Month: March 2009

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has asked Canadian cities and towns to phase out bottled water. [CBC]

What can we hang on to and what should we liquidate?

“These jobs aren’t coming back,” John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia in Charlotte, North Carolina, said after the Labor Department’s report Friday. “A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations.”

The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone.

The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves.

You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.

Frank Schaeffer, Open Letter

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home.

You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the “architect” America just hired — President Obama — to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year’s primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his “supply side” myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There’s more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with — and useful to — the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God).

They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America’s “moral decline.” Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now?

Mike Stathis at SeekingAlpha:

Mr. Greenspan, you have been the individual most responsible for the current crisis; a crisis which commenced only a few years after you tried to minimize the dotcom collapse, which of course you also created. By flooding the banks with ridiculously low interest rates you thought this Ponzi scheme economy could run on worthless money forever. But when you saw the end was coming, you quietly made your exit.

Your tenure as Fed Chairman will go down in history as the most destructive to any developed nation in history, costing Americans over $20 trillion for both bubble implosions combined.

That is a slap in the face to all Americans. Have you no conscience?

I think we should be ashamed that we tolerate sideshow barkers on radio and television. Loud and colorful opinions might be stimulating, but the errors damage us.

Who will count the millions that CNBC’s Jim Cramer has led astray? This chart shows stock picks from his broadcast and his poor record.

Cramer’s peculiar tirade brought viewers to advertisers, but few others would benefit, if only a random few that threw dull darts at rubbery balloons charted in Cramer’s casino.

Too many took his view that investment is no more than speculation, and worse, investment is no more than gambling. He sold the pace of a game and distorted our social purpose.

Cramer’s record shows Cramer is wrong and people are hurt.

Douglas Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box:

Something has gone terribly wrong.

Unquestionably but seemingly inexplicably, we have come to live in a world where the market has insinuated itself into every area of our lives. From erection to conception, school admission to finding a spouse, there are products and professionals to fill in where family and community have failed us. Commercials entreat us to think and care for ourselves, but to do so by choosing a corporation through which to exercise all this autonomy.

Life Incorporated, posted at Dervala Chicks

Neat illustration, but look, New Scientist reports that replacement bones can now be formed using 3D printers.

Exact replicas of a man’s thumb bones have been made for the first time using a 3D printer.

The breakthrough paves the way for surgeons to replace damaged or diseased bones with identical copies built from the patients’ own cells.

“In theory, you could do any bone,” says Christian Weinand of the Insel Hospital in Berne, Switzerland, head of the team that copied his thumb bones. “Now I can put spares in my pocket if I want.” [found at NextBigFuture]

From Edward Harrison’s blog:

Faber goes on to explain that not only did the key players fail to understand what was going on – when it was obvious to him, us and millions of others – they then misdiagnosed the problem and prescribed the wrong treatment. They thought it was a liquidity crisis; so they threw billions in cash at dying institutions.

At every step of the way, the feds have been clueless, hopeless, and defenseless. It was the feds who lent money at negative real interest rates for more than 5 years. It was the feds who pretended to “regulate” and “control” the marketplace… claiming to protect investors from fraud and malfeasance. It was the feds who licensed the banks… set banking standards… blessed derivatives because they “distributed risk more widely” (Greenspan)… urged people to buy adjustable rate mortgages (Greenspan again)… praised sub-prime lending because it encouraged home ownership… and even told consumers to “go out and buy an SUV” in order to give the economy a boost (Fed governor Robert Tier).

The feds piled up the tinder… poured on the gasoline… and lit the match. And now, what do you know… they’ve all joined the fire department!

The Public Domain by James Boyle

Go to the Library of Congress.

This is an astounding repository of material-not just books and periodicals, but pictures, films, and music. The vast majority of this material, perhaps as much as 95 percent in the case of books, is commercially unavailable.

The process happens comparatively quickly. Estimates suggest that a mere twenty-eight years after publication 85 percent of the works are no longer being commercially produced. (We know that when U.S. copyright required renewal after twenty-eight years, about 85 percent of all copyright holders did not bother to renew. This is a reasonable, if rough, guide to commercial viability.)

Yet because the copyright term is now so long, in many cases extending well over a century, most of twentieth-century culture is still under copyright- copyrighted but unavailable.

Much of this, in other words, is lost culture. No one is reprinting the books, screening the films, or playing the songs. No one is allowed to.

J-Walk points out there’s a free PDF version.

“The right moment has come today, for the first time after the end of the Cold War, for making real progress in resuming the global disarmament process on a broad agenda.”

GENEVA — Russia’s foreign minister called Saturday for an end to a decade of failure in global disarmament talks, seeking to build on an upbeat meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama appealed Saturday to his fellow citizens to endure, find opportunity in these hard times and ultimately prosper from the challenge.

“That is what we can do and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do.”

In other housekeeping news,

1. the Supreme Court wiped away one of the Bush administration’s greatest victories – to order indefinite detention of legal residents of the United States.
2. A federal judge threw out a lawsuit questioning Obama’s citizenship, lambasting the case as a waste of time and suggesting the plaintiff’s attorney may have to compensate the president’s lawyer.
3. Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with UK Prime Minister Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

If you’ve got a cell phone or an Internet connected PC, you can listen to “local” radio stations anywhere and read “local” newspaper stories from anywhere. So why do the so-called “local media” keep pretending like only nearby people are listening and reading? It’s time the industries opened their eyes to the new reality: Nothing is local anymore. And it’s a huge opportunity.

