What passes for policy debate in America today

The following sentence from an article about a study released by health insurers is hardly encouraging:

Democrats and their allies scrambled on Monday to knock down a new
industry-funded study forecasting that Senate legislation, over time, will
add thousands of dollars to the cost of a typical policy.

And sure enough, what follows in the article is not an argument on the merits, but rather:

"Distorted and flawed," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass.
"Fundamentally dishonest," said AARP's senior policy strategist, John Rother. "A
hatchet job," said a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee chairman Max
Baucus, D-Mont.

But what exactly is so "Fundamentally dishonest?"

At the heart of the industry's complaint is a decision by lawmakers to weaken the requirement that millions more Americans get coverage. Since the legislation would ban insurance companies from denying coverage on account of poor health, many people will wait to sign up until they get sick, the industry says. And that will drive up costs for everybody else.

Isn't that kind of a no-brainer? Why pay for health insurance when you're not sick if you can just wait and get it when you are? If the government forces insurers to provide insurance on the spot without limitation for covering illness or injury that they already had, they will be creating an incentive for people to go without insurance. People will only sign up when they are getting ready to submit claims.

If you are an insurer, what rate should you charge if many of your policyholders are only ever signing up for coverage when they are ready to submit a claim? Hint: the answer is it will cost more than today. If you are an insurer, and you used to deny some claims because they were submitted for pre-existing conditions, and you now have to pay additional money for those claims, how much should you then charge? Hint: the answer is it will cost more than today.

There can certainly be a debate as to how much premiums will go up, but ceteris paribus, they will go up.

The real "distortion" in this case is the White House calling a report that points out an important aspect of health care policy that they are trying to gloss over a distortion. The real fundamental dishonesty is for the AARP to call such a common sense application of the incentives people will face "Fundamental dishonesty." The real hatchet job is for Sen. Baucus to not to come out and acknowledge the (unintended?) consequences of his legislation, but to instead call a report that does a "hatchet job."

How discouraging that the White House, the AARP, and the Chairman of the Senate Finance committee are avoiding an honest, rationale, discussion of the impacts of health care reform.

Ellsworth Monkton Krugman

I think anyone with half a brain and enough time spent following American politics would agree that there is "over-the-top" opposition on both the left and the right towards the other side. If that premise is correct (and I think it is), then to suggest otherwise means that someone either:

1. is stupid
2. is uninformed
3. is twisting the truth to present the portion of it that they want you to see.

If I had to bet, I'd go with option #3 for Paul Krugman. In his recent NY times piece, he not only isolates Republicans as being "so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?" he also generalizes any opposition into the "essential truth about the state of American politics" that "the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple."

Being a Republican, which Krugman is not, I prefer to speak for myself. I am not guided by pure spite, or even impure spite. I chose the Republican party in my early twenties because I thought they were the closest philosophically to my view of the role of government: a limited one. I thought the Republicans were at their best in the mid 90's when they fought for limited government, and at their worst a decade later when they spent like big-government fools during W's two terms.

Back to Krugman, he conveniently leaves out any Democrats that have been over the top. Would it be fair for someone on the right to pluck a few choice quotes from ACORN, for example, and generalize all Democrats accordingly?

He writes "Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years." Or the Bush years, maybe? Was there no over-the-top opposition then?

To call someone out when they go over the top is certainly fair game. To imply that it's only one party that does so, however, is the work of a spin doctor. It's a piece that I think Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" would have been proud of.

First Amendment justice

I haven't taken a single law class, so am posting in a state of ignorance. If I understand the current jurisprudence on freedom of speech (huge if), then whatever moron launched the "Should Obama be killed" Facebook poll may not ultimately face legal penalties.

After doing a little surfing, I found the following on Wikipedia:

The doctrine states that speech that will cause, or has as its purpose, "imminent lawless action" (such as a riot) does not have constitutional protection. As of 2009[update], "imminent lawless action" continues to be the test applied in free speech cases.

It seems like there would be sufficient distance between taking a Facebook poll and "lawless action" so as to protect the poll under the First Amendment. Let's hope there is some other legal route by which the creator of this poll is punished.

To discuss the impeachment of a president (as some on the left did for much of Bush 43's presidency) seems to be well within acceptable speech. If someone doesn't like Obama and wants to put "Impeach Obama" bumper stickers on their car, let them. I don't agree with them, but recognize their right to that kind of speech. But "Should Obama be killed?" crosses the line.

