Penny Hero (dot) Net

Part I

Did you know that the Federal Govt. spends about $91,687,500.00 (that’s nearly $92 million, for those of us who don’t often see numbers bigger than 4 or 5 digits) a year on the salaries of 551 people?

Did you know that our president makes $400,000 a year? (sources: 1, 2) The average US salary in 2002 was $36,764 (ask.yahoo).

Let’s compare that to the Presidents and Prime Ministers of other nations (in US dollars):

• Mexico: was $245,000 (new President’s salary not announced yet). Mexican minimum wage salary (couldn’t find annual average salaries): about $8/day, or $3,000 a year.
• Canada: PM was $123,500 (USD) in 2004. Avg. Canadian salary: $40,000 (USD) (source).
• I’m trying to get Japan’s numbers too.

Anyway, my numbers are not going to be exact because I’m taking info from places that seem reputable after really quick google searches. I’m not trying to be totally scientifically accurate. I just want to show the trends.

This means that our President officially makes 11 times what the average American makes. The Mexican president made much more: 81 times more than their minimum wage earners during a good year, granted my data is probably pretty off. The Canadian Prime Minister makes only 3 times that of the average Canadian.

The moral of this story? I don’t know. Maybe “I’m glad we’re not Mexico and I wish we were more like Canada” ?

Part II

Did you know that US Govt. salaries increase every year (in 2001, it increased by about $4,000) unless they vote to block it?

I didn’t either (2001 about.com article explaining how it happens).

Now, on the one hand, I understand that US congresspersons must maintain homes in more than one location, and they have all kinds of work-related and personal stresses that come with a job that literally doesn’t end at 5pm each day like our jobs do. However, i can’t help but wonder if it would be cheaper if the government paid for Washington-area homes for our representatives and gave a lower salary.

Lastly, did you know that Hillary Clinton proposed a bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to tie the national minimum wage increase to the percentage increase that congress receives every year? It’s called the Standing with Minimum Wage Earners Act of 2006 and I kind of like it. While it doesn’t address the fact that congress makes a ton of money each year, it would guarantee that next time congress fails to stop itself from getting a pay increase this year, we’ll get a minimum wage increase by the same percentage.

The pessimistic side of me wouldn’t be surprised if congress finally starts voting to stop their (and our) wage increase if this bill passes.

Anyway, this is just stuff I ran across and started to investigate for kicks. Really. I enjoy this kind of stuff.

On the Virginia race:

An Associated Press count Wednesday night showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236, or less than one-third of 1 percent.

Wow. There are more people enrolled in some high schools than that. My high school was something like 6,000 people when I was enrolled. Nevermind! I just checked. it was more like 2.5k. I was thinking of my graduating class of 600 people.

Anyway, I guess this means is that Allen can request a re-count on the state’s dime since it’s fewer than half a percentage point difference (if these numbers are the final count).

Cassady just told me that voter turnout exceeded 40% for yesterday’s midterms (preliminary analysis). I know that I was one of those people who decided to stop feeling apathetic and start actually trying to understand what’s going on and get people to vote. Seems I wasn’t the only one.

Other news is saying they projected 45% turnout, and some states (like Michigan) are breaking major voter turnout records.

Not to mention the youth voter turnout record, as well as women turnouts increasing since 2000 in general!

Check out Oregon:

Democrat turnout outpaces Republicans’ and we’re likely to set a 16 year record for voter turnout in a non-presidential election (Nov. 7th story). I’m searching to find out what the end numbers were. That story implies that we could have hit 70%? that sounds very very high to me, but maybe it’s right? someone correct me.

Oregon:
Did you see the OregonLive results yet??

I’m pretty happy about pretty much everything there. :) Except, uh… laughably 47 is passing without 46. Considering that 46 ALLOWS laws regulating campaign funds in the first place, you can’t pass a MEASURE THAT WOULD REGULATE FUNDS (measure 47) without it. And thus… right now, measure 47 is passing…but meaningless if 46 fails. (ORmeasures.org).

(12:09:14 AM) Xander: obviously, someone didn’t read the ballot measures.

Understatement FTW!

Edit: Isaac Laquedem and his readers have much more intelligent things to say about this.

Nation:

I’ve had this insane I-cant-turn-off-the-news night. I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m ending the night with the Daily Show / Cobert Report mash-up. Cobert paraphrase of the day:

Democrats are going to use our tax dollars to buy electric cars for NPR and teach evolution to illegal immigrants!

