I strive for conservative ideals, but I recognize we no longer live in a conservative society and that’s not going to change during any tenure you choose to grant me. What I will seek out is necessary compromise: policies which meet short-term political or social needs using the tools available but which embody the ideal of long-term cultural change to render those tools unnecessary.
How many years would it take, saving $41/year, to pay for the $1088 purchase price of the solar panel?
Answer: ~26 years
I am fairly certain that if I owned a fleet of vans that I made a business of renting to the public and I donated them gratis to, say, the McCain campaign to drive their volunteers around that would constitute an in-kind campaign contribution and would be subject to the limits imposed by various campaign finance laws and regulations. If Bill Gates decided to outfit some politician’s campaign offices with Microsoft Word without charging them for it I am sure the same thing would apply. If a sign-maker contributed campaign signs, or the owner of a television station contributed air-time for campaign ads I am sure those would both count as contributions as well.
So why can Springsteen or Streisand contribute what amounts to some tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of concert without tripping over those same regulations?
The question, then, for both Presidential candidates is: What do you think is a “fair” tax rate? What is a “fair share” for any individual citizen, whether or not they are “rich”?
And, even more importantly, on what basis do you make that determination?
Those born to the lower class that are now living by upper class values and norms have made a conscious choice to do so. In a sense, they have repudiated their roots, declared by their actions that the way they live now is better than the way they lived then. And believe me, those on the other side of that divide are aware of the choice and feel it as a challenge. When you’ve actively chosen one way over another it’s hard to make the argument, even to yourself, that the choice was merely between two equivalents rather than between a better and a worse.
It has long been my contention that the first African American President and/or the first female President in America will be a Republican, for the simple reason that minorities and women who work their way up to levels of prominence in the Republican party tend to be there for reasons concerned with general economic growth, individual liberty, and social stability. Whether you think those concerns — and resulting platforms — are good or bad, they tend to be concerns and platforms that appeal to a broad centrist populace.
The chaos we are seeing — on the ground and in our own thinking — reflects the dissolution of the “nation” into more fluid and less tractable identities and spheres of interest. Al Quaeda is not a country, and yet in many circumstances it seems to define and control a “nation” of people who pledge it their loyalty. Iraq was not Al Quaeda, but were they really distinct — two “nations” apart — or were they part of the larger Arab — or was it Islamic? — “nation” to which both claim allegiance and from which the “clash of civilizations” is arising? Is the UAE a country allied with the United States, or is it a culture allied with Arabia or with Islam?
Last summer Bernie Weinraub wrote an article in The New York Times on ratings problems at The West Wing, the popular television show about a fictional Democratic president and his administration. The article covered all the expected problems with a show late in its run, with characters and ideas getting stale and audiences tuning out in favor of more exciting and novel fare. But in the discussion of why ratings were suffering I thought he left out one critical frustration factor that affects my viewing more than any other.
A friend of mine, Ira Goldman, is the inventor of the KneeDefender™, a small plastic device that fits on the tray table in an airplane and limits the ability of the seat in front of you to recline. His reason for creating such a device was the number of times his knees had been crushed by a sudden recline while penned within the claustrophobic confines of a coach class seat (and I thought “cruel and unusual punishment” had been outlawed by the Constitution).
The KneeDefender™ is one of those items about which no one seems to be neutral. To some it is their salvation; to others it is an outrage; to many it is a horrible sign of moral degeneracy and social decay – but one that they nonetheless find too useful to forswear.
I was in the process of preparing this for submission to Newsweek for their ‘My Turn’ section when the attack on the World Trade Center made the topic page one news everywhere. Submitting it suddenly seemed pointless….
Another week, another killing spree, or so it seems.