scratchpad

Concrete metaphor, or something?

2009-10-21T15:14:00.001-07:00

But it's pretty hard to imagine pursuing much happiness if you happen to get sick, get cut off by your health insurance company, and find yourself on your way to medical bankruptcy. Isn't that the point where we invoke that other piece of great American mythology -- the one that says now we circle the wagons, pool our resources, and find a way for all of us to help all our fellow citizens?

So, everybody that has one toss in a loaf or a fish, and we'll see what we've got to work with.

I'd think Christendom would be pretty much all over this sort of thing. Doesn't seem to be happening, outside the Sojourner's-style fringe. Is that the fringe? Is it in fact happening? Etc.

Duelling North Korea experts

2009-08-04T11:24:00.004-07:00

From an NPR Online NewsHour article on Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea.

B.R. Myers, an expert on the North's state ideology at the South's Dongseo University told Reuters that Clinton's visit allows the North to show its residents, who face deepening poverty, that the nuclear weapons program is making the outside world take it more seriously and the visit will be certain to be portrayed as tribute by the United States.

and

Yun Duk-min of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul told Reuters the visit held out the possibility of a dramatic turnaround by North Korea that could lead to a new phase of negotiations.

Who to believe? You get no help from the NewsHour. Are either of the experts any more than far-left/right loons (universities and institutes are not immune, right?)? No help from Reuters, either. Trust Reuters to vet their quotees? Beats me.

GE cheated, but promises to be good in future

2009-08-04T10:32:00.002-07:00

From the gummint, via an NYT/Reuters item.

The SEC alleges that GE used improper accounting methods to increase its reported earnings or revenues and avoid reporting negative financial results. GE has agreed to pay a $50 million penalty to settle the SEC's charges.

The four accounting violations were:

Beginning in January 2003, an improper application of the accounting standards to GE's commercial paper funding program to avoid unfavorable disclosures and an estimated approximately $200 million pre-tax charge to earnings.

A 2003 failure to correct a misapplication of financial accounting standards to certain GE interest-rate swaps.

In 2002 and 2003, reported end-of-year sales of locomotives that had not yet occurred in order to accelerate more than $370 million in revenue.

In 2002, an improper change to GE's accounting for sales of commercial aircraft engines' spare parts that increased GE's 2002 net earnings by $585 million.

That comes to $1,155 trillion in oopsies in 2002-2003, so the penalty is about 4.5%.

On the other hand, that was six or seven years ago, there ought to be corrections for inflation, the time value of money, the proceeds of the benefit to GE, whatever.

I'm betting GE made money on the deal, over all.

So, GE fulfilled its moral and legal fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value (for some definition thereof), and all is right with the ("free" market economic) world.

Capitalism == PerverseIncentive, I guess.

GE [...] consented to the entry of an order permanently enjoining it from violating the antifraud, reporting, record-keeping and internal controls provisions of the federal securities laws.

We promise never to do anything bad, ever again.

So that's sorted, then. Let's make Exxon be nice next--if they'll consent, of course.

Greg Palast: Grand Theft Auto -- How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

2009-06-03T10:11:00.001-07:00

Palast on "irregularities" in the GM bankruptcy, on BuzzFlash. Capital shall be served.

Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock -- or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada -- $6 billion right now and in cash -- from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

and

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own Web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."

The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.

(The law in question is Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), circa '74)

and

Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must
...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.
By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.

and finally

And it's been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler -- indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the U.S. taxpayer.

("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.

Sympathy minus empathy

2009-04-29T12:08:00.000-07:00

I feel bad for you, but I don't really know why.

Those ignorant atheists

2009-04-28T16:44:00.001-07:00

Andrew O'Hehir's review of Reason, Faith, and Revolution, by Terry Eagleton.

Seems to be religion more as metaphor or symbolism or an analytic framework concerning the good life than as concrete reality.

Karen Armstrong, interviewed. Historian and former nun Karen Armstrong says the afterlife is a red herring, hating religion is a pathology and that many Westerners cling to infantile ideas of God.

Perceptions/impressions of classical music

2009-04-28T07:48:00.002-07:00

Thesis: Carl Stalling has for-ever-after altered our experience of classical music.

Casual Fridays: Can we really tell what a musical work is "about"?, especially Sammy's comment and following.

Also, Even isolated cultures understand emotions conveyed by Western music.

Both from Cognitive Daily.

