Author: Brian

What are we told about the middle class?
Charles Smith has gathered a few facts. Generally, we think about income from $45,000 to $125,000, but we fail to include expenses, the roller coaster of inflation and debt and costly services such as insurance.

What if we looked more deeply? Charles is proposing taking a new look at our definition of middle-class:

1. No more than 30% of net income is spent on housing, either to own or rent.
2. 6-8% of net income is saved–not including retirement IRAs or 401K plans.
3. No more than 15% of net income is spent on medical and dental expenses, including insurance.
4. The household can afford to pay tuition, fees and books for two household members living at home and attending a 4-year state university/college.
5. Food (including meals away from home) costs no more than 15% of net income.
6. The household can pay cash for a recent-vintage reliable used vehicle, and can support the one reliable vehicle and a “beater” old vehicle for secondary use; the household carries no auto loans.
7. The household pays off all credit card purchases monthly and carries no consumer credit balance.
8. The household can afford to take a domestic vacation once a year without incurring debt or tapping the 6-8% of income set aside for savings.
9. If the family owns a residence, the equity stands at a minimum of 50% of market value.
10. The household maintains at least 6 months’ living expenses in readily accessible savings.

By these standards, how many households in the U.S. are truly “middle-class”? Not very many.

Charles asks, “Do you think this is a fantasy world? This was the world in the U.S.A. from 1955 – 1975.”

Newsweek:
Why can’t corporate America end its perverse love affair with Republican politicians?

American Nobel Prize winners endorse Obama, by Jay McDonough

Seventy six American Nobel Prize winners endorsed Barack Obama in a strongly worded letter [pdf] rebuking the Bush Administration’s contempt for science.

During the administration of George W. Bush, vital parts of our country’s scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant and declining federal support. The government’s scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations. As a result, our once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk. We have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse climate change, strengthen our security, and improve our economy.

We have watched Senator Obama’s approach to these issues with admiration. We especially applaud his emphasis during the campaign on the power of science and technology to enhance our nation’s competitiveness. In particular, we support the measures he plans to take – through new initiatives in education and training, expanded research funding, an unbiased process for obtaining scientific advice, and an appropriate balance of basic and applied research – to meet the nation’s and the world’s most urgent needs.

Jay McDonough says, “I’m sure the decision to support Barack Obama was made a lot easier last week when Sarah Palin scoffed at the use of federal money for research using fruit flies. Most sixth graders know the dominant role fruit flies have played in the understanding of genetics, including the understanding of birth defect genetics. Or, perhaps, it was Ms. Palin’s belief that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth at the same time, about 6,000 years ago.”

NYTimes on JPMorgan Chase:

Asked how an infusion of $25 billion of bailout funds would change the bank’s lending policy, an executive said the money would be used to buy other banks.

I’ve said before:

Several of the banks that have received our Treasury funds are using the money for MnA and takeovers.

Typical of the Bush years, ain’t it?

Bailout funds being spent in ways Congress never foresaw

The $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan was intended to go to buying up distressed mortgages and other bad assets. Instead, it’s gone to equity stakes in banks, and at least one bank used the money to buy a rival. It’s also likely to be used to buy stakes in life insurance companies, and maybe to help struggling Detroit automakers.

Ronald Reagan:

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? If you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrBKC3nQHYk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

“Now, because he knows that his economic theories don’t work, he’s been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book.

“Lately he’s called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class.

“I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” – Barack Obama

Xerox is releasing for free 11 patents used for removing solvents from soil and water. Anyone with a contaminated site can use the technology – old gas stations, dry cleaners and chemical facilities – more than 178,000 sites across America.

The process involves removing the volatile organic pollutants directly from the water and soil with a 50-horsepower vacuum. The time saver: both the ground and water are cleaned simultaneously, instead of separately, with the vacuum sucking up 98 percent of volatile organic solvents, such as carcinogenic toluene, benzene and others.

Over 175 firms are releasing patents to help with environmental cleanup. Eco-Patents Commons developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development puts environmental sustainability patents into the public domain.

More than twenty years ago I joined with Diamond Shamrock, a Texas oil and chemical firm, to bring new clean up technology to market. They had appointed the nation’s first officer of environmental management and had several research programs directed toward decontaminating land. Our goal was to use slurries of newly developed bacteria mixtures to clean contaminated soil under gas stations and refineries.

