wow, that’s some rich fodder on which to comment; however I have a blog etiquette comment. I’m interested in blogging more myself, and I know providing links is the right thing to do, but this entry illustrates the frustration I would have in it: links that go bad.

For instance this one: http://www.cbo.gov/budge/budproj.shtml and this one http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/2095780,virginia-health-care-obama-031010.article no longer work. What are the expectations for that? I tend to personally archive any article I encounter that I would like to refer to later, but I can see that wouldn’t be appropriate to post. How far back do people expect links to work?

Thanks for your advice.

I’ve become pretty settled that the government spending allowed a jobless recovery. Which helps business be more positive about moving ahead after the mistakes that were made. However I’m not convinced the case has been closed that it was a good thing. I’m pretty sure that if you don’t take the full dose of medicine that you don’t really learn the lesson. So either we’re doomed to repeat it (and worse of course) or there will be some aspect of it that will just extend the pain longer though at a less intense level. Not sure which.

I’m particularly unsettled at the calls to “disband the Federal Reserve”. I haven’t heard any viable alternative offered (the gold standard is completely unthinkable in a technological based society—we definitely would NOT appreciate a currency that was based on a commodity). And I’m very curious because it specifically was the leader of the Federal Reserve that tried to do things differently than the Great Depression in order to avoid our entering it…remember all the statistics that showed the economic downturn was the greatest since? He specifically attempted to primarily make different decisions than the ones they made back then. He didn’t know that they would be the right ones, but he was confidant he didn’t want to exactly repeat the same mistakes. So far he’s done better than the Great Depression (e.g. my savings haven’t been wiped out and unemployment is under 20%). And yet it’s in vogue for calls to disband the Federal Reserve. Maybe it makes people nervous, and I see their case, but can’t we find ways to give it comfortable limits?

Since everyone agrees the health care bill did little to address what most people wanted done about health care: the increasing costs, what was the biggest reason for the bill? It obviously was re-distribution. The have-nots (33 million or whatever) were going to get health care. The ones that the government decided were too poor (which actually I discovered with the birth of my 5th child actually include me, as far as covering my children was concerned—and I’ve actually taken the leap to do exactly what Republicans promised would happen when Bush expanded it: I, a comfortable middle-class family have moved my children to free insurance just because it was free—and really good benefits: major insurance company (no concern about being a “medicaid” patient, zero co-pays for everything (visits, emergency, AND hospital stays), zero co-pay vision insurance, and full dental coverage). I still am unsettled about it because I feel I’m somehow getting away with something…but I can assert absolutely that I was fully honest with my financial position in my application (even above and beyond in one aspect).) <- there are three levels of parenthesis nesting here which is totally grammatically unacceptable but the biggest thing that inhibits my blogging is that I am much less comprehensible than Chris…he just does very well editing.

Anyway, I fragmented the last sentence, but out of the ones without insurance, some of them would get it without paying for it. But since that had to be equitable, some that were paying for it would also get it free. Then others that were getting too nice a plan would have to pay even more for it. But the major thing was that young people would have to pay much more than they currently pay to make it more equitable with what older people (who have more costs) are paying. Again, to make this all okay, the government gets to decide how much you can afford to pay, so that if an individual who was paying $100 now has to to pay $300 the government gets to decide if they need to chip in part of the $300 or if you’re on the end of things that you should be happy to use more of your disposable income.

One last thought (for now). So there’s only 33 million without health care. That’s a minority in any election. Are they really going to change who wins office especially if you have to make the majority mad to give that minority something? People are (generally) fine giving some people money from the treasury if they think that it won’t personally cost them anything, but this bill was clear enough to know that their wallets got raided…which now sets us up for act 2.

NOTE: I’m having it both ways, here, which I am giving full disclosure, but I’m glad to discuss either side: why I’m fine taking what the government has allowed me to take, or why it shouldn’t be granting it in the first place.

There was a time when I did make local mirrors of every site with information worth keeping. It soon became unmanageable and I abandoned the attempt. If there was a suitable way to keep it managed, I would not mind it. Perhaps a module should be written for this CMS. ^_^

The other concern, though, is the “copyright” that certain authors claim on their work. I almost posted something the other day but because the document was short and described a “copyrighted picture,” I decided against it.

That leaves me on the fence.

I would prefer a return to the gold standard. From a Christian perspective, I even find a reference at the beginning of Genesis (2:11) to where gold could be found. But then from a realistic look at the world, I do agree with you that our view of commodities is in a very strange position. Gold brought Europe out of the Dark Ages. I fear that we will return to them without it.

Over the past few weeks, I have listened to lectures from a course on the “Wisdom of History.” The professor discusses the Greek and Roman empires and what led to their rises and falls. It seems that Democracies (yes, even of the Republican persuasion) can only remain democracies so long as they are small enough for the common person to understand. As they grow larger, the difficulties that they face become more dangerous and subtle. The larger an empire becomes, the more need there is for an aristocracy.

If all of that in the last paragraph is true, have we reached a point in the growth of our own “empire” that it cannot be ruled by the people any longer? Dangerous thoughts.

...the constantly transient nature of the web bugs me about creating/maintaining content, but I guess that means we’ll preserve some measure of jobs trying to keep everything up to date.

By divorcing gold as long as we have I’m confident there isn’t a path to return to it. Give me a path to make the conversion and I’ll consider it, but I can’t conceive of it. I’m frustrated by many of “my people” who take positions that aren’t incremental; “oh, let’s throw out the Federal Reserve”—yeah, nice concise, bold, quick, talking point. Absolutely unthinkable black hole. Sure…set a goal, but then what’s the first step (take for instance my welfare-leads-to-failing-schools one: I want to start by tearing down welfare piece by piece). To me the first step is to try and find adjustments to the liberties the Federal Reserve can take with our money supply to see if we can do something that we are happy with. However most of what is proposed would actually make it worse because it would allow it to be politically decided. We have to remember that the bankers suffer with devaluation of currency as well—they are probably the strongest motivated to not have inflation because that really hurts their business model (no one wants an interest rate that’s below inflation…even though we’ve been putting up with one of late). Personally, rather than even tweaking anything at the moment I’d rather watch what happens to the recovery. We have no idea what all that easy money has done to things…we should have a much better idea in a few years.

Technology has made democracy potentially much more manageable (as the Roman Empire was far flung with the technologies they took advantage of). One could potentially argue that the printing press and then long-distance instant communications allowed America’s to continue for a while. I’m not willing to give up on ours yet, especially since I’m going to take over the majority with like-minded people’s birth rate. We just have to find a way to harness the “small world” technology creates to fix it. Then we’ll have to re-examine it when we move to the stars and face rapid communication problems again (interesting that you mentioned this—I have a Sci-Fi author I really like and he actually hit on the problem of quick communication as the cause for a government demise and a new “revolutionary” war…I love authors that weave history and issue causes and motivations into their writing).

WordPress does have a plugin (in the form of a dashboard widget) that monitors all your links to see if they go dead, so you wouldn’t have to manually check them or run them through some link-checking site or software.

I’ve found that the title of the article and date published are helpful if you ever want to dig up an old reference. From what I’ve noticed it doesn’t seem like online referencing in a bibliography calls for it, but I think if you supplement it then it can make the loss of an active link moot—they know you can be referenced.