Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and Elizabeth Holmes Have Much in Common

Thanks to the New York Times, Mary Trump, Michael Cohen and Tony Schwartz spilling the beans, we now know the truth about Donald Trump.    He has never been a successful businessman.   He is nothing but a fat orange sociopath with a learning disability who was never good at anything other than selling the Trump name.   He is in the same league as Paris Hilton - famous for being famous.  He is in the same league as Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy with respect to business failure except that Donald's incompetence and illegal actions have not yet caught up to him.   The only difference between Donald and Elizabeth Holmes is that Donald's daddy gave him hundreds of millions of dollars so he could pretend to be successful while failing in his business adventures.

Here's a good article by Tony Schwartz that really nails Trumps psychopathic personality:   The Psychopath in Chief

We learned from Donald Trump's sister by way of Mary Trump's recordings that Donald Trump paid someone to take his SAT's.   So, he had to cheat to get into college due to a learning disability.

Donald Trump sent his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to threaten his colleges with lawsuits if they released his grades.   Michael Cohen said Donald had terrible grades that he wants to hide from the world likely due to his learning disability.   

We learned from the New York Times that Donald Trump has never been successful in business.   He was given hundreds of millions of dollars by his daddy and mostly squandered it.   His businesses consistently lose money according to his tax records.

We learned from the New York Times that Donald Trump earned over 400 million dollars from his reality TV show, "The Apprentice" which was a hit because people believed him to be a successful business tycoon.   And we know that he used his name to pitch everything from Trump steaks and Trump Vodka to the Trump University.   In other words, the only success he ever had was built on the myth that he is a successful businessman.

So now the picture is complete.   Donald's only talent is making himself famous.  Much like Paris Hilton and Elizabeth Holmes. 

I believe Trump is the first sociopath/psychopath to be president.   He should be known as "the fat orange psychopath".

Presidents Come and Go, Senators Last Forever according to Lindsey Graham

Our country would be healthier, wealthier and wiser if our congressmen and senators were not fixed in their cushy jobs for life.

It's difficult to displace an incumbent congressman.   So difficult that Lindsey Graham said this:

Presidents Come and Go, Senators Last Forever.   

Lindsey Graham

Jump to 14:50 in this Youtube clip

The arrogance is appalling.

We need some kind of term limits on senators and congressmen to fix the rot in American government.  

Bill Weld for President - Socially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative Republican

I think we finally have a good candidate for president:  Bill Weld.

Click here for excellent interview with Bill Weld by Christiane Amanpour on CNN

Here are some key points about Bill Weld:

1. He is pro-abortion rights.
2. He was pro-gay/lesbian marriage 20 years ago before it was fashionable.
3. He is in favor of term limits for U.S. congressmen and senators.  See: termlimits.com
4. He thinks the biggest problem with Donald Trump is too much spending.
5. He was the most fiscally conservative governor in America.

Bill Weld is not charismatic but he could be the first president in a long time with substance over style.

Health Care - Why Does it Cost So Much?

Why does it cost so much? This is the big question that seems to be avoided most of the time.

The answer is simple. It costs so much because there is nearly unlimited demand. There is nearly unlimited demand because the segment of the population that uses the most health care gets it for free.

It's all about supply and demand. If something highly desired is free, what else can happen to the price other than go up?

Medicare is the main cause of skyrocketing health care insurance costs. Medicare was started in 1965. Before that time, going to the doctor was like going to the car mechanic - it was an unpleasant expense but it was manageable. The health care insurance problem has been snowballing since 1965.

What would happen if the government gave free cars to all kids between the ages of 16 to 24 years old? Every kid would have an awesome car. The price of cars would go up. The technology in the cars would rapidly improve because price is meaningless to the kids when the government is paying the bill. Pretty soon, only the kids will have cars and the rest of us will be riding the bus.

There are two solutions to the health care crisis

• Get rid of medicare
• Give medicare to everyone

Getting rid of medicare is impossible because seniors vote and they won't go for it.  Giving medicare to everyone is therefore the only reasonable solution.  And it's a fair solution. Giving free health care  to a single segment of the population is NOT fair.

Simple Fix For Economy That Won't Cost a Dime

Here's a simple fix for our economic woes that won't cost a dime:

• eliminate all sales taxes.
• tax only individuals on their income, not businesses.

Sales tax is not fair. Why? Because sales taxes put more burden on poor people than on rich people. Imagine two people, one makes $25 per day and the other makes $100 per day. On a particular day, they both buy a movie DVD for $20 and pay 8% sales tax which is $1.60. Both people paid $1.60 in sales tax but that represents 6.4% of the lower income person's daily salary while it's a mere 1.6% of the other person's daily salary. The reality is - poor people are shouldering a ridiculously unreasonable share of the sales tax burden.

