Thursday Reads

Posted: October 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, 2012 presidential campaign, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Good Morning!! I’m going to be heading back to Boston pretty soon, and I’m looking forward to following developments in Occupy Boston and in the Senate race. They haven’t started an Occupy Muncie protest yet, unfortunately. But you never know. This town is really suffering from the poor economy.

At Mother Jones, there is an interactive map of all the Occupy protests that have sprung up around the country. It’s pretty amazing. Funny thing. A few days ago MJ had a post by Lauren Ellis in which she looked down her nose at the #OccupyWallStreet protesters. Now they have a whole section on the Occupy Movement.

There are still plenty of so-called “journalists” dismissing the protests though. Yesterday, I posted a link to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s piece in the NYT in which he reports his trip to Zuccotti Park at the request of a anonymous nervous Wall Street CEO. Glenn Greenwald skewered Sorkin but good, concluding that Sorkin’s

CEO banking friend is right to be concerned: if not about this protest in particular then about the likelihood of social unrest generally, emerging as a result of their plundering and pilfering. That healthy fear on the part of the oligarchs has been all too absent.

Greenwald also linked to this example of “snotty, petty, pseudointellectual condescension” at The New Republic. Ugh! Read it if you dare.

Yesterday, Greenwald followed up by verbally destroying CNN’s new nighttime host, Erin Burnett.

On her new CNN show on Monday night, host Erin Burnett was joined by Rudy Giuliani’s former speechwriter John Avlon and together they heaped condescending scorn on the Wall Street protests while defending the banking industry, offering — as FAIR documented — several misleading statements along the way. Burnett “reported” that while she “saw dancing, bongo drums, even a clown” at the protest, the participants “did not know what they want,” except that “it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama.” She featured a video clip of herself explaining to one of the protesters that the U.S. Government made money from TARP, and then demanded to know if that changed his negative views of Wall Street.

This is far from the first time Burnett has served as spokesperson for Wall Street; it’s basically what her “journalistic” career is. She angered Bill Maher a couple years ago when arguing that the rich have suffered along with the poor and middle class as part of the financial crisis, and that it would be wrong to “soak the rich” because they’re already paying so much taxes. She caused Rush Limbaugh to gush over her when she argued on TV in 2007 that all Americans benefit when the rich get richer: “the majority of Americans directly benefit from what happens on Wall Street,” she proclaimed, just over a year before the financial collapse.

In an interview last year with Vanity Fair, she insisted that people on Wall Street do not have private planes and that “there are a lot of stalwart, solid people on Wall Street. There are just a few shady people providing the fodder for big budget movies…”

Meanwhile Beltway Bob Ezra Klein has some advice for #OccupyWallStreet: they should immediately start taking advice from the liberal establishment and focus on developing policy and writing legislation in order to work through the system that they have already rejected.

The Wall Street protests seem to be gathering strength and expanding beyond the geographic limits of downtown Manhattan. The media, too, is finally amplifying the story. Whether they will grow larger and sustain themselves beyond these initial street actions will depend upon four things: the work of skilled organizers; the success of those organizers in getting people, once these events end, to meet over and over and over again; whether or not the movement can promote public policy solutions that are organically linked to the quotidian lives of its supporters; and the ability of liberalism’s infrastructure of intellectuals, writers, artists and professionals to expend an enormous amount of their cultural capital in support of the movement.

There’s lots more, but it’s basically a lecture from someone who just doesn’t get it. And speaking of people who don’t get it, George Will tries to school Elizabeth Warren in his latest column. According to Will, the “liberal project,” which Warren apparently speaks for is designed to destroy rugged individualism.

The project is to dilute the concept of individualism, thereby refuting respect for the individual’s zone of sovereignty. The regulatory state, liberalism’s instrument, constantly tries to contract that zone — for the individual’s own good, it says….

Such an agenda’s premise is that individualism is a chimera, that any individual’s achievements should be considered entirely derivative from society, so the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual. Society is entitled to socialize — i.e., conscript — whatever portion it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of political grace, allow the individual the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual’s possession.

The collectivist agenda is antithetical to America’s premise, which is: Government — including such public goods as roads, schools and police — is instituted to facilitate individual striving, a.k.a. the pursuit of happiness. The fact that collective choices facilitate this striving does not compel the conclusion that the collectivity (Warren’s “the rest of us”) is entitled to take as much as it pleases of the results of the striving.

But isn’t that what Warren is pushing for? For more individuals to have opportunities to make it in America? Really, isn’t it time for George Will to retire?
Meanwhile Warren is leading in the race for the Massachusetts Democratic nomination for Senate, and she appeared in her first debate on Tuesday at my undergraduate alma mater, U. Mass Lowell.

In her first debate as a candidate for U.S. Senate Tuesday night, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren declined to criticize her fellow Democratic candidates, taking aim instead at Republican Sen. Scott Brown, whom the Democratic nominee will face, and Wall Street.

“Forbes magazine named Scott Brown Wall Street’s favorite senator. I was thinking that’s probably not an award I’m going to get,” she said to applause and laughter from the audience at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Two recent polls put Warren and Brown in a statistical tie.

She also made the audience laugh and applaud with the second question, which asked each candidate how they paid for college, since Brown posed nude for Cosmopolitan to pay.