Let's hope that the perpetrator of this poll is caught, and justice is served.

ObamACORN pt. 2

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth? The video below seems to contradict Page's claim that "The organization and the former community organizer have not had much contact since, other than connections that have been alleged or exaggerated by conservative media."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJcVgJhNaU

ObamACORN

Clarence Page writes that the "right's recent obsession with ACORN... grows largely out of a faint hope that bringing down ACORN will help them to bring down Obama"

Being on the right, which Page clearly isn't, I can say that I hope ACORN gets "brought down" for a different reason: they are for things that I am against. Their reform consists of an even greater government intervention into the daily lives of all Americans, and removes even more of the voluntary exchange between free people. They want wages to be set, not by the market, but the government. They want the number of sick days to be set, not by an agreement between employer and employee, but by the government. They want to rewrite contracts that were voluntary entered into by both sides after the fact, so that lenders are forced to take it on the chin when homeowners stop paying their mortgages.

I'll leave their views on immigration out, because it's a different issue, but the above three are all instances of government restricting the freedom of both (yes both) parties in a voluntary exchange. This is America, and they are free to have their opinions on the proper role of government, along with everyone else. Why is it, however, that money is taken from me and given to them by the government?

By the way, you'd think that ACORN might be grateful to the hand that feeds them. Instead, they are now in the news for offering advice on how to set up a brothel with 13 underage El Salvadoran girls (Page's column conveniently leaves that part of it out) so as to avoid paying taxes.

For Page, the concern seems to be what impact this may have on President Obama, and his piece seems intent on short-circuiting any connection. After noting that "back in 1995, young Harvard law grad" Obama helped ACORN, he goes on to state:

"The organization and the former community organizer have not had much contact since, other than connections that have been alleged or exaggerated by conservative media."

Really?

Factcheck.org notes that

When Obama was on the board of directors of the Woods Fund, the foundation gave grants of $75,000 in 2001 and $70,000 in 2002 to ACORN's Chicago office.

They also note that ACORN's Political Action Committee endorsed Obama.

In addition, during the campaign, the Pittsburgh Tribune review reported:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an
offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

I certainly hope that the connection between Obama and ACORN, both financially and philosophically, doesn't "bring down" the president's efforts to avert a nuclear Iran, for example. I do hope, however, that this latest ACORN scandal will slow any momentum in imposing their leftist agenda on America.

Can you feel the "Change" in Washington?

I can't say that I'm shocked that federal government employees acted "innappropriately" in an 8/10/09 conference call where National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) employees joined with White House staff to discuss ways of using taxpayer dollars to fund art projects that would promote President Obama's agenda.

While it's wrong in multiple ways, it's not Obama's problem as much as it's a problem with government at every level.

More on the systemic problem in a moment, but first off, exactly what do we need the NEA for?? Why is money forcibly taken from me and every other taxpayer to pay for "art" that we have no say in? It isn't like without government support, there wouldn't be any art. In fact, many of our richest and most famous citizens are artists, and their money comes from the voluntary patronage of their fans.

Put another way, if whatever art is being funded wouldn't survive from the willing patronage of American citizens, then why should we fund it with the involuntary taxation of American taxpayers? Isn't forcing someone to pay for something they don't want contrary to freedom and liberty?

While I'm sure the White House at least wishes this call hadn't been made public, and maybe even that it hadn't happened, this is in no stretch of the imagination a problem unique to President Obama. At the local level, public employee unions (police, firefighters, teachers, office workers, garbagemen, you name it) take money from the wages that taxpayers fund, give it to the politicians who negotiate their contracts, and the politicians sweeten the deal. The politicians get campaign money, the unions get power, the public employees get paid and the taxpayers get screwed. The same thing happens at the state level. In California, the union for the correctional officers (the CCPOA) wields enormous influence in state elections. At the federal level, politicians get contributions from entities that benefit from the local projects that they fund from their earmarks.

So this cycle of taxpayer dollars being spent in a political fashion, while disgusting, is certainly not a problem unique to Obama, it happens every day at every level in our society.

The Hope of racism

Jimmy Carter, Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, and Bob Herbert all have two things in common:

1. They are Obama supporters
2. They’ve all stated recently that varying degrees of the criticism directed towards Obama are motivated by racism.

