and preparation for unpleasantness in general, but I have no taste for right-wing politics or christianity. Fortunately, preparation for the unexpected (i.e. EMPs, social unrest, the spanish inquisition...) does not require a right wing belief system, only a healthy paranoia and distrust of all institutions, over-complexified fragile, interdependent, energy-dependent supply chain ecologies and anything that comes over the mass media.

He can't be that smart; he claims he and his wife working together (3 MIT eng. degrees total) can't do their taxes.

The tax code isn't exactly simple, but come on.

This guy makes 'em all over the place. For example, he thinks that denying people birth control will reduce abortions.

I'm an Engineer. I've thought about getting into politics myself, but there's such a huge mess to clean up I don't even know where I could begin.

I believe in smaller government, but regulations as required to make sure the planet doesn't get destroyed in the pursuit of cashohol.

Your body? Not the government's problem.

Consenting adults? Why should the government care at all?

Products that could be dangerous? Stick a warning label on there and let people buy what they want.

Businesses? They aren't people.

The government should be there to provide services that are too expensive to afford for a single person. Military, fire departments, roads, park and environmental protection, health care, etc. Put taxes on the stuff that pays for the above; gas taxes pay for roads, drug taxes to pay for the police, junk food taxes to pay for health care, etc.

So what does that make me?

"But things have not gone smoothly for Massie in office—and that’s just how he wants it. “When you’re stalking waste within a government office, it’s like every rock that you turn over has a snake under it,” he says. Massie has been targeting waste, fraud, and abuse, starting with questioning electric bills, phone bills, contracts, and fees for things that don’t apply anymore. Like the county being charged rental fees for property that had long been sold, paying for phone lines that had been disconnected for years, or buying stuff from a magistrate’s store. He has upset a lot of entrenched powers, but has gained support from the masses for it. And he says that in his first nine months in office, he cut enough waste to pay his own salary for three years."

Why does this sort of stuff just plain piss the left leaning person off? I mean, even if you are a dedicated communist shouldn't you still wish to find corruption, overspending, and waste, and squash it? Shouldn't that be something anyone from any party would rally behind?

But no, unfortunately when someone says limited government they immediately get called a right wing racist teabagger.

Look, I went to MIT, and I can tell you that (a) the people there are remarkably bright and (b) I wouldn't particularly want to put my trust in the political or economic opinions of some randomly chosen person from there, right wing, left wing, or requiring more dimensions than string theory to characterize politically.

Really smart people often have amazingly insightful opinions, but there's nothing like a brilliant person to have unshakable confidence in an unassailably stupid idea, like Schockley (the inventor of the transistor) and his theories of white racial supremacy. Or like my friend who had an affair with a married man because he promised her that his wife would be cool with it. It was impossible to convince her of the obvious fact this was stupid, bat-shit crazy idea because as smart as I was, she was way, way smarter. Having an argument with her was like climbing into the ring with Ali in his prime for a few bare knuckle rounds. You couldn't lay a glove on her. That taught me that sometimes a friend's role is to wait and be there when life gives your friend an unavoidable hard lesson.

Really brilliant people are used to being right when everyone else around them is wrong. They're hard to argue out of a wrong position, and when you get enough of them together that they can sort themselves into loony birds of a feather even reality can't make a dent in their opinions. And brilliance in one area doesn't translate into competence in every area. There are people I'd trust to design an aircraft I had to fly in or a sub I had to dive in, but that I wouldn't trust managing by checking account.

Massie recalls Sununu saying, "We need more engineers and fewer lawyers" in politics. As Massie explains, "Lawyers are taught to take a position, whether it's right or wrong ideologically, and defend it—to go collect facts to support it. Whereas engineers are taught the inverse of that, they're taught to collect facts and then come up with an answer based on the facts. He said, 'That's the kind of thought process we need more of in government.' On the stump, that's what I'm trying to convey, that we need more problem solvers in Washington, DC."

I wholeheartedly approve of this idea.

steveha

if he can get at least some good tech/engineer representation in that parliament of whores that we call Congress, it's win-win as far as I'm concerned.

"Good tech/engineer representation" doesn't gain us any benefit at all, especially any benefit in regards to technology or engineering.

We've had technocrats before. They underwhelm as leaders. What we need is principled, decent people who are capable of listening and leading. Government is not like business. It is not like engineering. It is not like programming.

It's really quite a quandary, but what we really don't need is anyone who wants to be elected to anything. It's kind of like owning a gun. Anyone who wants to own a gun is the last person who should have one. Anyone who wants political power is the last person who should have it.

What we need is campaign finance reform. Strict and absolute limits not only on how much money can be donated to a campaign, but how much money can be SPENT on a campaign. It seems like the best way to keep the people who want political power from getting it, and giving us the best chance of being represented by people we can trust.

