Month: February 2010

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power. —Franklin Delano Roosevelt

James Wooley:

It is important to remember the primary product of Wall Street: the peddling of debt.

Often one hears of the necessity of Wall Street bankers for providing seed money for industry; but year after year we have observed them dismantling factories and shipping them overseas. We have observed them dismantling production facilities and shipping them overseas. We have observed them dismantling research and development laboratories and shipping them overseas

And year after year we have observed them ship all those jobs and careers overseas along with those facilities.

Dismantle, dismantle, dismantle is what we have observed. They securitize, and promote the privatization and securitization of everything. Then they transfer their private debt, from whence their millions and billions flow into their coffers, to the public, and then it becomes the public debt (or rather the public’s debt!).

Profiteering.

And what is the point? To enrich a few and to impoverish the many. As usual.

Edward Harrison:

Those at the top of the pile tend to stay there.

I would argue that free market ideology has been distorted by elites as a means of justifying kleptocracy.

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask: why do the commoners tolerate the transfers of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats?

Deric Bownds’s Mind Blog: Religion thrives when the majority seek the aid and protection of supernatural powers…

Because they are impoverished as in the third- and second-world countries. Or in the case of the United States, the most religious and creationist first-world country, because the majority of Americans fear losing their middle-class status as a result of limited government support, high levels of social pathology, and intense economic competition and income disparity.

Municipalities have revenue motives:

We find that significantly more tickets are issued in the year following a decline in revenue.

Our results suggest that tickets are used as a revenue?generation tool rather than solely a means to increase public safety.

Born with a density of dopamine:

“We showed that low levels of dopamine receptors were associated with low social status and that high levels of dopamine receptors were associated with higher social status.”

Ponder this nugget from Sarah Palin’s Teabagger speech.

“I think, kind of tougher to, um, put our arms around, but allowing America’s spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we’re not afraid to say, especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we’re not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.”

To recall her cause, she got through it using notes scrawled on her hand: Energy, Budget Tax cuts, Lift American spirit.

First of all, let’s be clear that ‘consumption experience’ and ‘hedonic adaptation’ are very odd terms.

Six studies demonstrate that interrupting a consumption experience can make pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant experiences more irritating, even though consumers avoid breaks in pleasant experiences and choose breaks in unpleasant experiences.

Take a break, or not.

“Clearly you need a decent building code there. It doesn’t exist,” said former U.S. Ambassador, Timothy Carney. “How do you enforce a sensible combination of building code and zoning on a place as free-wheeling, free spirited and unenforceable as Haiti?”

She says all poems are about love.
Carol Ann Duffy, first female poet laureate of Britain: My life is permanently erotic. Everything is, isn’t it?… And I never told my parents because I thought it was my fault.

Copyright runs out 70 years after an author’s death. “Freeing historic books from the shelves has the potential to revolutionize access to the world’s greatest library resources,” said Lynne Brindley, the British Library’s chief executive.

Spengler gnarling at Asia Times:

What brought the banks down was not speculative bets in volatile markets but what appeared to be ultra-safe investments in the most conservative assets available, namely medium-term bonds rated Aaa/AAA by Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, the major rating agencies.

The US Federal Reserve agreed to allow the banks to put on more leverage (that is, allocate less of their own capital against prospective losses) than they had in the past. But the Fed agreed to do this only for assets that were supposed to be virtually default-proof. The ratings agencies “sold their soul to the devil”, as a Standard & Poor’s analyst admitted in an e-mail later brought to light by a congressional investigation, in order to rubber-stamp riskier assets with the AAA label.

But that’s because the banks couldn’t find enough prime assets in which to invest and had to find subprime assets to replace them.

…
There is nothing wrong in principle with Paul Volcker’s call for banking caution. But the problems of the banking system can’t be separated from the larger economic picture.

Without a way to match the aging savers of the industrial world with the young workers and entrepreneurs of the global south, banking problems will persist no matter what regulatory regime prevails.

