How much do you trust the government to properly protect your personal information? The same government which is unable to implement electronic voting booths or protect top secret nuclear information at Los Alamos. During the upcoming VA legislative session, Bob Marshall will enter a bill to reject compliance with the REAL ID Act.

If REAL ID was implemented then a person would not be able to board a plane or enter a federal building including to meet their own Congressman without it. Additionally, carrying the REAL ID will become de facto as basic transactions such as credit card purchases will require it. Once it is assumed all citizens are carrying the REAL ID, the law enforcement will target those they believe do not have it. But how will they do that? Should they target anyone who doesn’t look “American“?

On the surface many citizens who are unaware of their civil liberties seem non-chalant and sometimes are even in favor of REAL ID. But what they fail to understand is that with all the states and federal agencies sharing biometric and personal information in real-time, there is absolutely no way to prevent hackers from accessing the information. The overall affect is that while the public is lulled into a false sense of security, the actuality is that we would be even more vulnerable to identity theft and loss of privacy.

“People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.” - Ben Franklin

For those inclined there is a Stop Dangerous ID Rally
When: Jan 21 - 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Where: Virginia State Capital Bell Tower / 910 Capital Street / Richmond, VA

I guess it was inevitable. First John McCain suspended his campaign to make certain Wall Street was bailed out. Then George Bush said he was abandoning free market principles to guarantee the auto bailout. Well the Democrats want to play with funny money too and they aren’t going to be outdone by their Republican counterparts.

So how much do they want? . . .

One Trillion Dollars dun dun dun. mwahahahah

Yes maam. The big T in that Trillion. The Democratic governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin are in discussions with the President-Elect and have said “The Obama team has been very receptive in listening to us.” I am sure Governor Kaine would like the federal “assistance” to help Virginia cover its $2B+ shortfall as well.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine said “It’s not shockingly large” when discussing the amount they are asking for. He is sort of right. It is large but not shocking anymore. The moral hazard has really sunk in. I am somewhat speechless as it is obvious we need to cut down a lot more trees to print the new dollar bills.

I am sure 90% of us who made New Year’s resolutions included one to lose weight (my goal is to lose 15 pounds) and it is consistent promise made to us by “fiscally conservative” politicians on both sides of the aisle. So if you were in charge where would you cut spending? Here are some areas I would trim down:

Military: Reduce our global footprint, specifically the 60,000+ soldiers in Asia and 100,000+ soldiers in Europe. I would redeploy some of them to Afghanistan and some to Border Patrol (in a non-military capacity).

Education: Return power to the States and eliminate No Child Left Behind

NASA: Focus agency on data collection satellites versus expensive and unnecessary human space flight.

Intelligence: Eliminate red tape added by DNI

IRS: Two for one special : - ) Get rid of personal income tax and a bureaucracy

I would also surgically dissect agencies such as the FCC, FDA and FAA. But these are just some starter ideas. If you had to put your money where your mouth is, what would you cut?

This is simply a horrible year for Detroit. Of course everyone knows about Eminem delaying his new album until next year because he’s such a perfectionist. Then Motor City became the embarrassment of the nation with their CEO’s blundering in front of Congress. To add insult to injury, the Detroit Lions had a perfect losing season at 0-16 to officially become the worst NFL team in history.

In the latest chapter of the Detroit blues, the Kuwaiti government is backing out of a $17.4 billion joint venture with Dow Chemical which was to be based in Detroit. The Supreme Petroleum Council of Kuwait deemed the contract as “very risky” given the global financial crisis and recent oil prices. Foreign investments are important to the US economy and previous moves by Congress to deny Dubai contracts in the US probably didn’t do much to help the confidence of Kuwait in these uncertain times.

So what are we going to do to build confidence in America’s business environment and compete on the global market? I hope we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and build up more trade barriers and scare investments away. How about reducing the US corporate tax rate which is the 2nd highest in the industrialized world?

I’m saddened to see the latest conflict between the Israelis and Hamas. For starters, I believe Israel has every right to defend itself and that Hamas is a democratically elected terrorist organization. We can argue until we are blue in the face about who started what and when but those discussions are rarely productive. The real question is how to achieve long-term peace and prosperity.

The diplomats will focus on how to carve a 2-state solution based on land appropriations, which I do think can play a part in the peace process but the root problem as I see it is the lack of a decent economy in Palestine. No doubt the hawks in Israel would love to kill every terrorist they can find but that strategy is never-ending. Many at the U.N. scold Israel for disproportionate responses to attacks because they seem unfair. However, my concern with the disproportionate responses is that they are often designed to limit basic resources to the Palestinians so much of their time is spent on basic survival needs.

