I am completely conflicted and no party adequately represents what I believe or think – meaning, no one supports things that benefits only me. It sounds evil, but I’m not really interested in things that doesn’t at least benefit me in some way. Schools, libraries, meat inspections, social security, etc. – I’m all for that because I’m surrounded by its benefits either all the time or at some point in life. That’s good policy – it benefits everyone.

On the other hand, things like food stamps, affirmative action and Judge Judy really bother me. Programs like food stamps are hard to get off of, work poorly, subsidize shit food that later causes more expenses when people get fat and unhealthy and I personally know three people that game that system for no good reason. It’s these programs that could go away tomorrow and I wouldn’t care – they benefit few. That’s not good policy. The fixes to these will have to wait for another post.

Republicans

I hate spending money. I hate waste. I hate wasted money with a passion. A good Republican would too. Now, our current crop sucks, but they’re some good ones in there – Ron Paul, Mitch Daniels and a few others. I want people that cut the crap and do the work.

I also like the general conservative outlook on life that you can’t rely on other people for everything – you have to get up and go do something to get anything out of life and to live comfortably. To me, this translates to “work hard, be nice, play fair, do well”. I like that idea. Notice I said, “play fair”. This doesn’t mean companies can mistreat workers or invent new kinds of cheeses made from lead to reduce costs to raise profits on cheeseburgers.

And, I loathe laziness, I loathe lazy people and I respect two things very much: loyalty and timeliness. Two things that go well together and make for a great person. Get up, commit to a cause, do it, do it well and do it on time – with as few resources as possible.

Basically: shut up, quit whining and work hard.

Democrats

Some people are just so stupid, they require someone of authority to tell them they’re wrong. Whether that’s companies doing evil things like dumping sludge in a river or some hick who picks fights with blacks and gays. Democrats, generally, do a good job of looking out for individuals, as people.

Also, I think our current crop of Democrats are just ever-so-slightly better at being better politicians. They seem more interested in governing and less interested in just winning elections (but only slightly). I respect that.

And, I want to be around people who like to think every now and again and don’t always resort to “it’s in the Bible” for every argument they can’t win. A good Democrat wouldn’t.

Basically: think for  a second and be nice to people.

The Problem

My issue with all of this is that those kinds of people don’t seem to coexist, or at least not on a national level. Heck, not even on a state or local level. Maybe it’s generational, maybe I’m just weird.

But I have a problem with how “easy” it feels to me for poor people. I mean really poor – like $10,000 a year and less poor. Yes, I know, they’re poor and they usually live in squalor, but dangit, if a person really knew what was available to them, it wouldn’t be unfair to assume a person could get cheap living in decent areas – maybe not in Indy where you’d be in the ghetto, but in small, rural towns. You could get $150 a week in food (I only spend $40 a week), you could get free healthcare (even before the health bill) and you could get funding to go to school at the drop of a hat if you wanted it. All because you don’t have anything. And those people still don’t bother to seek a way out – probably because the system makes it so much easier to do nothing. We call them “entitlement” programs – I’d prefer if we redefined them to, “safety net” programs that are there to get you back on your feet and shove you back into the real world.

Yet, if you make more than a few pennies, you get turned away at every corner for everything. You’re left to fend for yourself while you watch the poor get help and the rich get richer. I think that’s called “the crumbling middle class”.

Everything bothers me.

At a panel on national security policy at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, a prominent lawyer from the Bush administration’s Department of Justice said he was concerned that the higher number of terrorist executions taking place under Obama was compromising U.S. intelligence operations.

“Why have executions increased?” asked Viet Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and one of the authors of the USA Patriot Act. Dinh complained that “the president and vice president expound this fact as a fact that they are actually successful in war.”

I’m just going to come on out and say I’m totally pro-death. I’m all for guns, abortions, executions and basically anything that gets people out of my way.

Frankly, in this world of stupid people doing extraordinarily stupid things, some people just should be shot on-site so we don’t have to pay for their trials where they’ll no doubt continue to say stupid things. There ability to say and do stupid things are probably interrelated.

For example, if you break into someone’s house, the property owner has a right to shoot you because A) you’re stupid to think you can just get away and B) no one wants your grubby hands on their stuff.

