April is not the Cruelest Month

Spring.  I spend more time staring at the sunshine-enveloped picture out my office window.  White branches.  Green dots on outreached brown limbs.  Clean slate walks cutting through green lawn in Academy Park.  Hudson River trying to reclaim its natural place among the intrusion of roads and ramps that block the way.

April holds all the promise of life.  By the end of June, nature has pushed all its plants through the reenergized earth, the sun hangs around longer each day to supply warmth, and we humans spend less time within our protective walls.

Of course, April also brings Opening Day.  Major League Baseball has diluted that event, but such a marketing move was inevitable.  Those of us already hooked on baseball don't need the national ritual to remain fans.  So it is not surprising that there are numerous 'opening days'.  An interesting historical perspective can be found here.

Go Giants.

Next Year's Commodore64?

I bought a tablet computer.  I work in IT, so I should probably know what these devices are all about.  A refurbished Toshiba Thrive, an android tablet, sold online at a cutrate price.

I have had it for about three weeks, and I am still identifying where it fits.  I have watched work colleagues use their iPads at meetings as note-taking devices.  One compatriot used to carry a notepad portfolio and one or two manila files to every meeting.  This meant shuffling of papers, referring to agendas and background documents, and eventually covering six square feet of space on the table in front of him.  He now uses his iPad to take notes, and includes any agendas and background docs electronically on the device.  Others use both paper for making notes, and the iPad to reference for email or other documents.

The visual is variant.  Most prop their iPads at a low angle using the flexible cover; others keep the device totally flat.  The tablets do not create a wall in front of them, in the same manner as laptops or netbooks.  But users can still seem distracted as they type, one-fingered, on the electronic keypad that covers half the screen.

 Anyone who carries one, however, have generally left all the other stuff behind.  Seemed like a good mode of operations.

These seem to be most effective as consumption devices.  Apps are freely available for movies, books, magazines – most of which, naturally, require payment.  I can read all variations of my email, from personal to work sources.  Basic games like solitaire, Words with Friends, the ubiquitous Angry Birds games, are nicely arranged and colorful.

One of the most popular functions are news aggregators, essentially RSS feeds from major publishers that appear as small pics with headlines, or magazine links, that will expand to full articles when tapped.  Sites like Pulse, GoogleReader, Freely give me the ability to designate favorite subjects – news, opinion, technology, baseball, art, etc – and will present scores of articles or sources in one instance.  Just scroll forever.

And therein, thus far, is the most interesting issue with these devices – they can present a flood of information.  There are thousands of apps to choose from.  Many of them can point you to sites on the internet that present me with thousands of activities, games, scores, things to read, things to watch, things that lead to other things, things to buy.

My 10inch screen can be the physical incarnation of TMI, Too Much Information.  I can’t focus or filter if the pixels keep pointing to multiples of pictures, words, shadows and lights.

I have actually downloaded certain apps a few times, only to remember, wait, I already tried that one, so I delete it again.  I was really anxious to access one of the major poetry sites, only to discover that it uses a wheel-like method of switching between screens – it spins from one category of poems to another, as if the letters were a slot machine.

I downloaded four major note-taking apps so far, each of them with the same feature sets, each of which can store my notes in some cloud-storage facility in an undisclosed location – but still accessible with my tablet, desktop, laptop, netbook, or smartphone.  And yet, I have to touch-type my way thru the tablet’s keyboard to create the note.  Not ready to accept that as an endeavor at a meeting, I guess.

I was not concerned with form factor of the device at this point.  The Thrive is actually thicker than most tablets, but contains a full-sized USB port instead of the micro-USB and a full slot for a memory card.  It operates the same as all the other Android tablets, and has access to the same vats of apps.  None of them -- including the iPad -- can multitask.

So far, then, this is an impulse method of discovery.  I read a list of ‘best apps’ online, find them in the app store, download and try them.  They then get lost in the clutter of unsorted miniature boxes on my screen.

But I suppose all of this is fitting.  I bought the tablet on impulse on Woot, the ultimate one-day impulse website:  hurry before they run out, or more urgent, before they become obsolete.

Too late.

Starving the Beast

It’s called ‘starving the beast’: the theory that a constant, consistent reduction in taxes will result in smaller government. A government that has a reduced income stream will, out of necessity, reduce its expenditures and inevitably shrink in size.


The starving process can take many forms. Reduction in income tax rates, particularly at the higher income levels. A reduction in the number of income tax rates, i.e., eliminating the progressivity of the tax rates, thus reducing the volume of dollars coming into the government coffers. Tax caps on government, such as the recent 2% cap imposed on local governments in New York State. Creative tax breaks that favor certain segments of the economy, which has the two-fold impact of reducing tax revenues and reducing supposedly ‘onerous’ regulatory burdens on the market.

Each of these methods has been used in the past 30 years, the result of the ‘Reagan revolution’ of conservative government. We can all argue about whether it has really reduced the size of government; most of the numbers demonstrate that it has not, primarily because governments find creative ways around them. 

Such tactics have had disastrous affects at the state and local government level, where government is obligated to balance its budget annually -- unlike the federal government, they can't print money.  California's education system is frequently held up as an example:  once the leader in the nation, that state's education system suffers from poor school performance and failing infrastructure, as the tax investment has dwindled due to 'proposition 2 1/2', which placed a limit on property taxes.  Over the past 30 years, the State has not filled the gap.

A mandated squeeze on taxes forces governments at all levels to make choices, to prioritize where the revenues are spent. And the impact is not always pretty – because the decisions tend to favor those with money and power. Health care, education, food assistance, unemployment programs are targets for cuts, while tax abatement and business investment loan programs are funded.

Meanwhile, those at the top of the income pyramid get to keep an ever-increasing percentage of their money. Reagan and his disciples – the Grover Norquists of the world -- believe that such a system permits the dollars to ‘trickle down’ to those in lower income brackets, as those with money would invest in the market, expanding opportunities for all.

It hasn’t happened.