After the MiniDV videotape camcorders and before the explosion of hard disk camcorders,
several manufacturers were making these camcorders that would record directly to DVD media. A handful of them recorded to full-size DVD media, but most recorded to a small (~3 inches in diameter) mini-DVD media. One of these discs can hold about 30 minutes of SD (740x480, 30 frames per second) video or about 1.4GB of data.
A couple years ago, I was working on a video editing project and one of my sources was from one of these mini-DVD camcorders. One of the perks of the mini-DVD format is you can throw it right into a DVD player and it plays it, without much grief, like a normal DVD movie. There's even a scene-selection menu that shows you thumbnails of images to select scenes recorded on the DVD.
I think the mini-DVD format was a great idea for people who just want to videotape an event and throw it in the DVD player, but it's not so good for someone who wants to edit the video on the computer. The camcorder manufacturers probably shipped the cameras with some kind of conversion program to extract the video from the discs and convert it into an editable format, but since I didn't own one of these mini-DVD camcorders, I didn't have such software.
A little googling and I found the answer!
Check out this command:
mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile dvd.vob
This mplayer command may be familiar to those who rip video from DVDs to convert it to an MPEG4 format or something similar.
I can't edit a VOB file, so I needed to convert the VOB into, preferably, an AVI. Most of the AVIs I edit are DV format AVIs that I get off my DV camcorders. I knew if I could get the video on the mini-DVD into that format, I'd be in heaven. I didn't find a direct way to do this, but I did find two more steps that would do it.
ffmpeg -i dvd.vob -target dv dvd.dv
cat dvd.dv | dvgrab -f dv2 -s 0 -stdin
The first command (ffmpeg) converts the VOB into raw DV data. This is data you could stream to a camcorder and store on a tape. It's not in an AVI container, but it's close. The next command (dvgrab) is usually used for capturing video from IEEE 1394 (Firewire) video devices, but being that it has an option (-stdin) for reading data from standard input, we can use it to convert our raw DV data to an AVI.
Voila!
Another book I read recently is "A Train To Potevka" written by Mike Ramsdell, a native Utahn.
Ramsdell spent many years working in Military
Intelligence (MI) and with his mastery of the German and Russian languages,
was involved in missions behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s.
This book, Ramsdell's first, is classified as fiction, but it's clear from reading that it is, at a minimum, based on real events. The stories take place shortly before the collapse of the Communist government in the former Soviet Union. Ramsdell was involved in a mission to capture a member of the Russian mafia for being involved in fraudulent activities surrounding the construction of the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
Just as the mission was getting close to finishing, the team's security is compromised. Ramsdell sends his two other operatives home while he "cleans up" and prepares to leave as well. He is intercepted by a mafia hit man and must find a way to escape and get out of the city to a safehouse in the town of Potevka.
This is a great book, especially for a first-time author. It ends up being both a love story and a spiritual story. For readers who are LDS, they will be especially touched by the spiritual side of the story. All readers will likely be captivated by the nitty-gritty details of Ramsdell's writing as he describes degrading conditions in the Siberian provinces of the former Soviet Union near the fall of Communism.
You can purchase this book from Amazon.com.
I've come down with a cold this last week. I took Thursday off work to try to rest and get better, but I don't think it really helped. I still feel like I've got a pool cue ball lodged at the top of my throat and it's not a very pleasant feeling.
Yesterday, this somewhat painful and uncomfortable sensation in my throat begat the beginnings of a scratchy cough and I knew (actually, my wife knew) once I tried to lay down in bed and go to sleep, that scratchy cough would become a pesky inhibitor to sleep.
Sure enough, when I tried to lay down and go to sleep last night, the itchy throat kicked in and I was overcome with a compelling need to cough.
Knowing I had to do something about this in order to sleep, I threw some clothes on and drove over to the neighborhood Smith's grocery store in search for some sugar free (because I'm diabetic) cough drops. I quickly found a couple flavors and headed in the direction of the self-checkout station. On my way, I passed their selection of books for sale and I decided to see what they had. I was pleasantly surprised to see they had Glenn Beck's book in stock. It's only been in stock one other time before that I can remember looking. After looking through the hardcover books, I decided to do a quick pass through the paperbacks to see if there was anything interesting. That's when I found "The Blue Zone" by Andrew Gross. I had heard Gross talking about his new book "A Dark Tide" on the radio and thought I might like this book.