Sales taxes are a terrible idea that should be stopped. Right now, many companies are complaining that Amazon doesn't have to charge sales tax giving Amazon an unfair advantage over their brick and mortar competitors. Eliminating all sales taxes for everyone will fix this.

How about taxing people on income and not taxing businesses? There's no such thing as a business without people. A business is just a concept - there has to be someone receiving the profit. Why not just tax the income when a person actually receives it? Eliminating income tax on busines will free businesses to focus on good ideas rather than tax impact.

Where can states and cities get their income if there is no sales tax? From income taxes alone.

What would happen in our economy if there were no sales taxes and no tax on businesses? The economy would become highly productive because no one and no business would be wasting time and money trying to control their tax exposure - we would enter a whole new era of productivity and wealth. This would be a positive change in our society on a scale to rival the industrial revolution and at the same time, it would be more fair.

See http://fairsimpletax.blogspot.com/ for more detail.

Fixing the Patent System

The US patent system is broken. It hurts us all more than it helps. It either needs to be fixed or thrown away.

How does it hurt us? Take the "One Click Ordering" patent by Amazon. It's a ridiculously simple idea that anyone and everyone could and would have implemented on their websites but Amazon just happened to get a patent on the concept. Because of this ridiculous patent, all of us have to endure multiple steps when we order products on other websites.

The "One Click Order" patent just happens to be the obvious target of ridicule in the patent system but there are many more subtle absurdities that cause us all harm in the form of higher prices and reduced access to new technology. The harm comes when companies create some new product or technology that innocently and accidentally happens to infringe some obscure, overly broad patent that no one ever heard of only to end up in costly litigation with the cost passed on to us, the consumers.

Technology patents today are a virtual minefield of obvious ideas that have been "claimed" like land in the gold-rush era. But if all these technology patents are so obvious that they get infringed easily by companies that never even heard of the patents, then did they really deserve to be patented in the first place?

The patent system is supposed to rest on this principle - "you tell us how you did it so that we can all do it in the future and, in exchange, we will give you a 20 year monopoly on your idea."

That's a reasonable proposition. But, it implies that if the idea is so simple that many people are going to come up with the same idea then the idea should not be patentable. Likewise, if companies are infringing patents accidentally left and right, then perhaps those original patents should never have been granted in the first place.

HOW TO FIX THE PATENT SYSTEM:

The fix seems simple based on the principle "you tell us how you did it so that we can all do it in the future and, in exchange, we will give you a 20 year monopoly on your idea." Simply add a criteria to the patent process that an idea must be unlikely to be invented by other people. And in patent litigation, if the patent is easily, unintentionally, accidentally and often infringed by people WITHOUT knowledge of the patent, then the patent should be suspected of being too simple and too obvious.

There is currently a push in Congress to fix the patent system. The drug companies want to keep the patent system strong while the technology companies want to reduce the cost of litigating accidental patent infringement. The solution posted here explains and solves the problem cleanly for both of them. Obviously, the creation of a new drug is expensive and time consuming and is not the kind of thing anyone and everyone can do on their own. This is why the drug companies deserve their patents. On the other hand, technology patents, in particular computer programming technology such as Amazon's One-Click Ordering, most definitely are likely to be independently reproduced by hordes of programmers which is why they do NOT deserve to be patented. The technology patents in the computer field are getting accidentally infringed everyday because they are simply ideas that thousands of programmers are likely to independently create - making them not suitable to be patented.

P.S. There is already a "novel" and "non-obvious" test in the patent system today but apparently it has no teeth and is not blocking utterly simple and obvious ideas like Amazon's One-Click patent.

Penalties Doubled for government officials in a position to abuse authority!

Penalties are doubled for drivers who speed in a construction zone because the workers are vulnerable.

How about doubling the penalty for corrupt politicians?

We are all vulnerable to the power of government officials. This includes police, judges, district attorneys, IRS auditors, senators, congressmen and presidents.

They all have power over us and we are all vulnerable to their power.

Shouldn't they pay a double penalty if they abuse their authority? They should pay a much higher penalty than the average Joe Citizen when they are convicted of serious abuse-of-authority crimes but the reality seems to be they pay a much LIGHTER penalty. Why?

Personally, I believe a government official who abuses their authority and hurts innocent people should be executed.

Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham is the latest corrupt republican to be caught. He apologized in tears but he'll probably get a minor slap on the wrist, spend a short time in jail, and retire a wealthy man after using his position as congressman to line his own pockets with money and perks at our expense - the citizens of America.

"Creator" in the Declaration of Independence is Reality, Not God

Some people think the word "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence refers to god. I do not. We are created by nature, i.e., reality.

Why didn't the founding fathers of our country simply say god if they meant god? Instead, they chose concrete words that are forever true here in the reality in which we live rather than lowering this important document into the mythological dungeon of mysticism. The founding fathers chose reality over superstition.

As an atheist, I believe we ARE endowed by our creator with unalienable rights and the creator of humanity is reality, also known as the natural universe.

Physical Castration for Violent Criminals

Here's a simple, inexpensive solution to decrease violent crime, prison overcrowding, rape, pedophilia, predatory catholic priests and the spread of sexually transmitted disease: physical castration on the second conviction for any violent crime.

Denmark has experience with this.   The recidivism rate of castrated rapists drops to less than one percent.   see: http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/33/1/16

Some communities in America perform court-ordered chemical castration of violent convicts. Chemical castration is ridiculous - as soon as the convict stops taking the hormone shots, he's back to his old self. In addition, chemical castration is much more expensive for the government to administer and far less reliable. But, the real point is - if chemical castration is okay, why not physical castration?

One possible way to introduce physical castration is to offer early probation for convicts that agree to be castrated. This way, it's not forced on anyone and we can begin to collect data on the results. Interviews with castrated convicts might even reveal they are much happier in life after castration.

The bottom line is, physical castration will solve a lot of our crime problems and our sexually transmitted disease problems and I truly believe the violent offenders themselves will be much happier for the rest of their lives once their testicles are removed and no longer pumping aggressive testosterone into their bloodstream. And as a side benefit, they'll cure their hair loss and they won't be fathering new hereditary criminals.

Everyone is Born Atheist

1. Atheism simply means the absence of belief in any gods. Obviously, a baby cannot be born believing in god anymore than he can be born believing in Santa Claus. Clearly, all people are born atheist.


2. Being atheist says nothing about a person other than the person does not believe in the existence of any gods. Being atheist does not indicate whether a person believes in free enterprise or socialism. It does not indicate whether a person is moral and ethical or not.
   
   It is highly probable, however, that an atheist in America has much higher standards of morality and ethics than a religious person because in America, religion is so pervasive throughout society that a person has to do some serious thinking about right and wrong and truth versus myth to escape the religious brainwashing. This kind of rational thinking naturally leads to rational, sensible morals and ethics.
   
   I don't know if law enforcement maintains statistics on the religion of criminals but I predict very few murderers are atheist. Let's suppose the population is 10% atheist. I predict that much less than 10% of murderers are atheist. Whatever the true percent may be, it's likely that the relative percentage of atheist murderers in prison is much lower.
   
   It is not coincidence that the mafia has its origin in the same country as Jesus and the Catholic Church.  Any religion that teaches a person he can commit murder and then simply go to confession and it's okay is just inviting the deterioration of morals and ethics.

Republicans Without Religion

It's time for a new kind of Republican. Republicans Without Religion!

There is an old saying, "Republicans let you keep your money but control your life. Democrats take your money but let you run your own life."

The only clear agenda of republicans these days is religious smut peddling.

Republicans used to be about free enterprise and smaller, less intrusive government. Not anymore. Republicans don't seem to care about anything other than converting all Americans into christians and weaving religion into the fabric of American government.

Thanks to George W. Bush, our government is spending more money now than Bill Clinton would have ever dared and he's adding to the size and influence of goverment on a daily basis. I'm a total fan of free enterprise. I hate socialism yet this November, 2004, I will have to vote for a Democrat because there's nothing more dangerous to America than religious zealots. It was religious fanaticism that brought down the twin towers and it can bring down America if we don't stop it. I'm much more afraid of religious wackos in Washington than all the terrorists in the world.

America was the first country in the world NOT integrated with religion.  America grew strong because of separation of state and superstition and because of individual rights and free enterprise. The constitution of America does not mention god even once and the first sentence of the first amendment says that "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Our founding fathers were geniuses. Even though the founding fathers were somewhat religious themselves, they recognized that government needs to be based on reason rather than religious superstition. The republicans in our government today are trying to attack and destroy the traditional wall between government and religious superstition established by our founding fathers.

The Republicans are out of control but the Democrats with their socialist/communist tendencies are not the answer. It's time for a new kind of Republican. Republicans Without Religion!