Candidate Policy Comparisons

As an engineer, I am commonly comparing a two or three different options in a simple table. It is a great way to compare things. I really have wished to see something like this for our candidates (presidential or otherwise) in this and past elections. For some reason I never seem to be able to find them.


Anyway, I ran across a nice article comparing the proposed tax policies between McCain and Obama and thought it was going in the right direction. They have a nice table in the upper right corner "Breaking the Numbers Down" that shows some estimates about how different income levels will be effected by the proposed changes. At the very least take a look at the table if you don't want to read all the text (I don't blame you).


Here.


I don't want to get into McCain's policy vs. Obama's here, but will comment on one snippet that I thought was interesting (since I think both candidates are going in the wrong direction):

Under both plans, all American taxpayers could pay a price for their tax cuts: a bigger deficit. The Tax Policy Center estimates that over 10 years, McCain's tax proposals could increase the national debt by as much as $4.5 trillion with interest, while Obama's could add as much as $3.3 trillion.

What's the deal with this? Last I checked the national debt was already at 9+ trillion and this is impacting the value of the dollar in the world economy. Now I am no economist, but why is neither candidate pushing for a balanced budget? Republicans -- what happened to fiscal conservatism? Democrats -- what happened to reversing the mistakes of Bush? We should be paying back our debts to China, not incurring more. If that means higher taxes, I don't want to pay them but I understand it may be better for me and the country in the long-term.

Latourell Falls and Oneonta Trail

This past Saturday Janel and I were planning on doing Dog Mountain in the Gorge. On our way out there, we encountered overcast skies and colder than expected temperatures so we decided to bail and do a couple short hikes in the Gorge that we have not done yet. After about an hour the clouds burned off and it turned into a beautiful day, but oh well :). The hikes were pretty good.


We started off doing the Latourell Falls trail. Latourell Falls itself is one of my favorite falls in the gorge. It is very close to the road though, so we usually just stop by and had not ever done the 2.7 mile loop hike up to Upper Latourell Falls. For those of you looking to do the hike, definitely start out uphill (not downhill towards the lower falls) as the view are better this direction.


Upper Latourell Falls turned out to be a good waterfall. Not quite as large as the lower falls, but still worth the hike.





The lower falls are of course great. Definitely take a quick walk down to these falls from the historic highway if you are ever in the area.





On the way we also saw a snail which I thought was kinda cool :).





Next we moved on to the Oneonta Trail. We started up from Horsetail Falls and first hit up Poneytail Falls. It is one of those falls that you can walk behind, but really not all that exciting if you have done that sort of thing before. The ones at Silver Falls are better.





You then head along the gorge to the West. Not really that exciting. I got once decent photo out of it though.





Next you come to a little view into the Oneonta Gorge. This is a really thin canyon that comes up to Oneonta Falls. It is supposed to be a really fun hike -- but only in the late summer when the snow melt has settled down and on a hot day (the water is really really cold and you have to wade through it). Here is a (poor) photo where I try to capture the gorge (admittedly not that well).





Finally, we headed up to Triple Falls. We had a nice picnic along the river just above the falls.





All in all, I would rate the Latourell Falls hike a 3.5 and the Oneonta Trail a 3. You can see all the photos from Latourell Falls here or the photos from Oneonta Trail here.

Affordable iPhone My A$%

So I got all excited today. The iPhone price dropped from $399 to $199.


Then I looked into it some more...


The first thing I found was that the $199 price was with a new contract. Okay -- I expected that. Still though -- keeping the $399 price and adding a GPS and 3G is not so bad. I might be able to swing that.


Then I found out the second detail (which they are not as "open" about). The price of the data plan that AT&T requires for the iPhone is increasing from $20/month to $30/month [source]. So, over the coarse of two years -- that means $240 in additional cost.


Now I understand that Apple (deservedly) should get a good margin here. And AT&T needs to cover the costs of their 3G infrastructure and I am fine with that. However, it shameful how Apple and Steve Jobs presented this to their loyal customers. Preaching about making it more affordable. What a load of crap.