Great Society?

2009-04-20T11:36:00.006-07:00

Chip Ward on homelessness.

Makes me want to rub people's noses in it. Hard.

Including my own.

Where's LBJ when we need him?

Dopamine

2009-04-10T17:53:00.025-07:00

Dopamine is a:

neurotransmitter
precursor of norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline)
member of catecholamine family

Functions in brain include:

behavior and cognition
motivation and reward
mood
attention
learning

Dopaminergic neurons chiefly in:

mesocorticolimbic system (?) (reward, cognition, motivation)

mesolimbic pathway
- ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain
- nucleus accumbens
- amygdala
- hippocampus
- medial prefrontal cortex
mesocortical pathway
- ventral tegmentum
- cerebral cortex
- frontal lobes
- dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

substantia nigra

Motor control

arcuate nucleus

lactation, growth hormone and appetite involvement

More?

reinforcement
anticipatory (wanting) vs consummatory (liking)(the reduction in dopamine did not reduce the rat's consummatory pleasure, only the desire to actually eat)
motivation
anhedonia
social anxiety/withdrawal
pain
salience

Obama's still just the lesser evil...

2008-07-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

...so I'll vote for a third party candidate. Why Criticize Obama, on Digital Underground, gives some reasons.

The only good thing about the winner-take-all electoral college system is that I live in a fairly safe Democrat state. Hence I have the luxury of voting my conscience instead of being forced to vote strictly to repel the barbarians at the gates.

Would that everyone were so lucky.

Some may be missing the point

2008-07-14T08:20:00.001-07:00

From Impeach Bush Now by Elizabeth Holtzman, in The Nation.

Impeachment is one of the few ways Congress can draw limits around presidential power and educate the country about those limits. And without the people's support for those limits, they will be breached again and again by future Presidents.

The important things about this question aren't punishment or politics, they are precedent and deterrence. We prosecute the accused to find the facts of the matter, to reduce future crime, and to help determine the kind of society we inhabit. Whether we acquit or convict, we don't turn a blind eye and tacitly condone, or we deserve what we get.

A little light reading

2008-07-13T13:49:00.001-07:00

The Green Light by Philippe Sands, In Vanity Fair.: Torture, war-crimes, and the neo-con cabal--I say Hang 'em. It'll teach 'em a lesson.
Believe Me, It's Torture by Christopher Hitchens, in Vanity Fair.: Hitchens waterboarded--I may think he's an ass, but at least he seems honest.
It Takes a School, Not Missiles by Nicholas D. Kristof, in the New York Times.: Decent people may yet prevail.
The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008 by Frank Rich, in the New York Times.: What we don't impeach, we condone.
Rangel Calls Rent Bargain Legal and Fair by David Kocieniewski, in the New York Times.: You don't have to be white to be a jerk.

FISA bad, Feingold good

2008-06-25T10:20:00.003-07:00

FISA, Feingold, and a Filibuster?:

"It doesn't simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law," Feingold said. "It may well prevent us from getting to the core issue, that I've challenged since December 2005, which is the president ran an illegal program I think that was essentially an impeachable offense."

I think the big story is ultimately not going to be that the telephone companies got immunity... it's that our personal conversations are now in a giant database somewhere over which we have no control.

MSM economic coverage

2008-06-23T11:42:00.005-07:00

Big Bump in Post's Budget Reporting: It Doesn't Add Up

From Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in his Beat the Press blog on TAP.

A critique of a WaPo article concerning, in part, budget and deficit numbers, projected and past.

The numbers tend toward uselessness, he says.

As does the WaPo site mark-up, sez I, off-topically. And ~~serendip~~ ~~coincident~~ surprise, somebody agrees:

the Post's website could be better

How's that for context-free quotation?

OMG!

2008-05-13T17:46:00.002-07:00

From a Politico interview:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf, he said. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.
Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life, he said. I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, It's just not worth it anymore to do.

Health, economics and public policy in Alameda County

2008-04-24T08:30:00.009-07:00

Via Google News:

Comment by Tony Iton, M.D., J.D., MPH, Director, Alameda Co. Public Health Dept.

