All Tubes run through Berkeley?

At a recent Berkeley City Council meeting, Gordon Wozniak (District 8), floated an idea that perhaps a huge chunk of of the United States Postal Service's financial woes could be resolved by taxing email.

My first reaction upon reading the New York Daily News article (which they picked it up from Berkeleyside!) was is this guy serious??…which was closely followed by wondering whether he is any relation to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak? In fact, he is The Woz's brother!

The Woz can certainly be accused of Thinking Outside the Box, so I suppose The other Woz could be expected to as well.

Years ago, Berkeley had a reputation of butting heads with the national establishment. But, I'd suggest that has been ratcheted back a fair amount since the days of the Gus Newport.

That's why I was surprised to see the post on Facebook promoting the Daily News' article about Wozniak's idea.

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There's no arguing with the fact that Internet communications decimated the USPS' pocket book with its ability of near instantaneous communications.

Just yesterday I mailed two First Class letters. These were the first letters I'd mailed in probably six months. I honestly, can't remember.

In that same time, I've probably sent hundreds of emails. But, even more prevalent have been posts made on Twitter and Facebook, not mention this blog.

Beyond that I do my banking on the Internet. Make many of my purchases over the Internet, and the first library I seek out is the Internet.

None of that activity requires a physical piece of paper be stuck inside an envelope with a stamp affixed to it.

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Just for argument's sake let's take a look at this idea.

On its surface, it sounds like a really simple and practical idea. After all, If you send a physical letter, you put a stamp on it. Why not If you click the Send button in your email client, you pay a very small tax of a centipenny. (Don't bother looking up that term. I made it up since there's no such denomination as 1/100th of a penny).

However, that's where the simplicity and practicality ends, and the futility of the idea begins.

When a normal piece of mail is sent, it must go through the USPS. Even all that Third Class junk mail we get too much of is counted, calculated, and charged postage.

With email, your computer connects with any of a number of service providers, who then route it through, as the late Ted Stevens (R-AK) famously suggested, nothing more than a series of tubes to its final destination. Your email provider doesn't even have to be physically located within the boarder of the United States.

Because of that global presence, there is no single gatekeeper, and trying to create one would be harder than making the 20,000 miles of the USA's border* 100% secure.

If you were to examine all the email sent to you, not just what gets by your service provider's SPAM filters into your inbox, you'd probably find a great portion of it is SPAM and Phishing schemes that originate outside the American borders.

Even if they are legit mailings, many of the senders change IP addresses and email addresses more often than the Santa Ana winds change direction in August, so it's impossible to get be removed. Does anyone really expect them to pay their taxes?

According to a Pingdom Internet research group study the average number of emails sent per day (Worldwide) during 2012 was 144 BILLION (try imagining Dr. Evil's voice as you read that figure!) and of that nearly 70% is unwanted SPAM.

The same study says this was generated by 2.4 billion internet users World Wide, of which only 245 million users are located within the United States. There is no breakdown of whether a user sends an occasional email, or 1000 in a bulk blast.

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The idea of an email tax actually isn't new. Back in the 1999, a United Nations report suggested this might be a way to raise money and help improve emerging global societies. It never got beyond the discussion stage.

A year prior to that, the United States passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which among many things, put a moratorium on email bit taxes. This moratorium has been extended multiple times, and is the law of the land until next year, when the moratorium is set to expire.

With the ever expanding National Debt being estimated as nearing $19 Billion by 2014, I can imagine a taxation on the Internet might be discussed by Congress. Any effort to impose such a tax on email, or Internet usage as a whole (with a bandwidth tax), would need to be watched like a hawk.

It's one thing to suggest a tax on email, but once you start suggesting taxes on connectivity (i.e.: Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets), you are running afoul of restricting people's freedom of speech.

Better yet Congress, how about you forget this idea even came up and PERMANENTLY extend the moratorium?

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*20,000 miles is the approximate mileage of the Canadian and Mexican borders, added to International water coastlines.

Your Government at Work II (DC version)

Rep. Al Green (R-TX) compares the Obamacare Act with the alternative being offered by opponents (in his right hand) during Congressional debate.  - CSPN

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Over the past couple of days I've had the opportunity to watch the House of Representatives in action, courtesy of CSPN, the cable network which televises the United States Congress, as well as other governmental and historical programming. If you have cable, but have never availed yourself of this source, you really need to. And I hope that high school political science classes use this tool that's available to them. It's one thing to crack open a dusty text book, but another thing to watch them in action.

However, perhaps I should have said "House of Representatives in INACTION" in the previous paragraph. It's not a well kept secret that we have one of the most gridlocked federal government ever, but the last two days makes me shudder. It seems the word compromise is a four letter word as of late.