“I kept my clothes on,” she quipped. She added that she borrowed money to go to a public university and had a part-time job.

Warren also drew applause for her tough talk on Wall Street. “The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it. That’s why I want to run for the United States Senate,” she said.

Go Elizabeth go!!

Another voice for the middle class, Robert Reich, explains why Wall Street is extremely nervous about the economic crisis in Europe.

If you want the real reason, follow the money. A Greek (or Irish or Spanish or Italian or Portugese) default would have roughly the same effect on our financial system as the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Financial chaos….a default by Greece or any other of Europe’s debt-burdened nations could easily pummel German and French banks, which have lent Greece (and the other wobbly European countries) far more.

That’s where Wall Street comes in. Big Wall Street banks have lent German and French banks a bundle.

The Street’s total exposure to the euro zone totals about $2.7 trillion. Its exposure to to France and Germany accounts for nearly half the total.

And it’s not just Wall Street’s loans to German and French banks that are worrisome. Wall Street has also insured or bet on all sorts of derivatives emanating from Europe — on energy, currency, interest rates, and foreign exchange swaps. If a German or French bank goes down, the ripple effects are incalculable.

Read the rest at Huffpo.

There are a couple of interesting reads about Republican candidates at the New York Review of Books. The first is by novelist Larry McMurtry: The Rick Perry Hustle Here’s a brief sample:

What Perry has brought to the Republican muddle thus far is his abundant, if unfocused, energy. He rushes from debate to debate, gives many interviews, gets his picture on the cover of TIME; yet all his politicking is curiously affectless. He makes sounds, but where’s the personality? Hillary Clinton has a personality; so does Sarah Palin. Either of those women could cut Governor Perry off at the knees, and will if given the chance.

It’s not been said so I’ll say it: as a politician Rick Perry is fundamentally lazy, so far as actual governing is concerned, content to run things mainly by sound-bite. He makes lots of decisions but lingers on no issue very long; there’s little follow-through. Clemency, or its absence, is an example. Two hundred thirty-four humans have been executed in Texas on his watch and only recently has he been stirred to a review. He believes that the State Board of Pardons and Paroles is so infallible that there’s no reason for him to lose sleep over the fate of this or that prisoner. The Governor has much more confidence in the Board than the Board has in itself; its members are well aware that even, or especially in Texas shaky verdicts have come down. The Governor, a man with a notably short attention span, has a lot more to think about than the death chamber.

An irony of his sudden emergence as a front-runner is that his few humane decisions—the HPV vaccine, which is safe and helpful, and the tuition credit for the children of illegals, which could help keep gangs of feral children off our streets—are what may sink him with the Tea Party and his own rabid right wing. And this is the wing he has assiduously cultivated his whole political life.

The other NYRB article of interest is by Christopher Benfry: Mitt, We Hardly Knew Ye!

We’re feeling vulnerable and surly these days in western Massachusetts, as the leaves turn yellow, the Red Sox fade, and winter looms. Our corridor of New England along the Connecticut River endured, during the summer months, a ruinous tornado in Springfield, an earthquake, of all things, and Hurricane Irene, which knocked out roads and historic covered bridges in our hill towns and across neighboring Vermont, and left a lot of people homeless and adrift. It’s our Katrina moment, we sometimes think, with slightly grandiose self-pity, as Republicans in Congress demand budget cuts if FEMA is to pay for disaster relief in the blue states.

We don’t see much of Mitt Romney, our ex-governor, in these troubled times. Then again, we never did. Our most indelible memories are of Mitt leaving—“the sight of Mitt’s back,” as a friend of mine put it, as he went off to lay the groundwork for yet another campaign. Mitt ran for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994, lost, and left the state to salvage the Salt Lake City Olympics. When he returned to run for governor in 2002, he had to go to court to prove that he sort of lived in Belmont, outside Boston. Then, after a couple of years in the state house, he left again to campaign for the presidency, spending two thirds of his time out of state in 2006. Mitt has sold his house in Belmont and now lives in the important primary state of New Hampshire (at his estate on Lake Winnipesaukee) or San Diego or maybe Utah—anywhere but Massachusetts.

In the Republican debates, Mitt pretends that his ties to Massachusetts are tenuous. Mitt’s greatest achievement as governor, the Massachusetts health care system (which passed with Ted Kennedy’s support and two dissenting votes in the state legislature), is now his greatest liability among Republicans, who see it as a stalking horse for Obamacare. Mitt now claims it was right for our quirky state but not for the nation. He has yet to explain why.

When Mitt trumpets his experience in American business, he rarely mentions that Bain, the consulting and investment conglomerate in which he amassed his $200 million fortune, is a Boston firm.

And so on…Romney used our state as a springboard and then denied even knowing us.

I’ll end there for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Tuesday Reads: Romney vs. Perry, 9/11 Revelations, and Hormonal Effects of Fatherhood

Posted: September 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Good Morning!! Let’s see if there’s any news out there. I didn’t see much of the Tea Party debate, because I was watching the New England Patriots crush the Miami Dolphins. That was soooo much better than watching Wolf Blitzer and the crazy people. Thanks so much to those of your who watched and documented the insanity so I didn’t have to.

According to Alexander Burns at Politico, Mitt Romney turned into an attack dog and lit into Rick Perry.