Life Expectancy Gap Is Not The Result Of Bad, Stupid, Or Lazy People

The news coverage of these provocative research findings has thus far focused on the "health behaviors" (i.e. smoking, diet and physical inactivity) of the populations in these communities as an explanation of the increasing life expectancy gap in the U.S. This logic seems to suggest that these unhealthy behaviors occur in a vacuum and are somehow regionally distributed. There is abundant research, including the recently released Alameda County Health Equity Report, that suggest that federal, state and local policies that shape the social consequences of being poor in America are as important if not more important than individual health behaviors, and may in fact, indirectly influence the prevalence of these unhealthy behaviors.
There are a constellation of social policies affecting the lives of people in low income communities that effectively conspire to deprive them of opportunities to achieve a healthy life. These include policies related to minimum and living wage, health insurance access, education funding, housing, land use, incarceration, transportation and others. Central among those policies, and certainly among the most pernicious, is the low quality of public education that results from underinvestment in public pre-school and K-12 education systems in many of these same counties that are demonstrating falling life expectancies. Education is supposed to be the ultimate equalizer that gives poor kids an opportunity to achieve the American Dream. It is ostensibly the ladder out of American poverty.

The effect of this systematic deprivation of important social resources and opportunity is a profound sense of despair and hopelessness that has become pervasive in these communities and contributes to a state of chronic stress among many individuals. Chronic stress has detrimental physiological consequences leading to higher rates of high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and a cascade of related chronic diseases such as heart disease, kidney failure and stroke. This is not primarily the result of bad, stupid or lazy people; it is the failure to recognize how social policy and its consequences are inextricably bound to health consequences. Disease and death are not randomly distributed in populations, to a large extent, the distribution is socially patterned and consequently, predictable.

This study is a harbinger of things to come. It is foreseeable that life expectancy will continue to decline in these communities until a concerted effort is made to systematically identify and strengthen the core social determinants of health that plague these communities. We need not feel that these are insoluble problems. Focused efforts and policies directed to improving the social consequences of poverty will serve to decouple the tight linkage that presently exists in America between being poor and having poor health. We are smarter than this; we can do better as a Nation if well-intentioned people come together and work on constructive solutions.

Great names in the news

2007-11-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

Susan Weed opposed Daquarii Rock

for an open seat on the Pullman, WA school board.

Weed won.

Pat Buchanan's Right Again. Dammit.

2007-09-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

In Why the Antiwar Democrats Will Retreat, he nails it.

Bush is winning today because he has jettisoned the jabber about global democracy and argues that a U.S. withdrawal risks a strategic disaster, national humiliation, massacre of our friends and triumph for al-Qaida. Democrats, fearing he may be right, are in paralysis.
Scourged for 20 years over Who Lost China? they don't want to spend the next 20 years answering Who Lost the Middle East?
Thus the rout of the peace Democrats. But the movement will be back. For, Petraeus' good news notwithstanding, there is no light yet visible at the end of this tunnel.

Agreeing with Pat tends to give me that icky feeling inside, but sometimes it has to be done.

Fear and Loathing

2007-09-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

According to a FOXNews.com PR piece for the batch of thugs and school-yard bullies (with nuclear weapons) currently in power in the good 'ol US of A, our collective hands will soon be even gorier. Considering how well it's worked elsewhere, why not bomb Iran back to the Stone Age? If they don't do what we tell 'em, they deserve what they get.

If we let our current ruling regime get away with this, we deserve what we get.

Our victims don't.

Here's a simple mnemonic for the solution: ICICI.

Impeach
Convict
Indict
Convict
Imprison

Repeat as needed.

Murder, war crimes, treason, desertion--no shortage of grounds. Mix and match, or pick a personal favorite.

You don't have to hit me over the head with a shovel....

2007-07-06T16:59:00.000-07:00

In:: Key GOP Senator Breaks With Bush
From:: washingtonpost.com
By:: Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane

The six-term lawmaker, party loyalist and former staunch war supporter represents one of the most significant GOP losses to date. Speaking to reporters at a news conference in Albuquerque, Domenici said he began to question his stance on Iraq late last month, after several conversations with the family members of dead soldiers from his home state, and as it became clear that Iraqi leaders are making little progress toward national reconciliation.

Once more, with emphasis: Domenici said he began to question his stance on Iraq late last month, after several conversations with the family members of dead soldiers from his home state.

So, Senator Pete is so dim, or callous, or out of touch, or--what?--that finally, in the last few weeks, after the reality of the last several years, after tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents dead, all it takes is having his nose rubbed in the Iraq mess via the grieving families of murdered soldiers. I had a dog like that once, but she grew out of it in six months or so. That's pre-kindergarten in dog years. Pete seems a bit developmentally delayed.