That was between 1:30 and 2:00 in the morning.
I decided to let the cough drops work their magic for a little while before I attempted to sleep again, so I started reading "The Blue Zone." I ended up reading about 150 pages of the book before climbing back in bed (fell to sleep without any problems at all). Then, I read some more this morning, and then finished it tonight- about 22 hours after purchasing it.
I think it goes without saying that it's an easy read.
The story is also an easy one to get into. Kate Raab is the central
character in the story and is a graduate student doing some kind of
research in genetic biology in the New York City area. Her father is a
respected and well known trader of gold and other jewelry commodities.
The story begins with Kate's father being arrested for being involved in a money laundering scheme that was connected to Colombian drug cartels, a charge he firmly denied any knowledge of.
As the government explains the evidence they have against him, they also explain they can work a deal wherein he and his family get witness protection in exchange for his testimony against other people higher up in this scheme. After much deliberation, he decides to go ahead and take the deal. While it seemed he really didn't know what his clients were actually doing with the gold he was selling to them, he knew enough about the transactions and the people involved for the government to build a strong case.
Kate is 23 years-old, about to get married, and working on groundbreaking research in her field. When offered the opportunity to flee into the witness protection program, she declines despite knowing it will be very difficult for her to maintain communication with her family once they go into the program.
Several months later, government authorities go to Kate with news that her father has disappeared and they believe he may be involved in a murder and that her life may be in danger. From here, it seems Kate's whole world gets turned upside down as she tries to figure out why her father was charged in the first place, why he's gone into "the blue zone" (a phrase used for someone in witness protection who has gone missing), and who these people are that he was allegedly involved with and testifying against.
Gross's writing style seems very contemporary and somewhat formulaic. While he does a good job of building suspense and mystery, I can't say he did it completely convincingly. There were a couple times, albeit rare, when I saw something coming that was intended to draw a big gasp of shock from the reader.
In the story, Kate is an insulin-dependent diabetic and was diagnosed just a few years prior to the events in the book. That's interesting to me because I am also a type-1 diabetic and have only been for seven years or so. Gross's handling of the diabetes was a little weak. I think he could have done his research better on the symptoms of high blood sugar and low blood sugar because I didn't buy everything he said about Kate's condition throughout the story.
Twice in the story, a character receives a surprise call on their cell phone. In each case, the character is shocked to hear the voice on the other end of the call because they assumed the call was from someone else. This bothered me because it's a cell phone! Come on! Every cell phone has Caller ID and if it wasn't whoever they thought it was, they would at least see that the number was different or that the Caller ID information was being blocked. I mean, who answers their cell phone blindly anymore and says, "Hey, honey"?!
That being said, this guy is a good storyteller. I'll probably get his next book when it goes to paperback because the premise is interesting.
If you like suspenseful thrillers where the protagonist is thrown into a situation they don't understand and they have to work against all odds to find their way out, you'll probably enjoy The Blue Zone.
I keep meaning to post some reviews of some of the books I've been reading, but it seems like I never do. So, to placate myself, I'm doing some quickie-reviews of a stack.
"An Inconvenient Book" By Glenn Beck
Oh, you were really surprised when you came across this book review, weren't you? Yeah, I'm a big Glenn Beck fan. Proof of just how nuts I am about Glenn Beck: I wrote a Perl script to convert the live streams on the Glenn Beck Insider site (which include bumper music and other types of material not fit for the "podcast" MP3s) into MP3 or Ogg files I can listen to when I want. Yeah. I'm a fan... a geeky fan.
Okay, so about
this book... It is very, very good. In my opinion, this is how all
conservative pundits and talk radio jocks should write their books. While a
significant chunk of the book is about hot political issues like illegal
immigration and global warming, there are chapters about less political
topics... like going to the video store or tipping service staff.
It's a pretty well-rounded capture of what goes on in the mind of the
third-most listened-to talk radio host in all of America.
