Steamd

Yesterday, I read an article on Ars Technica that really made me laugh:

Leaked memo: e-mail recovery will outlast Bush presidency

In a nutshell, millions of emails were lost between 2003 and 2005 for which thousands of them will likely never be recovered. The reason? Because the Bush IT shop decided to use Microsoft Exchange:

Archiving of government e-mail communications is required by federal law, yet the Bush administration has struggled since 2002 to comply with the requirement. The administration inherited a working archival system from the Clinton White House. But when the Bush IT shop decided to switch from a Lotus Notes-based e-mail system to one based on Microsoft Exchange, it broke compatibility with that software. Since then, the White House has repeatedly tried and failed to develop a new system. It first tried to retrofit the old Notes-based system to work with Exchange, but concluded that the approach was unworkable. It then took bids to design a new Exchange-based archiving system. According to one whistleblower, that system was finalized in 2006, but was reportedly mothballed at the last minute by White House CIO Theresa Payton, who cited vague performance concerns.

This is so laughable that it isn’t even funny. They ended up trying to implement a manual solution using the journaling feature in Outlook and Exchange. Not only is the Bush administration incompetent…but so is the IT staff! I only have two words for the Bush IT Administrator: Backup Exec!

I was an IT Supervisor at a small architectural firm for almost four years and one of the things I did while I was there was deploy an Exchange 2003 server. We were well aware of the requirement to backup and archive any email due to discoverability laws in effect that would require any and all email and documents to be put into question should a lawsuit occur. Thus backups were critical to the successful deployment of the server. If backups didn’t work we couldn’t deploy it. It was that simple.

The solution for us was Backup Exec. Not only did it allow us to do a full backup of our files every week with incrementals throughout the week but it also allowed us both full and incremental backups of our Exchange mailboxes as well. Although recovery was a pain in the ass, it was possible to restore a mailbox in its entirety should the need arise. Newer versions of Backup Exec are capable of more granular restore options, even down to the restoration of just a single email.

Even then, archiving email was a pain in the ass because everyone wanted to keep everything in their inbox. The question was: How do we archive email without it being in someone’s mailbox? The solution would have to be something that allowed you to move email out of your mailbox and into a repository that allowed for backing up and archiving email. Many solutions exist but the one we ended up deploying also happened to be a good project management solution: Newforma. Not only could employees store old emails for future retrieval but they could store them by project along with other important features that helped in managing the project. And since each email was stored in a file system as unique individual files, keeping routine backups was a no-brainer. Also, retrieving an old email couldn’t be any easier since all of it was indexed and completely searchable, even attachments. Newforma is just one solution for email archiving but I’m sure something just as robust and easy to use exists as well.

You’d think that out of any IT environment that the White House would have the best IT staff money can buy, right? I mean, this is the top-level of our government we’re talking about here. I can’t think of any place where the IT needs would require more attention and more care. The Bush IT staff can blame their problems on anything they want but I know better. Just because they’re using Microsoft Exchange doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to keep routing backups of all emails. That simply just isn’t the case. I just can’t believe that the IT staff in the White House is as incompetent as the Bush administration itself. Go figure.

So, I get this e-mail forwarded to me by a member of my family:

The media has done a good job of convincing many that Bush has done such a terrible job. Check your tax bill before you criticize!!!

Based on using the actual tax tables, here are some examples on what the taxes were/are on various amounts of income for both singles and married couples. So let’s see if the Bush tax cuts only helped the rich.

Taxes under Clinton 1999

• Single making 30K: tax $8,400
• Single making 50K: tax $14,000
• Single making 75K: tax $23,250
• Married making 60K: tax $16,800
• Married making 75K: tax $21,000
• Married making 125K: tax $38,750

Taxes under Bush 2008

• Single making 30K: tax $4,500
• Single making 50K: tax $12,500
• Single making 75K: tax $18,750
• Married making 60K: tax $9,000
• Married making 75K: tax $18,750
• Married making 125K: tax $31,250

If you want to know just how effective the mainstream media is, it is amazing how many people that fall into the categories above think Bush is screwing them and Bill Clinton was the greatest President ever. If any democrat is elected, ALL of them say they will repeal the Bush tax cuts and a good portion of the people that fall into the categories above can’t wait for it to happen. This is like the movie The Sting with Paul Newman; you scam somebody out of some money and they don’t even know what happened.

I couldn’t resist…family or no family, I just had to respond. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good debate! So it got me thinking…

Seriously, are lower taxes really that important? I personally don’t mind spending a bit extra on taxes if I can afford it. The problem I have with this picture is that, sure, it looks great on paper that Bush lowered our taxes. However, when you start to consider that the Iraq war alone costs the U.S. government an average of $270 million daily and has cost taxpayers $600 billion to date, tax cuts are the last thing we should be worrying about. $600 billion is a staggering number and I really don’t think all that money came from our taxes. A lot of it came from borrowed money that did nothing but raise our ever increasing deficit.

But I digress. Whether you’re for the war or against it, it doesn’t really matter. But everyone can certainly agree that the increased spending hasn’t done much to help us solve other problems that our country faces: social security, health care, immigration, energy conservation, education, poverty, the economy, and so much more. These are all hot topics on everyone’s agenda this election season, with the economy and health care leading the pack.

Lower taxes are all fine and dandy, but then whenever someone proposes solid solutions to many of the country’s other problems (social security, health care, immigration, education, etc.) pundits always ask the same question: “Great…but how do you propose we’re going to pay for it?” Umm…duh? The government manages to spend $270 million daily for the Iraq war. Plus, I seriously think that the wealth of this nation can afford to be taxed more with the lower and middle class being taxed less. Someone who makes less that $30K a year shouldn’t have to pay more than $4,500 a year on taxes. Granted, everyone can agree they’d like to pay less on taxes. I do agree that no one should have to pay more on taxes than they really should. We shouldn’t stretch anyone beyond their means. But saying that Democrats somehow can’t wait to “scam” people out of their money each tax season is preposterous.

Money doesn’t fall from the sky. Many of the things you require your government to do cost money. And one of the primary ways the government get the money to do all this fun stuff is through income tax. If the economy sucks and you’re paying less taxes, how does that equate to a good thing? Sure, we definitely need to reduce the amount of pork barrel spending in Congress, but that’s a completely different debate. Worst thing the government can do is tax the hell out of people when the economy isn’t good. That’s definitely not good politics. But neither is the kind of politics that drives the value of the dollar down a bit. That’s not good either.

The real question to ask is this: What do your tax dollars get you? Even if you had to pay a bit more on taxes, what do you aim to get out of it?

I don’t go out of my way to tell people what political affiliation I am. I don’t consider myself a devote Republican or Democrat. Hell, I don’t even think of myself as much of an independent either. I’m just a guy who votes his conscience and refuses to see the world through binoculars. I don’t wear rose colored glasses and I definitely don’t vote strictly on the basis of one or two issues. I do believe that too many people are divided and blaming it on the media isn’t helping. Sometimes you just have to open your eyes a bit, look at the big picture, educate yourself a bit, and see things for what they are.

Honestly, all this tells me is that I shouldn’t vote for Clinton. And, believe me, I won’t.