What Caught My Eye Today - Citizenship, Debt, Water, Electoral College

Citizenship - Born in Canada to an American mother, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born. Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries. Now why would he want to do that? It seems pretty rare, that one has the good fortune of being born into dual citizenship. That means he could assert the right to vote in Canada or even run for Parliament. Even better. If dude loses or hits term limits in the U.S., he can continue to feed his political ambitions north of the border. And yet, I sense a disturbance in the Force on this one. The circumstances of Cruz’s birth have fueled a simmering debate over his eligibility to run for president. Knowingly or not, dual citizenship is an apparent if inconvenient truth for the Tea Party firebrand, who shows every sign he’s angling for the White House. Uh-oh. The U.S. Constitution allows only a “natural born” American citizen to serve as president. Most legal scholars who have studied the question agree that includes an American born overseas to an American parent, such as Cruz. The Constitution says nothing about would-be presidents born with dual citizenship. Yeah, those Tea Partiers are real sticklers for that sort of thing. Just ask the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Detractors have derided Cruz as “Canadian Ted,” saying he can’t run for president because he wasn’t born on U.S. soil. How much do you want to bet that behind closed doors, President Obama is having a pretty good chuckle over this? Cruz said he would be the $100 fee to renounce his Canadian citizenship, saying, "Nothing against Canada, but I'm an American by birth, and as a U.S. senator, I believe I should be only an American." The way I heard it, Canadian officials were so elated that they offered to pay the $100 on Cruz's behalf.

Debt - Stop me if you've heard this one before. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Congress that the government will run out of money to pay its bills in mid-October unless lawmakers raise the country's borrowing limit, which is capped at $16.7 trillion. Oh good grief, not this again. Earlier this year, Congress temporarily suspended the borrowing limit so lawmakers could focus on other budget debates. Treasury has kept the government operating for several months through its bookkeeping maneuvers. The government is spending more than it takes in, running up annual deficits in excess of $1 trillion in each of the past four budget years. It has been borrowing the difference to meet its obligations. Republicans want to reduce future deficits by cutting back sharply on spending. Interesting concept--don't spend what you don't have. Sounds so simple doesn't it? Democrats have proposed a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, which Republicans strongly oppose. Congress last passed legislation to increase the borrowing limit in the summer of 2011 after a months-long negotiation between President Barack Obama and top lawmakers. Republicans forced Obama to accept about $2 trillion in spending cuts over the coming decade in exchange for a like-sized increase in the borrowing limit. Many Republicans want to use upcoming budget deadlines to mount an assault on Obama's signature health care law. In general, I'm a fiscal conservative, so why am I not jumping up and down in support of what the Republican Party is proposing? For one thing, there are basic economic principles that are being completely ignored (which I won't bore you with). In addition, the Republican party really needs to stop pouting about Obamacare. The law passed. Get over it! They aren't doing themselves or the people that they represent any favors by holding the budge hostage over a legislative battle that was wages years ago.

Water - Looking for investment opportunities to give a boost to your retirement portfolio? I have two words for you...Water Futures. Of course, the future of water in the United States doesn't look too bright, but as everyone knows, where there is misery for the many, there is opportunity for the few. Nearly 70% of the groundwater stored in parts of the United States' High Plains Aquifer, a vast underground reservoir that stretches through eight states, from South Dakota to Texas, and supplies 30% of the nation's irrigated groundwater, could be used up within 50 years, unless current water use is reduced. For those of you not well-versed in such things, groundwater is pretty much what we consume and use to irrigate our crops.  In a nutshell, no more water, means no more food. No more food would seriously curtail humanity's long-term existence. Then again, we'd die from lack of water, way before starvation kicked in.  Bottom line, this is a problem worthy of some attention. If current irrigation trends continue unabated, 69% of the available groundwater will be drained in the next five decades. 3% of the aquifer's water was used up by 1960; 30% of the aquifer's water was drained by 2010; and a whopping 69 percent of the reservoir will likely be tapped by 2060. It would take an average of 500 to 1,300 years to completely refill the High Plains Aquifer. I suppose there is some upside here.  Sure we'll dry up in next 30 or 40 years, but if we can figure out how to exist without water for the next few centuries, our aquifers will be fully replenished.  See? Glass half full.

Electoral College - Here's an interesting take on reforming the U.S. Electoral College from a dude who clearly has a bit of time on his hands. Don't mistake what I'm saying as criticism. Quite the opposite. I have nothing but admiration and, I daresay, a fair bit of envy, that this guy can take on such an undertaking, assuming that he has an actual day job that pays him actual money for done actual work. The electoral college is a time-honored, logical system for picking the chief executive of the United States. However, the American body politic has also grown accustomed to paying close attention to the popular vote. This is only rarely a problem, since the electoral college and the popular vote have only disagreed three times in 200 years. However, it's obvious that reforms are needed. The fundamental problem of the electoral college is that the states of the United States are too disparate in size and influence. The largest state is 66 times as populous as the smallest and has 18 times as many electoral votes. This increases the chance for Electoral College results that don't match the popular vote. To remedy this issue, the Electoral Reform Map redivides the fifty United States into 50 states of equal population. The 2010 Census records a population of 308,745,538 for the United States, which this map divides into 50 states, each with a population of about 6,175,000. It's a pretty cool map (click here). Among the advantages of such a proposal:

• Preserves the historic structure and function of the Electoral College.
  What with the Electoral College being established in the Constitution, I guess that's a good thing.
• Ends the over-representation of small states and under-representation of large states in presidential voting and in the US Senate by eliminating small and large states.
  As long as Iowa is no longer the center of the political universe for months on end, I am totally on board with this.
• Ends varying representation in the House. Currently, the population of House districts ranges from 528,000 to 924,000.
  Being a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I live in a district on the high end of that range, which basically means my vote is counts for much less than the vote of a resident of Wyoming.

Here's my only gripe. Let's say we re-draw the U.S. as proposed. I would no longer live in California, but rather Yerba Buena. Dude, I don't want to live in Yerba Buena.