Jeremy asks:

If you were asked to launch a major political movement, what would the platform look like?

As I said to Jeremy in an IM after reading his comment, “good grief Jeremy.”   I’ll make an attempt at tackling the question though.

I think the 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution needs to be read and remembered by everyone.  Here’s what it says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It’s important to realize what that means.  I’m no political scholar, but how I interpret it is this:  Any powers not given to the government belong to the people.  So in essence, the people have all the power, and the government only has those powers which the people give it.  This is a very important foundation in my opinion and sadly one that is all too often forgotten by we the people.  That’s not necessarily answering Jeremy’s question, but it is important to point out for the purpose of conveying my mindset.

I asked Jeremy if this was intended to be as if I was running for office or if I was just planning to lobby for causes.  He responded, “the hypothetical is less important than just what are your priorities.”  It still stays a very open ended question, so I’m going to narrow it down a little.  For one, I’m going to take this from a national perspective, and two, I’m going to limit it to three priorities.

Here are three priorities I would want to pursue:

• No more bail-outs.  We’re completely killing any chance of the “free-market” working with these.  I don’t have access to the exact quote, but a BB&T executive spoke out against the financial sector bail out when it was being proposed.  What I remember from the quote, he basically said please don’t bail these companies out.  BB&T is secure because it didn’t engage in the risky lending practices, and by bailing out those companies that did, you are giving BB&T’s competition an unfair advantage in the market.  We need some darwanism.  I understand that this would likely mean rough (potentially very rough) times in the near future, but I soundly believe that it would be better in the long term.  If I could recall the previous bail-outs, I would.
• Investments in alternative energy sources.  Look, if you think we’re ok relying so heavily on oil/coal … please come out from under your rock and join me in the real world.  I don’t believe there’s a silver bullet for alternative energy, at least not in a country the size of the United States.  We’ll need a good mix of multiple sources from solar, to hydro, to geothermal, to wind.  The most efficient method should be used in its respective geographic area of the country.  This should have been done long ago.
• Finally, I would push for a return to states rights.  I’m not looking to start a secession movement, so please don’t mistake my comment.  However I am starting to believe that governing micro issues on a national level is both hugely inefficient and not very realistic.  We are a diverse nation and Region X is being forced to succumb to the needs of Region Y even when the needs of Region Y do not concern Region X.  One of the ideals this country was founded on was more or less, “live how you want, just don’t piss in someone else’s cereal.”  We shouldn’t be forcing personal beliefs on one another.

Anyhow … I hope that answers your question Jeremy.

_{Note: This is part of the Ask Matt series where you, the reader, get to post a question and have me answer it.}

Bobby asks:

If you could have any one thing for Christmas, or be in any one new place, or meet any one person….what/where/who and for what reason.

Thanks for the question Bobby, I’ll answer all 3 parts.

Thing for Christmas
I’m going to take the somewhat selfish approach in answering this question.  No world peace type of an answer here ;)  I would probably most want a Drobo unit.  I really like how the unit doesn’t require you use the same sized disks in the RAID and that it can run applications built specifically for the Drobo, basically allowing you to turn it into a mini server on your network.  It’s not cheap, but it’s feature set is also unmatched.

New Place
Narrowing this down to one is tough.  There are many places both domestically and internationally that I would like to visit.  However, if I’m forced to narrow it down to one it would be Ireland.  A lot of my family heritage comes from Ireland and I’ve wanted to visit there for a long time.  On my mom’s side, where most of my Irish heritage comes from, we’ve been in the states for quite some time (apparently I have an ancestor with a statue somewhere for fighting in the revolutionary war).  Because of that, it’s not like I’d really be reuniting with long lost family members.  However it would still be interesting to see where we came from.

Meet Person
I’m actually having a real hard time answering this.  I wouldn’t mind actually meeting Pat.  He and I have been friends for years now.  I think I met him around 1995 maybe?  We’ve never actually met face to face though.  And we’ve probably only talked verbally (as in phone or VOIP) for a total of 1-1.5 hours.  I consider him a good/close friend though, so it’d be cool to grab a beer or something.

_{Note: This is part of the Ask Matt series where you, the reader, get to post a question and have me answer it.}

Jason has been running this for the past couple of weeks, and I think it’s a pretty neat idea.  I know I don’t have tons of readers these days since I went so long without posting consistently, but I’m trying to change that now.

So anyhow, here’s your chance.  Ask me anything you want in the comments and I will give you an answer.  It can be anything from PHP to Politics to Cats.  There’s no question that is unacceptable.

I look forward to hearing from you.