The layout of the book is also impressive: Every page is printed in 4-color process and the text is accompanied by charts, graphs, and humorous drawings/pictures that go along with the topic at hand. The designers also gave each page a seemingly unique watermark, or background, that gives it a well-handled, worn look- like maybe you've spilled a cup of coffee, or in the case of Glenn, a can of Coke Zero, on it, by accident.
From my perspective, as a rabid fan of Glenn's, I found the book a bit lacking in detail. That is, aside from the packaging of the book itself, there really wasn't much new here for me, content-wise, that I hadn't already read on Glenn's site, heard on his radio program, seen on his television program, or experienced myself at one of his stage shows. But... hey... I'm the exception here. If you've had some exposure to Glenn Beck or none at all, this book is an excellent way to jump in and find out what he's about.
Want to buy the book? Head over to Amazon and get it. It may be hard to find at your smaller local bookstore as it has been one of the top New York Times bestsellers since its release in November of 2007.
"The Real America" By Glenn Beck
Stop laughing, already. So, when I ordered something like six copies of "An Inconvenient Book," I went ahead and bought a copy of Glenn's previous book, "The Real America," which was written before I became turned on... uhm... exposed to Glenn (2003).
I enjoyed "The Real America" more than
"An Inconvenient Book" because it's more about values and
contains more personal history from Glenn about his battle to overcome
alcoholism, his conversion to a member of the LDS church, meeting his
now-wife Tania, and finding success in the world of talk radio.
There were parts of "The Real America" that made me put the book down and say "Wow," to myself.
A recurring topic with Glenn is "pivot points" -- significant events in a person's life at which things change. Glenn characterizes these moments as so memorable you can remember the song that was playing on the radio, or the pattern on the wallpaper in the room. This book gives you a unique insight into Glenn's personal pivot points and how he has been able to use these to make himself into a better person.
So, a little less humor and a lot more heart.
Buy it at Amazon.
"Twilight" By Stephenie Meyer
If you know anything about the Twilight series of books by Stephenie Meyer, you know they're found in the "teen, fantasy" section and they're hugely popular among teens and young adults... especially girls.
How I came to read this book is quite interesting. I was searching Amazon
for books on the development environment Eclipse so I could become more proficient with it at
work when I ran across a link to the book "Eclipse" by
Stephenie Meyer. It is the third book in the Twilight series. I
couldn't tell what it was about, exactly, but a little digging
told me that Meyer was a graduate of Brigham Young University, currently
lived in Phoenix, AZ, and the series was about a young girl's
relationship with a vampire.
I found that interesting, but I know vampire fantasy novels are almost a dime a dozen, right? I mean, Ann Rice popularized the genre quite a bit with the goth culture over the last twenty years and then you've got the popularity of films like The Lost Boys, the Blade series, and the television shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Sure, it would seem there's plenty of interest in vampires, especially for young readers.
I didn't buy any of Stephenie's books at that time. I just ordered my Java and Eclipse IDE books and went along my merry way. Then, a couple days later, I was chatting online with my friend Jennie and she asked me, point-blank, if I had read the Twilight series of books by Stephenie Meyer. No, I replied, and before I could tell her it was interesting she asked because I just recently ran across the books online, she started yelling at me (as much as a person can yell in an instant messaging session) that I HAD to read them, they were absolutely awesome, etc., etc.
Within a couple days, I had a copy of "Twilight" in my hands, compliments of Jennie. She actually wanted Christine to read the book (because Christine's a girl, you see) and included a short note inside instructing Christine to go to Stephenie Meyers' website after she finished Twilight and "read Edward's version of Chapter One, but don't do it until you've finished the book!"
Christine wasn't really that interested. So, after a week or so, I decided to take a peek and started reading the book. Within minutes, the surface of my hands became like Gorilla Glue and my face grew blinders on each side of my eyes so that I could see only the pages of Twilight and nothing else.
It's a good book. It draws you in.
The story tells of Isabel (Bella) Swan, a junior in high school who moves to the Pacific northwest to live with her father in a small rural town. While attending high school there, she meets Edward Cullen, the member of a somewhat peculiar, but beautiful family. Bella eventually learns that Edward is a vampire, as is his entire (adopted) family.