Mark Anderson:

1. The last administration spent more money from current funds, and indebted us more deeply into the future, than any in history.
2. Called “starve the beast,” it is a much-discussed strategy of spending the US into oblivion while in power, so that the following party has no dry ammunition with which to carry out its programs.
3. Carried further, it suggests a gluttony of spending while in power, so that services, and the government itself, is forced into contraction.

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.

We have 1000+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance.

What’s sad is libertine disregard for the blood-pumping requirement to bring honor and integrity to every moment of leadership.

MSNBC: Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that the first gentleman, Todd Palin, exchanged with state officials draw a picture of his influence on policy in the Sarah Palin administration. Other e-mails are still being withheld by the state of Alaska.

• The governor coached her staff on how to disguise the amount of electrical work needed at the mansion to hook up her new tanning bed.

• Palin and her staff stewed over the refusal of the state Public Safety Department to provide a plane so the children could fly to Todd’s family’s home in Dillingham…

Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production, marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, “strategy for responding to media allegations,” staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, “strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,” potential cuts to the governor’s staff, “confidentiality issues,” Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

Foolishly indebted Phoenix will now tax all fresh and basic food, yes, milk, meat, vegetables and other food.

J. Ritchie, a robot, i am not:

Understanding the motivations of the architects of the modern world reveals a startling picture of greed, callousness and ignorance.

Lord Macaulay in the British Parliament on 2nd Feb 1835:

Miles O’Brien:

We had all watched and marveled as Sullenberger and Stiles ditched that Airbus so deftly in the Hudson River. Continental/Colgan 3407 was the negative image of that event.

From Sully – to sullied.

The two crashes offer cases in point for the consequences of a fundamental change in the way we fly in this country that you probably have not noticed. Since deregulation in the late seventies, the large, legacy carriers have outsourced much of their flying…

The Washington DC firm of Murray Hill Incorporated is first to take the step of running for Congress.

Murray Hill Inc. has long held an interest in politics and sees corporate candidacy as an emerging new market. Filing to run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, Campaign Manager William Klein said, “The business of America is business and now it’s the business of democracy too. It’s our democracy. We bought it, we paid for it, and we’re going to keep it.”

Murray Hill Inc. launched the campaign with a website, Facebook page and YouTube campaign ad.

Science Sez:
When complaining, smile. When complaining about something important, smile and snarl.

Read that post title, er, twice.

Chris Corrigan:

    We are just poor weak human beings,

    Resisting the call

    Because we cease and desist

    our belief in all we can offer

    Somehow we have created

    single places upon which everything hinges

    and when we are put in those spaces

    we confront our smallness, see it in

    perspective because none of us are

    big enough to be the change others expect

    and we have long stopped fooling ourselves.

    To confront our own smallness is terrifying

    especially when people project bigness on us -

    the scale of challenge, the scope of our capability.

    The I we are through other people’s eyes

    is never the me we see through our own.

    Know this - you have been chosen only to live.

    It is never over until you leave.

    the only line you ever cross

    is the one you choose to draw.

White Blood Cell Chases Bacteria.

“The white? blood cell stalks its prey tirelessly. It can consume more than three times its physical size in a single day.”

Just super!

I wondered about the creep factor if I’d seen this as a child and I’m in awe that kids now enjoy our world within.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnlULOjUhSQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

NASA posits that the universe ballooned from subatomic scale to the size of a soccer ball during its first 10^-33 seconds, “not a surprise, but it’s nice to have confirmation”.

On it’s way to 60% of our spending, already one half the world’s total, one newspaper editor steps up:

Our military budget is 13 percent higher than at the peak of the Korean War, 33 percent higher than at the peak of the Vietnam War, 12 percent higher than at the peak of the Cold War and 64 percent higher than the Cold War average.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Biggest US Defence Budget Since WW2

Fred Kaplan | Slate | 1 February 2010

At $708bn, 2011 defense budget 23% higher in real terms than Cold-War peak.

Jeremy Cherfas:

Like us, developing countries are simultaneously becoming obese and under-nourished, because the ‘diseases of affluence’ are not diseases of affluence at all but diseases of an over-simplified diet.