This week, the GOP revealed what its agenda would be should the party win control of Congress in the upcoming elections. Included in this agenda are plans to extend tax cuts to all income levels, to roll back the recently passed health care plan, and to continue a policy of deregulation. There are also plans to roll back federal spending to 2008 levels and to cancel any unspent stimulus funding.

There are two obvious targets in the GOP’s plans that most unbiased economic experts will dismiss as effective methods for improving the economy: tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of industries.

First of all, tax cuts to the top income levels don’t necessarily provide the benefits that the GOP claims that they do. The reasoning is that these tax cuts give business owners more cash to improve their businesses and ultimately to hire more employees. There is no guarantee, however, that these tax cuts will be spent in this way. The businessmen at the top income levels are being extremely cautious while the economy continues to flat-line, and are hedging their bets against a continued period of sluggish economic growth. They are in no hurry to invest more money into their businesses when the weak economy doesn’t offer much chance of a return on their investment.

On the other hand, tax cuts for middle class citizens tend to get spent immediately. Once that money is in circulation, it continues to help the economy. The middle class citizen spends that money at a local business, which uses that cash to buy more inventory, which gives the manufacturer money to pay its production employees. Then those employees spend their wages at a local business and the cycle starts over again.

While tax cuts to the rich only benefit the economy to the extent that they trickle down to middle class workers, benefits to middle class workers flow much more efficiently into the economy, where they still benefit rich business owners through increased business.

For this reason, I thought that programs like the Cash for Clunkers program were more effective than giving stimulus funds directly to banks. Stimulating the purchases of items like new cars brought new business to the banks while also benefitting the buyer and the auto dealer. The stimulus funds given directly to the bank seem to have only benefitted the bank and then vanished into the air.

But the even more obvious target of the GOP’s plan is continuing to claim that deregulation is an unnecessary economic restraint at the present time. The justification for deregulation is that it removes constraints on business and allows for increased production and more competitiveness within industries.

However, in light of recent events, there has probably been no better time for pointing out the harm that deregulation has caused. The current economic crisis was triggered by an artificial housing bubble where unregulated economic securities were created to capitalize on years of rising home prices. They created a pyramid of unrealized wealth based on the unlikely premise that housing prices would continue to rise indefinitely. Management of investment banks put the temptation of short-term profits above the consequences to the economy and to homeowners if the housing bubble burst.

There was also the story of the summer: the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Properly enforced regulations should have prevented such an accident, and would have also required an appropriate plan of action should an unavoidable accident occur.

There was also the recent gas-line explosion in California, which brought to light the state of the aging network of gas lines in many areas of the country. See also the recent salmonella outbreak caused by unclean conditions at massive egg farms. Going back several years, there were coal mine accidents during the Bush presidency that brought to light the lack of safety precautions by the coal companies.

And the list doesn’t stop there. It is all too easy to point out where decades of deregulation have threatened the safety of workers, citizens, and natural resources.

While these companies, and the legislators that seem to represent them, will argue that they must spend unreasonable amounts of cash to comply with federal regulations, these same companies have no problem spending millions on lobbyists to help fight against them. When the BP oil spill caused legislators to reexamine industry regulations, the oil companies upped their spending to lobbyists, with BP spending $1.7 million in one quarter. Shell spent $4.05 million on lobbying in the same quarter.

There are contingents representing employees and the environment who lobby against business interests, and sometimes take companies to court. However, this is a situation where an ounce of prevention would create a pound of cure. If these companies were to go the extra mile to ensure that they provide a safe work environment and sustainable business practices, then it would be much more difficult for environmentalists to make a case against a new oil well or natural gas line. Instead, we get BP taking shortcuts to get their deep sea oil well on line quickly and cheaply, costing 11 lives and billions in cleanup costs.

The GOP could make plenty of legitimate arguments for their plan to fix the economy. They could justifiably say that this is not the time for elements of the new health plan to take effect. They could argue against specific elements of the remaining stimulus spending. They could propose tax cuts for specific types of capital spending instead of just giving the richest 3% of America a continued payout on the taxpayer’s dime.

The GOP is completely out of touch with recent events if the party honestly thinks that it can continue to argue that deregulation will benefit the economy and not cause further harm. The party needs to let go of what it sees as the tried and true mantra of tax cuts and deregulation and form strategies to solve the current problems with the economy.