Meyers creates her own breed of vampire and picks and chooses what characteristics to borrow from popular vampire lore. Meyers' vampires have no aversion to crosses or holy water; They don't die when exposed to sunlight (but they are affected by sunlight, which is why the Cullen family has settled in a small town in an area that gets very little direct sunlight); They can't (usually) control your thoughts.
That being said, vampires in Meyers' books are very dangerous. The Cullens are a rare group that have chosen to exercise self-control over their blood lust in order to coexist with humans, but they are the exception and not the rule. Meyers' vampires are effectively immortal and have superhuman strength (and speed).
Twilight is a gripping tale of suspense, mystery, teen drama, romance, and a little horror. It's not gory, but it's not sanitized either. I wouldn't recommend the books for anyone under the age of 12.
Incidentally, a film based on the book is currently in production.
Buy your copy today at Amazon dot com!
"New Moon" By Stephenie Meyer
Once you've read Twilight, you just have to read
the second book in the series, "New Moon" because you're
dying to find out what happens to Bella Swan. I didn't bother waiting to get Jennie's copy of book number 2. I just went out and bought it.
"New
Moon" picks up a few months after the events at the end of
"Twilight." Things are going pretty well for Bella and Edward,
but then Edward mysteriously leaves and tells Bella to, in short, find
another boyfriend.
The bulk of the book then follows Bella as she mind-numbingly tries to cope with the loss of her loved one and begins spending time with Jacob Black, a young Native American who is more of a friend of the family than a love interest (although, he doesn't quite see it that way). Bella doesn't admit it, but she's really using Jacob to exercise new masochistic impulses she has been developing since Edward left.
Good book, but nowhere near as good as "Twilight." If that was the end of the series, I'd say don't bother reading it, but it's not the end of the series. You have to read "New Moon" to understand what happens in "Eclipse," so, it's worth it.
Buy it, where else? A-Ma-Zon!
"Eclipse" By Stephenie Meyer
You knew this was coming, didn't you?
And now, we get to "Eclipse." I bought it at a Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles because that's where I was when I finished the second book.
The third book in the series makes up for the slowness of "New
Moon" and, in my opinion, rises above both of the preceding novels to
be the best of the crop.
Bella Swan, constantly occupied with becoming a vampire herself so that she can have immortality (and immortal love with Edward) finds herself caught between Edward (who obviously has come back), the affection of Jacob Black, the Cullen family, the less friendly non-human-coexisting vampires, and a pack of werewolves that exist to do one thing: eradicate vampires.
Oh, and she's also trying to finish and graduate from high school.
Yeah. Lots more action in this one. And, we learn more about what these vampires can and can't do, the history of the werewolves, the excruciating process someone goes through being "transformed" into a vampire, and some great history on the Cullens.
I thought this was going to be the end of the series because of the way the book ends, but book number 4 is coming to bookstores Fall 2008.
Get "Eclipse" at Amazon.com.
A couple weeks ago, I got an e-mail message from an old friend that I went to school with from first grade until high school. She was inviting me to join a social network she had set up using the Ning platform. I signed up and have been spending a little time there catching up with the couple dozen people who have signed up as well.
This is the first time I've ever heard of Ning. I'd be interesting in hearing what some people in-the-know, as far as social networking is concerned, think of them.
In related news, if you're an alumnus of the Granger High School class of 1990 and you have not received an invitation to the class Ning site, drop me a line with your e-mail address and I'll get you invited.
Yesterday, my new laptop arrived. KnowledgeBlue purchased it for me as my HP Pavilion ZV5000Z was about three years old and was starting to show its age. KnowledgeBlue has standardized on Dell as its hardware supplier and, while I don't care for their desktop machines at all and I'm okay with their servers, I really had no clue what to think about their laptops.
What is nice about Dell is they have a line of Open Source laptops. These laptops have been certified as being friendly with open source operating systems like Linux and are available for purchase without a pre-installed operating system (the laptop does come with FreeDOS installation media).
