Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises ANS

Here is the Obameter again, just to remind you that he is still doing very well.  It seems to me that the broken promises are mostly the ones that got into the news, the media attention cycle, enough for the Republicans to actively block the promise from being kept.  Remember, he still doesn't have a Democratic majority in the Senate, at least not one big enough to counter a filibuster.  That's where you come in: do anything you can to INCREASE the real Democratic majority in the Senate (there are a few DINOs -- that's Democrat in name only -- in the Senate who vote with the Republicans.)  Then he'll get even more done.  and no, he's not liberal enough for me, but he's a lot better than anyone to the right of him. 
Please ask your friends who are going to "stay home" at the 2012 election not to, and to vote for the Democratic candidate, because we would be right back to the Bush years if they win.  We are on the cusp of a new Era, and it is crucial which side gets in power. The Big Question for this generation, this era, is "Which is more important, money or people?"  and so far, money is winning.  I don't want to live in that world.  do you?  Yes, Obama is too centrist.  If he was any farther to the left he would have been assassinated by now, like the Kennedys.  This goes for the California race for Governor also -- The Democrat would be so superior to the Republican candidate that it would be like a different world.  If you have been watching reality rather than listening to propaganda in the last twenty years, you will know that it is now the Democrats that are fiscally conservative and socially liberal, while the Republicans have become socially conservative and fiscally radical.  Don't listen to the hype --look at who has balanced the budgets, and who has helped The People more.  Sure, no one is perfect -- how would someone perfect get elected? or want to?  George Washington said, (and I quote from memory) " Anyone who wants the job of President doesn't deserve it."
Find it here (and there's a lot to look at at this site): http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
--Kim


The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises

[]

The Obameter Scorecard


PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.

We rate their status as Not Yet Rated, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

The report card at right provides an up-to-the-minute tally of all the promises.

Other ways to browse the Obameter
RSS   Obameter update RSS feed

Promises we've rated recently

In the Works  

No. 286: Secure the borders

The Promise:

Will support "additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry".

Update July 23rd, 2010:

Obama continues to beef up border security

>>More
 In the Works  

No. 232: Create a public "Contracts and Influence" database

The Promise:

"Will create a "contracts and influence" database that will disclose how much federal contractors spend on lobbying, and what contracts they are getting and how well they complete them."

Update July 23rd, 2010:

Administration makes progress on contractor database

>>More
 In the Works  

No. 323: Cap interest rates on payday loans and improve disclosure

The Promise:

Will limit interest rates on payday loans to 36 percent "because predatory lending continues to be a major problem for low and middle income families alike. Obama also believes that we need to ensure that all Americans have access to clear and simplified information about loan fees, payments and penalties, which is why he'll require lenders to provide this information during the loan application process"...And he "will work to empower more Americans in the fight against predatory lending by supporting initiatives to improve financial literacy and financial planning."

Update July 21st, 2010:

Financial reform bill includes payday, disclosure provisions

>>More
 Promise Kept  

No. 422: Create new financial regulations

The Promise:


"I'll put in place the common-sense regulations and rules of the road I've been calling for since March -- rules that will keep our market free, fair, and honest; rules that will restore accountability and responsibility in our corporate boardrooms."

Update July 21st, 2010:

Barack Obama signs financial reform law

>>More
 In the Works  

No. 299: Eliminate disparity in sentencing for crack and cocaine

The Promise:


"Will work in a bipartisan way to eliminate disparities" between mandatory sentences for trafficking crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, which he believes has disproportionately filled our prison with young black and Latino drug users. "They will also repeal the mandatory minimum sentence for first-time offenders convicted of simple possession of crack, as crack is the only drug that a non-violent first-time offender can receive a mandatory minimum sentence for possessing."

Update July 14th, 2010:

Senate votes to reform crack cocaine sentencing disparity; bill in House

>>More
 In the Works  

No. 26: Implement "Women Owned Business" contracting program

The Promise:

"Will implement the Women Owned Business contracting program that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, but has yet to be implemented by the Bush Administration." The program seeks to get more women-owned businesses to compete for federal contracts.