Tactically, I can understand Israel’s plan, but long-term strategically it simply won’t work. I have a strong biased towards using Capitalism as an ambassador of peace and in this case it would mean allowing the Palestinians to more easily get business permits and not destroying their entire infrastructure. Organizations such as Hamas are often strengthened by Israeli attacks because they end up offering many of the basic services, which in turn assists in recruitment and fundraising. Meanwhile, the Palestinians also have to understand much of their situation is their own doing and blaming others will not change that, so I was happy to hear Abbas squarely putting the blame for the recent violence on Hamas for breaking the truce. Regardless, until the economic situation of everyday Palestinians is improved they will continue to be vulnerable to pay-offs from rich Saudis and other forms of recruitment.

Land is important but paychecks are imperative.

So what qualifies someone for public office? I learned this the hard way but when running for office you must have a history of supporting the party you want supporting you. Many Ron Paul Republicans found this out rather quickly but most of them were largely under-funded, unknown and had difficult general elections even if they did win their primaries.

But in the latest chapter of political newcomers, Caroline Kennedy is not under-funded nor unknown among political circles. In her bid for Hillary Clinton’s now vacant seat, Kennedy is getting hounded by those in her own party for not having adequately supported previous Dems. While many of us can probably understand internal party politics (at least pretend to), I do not think the average voter really cares about a candidate’s actual monetary support to other candidates (outside of egregious cases) and would prefer to focus on the candidate themselves. However, if the kingmakers do not support the candidate then it takes an enormous amount of star power and money to overcome. Is this fair to the constituents of the party? Personally I don’t think so but politics is about power and if you don’t kiss the ring you can kiss your chances goodbye.

It’s no secret Jim Moran has no problem touting his ability to get earmarks but I was surprised to see an opinion by Lindsay Wood in today’s DC Examiner calling him out on it. Despite all the empty rhetoric about earmark reform during the 2008 election cycle, a Seattle Times investigation found 155 earmarks worth $8.5 billion of which $3.5 billion was in the defense bill.

Among the many infamous remarks Moran has made he promised to “earmark the $H!T out of” defense bills and he kept his word. Moran alone added over $40 million to the defense bill of which $3.4 million went to Mantech International, which spent $74,000 on lobbying Moran. A ROI of roughly 4,600%, not bad. After John Murtha and Peter Visclosky, Jim Moran has received the most campaign money from defense contractors.

Earlier this year CQ Today quoted Moran as saying, “Defense is the only bill where we’re going to give him [Bush] anything he wants. And because that’s the one he wants, it’ll be full of earmarks and he’s not going to issue a peep about that.” That sort of honesty is hard to find in politicians nowadays.

While Moran has no problem snubbing Bush’s request to halt earmarks, what will he do under the Obama Administration? Virginia’s 8th district will always be loaded heavily with defense contractors but as the Iraq War is hopefully winding down, where will the new earmarks be hidden? And would Moran heed a call from Obama to halt earmarks? Until then, Santa Clause Moran will continue to bear more gifts for his nice donor list of special interests.

Well now that we’ve given the Big 3 roughly $17,000,000,000 to restructure and design more fuel efficient cars and oil is trading less than $40/barrel resulting in the lowest gas prices in 5 years, one would think the chant of “Drill Baby Drill” would be a quiet whisper.

In fact it is. The Bush Administration is quietly moving forward with offshore drilling procedures in Virginia. I don’t have an immediate rejection to offshore drilling in the U.S. granted it is done in environmentally sound ways, which I believe can be done, but I am more disturbed by the short-sightedness of the move. Even with offshore drilling, the U.S. will continue to rely on foreign oil from unstable countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela so why not take this opportunity when the auto industry has to reinvent itself anyway and truly commit to alternative sources of energy for the long term benefit for the country. I’m a big believer in American ingenuity when its allowed to flourish and I think now is the best time ever to get public opinion, businesses and govt to walk in lock step to ween ourselves from dangerous sources of external energy.

This obviously throws another egg in the basket of problems Obama will have to deal with. If I was to guess, he will get enough pressure from his supporters to stop offshore drilling in its tracks which really sets him up as a scapegoat every time gas prices do go up. Just my $0.03 a little extra with inflation and all

Max Shapiro

Thanks to everyone who entered. I was somewhat concerned no one would enter because the topic was so vague but I was very impressed with the essays written. It definitely was not an easy choice to make so I have also decided that anyone who entered an essay will get a consolation prize of $5 worth of Virginia scratch-off lottery tickets mailed to them. Email me at aks@amit-singh.com with any preferences of games. If you guys think this was an interesting exercise I will definitely do it again in the future.

I know a lot of folks are rightfully upset at Bernie Madoff, who is now under house arrest in his fancy Upper East Side apartment, for swindling somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000,000,000 over 2 decades. But the U.S. Government’s Social Security pays 10 times that amount every year to beneficiaries. So far the pyramid has been working because we have enough workers to support the retirees but with the impending retirement of the baby boomers that is likely to change.

Often recent college graduates joke about how they are not going to receive Social Security benefits but we all know they are going to pay into it. So what to do? Is reforming SS by extending the age requirements and reducing the benefits enough?