HP also offers FreeDOS as an operating system option on many of its Business laptops for those people looking to run an open source operating system or simply avoid paying HP for a preinstalled Microsoft product.
So, anyway, I got a customized Dell Latitude D830. Here are some of the features:
- Intel Core2 Duo CPU T7700 @ 2.40GHz
- 2GB RAM
- 120GB hard drive (w/ free fall sensor)
- DVD burner
- 9-Cell battery
- NVidia Quadro NVS 140M (256MB)
- 1920x1200 widescreen LCD panel
- Intel 3945 802.11a/g wireless
Let me just say I am impressed. So far, this laptop has been nothing but awesome. The screen is absolutely beautiful. Most impressive is the fact all the hardware seems to just work in Linux. After all the hurdles I had to jump to get my previous laptop working with Linux, this was a paradisical experience.
I did a network install of Fedora 8 after booting from a CD burned from the distribution boot.iso. The software properly configured the video card to use the open source nv driver and accurately identified the characteristics of the display panel. Sound worked fine right out of the box. I was worried about wireless networking and was prepared to install a third-party driver from a site like Livna or FreshRPMS, but when I enabled NetworkManager, it just worked! I could scan for wireless networks (it saw more than my Atheros card ever did) and connected to my home network (encrypted with WPA2) with no problems at all.
One thing I do like about my HP laptop is the ability to disable the trackpad so that when I'm using a USB mouse, I don't have to worry about brushing against the trackpad while I'm typing. Speaking of pointing devices, the D830 has taken a cue from IBM/Lenovo and provides both a trackpad and a eraser-point stick thingie with a second set of left and right buttons.
One thing that has been a bit of a concern is the sound card. Maybe I need to dig deeper, but the mixer support seems really weak. The only controllable channels I've seen in my mixer is PCM and Front. From what I've seen so far, the headphone jack is not independently controllable (it is on my HP) and I haven't seen channels for Line In or Microphone.
Battery life seems good. I haven't timed it yet, but I think I'm getting about 2-3 hours off a single charge and I haven't really tried any power saving settings. I know the Intel chipset offers a lot of options in that department.
I haven't tried any kind of suspend or sleep stuff yet. I'll have to report my findings about that in a later post.
Talk about a frustrating experience!
A couple weeks ago, I had to go to a customer's office to do some network troubleshooting work. On my way, I received two text messages, in quick succession, on my phone (Palm Treo 700p w/ Sprint). I began to go to the text messages to see what they were and the phone "rebooted."
Now, this isn't a regular thing, but it's not unheard of for a Treo to reset. But this was no regular reset. My phone went into a nasty reboot loop-- never quite coming back up to normal operation. It would get to a certain point in the boot-up process and then reset again.
I tried just about everything I could think of (short of doing a hard reset that wipes all your data from memory) and nothing helped. I ended up taking my phone to the Sprint repair facility later that day. I went back in an hour or so and got the phone back to find they had done what I didn't do: a hard reset. All my data was gone. I had it backed up, but it's still a pain to restore everything.
It wasn't long before I realized the Sprint repair center didn't just do a hard reset on my phone. They also upgraded the firmware and the new firmware is abundant with annoying bugs that drive me nuts!
Several basic functions that had no issues before now have glaring issues. Here are some of the things I am having to deal with:
- Favorites button Quick Key in Phone application does not work. This is, essentially, a speed-dial function that lets you assign a keyboard key to a favorite contact from your address book. By holding down the assigned key, that person's number is dialed. Worked fine before. Doesn't do anything now. This sucks.
- Call list population is very undependable. I might get an alert that I missed 2 calls, but when I go to my call list to see who those two calls were front, they aren't on the list. If I make a call using a favorites button, the outgoing call isn't recorded in the call list.
- Ring tone and alert sounds "fade in." This seems like a "volume escalation" feature, but I've double and triple checked (and then some) that the escalate volume checkbox in the Sound preferences is not checked.
- The On Demand application freezes the Treo. I used to use the On Demand application frequently to check weather reports and read News Of The Weird news articles. Now the only thing On Demand is good for is freezing up the device. The only way to remedy the problem is to do a soft reset or remove the battery.
