Evansville city council to take up smoking ban - Stop talking and do it!

                   I’m kind of shocked to hear a local official against a smoking ban in this day of age! What bubble does Missy Mosby lives in? While Ward 2 has a mix of socio economic groups, data shows low income groups tends to have higher smoking percentage than  middle to high income groups, which puts Ms Mosby in predicament. Do good to her fellow citizens and not get re elected or provide poison for her district and get re-elected?  She could convince the businesses that a smoking ban would have an effect on getting more dining tables turnover quickly to generate more income, or how smoking affect health of everyone and increase cost to everyone in that district! Yes its people choice to do what they want, but why stop at smoking then, why not allow drugs at inner cities to be legal since that is good for business (Drug dealers make money and spend it there)! Why not allow drunk drivers drive (you keep busting people then bars and clubs lose customers, so bad for business)? That is their choice to kill others just like smokers has the right to smoke and affect others via second hand smoking.

            It is sad that when Louisville Kentucky, the State that lives off tobacco farming has a smoking ban in restaurants and bars, while we in Evansville still fight to keep smoking and obesity going!

Deficit reduction

So now after the debt ceiling has been raised and both parties back to pointing figures…before we go any further let us see what they have agreed on:

1. Total debt ceiling increase of about 2.1 Trillion dollars
   1. $900 Billion now
   2. $1.2 Trillion later on when president ask for it IF Congress does not approve a joint resolution $1.2trillion in savings
2. The deal puts in place the annual discretionary spending caps found in the bill the Republican-controlled House passed last week worth about $917 billion in cuts over 10 years. But those caps, from $1.043 trillion in fiscal 2012 to $1.234 trillion in fiscal 2021, are now split between "security" and "non-security" spending, enforceable by across-the-board cuts. The bill defines the "security category" as 'discretionary appropriations associated with agency budgets for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the intelligence community management account, and all budget accounts under international affairs.
   
3. Forming a SuperCommittee ….. (To me sounds like Mission Impossible): The committee will have 12 appointed members assigned by the top leaders from each party. This committee has the responsibility of coming up with $1.2 Trillion in additional reduction by 11/23.
   
4. Pell Grant gets additional $20 Billion and Federal government will no longer defer interest rates on loans until student graduate.

Let us examine the Mission Impossible here:

We 'the people' are trusting the same politicians people who couldn't/wouldn't come up to a solution given ample time, to figure it out in 2 months? Remember DC is shut down until Sept for summer vacation. These are the same people who left 4000 FAA employees & 74,000 construction workers out of a job because they couldn't come to an agreement over pity stuff. Yes Senate Majority leader did pass a bill to end the partial shutdown, but this is a temporarily one and most likely we will be back to same place in Sept.

So how can this SuperCommittee save us if they have already wasted $30 Million/day in tax collections from airlines ($330 million total for those 11 days)? Simple answer they can't and they won't so long as it's all about me mentality exists in DC we will not move forward.
Therefore I suggest the following:

1. Eliminate the SuperCommittee
   
2. Get the back taxes from the airlines (they kept charging consumer the fees). That's $330 million going back to workers and getting everyone back to work and spending at local level.
   
3. Reduce senators in DC to 50 from 100. Why? What good really comes from them…we are in the 21^st century we can really utilize new technology to reduce the inefficiency at DC (I will discuss this below). That is $174K/year per Senator which is about $9 Million/year *note.
   
4. Reduce number of Congress by half as well from 435 to 218. That is 217 jobs eliminated that is costing us close to $38Million/year.*note
   
   *Note: I'm not taking into account reduction in insurance and retirement benefits here.
   
5. Pull troops from Iraq & Afghanistan. The war has cost us over $1.2 Trillion since 2001 that is about $123 billion/year. If Iraq wants support they can start paying from their Oil or sign an agreement the USA gets all the oil until war debt is paid for. As for Afghanistan and the worries of Talaban attacking us and supporting Al-Qaida, well we have used more powerful weapons in past, we can surly use those again and avoid troop buildup and major cost.
   
6. Provide a simple tax code, what has been touted as Flat tax. Have one simple tax rate on income (income being paycheck, capital gains from stock sales/options, etc.), allow charitable deduction, remove mortgage deduction (really doesn't affect homeownership and might get people paying debt faster). According to Dick Armey (Former House Republican Leader). One of the Flat tax Advantages is: "It would reduce the cost of compliance from $593 Billion to an estimated $50 billion per year." Let us just say that is $500 billion in reduction ($93 billion in expense for not making it that simple)
   
7. Finally reduce or eliminate the foreign aid to all nations. Why in the world we are spending $8 billion/year (http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm) for all these countries. Until we get our budget in order and you still want to be Mr. Nice guy at least reduce it by ½

Looking at all the savings above an estimated of $630 billion can be saved each year for a total of $6 trillion over 10 years.
The big question is if we eliminated politicians how will we use 21^st century to help run the country and vote on important issues (from voting of people in office to bills)? First of all in my opinion the country will run smoother with less people fighting who has better ideology in their party. Second if American idol and various polls can do voting using text, we can search products using barcodes and QR Codes why can’t we the people do the same on important issues?
So I suggest having every person 18years and older be able to vote on any issue affecting where we live and vote for people in office by:

• Use of the smartphones (over 150 million in USA), tablets, PC (internet access, most laptops have cameras), ATMs, DMV for voting on local, state and government issues (such as the debt ceiling).
• Create an app for all the smartphones to vote on City, County, State, Country issues. (close to 50% US population has one)
• Create a website for voting on same issues for people with no smartphones. (240 million internet users)
• Using the banks ATMs for another venue to vote, we trust our money and their security so can’t we do this?
• Finally most DMVs have renewal machines outside to renew your car registration; this can also be used for voting.