While the idea of being rid of pennies might sound good for convenience sake, my one argument against doing so is a big one: if you get rid of pennies, retailers will round up their prices. By getting rid of pennies you are giving stores a legitimate excuse to raise prices. They can wash their hands of any blame for the price changes.

There are also sales taxes to account for. One can’t really charge a $.06 sales tax if there are no pennies. It’s not likely that retailers are going to adjust their prices to accommodate sales tax, so you will have a double rounding off effect – the retailers will round their price, and the local government will round up their sales tax. If both are rounded up to the next nickel, you could potentially end up paying an additional $.08 on every taxable purchase.

It might not seem like a lot, but that sure adds up over every purchase that you make in a year.

There are a couple of arguments made for getting rid of the penny, and I don’t think that either justifies passing an additional cost to the consumer to eliminate a form of currency.

There is a legitimate argument that the cost of manufacturing a penny is now more than one cent. According to the video above, it costs 1.7 cents to produce one penny. (Other sources say 1.4 cents or 1.26 cents per penny). The reason that it costs so much is that the cost of zinc has gone up.

There is no reason that we need to continue to produce pennies in their current form. They could made of steel, plastic, hell, substitute sunflower seeds for cents. It doesn’t matter what they’re made of, as long as there is still a piece of currency representing one cent circulating in the marketplace.

Another argument is that there is a lot of time wasted in dealing with pennies. Supposedly it decreases productivity. I’m not buying it. Personally, I throw my change into my wallet when I get it. When it begins to add up and make too much of a bulge, I take most of it and dump it into a cup at home. This rarely happens.

If for some reason you do end up accumulating a lot of change, there are those Coinstar machines at the store where you can redeem it. It costs a service fee, but it doesn’t take up too much of your time like rolling pennies would.

The only way I see pennies wasting time is to retailers. Just think of all the time spent by cashiers counting out pennies to customers, or by managers counting the pennies in a cash drawer at the end of a shift. Guess what? It’s a cost of doing business, like a million other things. We’re talking about dealing with a form of currency here. If you want to do business with paying customers, you need to factor in the cost of actually handling the money given to you.

It’s a completely different rant that doesn’t need to be made here, but there is are those who argue that cutting costs to businesses will benefit the customers through price cuts, and employees through wage increases. It’s more likely that the decreased costs add to the profit margin and go no further. The way that businesses compete is by making changes to become more efficient, like cutting costs. Decisions to lower prices are made when the products aren’t selling at the appropriate volume, and decisions to raise wages depend on the company’s ability to hire and retain qualified employees. Lowering costs by, for example, eliminating pennies, doesn’t necessarily lead to any kind of benefit for the customer or the company’s employees.

Which means that it is the executive-level decision-makers at retail businesses, the guys in charge of finding ways to lower the company’s costs, who should be pushing for the elimination of the penny. It doesn’t benefit the average joe to rant against the existence of pennies, especially when there are much more legitimate things to complain about.

One last thought is that transactions are increasingly taking place electronically. More and more, people are paying for groceries, gas, restaurant food, and other everyday purchases with their debit or credit cards. In these forms of payment, you get the benefit of the penny without having to actually having to handle any coins.

There are still some transactions that need to be made in cash, and there are a surprising amount of low-income individuals who don’t have a bank account. For these reasons, the physical production of pennies needs to continue. The increasing availability of electronic transactions, though, will make it so that fewer and fewer actual pennies are necessary. The concept of the penny as a form of currency, however, benefits consumers in a way that might not be apparent in day-to-day life.

I’ve been doing a lot of studying lately. After a long session of burying my head in the books, I need a little light entertainment to ease the brain fatigue. TV shows usually fit that bill, but we no longer have cable at the house so I’m limited to what I can find on the internet.

While looking for something to watch one afternoon, I discovered that the original Star Trek episodes are available from their IMDB page: “Star Trek” (1966) – Episode list

I’ve really never sat and tried to watch the original series as an adult. The episodes were on as reruns on weekday afternoons when I was a kid. I remember liking the weird-looking aliens, and I remember a few of the old plots (Tribbles, lava monster), but not much else.

I’ve also caught the occasional episode on TV in recent years. They are on weekend afternoons and late at night. At these times they were just amusing filler – I wasn’t watching them that closely.