Update July 2nd, 2010:

Progress, but not quite there yet on women-owned business contracting

>>More
 Compromise  

No. 74: Reimburse employer health plans for a portion of catastrophic costs

The Promise:

"Reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold if they guarantee such savings are used to reduce the cost of workers' premiums."

Update July 2nd, 2010:

Limited reimbursements in the final health care bill

>>More
 In the Works  

No. 75: Work with schools to create more healthful environments for children

The Promise:

"Work with schools to create more healthful environments for children, including assistance with contract policy development for local vendors, grant support for school-based health screening programs and clinical services, increased financial support for physical education, and educational programs for students."

Update July 1st, 2010:

More progress on healthy practices in schools

>>More
 Promise Kept  

No. 69: In non-competitive markets, force insurers to pay out a reasonable share of their premiums for patient care

The Promise:

In markets where the insurance business is not competitive, "force insurers to pay out a reasonable share of their premiums for patient care instead of keeping exorbitant amounts for profits and administration."

Update July 1st, 2010:

Health bill requires insurers to pay minimums to patient care

>>More
 Promise Kept  

No. 63: Require health plans to disclose how much of the premium goes to patient care

The Promise:

"Require health plans to disclose the percentage of premiums that actually goes to paying for patient care as opposed to administrative costs."

Update June 30th, 2010:

Health insurance plans must disclose how much goes to patient care

>>More
 Stalled  

No. 524: Strengthen international rules against commercial whaling

The Promise:

"As president, I will ensure that the U.S. provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling. Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable."

Update June 30th, 2010:

International Whaling Commission meeting ends in stalemate

>>More
 Promise Kept  

No. 27: Change standards for determining broadband access

The Promise:

Will direct the Federal Communications Commission to "provide an accurate map of broadband availability using a true definition of broadband instead of the current 200 kbs standard and an assessment of obstacles to fuller broadband penetration."

Update June 29th, 2010:

Broadband map started

>>More
 Compromise  

No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year

The Promise:

"Will make a national commitment to weatherize at least 1 million low-income homes each year for the next decade, which can reduce energy usage across the economy and help moderate energy prices for all."

Update June 25th, 2010:

Stimulus program to weatherize homes is falling short

>>More
 In the Works  

No. 59: Invest in electronic health information systems

The Promise:

"Invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records."

Update June 25th, 2010:

Health care law sends more money for electronic health records

>>More
 Promise Kept  

No. 109: Fully fund the Veterans Administration

The Promise:

Fully fund "the VA so it has all the resources it needs to serve the veterans who need it, when they need it."

Update June 24th, 2010:

New law for Veterans Administration mandates advanced appropriations; more money in budgets

>>More
Advertisement
sponsored link
Obama's 500 promises ­ Get the complete set
Each card presents on promise with a brief description. Follow progress on PolitiFact.com's Obameter.
[] Obama's To-Do List

Here's a random sampling of five of Obama's 505 promises:

No. 334:
 Use the private sector to improve spaceflight

No. 16:
 Increase minority access to capital

No. 153:
 Include humanitarian international missions in long-term budgeting

No. 225:
 Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas

No. 470:
 Require more flex-fuel cars for the federal government

>>All promises
How to contact us:

We want to hear your suggestions and comments. For tips or comments on our campaign promise database, please e-mail the Obameter. If you are commenting on a specific promise, please include the promise number. For comments about our Truth-O-Meter or Flip-O-Meter items, please e-mail the Truth-O-Meter. We're especially interested in seeing any chain e-mails you receive that you would like us to check out. If you send us a comment, we'll assume you don't mind us publishing it unless you tell us otherwise.
Browse the The Truth-O-MeterTM: Browse The Obameter: Subscribe:

Keep up to date with Politifact:

 
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Friday, July 23, 2010

Media refuses to burn Breitbart ANS

This is an article from Salon.com.  It tells it like it is:  Andrew Breitbart is not a mistaken journalist or a naughty partisan, he's an outright liar.  He should be shunned from respectable media. 
Find it here:   http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/07/22/media_response_breitbart_sherrod_open2010  
--Kim


Editor: Alex Koppelman
Updated: Today
Topic:

Andrew Breitbart

Thursday, Jul 22, 2010 12:15 ET

Media refuses to burn Breitbart


The problem's not that he's an "activist journalist," it's that he's a liar. And the industry needs to call him out

By Scott Rosenberg
Media refuses to burn Breitbart  
YouTube
Andrew Breitbart
This originally appeared on Scott Rosenberg's Open Salon blog.

If you're a writer or journalist and you quote someone selectively or out of context so egregiously that you can twist their words to mean the very opposite of what they actually convey when they're quoted in full or in context, what you have done is not just mischievous or aggressive, it's outright wrong. If you're a professional, then you've committed an act of professional malfeasance.

And if you get away with this sort of stunt repeatedly, despite being exposed and shamed for it, then you are pulling off a grand heist -- stealing the credibility of larger media and government institutions that continue to pay attention to you.

This, in a nutshell, describes the challenge Andrew Breitbart has presented to the world of journalism, first with his ACORN deception and now with his Shirley Sherrod stunt. So far, journalism is failing to meet it.

By this point, Breitbart ought to be an object of snorting derision in the journalism profession. He ought to be shunned by respectable news organizations and mocked in public. He deserves the sort of ostracism that until recently was reserved for serial plagiarists.

Yet look at how two post-mortems of the Sherrod affair framed their presentation of his role.

Listen to this lead "All Things Considered" story on NPR, as Ari Shapiro sums up the meaning of Breitbart's behavior:

There has been a pattern of conservative activists blurring the line between journalism and advocacy, and doing it with striking success.

This is precisely not the problem with what happened to Shirley Sherrod. What's wrong with Breitbart's work has nothing to do with the fact that he is a partisan journalist rather than an "on the one hand, on the other hand" style journalist. The problem with Breitbart is not that he is an activist in journalist clothes, but rather that he is a serial purveyor of deceptions who is somehow still viewed as a legitimate source by some of his colleagues in the media.

Here is how Politico framed its take on Breitbart's role in the Sherrod story (in a piece that also talked about Tucker Carlson's stories on the Journolist e-mails). "The combative Breitbart" caused an "uproar," but his "revelations proved decidedly less incendiary when the context of the comments was added. And both [Breitbart and Carlson] have been criticized for failing to provide, or even trying to provide, that context."

No, Politico, Breitbart's revelations didn't prove "decidedly less incendiary." They proved wrong -- deliberately counter-factual and embarrassingly misleading. Breitbart is not merely combative and uproarious. He is malicious and dangerous. A handful of journalists have come close to acknowledging this: Later on the same "All Things Considered," Jon Alter called him "a notorious smear artist." And over at Fox News, Shepard Smith describes him as untrustworthy.

But mostly, Breitbart gets off with being described as a rambunctious bad boy whose behavior is the result of overly ardent partisanry rather than simple unfairness and lack of decency.

If there is any remaining doubt about how fully Breitbart deserves a full-on shun from the entire media world, just take a look at the laughably inadequate correction notice he has appended to the original report on his site about Sherrod:

While Ms. Sherrod made the remarks captured in the first video featured in this post while she held a federally appointed position, the story she tells refers to actions she took before she held that federal position.

 

The implication is: "Our story holds up, Sherrod said what we said she said, but we goofed on this little detail of her employment at the time." Whereas a real correction would read more like "Our original story was wrong. We quoted Sherrod to suggest that she drove an old white couple off their farm because she was a racist. In fact, she helped that couple hold onto their farm and used the tale to argue against racism."

Really, though, if Breitbart had any self-respect he would withdraw the whole story and apologize to Sherrod. Since he's never going to do that, why should he have a future as a participant in public discourse?