Mitt Romney went on the attack against Rick Perry at the first possible opportunity Monday night, challenging the Texas governor on whether he “continues to believe that Social Security should not be a federal program … or does he retreat from that view.”

[….]

Romney jumped in with a hit against Perry’s book, “Fed Up!” – the tome that Perry used to describe Social Security as a program that violated constitutional principles.

“Gov. Perry pointed out that in his view, Social Security is not constitutional,” Romney said.

And so on, with Perry giving weak responses. It’ll be interesting to see Romney challenge Obama on Social Security during the general election. Talk about role reversal!

Unfortunately, the latest CNN poll shows Perry still leading the rest of the Republicans in terms of electability.

Hours before the start of the first-ever CNN/Tea Party Republican debate, a new national survey indicates that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is maintaining his lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

And according to a CNN/ORC International Poll, what appears to be Perry’s greatest strength – the perception among Republicans that he is the candidate with the best chance to beat President Barack Obama in 2012 – seems to be exactly what the GOP rank and file are looking for.

Paul Krugman wrote an addendum to his recent “controversial” blog post about the September 11 anniversary.

The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud.

[….]

Now, I should have said that the American people behaved remarkably well in the weeks and months after 9/11: There was very little panic, and much more tolerance than one might have feared. Muslims weren’t lynched, and neither were dissenters, and that was something of which we can all be proud.

But the memory of how the atrocity was abused is and remains a painful one. And it’s a story that I, at least, can neither forget nor forgive.

Good for him for sticking to his guns.

Former Senator Bob Graham today called for another 9/11 investigation, because of a new report that the FBI knew of connections between the hijackers and Saudis living in Florida and never revealed those finding to Congress of the 9/11 Commission.

Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil, new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn’t reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who cochaired the bipartisan congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks, said he should have been told about the findings, saying it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. … No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed.”

The U.S. Justice Department, the lead agency that investigated the attacks, refused to comment, saying it will discuss only information already released.

The results of a new study suggest that when men become fathers, their testosterone levels go down. The researchers looked at testosterone levels in a large sample of men before they married and had children and again a few years after their children were born. According to TheManlyZone.com, lower levels of testosterone could be nature’s way of making men less interested in other partners and more interested in caring for their families.

Experts say the research has implications for understanding the biology of fatherhood, hormone roles in men and even health issues like prostate cancer.

“The real take-home message,” said Peter Ellison, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard who was not involved in the study, is that “male parental care is important. It’s important enough that it’s actually shaped the physiology of men.”

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Ellison added, “I think American males have been brainwashed” to believe lower testosterone means that “maybe you’re a wimp, that it’s because you’re not really a man.

“My hope would be that this kind of research has an impact on the American male. It would make them realize that we’re meant to be active fathers and participate in the care of our offspring.”

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Thursday Reads: The GOP Debate, Obama’s Narcissism, and Generations

Posted: September 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baby Boomers, Barack Obama, jobs, morning reads, psychology, Republican presidential politics, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, unemployment, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

Good Morning!! Last night we live-blogged the Republican debate, and it was borrrrrinnngggg! The less said about that debate last night the better. I can’t begin to pick the best or worst of that bunch. They were all horrible. For the media the big story in the debate was the conflict between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. From CBS News:

The sparks flew early at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, with onetime frontrunner Mitt Romney and the man who has overtaken him in the polls, Texas governor Rick Perry, trading barbs over their respective records on job creation.

Romney was asked about the fact that Massachusetts was ranked 47th in job creation during his time in office. After making the case that he had improved a bad situation, Romney took a subtle shot at Perry, who has been in politics since 1984, saying, “Look, if I had spent my whole life in government, I wouldn’t be running for president right now. My experience, having started enterprises, having helped other enterprises grow and thrive, is what gives me the experience to put together a plan to help restructure the basis of America’s economic foundation so we can create jobs again, good jobs, and compete with anyone in the world.”

Pressed on his reference to spending a “whole life in government,” Romney, who touts his experience in the private sector, added: “It’s a fine profession, and if someone were looking to say how can we restructure government, and which agency should report to which other agency, well, maybe that’s the best background. If you’re thinking about what it takes to reshape and update America’s economy, and to allow us to compete with China and other nations around the world, understanding how the economy works fundamentally is a credential I think is critical.”

Perry countered by saying that while Romney had a good record creating jobs “all around the world” in the private sector, “when he moved that experience to government, he had one of the lowest job creation rates in the country.”

“So the fact is, while he had a good private sector record, his public sector record did not match that,” the Texas governor continued. “As a matter of fact, we created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than he created in four years in Massachusetts.”

Whatever.

I don’t expect the President’s jobs speech tonight to be much more interesting, but we will be live-blogging it anyway. I do expect that after the Obama has nothing new to offer in his speech tonight that he will have “crossed the Rubicon,” so to speak. He will have passed the point of no return. He’ll be done, finished, caput. I’ll say again what I’ve been saying for awhile now: this president needs to follow in the footsteps of that  other failed president, Lyndon B. Johnson. Realize it’s all over and withdraw from the race so someone else can try to beat whichever nutjob the Republicans nominate.

If Obama refuses to withdraw, I think the media should hold debates where the President debates candidate Obama from 2008. They could play clips of his campaign promises and then ask him to explain why he adopted the Bush policies instead. Now that might be an entertaining debate.