Now that I’ve discovered the episodes on IMDB I’ve watched an episode every afternoon for several days now. I also like to click over to the AV Club website, where a blogger has recently rewatched and reviewed the episodes: Star Trek | Tvclub | The A.V. Club

I had recently gone through a phase where I was watching the Next Generation episodes before bed when there was nothing else on. These I did watch during their original run, and I do remember some of the plots.

In now watching the original series, it is apparent how different the two series were. Yeah, the old show is cheesy. The sets and props are cheap, the costumes are silly (and the female crewmembers’ wigs), and the acting is sometimes laughable. I’m currently watching “The Enemy Within” as I write this – the episode where there is an evil Kirk created through a transporter malfunction. Shatner’s acting as the evil Kirk is hilarious. “I want to live! I want to liiiive!”

Both TOS and TNG reuse and recycle a lot of the same plots – the god-like being, the crew comes down with some malady, the time-travel stories, a crewmember strikes up a relationship with an alien that can never be fulfilled, etc.

The difference between the two series, and the thing that is so striking to me as I watch the old episodes, is that TOS moves pretty quickly into the main plot. TNG episodes tend to have a lot of filler. There are a lot of scenes where crewmembers are just standing around talking, either about a side plot or just deciding what to do about the main conflict of the episode.

The TOS episodes set up the story quickly (sometimes before the title plays), and go right into the second act. There tends to be a lot of phaser use, and there is almost always a fistfight.

Where TNG episodes rely on a lot of brainstorming and serious discussions to solve their problems, all of the TOS decision-making runs through either Kirk or Spock. While its never explored to a great extent, there is an interesting dynamic between Kirk’s seat-of-the-pants style and Spock’s logical decision-making. It seems like often Spock is there to lay out the sound plan of action just to illustrate how Kirk succeeds by ignoring the rules.

What really struck me about the TOS episodes was the music. It’s really dated, but it works to ratchet up the thrill-factor in the episodes. When the action heats up, there is usually a “boom, boom, ba-boom, boom” track going. There are also great spooky and dramatic themes that play at the appropriate moments. It’s scored like it was a movie, and the only TV series that I can think of to compare it to in that regard is LOST.

I don’t know if Roddenberry’s story ideas have particularly struck me so far. Clearly TNG was more interested in putting across the “important” moral lessons. Still, I am surprised at how well the old episodes hold up, cheese and all. I’m tempted to say that I enjoy watching it as much as I enjoy old Twilight Zone episodes.

And it’s also great for the unintentional laughs, like all of the outdated misogyny towards the female crewmembers (particularly Janice). I just got a huge kick out of beating McCoy to the punch on one of his trademark lines, “He’s dead, Jim.”

It’s full of bad acting and pointy ears, but you have to admit that there is something to the old Star Trek.

REM is from Athens, Georgia, which I see as an oasis in a desert of Southern culture. I must use the disclaimer that I haven’t really spent much time in Georgia. I’m sure that it is much more diverse then I am depicting it. Let’s just agree that certain segments of the population have a very backwards world view and forgive my overgeneralization of an entire section of the country.

The lyric that set me down this path was from the song “Can’t Get There From Here.” Michael Stipe sings that, “If you’re needing inspiration / Philomath is where I go.” When I heard this line while working the other day, the thought that sprung to mind was that he is being a little sarcastic when he says this. I don’t actually know anything about a town called Philomath, but I imagine that Stipe is referring to some isolated small town that hasn’t changed in years. Along these lines, the song “Can’t Get There From Here” could be saying that Georgia is not a particularly inspiring place. If you need intellectual stimulation, you probably won’t get it here.

The title of the album, Fables of the Reconstruction, is itself a reference to the South after the Civil War. Another stand-out song from that album is “Driver 8”.

I think that “Driver 8” is about struggling against ignorance and backwards thinking. The narrator in the song is frustrated that the South has held onto these attitudes for so long. It starts out talking about gradual processes, walls built stone by stone, fields divided one by one.

The train conductor is telling the narrator to take a break. The narrator is frustrated, but the conductor is saying to be patient. They can reach their destination, “but it’s still a ways away.”

