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By Kiran, July 31, 2011 9:10 pm

Of all the debates and all the name calling, not once has there been a mention of the biggest elephant in the room. A fifth of the budget each year in this country and therefore a fifth of all the debt is generated not from old or poor people but from the defense department. The US defense budget has actually more than doubled since Bush took office; reminds me of the famous quote from Ike – “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. ”

So what has this got to do with the debt ceiling; the interest on the debt related purely to defense expenses is almost 300b each year. Just the interest payments on defense related debt is a trillion dollars over three years. And Obama is sweating about reducing the debt by 2 trillion over ten years by cutting everything else.

So when spending cuts are floated, immediately numbers are thrown about how many hundreds of billions we can cut from medicare and how many billions we can raid from the social security trust fund (which by the way is fully solvent for at least twenty more years). So the cuts that have been celebrated by Obama and Defense Secretary Gates – $40b over ten years, are really a cruel joke or a cynical symbol of reality. If there was a single congressman out there that informed the public about this, he would be the true epitome of the righteous politician.

So how much spending is appropriate for the military – maybe double of what China spends. It’s somewhat hard for a self-professed geek like me to disparage defense spending because of the plethora of technologies (say, arpanet->internet) that have come out of this spending. But seriously, there is a difference between spending on DARPA and NASA and spending on wars and private contractors. And honestly I don’t believe that the US will come back to anywhere near its glory days unless it pulls back its occupation in so many countries and end the wars immediately. So I do agree with the Tea Party morons, spending is out of control indeed; but if only they would agree on which part of the spending.

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By Kiran, June 2, 2011 5:58 pm

And just like that it is the middle of 2011. People have moved, people have graduated, people have become parents. Six months is categorically short, a forgivable portion of our infinitesimally long and glorious lifetimes with seemingly endless possibilities. There is something to be said about every half year though, it has a standing, it has a place in our history. In ten years, most things that happened in that tiny slice of the time-space continuum will be mostly forgotten. But I can’t wrap my head around the truth that this was almost a whole 1.5% of my lifetime so far. That’s like that one long weekend we wait a hundred days for. That’s like the interest I proudly collect on my super prime special savings account once a year. It’s that one page in the weekly magazine that has the glaring advertisement. It’s that one stone in the fish tank. Though easy to ignore, its still there, its still space, its still our time, its still a piece of us.

Its that grim reminder that life happens in small days and long minutes. When its all shrunk and done, every day is a lifetime, every morning is a birth, every day is our prime, and every evening is a retirement and a long vacation, and every night is fading away into the dreamworld. I used to envy people who would gain immense satisfaction and joy from every morsel of what life threw at them, whether it was through whispers or whether it was through gusts; whether it was cooked or still pink, they still chewed it with a grin. I don’t envy them anymore. For I am reminded again that there is no such thing as a glory day. Why wait months and years to create only picture perfect experiences, why not enjoy a vacation every weekend, why not enjoy a feast on a tuesday, why not do a ridiculous dance in the morning sun, why not stroll in a midsummer noon breeze, why not stop counting percentages, why not use sunscreen, why not write a half baked blog entry.

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By Kiran, December 30, 2010 11:33 pm

- The year is a month, the month is a week, the week is nothing. I can happily report to have had at least one memorable experience each month, two or three in most months and I have preserved those memories in some form so that I can look back some day and smile. A good camera helps, and I just happened to buy one this year, and just in time too. A good partner in crime helps too, the camera is heavy.

- Two is better than square root three. The loneliest moment of each day used to be coming home late in the evening and be greeted by ghosts. Fortune has smiled on me, for I now come home to the wafting aromas of tasty indian curry. Life is sweeter and life is faster, but life is better with a wife. And I am happy everyday to impress my wife with my wikipedia wit and entertain her with my cartman jokes.

- We are in an endless hurdle race. One of the bigger milestones of my life was reached this year, and I am vexed that the celebration was so short. Now there are new challenges and goals to reach, goals that are not world-changing, just mundane mostly, but nonetheless, require work.  Maybe its better this way, more interesting than already having everything for it would be boring if the only thing to work on was how to groom the poodle.

- The job that everyone wishes for. I am thankful that I’ve had it for the last three years and I’ve absolutely enjoyed the challenge, the flexibility, the awesome bunch of people I work with, the boss that can make jokes, the customers that thank profusely, sigh. This year was the most eventful for me in terms for achievement in my work, and I take great pride in the product that I created. My precious.

- I am but a collection of moving parts. The only regret that I have this year is that I knowingly ignored fitness and sports. And I am that good at conjuring excuses, for I always have a reason why its more fun to watch tv than to exercise those creaky joints. I had a good run with the weekly volleyball till Fall, but that somewhat died down as people dispersed. I happily gained over twenty lbs since, and continue to happily tell my midsection each morning that its days are numbered.

- Hello ADD. I feel consumed by the non-stop stream of information that is making its way into my head. Everywhere I turn there is a god-damned tv, and god-damned computer, and a god-damned phone. Being a political junkie doesn’t help for its been a non-stop news year, and the talking heads are plenty. This year I have read the fewest number of books for all my years, for I am getting so used to reading single-page op-eds that books suddenly feel somewhat challenging. Something to fix next year perhaps.

The world got bigger. And that’s the thing about growing up. Maybe its always been that big, just had to drill through some big rocks blocking my life of sight. I feel a measure of relief at the end of 2010. Finishing another entire decade took a lot calories. I feel optimistic about myself and pessimistic about that big world, and I am eager to ride another red bus through the zoo. Giggity.