For a long time now, we’ve been seeing former Obot bloggers expressing their disappointment in the man they forced down America’s throat. Lately the disappointment and even disgust has been coming from more mainstream sources. It’s quite amazing really. Yesterday Richard Cohen, the aging WaPo columnist told the Villagers that Obama has lost the Hamptons.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to a number of events in the Hamptons. At all of them, Obama was discussed. At none of them — that’s none — was he defended. That was remarkable. After all, sitting around various lunch and dinner tables were mostly Democrats. Not only that, some of them had been vociferous Obama supporters, giving time and money to his election effort. They were all disillusioned.

Let me call the roll. I am talking about are writers and editors, lawyers and shrinks, Wall Street tycoons and freelance photographers, hedge funders and academics, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Democratic activists. They were all politically sophisticated, and just a year ago some of them were still vociferous Obama supporters. No more.

Frankly, I was surprised. The Hamptons are a redoubt of New York liberalism. It is to campaign money what the Outer Banks are to fishermen. I expected more than a few people to defend the president. No one did. Everyone — and I do mean everyone — expressed disappointment in him as a leader. In that area, they thought he was a bust. Some articulated detailed critiques — the nature of his stimulus program, for instance. They argued that more money should have gone into long-term infrastructure programs. Most, though, skipped the details and just registered dismay: Where had their “change” agent gone?

Today, Al Gore attacked Obama as anti-science and anti-environment.

Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.

BTW, why hasn’t Gore been protesting outside the White House? Why hasn’t he been arrested? Wouldn’t that have a powerful effect? But I digress.

I want to highlight another elite critique–although this critic apparently saw through Obama early on. Yesterday, HuffPo published an outstanding post by Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner, from the University of Pittsburgh: The Great Betrayal.

Barack Obama’s betrayal will resonate in history long after he has become just another name on the over-priced celebrity speaker circuit. It is a betrayal of far more than the youthful idealists and loyal progressives who put him in the White House. Obama has unmoored the Democratic Party from its foundations — philosophical and electoral. No longer is it an expression of the persons, programs and ideas that crystallized with the New Deal and which dominated the country’s politics for sixty years. Its future is that of ad hoc assemblage of hustlers and special interests whose sole claim to govern will be that it is not the amalgamated Tea/Republican Party. Obama, by this Oedipus-like act of patricide, has also betrayed the country that voted for an enlightened leader with a social conscience — a country in desperate need of the opposite to the fate he has laid on us.

Brenner argues that Obama’s extreme narcissism reflects our contemporary culture and that we’ll see more like him in the future {shudder}.

A narcissist has no convictions other than a total dedication to his own gratification. That gives him the freedom to maneuver without inhibition or conscience with the revered self as the only reference point. All expressions of ideals, of opinions, of intentions are implicitly so qualified. A complementary narcissistic trait is an ease with blurring the line between virtual reality and actual reality. Narcissists believe everything they say — at the moment they say it. Their declarations are sterile acts that have no pride of parentage nor can they expect honor from offspring. Witness Obama’s momentarily rousing support of a labor movement that he has scorned for thirty months. This is the same President who has launched an all-out campaign against public school teachers whose unions serve as the whipping-boy for all that ails American education. Narcissists take as given that they never dissemble or lie — because to do so is to acknowledge that reality has an intolerably constraining claim on them.

Of course, this last is a feature of contemporary American political culture in general. Facts are taken to be infinitely malleable, the very notion of truth is denied, speaking honestly is viewed as a lifestyle choice, and communication is more a matter of self affirmation than an attempt to convey knowledge, emotion or intention to somebody else. We have externalized navel gazing to a remarkable degree. One consequence is that public discourse is not anchored by common standards of honesty. It is a maelstrom of opinion, emotive outbursts, mythology and primal screams. Accountability, therefore, ceases to exist. There is accountability only where there are benchmarks of veracity, a reasonably rigorous monitoring of what is said and done, and a dedication on the part of some at least to ensuring that these requirements for a viable democracy are met. The abject failure of the media to perform these functions to any reasonable degree is a hallmark of our times. The think tank and academic worlds are little better.

This amorphous environment is narcissist friendly terrain. It is permissive of twists and turns, leaves no record of what was done yesterday or the day before — much less a year ago, and focuses only on the evanescent existential moment. Case in point is the remarkably uncritical coverage that Obama has received from the supposedly responsible media — especially those who claim to be upholders of the ideas and policies and interests that he has betrayed.

Wow! Can that guy ever write! As I said Brenner apparently saw Obama pretty clearly from the beginning. Here is an excerpt from a paper he wrote in October, 2008 Who is Barack Obama? In this piece, Brenner comments on Obama’s strange disdain for the political and cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Obama is not a philosophical progressive or a populist. Little if anything in the roiled public life of America seems to anger him or even irk him. At a time of multiple crises – constitutional, economic, and in the nation’s foreign dealings – he keeps his emotional distance. It is hard to imagine him getting worked up about any of the developments in American society or attacks on the body politic that so deeply dismay many others

In all respects, Obama is very much a man of his times. Weak or absent convictions, dispassion even about grievous wrongs, incapacity for moral outrage, quiet acceptance of the precept to put self first – if not quite the measure of all things, a natural egoism – all the hallmarks of contemporary American society. A man who amasses $10 million at a relatively young age after a late start and married to a woman with no inherited wealth whatsoever is a man who looks after himself. He has none of the idealism that exemplified his mother’s life, and for which she paid a steep price in comfort and security. Obama’s disparagement of the 1960s social movements that shaped his mother is revealing. It confirms the absence of serious interest in his own lineage. It hints at an introspection, such as it is, that has the instrumental needs of the present as its magnetic pole. It exemplifies a strongly ahistorical approach to the current world he occupies. Obama’s public remarks that the whole 1960s experience was a ‘psycho-drama’ is astonishing. He is what he is, where he is, as a direct result of the 1960s. The same holds for his wife and children. Indeed, he simply would not be were it not for the ideals and attitudes that became full-blown in the 1960s.