The new mantra should be: Cover local events exclusively, but for a global audience. [The Raw Feed]

Child abuse can change the structure of the brain.

University of Newcastle professor of perinatal and infant psychiatry, Louise Newman, says if children are abused early, they are flooded with stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.

“This impacts directly on how the brain develops and the stress regulation mechanism. It becomes highly stressed so it’s like setting the thermostat on high, setting up a system which regulates stress less efficiently.”

“Also it impacts on the area which controls feelings, so they’re more likely to be highly stressed, have difficulties with anger and emotions, and be prone to self-harm, anxiety, suicide and depression.”

Cleaning products and air fresheners can produce formaldehyde.

UC Berkeley researchers found that chemicals in pine oils and citrus oils react with ozone in the air, producing formaldehyde. [GreenBuildingElements]

A record 11.18 percent of housing loans – 1 in 8 – were past due or in foreclosure in 2008.

In national scales, 2030 is tomorrow.

An in-depth study by Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors Corp. has found that plant and forestry waste and dedicated energy crops could sustainably replace nearly a third of our gasoline by the year 2030. ScienceBlog

Sandia’s 90 Billion Gallon Study assumes 75 billion gallons would be ethanol made from nonfood cellulosic feedstocks and 15 billion gallons from corn-based ethanol. The study examined four sources of biofuels: agricultural residue, such as corn stover and wheat straw; forest residue; dedicated energy crops, including switchgrass; and short rotation woody crops, such as willow and poplar. It examines the costs of producing, harvesting, storing and transporting these sources to newly built bio-refineries.

Why the Republican Party Must Die – Generational Theft and End of Republicans – Esquire

So now all taxes are socialism and any kind of deficit spending is generational theft? This is just crazy talk. But we’re used to crazy talk from fringy Republicans.

Either they’re trying to convince us that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs or they’re insisting that 99 percent of the world’s scientists are wrong about global warming — and that they have a Professor of Dentistry at Oral Roberts University who can prove it. That you can pay down the deficit by cutting taxes. That the God of Love who embraced lepers and prostitutes is really the God of Gay-Bashing.

It’s hilarious the things these guys come up with.

What do Republicans stand for today?

Well, in truth, they don’t have a clue. But some evil mind in their ranks is telling them that, in the midst of the greatest crisis perhaps ever faced by the nation, they should simply oppose whatever Obama and his party suggests.

Really?

Is that all you’ve got?

If that is all you’ve got, then what you are doing should be deemed illegal. You aren’t even trying to offer us a new path; you are just doing what you did for the last eight years: wrecking America.

Transcript at Bill Moyers:

Given what we know is happening around the world, are you scared?

Johnson: Yes I am.

Moyers: What scares you the most?

Johnson: That everybody will stand and watch and cater to past patterns of power.

The banking system has been the dominant sector in our society and in our politics, which is heavily money driven, for a very long time. As they falter, we could stagnate, catering to their needs disproportionately while the system sinks.

Did condominium developers cause the housing bubble?

Some historical background, if you’ll indulge me. Things changed considerably in the early 1970s when the strata condominium was introduced to the market.

This new concept provided buyers, including tenants, the opportunity to purchase and own their own suite rather than pay rent. Prices paid for condominiums were soon much higher than rental apartments.

As a result, land quickly increased in value to reflect the fact that building condominiums was significantly more profitable than building rental apartments.

Accordingly, except for very few special situations, the construction of purpose-built rental properties ceased.

Without reasonable rental options, owning a property became the demand.

A canvas bag for groceries will creates 4.4 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every year, while single-use plastic bags average 13 pounds, and paper bags ring in at 66 pounds. [Allen Consulting Group]

Customers

The more customers there are, the more money [the rich] make, the more money you make. This is a basic law of the market. When, why, and how did we forget that? Why is this story not being told by the media? Is it because all the people on the TeeVee are making over $250,000? Well, guess what, Sparky. If there are more customers, and more ads, and more competition for ad space, you’ll make more than $250,000 next year.

Spread the word. It’s not about class warfare. It’s not about leveling incomes. It’s about creating more and better customers for what rich people make and invest in.

That’s how things worked out in the 1990s. Things can be that way again.

Easy overview at the press conference with Obama and UK’s Gordon Brown, who said:

As far as the common interests that we’re pursuing — look, there is the possibility in the next few months of a global new deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system. And there is the possibility of all the different countries of the world coming together to agree to expansion in the economy that is necessary to both restore confidence and to give people jobs and growth and prosperity for the future.

And there is the possibility of the international institutions for the first time being reformed in such a way that they can do the job that people want them to do, and deal with some of the problems that exist in the poorest countries of the world. And there’s a chance, also, that the recovery that we’re talking about can be a green recovery, a low-carbon recovery, where each country in different parts of the world can work on this together.

So the opportunities are there.

Testing pesticides one at a time to see how much is needed to kill a fish fails to show the true risks.

In the real world, pesticides combine to make the threat more extreme.

AP story at Forbes
Tip to Doug Powell at AGNET

The American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money, has given Harvard a big fat F.