Happy New Year.

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By Kiran, December 29, 2010 10:42 pm

Common sense is often so uncommon that it can be heralded as a virtue. So can be said about the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%, it is simply a long scam being sold as a job-creating solution (and I know a long scam when I see one). One very simple thing I point out, I oppose any tax cuts at this time because of the strain they put on the national debt. But this snake-oil gimmick being paraded by the Republicans is beyond stupidity, and the average joe-schmoes that are backing it knowingly or unknowingly being played into this unnecessary transfer of wealth.

1. Giving a tax cut will not create jobs

Say I own a diner and I somehow clear over 250K a year. If I get a tax break of another 10K per year, does that mean I am going to hire another waiter to sit around and swat flies. The only time I would hire a new employee is if I get more people to eat at my diner, which would happen if more “regular” people got a tax cut and decided to eat out more often. In any case, trickle down to me is still a silly myth, and I am still awaiting proof that it actually works.

2. The S-Corp bonanza

Small business owners are mostly registered as S-Corps; simply they want to avoid the double-taxation conundrum. So most of them are drawing modest paychecks and realizing their income through dividends which by the way are taxed at a lower rate. So the marginal tax increase has almost no effect on small business owners (first hand knowledge). And in any case, most small business owners never even draw 250k for they leave the majority of their earnings in the company’s books for rainy days and growth days.

3. The Hedge Fund operator

The most profitable hedge fund owner made a 4 billion dollars last year. Without getting into a debate about his economic value, I can be reassured that he is not going to add a single job in this economy from his 20+ million dollar tax cut. Again its demand that creates jobs, not job-creators with a tax cut. The highest earners in this country are nota Ford or a Rockefeller anymore, who created tangible products and generated economic value; the new high-earners are nameless faceless sharks who are sitting behind concrete walls creating money from air from speculation and puppetry.

4. The deficit dilemma

Why the hell is any tax cut a good idea? There is only one reason – political correctness. I can say, even with my limited grasp on economics, that tax cuts at this point is more populist than realistically viable. The debt ceiling will only rise that much each year, and the time is not far when the rest of the world will not be as keen to buy more American treasuries.

5. The holy defense budget

Instead of tax cuts, why not spend 50 billion dollars on the country’s infrastructure – maybe we can unclog LA’s highways, or put fiber in every home, or build subway systems, fix our bridges, mass-produce and adopt green tech, and create 2 million jobs in doing so. Where could that money come from, how about cutting less than a tenth of the defense budget. People are often amazed when they hear that the US spends almost a trillion dollars (700b on DOD, 150b on wars, the rest on DHS) a year on defense, dwarfing the next biggest spender, China (70b).  More on that another rant.

6. Wait wait, don’t tell

Very soon there will be a bleak future and our overlords will try to milk the black from the darkness. To get elected you keep giving these tax cuts, you keep increasing the deficit, you see no trickle down jobs, you slowly wipe out the middle class, you need to give more tax cuts to your biggest donors, there is nothing else to cut in the budget, so you cut everything else, start with local law enforcement, slash medicare, privatize social security, cut science funding, cut state match grants, privatize everything to a few big conglomerates, brand it capitalism, credit the founders, roll around in greenbacks with the rest of the plutocrats. Hello Russia.

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By Kiran, October 22, 2010 10:56 pm

This whole exercise in ridiculousness about cutting federal funding for NPR because of the Juan Williams incident has me seriously worried about the direction of this country. Over the years, the news junkie inside of me has taken me to a lot of nooks and crannies where I can get an update or opinion from, but in all honesty, NPR is the only single outlet that has stood up to be truly neutral, objective and unburdened by opinion. Even on my seven-minute commute each day, at every chance, I have excitedly looked forward to tuning to NPR to catch even the smallest portion of a segment about some obscure topic.

The state of journalism in US is one word, draconian; over the years, profit-driven news-carriers have erased even the last iota of objectiveness. All I see now is rants, raves and confirmations purely driven by greed and political gain. Never had I thought that rational thinking and educated debate would become such a scarce commodity in this great land. And this thought has nothing to do with political standing; for that matter, I am neither aligned to republicans nor democrats, instead I like to think of myself as “normal”. A normal person, and I say this with confidence that there are many like me, would be mostly fiscally conservative on economic issues and more-or-less progressive on social issues. We are the people who have both the patience and the aptitude to listen to both sides of a debate in full, we are the ones who would not be influenced by fickle public figures, and probably the only ones who would take a stand based on reason and a deeper conviction of the underlying problems. We might be a limited species, for we would like to believe that government is neither a problem nor a solution, for we wholeheartedly believe in free enterprise yet we oppose unwarranted deregulation.

And this brings me back to the case of NPR. Once upon a time, we used to pity the folk in the former Soviet Union for they were manipulated by a controlled news outlet, but today, I actually pity the folk in this country for they are manipulated by purely dollar driven outlets. NPR to me is the sole uncorrupted (despite its occasional left-leaning stance on social issues) organization that has managed to induce in its listeners a real sense of unbiased thought and a greater understanding of the problems that plague us. And for this reason, I am actually donating to NPR, the only non-humanitarian entity that I have donated to in my lifetime. And I hope, I solemnly hope, that there are enough like minded people out there that will help NPR rid itself of its 11% dependence on federal funds. For, the only organization that is still a beacon of a true democracy, should not have to fight all the bigots and idiots all by itself.