Category: Politics

BetterPlatform.org: time for a better Texas Republican Platform

With this blog entry, I am publicly unveiling BetterPlatform.org, a movement to reform the Texas Republican Platform.

The 2008 platform is a farce. After removing problem planks, the platform shrinks 70%. That’s a lot of cruft!

Some of the worst planks:

  1. Theories of Origin, which calls for replacing science with religious theory.
  2. Support of Our Armed Forces, an unfocused grab bag of miscellaneous requests.
  3. Emergency War Powers, which alleges the United States is in some overarching state of emergency.
  4. Elimination of Executive Orders, which have been used since George Washington to conduct business.
  5. Illegal Immigration, which starts with gibberish and prescribes little than punishment and deportation.

I don’t yet know where this movement will go, but it’s started!

Texas GOP’s new web site on kludge

The Texas GOP recently rolled out a new web site at http://www.texasgop.org/.

If you surf it, you’ll see asp file extensions. For example: http://www.texasgop.org/inner.asp?z=6

That means the Texas GOP’s runs its brand new site on a kludge CMS!

“Woah, Aren, isn’t that severe?”

No.

ASP’s most recent version is from 1999.

Microsoft replaced it with ASP.Net 1.0 in January 2002. ASP.Net is now on 3.5, and 4.0 is around the corner.

Vendors still delivering classic ASP code in November 2009 have colossally failed to invest or innovate and may be incompetent.

When I review products, those still on ASP start out such a disadvantage that they’ll probably never make the selection.

What is up with the Texas GOP? How did it get hoodwinked into a kludge CMS?

Google Street View Says I’m Republican

…and it’s right!

New imagery of my front yard, probably from October 2008:
frontYardGoogleMaps
Those are all Republicans.

Google also knows my across-the-street neighbors’ opinions about my signs. Look where they faced their signs. (Hint: Google camera’s straight-on view means they’re not facing drivers!)
1015erin 1023erin
Silly liberals!

See the whole scene for yourself. Pan around to see my neighbors.

Democrats are lying about the public option

healthcare

Mark my words: a public option health care plan will someday be the only plan.

Don’t put any faith in today’s democrat promises. With a few votes and a sympathetic president, future liberals can (and will) alter public option’s scope. With impunity. That is government’s track record:

  • Social Security expands: At inception, a 1% tax on the first $3,000 of income funded the system. By 1940, it paid $35 million of benefits. Now it’s a 6.2% tax on the first $102,000 of income and pays $650 billion of benefits. (source)
  • Income tax expands: In 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, the income tax was 1% of all earnings over $3,000. Now it is between 10% and 35%, depending on your bracket. (source)
  • Even the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation expands: “When the PBGC was created in 1974, Democrats running Congress assured everyone there was no taxpayer risk because the agency would be funded by fees from pension plans, as well as by the assets of plans the company takes over.” “Now the PBGC has a $33.5 billion deficit,” and this is before it is about to take on much of Delphi’s pension, a politically-motivated, union face-saving “second biggest pension bailout in PBGC history.” (source)
  • How about those automaker loans? What started in 2008 as large loans is now a giant taxpayer giveaway that just won’t end.

I could fill a whole blog post with expansionism.

Even with current democrat promises, public option probably starts out with a massive tax subsidy and forced lower payments than what private insurers can negotiate (a la Medicare). It will creep like St. Augustine grass and gradually smother all other options. Future expansionists will just seal this fate.

Don’t get me wrong: the current system is flawed. And Obama is right about a lot of its flaws. But as an expansionist liberal, anything he prescribes is quackery.