Patrick’s Rants

Come on Palin. I know you are wearing your best consignment digs these days – after being called out on spending more on a few outfits than most of us make in a year. But, according to CNN.com, Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday said Sen. Barack Obama has ties to a Columbia University professor who she said is “a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.”

Palin said her assertion “is not negative campaigning to call someone out on their record.”

“It seems that there is yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years,” Palin said at an event in Bowling Green, Ohio.

If you never travel, never leave the country and sit diligently watching Russia across the Bering Straits you will never meet a controversial person. And this is how Sarah has lived her life – when she wasn’t firing her ex-brother-in-law or having the state pay for her kids’ travel expenses.

Exxon Mobil reports another record profit. CNN reports that it partly due to the high price of oil. It’s time to push the oil companies into heavy research mode. There are alternative methods of creating crude oil, but Exxon and its cohorts would rather sit on the profits. At a time when the stock market is melting down, people are worried about their jobs, spending less and housing is set to go into free-fall, big oil needs to be working on a way to keep our money here instead of sending it to the Middle East. This is the company that Jeff Flake wants to reduce corporate taxes for.

John McCain took another swipe at Obama yesterday. He said, “when I’m President I won’t interrupt the World Series with an infomercial”.
First, in the Bush Dukakis race in 1988, both candidates ran 30 minute prime time blocks. Ross Perot was running everything he had. Second, if McCain really thinks that baseball is more important than the future of the country he is even more out of touch than just thinking the middle class extends to $5 million per year income and not knowing whether he has one house or eight. His explanation of his miscount is reminiscent of asking the definition of “is”.

Jeff Flake wrote a letter to the President which he summarizes on his House web site.

Mesa, Arizona, Oct 28 – Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today sent a letter to President Bush regarding reports that the Treasury Department may use funds from the bank bailout to assist struggling automotive companies.

News reports have also indicated that General Motors and Chrysler would use bailout funds to complete a merger, with the federal government receiving an equity stake in the new company.

“Many of us feared that the nationalization of the financial sector would spread to other industries,” said Flake. “Today it’s the automakers asking for a bailout; tomorrow we can expect the airline industry and other struggling industries to be next in line.”

“If liquidity is the issue, measures such as cutting the corporate tax rate, suspending the tax on capital gains, and removing penalties for the repatriation of foreign assets are far better options than putting the federal government in the position of choosing winners and losers in the economy.”

First, let me say that I agree that government money should not be poured into failing companies. That’s where our agreement ends though. I am not familiar with the foreign asset repatriation penalties, I will instead focus on the other points.

“If liquidity is the issue, measures such as cutting the corporate tax rate, suspending the tax on capital gains,

Why is it that the answer to everything for Republicans is to cut taxes and reduce government oversight? If a corporation is losing money they are not paying taxes. Period. The tax rate on -$1million is $0. The government doesn’t send corporations a check if they don’t make any money this year. Corporations don’t get the “earned income credit” or the “per child tax credit”. Instead, they get to apply those losses to future earnings.

Suspending the tax rate of capital gains? That only makes Warren Buffet rich. Correction, Warren Buffet doesn’t sell things – he buys them to hold them. A suspension of the capital gains rate will set the stock market up to go to zero. Anyone holding onto gains for because they didn’t want the tax consequence will dump their remaining stocks and bonds. And they will do it now out of fear that the market is going lower and the prospect that the suspension is temporary. It will start a selling spree that would not be limited to the stock market, homes could start hitting the selling block driving prices down even further. Additionally, the middle class will again get the shaft on their 401(k), Traditional IRA and other tax deferred retirement plans. The lower capital gains rate doesn’t apply to capital gains held in your retirement plan – instead you pay the highest rate, just like you would if you were still working.

At first glance, this appears to be complete and utter disregard for the middle class (anyone who makes less than $5 million/yr according to McCain) perhaps, I should heed Hanlon’s Razor, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Jeff, you are either an idiot or else you think we are, or you are maliciously attempting to cut the life out of the middle class. Jeff, if it weren’t for the middle class you would have to pay more taxes and clean your own toilet.

