That’s What You Get For Waking Up in Denver

Last night, my dad and I finally managed to get back from DC around 11. Then there was the hard part. Fighting our way in to our house. You see, when we went to the airport about 5 days ago, it was 60 degrees outside. My dad therefore decided we should take his car. It looks something like this…

Anyway, we had a hard time getting up the driveway. But we finally did, blasted up the heat so the pipes wouldn’t freeze, made sure the bird was still alive, and went to sleep. The next morning, we woke up to this headline.

Denver Water to Hike Rates 13% in Denver

Now you might think that my snow stuffed brain is exaggerating the importance of this headline. I mean, who really cares about a slight increase in water prices? Obviously not me, as I’m not paying the bills…yet. But the problem isn’t the fact that our water prices are going up, the problem is *why* the prices are going up.

If you read the article in the Denver Post (our ONLY newspaper…sigh) it says that the prices are increasing for some  ‘projects’. This is a blatant lie. The reason that water prices are going up is because people are using less water. And why are people using less water? Because Denver Water ran a giant  water conservation campaign, even winning an award for the brilliant billboards (pictured here) that they used to convince people to buy less water. I’m not even kidding. I’m also not a conspiracy theorist. So let’s assume, best-case scenario, that Denver Water has been planning to raise their rates for a long time, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that they have a self-induced shortage of revenue. Fine. The fact remains that the way Denver Water thanks people for meeting their water conservation goals is to raise their rates. Denver water is essentially saying “Great Job Guys!!! We’re going to give you all a present. It’s called ‘more expensive bills.’ Enjoy!”

Humph. It’s things like this that give environmentalists a bad reputation. Oh well. At least Colorado isn’t a Democratic state…wait. Never mind.

A Plea For Believable Lies

This week, which is not the week I turned 17 (sorry for the delayed publishing time) I wandered around the southish eastish coast looking at colleges. The morning I was supposed to look at Georgetown, I got into a rather lengthy discussion with a gentleman from AIPAC, and missed the Georgetown tour. Not to be put off, I decided to wander around the campus pretending to be a student. This actually went fairly well–I enjoyed an econ class and a free cookie–until I started talking. Almost every person I talked to eventually asked me what dorm I was living in, and what other classes I was taking. My answer was usually…”um…yea I dunno the orangeish  one near that road…wait-actually-I-live-off-campus-my-parents-donated-money-but-like…look over there!!!!”

 

As for classes, I feigned deafness.

The point is, I could have spent about 5 minutes making my fake student life more realistic. Dorms are posted on the internet, and I had a list of classes with me. With these simple steps, I would have been able to keep up the conversations I was having, and no one would have known that I was really a whole two years younger than they were.

So what am I complaining about today? The fact that politicians no longer think Americans have enough intelligence for them to even bother spending a couple of minutes making up believable lies. Granted, politicians are going to lie. But they don’t have to be so blatant about it! It would be one think for Obama to say that he’s going to decrease the influence of lobbyists, but to say that lobbyists, “have not funded [his] campaign?” Obama, in making this statement, is flat out assuming that most Americans don’t know the definition of a lobbyist. A lobbyist is just someone who tries to influence policy. When we write our congressmen, we are lobbyists. This means that pretty much everyone who is trying to be actively involved in politics has been a lobbyist at some point or another. Who is more likely to donate to a campaign: someone who’s involved in politics, or someone who isn’t? This may seem small, but politician’s belief in American stupidity goes much further.

Obama says that Fox is not a valid news source. Love Fox or hate it, Obama doesn’t like it because they don’t agree with him. Yet he tries to tell America that Fox is just an invalid news source. He has some good points.

Okay, bad pun. But Glenn Beck may well be insane…though the that could be said for Michael Moore or Arianna Huffington. The most biased parts of Fox are labeled as opinion shows. On the overall, the media has a liberal bias (even MSNBC admits this, having published this article about how more reporters donate money to the left), but Obama doesn’t call them invalid.