After many months of testing and promotion, the program failed to bring the technology through regulatory agencies. Instead of robust decontamination, a policy known as ‘out gassing’ was chosen where land is left fallow for months or years. Removing licensing fees and using tested methods may change the economics and again provide an opportunity for ‘true’ clean-up of contaminated soil and water.

Anil Dash is receiving significant mileage in the blogiverse for this:

What Sarah Palin Is Saying
“if Palin says “Barack Obama consorts with terrorists”, she is making the assertion that he supports acts of violence against American citizens & the media will refute this … If … Palin says he “pals around with terrorists”, she’s used code-switching to mask the seriousness of the charge, obfuscating her meaning enough to get away with making an assertion that inevitably calls for the imprisonment or even assassination of a political opponent. … these words are not imprecise to their intended audience. … Palin is a smart, talented public speaker who makes deliberate choices about her use of language … college-educated & has been a professional broadcaster … She is … explicitly communicating to an audience that is white, overwhelmingly not college educated & lives in rural or suburban areas. … [her] conduct has gone far past the bounds of decency & far past even the most dangerous efforts of any previous candidate … This is … inexcusable, unforgivable & unacceptable”

Bretton Woods II is a major upcoming meeting of G7 and many other nations. The meeting may shake-up the world’s financial architecture.

Central Bank rules will be examined, chartered houses will be restrained. Transparency will increase. Tax havens, libertine corporate globalism and pirate lending may be curtailed. There’s an excellent background here, Bretton Woods II: New Lifeline for Ailing Giants, by John Vandaele.

Debt and balance of payment requirements may put the United States in a challenging position. Nothing in the jingoist ideology of the Republican campaign acknowledges or deals with these problems.

We need change. Combining inflation, unemployment and plunging asset prices… the misery index is now at record highs:

[pdf at Peterson Institute]

McCain’s private definition of ethics:

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Years after he resurrected his political fortunes from the Keating Five savings and loan investigation, John McCain promoted an Arizona land swap that would’ve benefited a former mentor and partner of the scandal’s central figure.

The owners of the Spur Cross Ranch, a dramatic 2,154-acre tract of Sonoran desert just north of Phoenix, in the late 1990s sought to sell it to a developer who planned to build a premier golf course surrounded by 390 luxury homes.

And he fumed in anger when threats were unsuccessful.

Michael Mandel reveals that the real problem with the economy is that long accepted patterns of cross-border technology transfer, trade and finance are simply unsustainable.

…here’s the problem:

At the same time Americans were borrowing, their real wages were falling — and not just for the least educated. By BusinessWeek’s calculations, real weekly earnings for college grads without an advanced degree have dropped every year since 2002.

You can’t pay back rising debt with falling wages; something had to give.

The first thing that broke were subprime mortgages, given to less creditworthy borrowers. But once investors started to look, they realized that the entire global edifice was built on an impossibility.

The bad news is that government injections of capital into banks around the world can slow the damage, but they cannot fix the basic problem. The global economy has to go through a readjustment process that will be difficult even if policymakers can restore confidence in the financial system.

Policymakers should stop talking about investor confidence as if it exists in a vacuum. Instead, they should focus on the real goal of stimulating the creation of innovative new goods and services that the U.S. can produce and sell on global markets. That would reduce the amount of borrowing the country has to do, and help create a sustainable global economy.

This crisis is not any fun. But if it shakes up companies and government, and forces them to focus on innovation, the end result will be stronger, more solid economic growth.

A fellow spends a year alone on an island:

“We have an idea of who we are. An identity. And we hold that in place. We actively hold it in place. It’s also held passively in place by our culture. We are constantly, in our relationships, putting out signals asking for affirmation of who we are.”

On his lonely island, Kull finds that we in this society strongly desire to satiate and confirm ourselves through consumption and production. Our identities have come to depend on it. But in the process, we sacrifice our critical awareness, and become ignorant of the fact that our excessive reaching out for a feeling of being important and being alive actually does very little to achieve the experience of vitality.

“My goal in the wilderness was not to conquer either the external world or my own inner nature,” Kull writes in Solitude, “but to give up the illusion of ownership and control and to experience myself as part of the ebb and flow of something greater than individual ego.”

The bogus claim that Democrats are socialist must be offset with a few facts. For instance, the collusion of the wealthy with our government.

How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans?