 

BONUS LINK: David Frum explains why the conservative media won't hold Breitbart to account.
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The Dog Whistles ANS

If you don't already know about "dog whistles" in political communication, please read this short article explaining it.  It's from Truthout. 
Find it here:  http://www.truth-out.org/the-dog-whistles61622
Oh, and the computer warns me this has some bad words in it.  Be warned. 
-Kim


The Dog Whistles

Friday 23 July 2010

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

photo
(Photo: VickyTH)

It is all too tempting to dismiss the far-right Teabagger legions and their idiot media allies as nothing more than a band of brain-addled yahoos who regularly make solar flare-sized fools of themselves in ways undreamed of by the Founders. I've mocked them a time or three myself; it's almost impossible not to. When a Tea Party web forum goes into paroxysms of fear and loathing about an Obama-led fascist takeover of America because they read a 2007 satirical article from the Onion and thought it was real, all you can do is put your head in your hands and thank God for showing us His sublime sense of humor.

Then, of course, there is the ridiculous Breitbart/Fox News farce regarding former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod and her alleged black-on-white reverse racism. Unless you've been living in a cave for the last few days, you probably know the story already, but just in case: after the NAACP (correctly) accused the Tea Party of being a fundamentally racist organization, a right-wing fraud of a blogger named Andrew Breitbart heavily edited a video of Sherrod to make it look like she was admitting to having deliberately screwed a white farmer because he was white. The full video shows Sherrod going on to say that she did in fact help that farmer, that she learned from the experience and grew from it, and that she and the farmer became great friends. The video still cost Sherrod her USDA job, at least for now, because Fox News took the Breitbart video and ran it across the sky with enough volume to cause Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to go into total bonehead mode and fire her.

Once everybody realized they'd been duped by Breitbart and Fox News - and a hat-tip to CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for doing the heavy lifting to expose the story for the bag of crap that it was - everybody backpedaled and apologized to Sherrod...everybody except Breitbart and Fox, that is. They pretty much said the whole thing was the fault of the NAACP and Obama for promoting reverse racism in America. Yeah, they actually did, which makes you wonder what one has to do to lose credibility in the realm of right-wing news. Andrew Breitbart and Roger Ailes could bend over double and take a dump on their own faces in the middle of the Washington Mall, and they'd still have plenty of people who treat their swill as if it were holy writ.

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So, yeah, it can be funny, it can be silly, and it can be (and often is) simply mind-boggling. After a while, all the screaming and blabbering about Obama being a fascist racist socialist Muslim terrorist tyrant who wants to destroy America and Christianity turns into only so much noise that can be all too easily dismissed as the nonsense it is.

Dismiss it too easily or too quickly, however, and you'll miss the dog whistle buried in the message. I hadn't heard of the term "dog whistle" until I saw a disturbing post on the web forum DemocraticUnderground, but the term perfectly describes the phenomenon. Wikipedia describes the term thusly:

Dog-whistle politics, also known as the use of code words, is a type of political campaigning or speechmaking employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience. The term is an analogy to dog whistles built in such a way that humans cannot hear them due to their high frequency, but dogs can.

The DU post referring to a "dog whistle" was highlighting a recent broadcast of Pat Robertson's "700 Club." During this particular broadcast, author Eric Metaxas was being interviewed about his new biography of attempted Adolf Hitler assassin Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Metaxas' book paints Bonhoeffer as a prophet of God who was doing holy work through his plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer, a trained theologian who resisted the Nazis based on his Christian faith, has been a revered figure in many religious circles ever since his death, so a book calling him a holy prophet isn't wildly out of line on its face.

But here's the thing. During the interview, descriptions of fascism and tyranny were used extensively. Again, given that the topic dealt with Hitler and Nazi Germany, the use of this language isn't immediately improper...except when it's in the context of the kind of rhetoric used by Pat Robertson, Fox News and bloggers like Andrew Breitbart to describe President Obama. The interview basically stated that it is the holy work of any good Christian to assassinate a fascist tyrant, and given the serial ways these right-wing media people have used those exact terms to describe the president, it is a pretty short leap to realize the "700 Club" was essentially sending the message that whoever puts a bullet in Obama will be considered a saint on the level of Bonhoeffer.