I’m not here to enter the Obama/Fox feud. I just want politicians to start treating Americans with some respect. How many of  you have seen an ad in which a candidate claims he’s better than his opponent because he’s ‘not a career politician’? This is physically impossible. Whatever he was before, he’s now a career politician. At the end of some economy segments, I’ve seen reporters apologizing for the technical stuff, and thanking Americans for bearing with them.

We have common sense. We know that a health plan is going to cost money, that is it going to contribute to the deficit. We know that we aren’t going to win in Afghanistan any time soon, and that Israel and Palestine aren’ t falling in love. The bottom line is this: it’s one thing to give us false hope,  but it’s another to tellobviously surrealistic  lies.

So why do they do it? Because you can’t get elected by saying that things aren’t going to get any better, or that it will take time for the economy to recover, or by admitting that you are going to spend lots of money. Americans beg their politicians to lie to them, by voting those who promise impossibilities. So I’m not out to change the system (see the discussion under this article), but I’d love lies that were just a little bit more believable.

My Birthday was Just as Newsy as Any Other Story This Week

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of turning 17. For those of you who don’t remember, you only get to do that once. The week of my birthday, however, the news was basically nonexistent, and my laptop was in for repairs. (It’s a Sony. They definitely stand by their products. I’d opt for the extended warranty.)

So, because I didn’t have my laptop to keep you all informed, and because it was my birthday week, I’ll go ahead and recap the events of last week.

1. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m not going to blame him for this: he can’t help being popular. But those Norwegian politicians have got a lot of gall trying to influence our president. Good strategy though. What better way to end a war than to give the commander a prize for peace? Even he must have winced when he couldn’t attend some of the evnts because he was in a war conference.

2. The Balloon Boy

At first, this was a heart wrenching story about how a poor boy could have died. Then it became a story about mean attention seeking parents. Then it was a story about a Colorado photographer running away from an angry civilian. Finally, it became another heart wrenching story about potentially abusive husbands.

3. The Dead Guy in The Pool

One of Bernie Madoff’s associates, Jeffry Picower, was found dead in his pool. If it weren’t for people wanting to believe that karma had struck down this man who made $7.2 billion from investing in Madoff, it would have probably have taken a lot less time to realize that old guys have heart attacks. Sometimes while swimming. This often leads to death.

4. Windows 7 came out.

The Mac commercial sums this up nicely.

5. NASA shot the moon

Some people find this hard to understand. They sent two probes. One hit the moon so that dust would fly out. The other one analyzed the dust before it also crashed into the moon.  Results so far? The pictures were lamer than expected, but they “received good data.” (Dan Andrews)

6. The Worthless Dollar

The low value of the dollar made the cover of the Wall Street Journal 2 days in a row. All the same, the dollar’s low value has been beneficial in a couple of ways: it lowers our trade deficit, and makes it easier for our companies to export.

7. Desperate for a Man? Move to China

China is short 30 million wives. They’ve even resorted to importation, which contradicts their traditional value of a homogeneous society.

8. Generic Celebrity Gossip

Look it up.

 

On the overall, not too much happened. Other than my birthday, of course.

Californiacation

If California were a country, they’d be in the G-8. Yet California’s budgetary mess has been largely ignored by the mass media of late, in favor of more flashy stories about how Obama is going to murder our grandparents from the right and stories about how Roman Polanski isn’t really all that old from the left. Poor, poor California. Lost, alone, bankrupt, and not particularly newsworthy. Yet, the reasons for California’s bankruptcy aren’t just the usual despicable forces that cause a US deficit. In fact, the reason for California’s mess is that untouchable beacon of hope, that all powerful benevolent force that we Americans have come to know and love: our Democracy.

When California first when bankrupt, no one was surprised. Bankruptcy was the natural result of bills proposed by voters that directly allocated money to specific funds, and bills that directly limited their taxes. In essence, voters voted themselves money that didn’t exist. When the state goes bankrupt, this leaves no one at fault. Legislators couldn’t reallocate money without breaking the law, and so while they were sometimes blamed, there was no real accountability. In desperation, legislators resorted to stealing money from the funds that voters had given to other programs, the theory being that by the time the lawsuits came through, the state would have found some more money. Obviously, the state didn’t find more money. The tune of these ‘stolen’ funds reached 3 billion dollars when the most recent set of lawsuits came through.