Whaddaya think, New Mexico? Are YOU going to trust this guy with OUR lives, come next re-election campaign?

Some People Made a Movie

2007-06-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

I think it's good.

Join Spout | Buy DVD | Watch Video Podcast | Get Code

our own malevolent tyrant

2007-06-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

In:: The Madness of Our King George Has Even Texas Friends Worried
From:: The Niagara Falls Reporter Opinion
By:: Bill Gallagher

President George W. Bush is miserable and mad. He's off to Europe this week for the G-8 summit, and the prospect of meeting with peers who refuse to hang on his every word and bow to his whims makes him moan.

He also has to eat foreign food, sleep in an unfamiliar bed and pretend he's engaged and interested in what the other heads of state have to say. For Bush, this is pure torture, though richly deserved.

He'll probably restrain himself and not repeat his condescending, sexist shoulder rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. His buddy British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a lame duck, but the two will chuckle together, slap each other's knees and try to forget the disaster they brought to Iraq.

Bush can't bully the leaders of the world's major industrial nations and convince them of his righteousness the way he can his staff and friends. He is becoming increasingly unhinged and even more dangerous.

...and...

American troops have been in Korea for 57 years. Since the truce in 1953, only 90 U.S. troops have died in border clashes with the North Koreans. By contrast, in the four years since the "Mission Accomplished" proclamation, more than 3,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and the casualty trend lines are going up in the futile "surge" strategy.

The Iraqi bomb-makers are boosting production, and no matter what we do militarily, they cannot be stopped. More money and more troops won't change that grim reality. More Americans died in April and May than in any other two-month period since the war began. In May alone, more than 2,000 Iraqi civilians died.

...and...

Even our own malevolent tyrant knows there will be no ease this summer for those living in Iraq. He recently said, "It could be bloody -- it could be a very difficult August." He should know because, as he likes to remind us, "I am the president! I am the president! I am the president!"

Nailed it, eh?

Current front-runner for post title of the year.

2007-02-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

In:: Dear Julie- Welcome to the upper class! Spend your tax cut on something pretty. Love, US Gov, esq.
From:: Tart Juice
By:: somewaterytart

Bush: After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children's videos in her basement. The Baby Einstein Company was born, and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. In November 2001, Julie sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company, and with her help Baby Einstein has grown into a $200 million business. Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America.
Tart: Finally, some State-of-the-Union recognition for attractive, well-educated straight blonde women who became millionaires by turning 800% profits on low-budget children's videos featuring hand-held puppets and classical music played by a xylophone.

The best title I can remember at the moment, hands down.

Naughty word alert.

I like this paragraph.

2007-02-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

From:: Instapundit, You Dumbass! Thoughts on Mitt Romney and God’s Wife

At:: The Zero Boss

Religions are symbol-systems of meaning. Practitioners navigate these systems with the help of spiritual teachers in order to understand their place in the universe at an intuitive level. Anyone skilled in religion can craft their own symbol-system - which is precisely what Joseph Smith and the Mormon church fathers did. The problem occurs when adherents invest one of these systems with the imprimatur of absolute truth. The absolute truth is the unspoken truth that the symbols reveal - not the symbols themselves.

When We Say "Ownership Society", We Mean....

2006-07-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

According to "Reconciliation Tax Cuts Would Average $43,000 for Households with Income Over $1 Million, Revised 5/11/06", by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

The owners:

About 87 percent of the benefits of the reconciliation conference agreement would flow to the 14 percent of households with incomes above $100,000, and 55 percent of the benefits would go to the 3 percent with incomes above $200,000. Households earning more than $1 million a year, which represent only 0.2 percent of all households, would receive 22 percent of the benefits of these tax cuts.

The owned:

In contrast, the three-quarters of households with incomes below $75,000 would receive just 5 percent of the benefits. The 60 percent of households with incomes below $50,000 would receive less than 2 percent of all benefits. In total, 68 percent of all households would receive no benefits whatsoever from the tax-cut package.

Questions?