Of course we need to address security issues (one person one vote). Security can be accomplished by a combination of Biometric scans (Retina, thumb print) which can be obtained during a person renewal of their driver license or their state ID, using a person special PIN (maybe last 4 digits of SSN) and passwords.
A simple example:
Do you want to increase the debt ceiling? (This is done on each issue and not bundle everything in one like what is currently done)? Voters have 24 hours to complete the process.

1. Voter uses Smartphone, ATM, PC, or DMV to scan their Retina or Fingerprint
2. Enter PIN & Password
3. Vote on issue
4. Real time results
5. Congress/Senate pass it and President sign it

As you can see we no longer need two parties controlling us and bickering among each other. True democracy at work, only one to blame is you for not voting or your vote created ripple effect (we can’t push blame on DC anymore), elimination of lobbyist (maybe their money can be used to improve the country not to line up the pockets of the few). Process is streamlined and efficient.

Microsoft, Google Feuding over Patents

Lately both Google and Microsoft have taken their fight to social media as well as courtroom. The fight stems from Microsoft & Co (Apple, RIM (Blackberry), Sony, EMC and Ericsson) won close to 6000 patents from the bankrupt Nortel & Novel. Nortel was a communication company with history dating back to 1895 and Novell dates back to 1979 and is a networking company and supporter for the open source code Linux. While I would like to say congratulation to the winning parties and Google to stop whining and acting childish, I can’t! Taking a closer look at what transpired should give all of us a pause including the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

Few red flags are out there that at minimum should have made the FTC question the transactions/auction legality. Those are:

1.     Microsoft offering Google to join the bidding process

2.     Consortium included industry heavy weights and competitors  

How in the world FCC and the public didn’t question this illegal behavior is beyond me. According to the FTC website on antitrust: “For the most blatant agreements not to compete, such as price fixing, big rigging, and market division, the rules are clear. The courts decided many years ago that these practices are so inherently harmful to consumers that they are always illegal, so-called per se violations. For other dealings among competitors, the rules are not as clear-cut and often require fact-intensive inquiry into the purpose and effect of the collaboration, including any business justifications. Enforcers must ask: what is the purpose and effect of dealings among competitors? Do they restrict competition or promote efficiency?” http://www.ftc.gov/bc/antitrust/dealings_with_competitors.shtm

To me the act of having a consortium of competitors acting as one entity had one thing in mind, to harm the consumer with Google being a byproduct of that. How could a small technology business flourish if this consortium will fight with their deep pockets or ask for licensing fees that might be too high for small firm to absorb? This partnership in my opinion has violated the FTC rules in:

1.     Bid Rigging. Some might argue auction was open to all, but if you look at the deep pockets of competitors in this partnership no one could have truly won. If Apple had more cash than the US government imagine how much cash this consortium has. Imagine as well if Google did join in!

2.     Price Fixing. This is to be seen if those patents will be used to increase prices for licensing the purchased patents on companies not part of this consortium. But big indication this is happening is the flood of law suits coming against companies “infringing” on those patents. Think of organized crime mentality, pay us or get destroyed by our might of legal onslaught. For example Barnes & Noble is being sued by Microsoft for their Nook infringing on patents using Android OS! (some the patents Microsoft going after their partner Apples uses on IPads!)

3.     Monopolizations. According to:” Section 2 of the Sherman Act makes it unlawful for a company to "monopolize, or attempt to monopolize," trade or commerce. As that law has been interpreted, it is not illegal for a company to have a monopoly, to charge "high prices," or to try to achieve a monopoly position by what might be viewed by some as particularly aggressive methods. The law is violated only if the company tries to maintain or acquire a monopoly through unreasonable methods. For the courts, a key factor in determining what is unreasonable is whether the practice has a legitimate business justification.” This partnership used aggressive methods to cannibalize the patents to monopolize the trade and harm future innovation by burying competitors in either litigations or unreasonable licensing fees or force them to use their products.

The fact it’s only patents that were sold shouldn’t been any different than if above companies where to be merged with above consortium or to be acquired by competitor. The FTC needs to take a hard look at what happened and in the future not allow such practice. I would suggest if a company of that size default then for the benefit of everyone (consumers and corporations alike), their patents becomes public and for all to use. Think of drug patents when it expires and generic flood the market. Technology patent of defunct companies need to be treated as such and open it to public, think of all the new technological innovations that colleges would come up with when they utilize those public patents.