And who was this dog whistle aimed at? There are many potential candidates, as evidenced recently in Sarah Palin's former stomping grounds in Alaska. Tea Party backers of right-wing Senate candidate Joe Miller staged a march during a rally for Miller. Many of the people in that march carried Miller signs, American flags...and assault weapons. You can watch a video of the march here.

This is far from the first time Tea Party people have brandished weapons at public rallies, and most of them are you're typical armchair warriors, all flash and no substance, and only the outline of a real threat. It only takes one, however, to hear the dog whistle and decide to take on God's holy work.

A lot of these people are fools, and listening to them is like being inside someone else's headache. It's not all fun and laughs, though. The dog whistles are sounding loud and clear, if you have the right kind of ears to hear them.

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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Fwd: Another Big Deal: Wall Street Reform ANS

I don't usually pass these kinds of things on, but this one has a nice compact summary of what's in the financial bill the President just signed into law.
for those of you who might think he isn't getting anything done, have a look at this.  Despite all of the Republicans and all of the multinational corporations against him, Mr. Obama got this passed.  Read about it.
--Kim


[]  The White House, Washington


Good afternoon,

Today, President Obama signed into law the most sweeping reforms of our financial system since the Great Depression and the strongest consumer protections in history.

We've put together a video that walks through what the bill means for the American people:

Join the Discussion

Here are a few highlights:
  • There's now a single agency responsible for looking out for consumers: the Bureau for Consumer Financial Protections. Instead of seven agencies dealing with these issues part-time, one agency will be in charge of establishing clear rules of the road for banks, mortgage companies, payday lenders and credit card lenders.
  • Mortgage brokers won't make a higher commission by selling people mortgages that they can't afford. This was a major factor in the recent housing crisis. Now brokers and banks have to take into consideration a borrower's ability to repay before giving a home loan.
  • You'll be able to get a free credit score if you're denied a loan, an apartment, or a job because of your credit, so you won't be turned down without knowing why. Right now, you get one free credit report a year, but you can't see your credit score for free, even if a lender or employer rejects your application because you have bad credit.
  • No more bailing out banks with our tax dollars, no more "too big to fail." If a company's in trouble because of risky gambles, it will have to liquidate -- and do so before it can take down the rest of the financial system.

To learn more and watch the video, head over to WhiteHouse.gov:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WallStreetReformVideo

Yesterday, under pressure from the President, the Senate overcame a partisan minority and took an important step toward passing an extension of unemployment insurance. We need to keep the pressure on to ensure that there are no more delays and that this assistance gets to our friends and neighbors who lost their jobs during this crisis as soon as possible.

Their struggles are a staggering reminder of how much damage has been done and how many families have had it so tough for so long now -- in no small part due to reckless greed and irresponsibility hundreds or thousands of miles away on Wall Street.

The problem was that year after year, decade after decade, Wall Street gained more and more power in Washington, and they and their allies in Congress fought with everything they had to derail these reforms -- but this time there was a President who fought back, and this time they lost.

Let me tell you something: This President has been fighting for the middle class since Day 1. He stood strong for the Recovery Act that's created or saved 3 million jobs and cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. He fought tooth and nail against the insurance companies to pass health reform after seven previous presidents failed. And now the middle class has won out over the Wall Street lobbyists.

Wall Street reform is a big deal -- and it's only the latest major step forward for the American people.