This past week, Colin Powell endorsed Obama for President as well as granddaughter’s of conservative Barry Goldwater.

There is a joke that has been on the internet for quite a while. It goes something like this, “without walls and fences, who needs Windows^TM or Gates?” And now, Microsoft’s own advertising campaign is, “Life without walls.” That means we don’t need Windows.

Vista blog
More at Microsoft Watch

The latest Mac commercial has “PC” sitting at a table with his accountant eye shade on. We hear him as he’s moving money from a smallish pile of money to two other piles,

“advertising, advertising, advertising. Fix Vista. Advertising, advertising, advertising. Fix Vista.”

The pile for advertising is huge while the pile to fix Vista is quite small. Mac asks him about the piles and PC tells him that he has to spend a lot of money on marketing Vista leaving little to fix the bugs that exist in Vista – which might make it a product that people actually would want to buy. PC looks at the stacks and begins to ask if the “fix” pile might not be enough to fix all the bugs in Vista and motions his hands as if moving the marketing money into the fix pile. PC looks at the piles and says, “you’re right” and moves all of the money to the marketing pile.

John McCain was just on TV calling Obama a liberal.

He’s in the left lane of politics, he always has been.

I don’t know where John has been driving, but around here the left lane is the fast lane and in some cases, it’s the car pool lane.

November 4, 2008 has the following items on the ballot in Arizona:
Prop 100 would amend the Arizona Constitution to prohibit a transfer tax on property.
No. There is no need to amend the constitution, adding more cruft for something that has not – to my knowledge – even been proposed. A yes vote would require any future consideration to be two-fold: repeal the amendment and approve a transfer tax. Vote no new amendments.

Prop 101. I’m going to stray from no new amendments for this proposition to amend the Arizona Constitution. It expands rights instead of removing them. Rightfully, this should be included in statute, but it’s apparently not. It’s related to health care and health care choice. A reluctant “yes” on 101.

Prop 102. Amend the Arizona Constitution to “provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state”. This despite the fact that Arizonans voted against this two years ago; despite the fact that so-called “gay marriage” is already illegal in Arizona. Let me repeat that for the cheap seats, gay marriage is already illegal in Arizona. The bogey man here is that “activist judges” will change the law. Activist judges have done what judges do, interpret the law and when the law is wrong, they right that wrong. I won’t go into how much good is done when rights are expanded by “activist judges”. Something as simple as being read your rights when arrested, Miranda rights, come from an activist judge’s ruling. No, no, no on 102.

Prop 105. Amend the Arizona Constitution to “provide that an initiative measure that establishes, imposes or raises a tax, a fee or other revenue or mandates a spending obligation… shall not become law unless the initiative measure is approved at the election by a majority of qualified electors registered to vote in the state.” (emphasis added) No, No, NO! This amendment to the constitution would put all of the power in the hands of people who cannot be bothered to make it to the polls. All registered voters who don’t vote will have their votes cast as an automatic “no”. If a voter can’t be bothered to get off the couch and vote for or against something there is no way that they should get an automatic “no” overriding the wishes of people who actually do vote.

Prop 200. Modify and extend Pay Day Loan law. Yes.
Prop 201. Modify and expand homeowner/homebuyer rights. The commercials running against this are inaccurate and refer to sections of the proposition that do not exist using scare tactics and the “outside lobbyists” bogeyman. Yes.
Prop 202. I’m split on this one. Ostensibly this attempts to modify and correct the Arizona illegal worker law that was recently passed. The entire law needs to be thrown out. There are already federal laws in place to do exactly what the original law purported to do. Changing the law to “fit it” will do nothing to keep Arizonans or US Citizens (and legal residents) safer. The entire thing needs to be stricken from the books. This is in the same boat as my primary stand on amendments, no more cruft. Unfortunately, that option is not on the ballot – I would vote repeal if there were that option.

I would support an amendment to voting laws that would allow for a “Repeal original law” choice on the ballot.

Prop 300. Simple – raise the state legislator’s salaries from $24,000 to $30,000. They haven’t received a raise in ten years. Their jobs are part time and there should be no increase when the economy is flailing. No.

And now the floor is open for debate