Perhaps at the root of Obama’s narcissism there is a sense of disgust about where he came from and who is is? Or maybe he disdains the movements of the ’60s and ’70s–the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s movement, the anti-war movement, the gay rights movement–because he has no convictions of his own and can’t understand why anyone would have convictions worth fighting for? I don’t know. I admit I simply do not understand the man. I just know he’s toxic for America and he was toxic for the Democratic Party, which, thanks to him, is now truly dead.

Interestingly, I came across another post at HuffPo today that address the issue of generational conflict: Generation X Simply Doesn’t Get it, by Joshua Grant. The post seems to have been written in reaction to the August unemployment numbers. Joshua longs for the days when America really was a great country that everyone could be proud of. His generation, Gen Y, has never experienced it, he says.

We, Generation Y, are a people who have lived through the need for “ADHD medicines,” “anti-depressants,” dysfunctional and broken families, a dot-com bust, financial collapse, failed government institutions, world hunger, terrorism, and international conflicts. Simply put, there has been little to celebrate in life since we’ve been around.

Some people think we are self-absorbed, concerned only with our interest, but can you blame us? The only glimmers of hope have been what personal achievements we have accomplished, of which we hang onto to for dear life. After all, in a country that is supposed to be so “great,” something doesn’t add up, and we want to know why? It’s not that we are conceited or don’t want to be a part of something better, but why get in the middle of a national mess that looks like a downward spiral?

Joshua is so young that lacks any historical perspective. He blames the problems he sees on Generation X. Poor Gen X! They grew up under Reagan and never experienced an America that produced prosperity for anyone but the rich. I’m not sure Joshua even knows about difficult passages that members of other still living generations experienced–like the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, racial discrimination and segregation. He wants to know why things are so terrible in this country right now. And if Gen X-ers aren’t going to do anything about it, he wants them to get out of the way so his generation can. To his parents’ generation, he writes:

Let me thank you on behalf of my generation, Y, for all that you have done, and now I ask that you step aside, open your books, and let us, with all the right questions, begin to solve the problems you can’t seem to figure out. It all starts with Why/Y.

If you won’t ask, we will.

I don’t want to be too hard on Joshua, because he’s obviously very young. But what on earth is his generation waiting for? Why aren’t they in the streets protesting already? Why aren’t they out there demanding jobs and a guarantee they’ll get social security in their old age instead of complaining about being stripped of hope? Why aren’t they protesting the wars, torture, and domestic spying? Why are they waiting around for someone else to do it?

In the comments on Joshua’s article, everyone hammers the baby boomers and says it’s all our fault. At least we tried to fight the powers that be. Our generation didn’t sit around waiting for our parents to change things. We fought for change and we had a powerful effect on the culture even though we couldn’t stop the growing corruption and corporatization of the government. What are these kids waiting for? I admit I just don’t get it.

Well, this post has turned into a bit of a rant, so I guess I’ll wrap it up. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Friday Reads

Posted: August 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Economy, Environment, Environmental Protection, morning reads, U.S. Economy, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , | 29 Comments

good morning!

We’ve talked about the earthquake in Virginia some.  This is one of the most interesting op eds I’ve seen for some time and it’s written by Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall who is actually a psychologist but has done some research on the subject. She argues that fracking in neaby West Virginia could’ve been responsible for the unusual and unusually large quake.  I know there’s a lot of controversy about fracking but I had no idea it could cause earthquakes.  Actually, fracking itself doesn’t, its another step in the process and it’s happened before in Arkansas.

According to geologists, it isn’t the fracking itself that is linked to earthquakes, but the re-injection of waste salt water (as much as 3 million gallons per well) deep into rock beds.

Braxton County West Virginia (160 miles from Mineral) has experienced a rash of freak earthquakes (eight in 2010) since fracking operations started there several years ago. According to geologists fracking also caused an outbreak of thousands of minor earthquakes in Arkansas (as many as two dozen in a single day). It’s also linked to freak earthquakes in Texas, western New York, Oklahoma and Blackpool, England (which had never recorded an earthquake before).

Industry scientists deny the link to earthquakes, arguing that energy companies have been fracking for nearly sixty years. However it’s only a dozen years ago that “slick-water fracks” were introduced. This form of fracking uses huge amounts of water mixed with sand and dozens of toxic chemicals like benzene, all of which is injected under extreme pressure to shatter the underground rock reservoir and release gas trapped in the rock pores. Not only does the practice utilize millions of gallons of freshwater per frack (taken from lakes, rivers, or municipal water supplies), the toxic chemicals mixed in the water to make it “slick” endanger groundwater aquifers and threaten to pollute nearby water-wells.

Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracking (which extend fractures across several kilometres) were introduced in 2004.

The op ed provides links and information on the the related research and information on the prior quake experience in Arkansas.

Mitt Romney lost his cool last night in a New Hampshire Town Meeting. The dust-up was over Romney’s support of a balanced budget amendment which is basically anathema to economists.  You can watch the video and the resultant hair malfunction that results.  Also, interesting to note is Mediate’s use of the word “former” in front of front runner.

Former GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney got into a heated exchange with a voter at a New Hampshire town hall event Wednesday over his support for a balanced budget amendment, and by the mainstream media’s selective standards, lost his cool when she tried to engage him. In clips played on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundownthis morning, Romney certainly appeared angry by those standards, and the full exchange, while slightly less damning, demonstrated a marked contrast with how President Obamadealt with an aggressive questioner recently.

The snippets that MSNBC played, of Romney snippily asking the town hall attendee to let him answer her question, were obviously designed to show the candidate as impatient and besieged, but placing them in context doesn’t change things all that much. Romney aggressively interrupts the woman’s calm, if rambling, question by asking her, “Did somebody in the room say that we don’t need any government?”

When she tries to engage his question, calling the balanced budget amendment “irresponsible,” he interrupts her again, abruptly asking, “Do you have a question, and let me answer your question.”

“Yes, how do you think the government can not provide funds for the people, its citizens?”

Romney begins to answer the question, and from there, you can’t hear what the woman is saying, but Romney reacts angrily to her attempts to follow up, saying, “You had your turn madam, now let me have mine!”

Frum Forum mentions the number of economists that think a double dip recession is inevitable.  I want to bring this up now so that when you hear the villagers say most economists didn’t think that it was going to happen that you’ll see that a lot–if not most–of us do think that.  Also, note that the majority of us have been saying that the Federal government has been doing the wrong Fiscal Policy things since about 2007 too.  Paul Krugman mentions that  the fiscal policy response has just been gunning for another recession tool.

At this point the entire advanced world is doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says it shouldn’t be doing: slashing spending in the face of high unemployment, slow growth, and a liquidity trap. It’s a global 1937. And if the result is another recession, the witch-doctors will just demand more bleeding.

Yup, the austerity demons will undoubtedly howl for more budget cuts and more tax cuts for the unjob creators.

The U.N., U.S. and NATO have unfroze Libyan assets so the transitional government can provide critical humanitarian aid to the Libyan People.  This news comes from the US State Department.

The UN Security Council’s Libya Sanctions Committee approved a U.S. proposal to unfreeze $1.5 billion of Libyan assets to be used to provide critical humanitarian and other assistance to the Libyan people. The U.S. request to unfreeze Libyan assets is divided into three key portions:

Transfers to International Humanitarian Organizations (up to $500 million):

  • Up to $120 million will be transferred quickly to meet unfulfilled United Nations Appeal requests responding to the needs of the Libyan people (including critical assistance to displaced Libyans). Up to $380 million will be used for the revised UN Appeals for Libya and other humanitarian needs as they are identified by the UN or other international or humanitarian organizations.

Transfers to suppliers for fuel and other goods for strictly civilian purposes (up to $500 million):

  • Up to $500 million will be used to pay for fuel costs for strictly civilian needs (e.g., hospitals, electricity and desalinization) and for other humanitarian purchases.

Transfers to the Temporary Financial Mechanism established by the Contact Group to assist the Libyan people (up to $500 million):

  • Up to $400 million will be used for providing key social services, including education and health. Up to $100 million will be used to address food and other humanitarian needs.

The United States crafted this proposal in close coordination with the Transitional National Council, as they assessed the needs of the Libyan people throughout the country. It responds to humanitarian concerns in a diversified way that prioritizes key needs. The United States will work urgently with the Transitional National Council to facilitate the release of these funds within days.

The President of the AFL-CIO continues his harsh criticism of President Obama.  This should be interesting since labor unions provide a lot of GOTV work for elections at all levels.

The most powerful union official in the country offered reporters his harshest critique of President Obama to date Thursday, questioning Obama’s policy and strategic decisions, and claiming he aligned himself with the Tea Party in the debt limit fight.

“This is a moment that working people and quite frankly history will judge President Obama on his presidency; will he commit all his energy and focus on bold solutions on the job crisis or will he continue to work with the Tea Party to offer cuts to middle class programs like Social Security all the while pretending the deficit is where our economic problems really lie,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Trumka dismissed Obama’s recent job creation proposals — an extended payroll tax cut, patent reform, free trade deals — as “nibbly things that aren’t going to make a difference,” and said the AFL-CIO might sit out the Democratic convention if he and the party don’t get serious.

“If they don’t have a jobs program I think we’d better use our money doing other things,” Trumka said.

The editors of Bloomberg are down on monetary policy and are asking for more relevant fiscal policy in this op ed: The U.S. Needs a Jobs Policy, Not More Cheap Money.  Well, at least some body gets it.  The Federal Government can create jobs.  Some one just needs to get the President to believe that and fight for it.

While the Fed can only print money, the government has the power to create jobs directly. And jobs are what the economy needs now, to break the chain in which high unemployment, weak consumer demand and low business confidence reinforce one another. Bloomberg View has laid out some of the best options available for a national jobs policy:

— Public-works spending can lift demand and put people to work in capital-intensive industries such as construction.