If it were me, I’d shoot you in the head because I don’t want you limping away from the scene of the crime and wasting my time in court just so you can end up in jail and cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

My logic goes for car accidents, too. If I ever face a car or plane crash, we’re going to hit something hard because I don’t wanna limp away from that wreck with a bunch of medical bills and insurance costs.

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.

The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican’s assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.

Buttars has since toned down the idea, suggesting instead that senior year become optional for students who complete their required credits early. He estimated the move could save up to $60 million, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The proposal comes as the state faces a $700-million shortfall and reflects the creativity — or desperation — of lawmakers.

This proposal has so many holes it’s hard to even begin counting. If Republicans think kids just fritter away their Senior year, they’re not necessarily wrong. But to think that “Senioritis” won’t just turn into “Junioritis” is plain idiotic and out of touch.

Another big question: what kind of a university – either in Utah or elsewhere – is going to let in a kid who, for the most part, hasn’t completed high school?

It sounds to me like they’re just looking at all the high school kids and saying, “Are you done yet? Seriously. Hurry it the hell up – you’re costing us money.”

Again, I will reiterate this: governing with all that money shouldn’t be hard. In fact, I imagine if anyone with just common sense and a good head on their shoulders could do it by themselves.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

The article goes on to make the point that many folks, not just in Colorado’s second-largest city, are flat exhausted with what appears to be severe ineptitude and idiocy on the part of government officials. They’re not necessarily wrong. In Justin’s fantasy land, the Mayor would have all his department heads say precisely how much they need to do their job with an emphasis on looking ahead. I imagine the conversation going something like this:

Mayor: “Ok, what do we need to get done?”
Public Works: “It costs us $X per street light per day, so, for 365 days we need $Y.”
Police Chief: “It costs $X per cop per day, so I need $Y to cover us for the year. And, we have 10 old cars on their last few miles, so we should replace those 10 this year. We can do 5 more next year.”
Fire Chief: “It costs us $X per fireman per day, so I need $Y to cover us for the year.”

This is not that hard. At the end of the day, you add up your total and figure out your tax rates to meet that demand.

What people want at the local level is really, really straightforward. Plow the streets, fix the holes, plug the leaks and protect the people. And only hire just enough people to get the jobs done. So, you don’t get to hire an executive assistant to the assistant deputy mayor. And, while we’re at it, you don’t get to spend $800 per chair for meeting rooms and you don’t get to spend money on things no one really uses – especially when they’re better alternatives nearby. For example, someone in the comments says:

These cuts are not major quality of life issues. For example, they are talking about closing an indoor wave pool. I have been at it twice now, where my 2 kids and I were the only people enjoying it. Four lifeguards were watching us and the city was wasting a lot of energy running it. We prefer the YMCA pools — they are cheaper and nicer.

City government has no business running these kinds of things – not when you’re scaling back on police and firemen when you may really need them to have adequate coverage.

It’s hard to say what’s really happening in Colorado Springs. I think you can get away with turning off every other streetlight and closing a few water parks and not watering the grass (seriously – they live near a desert, why are they watering grass?). The citizens may have very good reason to doubt their government’s ability to spend money wisely. Until we start seeing our Mayors at rummage sales and flea markets, that opinion likely won’t change much.

What gets me is that there wasn’t anything that man said that anyone should disagree with. If so, you only disagree with what you perceive as his personal agenda to “git ya”. Frankly, if anyone disagrees with these things you should go bury your head in cement:

1. Everyone should have access to healthcare – i.e., no dropping people when they’re at their weakest and don’t deny people for things that happened to them in the past.
2. The last 8 years of Republican spending have left us in a hole.
3. Obama’s current spending has caused more debt, but I (and even Mr. Anti-Deficit Gov. Mitch Daniels) credit him for at least attempting to throw something different at the wall to see if it sticks.
4. Government is here to give a voice to the minorities – you pricks that think gays should be shut out of everything in life should shut up and piss off. If you hate ‘em so bad, why not stick ‘em on the front lines so they can be shot at and killed like everyone else that wants to. How Republicans can’t get past that is beyond me.
5. Companies deserve to be “fairly compensated and rewarded”, but I don’t think our forefathers envisioned a world where a handful of companies could kill, pillage and rape the earth and our citizens like the kinds of companies we have today. (See: Monsanto, Dow Agro, Aetna, Wellpoint, News Corp, etc.)
6. People have got to stop telling the other party “NO” just because they’re of the other party. I swear, I lost all hope in this democracy when Al Franken’s “Anti-Rape” bill didn’t pass in ten seconds. Senate Republicans cock-blocked him on every possible attempt. What the heck is wrong with you people?!
7. Our nation’s universities have got to get over themselves and stop thinking of themselves as two-faced public/private entities. You can’t have it both ways. Cut your crap and make your product cheap and good.
8. Banks can go to hell.
9. Iraq has to put up or shut up. Get your shit together because we’re tired of dealing with your hell hole. We have plenty of hell holes right here in America – like Elkhart, Indiana.
10. Politicians have to grow some balls.

If nothing else, I was hoping he’d at least announce a plan to cap foreclosures. Foreclosures aren’t good for anyone. If a family of four is foreclosed on, you end up with four homeless people needing more assistance, you have a neighborhood with an empty house ready for criminals to jump into and you screw with the kids’ educational attainment because they likely get shuffled to a new school. If you get laid off or make a decent attempt at starting a rational business or get slammed with a ridiculous healthcare bill, then by god, if you can’t make your payments in a recession banks have to be forced to forgo foreclosing on you for at least 12-18 months. And, they have to give you the chance to pay back the owed payments during that time. The only people that want that foreclosed house is the people that lived there.

Also, Republicans have to stop giggling every time someone mentions Twitter of Facebook. You wonder why you’re so out of touch with young Americans (people under the age of 40). It’s because everything you do is fake and half-assed.

Democrats, again, have to grow some balls.

When I first started working for the Court, I came across Air America and found it to be a pretty good way of passing the day. Music stations get cumbersome to me and since I was only an intern, I didn’t spend much time configuring iTunes with a bunch of podcasts (there weren’t that many then, anyway).

I generally liked Air America. Surprisingly, I enjoyed Jerry Springer’s talk show. It wasn’t like his TV show and he was rather thoughtful to his callers and offered good, centrist, opinions. Mind you, most others on the radio like Rachel Maddow and Randi Rhodes were far, far left of center.

This week, Air America died. It declared bankruptcy after years of financial trouble. The folks at FOX no doubt had a heyday with the news.

As I was driving, I realized why Air America failed – their audience is way too progressive to be listening to a radio. I only listened because it was the only thing available. Once I started working full-time and had more and more tech-related podcasts, I dropped listening to Air America. Plus, Jerry Springer had moved on and Rachel Maddow got her show on MSNBC.

It occurs to me why Republican-radio is so popular. The people that would actually listen to Republican-radio are old enough to actually own radios in places other than their cars. All the same reason why Republicans have such epic failures each year figuring out this new-fangled Internet. So, Republicans like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly will claim they destroyed Air America when really it was just bad distribution. Air America never put up full-length podcasts and only had an Internet stream that was shoddy and poor like every other radio stream online.

I’ll keep this in mind when I run for Congress.

“I’m more convinced than ever that Indianapolis would be a superb place for a national convention for either party,” he said. “Having said that, the 2012 Super Bowl obviously is a big deal for the community, and we certainly wouldn’t want to be at cross-purposes with the Super Bowl.

“I’m not saying we would be, but we haven’t had all of those conversations.”

Some initial conversations have been positive.

“We have been encouraged to bid for the 2012 convention by some of the leadership in the party,” said Mike McDaniel, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party when it put in a bid to host the 2000 RNC. “They see Indianapolis and Indiana as being readily suited to hold an event of that kind because we have a track record of doing big events well.”

Luckily for Indiana, our citizens don’t have enough money to really fit in with the RNC types. Maybe Indy should stick to the Super Bowl and Carmel or Fishers can host the RNC in their Holiday Inn.

Assuming that all goes well, maybe Indy could bid for the Olympics in 2016. We oughta be a shoe-in for that. What with our “Crossroads of America” schtick, we oughta be able to get everyone downtown and parked in about 10 or 15 minutes.