Now, you might just throw this off to some weird liberal problem of California’s, but Colorado, among other states, is now following in a similar path, voting for increases in education funding that the state doesn’t have the money to pay for.

Not to put too fine a finger on it, but this is a path of doom. Voters are voting to give themselves money where money doesn’t exist. When people vote for a free program, someone is still paying for it. When they further vote not to raise their own taxes, someone’s going broke. This exemplifies the problem of Democracy. Nothing is preventing voters from making poor, infeasible, or even impossible choices. I could propose an initiative to provide research to study the negative effects of the overhunting of unicorns, and if enough people voted for it, my bill would become law. Feel free to think that such things never happen, that the average American is smarter than this…feel free to ignore Californiacation.

The majority has never always been right, and right now, California has seen just how wrong they can be.

Obama Makes Me Laugh

Alright, in my last post, I might not have given Obama enough credit. He really *does* want to make us safer. He decided to prove it this week by choosing to extend the Patriot Act.

I'm slightly confused.

The Patriot Act, widely hated by liberals and seen as a negative result of Bush’s presidency, gives the government authority to wiretap phones and watch ‘lone wolves,’ who are individuals with no known ties to terrorist groups.

In fact, Obama just happened to be one of those Patriot Act hating liberals, saying that the act was “shoddy and dangerous” and saying, and I quote, “Yes, I would vote to repeal the U.S. Patriot Act.”  Repealing and extending tend to be opposites.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for Obama to show that he is taking steps to change Bush administration policies, as the Act was up for renewal anyway, without looking like he’s going out of his way to eliminate Bush’s policies. Whatever you think about the Act, or Obama, I think we can agree that this makes little political sense.

Obama Makes Me Smile

Guess who suddenly wants to be cost effective? Mr. O-We-absolutely-need-a-trillion-dollar-healthcare-plan-Bama. So, in order to do this, he’s eliminating a missile defense system that he called into action in early July when North Korea made their yearly threat to wipe us off the map. Of course, we must assume that’s why he’s doing it. The other possibility is that he’s doing it to appease Russia.

Here’s what he says…

To put it simply, our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies. It is more comprehensive than the previous program; it deploys capabilities that are proven and cost-effective; and it sustains and builds upon our commitment to protect the U.S. homeland against long-range ballistic missile threats; and it ensures and enhances the protection of all our NATO allies.

Which of course implies that the new system will be safer than the old one…even though Russia was freaking out about the old one and enjoys this one. It seems that for once Russia had our best interests at heart.

We’ve also repeatedly made clear to Russia that its concerns about our previous missile defense programs were entirely unfounded.

Oh. I get it. They were worried about the old system, so we told them not to worry…and then went ahead and changed the worrisome system…all in order to make us safer.

Giving Republicans a Bad Name

Right now, conservatism is growing in the population even as the GOP’s popularity is shrinking. The fault probably lies in people like this.

NO, not people who attempt to take picture while driving. Though if you happened to be behind me in the turning lane when I was attempting to take this picture, sorry.

The fault lies in Right Wing Nut Jobs who claim that 9/11 was the wrath of God, etc. etc. The GOP does not need to inherently change its principles, after all the US population has  been more conservative in recent history, except for a break near the 2008 elections. They simply need to rid themselves of the crazies. The Democrats send their extremists to the Communists, the Republicans don’t really have a place to send their loons.

The problem is that the Republican party is divided between social liberals and conservatives. The social liberals are technically Libertarians (like myself) but of course they vote Republican. Furthermore, there is not strict definition of Conservatism. If a thirteen year old kid can write a book about what he thinks conservatism means, the concept is obviously very loose. One party, the American Conservative Party, says that being socially liberal is a key part of being conservative.

So the problem is that a small sect of social conservatives are religious fanatics, we could call them the Extreme Religious Right (ERR), and these people should really have their own party. Now don’t get me wrong, I do realize that the Objectivist Party and the Libertarian Party would probably be better off running one candidate, and that the Socialist Workers, the Socialists, and the Socialist Equality Parties might have a lot to chat about.   But the ERR has no true party. If Republicans could remedy this, that is to say form a branch party for the ERR, they might lose some votes, but they could improve their overall image.

