Vocation in the Valley

Well, that’s the latest wisdom spouted by the Left and those in the Valley. I’m not at all sure how people as logical as software engineers can make this leap but they do so with ease. Lewis Libby, the Vice-President’s chief-of-staff, is charged with lying to a grand jury during the investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA agent. Did he leak the name? I don’t know and if anyone says he did ask them how they know because the indictment was for lying and obstruction not leaking the name of a covert CIA agent.

Does this prove Bush lied about WMDs? Hardly. It may prove that the Bush administration was trying to discredit someone who was trying to discredit them. Which is a standard part of politics. I guess the left will say that it shows a pattern of lying within the administration. Ask them if their child has ever lied and if that proves that they are liars. The argument I got was that this was the last link in a chain of lies. Yes, if the last step in a process is flawed, the whole process is flawed. An extreme view but, hey, I don’t expect anything less anymore?

I’m not very good at debating this stuff in a conversational situations. My logic doesn’t keep up with the emotional arguments. Although I would assume that people think they are making a logic argument, saying that Bush lied because Libby lied fails that test with me.

In the course of a discussion with a person, we got into the whole WMD argument. Since we know that they were in Iraq I asked where they were. The person had an interesting observation that they may have all deteriorated. A very good point. I didn’t bother pressing, but this logic ignores the fact that Iraq had the capability to make WMD and assumes that they wouldn’t want to do so again. This person then went on to say that the U.S. has a history of overestimating enemy strengths. And started talking about how we over-hyped Sovietmilitary capabilities and when we investigated we found old, worn-out equipment nothing like we were led to believe. Hey, I don’t know anything about this subject, but I’m skeptical. I mean if they had no nuclear weapons then I’d say we overestimated them. Otherwise, I’d rather overestimate an enemies capabilities than underestimate it. The scarier thing is I couldn’t honesty say that this person considered the USSR an enemy during the Cold War. I got the impression this person believed that we over-hyped their military just so we could continue to have an enemy. To what ends? I’m not sure. I guess the evil Right-wing needs to demonize someone to remain in power.

I just read a News.com article where the author shares his experience in selecting an elementary school for his child and he also opines about the state of education as he sees it.

He talks about children being interviewed and being asked to solve problems. About children being observed during these evaluations. All in the name of getting into the “right” school… AT AGE 4! Don’t get me wrong, I believe in getting a great education, in achievement, in excellence, but when do kids get to be kids.

I don’t know where the author lives, but I’ll make a guess that it is in Silicon Valley. I might further guess that it’s Cupertino because of the reference to the Japanese-language immersion school. But the Silicon Valley generalization is close enough. In the Valley, everyone has first hand knowledge that a great education is on the general path to success. We have two of the best schools in the country in Berkeley (fine it’s in the East Bay, but close enough) and Stanford. We also attract people from the other fine institutions in the country. And we have one of the higher standards of living in the country (and cost of living). Most people would agree that there is some correlation between the two.

Living in this environment puts a certain lense on education, namely that you can’t be successful without one and that the better the education the more successful you will be. So, if you want your children to be successful than they must have a good education and if you want them to be the most successful they must have the best education. Who doesn’t want their child to be super successful? Thus the competition to get into the best schools and the tightening of admissions requirements as the demand increases for those schools.

My brother experienced this and I think it’s part of the reason that he is no longer teaching. I experience this on a regular basis with co-workers and others talking about the outside language and study classes and comparisons of schools and school districts. Is the world really that different? Have the laws of success changed? Has the meaning of success changed?

Hey, I’m a product of Lowell High School one of the top high schools in California if not the nation. I also went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute one of the top schools in engineering. I do place a high value on a quality education, but do I believe I would be less successful if I had gone to Lincoln or San Jose State? Heck no. My parents instilled in me the values of a good education and hard work. These are what have made me successful. I hardly remember anything from either high school or college except for the people and I use almost none of what I learned in my career. But by continuing to learn and working hard, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. Am I successful? By my definition, yes! Can I be more successful? Yes! Is it going to take getting additional education from Stanford? Heck no! It’s going to take hard work, desire, self exploration, and learning that no school, other than the school of life/hard knocks can teach.

Robert C. Martin, an author and software engineering guru, has kicked a hornet’s nest with his posting entitled Terrorist Trap. In the posting, he posits that the war in Iraq is a trap to attract terroists away from the U.S. and to eliminate them. One of the many rebutals is that this has actually created more terrorists citing an article by a PhD. at Stanford about the situation molding a man.

I don’t know if the war in Iraq was meant as a trap for terrorist, but I do believe that Sadam Hussein sponsored terrorist and was creating or seeking to create Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) which he would have used on his neighbors and/or sold to terrorist groups. I hear the Left screaming, “The 911 commission said Hussein wasn’t involved!” True, it also said that he was involved in other terrorist activities. Officials in his government met with leaders of Al Qaeda. He gave money to Palestinian homicide bombers. Also the 911 commission is another beauracratic farce. They didn’t call a group to testify that identified the 9/11 leader a year before the incident. Then the Left screams, “But there were no WMDs!” Well, he did gas Kurds in 1989. And artillery was found with nerve gas. Was Iraq an “eminent threat?” Yes! Eminent means outstanding or high ranking, not immediate as many on the Left seem to define it.

As for the notion that by going to Iraq the U.S. has created terrorists, I wouldn’t doubt that there are a few people who became terrorists because of U.S. actions but that’s hardly a justification for not going. Those few people who turn into threats are outweighed by an entire nation that is becoming a democracy in a region sorely in need of an example of what prosperity a democracy can bring. Further, saying that fighting terrorsim breeds terrorism so we shouldn’t do it is like saying police shouldn’t fight crime because average people will get mad at the police and become criminals.

The Merc is reporting on the possibility of lowering of the amount of interest a homeowner can deduct on a mortgage. Currently, you can deduct the interest on the first $1.1 million of your mortgage. The proposal is to lower that limit to $312.895. In most of the country, this isn’t of much concern as the median home price in the U.S. is $208,300 as reported by Money Magazine. However, in Silicon Valley the median home price is $705,000. Even with 50% down, your above the proposed cap!

I’m not an economist, so I don’t know what the exact effects will be. My guess is that housing prices around here drop pretty significantly. As for how low, and what other ripples might occur (exodus from the state, companies moving), that I don’t know.

Another deduction that might go away and affects everyone is the deductibility of state and local taxes. If you’ve ever done your taxes, you know that you get to deduct the state and local taxes you paid from your federal taxes. Why all these proposals? To simplify the tax code of course. Yes changing a ceiling from $1.1 mil to $313K is a lot simpler. And having less deductions simplifies things too! They really should just eliminate the mortgage deduction all together if their goal was to simplify things. I have an idea why don’t they have fewer federal programs and a smaller Federal Government, that would simplify things a lot more than these changes.

Don’t get me wrong, I support the notion of a repository for knowledge and access to information that might not otherwise be available to people. But for several years now, the onlymention of libraries I hear/read are in the context of the great DVDs, videos, and CDs that you can get there for free. I could understand a collection of PBS and National Geographic titles, but commercial titles in the library offend me. Why? Because I don’t feel it is my responsibility to see that others get their entertainment for free. Those are tax dollars that being spent on those DVDs. Tax dollars that could be going to fix roads or name your pet cause.

My hope is that libraries will disappear or just become a place with a bunch of internet PCs. Libraries were meant to be a repository for knowledge accessible by the public. As knowledge moves to the internet, the library and those building that have great DVDs and CDs for free are becoming obsolete.