Fudging the Numbers: SS, Tax Cuts and Actuarial Science

2006-07-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

From "Will the Administration Claim the Cost of Fixing Social Security Rose $700 Billion Because Congress Did Not Act Last Year?", a 1 May 2006 article from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

President Bush and other Administration officials often claim that delaying action on Social Security by "...just one year adds $600 billion [or $700 billion] to the cost of fixing Social Security." Such claims may be repeated on May 1 when the Social Security Trustees release their annual report on the program's finances. Such claims, however, are not accurate.

And, for the curious, the title question is answered in a later article (revised 15 June 2006) titled "What the New Trustees' Report Shows About Social Security", the answer, apparently, being yes.

Despotism

2006-07-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

1946 short film by Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Scary, innit?

Compassionate Conservatism [sic]

2006-03-20T17:12:00.000-08:00

According to a Washington Post article:

Analyst Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in the most recent issue of the Hoover Institution's in-house magazine that food stamps contribute to overeating, and he argued for "retaining a stigma [about food stamps] historically associated with welfare."

Eat the rich.

Welcoming the Stranger

2006-03-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

From an article by Jeff Carr, in Sojourners weekly "email magazine":

When was the last time you heard a Catholic cardinal calling his flock to civil disobedience? That's what Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony did in his Lenten message, urging his people to make room "for the stranger in our midst, praying for the courage and strength to offer our spiritual and pastoral ministry to all who come to us." The strangers to whom he was referring are the estimated 11.5 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living on the margins of our society.
[...]

If enacted into law, [H.R.4437] would criminalize social service workers and others who provide compassionate or humanitarian aid to undocumented people, including churches and faith-based organizations. The crime would be a felony, potentially punishable by stiff fines and up to five years in prison. According to the Los Angeles Times, Mahony said that if Congress passes the bill, he will instruct the priests in his 288 parishes to defy the law in open civil disobedience.
[...]
I hope Mahony would have room to welcome an evangelical Christian minister such as me to join him and his fellow priests in civil disobedience. It's time for people of faith to stand up on behalf of our immigrant brothers and sisters whom I am confident Jesus would have included when he said I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

JC was a revolutionary, I figure, and we could use that now. I'm thinking of starting a group, tentatively named Christian Atheists (Radical/Extremist). That gives CARE as an acronym. A good acronym is essential, I think.

CARE would be a group for those who want to buy in to Jesus' social, economic and ethical philosophy, but not the Old Testamental, Jehovan, moralistic, supernatural, creation-myth aspects of traditional Christianity (at least not in a literal, non-metaphorical sense).

So if us left-wing atheists could make common cause with the social gospel wing of conventional Christianity, along with the Buddhists, Muslims, and any other people of goodwill in the world, mayhap we could bring about that heaven on earth I've heard tell of. Anything beats unfettered corporate capitalism.

Henry David Thoreau sez:

2006-03-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Athletic Autie

2006-02-27T17:39:00.000-08:00

Site is political, post isn't, links to video and news article, pretty cool.

Documents reclassified in secret U.S. review - International Herald Tribune

2006-02-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

Even if I had the slightest shred of trust in the present administration, this would still bother me. As it is, it's just one more thing that scares the hell out of me.

In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have removed from public access thousands of historical documents that had been available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

[...]

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy - governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved - it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.

[...]

The stuff they pulled should never have been removed, he said. Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous.

Bush Spent Over $1.6 Billion on Advertising and Public Relations Contracts

2006-02-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

That's spread over two and a half years. $640 million a year. $440 million/year of that by the DoD. And that understates the tax-payers' tab for administrational flackery:

GAO's accounting of the Bush Administration's public relations and advertising contracts is limited. GAO surveyed only seven of the 15 cabinet-level departments, relied on self-reported information from the agencies, and did not include subcontracts, task orders on existing contracts, or public relations work done by government employees.

More info at <http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/> . (Whew. And numerical IP addresses are considered user-unfriendly?)

Jeff Chester | The End of the Internet? (Truthout.org)

2006-02-07T17:14:00.000-08:00

The big network corp's want to give you as little as possible for the highest possible price. So what else is new in this greatest of all possible corporate-capitalist worlds?

We the people are, after all, merely an evolutionary dead-end, serving as feedstock for the great and powerful economic structures that own the world and it's teeming masses.

Best learn to live in the cracks and crevices, 'cause that may be all us commoners have left to us.

But I'm not bitter....

