Long Time No See

I'm back! But after a 2 year hiatus, I feel like I've lost a lot of my angst...
Maybe I'm getting older...
Let's hope I still have the writer's touch

Linsanity

Ok, I've decided to take a break from my political rants and choose a hot topic for discussion today. Looks like Linsanity has taken the NBA and the NYC area by storm, and it's no surprise considering how the Knicks have won 5 in a row, 4 since starting him, and all 5 since he played 30+ minutes. This is truly one of the greatest underdog stories in the NBA, not only because of his rise from obscurity into an overnight sensation, but his humble character and faith in Christ. No doubt about it, this kid (I can call him "kid" because I a year older than him) came to the NBA ready to play.

Now a lot of people I know have been accused of jumping on the Lin bandwagon in the past week, but I have been interested in Lin since his rookie year in Golden State. I've always taken an interest in Asian players in the NBA in general. Obviously being Asian myself, I've always hoped for them to succeed. But there's also a dark side of me, a bit of schadenfreude on my part as I watched guys who underestimated the level of competition in the NBA and overestimated their own abilities, come and go in the league (the likes of Sun Yue, Ha Seung-jin, and the overrated, complete bust of a 6th draft pick, Yi Jianlian) . I remember watching pioneers like Mengke Bateer (who even won a championship with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003) and Wang Zhizhi during my freshman year in high school. But they rarely got any playing time, and it was really once in a blue moon when they actually had a decent game by NBA standards. Then Yao Ming came to the league and changed everything. He became the first Asian #1 draft pick, all-star and All-NBA team member. However, although he made a huge impact on the international level, and increased international interest in basketball, people weren't really able to relate to him, and that was the cause of his freakish 7'6" stature. That became evident when his teammate Tracy Macgrady's jersey began outselling Yao's in China. True, most young Chinese people became interested in basketball because of Yao, but most young Chinese people aren't 7'6" tall. Furthermore, Yao's game is not really what you would call "fun" to watch. Sure, he has a nice soft shooting touch and is an excellent freethrow shooter, but he lacks any of the razzle-dazzle that fans want to see, and pay for. Yao gets an A for sportsmanship but a C- for showmanship. But this is not his fault, his 7'6", 310 lb frame was not made for that type of play, and even the way he was playing had taken a toll, eventually causing him to retire because of a chronic foot problem.

What the Asian basketball fans were hoping for was a guard, someone that could demonstrate agility, quickness, and ball-handling skills and inspire and excite the crowd. The hope was left unfulfilled after the attempts of Yuta Tabuse, Liu Wei, and Sun Yue. And then, last week, seemingly miraculous, that prayer was answered in the form of Jeremy Lin. However, as sudden as his success may seem, I don't think sudden divine intervention was the cause of it. Yes, God gave him the talent, but He gave Lin that talent the day he was born, not last week. And I was not too surprised when he went off on a scoring tear last week (of course until he dropped 38 points on the Lakers) because I've seen a glimpse of what he can do:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whVEiYap1F4

This was during the 2010 Summer League during which the Dallas Mavericks invited Jeremy Lin to play for them. What you see in that video is John Wall, the #1 draft pick, the most conveted new player that year, getting outplayed by Jeremy "Who?", an undrafted player who was unable to get a basketball scholarship from Harvard. Although he didn't get the attention the top picks of the draft got that year, Lin showed that he definitely can play, and can compete at that level. Kobe puts it best after the Lakers lost to the Knicks last Friday: "Players don't come out of nowhere." Lin is a legitimate NBA-caliber player, he was before D'Antoni gave him the starting point guard job, he was before playing 35 minutes against the Nets, he was while sitting on the bench in Houston, and he was while sitting on the bench in Golden State. You can't hide talent forever. It will reveal itself when the opportunity comes. Lin did not get lucky 5 games in a row, and he is definitely not a fluke (although if you have watched a recently episode of "The Office", you've probably heard this quote from Kevin that had me ROFL: "A fluke is one of the most common fish in the sea, so if you go fishing for a fluke, chances are you just might catch one"). Lin didn't let what people thought of and expected of him get to him, and knows exactly for whom he is playing for. We don't know how long this Knicks win streak will last, and how Lin will perform with the return of Amare Stoudemire against the Raptors tonight and Carmelo Anthony in the near future, but since the good Lord is running the show, and as long as He wills it, Linsanity is here to stay.

Join or Die

Does the image above look familiar? Anyone who has read an American history book in high school should have seen this before. This was a political cartoon created by Benjamin Franklin. However, it is usually mistakenly connected to the American Revolution, when in fact, the cartoon was drawn earlier, during the French and Indian War, calling the colonists of unite against the French. During the early years of the American Revolution, this cartoon was actually recycled without Ben Franklin's consent, to urge the colonists to once again unite, and this time against the British. Instead of 13 pieces to represent the 13 colonies, the snake is cut into 8 pieces, used to represent the 8 regions of the British East India Company. Whatever the application, the message is the same: forget our differences and join together as one country, as one body, or focus on what separates us, try to exist on our own, and eventually come to an inevitable death.

