our governments are captured

On corporate capture of our governments, in 1913 Woodrow Wilson wrote:

If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now?

Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it?

Must capture the government? They have already captured it.

Edward Kane at Boston College wrote:

This ugly financial episode we’ve all had to live through makes clear that taxpayers must protect themselves against two things:

1) the corrupting influence of bureaucratic self-interest among regulators and

2) the political clout wielded by the large institutions they are supposed to police.

That authorities and financiers could so callously violate common-law duties of loyalty, competence, and care they owe taxpayers and financial-institution customers is evidence of a massive incentive breakdown in industry and government.

All our regulators must:

…make themselves politically and financially accountable for the ways in which they exercise their discretion.

All our regulators must:

…fearlessly bond themselves to disclose enough information about their decision making to allow the community or interested outsiders to determine whether and how badly they neglect, abuse, or mishandle their responsibilities.


midterm message is no-confidence

1) The people are rejecting both parties.

2) All recent elections were rejections, not affirmations.

Thomas Ferguson:

What the election really shows is not that the parties can’t agree — Democrats and most of the GOP leadership finally agreed on the bank bailouts, for example — but that the American people will not accept the policies that leaders in both parties prefer.

In 2006 and 2008, the population voted no-confidence in the Republicans on the war and the economy. They have just now presented the Democrats with another resounding a no-confidence vote. What makes the current situation intractable is the fundamental reason for these serial failures.

It’s obvious !

Big money dominates both major parties.

American political parties are mostly bank accounts. What you are told is the voice of the people is usually the sound of money talking.

If you want a happy ending, you probably shouldn’t follow our system too closely in the next few years.


A few things to note… the two Presidents who added to the debt at the quickest rate were GW in first place and Reagan in second.

free to be other

When people don’t scream and hurl nonsense invective at each other.

Jon Stewart nails it:

As Stewart persuasively argued, “We’ve all bought into the idea that the conflict in the country is left and right,Republicans and Democrats.” Furthermore, an insidious, attention-grabbing news media “amplifies a division that I don’t think is the right fight … [because] both sides have their way of shutting down debate.”

“It’s become tribal,” he declared, and the major culprits aren’t Tea Partying loons — they’re the CNNs and Foxes and, yes, MSNBCs of the world.

Meanwhile, “The real conflict is corruption vs. non-corruption, extremists vs. non-extremists.”

kids know it

Is


Not


Republican.





Here’s why the president will win re-election in 2012.

wtfhassarahpalindonesofar.com

tweaking twilight

Having Come This Far ~ James Broughton

I’ve been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn’t
I was never sure how I would get there

I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch

I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love

No longer do I hunt for targets
I’ve climbed all the summits I need to
and I’ve eaten my share of lotus

Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice

I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life

I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I’d rather be blithe than correct

Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.

I think I’ll go ahead & splash & enervate & blithe. Transcendence with Ether I’ll leave to transcendence of ethers and other naughts we praise.

inventing us

We’re facing things no humanity has. Much more than all the heroes. Let us be pioneering. The thing mountains do, prairies do, rivers and little streams.

Part of ours is you. Part of stars is you.

media dissolves value

Media will sex things up at the expense of the truth, i.e. misleading investors into thinking returns are better than they really are.

It’s odd to me media is never bonded. A bond makes production liable. Instead we shelter media thoroughly. We will war for their right to lie when what we do not trust is a greater danger.

Sensationalism sells.

Why does this happen? Well, for one thing, a lot of journalists are innumerate and a lot don’t know much about history.

But for another, darker reason: it’s an easy story.

Gold price at record high. Nope.
In inflation-adjusted dollars, it’s 65% short of true 1980 peak.

The actual gold record was 30 years ago when the price hit $2,318.

Gold is at a record only if you fail to adjust for inflation. And you should almost always adjust for inflation.

Otherwise, you end up with a series of meaningless records — Gold reaches record high! Oil reaches record high! Lettuce reaches record high!

Still distracting gumming as far as I’m concerned. Dollars chase gold when too little in the economy is better. And that’s the task.

Jim Grant speaking on gold price: “the reciprocal of trust in the dollar”.

Why not aluminum, another metal that will not go away? That’s a light bet on the reciprocal of weight.

Bumped into this wonderful comment at Illusion of Prosperity:

Can we unfleece sheep?”

the stumping stimulus

Fizzle !

Election expenditures are “clearly adding to economic activity” but probably would have less impact per dollar than a direct government spending program such as President Obama’s stimulus effort.

Republicans, for example, spent twice as much on country clubs and golf courses, while Democrats spent more on caterers and liquor.

Washington Post:

Total spending for the midterms nears $4 billion.
The ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program was just $3 billion.

Campaigns paid banks to handle their money, consultants to map out their strategies and media buyers to book their advertising. Karl Rove Crossroads Media was paid more than $40 million.

The biggest winners of all were broadcasters, which together are expected to rake in about $2.5 billion in ad revenue from federal, state and local campaigns.

Please ponder Andrew Doran’s tweet:

“Cutbacks because of debt, debt because of financial bailouts.”

Who funded The Big Lie?

It seems to me that the last year or so has represented the triumph of untruth. —Andrew Sullivan

Certainly not the Tea Party on their sofa.