I suspect they have a third thing in common also: They want Obama’s critics to be racists.

Please note that I said I suspect that they want it, not that they do. I am no more able to see into their hidden desires and motivations then they are able to see into Joe Wilson, or anyone else they associate racism to based on criticism of Obama’s administration.

Assigning racial motives to any criticism of Obama, however, does afford them some benefits. It allows them to feel morally superior, to look down on someone as a backwards bigot. To the extent someone is a backwards bigot, and you are not, you should feel morally superior. But only to the extent that both of those are true. If someone isn’t motivated by racism in criticizing Obama, however, and you look down on them as a racist, I think you’ve lost more than a little of your moral high ground.

It also spares them of having to deal with the inconvenient reality that whatever proposal of Obama’s is being criticized may actually make things worse. An honest, objective assessment of whatever it is may lead you to the conclusion that, in that particular instance, Obama is wrong. Really understanding an issue honestly and objectively, however, takes a lot of work. You can certainly spare someone having to do that work by dismissing any criticism of Obamacare, for example, as racially motivated.

I have no doubt there are people in America who can't stand Obama because he's black. But what of those who criticize Obama based on a different view of the role of government than he's been promoting? Joe Wilson's pathetic outburst may be viewed by some as a gift to be exploited... an opportunity to change the discussion away from the wisdom of an expanded federal role in health care to the racial motivations of those who question that role.

Civil discourse

Last week, when President Obama asserted that health care reform won't cover illegal aliens, Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" A week later, the house admonished him. On Tuesday, President Obama called Kanye West a "jackass" for hijacking Taylor Swift's acceptance speech. I don't expect any such admonishment to be forthcoming on this.

As far as Wilson goes, he got what he deserves. He may have been right that Obama wasn't being completely truthful about the ability of illegal aliens to access healthcare, but that wasn't the time, nor the way, to express it. It may even be true that some democrats aren't as interested in civil discourse as they are in scoring some cheap political points (I seem to recall a fair amount of uncivil discourse directed towards Bush 43), but it doesn't excuse Wilson, who brought it on himself.

As far as Obama goes, that may not have been the zenith of the dignity of his presidency, but it wasn't out of bounds, either. Kanye certainly acted the part, and all Obama did was state the obvious.

Political advancement via schadenfreude

Attached is a letter I sent to Ben Stein, who wrote recently in the American Spectator about the GOP reviving due to Obama's mistakes.

Dear Mr. Stein-

Reading your article reminded me of a time, years ago, when I was in a Las Vegas casino on the opening weekend of the NFL season. In the sports room there were two guys watching the team they had bet on lose, and they weren’t taking it well. At one point, the other team’s star player had the ball, and one of the guys yelled at the TV to his defense to “Break his f***ng leg!!!”

I agree with you that Obama has had multiple missteps so far in his administration, and his public approval is slipping as a result. I think this is a different issue, however, than a GOP revival. In football terms, Obama’s offense is now throwing incomplete passes and being called for penalties. That’s different from the GOP getting sacks or interceptions. I haven’t seen the GOP offense do any scoring, either.

The Republicans went from the party of limited government in 1994, to the spend-like-a-drunken-sailor party during the Bush 43 years. It isn’t like the GOP is back after the first few months of Obama.

A real GOP revival will depend on the GOP, not on hoping Obama will break his (political) leg.

Sincerely,
Brian Whipple

Is that all they hope to get out of the speech?

President Obama, whose push for socialized medicine in America is not going as well as he has hoped, is now asking school children to help him. He'll be giving a speech on Tuesday that school age children are being asked to take time away from their normal school activities to watch.

Accompanying this speech is a "Menu of Classroom Activies" that the Department of Education is sending to all schools. One of the activities is for children to write about "how they could help the president."

I thought schools were for education, not indoctrination, but I guess I was wrong. Call it the Obama Jugend.

On a related note, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated

"At the end of the day, if the president motivates on C student to become a B
student, or one thinking of dropping out to stay in school to take their
education seriously, it's all worth it."

If that were true, the activity should have been for them to write about being a better student, not about advancing the President's partisan agenda. Even if that were the agenda, shouldn't we have higher expectations? As much as I dislike most of Obama's policies, many people find him very persuasive. I would expect school children, who haven't developed good critical thinking skills, to be even more persuaded by his words. There are millions and millions of school age children. If just one goes from a C to a B, then it's successful?

