A last minute plea for civil disobedience.

       What I am proposing is a little ridiculous, but if you are someone I have ever met, this will not be surprising.  See, being a "Third Party Voter" most of my life, in a solidly blue state (Illinois), I have come to despise the electoral college.  In Illinois, unless you vote democrat, you may as well stay home.
       The problems are legion with our current, electoral, approach, but let's recap.  Electors are not required to vote as instructed.  Districts are drawn by the party currently in control of the state.  (gerrymandered).  The two major parties have everything so figured out with polling, that they already know where to bother throwing money.
       It all adds up the same.  Your vote does not count.  Not directly.  Not even if your state or district votes your way.   
       So What I am suggesting is this:  If you are in a state that is "in play", vote your conscience.  Sleep the sleep of the just.  But if you are in a very red state, vote for Obama.  If you are in a solid blue, Romney.  Even if you are voting against your conscience.  Even if it will make no difference.  (It won't)
       Even states that "split their electorate" can participate.  In those states just apply the same rule at a district level.  (Blue districts vote red; red votes blue).
       The idea is for as many states as possible to have the slimmest possible margin of victory.  So that no matter who wins, the popular vote will not be the same as the electoral vote.  Maybe, if we do this enough, things will change.
       Maybe I'll win the lottery.  Maybe the tides will stop because I say so.  Maybe, in the long run, if you look at voting records rather than rhetoric, the two major party candidates are so similar it won't make a difference anyway.
       So get out and vote.  If you are in Ohio it might even mean something.

In Defense of Herman Cain: A progressive, flat, regressive tax.

       I was listening to the news on the way home from work, as is my wont, and they were discussing the oddly controversial 9-9-9 plan that Herman Cain has cooked up.  For those unfamiliar with it, his plan is to have all taxes boiled down to a nine percent income tax, a nine percent corporate tax, and a nine percent sales tax.  You know like in Sim City.  This post is not about whether I agree or disagree, or even what a valid opinion might be, or even if he stole the idea from Sim City.  Rather it is a vocabulary primer for the obviously under-educated media.
       You see they were calling Herman Cain's plan a "Regressive" tax.  Now I may not be the sitting chair of the political sciences department of a university; but I do know that a tax that is equal to nine percent of earnings, regardless of income, is not regressive.  It is flat.  One light argue that it is a regressive tax since the rich would miss that nine percent a lot less, but while that may be true, it is a misnomer.
       A regressive tax is one like they had in medieval times.  the poor pay a higher percentage of their income than the rich.  In this example of course the rich, being lords, pay nothing.  But this does illustrate what a regressive tax is.  Conversely a "progressive" tax is one where the rich pay a higher percentage than the poor.  This is the type that most Americans would consider "fair".  This is based on our long held belief in the "ability to pay principle".  The rich can afford to pay a higher percent because they have so much.  Ten percent tax on one million still leaves you nine hundred thousand.  Ten percent tax on one thousand dollars leaves you only nine hundred.  Don't be offended at these simplifications, remember this is for journalists to read, and if they could understand simple concepts, they would have useful occupations.
       Now it wouldn't bother me that this taxing plan was mis-categorized; except that Rick Perry's plan to have a "flat" twenty percent tax was called exactly that by the same media, in the same news story.  Possibly they like Perry better because he provides more sound bites.  I don't know.  I do know that the percentage involved does not matter unless it changes up or down by income level.  Nine percent for all is nine percent for all.  Twenty percent for all is twenty percent for all.
       So let's review:  if you plan to tax people at a flat rate of nine percent it is somehow a "regressive" tax, but if you raise that by eleven percent, up to twenty, it suddenly metamorphoses into a flat tax.  It must be the media's bias in favor of people who provide good audio clips.