- Deactivating the keyguard to delete or view messages is difficult. The Treo will act like the keyguard is active, but the normal "Keyguard: Press Center button to unlock" message does not display on the screen. Very frustrating.
Has anyone else seen these problems with their Treo device?
Should I take my phone back to the repair center or will they just do another hard reset and tell me that's all they can do?
It pays to study your history or else you're doomed to repeat it.
View the video segments on YouTube.
Aaron's a good guy and a productive contributor to the local open source community, but he's blogging again about how we should all stop using proprietary instant messaging protocols and only use open protocols like Jabber/XMPP.
I'm a long-time satisfied user of open source software and of
Jabber/XMPP instant messaging. I would love to see the whole world
embrace Jabber as the One True Instant Messaging Protocol just as the whole
world has embraced SMTP as the only viable protocol for sending e-mail.
That being said, I am repulsed by Aaron's "you shouldn't
use that software because it's not Free
Software" message.
I know many in the open source culture have had more than their fair share of the Richard Stallman Kool-Aid and believe religiously there is something morally wrong with software that doesn't come with source code and a license to do whatever you want with it. I'm not one of those people and I think it's an immoral philosophy.
In my opinion, open source software is about choice and having choices. You should use whatever software fits your need best. I don't think the fundamental principle behind open source or Free software should be to stigmatize people from using non-open, non-Free software.
Now, I'm not defending the practices of the purveyors of
proprietary instant messaging protocols. Clearly, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL have
all exhibited their various dark sides trying to circumvent the interaction
of unofficial client software (both open source and otherwise) with their
chat systems. But, they have the right to do so! Eventually they'll learn it's futile. :)
If you write software for the public to use, you have choices on how you want to distribute it:
- You can withhold the source code and charge for the use of it.
- You can withhold the source code but give the software away for free.
- You can provide source code.
I'm generalizing here, but my point here is that it doesn't really matter how your software is developed or distributed. The public will choose based on many variables such as cost, ease of use, accessibility, etc.
Not many people will actually care whether or not the source code is
available. What most people will care about is how well
the software works and what the cost is to them to use it. Cost is and always will be a compelling reason to choose open source software, but you can't ignore the features of the software itself.
Case in point: Adobe Photoshop is still priced quite high for the average user. While open source alternatives like GIMP continue to gain competitive ground on Photoshop, users continue to pay Adobe's price because Photoshop provides what they need and the price is worth the benefit.
On the other hand, if someone buys Adobe Photoshop to crop and resize photos, I think they're a complete idiot!
I think the software playing field is like any other market and the capitalist in me says, "Let the market decide!"
Wouldn't it be nice if no one ran Windows and everyone ran an open source operating system?! Yes! It would be AWESOME! In fact, I think Microsoft is doing a wonderful job of pushing many of their users in that direction with XP and Vista, but they're also trying very hard to produce software to convince users it's worth the price for the benefit they receive.
The Free/open alternatives should be able to (and usually do) compete on their own merits. We shouldn't go around telling people they're behaving in an immoral way for choosing the software they choose. We should definitely inform everyone of the benefits of using open source software, open protocols, open standards, etc., and, as a community, we can continue to improve the software we're personally involved with.
Now, as a note,I don't think many companies are adopting proprietary solutions
for internal instant messaging. They're using some Jabber/XMPP
platform (some of which are commercial, proprietary implementations).
As this phenomenon spreads, as more people are using XMPP, I believe it will become
the de facto standard and other protocols will either fade away, adapt to
become compatible, or become niche. If and when it prevails it will be because it is the best solution and not because of the lobbying power of a bunch of self-righteous nerds.
Vocal supporters of this "abandon all proprietary messaging platforms" bandwagon are opposed to the efforts of projects like Pidgin -- an open source, multi-protocol messaging client -- which they claim only perpetuates the use of these bad closed, proprietary messaging platforms.
Hogwash! Pidgin is an excellent example of open source software that was created to meet growing demands of users. Is it perfect? No! But it epitomizes open source software and continues to evolve toward more of what its users may want.
