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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

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most astounding fibs

“Sarah Palin says she wants limited government. Does that mean politicians quit midterm?”

“Former President George W. Bush reveals in his book that he considered dropping Dick Cheney. But Cheney nixed the idea.”

Dismantling discretionary spending, extending retirement, pooling health services, aggregating oversight, stripping incentives, buggering education, abandoning infrastructure, ignoring corruption, bailing the wealthy, and they call that a pledge, nay, a vision. Phooey.

Our Banana Republic – NYTimes.com:

“You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24% of all income, up from almost 9% pre-Reagan Republican.

As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

CEOs before Reagan earned 42 times the average worker but 531 times more after Republican laissez-faire supply-side no tax bankster free markets.

Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

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revenue punditry

The facts are painfully apparent.

Though hundreds — if not thousands — of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don’t require any of that. The facts are simple.

The facts are obvious.

The facts are undeniable to anyone not paid fistfulls of sweaty money to lie or sensationalize…

Clarity is always relief.

So much better hotly written:

We’ve got lives to lead, we’ve got struggles to struggle through, we’ve got bills to pay – in short, we’ve got to get through the shit you’ve created and continue to create.

And as you now incessantly bitch about the alleged scourge of those evil election-losing liberals, as you whine and wail and cry from the cocktail and hors d’oeuvre paradise of TV studios and green rooms and congressional offices and party fundraising events, you’ve made quite clear you don’t give a shit about the harsh reality we all face – the harsh reality we all face thanks to you.

Knowing all of that, I’ll end just to reiterate my one succinct request: All I ask is that as you continue your hard work to prop up the kleptocracy, as you continue to clog our last remaining democratic conduits with your viscous rhetorical shit bombs, please, do us all a favor and for the love of whatever god you worship – please just stop wasting our damn time and go fuck yourself.

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packratnomics

Paul Davidson writes:

I am not surprised by the failure of the Obama Administration to win over the American people to a progressive economic program.

After all, we all hate Franklin Roosevelt. Right? Wasn’t he related to the Czars?

Paul Davidson argues that the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress have not actually followed the prescriptions laid out by the British economist Lord Keynes in making economic policy – and that this is a principal reason for their failure to deliver.

Who’s Lord Keynes? Oh, I remember. He’s bro’ of Karl Marx and begat the loather Hunter Thompson. Wingnuts know so much Adam Smith, just enough to keep evolution true, because it sells. No government. No tax. We’re free boat hands after all, last on deck, last on deck, but juicing stagnation. Yes, as Republicans say, you’re better off with that ol’ Reagan revelry.

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polarized

From Jo at Majority of Two, composed vignette of purpose.

At one time, folks all lived in small communities and everyone knew each other. Even in large cities, people lived in specific areas and everyone worked, lived, and socialized within their own community. Everyone knew everyone else, people visited back and forth in each other’s homes and there was a real sense of belonging.

h/t Pauline.

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deeply told

We know so little. Regard is essential. That’s humility and with it awe.

Here’s 4 minutes of our ocean, best clips of Howard Hall, to show beauty abounds, poise in wonder, life among our tiny container.

Take care. Be care, my friends.

Be care, the frenzy we’ve forgotten and the future we’re able.

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problem perception

I was reading about the paradox of complexity and certainty. To plan is Soviet. To distribute is Socialist. To regulate is Democrat. To defer is Republican. And for the Tea Party, it’s dismantle.

‘As If By An Invisible Hand The Wealth Of The Nation Will Grow’

Is there room on a bumper for this slogan of the times?

Yes, invisible hands took the wealth of this nation. What do we say about national pilfering and the concentration of finance?

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much done

http://twitter.com/cate_long/

• “Today, Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) has clear responsibility for examining emerging threats to our financial system.”

• “No more bailouts. Instead, the Dodd-Frank reforms provide the government with the authority to wind down any firm.”

• “Today, there is one agency for one marketplace with one mission – protecting consumers.”

• “Before Dodd-Frank, consumer protection was fragmented over 7 fed regulators … [with] higher priorities than protecting consumers.”

• “Today, the OTC derivative market is comprehensively regulated for the first time.”

• “Before Dodd-Frank, the OTC derivatives markets- $700 trillion at its peak–grew up in the shadows, with little oversight.”

• “Today, ‘too big to fail’ is gone. We no longer have to make the untenable choice between taxpayer bailouts and market chaos.”

• “And the regulators have clear authority to restrict excessively risky activity, including proprietary trading, by banking firms.”

• “Today there is authority for clear, strong & consolidated supervision of every financial firm-regardless of legal form.”

Assistant Secretary Michael S. Barr Remarks at the American Bar Association. http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg947.htm

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political boss

Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

But amid the wreckage of Tuesday’s GOP rampage, there’s one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy – that’s not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker’s gavel. Still, she squeezed every drop out of her four-year tenure.

To string together a couple of sports cliches, she came to play and she left it all on the field. I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi.

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margins and markup

A very large percentage of our healthcare line items are ruthless extraction.  If it mattered to mood-driven America, Chris Corrigan’s summary of health care would be premier campaign material.

Chris Corrigan:

In Seattle yesterday I was listening to a keynote by Dr. Jack Shonkoff who is a brain researcher at Harvard with an interest in early childhood development.  He said an interesting thing about American health care which kind of answers the question for me about what the US is good at.

Many Americans who are opposed to public health care use the argument that people from other countries come to the United States for the world’s best treatment, surgery and acute care.  No question that if you can afford it, the USA has the best.

BUT – and this was a revelation to me, to hear from a leading doctor –no one moves to the USA permanently for their health.  In the case of almost every industrialized country, and several developing countries as well , the USA trails in health promotion.  So while people do come for treatment, they go back home to countries that support better overall health.