Defense of Eavesdropping Is Met With Skepticism in Senate - New York Times

2006-02-06T17:03:00.000-08:00

Mr. Feingold was clearly angry when his turn came to question Mr. Gonzales. You wanted this committee and the American people to think that this kind of program wasn't going on, he said. But it was.
Not so, Mr. Gonzales insisted. Last year, he said, Mr. Feingold asked him whether he thought the president could authorize eavesdropping in violation of the law, and that the question was therefore hypothetical.

I was telling the truth then, the attorney general said. I'm telling the truth now.

What is the meaning of "is", again?

Tell me again--why is Boehner a good choice?

2006-02-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

Compare this, from one NYT article on Boehner's election (emphasis added):

Mr. Boehner received 122 votes to 109 for Mr. Blunt, the House Republican whip, in a runoff made necessary by an inconclusive first ballot. The stunning upset signaled that many House Republicans are uneasy about the lobbying scandals that threaten to tar some in their party, and that they wanted far more change than Mr. Blunt seemed to promise.

to this from another NYT article on Boehner (ditto the emphasis):

Boehner rose to fame as a member of the "Gang of Seven," the group of upstart Republicans who assailed the excesses of the majority Democrats amid reports of bounced checks at the House bank.
Once in power, similar GOP foibles were on display. Boehner was forced to apologize in the mid-1990s for distributing checks from tobacco companies to his colleagues on the House floor.
He has been scrutinized recently for accepting donations, parties and trips from Sallie Mae, the nation's largest provider of student loans, as it lobbied the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which Boehner chairs.

Yup, sounds like the Republicans have really got a handle on this reform thing. "Suitcased", as my boot camp company commander used to say.

The March of the Straw Soldiers - New York Times Op-Ed

2006-02-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

Let me put it to you in Texan, Mr. Bush drawled at the Grand Ole Opry House yesterday.

...says the New English Preppy-in-Chief, speaking in reference to his ~~illicit~~ ~~illegal~~ criminal surveillance activities.

Mr. Bush said the warrantless spying was vetted by lawyers in the Justice Department, which is cold comfort. They also endorsed the abuse of prisoners and the indefinite detention of "unlawful enemy combatants" without charges or trials.

The president also said the spying is reviewed by N.S.A. lawyers. That's nice, but the law was written specifically to bring that agency, and the president, under control. And there already is a branch of government assigned to decide what's legal. It's called the judiciary. The law itself is clear: spying on Americans without a warrant is illegal.

Good and Bad Procrastination

2006-01-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

Encore.

How to Do What You Love

2006-01-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

Picking a "profession" for the right reasons.

Baen Free Library

2006-01-19T11:38:00.000-08:00

Occasionally a reason for optimism turns up.

Dissertation Could Be Security Threat (washingtonpost.com)

2006-01-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

Telecom infrastructural chokepoints, c '03. Security through obscurity?

t r u t h o u t - Cost of Iraq War Could Top $2 Trillion

2006-01-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes plan to present this week a paper estimating the cost of the Iraq War at between $1-2 trillion. This is far higher than earlier estimates of $100-200 billion.
The study expands on traditional budgetary estimates by including costs such as lifetime disability and health care for the over16,000 injured, one fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. It then goes on to analyze the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and the impact of factors such as higher oil prices that can be partly attributed to the conflict in Iraq. The paper also calculates the impact on the economy if a proportion of the money spent on the Iraq war were spent in other ways, including on investments in the United States.

Rules are for the little people ...

2005-10-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

At my alma mater, of course, the big people don't have time to deal with such mundane matters. 'Sides, they're all such wonderful human beings that they deserve to do whatever the hell they want, anyway. So there.

And y'all ought to be honored to pay for a year's paid vacation for the vice-presidential types every four years or so. I'm sure Charlene deserves it. For something. What's a hundred thou, give or take, amongst friends, after all?

Eat the rich. Just gnaw on the comfortable.

Aspens

2005-10-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

They're stranger than you probably knew, and symbolic to boot.

From the essay by David Lukas:

The most widely distributed tree in North America is a mystery. Called quaking aspen for the trembling of its leaves, it is anything but timorous or fragile. It is unfathomably ancient and enduring, approaching what has been called "theoretical immortality." It is a lifeform persisting over time without offspring, in suspended animation, waiting patiently through the dark passage of millennia for something we can only guess at.

Bush: Worst President Ever?

2005-10-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

Stephen Pizzo's "coming recession" article on AlterNet led me to an older article of his arguing the position that the current administration is our worst yet. From there I followed a link to the real prize, News for Real.