— A tax credit for companies that increase their headcount can encourage hesitant employers to hire at minimal cost to taxpayers.

— Programs that pay the wages of new hires as they gain on-the-job training can efficiently target the long-term unemployed.

— Allowing the unemployed to collect benefits while starting up new businesses can prompt older, better-educated people to create their own opportunities.

— For some entry-level jobs, scrapping the reporting of criminal records on applications can help qualified workers get a foot in the door and stay out of prison.

— And to make the spending more palatable to congressional opponents, President Barack Obama could offer to cut some of the red tape holding back hiring and economic growth, such as the outdated Davis-Bacon Act, which artificially raises the cost of public-works projects.

Altogether, a meaningful jobs package might cost taxpayers more than $200 billion over a couple years. To provide the government the leeway it needs to support the economy in the short term, it’s crucial that the congressional supercommittee, which must find $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years, recommend a combination of new revenue, spending cuts, tax reforms and entitlement changes that would put the government’s long-term finances on a sustainable path.

Whatever Bernanke says today, he can’t rescue the economy alone

Yup.  But, we’ve been talking about that here for a long time.  I feel a bit blue in the face, do you?

So, here’s some news from North Dakota where seven oil companies are charged with killing birds.

Seven oil companies have been charged in federal court with illegally killing 28 migratory birds in Williams County.

Slawson Exploration Company of Kansas, ConocoPhillips Company, Petro Hunt, LLC and Newfield Production Company, all of Texas, Brigham Oil and Gas, LP of Williston, Continental Resources, Inc. of Oklahoma, Fidelity Exploration and Production Company of Colorado face charges of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Most of the dead birds were found in un-netted oil reserve pits in May. An employee of one company alerted the Fish and Wildlife service to some of the dead birds. Others were found by inspectors.

In one case, an oil spill leaked into a nearby wetland, where several ducks died as a result of exposure to the oil.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says netting is the most effective way of keeping birds from entering waste pits.

The maximum sentence they face is six months in federal prison and a $15,000 fine.

So corporations have all these people rights now, how do we get them into prison for those six months? Perhaps Uncle Clarence Thomas has a suggestion?

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

UPDATE:

Via Corrente and Lambert/DC Blogger: 

Update on Susie at Suburban Guerilla

Susie was taken to the hospital early this morning for a possible heart attack and is being kept there for observation and testing until tomorrow morning.

Monday Reads

Posted: August 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: education, Foreign Affairs, Libya, morning reads, religion, religious extremists, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning!! Yesterday was an exciting day for the Libyan rebels, who have taken over the capital city, Tripoli. From the NYT:

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power dissolved with astonishing speed on Monday as rebels marched into the capital and arrested two of his sons, while residents raucously celebrated the prospective end of his four-decade-old rule.

In the city’s central Green Square, the site of many manufactured rallies in support of Colonel Qaddafi, jubilant Libyans tore down green flags and posters of Colonel Qaddafi and stomped on them. The leadership announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered and that they controlled many parts of the city, but not Colonel Qaddafi’s leadership compound.

The National Transitional Council, the rebel governing body, issued a mass text message saying, “We congratulate the Libyan people for the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and call on the Libyan people to go into the street to protect the public property. Long live free Libya.”

Officials loyal to Colonel Qaddafi insisted that the fight was not over, and there were clashes between rebels and government troops early on Monday morning. But NATO and American officials said that the Qaddafi government’s control of Tripoli, which had been its final stronghold, was now in doubt.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens next. I hope it will mean the U.S. pulling out of there, but that’s probably a vain hope. After all, Libya has oil and gold.

Business Insider: AFTER QADDAFI: Oil Prices Will Tank, Stock Prices Will Soar

Watch what happens to oil prices if and when the Qaddafis lose and leave.

In short order, Libyan oil production will ramp up. As it does, oil prices in world markets will fall and oil futures markets will reflect the expected increase in production of oil from Libya. The key prices to watch are those trading in Europe, like Brent. US oil prices (WTI) are no longer the leading indicator of world prices intersecting with world supply/demand. Excess inventory at Cushing, OK is complicating the pricing structure.

We expect oil prices to fall when highly desirable, sweet Libyan crude production is fully resumed and enters the pipeline. Maybe, they are going to fall by a lot. This will come as a much-needed boost to the US economy and to others in the world.

Remember: the oil price acts like a sales tax on consumption. To clarify this relationship we convert crude oil prices to gasoline prices and then estimate what a change in gas price will mean for the American consumer. Roughly, a penny drop in the gas price per gallon gives Americans 1.4 billion more dollars a year to spend on other than gasoline. That is a huge stimulant to the economy. The ratio is different in Europe because the gas taxes are so much higher there. Nevertheless, it is still significant.

In other news, President Obama is still on vacation, and unemployment is still soaring. From the SF Chronicle: Obama keeps full vacation day after Libya briefing

In between briefings on Libya, President Barack Obama packed golf, beach time, a stop at a seafood restaurant and a visit to a wealthy friend’s seaside compound into his Martha’s Vineyard vacation Sunday….

Then Obama and his family headed to dinner at the house where White House adviser Valerie Jarrett is staying.

