Sometimes I think I’m a little too hard on them.

• Bailing credulous homebuyers out of their lousy mortgages is not the role of the federal government. The government should ensure that parties abide by their contractual agreements. If you didn’t like the terms, you shouldn’t have signed five times and initialed thirty places in front of a notary. If your bank is violating those terms, then it’s time to get the government involved.
• International trade is, on balance, a good thing. Protectionism generally leads to the kinds of international relations that yield wars. There is a trade imbalance between the United States and several notable nations, but when you purchase something from a store, there is a trade imbalance between you and the merchant. He profits and gets your money. You get a good or service that you felt was worth at least as much as the money you paid for it.
• You’ll pay whatever the oil companies demand for gas. Your gas prices may be affected by market speculation and big-money manipulation, but fundamentally you’re being charged what the market will bear. You’ll know when they’ve crossed the line when you stop buying it. This is not a position that the Republicans are keen to shout from the mountaintops, but that’s just because economic populism sells.
• Competition works. Well, it works when there’s real competition, and there are some markets that simply do not lend themselves well to competition, in which case the government will have to step in and make sure the natural monopolies keep things above-board (the Democrats largely agree with this, but there’s a lot of common ground).
• Beefy Austrians make for interesting governors.
• Guns are cool.

Just a couple of things that have come to mind repeatedly while reading the news:

• Instant run-off voting doesn’t make sense to the entrenched parties. Why give the fringe parties a seat at the table? Possible solution: introduce instant run-off in non-party contests like county seat, city council, school board, etc. Over the course of a few elections, people may get used to the idea of not having to settle.
• Nuclear power is safe, and secondary and tertiary-fuel reactors are possible and feasible. Fire a couple up where the fault-lines aren’t.
• Transmission over long distances is inefficient, and centralized production is subject to market manipulation a la Enron or physical disruption. Put some solar-panel factories near the reactors.
• Recently-viable third party forms in-state to reform state constitution and ensure that California taxpayers are getting their fair share back from the feds.
• Take a queue from Germany and give some incentives for private citizens to buy into decentralizing the power grid a bit. More resistant to interruptions in transmission lines (earthquake, fire, etc.), increases in residential population helps offset increase in consumption.
• Continue building nuclear reactors to run desalination projects for Imperial Valley, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other inherently-thirsty areas.

Not a plan, just thinking about some ways to address California’s reliance on its neighbors.

House Bill 1089 passed in Oklahoma yesterday. For those of you who, like me, were only vaguely aware that Oklahoma existed as anything other than a Christian terrorist militia target and monument to our nation’s mistreatment of our aboriginal population, this was an effort to assert their rights as a state as originally established in the 10th amendment to the United States constitution. This was largely prompted by a backlash to Oklahoma’s recent legislation that would deny taxpayer-funded services to illegal immigrants, which is ironic, as the federal government explicitly has domain over immigration policy per Article 1, section 8, which enumerates the federal legislature’s power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”

Well good for you guys, Oklahoma. I’ve been thinking about having my state renegotiate the terms of our entry into the union, but you seem to have found an interesting baby-step towards a modicum of independence.