In my heart, I know he's right. Was it Nixon who used that (paraphrased) slogan? Anyway, I think I like him. Pizzo, not Nixon.

Article by Cindy Sheehan

2005-10-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

A brief report on her visit to DC.

England's approach to "homeland security"

2005-10-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

There's no monopoly on supression of dissent--the UK reportedly equals or exceeds our efforts.

Wal-Mart helps make our nation a little safer

2005-10-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

Watch what pictures you have developed at Wal-Mart. They take seriously keeping the ~~fatherland~~ homeland ( and the beloved leader thereof, of course) secure, according to an article in the Progressive.

Wal-Mart resistance in the palouse

2005-10-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

Local resistance

The Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development has posted a position paper on the "Big Wal-Mart Controversy" (Wal-Mart wants to bring one 'a them Great Big Mothers (GBMs for short) to Pullman).

They may manage to get some mitigation of the physical damage to the community (traffic, run-off, erosion, and the like), but I fear they will have a lot less luck with the social damage.

Still, every little bit helps in the resistance to BigCorpCapitalism [Godless Division], so wish 'em luck, boycott Wal-Mart, and consider more socially responsible companies for your shopping dollars. WinCo and CostCo come to mind.

Some Wal-Mart/Costco links

A good Fast Company article that goes into Wal-Mart's relationships within the corporate sphere. Labor and consumer issues pretty completely overshadowed this area, at least for me.
A Labor Research Association article comparing Wal-Mart and Costco from the standpoint of labor productivity.
The Costco Wikipedia entry.
The Wal-Mart wikipedia entry.
Even Business Week weighs in.

The Forbes 400

2005-09-30T13:16:00.000-07:00

What's it take to get on the Forbes 400 list of the biggest and baddest of our country's capitalist culture heroes? This year it's a net worth of US$900,000,000.

All told, The Four Hundred (wasn't that the title of an O. Henry collection? Or am I off by a factor of 10,000?) have a combined net worth of US$1.13 trillion. That's up for the third consecutive year, and an increase of more than 12% over last year.

Over US$2.8 billion apiece. The median is US$1.6 billion. How's that compare to the median net worth in the good 'ol US of A? I'll google ... no recent numbers, but a CNN Money article from 2003 gives the 2001 figures from the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances. It's a triennial survey, last results released in January of '03. Should be interesting to see what the new one shows this coming January. Mark that month on your calendar, kiddies. The data, I guess, would go through '04.

Anyway, the 2001 median family (household?) net worth was US$86,100. A little division gives an exchange rate that seems to indicate that each of The Exalted Four Hundred is worth over 18,000 of you median, middle-of-the-pack prole families. Which is as it should be. Of course, that's 2001 proles and 2004 billionaires, and the gap may have narrowed. But I doubt it.

Another blurb on the Forbes site announced that 10 list members had made charitable donations of US$25 million or more. Lessee, 1.6 billion is to 1.6 thousand (my net worth, if I'm lucky) as 25 million is to ... twenty five bucks? Wow. All hail their beneficent generosity. Pikers.

A few more Forbes articles look interesting, but I haven't gotten there yet:

Betaseron trial results

2005-09-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

A press release by Schering AG, manufacturer of the Multiple Sclerosis drug Betaseron, reports drug trial results showing a 50% reduction in risk of developing clinically definite MS after a single attack suggestive of MS, supporting early treatment of people at risk for MS.

Previously, Betaseron had been shown to reduce the number (and severity?) of relapses in relapsing-remitting MS, and to slow progression of disability in secondary-progressive MS.

Labelling changes will be sought from "regulatory authorities" as a result of the study.

Energy Costs Drain Joe Six-Pack

2005-09-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Excerpted from the Alger Market Commentary in a Forbes article:

The fear is that higher energy prices will cut into consumer spending. Higher prices do not hurt companies much because energy costs tend to be a minimal portion of the cost of goods sold (about 2% of overall revenues according to Empirical Research). So the question is: How much do high energy prices impact consumer spending?

Well,

Overall, energy prices will account for about 6% of consumer spending by the end of 2005, which is higher than last year or at any point in the last decade, but is still almost 50% less than the peak percentage in the early 1980s. And consumer spending is slowing slightly, from a 4% growth rate in 2004 to an estimated 3.5% in 2005.

