Category Archives: Current Affairs

Wanna Know the Facts? Ask an Independent

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One of those polls that show exactly how uninformed we are has hit the newswires.  It reaffirms, once again, that the average adult in the United States has no idea what's going on in the world unless it appeared on Oprah or Entertainment Tonight. Normally I'd have ignored it but then I saw the graphic titled "Party Identification and News Awareness" that shows the breakdown by political party of what percentage of respondents answered each question correctly.  What it shows is that if you want to know what's going on in the world your best bet is to ask an independent since they were right more often in nine out of eleven categories. (h/t to John Robinson for the pointer to the poll)

Local Pastor vs. NC Legislature

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A local Baptist pastor was invited to offer the NC legislature prayer for a week.  He was told what the approved method of prayer was (in a nutshell, non-sectarian) and that if he didn't adhere to those standards he would be uninvited to pray.  He refused to adhere to those terms, which is his right, and the legislature uninvited him, which is its right.  Now the pastor wants an apology and the opportunity to open a legislative session with a prayer in the manner he sees fit. A quote from the story:

"I was made to feel like a second-class North Carolinian when I was told that my services would no longer be needed if I could not offer the opening prayer in the manner prescribed by the House of Representatives, rather that in the manner my biblical faith requires," Baity said.

I guaran-damn-tee you that he's on the side of the sectarian prayer advocates in the case being fought here in Forsyth County.  To refresh your memory the pro-sectarian prayer folks are saying that they should be able to pray in whatever manner they wish, much like the pastor is arguing here.  The anti-sectarian prayer folks are saying, no, you can't because then the government is put in the position of endorsing a specific religion.  

Here's the irony to me: what the pastor is saying, that he's being made to feel like a second class citizen, is exactly how people who don't want to be forced to hear sectarian prayer at a government meeting feel when a clergyman is invited to give a sectarian prayer to open the meeting.  

Walk a mile…

BP Bustin’ Up?

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Things in BP-land ain't looking too good:

THE British government is drawing up contingency plans for a possible collapse of BP.

This is amid mounting fears that the oil giant could be broken up or taken over in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The talks, which are being led by officials at the Department for Business and the Treasury, reflect growing concern within Whitehall about the implications that a corporate failure of BP, formerly Britain's biggest company, would have on British interests domestically and around the world.

Oo-la-la. Is it possible that a corporation behaving badly could actually be held accountable for its bad behavior?  Well, duh:

Prime Minister David Cameron and Energy Secretary Chris Huhne are set to discuss BP's future with US officials during a trip to Washington on July 20.

Speaking in Toronto at the G20 on June 25, Mr Cameron warned that BP faced potential destruction unless US authorities stepped in to prevent its compensation costs escalating out of control.

Government supplication to petroleum purveyors begins in 10, 9, 8…

Armed

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Guns make me nervous, always have and always will.  In particular I'm not a big fan of handguns because it just seems like it would be too easy to make a catastrophic error with one.  That's why seeing people walking around with handguns makes me jumpier than a mouse in a room full of cats.  It's not that I think they'll gun me down for looking at them cross-eyed, rather it's that I can think of 100 ways that someone could inadvertently pop off a round and I can just as easily imagine myself catching that round somewhere on my body.  That explains why you won't catch me within ten miles of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park on August 14 when some pro-gun people hold their Restore the Constitution Rally.

Obviously I'm not a gun guy, but I'm also not someone who gets real worked up about gun control.  I am a guy that's been known to sit in rush hour traffic and marvel that so few accidents occur on a daily basis rather than how many.  Seriously, given what we know about the human condition how is it possible that thousands of cars driven by people who watch American Idol on a regular basis can weave from lane to lane at 75 mph and only a tiny minority actually wreck?  Take that thought process and apply it to guns and you'll know where I'm coming from.

About Those Overpaid Bureaucrats? They Aren’t in Cali These Days

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California hasn't passed it's 2010-11 budget and as a result Gov. Schwarzenegger has reduced state employees' pay to the federal minimum wage: $7.25 an hour.  And if you're a state employed lawyer or doctor you're really SOL:

Some employees, such as doctors and lawyers, would get no pay because federal exempts them from any minimum wage requirement. Managers, supervisors and others who don't get paid for working more than 40 hours per week would receive $455 per week until a budget deal got done.

Schwarzenegger has invoked a 2003 state Supreme Court decision as grounds for the move. That ruling, White v. Davis, held that without a budget that appropriates money for state payroll, employee wages can be withheld to the federal minimum. That condition exists today, which is the start of the 2010-11 fiscal year and the state is without a budget. The back pay would be paid once a budget is enacted.

Full article: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/01/2864148/schwarzenegger-orders-minimum.html#ixzz0sWVNpsyi

The good news for the 'crats is that they'll get their money eventually, but I'm thinking next month's mortgage and car payments are gonna be painful for them.

Is BP Burying Oil?

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According to this post at FastCompany.com BP is being accused of dumping sand on top of oil from the Gulf Spill at a beach in Louisiana.  Below is the video they posted showing oil sandwiched between different layers of sand.  The oil was exposed by erosion caused by the hurricane/tropical storm that blew through the gulf earlier this week. Obviously there needs to be confirmation by an independent scientific expert, but if the story is proved true it will be next to impossible to believe anything that BP says about the spill.

Captain Obvious Announcement: The Rich Get Richer

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Updated numbers show that in America the very wealthy got very wealthier during the last decade:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report over the weekend showing that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007. The CBPP concluded that the data suggests greater income concentration at the top of the income scale than at any time since 1928.

Check out the chart here for a little visual of what they're talking about.

Later on they point out that the numbers only cover up to 2007 so the Great Recession probably knocked the super wealthy down a peg, but I seriously doubt it put much more than a dent in the disparity.

One of the common arguments I hear about taxes, especially when the topic is progressive tax structures (i.e. higher tax rates on the wealthy) is that the wealthy pay more in tax dollars than the rest of us.  I find that argument pretty lame because in my mind the most important number is the net, not the gross, and as you can see from the numbers above the net income of the super wealthy, that is their income after taxes, has grown at a much higher rate than everyone else.  That means that even if they are paying a higher tax rate, and that's a big if (see this for a look at how the effective tax rate on the super wealthy is less than you'd think), their real net income gains have still far outpaced those of us who live here below the income stratosphere.  As your average middle classer I find that troubling.

Countdown to someone calling me a socialist: 10, 9, 8, 7…

A Voice of Principle and Reason

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President Obama wrote the following on Twitter: "With Robert Byrd's passing, West Virginia has lost a true champion, and America has lost a voice of principle and reason."

Let's put this in perspective.  That sentence was written by America's first black president about a man who while he was serving in Congress filibustered against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and as a young man had belonged to the KKK.  Byrd later said that he regretted both of those decisions, but to me that even further highlights the change we've seen in this country in what is really a historical blink of an eye.

Here's an interesting fact for those of us who live in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina: Byrd was born in 1917 in North Wilkesboro (about an hour from Winston-Salem) and was originally named Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. His mother died in the 1918 flu pandemic and he was adopted by his aunt and uncle from West Virginia and they changed his name to Robert Carlyle Byrd.