If you really want to pick the lyrics apart further, there are several references to faith, and also the phrase that all the children hear is sky-blue bells ringing. This could be saying that the children are held to a very narrow-minded religious viewpoint, and all that they hear are the church bells ringing. In contrast to this, the narrator is trying to shield his children from the hated heat. He wants them to grow up to be more tolerant and not to hate.

As I said, I tend to read way too much into these things. They are great songs that can be enjoyed without trying to dissect what is being said, but I think that there is at least a grain of truth to my interpretation.

Or it could just be a really cool song about trains, if you prefer.

The song “Alison” by Elvis Costello is an example. I’ve heard people talk about what a beautiful song that is, sung to a girl that the guy always had a thing for and hadn’t seen in a long time. I’ve always heard it as a bitter ex-lover taking the opportunity to kick the girl while she’s down. If you’ve heard enough Elvis Costello songs, you know that he probably left it purposely ambivalent. A lot of his lyrics are left vague and open to interpretation.

That said, I have some thoughts about an Arcade Fire song that I really like. I might be reading way too much into it, but this is the way I choose to hear it, and I think it’s great.

To me, the song “Power Out” is about a kid losing his innocence. When I first heard it, I took the title literally. I thought that it was about a kid whose family’s power gets shut off in the wintertime.

To a kid, the concept of paying the bill or getting your service terminated is completely foreign. All that he sees is that he and his family have been left cold and in the dark, while people around him are happy in their warm, cozy homes. He sees it as cruelty, and it is what teaches him that the world is not the harmonious place he thought it was.

In the end, the singer shows that the way he sees the world is forever changed from then on.

“Because nothing’s hid, from us kids! You ain’t fooling nobody with the lights out!”

Arcade Fire “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)”

When Portland-area author and Oregonian entertainment reporter Peter Carlin released Paul McCartney: A Life, the ads were everywhere in the local press. What finally piqued my interest in Carlin’s book was an interview that he did. He mentioned that Paul and John Lennon had met on friendly terms several times after the ugly Beatles breakup. They even jammed with Stevie Wonder at one point.

Carlin’s book moves pretty quickly through the Beatles years, and follows Paul’s life all the way up to the present day. He gives pretty equal treatment to all of the various stages of Paul’s story.

Carlin seems to do a fair and unbiased job of reporting, acknowledging that Paul was a control freak, and a sometimes self-centered egomaniac. When the Beatles are first getting signed by their manager Brian Epstein, McCartney slips in a word with him, saying that he would be a star whether the band makes it or not. In later years, McCartney refuses to take criticism while making his solo records, instead replying, “And how many number one hits have you written?”

The stories about Paul and John are there too. Carlin points out that Paul was the professional one in the Beatles. His influence kept the moody, unpredictable Lennon from drifting away from The Beatles much sooner than he did. Paul’s emerging skills as a songwriter pushed John to raise his game and create his own masterpieces.

The stories about John and Paul meeting up late in the 70’s are relatively short and simple, but they are an important and previously unheard of part of their long, complicated relationship.

Carlin’s writing can get a little hokey when he starts to talk about the music. He is especially giddy when describing McCartney’s live performances. He recovers to give a touching portrayal of Lennon’s “Free as a Bird” and how it came to be included on the Beatles’ Anthology. He also does his best writing of the book when it comes time to talk about Linda McCartney’s final days before succumbing to breast cancer.

Not being a big McCartney fan, though, I was more interested in the dynamics of the story. The rise from Liverpool kid to worldwide star is a fascinating one.

When something as big as The Beatles ends, what you do next is a big question. Carlin takes us through the next forty years of McCartney’s life without losing the momentum from the earlier part of the story. It was a relatively fast and enjoyable read, and I would have to say a successful job on Carlin’s part.

Then I listened to this song the other day at work and I realized that I am the guy in that song. I am 35 years old and making my second try at going to college. I have made two major moves since graduating high school: once to upstate New York and eight years later to Oregon.

No matter what I have done, it has always been just temporary. It was always just what I was doing until that big thing that I am supposed to be doing comes along.

Unlike the guy in the song, I’m not sure that life has passed me by. I’ve gotten to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was tied down.

Still, it was a sad moment to realize that I’ve spent so much time and effort chasing my “real life” instead of taking advantage of all of the ways that I have been blessed.