An insurance-based system is to blame for this. Pouring money into insurance means that treatments including surgery and drugs are developed and widely available because there is an incentive for private companies and public institutions to develop excellent treatment, activities and products that you can charge for.

Health promotion is not a profit making venture, so if you choose to put public resources in private insurance, you get private, price-based solutions.

Building a system that prioritizes prevention, healthy communities, health promotion and safety is the way to reduce the need for acute treatments later in life, but no one can make a profit at it, so it requires a public, social response to build that infrastructure.

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voter unpsychology

Harpers, since 1859:

The corruption of our institutions manifests itself in a variety of ways, but in none so dramatic as the imbalance of national wealth, which in recent decades has shattered records formerly set in the late 1920s.

Although it is often claimed that the gap between rich and poor began decisively to widen in the late 1970s, as if to absolve Ronald Reagan for what his followers no doubt count as his primary accomplishment, the total share of income of the wealthiest 10 percent of American families was well within the postwar norm until 1982, when Reagan’s policies began a massive, decades-long transfer of national wealth to the rich.

…

Such a distortion of the nation’s balance of wealth did not come about by accident; it was the result of a long series of policy decisions—about industry and trade, taxation and military spending, by flesh-and-blood humans sitting in concrete-and-steel buildings—that were bought and paid for by the less than 1 percent of Americans…

Nemo says:

So my choice of parties is between
a) owned by Wall Street and
b) totally owned by Wall Street.
Just pick a side, and start sniping!

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tender up

If adults were merciful and resolute, we would all see that stress derails:

Babies brains build a basic architecture by forming synapses and then a more complex architecture develops on top of that.  For the first three year of life, babies’ brains form 700 synapses a second.

Genes provide the template for this work, but experiences turn the genes on and off.  So early life experiences are built into our bodies, encoded in our brains – for better or for worse.

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moodocracy

Oh, now you’ve done it. See?

But hey, when Americans are angry and nervous, they do stupid things. Like vote Republican. It happens. Just did.

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com

“The Tea Party has been a great schtick for the GOP — a bunch of rallies, some don’t-tread-on-me talk, and suddenly the people who screwed the economy are elected as its saviors!”

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a rigged deal

Well, the pirates succeeded, pointing scorn to government.

This is one of the areas that are very easy to demagogue.

By accusing government of being the enemy and promising people that if we simply shrink government they will be better, some politicians and ideologues are attempting to improve their own positions of power. They are misleading the voters.

We know that when the private sector is unwilling or unable to spend and when consumers are under a huge debt load, government is the last remaining spender, at least in the short term. Long term deficits do have to be reduced, but unless we get the economy growing in the short term through government spending, we’re all going to be experiencing a much longer and more painful so called recovery.

And stop blaming China. The USA is a greater threat to the world.

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tower of rules

Tax practitioners are so serious and dry. Why are their blogs scary?

Not a single news organization reported this data, this basic information, when it was released October 15.

The story the numbers tell is one of a strengthening economic base with income growing fastest at the bottom until, in 1981, we made an abrupt change in tax and economic policy.

The Founders were concerned first and foremost with preventing tyranny, oppression and policies that retard the human spirit. Economies have rules and those rules have a huge influence on the distribution of benefits. Specific rules raise or lower incomes, for example.

There are hundreds of thousands of pages of these rules.

These rules distort economic outcomes. Hardly anyone but the people who get rich off them through what economists call ‘rent seeking’ has ever read them, much less explain how they distort the economy.

When those rules allow huge interest-free loans to some, or limit how much the vast majority can save on a tax-favored basis but lets those at the top save unlimited amounts, when some workers can defer paying their taxes for years or decades and then at rates lower than that of the median income worker the outcomes are heavily influenced by those rules.

The current federal income and payroll tax burden on a single worker who made the median wage of $26,000 in 2007 was 21.6%, but by the same measure for the 400 highest income taxpayers, who made almost a million dollars a day, this tax burden was just 16.6%.

Only the wealthy pay low taxes.

Why do you think corporations spend all that money in Washington? They did not always run huge lobbying shops. They do it to win favors that shape, influence and in some cases rig markets, and that in turn alters how the benefits of the economy and the burdens of government are distributed.

We are a terrible thing to waste:

1) The data show that the tectonic shifts have taken place since the Reagan administration began, with its ‘new theory’ about wealth creation, jobs and taxes.

2) The data show that these policies have not worked out well for the vast majority, but they have helped a relative few really prosper.

Oops. Bloomberg cites the data October 25; thanks Zo. Tax returns were made secret in the 1920s, yet last year’s pay at the very top is up more than 500%.

There’s something to gain understanding where our money goes went.

Who dares believe Republicans are defending this nation? It’s plundering and pillaging and marauding since the neoconservative launch; since Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman, never an economist nor taxation analyst, but a one-time Representative of a 95% white rural Michigan district plucked as Sarah Palin is plucked, a political operative and willing trumpet.

Renting Congress.
Now that’s rent seeking!

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sick industry

And there’s the rub, put into a practical series, for our own good.

If we’re going to spend way more than any other country on health care, then we should absolutely, positively have the best health care system in the world.  We don’t.

  1. Introduction –I can’t blame you.
  2. Population Statistics –This may seem like a small thing, but.
  3. Available Technology –Well, we’re not the worst.
  4. Disease Care –Here’s where we shine. Not.
  5. Infrastructure –I won’t lie to you.
  6. Health Care Utilization –Nowhere near the top.
  7. Physician and Practice –They are, after all, essential.
  8. Patients –They should have some say.
  9. Executives –Let’s move on to something new.
  10. Conclusion –I expected more arguments.

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blame blame blame

So why do two in three Americans not know that TARP expects to turn a small profit, the economy is crawling upward, Obama significantly cut taxes?