The International House of Bacon

Because you should never blog about video games when you’re trying to finish the rest of your stuff to go and play one.

1) I’m very, very excited about Spore. Due 7 September, it’s the new Will Wright (SimCity, etc) project where you essentially start a civilization from scratch, eventually having it evolve to the point where you can explore other people’s worlds. I really hope it can live up to the hype.

2) EA retains the exclusive contract with the NFL until 2013. Sigh.

3) Electronic Gaming Monthly had a great piece (not online yet) about achievements and gamerscore on the XBox 360. One person profiled was a father who played 60 hours a week, obsessed with raising his gamerscore.

I personally love the achievement process on the 360 - it really increases replayability for me and it’s fun to try and do bizarre things to get achievements (my favorite so far is the one in Crackdown that requires you to keep a bad guy up in the air using a set number of rockets). But I also know that my 2500 gamerscore or whatever isn’t ever going to reach an upper echelon of scores, either. But wow, sometimes the gamerscore thing can get crazy.

Since there’s not much more to say at this point about Obama’s ridiculous campaign, perhaps it’s time to start shining a light on some of the ideas he’s trotting out there, either as a Senator or as a possible action as President. Here’s one to get the ball rolling:

Meet the Patriot Corporation Act. This act, co-sponsored by Obama, is an interesting beast. The quick and dirty is this: Corporations will get tax breaks under this plan, as long as they meet a few requirements: namely that they do 90% of their production and employment in the United States while offering decent wages, health insurance, and other perks. Of course, these numbers aren’t defined by anything realistic - the wages are required to be “enough to keep a family of three out of poverty,” push for “neutrality” in worker organization drives (a clear shot across the bow at the reisstance to the elimination of the secret ballot in terms of organizing) and the employer needs to cover “at least 60% of each worker’s health care premiums.” Never mind that wages to “keep a family of three out of poverty” mean completely different things depending on where you are and what industry you’re in (not to mention that it sets some arbitrary standard as to what salary level constitutes being patriotic, but whatever) - the bill uses the census figures which fail to account for the broad standard of living deviances across the nation - but if any company attempted to actually reach this standard that didn’t already, the tax break that the company gets? The equivalent of 1% of the taxable income. That doesn’t come close to covering this nonsense.

This bill is really a great example of how Barack Obama simply doesn’t understand the problems that are facing this nation economically right now. Right now, the United States has some of the most uncompetitive corporate tax rates in the world. At 35% on the federal level alone (the rate can go north of 10 points higher when you factor in state and local taxes), that puts us 18th overall and nearly 8 points above the average, an average that is declining as Europe moves to a flat tax and places like Canada plan to drop their rate dramatically. General Motors continues to shed jobs because it costs so much to employ people in the United States compared to overseas markets. In the long term, the blunt reality is that the United States is moving away from a manufacturing economy and toward a service one, and part of that move is the recognition that globalization is here to stay.

Barack Obama mentions corporate taxation once on his website. His only plan to deal with the fact that we’re falling behind internationally is to try and close loopholes and try to govern where international corporations decide to set up shop. Instead of aggressively dealing with the problem in a way that keeps us productive and competitive - a sharp reduction in corporate tax rates, for a possible example - he goes for the Same Old Democratic Response: act as if the corporations and businesses in America are not doing enough for this nation, and saddle them with the extra costs, fees, and taxes that are causing them to close up shop and head elsewhere to begin with. Politics as usual. All Obama’s positions advocate are the further siphoning of jobs to lower-cost nations, and harm the economy in poor ways.