Thoughts and Notes

According to the latest CBO report Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output as of September 2009 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations cost the government more than the impact of those cuts increased revenue.

For every dollar of tax cuts for the wealthy, the GDP increased by $0.50. For every dollar of tax cuts for corporations, the GDP increased by $0.40.

However, for every dollar of tax cuts for the poor, GDP increased by $1.70.

The conclusion is obvious. Cut taxes on the poor, not the rich, to stimulate the economy.

Quick follow-up: Even better than cutting taxes? Paying benefits, like food stamps, unemployment, the like. For every dollar, we see a $2.20 increase in GDP.

One of the projects I'm working on is conditional publishing of DITA content using ant. Basically what I want to do is, given a list of files, build the output that is affected when those files change.

We manage our files using Perforce, so the workflow is something like this:

1. Check out files
2. Edit/modify content
3. Run conditional build
4. Review output
5. Check-in files

When you check files out of Perforce, they get put into a changelist, so, to get my file list, I need to ask Perforce what files are in the changelist. Perforce has a nice way to do that. The command is,

 p4 opened -c <changelist_number>

The problem is the output includes a bunch of information I don't want.

I get lines like this:

 //doc/main/core/build/build.xml#164 - edit change 1075456 (text) by sanderson@docbuild

what I want is

 //doc/main/core/build/build.xml

or, even better,

 files-in-changelist=/home/sanderson/doc/main/core/build/build.xml

That format is the format ant expects for a property files. Property files are nice, because you can load them up and use that property in ant.

What to do, what to do? In my case, I turn to ant. If I have a build issue, someone else has probably run into it, so, I look there first.

Sure enough, ant has a task called filterchain for exactly these kinds of uses. Here's what I wound up with:

     <target name="getFilesFromPerforceChangelist" if="changelist">
        <property name="ant.regexp.regexpimpl" value="org.apache.tools.ant.util.regexp.JakartaOroRegexp"/>
        <exec executable="p4" output="changelist.txt" append="false" failonerror="true">
            <arg value="opened"/>
            <arg value="-c"/>
            <arg value="${changelist}"/>
        </exec>
        <copy file="changelist.txt" tofile="changelist.properties">
            <filterchain>
                <replaceregex pattern="#.*" replace=","/>
                <replaceregex pattern=".*build" replace="${basedir}"/>
                <striplinebreaks/>
                <prefixlines prefix="files-in-changelist="/>
            </filterchain>
        </copy>
    </target>

Just another reason to love ant.

George Osborne, who would become the chancellor of the Exchequer if the Conservative Party wins the next election in the UK, gets the reality of the situation they face in the UK and that we face here in the US - we want our government to provide us services (yes, we all do - stop driving, stop eating food you don't grow yourself, etc., if you believe otherwise), but we don't want to pay for them.

Osborne speaks like an adult speaking to other adults.

He says he doesn't like how high taxes are, especially for the wealthy, but that's life, he doesn't want to cut those taxes until the poor aren't being asked to scrimp.

He tells members of his party to stop insulting government workers.

He proposes cuts to programs that don't work, even ones that go along with his political philosophy.

Nobody wants to be in charge when the retirement age is raised, but he set a timeline for doing it. Not someday, but in 5-10 years. If we did that, Social Security would avert the upcoming crisis everyone is afraid of.

Why don't our politicians treat us like adults? We all know we can't go on this way. We all know that the situation can't be resolved by only cutting programs or only raising taxes (if you don't know that, it's time to put aside your ideological blinders and take a good look at the way the government works).

See David Brooks op-ed piece on Osborne's speech for details.

If you listen to this and are not moved, if you watch this and still think that health care reform is something we shouldn't do, I feel sorry for you. Your politics have so blinded you to a compassion that is at the core of being human.

Rachel Maddow had Tom Ridge, the first head of the Department of Homeland Security agency under President Bush, on her show last night.

Ms. Maddow asked some very pointed questions, but let Mr. Ridge answer them completely. She was civil, even when his answers seemed, I thought, to be hogwash or logically untenable.

In the final segment, she told him, point blank, that she thinks Mr. Ridge, and the Republican Party, will never gain back any credibility on national security until they admit that invading Iraq was a mistake, one driven by policy decisions, not by poor intelligence. Mr. Ridge didn't agree, and she let him explain why. Repeatedly. Without interrupting. No one on Fox News would have allowed a guest that disagreed with the host to do that. None of them would have treated a guest with the respect she gave Mr. Ridge.

Mr. Ridge knows it, too. At the end he said so. He said, "I really appreciate the civil way we've had this discussion. Frankly I think we would advance the interests of our country a lot further and a lot faster if we could have discussions such as this".

This is the way to do it Fox News.

Folks, I don't care what your politics are, be civil with people that don't agree with you.

Craig Newmark, said, in Why Craigslist is Such a Mess this:

People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day.

Politics doesn't change that. People are basically good. We all want the world to be a better place. Be kind and respectful to people with different opinions. Don't yell at them because they don't agree with you. Don't call them names (especially names like Socialist, Fascist, baby killer, Nazi, etc. that are so inflammatory they just lead to ending the discussion). Don't judge someone as being a bad person because you don't agree with them.

Lest you think I'm saying this just because a Democrat is President, look back a past posts. I believe in civility in political discourse, regardless of which party has control of the White House.