I won’t get into a discussion of whether we needed Social Security in the first place because at this point we have it and it is a safety net millions of seniors rely on and we cannot abandon them. But for the next generation, what are we going to do to ensure they receive retirement benefits? Bush was unable to privatize Social Security because he didn’t have enough “political capital” given the Iraq War and I am quite sure Obama will not make any gestures to give citizens more control of their own money.

I think the best answer for now is to allow the economy to thrive by letting bad companies go out of business and good companies succeed thereby creating a more substantial and stable tax base. Or we could do what we always do and simply print up more money.

okay, the time has come. I actually am going to extend the deadline until Sunday for all you procrastinators. You have 2 ways you can enter your essay:

1) Simply reply to this thread (will show up immediately)

2) Send your essay to aks @ amit-singh . com (will show up at the end)

just as a recap:

Topic: Which do you prefer? Ordered Chaos or Chaotic Order. You can define what those mean to you.
Prize: 25 new scratch-off Virginia lottery tickets mailed to you (value $0 - $??,???)
Judge: me of course!
Length: less than 500 words
Due Date: December 21

this is not an acceptable submission: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynhGiZNCyeo

As if we didn’t know this to be true so long ago. I think in retrospect, I will look back on the Bush presidency and add to his list of failures how he tainted the term “Free Market” and has made the Left and most of the country believe that the Free Market is unable to self-regulate and provide better solutions to our problems than the government. For someone who I had such high hopes for 8 years ago, I am truly disappointed.

The weather in Alexandria tonight is terrible but both candidates seeking the GOP nomination for the open VA-46 delegate seat were at William Ramsay Rec Center tonight and I got meet and speak with them briefly.

Phil Cefaratti was there with his wife and handing out this flyer that included the note “Alert! Sasha Gong supports Hillary Clinton and Mark Warner.” I asked him what he would focus on and he explained it was fiscal responsibility specifically dealing with the upcoming $2.5B budget shortfall. He also wanted to make sure Virginia got its fair share of the Obama administration’s promise of the infrastructure money for roads and bridges. He said he would run as a pragmatic Republican in the short campaign ahead of him if he was to win the nomination tonight.

Sasha Gong attended the canvass with a handful of supporters wearing “Vote for Shasha” stickers. She was handing out this flyer which chronicles her life from dealing with Communist China including being imprisoned for a year up until today where she was a leader in the Asian-Americans for McCain Coalition. When I asked her what she would focus on she replied education. She was concerned America was graduating many lawyers but not enough engineers and that we need scientists and technical talent to be competitive on the global scale.

The Democratic canvass was being held in the same building and I am sad to report their lines were longer than ours. Regardless, some of the usual faces at 8th District events were there as well including Chris Marston, Mike Ginsberg and Brenda Hankins. Dave Foster also made a quick appearance. I hope to post the results later tonight.

UPDATE: Joe Murray is the GOP nominee. somehow I missed him but here is the email from Chris Marston:

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Chris Marston < ----> wrote:

In the special party canvass called to select the Republican nominee
for House of Delegates representing the 46th District in the Special
Election orderd for January 13, 2009, Joe Murray was selected. The
chair of the Republican Legislative District Committee will certify
the results
tomorrow to the State Board of Elections. There were 49 votes cast.
Three candidates sought the nomination:Phil Cefaratti–16, Sasha
Gong–13, Joe Murray–20.

So far 3 members of the GOP have expressed interest to challenge the Dems for Brian Moran’s open seat. They are: Phil Cefaratti, Lisa Marie Cheney, and Sasha Gong

There will be a special canvass from 6-9PM this Tuesday, Dec 16 at William Ramsey Recreation Center, 5650 Sanger Ave. More details at: http://www.alexgop.org/campaign/canvass_hd46.php

The special election will be held on Jan 13, 2009. Expect a story in tomorrow’s Washington Post about the race.

Find out more about each candidate after the break.

Today British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said 75% of the terror plots in Britain originate from Pakistan and agreed with India’s assertion that the Mumbai attackers were from there as well. Overall, I am happy with the United States in the ordeal as a diplomatic player to keep India and Pakistan from going to war but I wonder who would play that role if America was attacked?

While the Indian public is foaming at the mouth to attack Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, the United States fires missiles into Pakistan, a sovereign country it was not attacked by, a few times a week despite repeated calls by Pakistan to halt the practice.

So what’s the difference? One could argue there is no chance U.S. and Pakistan would go to war with each other while India’s incursions would escalate to war. But at the same time, are the U.S. actions making Americans safer or not? I don’t think it was any coincidence that the attacks in Islamabad and Mumbai are focusing in on tourist areas and the attackers were specifically looking for tourists with U.S. and British passports.

I don’t think under the Obama administration there will be much change in how we deal with Pakistan which may be okay now that Musharraf is gone (for now) and Zardari is much more interested in peace and stability. Regardless, I think we need to develop more comprehensive ways to “defeat terrorism” rather than thinking we can kill all the terrorists. Of course, you know I think we should take a more capitalist approach and work on the economy to provide jobs to would-be jihadists.