I'm going to continue to use Pidgin as it does a fantastic job of simultaneously allowing me to converse with my contacts via AIM/ICQ, Yahoo! IM, MSN Messenger, Google Talk (based on XMPP), several IRC servers, and several Jabber/XMPP servers. For what it's worth, I communicate via IRC and Jabber more than anything else.
I've been reading the book Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. The title of the book is guaranteed to set people off, one way or another and for this reason, Goldberg seems to spend a extraordinary amount of effort defending his premises and explaining that he's not saying that today's liberals are anti-semetic, genocidal maniacs. What he does say, and says very well, is that history's most common tales of fascism, such as Adolf Hilter and Benito Mussolini, were largely influenced by progressive thought--the same progressive thought that rules the Democratic party and liberal politics today.
In a July 2007 debate, Hillary Clinton responded to the question of whether she would refer to herself as a "liberal."
"You know, ['liberal'] is a word that originally meant that you were for freedom, that you were for the freedom to achieve, that you were willing to stand against big power and on behalf of the individual.
"Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years, it has been turned up on its head and it's been made to seem as though it is a word that describes big government, totally contrary to what its meaning was in the 19th and early 20th century.
"I prefer the word 'progressive,' which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.
"I consider myself a modern progressive, someone who believes strongly in individual rights and freedoms, who believes that we are better as a society when we're working together and when we find ways to help those who may not have all the advantages in life get the tools they need to lead a more productive life for themselves and their family.
"So I consider myself a proud modern American progressive, and I think that's the kind of philosophy and practice that we need to bring back to American politics."
At the time of this debate, I was reading The Forgotten Man by Amnity Schlaes which provides a new look at the political forces at play before and during the 1930s when the United States was enduring The Great Depression. What Schlaes reveals--and what many people don't know--is that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies were formed with the help of a team of progressive advisors and cabinet members who had varying degrees of infatuation and admiration for Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini and the forms of government they were managing and/or advocating.
Schlaes offers that the policies of the Roosevelt administration were a significant input into why the Great Depression lasted for the entire decade of the 1930s while other industrialized nations around the world suffered an economic hit in 1929 and then recovered relatively quickly.
I mention this because, thanks in part to my friend Glenn Beck, I recently came across a number of platform statements and congressional records belonging to presidential candidate (and current frontrunner) Barack Obama that suggest he is ready to (blindly?) take us right into a repeat of the 1930s.
National work programs
The Roosevelt administration, in the interest of stimulating the economy and helping the large number of unemployed, created a number of government work plans including the Civilian Conservation Corps, a work program for young men, 17 years old or older. The CCC put these men to work in camps on various projects around the country such as clearing out dead wood in forests and building bridges, walkways, and roads, and other construction projects, usually in rural or undeveloped settings.
Last week, Barack Obama announced to Wisconsin auto industry workers that, as president, he would propose over $200 billion in programs to create new government jobs. The bulk of this spending would go to create a workforce of "green-collar workers" that would tackle environmental issues like finding new forms of enviro-friendly fuels. Other jobs would go to infrastructure projects such as highways and bridges.
While I agree that good hard work is good for the mind and soul and would benefit individuals who would otherwise be unemployed and potentially idle, I can't help but be concerned that Sen. Obama hasn't studied his history. Quite frankly, it doesn't seem like many on the left have studied their history because these types of programs are becoming quite a popular topic of discussion among liberals. If we know we're going into a period that may be like the 1930s, why would we do the same things that prolonged the suffering and the stagnation then?
The less-fortunate
Many Americans believe we have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate around the world. Liberals believe this should be a function of the federal government. Conservatives, on the other hand, would prefer this be done by private organizations and charities. One of the reasons conservatives feel this way is because the charitable feeling is completely lost when your money is forcefully taken from you by the federal goverment in the form of taxes and fees, no matter how good the intentions are. Plus, there is the issue of how efficiently those funds will be handled.
Senator Obama, along with fellow senators Chuck Hagel and Maria Cantwell, have sponsored legislation known as the "Global Poverty Act" which passed the Senate Foreign Relations committee this last week. If passed, this legislation would require that the federal government provide a small percentage of the economic GDP as financial aid for countries where people live in poverty. The US would not send this money directly to the people or their governments. Instead, we would give that money to the United Nations to administer the funds.
