A little bit of Sarcassem

Day 20: Scale

One of my favorite places in the world, with Goofy for scale.

I’m flabbergasted.

From CNBC:

“President Donald Trump offered a pardon to Julian Assange if the WikiLeaks chief agreed to say that Russia had nothing to do with hacking emails from Democrats during the 2016 presidential election, Assange’s lawyer said.”

All you have to do for me to pardon you is lie. No big deal.

A random thought occurred to me: as we become more and more focused on privacy and ephemerality, how will future archaeologists figure out what we were all about? Physical structures, etc for sure, but data?

Day 19: Space

When Onyx was little, he didn’t want to give his big brother much space.

Sometimes simple things are more interesting.

My love! 😍

Day 18: Oppose

It’s a formidable beast to oppose, but in the end, you realize it’s nothing at all.

Day 17: Cool

On a relatively cool morning, there are a few clouds hanging about.

Day 16: Rest

Onyx never looks at rest. He’s constantly at attention.

Who is using Mastodon (I’m going to give it a go), and what app do you prefer for it?

Diamond Princess cruise ship: US to evacuate Americans on ship quarantined in Japan from coronavirus outbreak:

The US embassy in Tokyo on Saturday sent an email to Americans on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship detailing plans for a voluntary evacuation for US citizens and their immediate family from the ship to take place Sunday evening local time.

From the CNBC article by Kayla Tausche:

“As part of a forthcoming package of proposed tax cuts, the White House is considering ways to incentivize U.S. households to invest in the stock market…”

The gist of the plan is this:

“…one of many new tax cuts under consideration, would see a portion of household income treated as tax-free for the purposes of investing outside a traditional 401(k).”

And:

“Money put into the account would be done so on an after-tax basis, and taxed when withdrawn as well; but any accumulation of profits during the investment timeframe, known as capital gains, would not be taxed.”

This sounds vaguely similar to a [Roth IRA] (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rothira.asp) with the exception that there’s some sort of weird rule about the original money being taxed again after withdrawal?

Okay, so the article goes on to state that the proposal is far from complete or finalized yet. Apparently they’re just floating the idea to see what the reaction is.

As far as I’m concerned, I feel like we need to be able to incentivize people in some way to save their money. There is an economic theory that if savings is incentivized, people will simply hoard their money and the economy will suffer. I don’t believe that to be true, and I believe there are ways to balance the two.

The over reliance on credit spending (in particular in the U.S.) has become something of a national issue. U.S. household debt has soared over the past few years and has reached the highest levels since 2008.

If we utilized proper incentive methods for both eliminating debt (not forgiveness, specifically¹) and saving, we could create a stronger economic floor upon which to build.

So, what if we did something like this:

For consumer debt:

A 2-for-1 tax credit on the difference in total consumer debt level based on January 1’s total balance minus December 31’s total balance. If you’re paying off debt, you’re actually helping everyone.

For Incentivized Savings:

If a bank issues a credit card as a product, they must also offer a savings account with an interest rate that is the equivalent to the average interest rate charged for their credit card product.

If you’re going to charge an average of 23% interest to credit card users, your savings account product must also offer 23% interest.

On the latter, I feel like this would cause a few things:

• Banks would reduce the amount they charge for credit cards because they wouldn’t want to have to pay that much for savings accounts.

• Banks may decide to eliminate credit cards or move them to a separate company to avoid this rule. We would need to account for that possibility.

• Banks may stop issuing credit cards to those individuals they’d normally charge the highest rates to. If we are incentivizing savings, and savings grows at a higher rate thanks to this rule, this may not be a problem.

This is just a half-baked thought. Poke some holes in it.

Day 15: Balance

The fog hangs in delicate balance between the air and the land. Trying it’s best to avoid being burned off by the sun.

Thank you @macgenie and @manton!! I’ve attached the sticker to my Yeti already. 😀

Day 14: Warmth

I have a lot of warmth and affection for this guy: Tigger.

Hi! 👋🏻 So, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you’re amazing. You are strong, kind, and enough. Keep being you!

Day 13: Rise

Let your eyes rise up to the night sky and behold the stars!

First day back to work after a long vacation. 😏 Let’s see how today goes. I’m determined it will be great!

Day 12: Attachment

The way the wrought iron adheres to this wall demonstrates an attachment of a symbiotic nature.

I’m sad to see Andrew Yang drop out of the race. I think he was handed a raw deal and didn’t receive nearly the coverage of the other candidates. I hope he continues to fight for his ideas.

I ran across [this article in The Atlantic by Simon Barnicle] (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/case-new-states/606148/?fbclid=IwAR0Jp8UB60YJP3QDOIlSsaIs0upSpAQ2blR-kjPUtNdNVjdaia0mYfbxYS0) about the ways we could fix the issues facing our country with regards to the current state of our democracy.

Barnicle writes:

“Two of the past three presidents received fewer votes than their opponent. In 2017, most legislation passed by the Senate was supported by senators representing only a minority of the population. And after the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, all five of the conservative Supreme Court justices—a majority of the Court—have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, supported by a group of senators who received fewer votes than the opposing senators, or both.”

This should certainly grab one’s attention. This isn’t how democracy is supposed to work. He continues:

“Due to an advantageous distribution of voters in the right states, the Republican Party has repeatedly been able to control the federal government despite a lack of popular support. In 2016, for example, Republicans failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate, or the presidency, yet nonetheless secured control of all three.”

The rest of the article goes on to discuss a fix called the 53-state solution (making Puerto Rico and D.C. into states of their own) that would work best to ensure there would be more fair representation because they are more likely Democrat than Republican. Additionally, the article claims that it would reduce the likelihood of retaliation should Republicans regain control in the future.

It’s an interesting proposal, and certainly something has to be done. The current state of our “democracy” is appalling at best. Ultimately, we need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ascribe representation more fairly across the states to ensure that gerrymandering cannot take place for either side. An amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a monumental effort, but it’s certainly something that we should consider as a solution alongside some of the proposals from Barnicle.

Another suggestion in the article is breaking states up into smaller states. Barnicle writes:

“A third option is simply to break an existing Democratic state into multiple states. This would require permission from the state being broken, but perhaps one state—or several—would be enticed by the prospect of increasing its representation in Congress, and changing the balance of power in the federal government.”

I actually like this idea. I think it’s interesting, and is easily achieved assuming we win the 2020 presidential election and pick up some Senate seats. We have to fight like hell to do so.

Further, Barnicle writes:

“Republicans would, of course, cry foul, and accuse Democrats of manipulating the statehood process for partisan purposes. But that’s par for the course: American statehood has always been intensely political.”

We have to get to a point, as Democrats, where we leave this entirely out of the equation. Whatever we do, the Republicans are going to cry foul, and they’re going to accuse us of everything from partisan politics to treason. So forget what they’re going to say, they’re going to say it regardless.

I love this article, and Barnicle outlines his case well. It’s worth contemplating at least.

Just testing something out. This photo was taken and edited on an iPhone 11 using Night Shot.

Question: How many of you use Marsedit for your blogging and/or posting to micro.blog? If you do, what are your favorite tips and tricks for it?

It’s odd that on my days off I don’t typically eat very much. I find that I usually eat one meal that day versus three other days. I’m not sure why other than perhaps on days I’m working, I feel like I need more energy?

Day 11: Plain

Plain brick can be just lovely when pieced together in this way.