Nowadays, the snake is split in half, but instead of being easier to unite, it has become many times more difficult. Because over time, these differences have coalesced into ideologies, which are conveniently packaged and force-fed to the American public. Nowadays, the choice is simple, and you are either for us, or against us. Everything is so black and white. If you believe in so and so, then you must be against such and such. Anything in between is disregarded, as if we are given choice to fit the mold, or not be taken seriously at all.

In his famous work The Prince, Machiavelli illustrates the dangerous potential of a monarchy, republic, and democracy to fall into a dictatorship, oligarchy, and anarchy respectively. He had the insight at that time to envision a government incorporating all three types of government bodies, a system of coexistence that will dispel the dangers of each type of government existing on its own. And that is what we have in the U.S. today, and for a long time, in the form of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. However, instead of keeping check on each other while working together toward a common goal, what we have is a constant debate, and a constant struggle to gain the majority vote for one's package of ideologies. Inaction and indecision have become keywords to describe congress, and it will eventually cause us as a country to become left in the dust. Candidates nowadays spend more time delivering harangues attacking each other's credibility and ideals, instead of offering solutions to our national problems. Once in office, the losing party attempts to prove the new incumbent's ineffectiveness by countering every one of his or her proposals, delaying action, instilling public impatience. This may help politicians win politically, but most of us Americans are losing, and if the system does not change soon, we will have less and less to lose.

In his song "Ghetto Gospel", Tupac Shakur says: "it ain't about black or white, cause we're human, I hope we see the light before its ruined." Well, it ain't about red or blue 'cause we're Americans, I hope we see the unity before the country is ruined.

Steve's jobs > Obama's jobs?

I didn't get to hear most of President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. I only heard a bit of the ending in my car. However, what I did hear was the Republican rebuttal delivered by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. There was a specific statement in it that caught my attention, and I think the attention of many others as well:


"Contrary to the president's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew." --Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

Wow, that's quite a bold statement to make, no matter who you are. So apparently one individual's endeavor overshadowed the attempt of an entire country. But before we go any further, let's consider the veracity of Daniels' statment. Apple currently employs about 60,000 workers in the U.S., while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the number of jobs created by the $800 billion-plus stimulus at 1.4 million to 3.3 million. Realistically, Jobs has directly created more jobs (no pun intended) in China (the 300,000+ workers at Foxconn building his products), than in the U.S. Of course, there are two sides to this argument. People argue that a number of the 1.4-3.3 million jobs created by the bailout are only temporary, menial jobs that didn't help most people in the long run. I personally thought the 2008 Economic Stimulus was a bit of a fiasco, but the purpose was not to create long-term stable jobs, but temporary jobs that allowed families to carry on while the economy slowly recovers.

There are also people that argue that Steve Jobs indirectly created more jobs through programmers designing apps and features for his products, employees of retail stores that sell his products, and transportation workers who deliver his products and product parts, etc., etc., etc. Well, that all sounds great, but if you think about it, those software developers and programmers were designing and writing code for other devices before Apple products, and those retail stores workers were working in the same store that sold other devices prior to Apple, and considering how parts for Apple devices are assembled as well as manufactured in factories in China (which is one of the many reasons why Apple doesn't do manufacturing in the U.S.), I wonder how "American" those transportation workers are.

Also, we have to consider that business is business, and one product or service's success often comes at the expense of another product or service. The i-phone is a great product, but look at what it did to competition in the cellphone market. Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) recently announced that it will layoff 11% of its workers. Once the market leader in mobile operating systems, RIM has lost considerable ground due to Apple's success. Nokia, still the world's leading phone-maker despite losing market share to Apple, announced in November 2011 that it will layoff 17,000 employees worldwide. Many other wireless equipment makers like Ericsson and Motorola have also seen their markets shrink as Apple grows. If Steve Jobs is going to get credit for the jobs he indirectly created, he should also be held accountable for the jobs he indirectly destroyed.

Daniel's refers to business as a noble pursuit, but no profession is noble. There are immoral professions (the world's oldest profession, for example). It is the person, not the profession, that can be noble or not. There are noble businessmen as well as ignoble businessmen. In fact, during the time of kings and castles, there were nobles who weren't very "noble". I'm not trying to belittle Jobs, I think he was a brilliant entrepreneur, but Daniels is portraying him as a Messiah-like figure that can save this country's economy. We can't do anything to save ourselves, neither Obama nor the government can do anything to save us, only more individuals like Jobs who need to rise from obscurity can. Very noble and ideal thought Daniels, but reality isn't so rosy and human nature isn't so altruistic.