Let’s poke around to learn why politicians succeed with neither truth nor fact. Study the ugly nueromarketing of 2010 and try to stay on point, folks.

“The real risk is that politicians will not want us to know that they are using influencing tools.”

“It has already been used in the last two elections and I believe it will become an even more significant factor in the future.”

“It’s easier to trust the response you visualize on a MRI than to trust what people tell you.”

Republicans appear to be using neuromarketing more than Democrats, if this midterm is any indication. They are appealing to the emotion of voters’ triggers.

“No Democratic candidate I know of has used them [neuromarketing tactics], nor has any major Democratic organization appeared to express any interest in them.”

inner workings

Transparency | Number10.gov.uk

“We want to be the most open and transparent government in the world.

“Publishing all this information is a massive job…”

Whitehouse Transparency

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Government should be transparent.

groupthink asphyxiation

But these days, one source of anger trumps all others. We are perhaps most furious about our dysfunctional political system, one that cherishes acrimony over cohesion, backstabbing over unity, bickering over a calm and respectful, unified vision.

Mark Morford on keeping the anger, the dread, the paranoia alive —the Tea Party chugged it like Coors-flavored heroin:

You don’t have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it’s ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job.

There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.


“For there to be common ground, both sides have to be looking for it.” —Helen Philpot

making ready

Central governments famously have Five Year Plans.

China’s recently released a draft plan for the next five years is nothing short of full-blown strategy for transforming the nation’s development model.

In a first for the government’s planning process, the 12th Five-Year Plan for the 2011-2015 period outlines specific steps designed to raise consumption levels and make China a leading consumer market.

One message is clear: The Chinese government wants to foster a national transformation from ‘world’s factory’ to ‘world’s market’.

Editor’s comment:

Size is only one of many factors that determine whether a market leads the world. More important are a market’s depth and breadth, which it turn depend on a nation’s integrated development. This is why a responsible government should focus on employment, fair allocation of resources, education and public services.

As China’s per capita income approaches US$ 4,000, the vision and abilities of the central leadership are being tested.

Leaders are  struggling to balance growth and income distribution, fairness and efficiency. The outcome will determine China’s development for the next five years.

ultra sharing

They are the rarest of the rarest of the rare.

There is evidence that they can see through each other’s eyes and perhaps share each other’s unspoken thoughts. And if that proves true, it will be the rarest thing of all. They will be unique in the world.

The way their heads are joined, they have markedly different fields of view. One child will look at a toy or a cup. The other can reach across and grab it, even though her own eyes couldn’t possibly see its location.

They share thoughts, too.

h/t Mind Hacks

so the entire world

Chiefs, kings, tyrants and thieves teach each other so many tricks.

“If they can give someone $300,000 for not winning a game then that means Zimbabwe should have no reason whatsoever to have people that are hungry, suffering or oppressed.”

Leaders get away with what they’re provided: our tolerance of up.

wanna take you liar

Decision Points. G.W. Bush is counting down to his book sale:  “11… 9… 10…”

He’ll be on the Today Show waterboarding veal cutlets.  —David Letterman

I’m not going to read it until he reads it.  —David Letterman

discourachirpy

The first thing to do to become happier, paradoxically, is to accept painful emotions, to accept them as a part of being alive. You know, there are two kinds of people who don’t experience painful emotions such as anxiety or disappointment, sadness, envy; two kinds of people who don’t experience these painful emotions. They are the psychopaths and the dead.

save ourselves

What is THE practical question?

1) “How can we make the transition to a post-cheap-oil, post-stable-climate, post-industrial-economy society?”

2) “What does it mean to live a good life?”

You’re invited to reply to one, two, both, more.

volatile and heating

Climate disruption is the term recommended by longtime climate scientist Michael Tobis. That’s the term.

Saying “climate disruption” is stating the whole problem.

When evidence is needed, try NASA’s Eyes On The Earth as a top ‘go to’ website.

Slacktivist sez: The facts of the matter do matter to those for whom facts matter.

“We’re not going to go down the science route”, says Karen Alderman Harbert, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.

Harbert frequently testifies in front of Congress and
provides analysis to the media, policymakers and industry leaders.
Harbert is Republican administration former assistant secretary
for policy
and International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
She was the primary policy advisor to the DOE Secretary
and to the department on domestic and international energy issues,
including climate change, fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Harbert was also a member of DOE’s Executive Board as well as the Credit Review Board.
She negotiated and managed bilateral and multilateral agreements
on energy security and research and development objectives.
She was vice chairman of the International Energy Agency
which advises its 27 member nations
on energy policy issues
and orchestrates international responses
to energy supply disruptions.
Harbert was the deputy assistant administrator for
Latin America and the Caribbean
at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
She had oversight of programs in 11 countries,
totaling more than $800 million and 1,000 employees.
In the private sector, Harbert worked for a developer
of international infrastructure and power projects
valued at more than $9 billion int he Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.
Harbert gained experience on economic reform and privatization
through earlier positions at the USAID, the Organization of American States,
and the International Republican Institute. [link here]

Michael Tobis also said:

“The problem with quotes on Twitter is that you can’t always be sure of their authenticity.” ~ Abraham Lincoln