Do you know what I think would be "worth it?" The statistics for blacks on graduation rates and out of wedlock births are dismal. President Obama has been remarkably successful in educational achievement and appears to be a good father. I think he can speak to and inspire the black community in America like no other person on earth can. If he is successful in having an impact there (in the community, not on one person!), he will have done something I think all Americans will be proud of him for.

This is how to decide public policy?

The government will either make things better or worse if some form of healthcare "reform" passes. They may end up doing both (making it better for some, worse for others). Whatever the merits of whatever proposals are being evaluated, however, isn't it the merits that should determine what unfolds?

Not if you're Jesse Jackson. He argues in a recent editorial that

The Senate should honor the legacy and service of its colleague and friend not
by fine speeches, but by clear action. Democrats should join together to pass
Kennedy's health care bill,

So a bill so momentous it will impact 1/6 of the economy and every one of the hundreds of millions of Americans is to be passed because one 77 year old senator came to the end of his long, full life? Of all the reasons I've heard for and against health care, this is by far the least persuasive.

Unity?

The editors at the New Republic have recently lent their views to the partisan aspect of the health care debate in an op-ed titled "Long live the death of bipartisanship." Attached are the comments I submitted to them:

I agree with you that Democrats don't have to work with Republicans in a bipartisan fashion. Furthermore, if I was in favor of additional government intervention in healthcare (I'm not) I would likely see things the same way: Why risk getting what you want (or dilute it) by seeking a "bipartisan" bill?

But what of the President? One of the central themes of candidate Obama was unity and an end to partisanship. If you were in the middle (and neither of us are), what if you voted for Obama because you thought he would bring the country together? All the major legislation thus far has been very partisan: the stimulus bill, the budget, cap and trade, and now health care. Do you think he has been successful in bringing the country together?

The fault (to the extent that partisanship is a fault) is certainly shared between Obama and Republicans for not working together. I think, however, that candidate Obama's words about unity are an important aspect of the partisanship of the health care debate. Don't you?

Is it really for the children?

It’s not uncommon to invoke “our children” when making a public policy argument, and in this respect, President Obama is like many other politicians. In his recent op-ed in the New York Times arguing for health-care reform, he stated:

This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back years from now and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed, and gave our children a better life.

The better life our children will enjoy years from now will result from, he argues, better health care stemming from his reform. Whether health care will actually improve from federal intervention is the subject of much debate. There is another aspect, though, to the quality of life our children will enjoy years from now: the debt that they inherit from us.

“Our” children will be entering adulthood in ten years (2019), when his youngest daughter Natasha turns 18, and my youngest daughter (Sarah) turns 21. The economy will already be weaker in 2019 than it otherwise would have been as a result of the “stimulus” package. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) wrote on 2/4/09 that it “estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net.” This damage to our economic future is due to the additional debt from the stimulus.

On top of that, the federal budget proposals that followed make things worse. On page 11 of the CBO’s 3/20/09 analysis, it states “ The cumulative deficit from 2010 to 2019 under the President’s proposals would total $9.3 trillion, compared with a cumulative deficit of $4.4 trillion projected under the current-law assumptions embodied in CBO’s baseline.”

To put these numbers in context, when Natasha and Sarah are becoming adults, they will each owe an additional sixteen thousand dollars from Obama’s federal budget proposals, on top of the fourteen thousand dollars they would have owed anyway. It’s not just Sarah and Natasha, either. Every man, woman, and child will be on the hook for the national debt, and in an economy that is already weakened then by the hangover from the stimulus.

Against that backdrop, we are now going to have the federal government start spending on health care. The details are still being worked out, but the preliminary analysis of the Kennedy-Dodd bill was a price tag of over $1 trillion (or about three grand each for Sarah, Natasha, you, me, and every other American).

We all see the world through our own lens. From my point of view, however, spending money now and giving the bill to the next generation does not provide them with a better life.

Cheers for Paglia

I am a fan of Camille Paglia. Not her politcs or worldview, but her honesty. Although she's on the left, her most recent article calls both Obama and Pelosi out (and not gently, either). I'd read her once or twice before, and had a similar reaction then also.

I find her much more intersting than Hugh Hewitt, for example. I like Hewitt, I like his politics (which are far closer to mine than Paglia's), but when I listen to him on the radio, I know that the shortcomings of the left are magnified and the shortcomings on the right are rationalized.

