If a politician is convicted of a crime while in office, can the constituents file a class action suit against them for breach of contract, using the oath of office as verbal contract?

Today, on CNN.com there was an article on Nuclear Power and how bad people are sneakily building Nuclear Power plants in order to kill us all. It has a byline of "By Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash & Harvey Wasserman" Now, three of these people are musicians, I own albums featuring two of the three, and respect the third greatly. The fourth author is someone who seems to write about these sorts of issues regularly.

Some quotes:

If these subsidies pass, scores of new radioactive terror targets, thousands of tons of radioactive waste and untold billions in bad debt could haunt us and our children for a long time to come.

But these nuclear industry loan guarantees could make that all but impossible. These "new" reactors are the same as the old ones, with a few bells and whistles, and a proven 50-year track record of catastrophic failure.

Could we see some documentation please? Especially about the "track record of catastrophic failure". To my knowledge, there has been one catastrophic failure at a nuclear power facility... ever. And that was caused by willful negligence, and a reactor design that is not used anywhere now, and has never been in the US.

I'll make a deal with Bonnie Raitt publicly. You promise not to write "scientific" articles, and I won't release any "music". I think that's fair.

Apparently, the Nobel Peace Prize is now given for successfully marketing a movie. Can someone tell me what exactly Al Gore has done to deserve this? Did he solve the "climate change" issue? Did he direct the movie? Did he do the research that proves that the climate changing in ways that can only be attributed to man, and and are therefore preventable via his specific plan? Did he come up with a process or system to make the transition from carbon-based infrastructure economically feasible? Or did he engage in a marketing campaign with the goal of treating scientific theory as holy writ and having a propaganda film be treated as scientific textbook? And now he's on the same level as Einstein?

Seriously. While the habits espoused by the "climate change" fanatics are admirable (reducing energy usage and being a good steward of the environment are both good things) the science is at best debatable. The accuracy of weather data from any time more than 50 years ago is suspect. The recording methods and accuracy of instruments, as well as the size of the sample group is simply not enough to be able to consider the data accurate to less than a few degrees. That, combined with the fact that the data has been recorded for a very short period of time at all (when compared to global climactic patterns) means that, at the very most, a scientist can say "If this data is accurate, there is a suggestion of a pattern." No scientist who actually believes that facts aren't facts if they can't be empirically proven, can say "Significant climate change as a result of human actions is occurring, and will continue to occur." There simply isn't enough data. It's like coming to my apartment and using that sample group to "prove" that all domestic cats weight more than 10 pounds.

Conservation and ecology are important, even vital to the population (human and otherwise) of this planet. That doesn't mean that theory should be treated as fact. And that doesn't mean that marketing will save the world. Fanaticism is bad enough when applied to religion, when applied to science it's worse. The whole concept of faith is belief without proof, but science is supposed to be about the finding of proof. Fanaticism in the realm of science is the opposite of science. But this award will only feed the fanatics.

What do the H2, Congress, and Lukewarm Coffee all have in common? They are syptoms of a societal refusal to take personal responsibility. Most people want to take the path of least resistance, and allow others to make decisions for them. When things don't work the way you want them to, you want someone to blame. Starting with the obvious one, when you order hot coffee, and you put that hot coffee in your lap, while driving, and that coffee spills on you, who should take the blame? The person who ordered the coffee? The person who put that coffee in your lap? The person who drove with that coffee in your lap? Or the person who provided you witht eh coffee you ordered? In any rational examination of the situation, it wouldn't be that last one.

So, for a less obvious example, let's look at Congress. Ultimately the power of the Federal Government resides in Congress. Neither the Executive nor the Judicial branches have the ability to create laws. Congress is up for election all the damn time. (Every House seat is up every two years.) And yet... it's Bush this and Cheney that. They're responsible for all the ills of the world. Um... I call bullshit on that. Every member of Congress has been through an election since Bush took office. If people really were that dissatisfied with Bush and willing to take responsibility for doing something about it they would have voted in a Congress that would take action. They would be willing to remove representative who don't do their job. They would make it clear that when you don't vote the way I believe you should, You lose my vote. You do that enough, you lose your job. Voted yourself a pay raise, while unemployment in your district went up? You're out. But people won't do that. They vote party lines. They vote based on 30 seconds of soundbites about how awful the opponent is. Or, most likely, they don't vote at all. "My one vote won't make a difference." is saying "I'd rather someone else decided how my Country is run."

So, where does the H2 come into this? Well... why would anyone drive an H2? It doesn't have the usefullness of an actual Humvee (and when was the last time you saw one that was off-road, or even dirty for that matter?). And it's too expensive to use as a working vehicle. The only reason someone would buy an H2 is as a status symbol. And status symbols are just another way of saying "I can't be held responsible for my own self-worth. I will allow others to decide my self-worth based on the display I make." Rather than spending that money on adding insulation to my house, or taking classes in something that interests me, I'll buy a vehicle that gets lousey milage, but looks pretty (to someone, I suppose.)

Of course, most of the people who know me (and hence might actually be reading this), are sitting there saying "Yeah, Hummer drivers are total tools." But every time you make a decision based in any part on what someone will think of you for doing something, you're doing the same thing. You're transfering responsibility for your decision to someone else. Am I innocent of this? Of course not. To some extent, shared responsibility is the foundation of civilization, but I think we'd all be better off if when we did sacrfice our personal responsibility to that of the group... well, we took responsibility for doing so.

This will, I'm sure, come as a shock to most of the readers of this site, but... well, I'm pretty lazy. One of the things I'm lazy about is laundry. I tend to forget to switch loads. However, I've discovered that a 1 hour show, when you fast-forward through the commercials, is as long as it takes to dry a load of laundry. Between that, and the ability to start the shows when I'm ready, means I get the loads through pretty quickly. I start a load, start a show. When the show is over, it's time to go switch loads. After I finish switching loads, it's time to start another show. Now that I've got the laptop, I can work on stuff during the shows. Everybody gets ice cream!

September was great. Although we didn't increase our savings, we were able to buy a new laptop and take a vacation, all without incurring more debt. And, we were able to up the savings for October. In general, our expenses were down a little with the exception of the vacation and computer expenses that were planned. Also, our net worth is finally showing as positive. We now have less debt than we have savings (granted, most of that savings is in our 401k's). We're looking forward. You'll notice that the sidebar graph is now showing new goals as the Emergency Fund goal is now funded, as is the vacation fund (for next year!). Christmas is next on the list. Then a headstone for Aiden. Hopefully those will both be done before the end of the year. Then we'll be able to move on to the bigger goals (Roth IRA and down payment for a house!)

Needless to say, we're pretty darn happy.