One Stop Thought Shop

February 18 – Rasmussen Reports national poll:

1. Nearly half of all voters believe that people randomly selected from the phone book could do as good a job as the current Congress.
2. Just 27% believe their own representative in Congress is the best person for the job.
3. Moderate and conservative voters say the government lacks the consent of the governed. Liberals are evenly divided.
4. Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

Last, but certainly not least, Donald Trump wants Al Gore to give back his ill-gotten Nobel Prize on account of it snowed a whole lot on the East Coast.

Which brings up a sore point. I really wish the architects of the International Socialist Global Warming Hoax had been a bit more alert to the possibility that a couple of big snowstorms would come along and destroy all our carefully laid plans. I’ve been promising my comrades down at the Birkenstock factory that we’d see the Dictatorship of the Proletariat by Halloween, at the very latest.

What the hell am I supposed to tell them now?

Confounding us all, Julia Sweeney as Pat could hide her sex identity. She might be the tip of the iceberg. For instance, women with many sex partners have higher masculine traits. “They’re not less attractive and they don’t come from bad families if that’s what you were thinking.”

Testosterone or estrogen plus a slurry of compounds influence gender. To be precisely men or precisely women, we must each have precisely the same dose…

How and why do people transform into brigands and pirates?

Maybe the best way to lie to others is to first lie to yourself.

When something doesn’t quite fit the script, you very rarely tear up the entire story and start from scratch. What you do, instead, is to deny or confabulate in order to make the information fit the big picture.

Fix The System, Don’t Blame the Individuals:

This does not mean that we should not pursue those guilty of fraud. But merely pursuing instances of fraud without fixing the incentive system in place will get us nowhere.

It is misguided to focus on greedy bankers and incompetent or compromised regulators. Bankers and regulators are merely adapting to the incentives presented to them by our current economic and political system.

In fact, the real question is why so few economic actors indulge in fraud or milking taxpayer guarantees when they have every incentive.

The answer is that our ethics prevent us from exploiting the situation. But our ethical standards do not remain constant. They can and will erode if a perverse system is in place for too long.

1. Their average daily income is $945,000.
2. Their income taxes are at a record low.
3. Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes rise by 13% compared with an increase of 399% for the top 400.
4. Most of the income going to the top 400 is from capital. In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from 2006.

The annual top 400 report was first made public by the Clinton administration. George W. Bush shut down access to the report. Its release was resumed a year ago when President Obama took office.

Mick Arran flushes a bit extra:

Conservatives are always complaining that Obama is a socialist and wants to redistribute the nation’s wealth. They say this as if it’s a Bad Thing, yet they didn’t complain about the way the Bush & Clinton Admins redistributed the nation’s wealth.

That wasn’t ‘socialism’ because it went to the top instead of the bottom.

And boy, did it ever!

Eric Hoffer’s classic study of mass movements, The True Believer, 1951.

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members. Though manifestly unfair, this tendency has some justification. For the character and destiny of a group are often determined by its inferior elements.

The inert mass of a nation, for instance, is in its middle section. The decent, average people who do the nation’s work in cities and on the land are worked upon and shaped by minorities at both ends — the best and the worst.

The superior individual, whether in politics, literature, science, commerce, or industry, plays a large role in shaping a nation, but so do individuals at the other extreme — the failures, misfits, outcasts, criminals, and all those who have lost their footing, or never had one, in the ranks of respectable humanity. The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of of the majority in the middle.

The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present.

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning:

It appears to me that the Tea Party movement places us on notice that conditions in the United States now support mass movements of the kind Hoffer is talking about.

Such movements are not known for having good ideas for how to run society.

They don’t need to have ideas that make sense to the elite, such as abolishing the Federal Reserve. They just need to have ideas good enough to appeal to the unbearably disappointed and frustrated, the failed and the failing…

If sweeping up is hope, let’s dramatically illustrate Republican disaster and Democratic hope.

For votes:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted against the Recovery Act twice, but then touted the job-creation and economic development potential of a stimulus-funded high speed rail project in Virginia.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted against the Recovery Act twice but then touted a military project in Kentucky funded by the stimulus as “a source of significant employment.”

They can’t really have it both ways.

Charles Derber recounts the terrible difficulty he had realizing with despair the seriousness of climate change, in dealing emotionally with the prospect of mass death.

“More difficult than dealing with my own personal death.”

“No sane person would wish it to be the scientific truth.”

This just in. Spanking states are Republican:

Spankers tend to see the world in stark black-and-white terms, perceive the social order as vulnerable or under attack, tend to make strong distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and emphasize order and muscular responses to threats.

Extra commentary:

Conservatives may be more responsive to health reform, he suggested, if it is framed as a national security argument. For example, American companies complain about the difficulty of competing with foreign companies that don’t have to pay for employee medical coverage. In that sense, our existing health care system leaves us vulnerable…That foreign threat might make conservatives sweat so much that maybe, just maybe, they’d consider revisiting the issue.

Here, we show that facial appearance has important effects on choice of leader. We show that facial shape alone can predict who wins or loses an election

Before you start, think about the stereotype of someone who excels at what you’re attempting.

Hmmm.

Jesse at Crossroads Cafe:

The notion is that by ‘saving the banks’ they will be able to support the real economy with loans to spur economic activity.

It is the same mindset that provides for huge tax cuts to the top end of the income chain, the very group that benefited from the latest bubble. Its a variant of the ‘trickle down’ theory popularized by the Republicans under Reagan.

The banks prefer to take the Fed and Treasury money and guarantees at near zero percent cost, and loan it back to the public (after all it is their money) in revolving credit (credit cards) at 18%.