To be fair, both sides of the aisle seem to have issues, though the more conservative side seems to have an extra hard edge to grind. What they seem to forget is that while extra sharp steel may cut quickly, it also gets ground down a whole lot faster and needs more maintenance.

I'm sure by now you've figured out I was watching the debate and voting on HR 6079, a bill to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act 2010. (Though it's usually used as a derogatory term, I'm going to refer to it as Obamacare for the rest of this blog out of expediency).

Obamacare was passed in March 2010, after nearly two years of discussion in the House and Senate. Almost immediately, efforts were brought forth by Tea Party members Rep. Steve King (R-IA), Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) for repeal. None of those bills made it out of committee.

You would think that after dying in committee they might get the message. NOPE! That was during the 111th Congress. During the current 112th Congress, there have been THIRTY-ONE bills introduced for repeal, including the one voted on today. What was not introduced was a reform alternative at the same time.

And there were several Republican Congressmen who were only too happy to exclaim that if they did nothing other than repeal Obamacare, they'd be very satisfied. If my Congressman said he'd be happy with only accomplishing one thing during his two year term, I'd be looking for someone else to vote for.

I think the most perfect illustration of this was from Rep. Al Green (D-TX) who compared a five inch thick copy of Obamacare with an invisible copy of the proposed alternative.

While today's House vote was for repeal, it was a hollow victory because it will never pass muster in the U.S. Senate, nor is President Obama likely to sign it, should it actually reach his desk.

Both sides of the aisle say that healthcare reform is necessary. Obamacare was passed, and has been ruled Constitutional by the United States Supreme Court. People are certainly within their rights to try and repeal it. However, a more rational effort would be to propose alternatives to parts of the Act, rather than simply going back to the status quo; and doing it over and over and over when it's obvious their efforts will not succeed.

What is fascinating is there ARE common traits between Obamacare and Massachusetts healthcare, which was passed under Mitt Romney. I'm not going to say they're carbon copies, but there are things that both sides of the aisle can agree on, if they can get past the partisan bickering.

Massachusetts has a penalty if you don't buy insurance. So does Obamacare. Massachusetts requires companies with 11 or more full-time employees to provide insurance. That requirement doesn't kick in until 50 full-time employees with Obamacare. Both plans prohibit denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Both plans prohibit insurance companies from arbitrarily canceling coverage.

The biggest issue that needs to be worked on is exactly how to pay for it. This is not as easy to answer as comparing a state insurance program vs. a federal one.

Obamacare is basically being paid with new taxes. The sooner proponents admit that, the sooner they can move on to other discussions. Some of the taxes are minimal at best, and won't be noticed. Some are definitely going to hit people more the closer we get to 2018. This is where discussion would be helpful, rather than just sticking their heads in the sand, hoping it will go away.

On the surface Obamacare opponents exclaim they can't be made to buy health insurance. That was my initial reaction. But, then I have to ask how the states can require drivers to buy automobile insurance? You will certainly face a penalty if you're caught driving without it!!

Opponents say people won't be able to keep their current insurance. That's not true. The only way they don't have that option, is if their employer decides to cancel their employee's coverage.

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One of the more egregious things mentioned today were stories of children that had life threatening illnesses before they were born, or immediately after, and had to get treatment just to survive birth. After receiving that treatment they were told they were uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions. How rational is that?

While I'm not personally familiar with those cases I can speak from personal experience.

Many years ago, I was covered by a national HMO under my parent's plan. After graduation, I was able to enroll in the same HMO through my first job after graduating college.

Like millions of other Americans I was diagnosed with high blood pressure, and was prescribed medication. Unfortunately, after the company went bankrupt I was laid off. I chose to use COBRA to continue my plan, and paid out of pocket.  When I first started paying it was $187/MTh. Over the next four years, there was a steady increase EVERY year until it was $488/MTh, which I couldn't afford so let it lapse.

What's somewhat ironic is my HMO claimed to be a non-profit, yet every year they finished in the black financially, and every year they constantly built new facilities around the Bay Area to the point of being one of the area's larger real estate owners.

As bad as that price increase looks on paper, it wasn't the most incredible part of the whole thing. My new employer happened to offer the exact same HMO for their coverage. I filled out the paperwork to apply. However, I was denied due to a pre-existing condition. They denied me for being treated for high blood pressure.

It would have been interesting to have had a blood pressure cuff on when I heard the reason. I explained to the person on the phone how ridiculous that was since it was their HMO which had diagnosed my situation and had prescribed the medication. There was silence and then a bit of telling me that's the way it was.