So, let me say it again, in closing, to try to make this point stick - I don't care what your politics are, be civil with people that don't agree with you.

Click on the images for full screen fun!

Well. Mommy is at a retreat, so Daddy and I decided to have some fun. We started out with a lot of playing at home. I mean, we had breakfast, and tub, but the fun thing is that Dad lets me run through the sprinklers naked. Then a nap. I don't know why Dad thinks I need a nap, but, well, he does. We had a good lunch, and then, Dad made me put on some clothes and we strolled down to Habitot.

By the time I got there, I was ready for a snack, which Dad made me have in the hall.
He said it wasn't nice to the other kids.

Then we went in, and they have lots of fun stuff. One of my favorites was playing in the water. Bubbles, and buckets, and water, and, cars that you ride around in and ... It was fun!

Dad also pulled me around in a trailer, and I climbed around in something they call the wiggle wall, and, oh, I painted!

We closed the joint down, then came home. I got a little tired.

After that was dinner and then an early bedtime. I was still tired.

I missed Mommy, but Daddy and I had fun.

John Mackey, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods has shot his mouth off. Again. Last time it was an anti-labor screed. Now it's a ridiculous rant against health care reform called The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare. Basically his entire op-ed piece boils down to this "Government bad, private business good".

One example of how out of touch he is, he wrote,

Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully.

In other words, he's praising a plan that rewards people for choosing not to get health care. How can you praise a plan that encourages people not to get care when they think they need it? It's asinine.

Here's another gem.

Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

Translation, allow insurance companies to pretend to be from the state that has the fewest consumer protections. Again, asinine, unless you are more interested in money than health care.

Now, while this is a great idea

Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

His reasons are completely wrong. The reason we created social safety nets, like social security and medicare, is because charities were not meeting the needs of those that needed help, and we, compassionate people that we are, wanted to make sure that our elders weren't eating cat food and dying due to lack of health care, not because we believed people have an intrinsic right to social security or health care.

I won't go deeply into how flawed his arguments are about rationing. Just think about your own experiences dealing with health care under our current system. We have rationing, rationing that is focused on maximizing the profits of the insurance companies. I'd be really happy if instead we rationed things on who needs a certain procedure the most, wouldn't you?

Of course he ends with the typical canard. Our health care issues in this country are due to a lot of lazy, fat, smokers that don't take care of themselves. Why should we pay for their health care? The reality is our current health care system is so focused on after the fact care, that it contributes to our obesity rates. Easy access to health care will decrease the obesity level and lower health care costs, as well as increasing quality of life, for millions of Americans.

In 1993 Congressional Republican's did everything they could to keep the Clinton administration from passing their budget. In the end, Al Gore, as Vice President, had to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

At the time, Republicans were full of predictions about how bad the economy would suffer.

Said Dick Armey, the House Minority Whip,

It is a recipe for disaster. This plan is not a recipe for more jobs.

New Gingrich, on much the same note, said, the package would lead to "a job killing recession".

There are a lot of similar quotes like that. I won't bore you by listing any more What happened? As has happened time and time again, exactly the opposite of what the tax cutters claim - the economy improved. Not just a little, a lot.

Because of their staunch resistance to the fiscal restraint of the Clinton administration, the Republicans could not accept any credit for the improved economy during those years (which is part of the reason why they changed course and went after Clinton on moral issues rather than economic issues).

Now, in 2009, they are in the same situation. The Republican's, especially those in the House, made a conscious decision to resist Obama's plan. Not due to any belief that stimulus wasn't needed; nope, merely because of their own partisan politics. I mean, heck, it's the largest tax cut ever! When did Republicans start voting against tax cuts?

They voted against the stimulus for purely political reasons. They know that agreeing with Obama will not gain them anything politically, and resisting him might result in political gains. Suspect anyone that gives any other reason for voting against the package.

Arlen Specter, a Republican that voted for the stimulus package, said that several other Republican's congratulated him on his courage voting for the stimulus package. They couldn't because they were worried about the political fall-out for doing the right thing.

That's sad. I hope, just like in 1993, the predictions of the Republicans are wrong. I'm worried, though, that they aren't. Too much is being lost to tax cuts. Too much spending was cut out of the final bill.

The Republicans are putting themselves back into the same spot they were in 1993, but this time, maybe, they may have done enough damage to the package that their hopes come true. I hope not, but the Obama administration, I think, is going to have to get busy and get some more spending packages passed. This package seems too small and too slow.

I was hoping that this book, like the Brother Cadfael books the premise so resembles, would be a good bedtime book. Enjoyable, engaging, but not so much that I would stay up all night reading it.

Sadly, no.

I could never find myself caring about any of the characters, and the action was too slow to keep me engaged.

The writing was fine, not earth shattering, but appropriate for the genre (historical fiction/mystery). The story just bored me, though, and, half way through, I stopped trying any more.

Today I learned about Sam Seder, a comedian/commentator. Here's a great clip of him talking about the inane idea that there is a "War on Christmas".

Anyway, while looking for more by him, I read this hilarious review on amazon

Sam's book illuminates why Air America is a failure and why the Left and Liberalism is dieng in America. Thank God! The only followers they have "left" are the mentally ill and drug addicted.

How foolish do you have to believe something like that? I'd feel the same way if someone said that about conservatives, too. Just because someone doesn't agree with you, doesn't mean they are mentally ill.