It’s a sweet setup…

What could be accomplished with this money is almost beyond common comprehension.

1. 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1
2. 2000, CEOs made $90 for every $1
3. 2004, CEOs made $500 for every $1

During Reagonomics, the richest 1% of America tripled their percentage of our nation’s total income.

“Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three-quarters of all the economy’s growth was captured by the top 1%.” Bush and Cheney.

The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all time record.

Since the crisis began, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans increased to more than the combined net worth of 50% of the US population.

Just to make this point clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155 million people combined.

Follow the complete report by David DeGraw:

I: Causalities of Economic Terrorism
II: The Rise of the Economic Elite
III: Exposing Our Enemy: Meet the Economic Elite
IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat
V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy
VI: How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won

Regardless of your position on anything, refuse support to anyone who isn’t willing to deal with the other side. And start dealing with the other side yourself.

Maybe over some tea.

Dana Blankenhorn:

We tend to think of politics in two dimensions — left and right.

The Nixon Thesis of Conflict has accustomed us to this. We can’t put that genie back in the bottle, we can’t close Pandora’s Box.

Medievalism is not an option… the real issue before us, the issue that has led 10% of the Congress to suddenly up and walk, is whether compromise is possible.

Efforts over the last few Congresses to find common human ground between Democrats and Republicans, between liberals and conservatives, have been unavailing. These people don’t eat together, they don’t play together, they don’t socialize with one another at all. They barely acknowledge the others’ humanity. They have become so short-term oriented that the idea of doing the peoples’ business is foreign.

This is most true among Republicans, from the top on down. Republicans will not negotiate in good faith, they will not come to any agreement on anything, they filibuster even routine business on the flimsiest grounds, but more important they have absolute support in this from their grassroots.

It’s time to understand what’s really going on. These people are frightened.

They see the country changing, they see the pace of change accelerating everywhere, and they’re scared.

Haiti Rewired points to a necessary slant on the dark motives and easy habits among Haiti’s institutionalized oppression, poverty and misery:

Haiti is called the ‘Republic of NGOs’ with over 10,000 operating for its nine million people, the highest per capita presence worldwide in all sectors of activity and society, many with sizable budgets.

Yet their numbers beg the question. With that abundant firepower, why is Haiti the poorest country in the hemisphere, one of the poorest in the world, and one of the most oppressed? Why were so many Haitians starving pre-quake? Why now are conditions catastrophic and worsening?

…fraud, greed, corruption, apathy, and political agendas:

At the level of individuals and NGOS, the lack of fiscal accountability is manifest in the enrichment of the custodians of the money – pastors and directors of NGOs, schools and orphanages – and the redirection of charity toward middle and upper class Haitians, the very ones who don’t need it.

At governmental levels, ‘Charity is manipulated to serve political ends.’

Without accountability, corruption gets embedded, aid is distorted, and ends up doing more harm than good, precisely according to plan…

Disaster profiteering is kicking into full gear in Haiti. Dubious contracts will slip through the cracks.

A watchful eye will reduce abuse and fraud.

And now Carly Fiorina is hustling a Senate seat!

Let us consider the sad example of Lucent. During the dot-com era, a myriad of obviously-never-gonna-make-a-dime-in-profit companies were accorded all kinds of bizarre adulation, including sycophantic coverage in the business press and IPOs at delusional valuations.

So the whole business model was greater-fool theory. And it wasn’t just the poor dumb stock buyers who were duped, but vendors.

I am not familiar with the details of the arrangements, but when Carly Fiorina was head of marketing at Lucent, she ramped up sales (and her compensation along with it) by selling equipment by the boatload to these ultimate dot-bomb enterprises in return for paper of various sorts that proved to be worthless.

[Many had the] misfortune to ride the stock down from $100 a share to $1. – source: Yves Smith

I have been bottling up a fair amount of rage.

At a time when there are so many smart people capable of solving problems, what happens? Nothing. Running into walls. Grubby murky compromise. I really hate this.

What the world needs is a restart. – Chris Anderson

TED2010

Yet we’d have to go back before the Enlightenment to find a time that we fought things more than we do now.

You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts; sorry about that. – Michael Specter

America’s firms are much, much more leveraged and indebted than government. Better if we were not forced to rescue decades of folly, government deficits equal non-government surpluses.

With regard to the future, the choices we make determine the paths we will take. As I have been writing for a long time, we have made a series of bad choices, often the easy choices, all over the developed world. We are now entering an era in which our choices are being limited by the nature of the markets.

Living near freeways hardens arteries at twice the rate of those who live farther away.

“We have shown that air pollution contributes to the early formation of heart disease, atherosclerosis, which is connected to nearly half the deaths in Western societies. . . .”

I’ve just remembered there’s ASCII NumLock-Alt-3: ?

In what amounted to a garage sale on a national scale, Greek officials essentially mortgaged the country’s airports and highways to raise much-needed money.

What other country encourages counties and cities to sell highways and airports and prisons and, yes, its spectrum?

Posted by Nate Hagens:

No research is published about how much total medical care affects our lives. I estimate the effect is probably less than 2 months average.

If we had no advanced medical care we might live to an average of 78 years instead of 78.1.

I estimate 45% social factors (money, education, work and geography), 40% neighborhood shaped choices (exercise, diet and smoking), 12% ‘fixed’ biology (gender and genetics), and no more than 3% healthcare determine average health in rich countries. Society, not biology, underlies 85% of human health.

Healthcare may make a 2 month difference, while social factors make 5 year differences in lifespan.

Almost all other industrialized nations and some poor ones now outlive us.