Jefferson vs. Hamilton

Let me preface this post by saying that I’m sure Joseph Ellis has forgotten more about American history than I know. That knowledge may well have armed him with a greater understanding of human events and put him in position to better evaluate the proper role of government, which was the subject of his 8/9/09 editorial in the LA Times.

In it, Ellis states that Jefferson's view of limited government (which I share) is “increasingly anachronistic” and goes on to state ”It became abundantly clear that government power was necessary to regulate the swoonish swings of the marketplace.” He favors instead a Hamiltonian view “which presumes that there is a collective public interest that only government can serve.” He goes on to give several examples, one of which I’d like to discuss:

“In the ongoing banking crisis, to take another example, the removal of government regulations permitted major banks to assume unconscionable amounts of debt, much of it in the form of toxic investments that still remain on the books. It has been obvious that the banks needed to be temporarily nationalized to force them to purge bad debts from their portfolios. But fear that the stock market would interpret this course as creeping socialism has prevented such straightforward action. So we are still waiting for many of the same self-described financial wizards who created our fiscal mess to get us the rest of the way out of it.”

If only those pesky limited-government types hadn’t impeded the government from exerting an appropriate control over banks! This view, however, ignores several factors that were in play in the recent banking crisis:

1. Easy money from the Federal Reserve. If the Federal Reserve doesn’t stem from the Hamiltonian (vs. Jeffersonian) view of the world, then nothing does.
2. The Community Reinvestment Act. In this gem, the government forced the banks into lowering credit standards, which made mortgages riskier.
3. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Again, a government creation that contributed to the problem (and brought to you from the Hamiltonian world view).

In each of these cases, government action contributed to the problem. For Ellis, however, the only culprit is Wall Street, and the only solution is Government.

As it happens, I’m reading a biography of Hamilton right now (by Chernow). Perhaps when I’m through, I’ll gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the Hamiltonian view. I suspect, however, that I’m not the only one who would benefit from understanding the other side.

Don't know much about Teddy Roosevelt

While in New York, I visited the birthplace of Teddy Roosevelt, and the Museum of Natural History (Roosevelt has a prominent role in the museum), and was inspired to read more about him. I started with a book I have titled “Don’t Know Much About History” by Kenneth C. Davis, and flipped to the era that Roosevelt lived in.

When I went to chapter 5 (the time between the Civil War and WWI), I was greeted with an introduction that seemed to fall somewhat short of an objective historical accounting. In one example, Davis writes about workers in the new industrial age and states on the first page of the chapter that they were ”miserably underpaid.”

Miserably underpaid? It’s not unusual to hear talk like this, but I have to say I think it reveals far more about the writer than the subject. Let’s begin by stating what should have been obvious to him. These “miserably underpaid” workers were not slaves. They chose to exchange their time and efforts in exchange for the money they received in return. If you offer to pay someone $1 to work in a mine for 12 hours, and at the end of that 12 hours you give them the dollar, they are paid exactly right. In fact, if you give them $1.01, they are now overpaid.

Let’s look at this another way. If you can generate $10 worth of value in an hour for an employer, and an “evil, greedy, exploiting , (feel free to insert any other invective you've seen) employer” is only paying you $1, then doesn’t another employer stand to profit enormously by hiring you away at $2/hr? They would be doubling your salary, which would certainly be beneficial to you, and at the same time, they can make an $8 profit per hour of your time. You’re still being “exploited,” but you aren’t quite as miserably paid as before.

But wait, there’s more! You’re still worth far more than you’re being paid, so it would still behoove another company to come along and pay you $3/hr. You’d again be getting a nice raise, and the company would again profit from your work. The logical conclusion to this, of course, is that as long as you are “miserably underpaid” another company has an incentive to come along and raise your pay. You are also free to seek out other opportunities on your own, or to start your own business and employ yourself.

One final lens to view this through: What if those greedy bastards didn't hire them for such a pittance?? If working long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay is your best option, what are you left with if that's taken away?

I’ve simplified things to illustrate the point, and recognize that things aren’t always so simple. There is such a thing as market failure, but I wonder if the people who slander companies understand what the requirements for a free market are (the absence of which can cause distortions). In this particular case, the author presents no evidence of market failure, he simply jumps to stating the workers were “miserably underpaid.” He may not even have realized that they were likely being paid more than most other employers would have valued their employment (more on the “free agent curse” in another post).