After multiple phone calls to multiple departments and mangers they finally woke up and gave me health care. I shouldn't have had to jump through all those hoops and loops to get care; and under Obamacare I wouldn't have.

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It's a shame we have came to a point where we're basically required to get government regulated health insurance. Unfortunately, the emphasis on profit vs. society and legalistic treatment of individuals has driven us to it.

Power...Glorious POWER!!!

You remember the scene in Oliver Twist where all the kids are sitting around the dining hall tables and Oliver has the audacity to ask for more. Then they all break out into “Food...glorious food!” I completely understand it, only its not food, but electricity!

Today I woke up around 9:30a. Just as I walked into the upstairs hallway I heard my computer's battery backup making noise. Thought to myself, “hmm, the power must've just went out.” Sure enough no power. I was going to go make coffee. Wrong, the coffee maker runs on electricity. Next I go back upstairs and decide to watch the Speed Racer DVD I received from Netflix yesterday. Ugh, I can't turn my computer on, can I? Oh well, there's always the Tivo recording of last night's episode of Sanctuary. NOPE...can't watch that either if I can't turn on my television set, can I?

Wanted to call PG&E to see about the outage. Problem there too. We use a cordless phone, which runs on electricity, and our phones aren't working since my router /modem is not on and we use Earthlink's phone service. But I can always use my cell phone. As I slide the keyboard out it gives me a low battery indicator and tells me to plug it into the recharger. :-)

I had thought about going out and shooting some digital photos today, but I needed to recharge my camera's batteries since I hadn't used it in months. Scratch that one. I was about to scream at this point!!

So what's the thread through all of that? ELECTRICITY!!!!! Without thinking of it, American society has grown so intertwined with the dependency on energy, especially electrical energy, that when it's not available we're basically stuck. One of the big themes that we keep hearing by this year's presidential campaigns is try to rid us of the reliance on foreign oil, and the mantra of “Drill...baby drill.” I'll give the Republican candidates kudos for coming right out an publicly admitting that for all to see (even though I don't wholly agree with it. Then there's the talk of “clean coal” as if there really is such a thing.

Build! Build! Build! Build coal-burning power plants. Build hydroelectric dams. Build oil refineries!! Those are always the primary answers that seem to be heard. However, there seems to be very few sound bytes promoting the #1 renewable energy source that will always be here as long as Man walks the Earth....Solar Power.

I'm hoping that someday some president will see that logical conclusion and try and solve the looming energy problem by attacking the crisis head on, with a groundbreaking speech akin to John F. Kennedy's “Moon” speech given Sept. 12, 1962. If you're reading this Mr. Future Present, I would come up with a $1 billion tax break for the first American car company to develop a fleet of cars that rely on electricity. There HAS to be a way to develop a solar cell system that can cover the entire exoskeleton of the car body so as to provide a long lasting charge of energy without giving up many of the creature comforts we've came to enjoy, and being able to drive at more than 30mph for 200 miles at a time. Think of it as a governmental version of the XPrize. (The XPrize foundation HAS an automotive-based XPrize, but it doesn't go far and doesn't have the potential impact this government handout would).

Oh, by the way, YES...I said billion with a B. That's one big tax right off going to big business! However, it would only be available with some strict limitations. The company must be American-owned. The company must build their vehicles here in the US. NAFTA doesn't count. The vehicle must consume 100% electricity as its fuel source. The cars must be in full production and available to the general public no later than 2015, and the company must pledge it will manufacture the vehicles for at least three years after being rewarded with the tax break. If the latter is violated then the company will give up their tax break and publicly publish their patents for all the World to see AND use. By converting our vehicle fleet over to relying on electrical energy, and not looking like something out of Back to the Future, Part II, that will put a huge dent into our consumption of fossil fuels.

Now that's the Pie-In-The-Sky vision, especially when you've got car and oil companies telling us that a 100% electrical car is not going to ever happen because of such and such a reason. It happened with the space industry. It can happen with the auto industry. Also consider the natural advancements in other industries that will be an off-shoot of such an automobile industry revolution.

In the immediate future better tax-breaks should be more readily available for Joe Citizen so they can install solar electrical systems on their buildings to help relieve stress on the Grid. If the leadership of this country cannot envision at least that there will be no emphasis on development. Kennedy had a vision and that vision was realized in less than a decade. This one should be too.

After all, it's not rocket science!


(BTW: If you're interested in knowing what I ended up doing, first I took my fossil fuel burning car and went to my bank, followed by coming home and picking up a book I'd started reading a few months ago. Unfortunately, with my eyes I seem to only be able to read for about an hour before I've got to put the book down. Power eventually came on around 2:30p when I sat down to write this blog.)