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858509660/

1. What Palinization is, and how it, ironically, doesn’t apply to Sarah Palin.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/223803

2. A judge rules on the government’s use of prayers to Jesus and gets slammed for preferring the secular term “Allah”.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/223519

The first page has stories about how this is a tough season for charities, and a shooting that happened last night in the town that I live. Apparently, some guy in a car shot some other random guy in a car for no clear reason. He then led police on a four-mile chase while shooting at them. He ended his night by crashing his car, getting out, and continuing to shoot at the police, who responded by shooting him dead. Good times.

The next page of the paper has a story about how al-Qaida has English-language websites that it uses to recruit nutcases like the guy in Fort Hood to open fire on innocent people.

The page after that has a story about how the right-wing militia movement is resurfacing now that there is a black liberal president in charge. Apparently, according to one guy, Obama is going to snatch you up in the middle of the night and you will never be seen again.

The thing is, I don’t blame these guys. After reading the first few pages of the newspaper this morning I’m ready to pack up some guns and head off into the hills myself. So join, won’t you? And don’t forget to pack some marshmallows. We’ll make some s’mores.

Krakauer does a great job of being ambiguous and letting the reader make his own judgments. While the movie of Into the Wild is a good representation of the book, the Christopher McCandless that appears in the movie is portrayed as some tragic hero much more than he is in the book.

Pat Tillman would seem to be a good subject for Krakauer. Here is another man with great drive and a streak that some might have called reckless. He could be seen as either a great hero or a cocky jerk that got himself killed when he could have earned millions as a football star.

There is a little bit of that treatment in Where Men Win Glory, but not nearly enough. The background on Pat’s early life is great, and it shows a much more complex man than the one who was initially portrayed by the media. Pat spends a short stint in jail that teaches him to get a handle on his cocky side, and also to appreciate the opportunity to attend college for the academics as well as the athletics.

When Tillman decides to forgo a six million dollar NFL contract to join the post-9/11 fight, it is not just out of blind patriotism or arrogance. Tillman looked at the privileged life he was living and didn’t feel like he deserved it. He didn’t feel like he had earned it, yet. So, in what was possibly a short-sighted prediction, he saw himself doing the noble thing and fighting for his country, and then returning to his old life with the sense that he now truly deserved that privileged life in the lofty air-conditioned home.

While the book is satisfying up until the point when Tillman and his brother join the Army Rangers, it quickly goes south after that. Part of it is that you know what is coming. Part of it is that Pat is soon disappointed to find that his fellow soldiers are mainly undisciplined punk kids. Pat also sees through the reasons for war with Iraq, and pledges to continue doing his duty though his bitterness comes out in his journal entries.

What really ruins When Men Wins Glory, though, is the endless material on how the military leadership got everything wrong. We get the background on how the Jessica Lynch story got blown out of proportion. We hear a story about a company of amphibious assault vehicles that gets targeted by their own planes in an airstrike. We hear how the strict adherence to timelines, set by Pentagon desk jockeys with no firsthand knowledge of conditions on the ground, led to disastrous results, including the circumstances that ultimately led to Pat Tillman’s death.

We then hear about the cover-up of the friendly-fire nature of Tillman’s death at length. We hear, for instance, that Kevin Tillman was allowed to unknowingly go back to serve alongside the men responsible for his brother’s death before he was told the truth about what happened.

As if all that isn’t enough, the book ends with reporting on how Afghanistan eventually fell apart as the Taliban regained power in the region. Yes, all of the reporting is relevant, but this is supposed to be a book about Pat Tillman. There is so much written about how the military leadership screwed up that it is depressing and oppressive to try and get through to the end of the book.

While Krakauer rails against Rumsfeld and the men who tried to use Tillman’s story as propaganda for the war, by focusing so much on the negative aspects of the war while telling Tillman’s story Krakauer is guilty of the same offense. This is supposed to be Tillman’s story, but I felt like the author was done talking about Tillman long before I got to the end of the book.

I was looking forward to reading this book when I saw that Krakauer would be writing about Tillman. I knew of Tillman from his days at ASU while I was still living in Arizona. I felt like Krakauer was the right guy to give Tillman’s story the proper treatment. Instead, I feel like I got too much of Krakauer’s indictment of the war. I’m not sure that he did this story justice, and I would not recommend this book