Wikileaks

Today, since I can't think of anything of anything else to write about, I will discuss why Wikileaks is an important part of a free and democratic society. Since this is mostly all opinion, my stance on Wikileaks is that it should not be taken down. As for Assanage, I support him for publishing the documents, but I disagree with some of his tactics, as well as those of a few of his followers. Mounting a DDoS isn't going to promote a peaceful society. In fact, it just promotes hostility. While I haven't read much of the leaks other than from the major media outlets, I feel that exposure to hidden secrecy that our government has should be revealed. Of course, I'm not surprised that the government wants to hide the information. Whistleblowers deserve protection because they are the ones who intervene in something unethical or corrupt. By exposing corruption, the people can remove it. In a way, this is similar to the Pentagon Papers, or any other leaks that went on in the past. A ban on reading exposed information would amount to censorship, which is against our Constitution. The only problem that I might have is that they didn't verify their information. If they revealed false information, it would damage their credibility.

What are the requirements to be a President?

With buzz of who's going to contend for the 2012 presidency, let's look at the requirements posted in the Constitution.

"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

Tl;Dr:
1. Be a natural born Citizen, as in being born in the United States.
2. Be 35 years old.
3. Be a permanent resident of the United States for 14 years.

With the 22nd Amendment-
4. You can't be elected more than twice (Something that I disagree with; If voters decide the President has done a good job, why should they not reelect him? I also didn't mind for Bloomberg's third term, since I believe it is up to the voters to decide whether someone should stay in power or not. The argument for a monarchy is frivolous as voters can vote them out; however, the argument for excessive power is not, as history shows there has been quite an abuse of power. I'd recommend limiting presidential powers to combat this).

All serious matters aside, there are some things that people take into account when deciding if a runner is qualified. These can include, but are not limited to:
1. Ideology
2. Public Experience
3. Charisma
4. Voting for the lesser of two evils*

*It seems that this is the trend during the last 4 years.

I'll discuss the potentials of prospective candidates as more information is revealed.

Earmarks

If you've been reading up on politics, you know that there's a stigma on earmarks, or pork-barrel spending, or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, I'm here to DEFEND the use of earmarks. I do agree that wasteful spending is bad, but that doesn't mean all earmarks are bad. On a more interesting note, the definition of wasteful may be different to some. Anyway, these are my reasons:

1. Congress can spend to provide/promote the general welfare.
    Of course "the general welfare" clause is something that's quite controversial.

2. It's less than 2% of discretionary spending.
    I realize that we have to cut spending, but to imply that banning earmarks is a panacea to the deficit is ridiculous.

3. Earmarks, when used PROPERLY, is beneficial to communities.
    If the earmarks can help local communities, it can promote the larger economy.

For some strange reason, the only think tank that shows up on the news is the Cato Institute. Anyway, in short they propose to limit/ban earmarks on the grounds that it promotes corruption. In this sense, I would agree that it promotes corruption, but I believe that greater transparency would offset this.

The problem with deciding what is "wasteful" is quite opinionated. The Bridge to Nowhere is something that most people would agree is wasteful. Funding for research on flying snakes, in my opinion, is not. For the article, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/science/30obflight.html?src=twrhp
Anyway, the article basically says that the Pentagon is funding this research in order to examine the physics of how these snakes "fly". Close minded people would dismiss this as useless, but when people think about the
potential uses for this it's quite amazing. A breakthrough in aerodynamics can lead to a dramatic change in how airplanes work. For those that love war, the new research in aerodynamics can lead to breakthroughs in war planes. Even if the findings wouldn't benefit as much, it doesn't hurt to have more knowledge in how these snakes work.

Edit: 3:50 12/6/10
They should just have a bill only with earmarks, and not filled inside other bills. This reduces the volume of words in any given bill, and is more transparent.

The U.S Defecit

Personal note: Lots of work = no fun; I'm not sure how to attribute this image, but I think you can tell who the author is from the bottom left. If this image violates copyright or whatever, I apologize in advance and will take it down when I have time.
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As some of you may have noticed by now, Congress is in lame duck session and the budget, along with the Bush Tax Cuts, are in hot debate. Almost a month ago, the New York Times (or as my old American History teacher once punned, The New York Slime) created an interactive medium in which readers can decide what to kill in order to reduce the deficit. A similar proposal by the GOP created YouCut, which encourages voters to pick what they wanted to cut from the federal program. In my personal opinion, I think the New York Times does a much better job, as the YouCut program is more opinionated. Anyway, I'll list what I think of these two programs.

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html

In short, this interactive puzzle addresses both short term issues and long term issues. However, many critics point out that it is limited in choices. I definitely agree with them, but I believe that what the Times has presented is a contributing step towards handling the deficit.

YouCut
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/

In short, it lets voters decide what they should cut from the deficit. I believe it's a nice attempt, but it's quite lacking. For one, it only has at most $150b in savings, which according to the Times is only 1/3 of what we need to cut. Also, I would only agree with about a little less than 1/2 of what was proposed.

There's also a Deficit Reduction proposed by the Cato Institute, but I won't discuss it here because I have no idea what some of these mini departments do. You can't just say "Throw it away" without knowing what it does.

From what I can tell, a combined tax increase and a spending decrease can help. Of course, it's quite hard to predict what will happen. I advise readers to look at both, though the inner politician inside me recommends the New York Times more because it has more discussions on the deficit than the YouCut website.

On a slightly off topic note, I don't understand why there's a stigma with "elitists" from both sides of the spectrum. The right believes (as far as I know) that they know better than elitists. I'm not sure how I can explain why I disagree with this, but here it goes: "Elitists" are people specialized in certain areas, and this goes along with that economic theory of specialization. I would rather trust a gardener about gardening topics than a carpenter with gardening topics. On the left, I believe there's a sense of "They make too much money". I tend to side with the left side of the argument, but I do believe that if people earned it ethically(a description that is vague), then they have the right to that money.