Go Cobert go! (someone correct me on the exact text of that quote please?)

In my head:

Another thing that’s spiffy is how all of this led to me having really great conversations with people I don’t get to talk to very often. Like Maiki and Xander to name just two. I suppose it’s not BAD that politics brings people into productive, unexpected, heated, and awesome conversations with each other. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

Anyway. It seems that only three of the friends I talked to didn’t vote, so I think that’s a good sign. People my age … CARE! I feel less disenfranchised!

I don’t care much for reality tv. In fact, I pretty much hate it. Yup. But this opinion on the “Racial” Survivor show was funny and intelligent:

First, unless four white cops get caught on videotape billy-clubbing a black man, and then all get let off the hook, television has little or no power to inspire racial violence. Second, Americans don’t rise up for anything nowadays, or else people would be rioting over unleaded being $3 a gallon and the president continuing a war most of us oppose. And third, dividing “Survivor” into ethnic tribes is more likely to keep people off the streets and in their homes watching TV, where they ought to be.

My favorite was the “American’s don’t rise up for anything nowadays” bit. SO TRUE. SO SAD!

We need more riots!

This reminds me of a conversation I had last night about how congress needs to grow a backbone and confront the president about the crap job he’s doing. Americans who oppose stuff need to lose their Birkenstock sandals and stop being apathetic. (joke shamelessly stolen from Sherman Alexie) blah blah.

Anyway, somehow that political criticism has seeped into a commentary about reality TV. That’s the kind of “American” mentality I’d like to see more of in general.

Just for a second, I’m going to pretend that I’m a political/news blogger…

This story is CNN covering Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks about the Holocaust being a “myth” as part of his argument for the elimination of Israel and the reinstall of a Palestinian state. Now, these comments are absolutely deplorable, unacceptable, and evil. The Holocaust was not a fucking myth, and “[a]ll responsible leaders in the international community” agree, so I’m not worried about this idea spreading and being generally accepted.

I’m not an expert in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I sure as fuck have never expressed my opinions/views/limited-understandings of it online before, and I also don’t have any actual personal ties to it other than the fact that a few generations ago, my descendants ancestors (thanks rio) came to the US from Lebanon. (and I still have a lot to learn.) Even though I truly believe that the Israelis rightly deserve a home-country, my gut instinct is also to be sympathetic to Palestine, which I also know isn’t too unreasonable of a position; most educated people realize that there is no way to truly “take sides” because the history (like all history) of the conflict is complicated and both the “west” and the “mid-east” parties involved have blood on their hands. Maybe it’s naive to “just want to have peace” or to have a place where both Israeli and Palestine can exist together without neighboring countries and western powers trying to tie each other’s hands behind their backs. No, not “maybe.” It’s totally naive. It’s a sentiment that’s expressed to death in fairy tales and “can’t we all just get along” hippy sentiments.

The world is Fucked Up. (Notice how that’s also a sentiment that’s expressed to death.)

But this also highlights and deepens my understanding of how mid-east leaders must feel like they, and their nations, are being patronized by western national leaders. They’re not allowed to develop nuclear programs, and their peoples are often met with suspicion and hate from our peoples. Terrorism/freedom-fighting is the result of not having any peaceful or recognized avenues of getting their point across to a network of world powers who probably wouldn’t take them seriously anyway, because we’re so invested in Israel (for example), dependent on oil (for example) and in keeping our own version of history popular so that the western population doesn’t start blaming itself and sympathizing with the “other side.”

Statements like this, that the Holocaust is a Myth, is like rhetorical “terrorism” in that he is desperate to support a position that has no legitimate or recognized avenue of expression. Like terrorism, he’s using a tool that is the closest thing we have to being OBJECTIVELY wrong to try to say something about something that’s subjectively right. Palestinian supporters have been trying to have a place to live for decades, and the west, who installed Israel, and Israel itself, isn’t going to just sit down and say “yes, sorry. Here, have your land back.” (look, readers! Another sentiment that is expressed to death!)

Anyway, I’m frustrated with my inability to NOT simply restate what other people say and feel. But I don’t know enough, and I don’t have the right perspective to come up with anything new. I don’t have personal ties to the area, but I still feel so completely tied to this conflict probably because it is so disillusioning. It’s one of those things you learn about the world that makes you realize without a doubt that shit is Fucked Up and that there is no simple solution at all. Its both maturing (like life) and devastating (like death). It’s the same feeling I felt when I started to realize how widespread the illegal sex industry, and people-trafficking industry (CIA pdf, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women pdf, wikipedia + lots of links) is in the US…

*sigh*

Ok. I’m pure tired right now. And there’s no hope for me to find any kind of closure or even try to slap some kind of judgement or solution or strong opinion onto this like many news-bloggers try to do.