• How did we end up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world?
• How did homeowners’ title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly?
• How does our government subsidize luxury golf courses?
• How did the Yankees and Mets owners collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds?

Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (and Stick you With the Bill)

Interview here.
Another interview here.

A hyperlink can’t plagiarize!

In a landmark ruling, a Canadian court has ruled that a web site’s publication of hyperlinks to an allegedly defamatory web site is not in and of itself a ‘publication,’ and therefore cannot in and of itself constitute defamation. In a 10-page decision [PDF], Crookes v. Wikimedia, Sup. Ct., British Columbia, Judge Keller dismissed the libel case against Jon Newton, the publisher of p2pnet.net, which was based on the fact that his article contained links to the allegedly defamatory site, since hyperlinks, the Court reasoned, are analogous to footnotes, rather than constituting a ‘republication.’ Mr. Newton was represented in the case by famous libel, slander, and civil liberties lawyer Dan Burnett of Vancouver, British Columbia.

[slashdot.org]

I’ve been waiting.

Several of the banks that have received our Treasury funds are using the money for MnA and takeovers.

Ted Stevens is the first convicted Senator for as long as anyone can recall but Republicans ignore seven guilty verdicts.

Republican Ted Stevens – I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have. I am innocent.

Republican Sarah Palin “is confident her state’s senior senator will do what’s right for the people of Alaska”.

Republican Don Young, R-Alaska – I don’t think he had a jury of his peers.

Republican Party Alaska spokesman McHugh – We need to vote for him because a vote for him is a vote for a conservative candidate, a Republican…

A jury of his peers? Think America.

Wonkette link: 30 or 40 employees of the telemarketing firm Americall got up and left rather than read the usual “Barack Obama is a socialist terror friend who will rape your white children” stuff to Indiana voters.

Christopher Hitchens is receiving applause across the Internet for his analysis of this election and science.

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just “people of faith” but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Only White House spin said there’s been improvements.

Only corporate media said there’s been improvements.

But Texas accused FEMA of slow response. “It’s a tragedy,” said Jack Colley, the state’s director of emergency management.

We knew it would be. New Orlean’s put it in front of our eyes, the hurricane we have in Washington. What will we do to end arrogant incompetence? Yes, one requires the other.

Hate. Is it legal because it’s popular?
Rush Limbaugh Says Angry Blacks Are In 30 Year Plot To Train Black Children as Militants

There are headlines, likely rigged, stating that business likes McCain’s health care ideas. Well, you betcha. It’s a Wall Street takeover of American health care.

But there are severe criticisms. Even the business rag Wall Street Journal says, “John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.”

Buying health coverage on the open market is a tremendous step; will take decades to mature; can be intensely cruel for millions of Americans.

We all know that ‘administrative costs’ are drained into private coffers under our current messy system – the highest percentage in the world.

What about adding fleets of sales and their commission costs?

In many cases a salesman will receive thousands to sign up a new customer. Already, commissions are as high as $1,000 for signing up a zero cost Medicare supplement! Already commissions exceed $2.500 for each new commercial Medicare supplement policy.

There are no rules.

Although our medical system has many profiteers, there’s not been usury in health care since rules and laws shut down the era of snake oil. Well, except for food and supplement and spa. Like mortgages and credit cards, McCain’s failed ideology, it’s not science or economics, will erase dozens of laws in each state and leave us like sitting ducks.

McCain’s health program is another relaxation, similar to the lifting of the commodities regulations and the loosening of credit swap and derivative rules.

Our pay, mortgages, credit, pensions and the dollar are already destroyed by loose pirates.

From Courant.com:
Thousands of horses are euthanized because of leg injury. Anyone who owns, rides or cares for horses lives with one big fear — a leg injury.

“Horses’ legs are delicate, almost too delicate for the weight they bear. An injury to one leg often affects the other legs, which are forced to bear extra weight. If a horse breaks a leg, common on racetracks, there’s nothing to be done other than put him down.”

But Riley from Best Friends Animal Society is walking around after help from Veterinarian Ted Vlahos who has pioneered an artificial leg for horses. Though not for every horse with a broken or infected leg, Dr Vlahos believes that eventually the prosthesis option will become a common practice. ‘We’re hopeful that horses like Riley will get the word out that we don’t always need to kill them.

Press Release from Best Friends
Story with extra pics at Daily Mail
Story at the Telegraph
NewsGuide story here