I don’t suspect Mr. Davis to be any more biased than most people (myself included). Furthermore, the sentiment he exhibits (that companies exploit workers) is widely shared. As I see the world differently, however, seeing his bias here taints my reading of this section of his book, an area that I was interested in learning more about. While I don’t particularly mind the bias that’s on display, once I’ve detected it I wonder what’s being omitted.

My solution was to pick up a book on Roosevelt by David McCullough. I haven’t read this one yet, but have liked other works by him, not only because McCullough tells a story well, but also because I haven’t detected bias when reading him.

Blinded by partisanship

The recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has drawn a lot of attention, more so after President Obama chimed in that the police had acted "stupidly." This event was the source of an 8/1/09 editorial by Frank Rich in the New York Times. In it, Rich states:

"What about those far more famous leaders in Hume’s own camp who insistently cry “racist” — and in public forums — without any credible justification whatsoever? These are the “certain people” Hume conspicuously didn’t mention. They include Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, both of whom labeled Sonia Sotomayor a racist. "

The flap of Sotomayor stems from her saying the following - "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life,"

By definition, this statement is both racist and sexist. The factors in it determining who makes a better conclusion are race (whether the person is hispanic or white) and gender.

I looked up "racist" in dictionary.com and got the following definition:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

In advancing the notion that "more often than not" a better conclusion would be made by a Latina woman vs. a white male, Sotomayor is using race to distinguish quality of judgement.

There can certainly be a debate about whether uttering a racist statement makes one a racist. But I don't understand what argument can be made that the statement itself is not racist. So it is not without "any credible justifcation whatsoever" that someone who makes racist statements would be called a racist. There is evidence of racism.

Given the tenor of the article, it seems like Rich isn't particularly fond of Republicans. To be fair, I'm not particularly fond of most of the policies of Democrats. But that doesn't mean that everything someone on the other side says has no creedence to it.

Memorial Day, 2008

Do you know who Walter Gropius is? I didn’t. I looked him up on Wikipedia and discovered that he was a German architect who is “widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.” He is also a man honored with a Google logo. On May 18, 2008, Google changed the letters spelling its name into modern-looking buildings to honor the 125th birthday of Mr. Gropius.

It’s quite an honor. He joins Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Graham Bell, and Mom as the people who have prompted a Google logo in 2008 (unless you also count Valentine’s and St. Patrick’s day). Google has further honored Earth Day, the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick, and the Persian New Year.

If you were to look on the site on Monday, May 26, 2008, however, all you would see is the regular Google logo. For whatever reason, the day that was set aside to commemorate men and women who died in service to their country didn’t rank as worthy of a logo change.

It would be easy to continue with a rant against Google. It’s founders have become very wealthy in the land of liberty that others have died to protect. But it’s always easier (for me anyway) to find faults in others. For my part, my commemoration today will consist of not going to work, putting the flag out, and firing up the barbeque. If you have lost a loved one in military service, I doubt you’ll be touched by my day’s activities.

In contrast to the day I’ll enjoy today is October 21, 2006. I had driven to Yuma, Arizona with my wife and kids to celebrate the 40th birthday of my brother-in-law, who serves in the Marines. He and his family lived on base, and we had another barbeque with several of his neighbors that Saturday night. One of his fellow marines showed up late, and after finishing his plate he looked around at what was going on. Then he said “This is nice. I’m not sure what to do with the free time I have, I usually get home later.”

He had been at work since early that morning, and after putting in a long (12-14 hours?) day on a Saturday, he was still happy for the couple hours he had with his family that night. That long day on Saturday was still shorter than the days he had been putting in during the week.
Similarly, my brother-in-law has worked some very long hours. Besides the time spent in Iraq in 2003, he was stationed in Okinawa when the tsunami hit, and spent many long days and nights during the relief effort.

Memorial day wasn’t intended to honor my brother-in-law, nor those of his fellow Marines who are thankfully still alive. I mention them because our freedoms have been purchased by all sorts of sacrifices - some their entire lives, others a portion of it. On the day that we have set aside to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, Google will go about it’s business, ignoring them, and I’ll be manning the grill. Perhaps I should spend my time appreciating architecture or playing with LEGO’s instead.