Consider me either subvertive, honest, or just plain naive. I don’t care. I want more perspective and I also don’t ever want to have an over-simplified understanding of things like this.

I welcome opinions, information, links, heads of cabbage, and hugs.

Discuss.

(x-posted)

I went to http://www.moveon.org/unitednotdivided/ and said

I believe that the democratic system we employ in the United States is a useful and usually a very just and fair system. However, I believe that if left to a majority vote by the population in America, the American people will vote to ratify this amendment to the US constitution which will allow descrimination and hate to have constitutional backing. The argument that “might does not always make right” has already been made in conjunction with the majority opinion during the civil rights movement. It has already been pointed out that if the american public had been allowed to vote on the issue of whether or not slavery should have been abolished in the US, it may not have passed. In cases of moral precident, when the majority opinion may for some reason be in favor of discrimination and hate, someone else must step in and speak for the moral minority.

Gay marriage does not threaten our society. If anything, removing obstacles to the recognition of gay marriage will send a message of acceptance and tollerance for all lifestyles that all American citizens engage in. It will unite people of very different worlds under a hate free and multi-colored American bannar.

Give our society a chance to prove that we are evolved enough to grow and transcend old discriminatory habits that no longer apply to our growing and changing society. I am positive that the gay and allied community will prove that we are just as capable of contributing to the health and well being of society and its children, because we are no different from heterosexual people, in relationships or single. We are all human beings, and we are all Americans.

If you are alarmed by the idea of having the United States Constitution amended to define marriage as a “union between a man and a woman”, please click on the link, send your comments, and call your senators. (their phone numbers will be sent to you with the confirmation email.)

I’m feeling really bitter right now. About the US government… about how most of my Big Values are unimportant to the vast majority of those in power and how that filters down to the masses of under-educated people on the internet and leads them to hate me because I express a certain view that they can’t understand. I’m bitter about how education doesn’t have the emphasis it should. I’m bitter about this rumor about the draft being reinstated.

I have this theory. Education has been de-emphasized because people in power know that if the general public were better educated, they wouldn’t have been elected in the first place. My raising cost of tuition is all part of Bush’s re-election campaign.

In Other News: I just got back from Seattle/Mill Creek. I went and saw Paul Van Dyk. It was fun, but not as fun as the Armin one… not nearly. This show was completely sold out… the club was at full capacity, and it would take a good 15 minutes just to make your way across the fricken bar. The peole weren’t quite as friendly either… a little more snotty. And the guys who tried to dance with me were just dirty. (I had to turn around and shove this one guy off my ass because he didn’t seem to understand that moving away from him meant I didn’t want to dance with him). I did dance with one soooper hot guy, but he dissapeared soon after, and never said a word to me.

Paul’s music was awesome. But the two djs before him were… boring, or something. I don’t know how to describe why I didn’t like their mixing. two repetitious…? too much of a certain tempo? It was just boring, and my brain was like “ok… is this all the song does?”

I honestly had more fun at the Armin show, mostly because of the people there… Armin also liked to play with the crowd… waving his arms around, gettin’ all intimate and shit. Paul was pretty blah, performance wise. Granted, everyone I talk to says that Armin is the only big dj who actually performs. Everyone else just makes music.

Ok… gonna go make food.

My dad’s cousin (I think that’s the relation) is in this story. I feel strangely special and frustrated at the same time. Special because well, a family member of mine (whom i really like!) has been quoted in national news… and frustrated because I had no idea that he was spokesperson for the Defense of Marriage Coalition. (president of it? according to my stepmom.)

(Oregon county bans all marriages - period)

Go mixed feelings! Ra ra!

At least it’s not as tumultuous as the whole “let’s go invade Iraq” thing that had me wanting simultaneously to move to Canada, and go see my brother who’s now out there…

P.S. Who bought me a subscription to Nintendo Power? My brother (top suspect) says it wasn’t him. Was it you? If so, xie xie. :)

CLICK ME

Just in case you didn’t hear about what’s going down in Multnohmah County. :) :)

We fucking rule. I’m not even from Portland. :)