But what I really want to ask is: why are we still talking about Steve Jobs? Can't we put this man to rest? Why are we treating him like some epic hero? Let's look at what his man did. He turned two companies into huge successes and revolutionized mobile device capabilities. That's pretty good. But he didn't invent the lightbulb or introduce genetically engineered crops that saved an estimated 1 billion people in developing nations. But Thomas Edison and Norman Borlaug are rarely the topic of our conversations (many of us have never even heard of the latter). If Daniels really wanted to mention a businessman who is "noble", in every sense of the word, he should have chosen Bill Gates, someone who is as big of a philanthropist as he is an entrepreneur (the man just pledged $750 to global AIDS research http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-davos-aids-idUSTRE80P0GL20120126). But everyday, everywhere I go, everyone's talking about Jobs. Talking about his biography, reading his biography, listening to his audio biography, even talking about the Steve Jobs movie, which will be directed by the same guy that directed "The Social Network." Everyone is talking about a man that was a visionary, a perfectionist that was on a mission to create the perfect product. I've read and heard parts of the biography as well, but I get a very different image of Jobs. I see an impatient, oppressive, obstinate and emotionally fragile man that stole ideas from others, didn't give those working for him credit for their ideas, and broke down and cried when a product didn't come out the way he envisioned it. He may be a great businessman, but he's far from being a noble businessman.


And we need to keep it real and stop lying to ourselves. At its roots, business is about the pursuit of profit. A good businessman is one who can maximize his profit, either through increasing his sales, minimizing his expenses, or both. Steve Jobs has done both through his operations in China. The cheap cost of labor and parts allows him to minimize the expenses involved in the assembling of his products, while the massive workforce and manpower can be harnessed to produce an incredible amount of these devices for sale. He can care less about the jobless rate in the U.S. as long as Americans continue to purchase his devices. But Steve is not the only one involved, outsourcing to developing countries is so prevalent today that one can hardly be a good businessman without doing so, but for Mitch Daniels to use Jobs as an example is more than inappropriate. What would the founding fathers think if they heard that a man who exploits laborers in developing nations, deprives his own countrymen of manufacturing jobs but instead sells products to his own countrymen at a premium cost, is used as an example of a heroic patriot?

Mitt Romney Releases Tax Returns

So the cat is finally out of the bag. Romney has revealed that he paid 13.9% of his total earnings in 2011 toward taxes. This is just ridiculous. I mean, I knew there were loopholes in our income tax system, but this is no "hole". Romney took his $20 million in capital gains and marched right through the Arc de Triomphe. While Uncle Sam drops the iron fist of income tax collection on us workers on a payroll (the highest pay up to 35%), Romney and millionaires alike are effortlessly walking through a wall of swiss cheese.

Romney released his tax returns after Newt Gingrich, who was the first to reveal his financials to the public. Seeing how he paid more than 30% of his earnings in taxes, Gingrich was obviously not shy in releasing his tax returns. However, tax experts say Newt could owe up to tens of thousands of dollars in medicare tax. Whatever the case, it doesn't matter a bit to me, because I just don't like Gingrich as a person. His behavior and speech just reeks too much of a self-aggrandizing prick who didn't, doesn't, and won't give a rat's ass about the average American. He left a bad impression right from the get-go, and bad impressions are hard to extinguish, even if he "supposedly" represents the "mom and pop" small business owner who's supposed to be the free market's poster boy. And furthermore, would we really want the president, the Commander in Chief, the symbol of the American spirit, to be someone named "Newt"? (Mitt is not a very promising name for a president but it's way better than Newt)

Anyway, back to the subject on hand. Warren Buffet was the first person who brought the 15% rate for capital gains into public attention. Many of us would have just gone on with our daily lives and jobs. Not knowing, not questioning, just trusting that Uncle Sam has some kind of fair taxation system worked out for all of us. Buffet revealed that he was taxed a lesser percentage of his earnings than his employees, and Romney showed us that he paid even less than the 15% dividend tax. Keep in mind that these are the people who have actually agreed to reveal their income tax returns. I wonder what ridiculous percentage some of these other 1%'ers fork over from their annual income.

I have had people argue with me that the top 1% of wealthy Americans pay over half of our taxes in dollars, or some ridiculous number like that. Well if they do, and they could, then they should. But the point is not that the 1% have to contribute more than 50% of the total income tax into the U.S. treasury, but the fact that they can contribute 50%. Doesn't anyone else see something terribly wrong in the fact that 1% of the population are able to pay 50% of the total income tax in a country even though most of them are getting taxed at a lower rate than the other 99%? The people I have spoken to on both sides of the issue have all agreed on one thing: a flat tax rate. Yes, of course that would be great, but if we really took a flat average of all the tax rates, what would really happen? Would we all pay a little more? Or would most of us get a lower rate, and the top 1% have to pay 55% of the total income tax instead? One of the major causes of the American Revolution was taxation without representation. Of course, that's not the case today. We have all these congressmen and senators that represent us. But the question is, are the people that are supposed to represent you being taxed at the same rate as you are?