That's in the aggregate. When broken down a little further, there's some bad news:

Consumers in the lowest quintile, who are at or below the poverty line, have little disposable income and will be squeezed.

But not to worry:

Their spending, however, does not drive U.S. economic growth.

Slightly scarier:

The two middle segments will feel the pinch of higher energy prices more because of their relatively high levels of home and automobile ownership.

But praise be to the upper brackets!

[...] the upper two quintiles will be mostly unaffected because their disposable income is quite high relative to the increase in energy costs we are now experiencing. In pure-dollar terms, the spending of the upper two-fifths of consumers matters much more than the combined spending of the other three-fifths. It's the same 80:20 principle--the upper end contributes a disproportionate share.

So heave a sigh of relief, go back to whatever you were doing, and don't worry about a thing:

At the middle and higher-end, the bite of higher energy prices has not mattered much, and we do not believe it will. For these consumers, a significant part of their spending will be driven as much by desire as need. We are watching carefully how this group spends ("Do I need that new vacation house/new pair of running shoes/dress/car?"), because that will say something about which companies will benefit and which will be hurt. While the spending patterns of the upper income brackets may shift, we are not particularly worried that their spending will cease or even slow.

Year-to-date, an 8% drop in consumer discretionary stocks (the worst performing group in the S&P 500) is more than offset by the 37% rise in energy stocks (the top group in the S&P). It's comforting to know that something is coming out ahead.

Dollar stores, however, are gonna take a dive. Place your "sell" orders now, kids!

Someone had to tell them the truth

2005-05-26T17:46:00.000-07:00

From:: Trial for Governor's Seat Set to Start in Washington
In:: New York Times

So while Republicans will argue that most of the felons voted in the heavily Democratic King County, and therefore should be deducted proportionally from Ms. Gregoire's total, the Democrats will counter with their own experts who say that felons in the state tend to vote Republican.
The Republican base has always been nonunion, white, blue-collar males, and that's who the felons are in the state of Washington, said Paul Berendt, chairman of the state's Democratic Party.

Note he didn't say that felons are who the Republicans are in the state of Washington.

That would've been rude.

Autism Inflation

2005-05-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

From:: A Forbes OpEd on autism

Autism's sharp rise is, in large part, a matter of definitions. Is a child with severe learning problems autistic? What about a child who is insensitive in social situations? What about children who have trouble communicating or seem to retreat into their own shells? These days a large number of children who fit any of those descriptions are likely to be tagged with the autism label, or their parents will be told that they have a disorder (like Asperger's syndrome) that falls somewhere in the autism spectrum.

No argument here, offhand, except that they say it like it's a bad thing.

This looseness of definition is getting in the way of medical progress. We will not find effective cures for autism until we add biological markers to behavioral symptoms in diagnosing children.

This, however, I'm not so happy with. I get too strong a feeling of the steam-roller of technological progress. Ve vill overcome this veakness! (Apologies to any German contingent) A lot of auties will tell you they don't particularly want to be cured, especially since that which would be cured can feel like a large part of one's very self.

The currently preferred treatment for children exhibiting early signs of autism is enrollment in intensive behavioral programs. These programs involve one-on-one interactions between the child and the therapist from 20 to 40 hours per week. Scientific studies of the most popular of these programs have shown modest results. Although intensive behavioral therapy can reduce the frequency of certain autistic behaviors for certain children, it does not cure the basic language and emotional deficiencies of most autistic children.

Those intensive behavioral programs can be sorta' controversial in their own right.

Jerome Kagan, professor of psychology at Harvard, and Robert Pozen, chairman, MFS Investment Management

Kagan seems to have had some experience on an advisory board of the Boston Higashi school, an intensive behavioral program that received some bad press of it's own a few years ago. (The bad press links to a reposting of a Wall Street Journal Online article from 2002.)

Pozen, of course, is that well-known expert on ~~autism.~~ ~~psychology.~~ ~~mental health.~~ ~~disability.~~ wealth, power and social security.

Alexithymia

2005-05-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

Alexithymia. I can't tell you how pleased I was to hear about this. Heh.

Although in When a Patient Has No Story To Tell: Alexithymia, Rený J. Muller, Ph.D.:

seems to have worked in an ER, hence probably saw an unrepresentative sample;
lapses into severe shrink speak, but then, that is his audience, I guess;
gives himself, to my ear, too much credit for insight into the psyches of his subjects;

still, I find it interesting.