We've managed to pervert the founders' intentions by using their own words against them. First amendment, second amendment, practically right on down the line. It's almost as bad as basing your current behavior on standards set by Iron Age politicians and clerics who didn't even know the Earth was round.

I'd rather see Congress made up of 435 people picked at random from the phone book than the current system we have, which has been designed for maximum corruption. The only think more pathetic than the people who are currently in power is the notion of an MIT engineer tea partier. Does anyone believe the current crop of tea party freshmen congress people signing off on the latest ALEC-written legislation is anything like a solution?

Yep, attended one a while ago, actually.

And that says far more about the press, than about the Tea Party movement.

A key point of the movement is for different groups normally associated with conservative politics to put aside their differences and focus on something they agree on. For instance, at the rally I attended, there were folks who agreed and who disagreed with current US foreign policy when I spoke to them.

They'd certainly like to, but there was very little in the way of social-related anything at the rally I went to. No mention of abortion at all. The pro gay marriage GOProud [goproud.org] folks were handing out flyers and such, without a single unkind word towards any of them, but other than that, nothing related to sex during the speeches or on the signs. Perhaps I missed something. What should I have been keeping a look out for?

I can't do my taxes either. It's not lack of ability, but lack of motivation. (1) Nobody is paying me for ~8 hours wasted reading through the booklets, and (2) it's cheaper to just work 1 extra hour and then pay someone else to do it.

My mother does her own taxes, but it takes her 2-3 days. Which is just nuts. The tax code should be simpler without all the confusing deductions, credits, and social engineering.

The interesting thing is, there is another group of extremists who are known for the prominence of engineers in their midst. Osama Bin Laden was himself an engineer, and he's not the only one. It's not a science thing, you don't see many botanists or physicists running amuk, just engineers. It may be an engineering mindset thing.

It seems to me that as a group engineers may not be the best possible choice for political discourse. Bring on the botanists and psychologists and chemists and entomologists (and etymologists too, what the hell), but let's not overdo the representation from engineers.

Do you think so? I personally know Americans who think the US should be run under Old Testament of the Bible law -- including stoning adulterers -- and people who think that churches should be outlawed. I know people who own 100,000 rounds of ammunition and people who think guns should be banned. People who think sick people who can't pay medical bills should be dumped out on the street to die and people who think the government should provide free unlimited healthcare. People who think the Federal government should do nothing more than fund and run the military, and people who would like to see the government nationalize many large corporations and run them. I don't actually know anyone who argues that women shouldn't have the right to vote, but I've seen them talk. I do know people who think anyone who doesn't believe in the christian god should not be allowed to hold public office. That's a pretty wide spectrum of ideas, spanning from Saudi Arabian to Maoist to anarcholibertarian. I'm sure other countries have as broad a swath of ideas: I'm not claiming american exceptionalism as regards political leanings. However, I haven't seen much evidence of other countries having much broader political views.

This is a little mini-speech I like to give to people, and it's rather appropriate for the this:

In the US, politicians train and study as politicians. They have degrees in political science, or law, or economics, or maybe history or business. Obama was a lawyer. So was Clinton. Bush II had an MBA. Bush I studied economics, as did Reagan. You have to go back all the way to Carter to find a president that had any sort of remotely "practical" training, as a naval officer specializing in nuclear submarines.

In China, politicians train and study as engineers. If shit goes down (as it is wont to do) and the revolution comes, President Hu Jintao could flee to the US, change his name, and live out his life working as an engineer (hydraulic engineering - his first real job was at a hydroelectric plant). Vice President Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering. Premier Wen Jiabao studied geomechanics. Wu Bangguo studied electrical engineering.

Engineering, fundamentally, is "the study of solving problems". It's not, strictly speaking, a science, but an application of science to the real world.

Modern American politics seems to be less about "solving people's problems" and more "making new problems to 'solve' so you can stay in power".

In case you haven't noticed, China is beating us. They're obviously doing something right, and I don't think it's the censorship or the market controls. Their system of government may not be better than ours on paper - slow, central control of everything rarely works for long - but they're better in practice because they have people who actually do the job they're supposed to do.

NOW is our chance. The Chinese seem to be making exactly the mistake we made - their up-and-coming leaders are career politicians, born-and-raised to rule. At the same time, their population boom will be shifting from a worker-heavy populace to a retiree-heavy populace, causing exactly the economic problems we're having now with all the Baby Boomers retiring.

We get one chance to get back on top. We need a government that responds to us, one that works quickly and efficiently for the benefit of everyone.

If anybody knows of any good candidates, speak up. I do not want a lawyer to represent me. I do not want a manager to represent me. I want an engineer, a man (or woman) who solves problems, because we have a lot of problems that need solving.