An Analysis of Obama’s Tax Proposals

Tax Mess

The Brookings Institute, one of Washington’s most respected think tanks, has a very informative page on Obama’s and McCain’s tax policies(McCain’s policies aren’t of significance for obvious reasons). Obama is officially going to be our president today, so it’s about time I’ve fully analyzed his policies and adjust my behavior accordingly. To my surprise, his policies are reasonable and is potentially extremely beneficial, financially, to my family(and most American families). Although I have to reiterate that my criticism of Obama was mainly based on the misleading messages of the Obama campaign in addition to the biased role that media played.

The Obama Administration’s newly introduced policies are mostly innovative and prudent, I’ve listed below the ones I felt will make the greatest impact on everyday Americans.

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Graduation Speech

Colbert Graduation

Good evening everybody.

As I stood in front of our graduating class this morning, something hit me… I’ve never seen half of you before, and don’t know the names of the remaining three quarters. That leaves the only 1/8th (for those of you who failed algebra) of our class, most of whom, I know and love. My first reaction was that my worst fears have been realized… that Scientology has infiltrated our graduating class in attempt to turn all of us, even the females, in to Tom Cruise. Thankfully, Mr. Finnochi assured me this was not the case and that you all belong here.

Understandably, I was in a pickle this afternoon as I was trying to write something that would appeal to the ENTIRE class, half of which I didn’t know existed till a few hours ago. But soon it hit me, everybody has had problems at Cross these past four years, even me, the epitome of perfection, so perfect that I’m often asked that if I’m human or not. Most of these problems range from getting yelled at by Mrs. Sherban Cline for being in the hallway during class time, to getting suspended by Mrs. Sherban Cline after she found out that you don’t have a pass. Note: I only had experience with the former and the SECOND part of the latter. On a more serious note, not that my previous statement wasn’t serious, we’ve had a lot to deal with these past few years at Cross, especially this year, with college application and/or job hunting while making sure all your graduation requirements are met.You’ve no doubt also had to deal with problems at home involving angry parents, relatives, friends, and dead pets. I know your parents and teachers are proud of you for making it this far, and you should be proud of yourself, so you can give yourself a big hug at this moment if you wish….

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National Honor Society Speech: Scholarship

National Honor Society

Good evening students, parents, teachers and guests, I will be occupying the next 3-6 minutes of your life by speaking about scholarship.

I imagine a scholar to have been well privileged grey haired old man who spent the majority of his time in a dark, secluded, silent, fire-lit dungeon, surrounded by thousands of barely legible hand written documents in alphabetical order, painstakingly filtering through the potentially erroneous works of others.

The pursuit of scholarship is a much different experience for modern students. We sit in our messy, air conditioned rooms, with Sparknotes, Google search results, GMail and countless ringing AIM chat windows littered across our computer monitors, and iTunes blasting music to our stereo in the background, providing a symphony of sounds that would drive most adults crazy. Every weeknight was a journey, a journey filled with Shakespeare, LOLs, derivatives, OMGs, regression analysis, ROFLCopters, red blood cells and the realization that Sigmund Freud will just have to wait because it is too late in the night (or morning), or when everyone signed off of AIM and GMail.

Despite the extracurriculars and distractions, we are held to higher expectations than the idealized scholars of the past. We learn not for the simple enjoyment of the pursuit of knowledge, but to become more responsible, productive and charitable citizens. Scholarship is the corner stone to all three qualities that the National Honor Society emphasizes: service, leadership and character.

Tomorrow’s leaders and politicians will use the lessons taught by Shakespeare and Freud to score points with the ladies, or better understand human nature so that they improve their character and treatment towards others, so that they may better govern. Tomorrow’s engineers and architects will use derivatives to design the best potatoes cannon ever, or to construct marvels that will inspire awe for decades or centuries to come, leading the way for future feats of human accomplishment. Tomorrow’s scientists and economists will use regressions to figure out the likeliness of their team of winning the Super Bowl, or to find critical patterns to predict social and environmental disasters and help redistribute scarce resources in our society to improve the overall quality of life. And tomorrow’s biologists will use their knowledge of red blood cells to save the rabbit that their pet just attacked or provide cures for fatal illnesses and prolong the span of human life, making the world we live in a safer place.

I hope your induction in to the National Honor Society will encourage you to be more active in the pursuit of scholarship, leadership, service and character so that all of you will one day become a respectable and proud member of society, or at the least be someone fun to hang out with.

Thank you.

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Bear Stearns BUYOUT, not BAILOUT

Bear Stearns

There has been much discussion about buyout of Bear Stearns by J.P. Morgan. CNBC has a video that pretty well sums up many people’s perception that the Fed showed preferential treatment towards Wall Street over the individual citizens amid the economic crisis. The media has a knack for revving up emotions for the sake of their ratings and I find its focus on the Bear Stearns deal especially unnerving. The media wants you to believe that the Fed negotiated the BSC deal in order to cover Wall Street’s ass, by using 30 billion dollars in your tax money to “bailout” BSC. When I see these reports I often find many small but significant details left out.

First and foremost, BSC was initially sold to J.P. Morgan at $2 per share, at the urging of the Fed. J.P. Morgan officially announced today to raise the bid to $10 in order to make the transaction smoother by gaining some shareholder support. Even then the 6 month stock price chart gives you a pretty good idea of how cheap BSC is being sold at; the stock price hovered near the hundred. Bear Stearns, its executives and employees are losing a majority of their wealth by going through with this deal. About 30% of the BSC is owned by Bear Stearns employees and I’d bet that no employee is happy about their investments and savings taking the huge dive evident in the charts.

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New Site Design

New Design

I was amazed at the ease of use and powerful features geared towards web design that Adobe integrated in to Fireworks CS3 when I introduced it to my girlfriend last night. The multitude of brushes themselves, including all types of color changing confetti and “alien paint”, many of which respond to pressure from the pen for the Wacom Bamboo tablet I got her for Christmas, provides all the tools a design will need. I was so impressed that I had to check out those features for myself, and there is no better way to do test Fireworks potential than to produce a real world design.

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