Now all that’s left to do is name the ERR party. Any ideas?

Anti-Obama vs. Anti-Black

O’Reily brought it up last night. CNN brought it up this morning. And now we all must wonder: are Republicans Anti-Black or Anti-Healthcare Reform?  And the answer, according to our highly esteemed former President Carter is that they are racists. And it’s not that  just some of them are racist, it’s that an overwhelming portion of them are racist.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American. I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that shares the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans.”

“That racism inclination still exists, and I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people — not just in the South but around the country — that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.” -Carter’s quote pulled from CNN

This seems ridiculous. Republicans were against healthcare reform when Preisdent Clinton brought it up….but of course it is illegal to call the President a liar, as poor Joe Wilson found out, so we are forced to conclude that President Clinton was secretly black.

Yes, this is supposed to be blank.

Here is where I would normally insert some sort of humorous picture depicting Clinton as a rapper…but now that my racist identity has been revealed, some people might assume that I think all blacks are rappers.

Of course, this is simply preposterous. I *know* that all blacks aren’t rappers! If all blacks had that kind of money, we wouldn’t need a wealthfare system.

My CSAP (No Child Left Behind) Scores

Okay. So in following my new policy of occasionally trying to write about things that I actually have some, however limited, experience with, I’d like to talk about No Child Left Behind. In Colorado, NCLB made it necessary to take the CSAPs for every year from third to tenth grade. Last year the testers realized that they were sending us meaningless numbers every year, and I got a nifty copy of all of my scores from sixth to tenth grade, on a scale that compared them. So, here they are. (Click on the image to see the whole thing)

You may be wondering what on earth happened to my reading scores in 9th grade or my 10th grade math scores. I’m wondering the same thing. In fact, I don’t even have a clear idea of how well I did compared to anyone else. For all I know from the scores, I could have been the worst person tested in the entire state. Beyond that, I’m not really even sure how well I did compared to myself.

To attempt to put some of this into perspective, 10th grade was the year I got a 5 on the AP Calc BC test. Yet my math CSAPs went down. Does that drop mean that my math skills failed me, or that the test was harder? Or is the difference within some sort of range of error? I also can’t explain why I was allegedly better at reading in 8th grade than any other year. It’s kind of…sad. Maybe I cared more.

Now let’s pretend that my scores are the average scores for the school. Luckily, most of the students got advanced on their CSAPS. Yet the school probably did *not* make AYP, or adequate yearly progress. The way it works, the school must either decrease the percent of people who did not make proficient by ten percent, or meet a performance goal where the eventual target is to have 100% proficiency in math and reading by 2014.

Cherry Creek High School, my actual high school, a very high performing school, did not make AYP in reading or math. Probably because it is impossible to get everyone to proficiency, and as the school already has about 86% of its students at the required level, it can’t raise this by 10%. The school still received a rating of excellence.

Schools are also required to break down results by race and socioeconomic group. At Cherry Creek, 90% of Whites were proficient or advanced, compared to 49% of Hispanics, 59% of Blacks, and 80% of Asians. Every single one of the groups had worse scores in ‘07 than ‘08, but not by very much.

In general, we can see that these sorts of standardized tests do not make much sense for individuals (like myself) or for schools because minorities can get left behind even in the best of schools and without adversely affecting the ratings. We can also see that AYP doesn’t make very much sense.

All that I’ve been able to conclude from this (other than the obvious that NCLB needs some work) is that my public education has failed me.

The VMA’s: This World is Just Crazy.

So Kanye just has to storm the stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech where she is receiving the award for best female video for “You Belong with Me” and say that Beyoncé had the best video ever. Fine. Whatever. He’s like that. Then he apologizes and she sort of accepts the apology and blah, blah, blah. If you really care, you can read the full story here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or you can just Google the issue and check out any one of the other 36.X million other results.

So what, about all of this, bothers me? Why is this featured in my blog today? Because the similarities between the following two songs have been bothering me for a while and now seems like an excellent time to mention it.

Girl Next Door by Saving Jane.

Here’s Swift’s for comparison.

Huh.