Wednesday Links

Dear James, Daniel and Emily

Three links that symbolize the importance of learning and understanding basic math, economics and statistics. Failure to understand these things leads to fear, ignorance and poor decisions on vital issues.

I love it when someone presents the same ideas I have in a more coherent fashion.

I have been trying to present this same case for the last couple of weeks. That the reason Obama and the Democrats are losing this debate is because they have not had the guts to really present the argument correctly. This really is an issue where they are trying to do something that will help the great majority of people in this country, and save the governments (City, County, State, Federal) money in the long term, and they are somehow losing that message. It is just astounding to me that they could blow this.

Although I think the underlying reason is the same as the whole tax battle. The anti-tax folks have won this battle with an implied argument that somehow increasing the taxes on the top 1% will somehow affect people in the lower 25%. And I don't have any idea how to take back the ground in this battle either, I just know it needs to be taken back.

More Outrage of the week from FreeRange Kids

What was funny is that this article appeared the same day I was thinking about how I was walking to school alone when I was a year older than James, and yet I see parent walking kids even older to school and waiting until they enter the school. It's ungrounded fear. We have been taught that the statistics that put the possibility of abduction at 1.5 million to 1 are either false or they don't mean anything.

Doug Bruce continuing to do his level best to destroy my hometown.

I love it when even the very conservative Republican Mayor is disgusted with this guys antics. It just irritates and sickens me that this carpetbagging Californian has done so much to make my hometown, the city where I was born, a near wasteland. Here we are looking at a year where our public safety will be at risk, vital city services are cut to the bone, and there are no community pools and he wants to cut even more. I think it is time to say no more. Vote against his crazy petitions, repudiate everything he stands for, vote down Tabor when we get the chance. And when the city actually gets the staff prosecute him for all the code violations on his slum like rentals, and chase him out.

Again there is a basic failure here: people do not understand the basic math that is involved in keeping a city afloat. The message that Bruce and his followers present is that there is some secret fund in the city budget that can always be cut. When that just isn't true. And that we are somehow taxing the people of the city to death when we live in the least taxed city and county in the entire state. Economics cycles cannot wait for elections to resolve our budget issues.