A pile of used bandaids

I'm way behind in all the things I want to blog - I hope someday I can blog straight out of my brain, because a lot of my best writing ideas come when I'm not by a computer.

I really need to start reading more fiction and less history, biographies, and especially news, because, even though I find them fascinating, I also find them frustrating. (I believe I get my fascination with history and humanity from my dad...)

Today I read an article in "Time" (one of the few news magazines I find to be the most objective) about the economic situation that states are in right now, having to look at cutting all sorts of stuff. I didn't know that only the federal government is allowed to run a budget deficit, states are required by law to balance their budgets. I guess most of the time, the normal ups and downs of the economy balance each other out and usually don't cause problems. Apparently this "down" has been a lot longer and deeper than most and states are having to make what they call "real cuts" now - into services that are ingrained like education, medicaid, etc.

The situation the state governments are in sucks, and I don't really know how they're going to deal with in the very short term. But I don't understand why no one will stand up and say out loud what the truth really is about all of this. We have overinflated and artificially grew our economy for many many years (not just one president and congress, but many) and now we're going to have to pay for it. And that means if we want to continue some of these fundamental services that make our country good and strong and secure (and I'm not talking militarily secure, but secure and "sound" as a society) we are going to have to pay more taxes. Stuff costs money. We can pay less in taxes and have lesser quality of everything and have stuff run down, or we can pay more in taxes and have higher quality public services and infrastructure. It's not rocket science.

Most people probably don't want to hear that from the guy with a good job, but they should hear it from the guy that pays more in taxes as a single (at least from a tax standpoint) person in a higher tax bracket. Certainly I'd rather pay less in taxes and keep more money for myself, but if paying taxes means better education, better infrastructure, better stability, etc. then I'm willing to do it. Certainly that means our governments should spend wisely, not be wasteful, and get the most value out of our tax money as they can. But in the end, stuff still costs money.

What we seem to be doing now (getting to the explanation of the blog title) is that we keep altering laws, doing magic with budget numbers and the money supply, etc. to band-aid whatever the problem of the moment is. But we're getting to the point where all we have is a pile of used bandaids.

For example, just on the way in to work this morning I heard a commercial advertising a firm that can help you "settle" your credit card debt, and how if you have over $10,000 in credit card debt, there are government programs that can settle it for a fraction of the cost. Seriously? This is an example of another bandaid - banks get their money, and people who were irresponsible (yes, I'll say it out loud - an individual who charges up more credit card debt than they can really afford cannot just blame bad bank laws and deregulation) get set back to $0 and get to start spending more money and buying things which artificially stimulates the economy again...until somewhere down the road we have to pay for that bailout.

I realize that every situation is different, and someone who buys a house and then loses their job a few years later was not being irresponsible. But that is not everyone. I guess I've always been under the assumption that if I take out a loan for something, or charge something on a credit card, I actually have to pay for that at some point.

Why a salad costs more than a Big Mac...

Thanks to my friend Christian for sharing this one:

http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/05/18/federal-subsidies-vs-nutritional-recommendations/

I've always wondered about this too - I realize that land, weather, environment dictate to some degree the types of things that can be raised in a given area, but probably not the degree of the disparity in our country.

Thursdays on First

I really love that Rochester has done so much over the past few years to promote downtown and community events like "Thursdays on First". Whoever says there's nothing going on in Rochester is selling the town short. Sure there isn't a huge amount of "night life" but there are a ton of people from all walks of life out having fun at things like this.

I had the opportunity again last night to come down and jam with some other great musicians, thanks to my good friend Dan who I've known from various musical things including the salsa band. We all jammed by Sonte's for 2 hours and had a great crowd of people watching and enjoying the beautiful Minnesota summer weather. I hope we have the opportunity to do it again!

Happy 4th

Not an especially nice weather day, but a fun weekend, and especially nice that it's on a Sunday and I get Monday off of work too!

We've had a fun weekend of wedding rehearsal, wedding, and a fun evening out downtown with all the friends back for the wedding.

This morning was also very cool, as for church I played "America The Beautiful" as a bell solo - the third solo I've done. It was really neat and I think everyone enjoyed it.

Hilarious Bonnie Tyler video

If you never watch any of the others ones I've shared, you should watch this one - especially if you were of the era when Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" song was hugely popular om the 80s. This video is the actual original video with "literal" lyrics put to it. I never really thought about how scattered and mindless the video actually is :)



Happy 4th everyone!

iPhone 4: If at first you don't succeed....

I have to chuckle a bit when reading about this whole iPhone 4 "don't hold it wrong" antenna thing:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Apple-stunned-to-find-iPhones-apf-1175483258.html?x=0

Now, I actually do believe them in this case, that they're probably not doing signal strength calculations correctly - in fact I've read some more objective, credible articles about researchers having determined that on their own. But the phrase my friends and I in college used a lot still comes to mind - "If at first you don't succeed, redefine success." And as funny as that is, it happens all the time - benchmarks, performance tests, and, yes, signal strength calculations :)

Some related phrases, "Politics is perception" (from one of my all-time favorite movies, "Te American President"), and "So what I told you is true...from a certain point of view" (Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker in "Return of the Jedi" when he tells Luke that he wasn't actually lying when he said Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father), come to mind. Really, so much of life IS how we make it - and some (a lot?) of how we perceive things is our own choice. So if it makes us feel better to see 4 bars instead of 2, even if ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has actually changed with our signal strength, maybe that's ok? I guess one of my other favorite phrases may apply here too... "Ignorance is bliss" ... often true.

Google

I like Google for a variety of reasons, but I'll add this one now:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38037689/ns/business-careers/
(the title is somewhat misleading...you have to read the first paragraph at least to understand it)