Earlier, Obama spent about an hour at the home of Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts after playing golf with some buddies. The golf foursome included Obama’s Chicago pal Eric Whitaker, UBS America executive Robert Wolf and a White House aide. Obama spent the morning at the beach with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia.

From the LA Times: Congresswomen hear economic, unemployment woes at Inglewood event

…hundreds of people from Los Angeles-area communities…gathered Saturday to share their stories of hardship and to urge local members of Congress to push corporations to help fix the economy and devise ways to put people back to work. Three Democratic U.S. representatives attended the event: Maxine Waters and Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Laura Richardson of Long Beach….
The recession has slammed Los Angeles County, where 1 in 4 workers are jobless or underemployed, according to Good Jobs LA. This summer, L.A. businesses announced 5,700 layoffs, the jobs advocacy group said.

At the same time, corporations are hoarding almost $2 trillion in cash but failing to invest in jobs, the advocacy group said. The group also cited skyrocketing bonuses for many chief executives and big tax breaks for some of the nation’s largest companies.

Warren Buffet recently asked President Obama to raise taxes on the rich for the good of all. Another multi-billionaire, David Koch, disagrees with Buffet that rich Americans should sacrifice anything for their country.

America’s current tax system forces people making $50,000 a year to pay a higher rate than hedge fund managers making $2.4 million an hour. Warren Buffett penned an op-ed last week declaring that America’s super-rich have been “coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” Lamenting the numerous tax loopholes and special breaks afforded to billionaire investors, Buffett noted that in his entire career, even when capital gains rates were as high as 39.9 percent, he never saw anyone “shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”

Charles Koch, head of the massive petrochemical, manufacturing, and commodity speculating Koch Industries corporation, has responded to Warren’s call for shared sacrifice: “No Thanks.” In a statement to right-wing media, Koch states:

Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending. I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

Yeah, like supporting wingnuts like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan is good for our country. I’d like to see Koch’s fortune confiscated. Maybe we need to bring back the guillotine?

Romney's home in La Jolla, CA

Speaking of rich A$$holes, Mitt Romney has decided that his $12 million mansion in La Jolla must be enlarged–he wants the already huge house to be four times as big.

LA JOLLA — GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, scheduled to attend a series of fundraisers this weekend in San Diego, is also working on plans to nearly quadruple the size of his $12 million oceanfront manse in La Jolla.

Romney has filed an application with the city to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot, single-story home at 311 Dunemere Dr. and replace it with a two-story, 11,062-square-foot structure. No date has been set to consider the proposed coastal development and site development permits, which must be approved by the city.

The former governor of Massachusetts purchased the home three years ago. According to a description from the listing agent, the Spanish-style residence at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac is sophisticated and understated in its décor, “offering complete privacy and unsurpassed elegance.”

Tentative plans call for new retaining walls and a relocated driveway, but would retain the existing lap pool and spa.

Just how many homes does this man own anyway? Slate Magazine says “just” two. He had a huge house in Massachusetts, not too far from where I live, but he sold it in 2009 for $3.5 million.

I guess after he used (screwed) our state to set up his run for President, he decided to clear out and move his con man act to California. He also sold a “$5.25 million, 9,500-square-foot ski villa in Deer Valley, Utah,” according to Slate. Time calls that “the new frugality.” He’s hanging onto a home in New Hampshire apparently. Where’s that guillotine?

In science news, from Clive Cookson at the Financial Times: Life on earth came from space

The existence of amino acids in space has already been proved by the analysis of meteorites that have struck earth, and comet samples collected in space during Nasa’s Stardust mission. It has been harder to prove that traces of nucleobases found in meteorites were not the result of contamination after they arrived – but the new study seems to do so, while showing that nucleobases reach earth from space in greater diversity and quantity than scientists had thought.

The Nasa team analysed samples of 12 carbon-rich meteorites, including nine found in Antarctica (a rich collecting ground), and detected guanine and adenine, two of the four nucleobases that make up DNA. They also found three related molecules known as nucleobase analogues, a discovery which provides confirmation that the organic compounds in meteorites come from space.

“You would not expect to see these nucleobase analogues if contamination from terrestrial life was the source, because they’re not used in biology,” says Michael Callahan, lead author of the study, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “However, if asteroids are cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, because of the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid.”

Further confirmation came from an analysis of Antarctic ice, taken from near where the meteorites were collected, which showed no trace of the compounds.

Wait…. you mean life didn’t originate in the Garden of Eden?

In related news, a court has ruled that a teacher who made fun of creationism and Christianity cannot be sued for expressing her opinions.

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a California teacher could not be sued for criticizing Christianity and Creationism during a college-level European history course.

“This was a really important ruling for academic freedom,” University of California constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, who took on the case pro bono, told The Orange County Register. “There has never been a precedent set for something like this before. Teachers should be able to criticize religion just like they can criticize government, business and similar groups without the fear of being sued.”

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out a lower court’s decision, which held that teacher James Corbett violated a student’s First Amendment rights by making comments during class that were hostile to religion in general, and to Christianity in particular….

Corbett said during his class that serfs opposed social, political and economic [sic] that were in their best interest because of religion, compared Creationism to “magic,” and made twenty other comments that then-sophomore Chad Farnan alleged were disparaging to Christians.

Oh, did I mention this was a college course? Good grief!!

That’s all I have for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

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