Again, when will people learn?! Our government created a formal "War On Poverty" after World War II and spent plenty of money on programs to help the poor improve their station in life. Did anyone actually rise out of poverty? Not according to statistics. Because of this and because the government continued to rise the poverty level to include less and less poor households, those who qualified for assistance under these programs grew.
1964, Ronald Reagan gave a speech titled "A Time For Choosing". In it, he addresses the inefficiency of the government's welfare programs.
"We are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead."
He also talks about the overall ineffectiveness of cutting checks to those "in-need:"
"If government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? ... But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater."
Again, haven't we learned anything from our past mistakes? Why can't our political leaders learn what works and employ those techniques instead of playing the same old card again and again?
What works for poverty, unemployment, etc.? Not free handouts.
The LDS Church here in Utah has its own welfare programs which are available to anyone, regardless of church affiliation. These programs are not handouts. Instead. they are structured, compassionate programs that encourage the recipients to "give in" to receive. Meals, clothing, and other assistance are available to those in need and, in turn, the recipients are asked to give of their time and effort to help provide the same services to others. This is a perfect example of why private charitable organizations are much better equipped to deal with these kinds of problems than the bureaucratic nightmare of the federal government.
Obama's legislation states that it is all part of an international agreement to help combat poverty. This means that all participating countries will be taking a portion of their national revenue and giving it to the United Nations for distribution to poor areas. Two alarm bells go off when I ponder this: Global redistribution of wealth, a socialist policy tenet, and international taxation by the United Nations! When will the madness stop?
The United Nations is supposed to help keep the peace in sensitive areas of the world and it can't even do that well. Why would anyone think this organization would be effective and act responsibly in an effort to combat poverty? Oil for food, anyone? Do progressives, liberals, and socialists simply lack the ability to learn?!
Debt
The United States government, and by association, the citizens of the United States, are between $9 and $100 TRILLION dollars in debt. I fail to see the sense of spending more than what is required to maintain bare essential services until this debt is eradicated. Social programs, earmarks, museums, assistance programs... They should all be stopped or shrunk so that some of the government's revenue can be applied toward the outstanding debt.
History tells us Thomas Jefferson had much to say about debt, both personal and national. He stated it was vital that the country not take on debt and if it did, that it should be no more debt than could be paid for in one generation.
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."
As a country, we have ignored Jefferson's advice since the beginning of the 20th century and now we are witnessing the effects of years of irresponsible borrowing in our economic outlook.
And speaking of irresponsible borrowing, Barack Obama has proposed a $10 billion federal fund to help "innocent victims" caught in the subprime loan mess. Are there really innocent victims? I don't think so. When you borrow money to purchase a house, you have plenty of opportunity to learn what you're getting into, what your obligations are, etc. The lending institutions are certainly not innocent either because they have time-tested methods for determining risk when lending money. What Obama is suggesting is essentially saddling us with more national debt because of a few people's irresponsible behavior.
Fiscal discipline and revenue
Barack Obama's website says a lot about a need for fiscal discipline and responsibility. I'm glad his website says these thing, but if he really believes in these things, how are these billions upon billions of federal programs going to be funded? There will have to be greater revenue to the federal government and/or less spending on programs that are already there. Obama's honest about this, if not direct about it. If you peruse his website, you'll learn he wants to cut spending on various programs and he wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts. Well, only for the rich, not for the poor or middle class taxpayers.
While repealing tax cuts for the rich is a popular thing to do (because there are a lot more people who aren't rich than are), it is, by definition, not fair. I would really like someone to explain to me why it makes sense that we pay a different percentage of our assets in taxes based on the amount of assets we have. To be fair, equal, and all that, shouldn't we each pay the same percentage?
What are the economic repercussions of saddling the "rich" with more taxes? The rich are more likely to spend more than those who are less wealthy, so this would cut into their spending power. The rich are more likely to employ others than those who are less wealthy, so this cuts into their hiring power. Hello?! Tax hikes on the rich is a direct attack on important driving forces of the economy: consumer spending and employment!
