THE RIGHT TO BEAR CARS

with the seemingly weekly tragedies involving often deranged people using guns to commit violence, there is an increase in calls for more gun regulation. guns rights folks roll out the Second Amendment. "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to bear arms, shall not be infringed." it is a long time since i took constitutional law in college. it seems in a plain, common sense reading to mean to me that this right to bear arms is connected to needing a well regulated militia. and it says, "well regulated". anyhow the gun rights folks ( and by the way, i own two shot guns that i use occasionally to hunt birds or shoot trap ) stand on the last clause as inviolate. i am not enough of a law scholar to go much further with a legal analysis but lets try an analogy most Americans own a car. or it seem so in LA. when we buy the car our identity is checked, our having a valid drivers license is checked, our having insurance is required. the car has a unique VIN. we have to register it with the DMV; every year. we have to take a test both written and driving to get a license. its pretty damn regulated! now if LA had a constitution it would no doubt have in it the right to bear cars. are guns more dangerous than cars? in LA its a toss up. but given what we put up to own and drive a car, is it too much to have something similar for guns? now a lot of these shootings are by crazy people. look up crazy in the DSM. we have a mental health problem in this country; not just a gun problem. the number of psychiatric beds in the US has declined from 558,922 in 1955 to 43,318 in 2010. this is a big problem. the subject of another blog.

SEARCH AND CURATION

we currently live in a world of too much information. there is just too much stuff. too much books, movies, music, restaurants, photos. we dont live long enough to intelligently take even the best part of it in. and it is only going to get worse. the amount of information created and stored is now measured in exabytes and zettabytes. in such a situation the only answers lie in search and curation. search needs to get alot better. word, image, spoken, phrases etc, need to be integrated and get much better. today when we make a google word search we get a million answers and never leave the first page. we are not getting the best, unbiased, unbought nor personalized answers. search needs to and will become amazing. and Curation. letting trusted experts recommend stuff to us. at the end of each year, hundreds of entities, people, periodicals etc come out with their best of lists and even just relying on such, there is too much stuff.somehow or other i managed to see about 5 of the LA Times "best" movies of 2012. i know the latimes is not the apogee and i will try to see Amour and Zero Dark 30, but i stray. curation is critical. we need more of it and we need better curation. maybe the answer is to figure out how to increase the rewards for excellent curation that's it. in a world of too much information, we need to rely on search and curation.

EVERYTHING IS MOBILE; THE MAGINOT LINE FAILED

everything and everyone is mobile. this is a problem for nation states and states. the french built the Maginot Line to block a German invasion after WW I. they used static analysis. it failed. the Germans merely went around it in a flanking maneuver and took France in 6 weeks many years ago i flew from New York to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, business class, non-smoking. the only problem was that what separated non-smoking from smoking was just an aisle. the smoke didn't know it wasn't supposed to go across the aisle and ruin my flight. the UK recently increased the tax rate on "millionaires" from 40% to 50%. this was to increase tax receipts. what happened was that the number of millionaires in the UK declined from around 16,000 to around 6,000 and the total amount of taxes and the % of taxes from this group actually declined significantly. they left. and they probably took their money California recently raised a bunch of their taxes to balance their budget; which is out of balance because expenditures are up by 60%. what do you think will happen? some people will leave. people who have national businesses will focus their growth outside of California. if you had the choice between trying to grow in California or actually growing in Texas; which would you choose? Texas. labor is mobile it will follow the jobs, though there is some friction entrepreneurs are mobile capital is mobile all these elements will tend to flow towards policy that encourages economic growth and value creation, which includes wealth creation and away from those places like california and france that dont. the UK just lowered the rate down from 50% to 45% to lure some of those bad millionaires back we will see

ELECTORAL COLLEGE HAS TO GO; DISENFRANCHISEMENT

most of us studied american history in grade and high school and were told versions of the birth of our nation and its form of government. its been awhile but i seem to remember that the electoral college was put in place because we were an agrarian society and we didn't have have speed train yet so we needed "electors" instead of a direct popular vote. i thought it was a little iffy at the time but let it pass. but it doesn't get a pass anymore. its got to go. we have a situation now in this country where 10 states will determine who the next president is. and that might be generous; it might be 4 states, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado. the rest of the states and the rest of US, don't matter. the principal reason for this is the winner take all allocation of electoral votes by the states. so if your Romney, you basically ignore California and New York in terms of campaigning, other than fund raising, but there is not way for him to win in those 2 states. and the reverse holds true for red states like Texas. this is ridiculous. its time for a popular vote. the vote of republicans in California and democrats in Texas should count. we could change the allocation of electoral votes on a proportional basis but that is tantamount to a popular vote; so lets get rid of this silly, anachronistic, disenfranchising relic next we will discuss daylight savings time!

WHO LOST SYRIA? ITS ABOUT TO BE US!

time and time again, nationalists who want to take their country back from dictators reach out the US and the west for help, with very mixed results. ho chi minh was a nationalist before he was a communist. we wouldn't talk to him; the chinese and russians did. here we have syria. a 2nd generation dictator and bad guy, assad, committing genocide against his own people. getting direct support from Iran and tacit support from china and russia. the UN goes in and calls for a cease fire when one side has all the weapons. and the syrians are doing what they must to defeat assad. without more support from the west and moderate arab states, al queda and the such will continue to come in and assad will fall but the outcome will be not what anyone would want nor what was and is possible. who are we afraid of? iran? china? russia? syria matters. aside from the humanitarian issues; the geopolitical are immense. it represents an opportunity to weaken iran's influence over syria, lebanon, etc. lets not blow it

A MODEST PROPOSAL: TRADE HAWAII FOR CHINSES HELD DEBT

this is not actually my idea. i was having lunch today with a friend and i was bemoaning the fact that we cant keep running billion dollar deficits. he agreed and suggested that we swap Hawaii for all US debt held by China. i just checked and it says they hold about $1.2 trillion. if we swapped with the Chinese, we cover our deficit for one more year, so we kicked the can down the road and don't have to make hard decisions for another year. and whats the downside? we can still go to Hawaii on vacation. the surf will still be there. we will get better Chinese food. what's the downside? upon reflection, i think we could sell Hawaii for more; maybe $2 trillion. what do you think? just saying.

NYPD; THE GANG WHO COULDNT SHOOT STRAIGHT?

the morning we were all getting the first news reports of the shooting in front of the empire state building, aghast. here we go again. and then a little later it appeared that most of the shoots were fired by the nypd; that most of those hit were hit by the nypd, my assistant immediately observed, don't they teach them how to shoot? isn't that their job? well do they? clearly there was an armed man on the streets. action needed to be taken. but? i am sure there will be an investigation. we will see. but i bet we will find that the nypd used poor judgement and worse marksmanship. get these guys on to the range and teach them to shoot the bad guys; not the citizens!