Sincerely,

Joe Biden
Vice President


P.S.  If you've made it this far, I know you're interested in Wall Street reform. Check out the video, and share it with folks who might find it helpful:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WallStreetReformVideo



Visit WhiteHouse.gov


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Monday, July 19, 2010

Powers That Ought To Be ANS

Here is the Weekly Sift from Doug Muder.  I particularly recommend reading what he's written about the rightful place of journalism in a democracy.  
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.blogspot.com/
--Kim




Monday, July 19, 2010



Powers That Ought To Be

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

-- Sydney J. Harris

In this week's Sift:
My Journalism Reading Project: a work in progress

Imagine, for a moment, that you're the sovereign of your own little country. You're queen or generalissimo or president-for-life or something. If you wanted to do your job well, how much would you want to know about your country?

Silly question, right? You'd want to know everything you could. To the extent that your administration could afford them, you'd want to have agents of all sorts bringing you information: people who kept track of all your government's projects and how they were progressing, who kept you up-to-date on the business climate, who monitored the health and safety of your citizens, and so on. You'd also want experts compiling statistics and noticing trends so that you could stay ahead of events. Outside your borders, you'd want agents keeping track of all the foreign countries that affected your homeland -- trade partners, allies, threats, rivals.

And what would happen if you didn't have that information? People who did would manipulate you into serving their interests rather than yours or your country's. You'd sign things you didn't understand. You'd empower underlings to go off and do God-knows-what. Even when you thought you were deciding things, you wouldn't be; someone else would have laid it all out for you so that you really only had one choice.

Well, guess what? You are a sovereign. That's what democracy is supposed to mean: the people are sovereign; they rule. You rule.

And there is an army of agents out there bringing you information. That's what the news media is supposed to be: your intelligence agency. They're supposed to be gathering the information you need to rule, figuring out what it all means, and presenting it to you in a way that you can absorb and use. And when they don't, you and your country are at the mercy of whoever does have the information.

And so You the People, We the People, find ourselves going to war for reasons that turn out to be false, or being stampeded into covering the multi-billion-dollar losses of dishonest investment banks. When we try to do something in our own interests, like guaranteeing each other's access to health care or heading off global warming, it's incredibly difficult because of all the disinformation we have to wade through -- death panels, Climategate, and much, much more.

So our intelligence agency has been letting us down. And things are getting worse: news agencies are closing bureaus and laying off reporters to save money. Can you picture any other sovereign allowing that? After 9-11, when it looked like the CIA and FBI had fallen down on the job, did the U.S. government respond by slashing their budgets and firing a bunch of agents? No, quite the opposite.

In many ways this is a big, complicated topic, but this much of it is simple: We the People haven't been taking our sovereignty seriously. And we've tolerated both our government and the media corporations not taking it seriously either. We haven't demanded the high-quality information that we need to do our jobs.

Scads of books have been written in the last few years about the sorry state and poor prospects of American journalism, and lately I've given myself the project of trying to read them. I'll be telling you what I learn in dribs and drabs rather than saving it all for one big report.

Here's one thing I've picked up already: Chapter 3 of McChesney and Nichols' The Death and Life of American Journalism contains some American history I had never run across before: Apparently the Founders really did take the sovereignty of the people seriously, and did consider the press to be the People's intelligence agency.

That wasn't just pious rhetoric. They spent serious money to subsidize that era's equivalent of the Internet: the Post Office. Under the early presidents, America built the best postal service in the world, and had one of the highest literacy rates. That wasn't just the result of our rugged individualism or our protestant desire to read the Bible for ourselves; it was social policy. Because, as Jefferson put it:
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

In particular, the federally-funded Post Office charged practically nothing for shipping newspapers and pamphlets, and the debate among the Founders was whether it should charge anything at all. At the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Rush said:
It should be a constant injunction to the postmasters to convey newspapers free of all charge for postage. They are not only the vehicles of knowledge and intelligence, but the sentinels of the liberties of our country.

Today we hear a lot from the Tea Party about the Founders and the Constitution and how "freedom isn't free" -- which always means that we have  to fight a war somewhere. To the real Founders, though, freedom wasn't a strong military ( quite the opposite) but an educated public with access to high-quality information.

And that brings us to the next story.
What's Really Wrong With America: Too Many Free Books

Like a lot of states, Illinois and its cities have budget problems. And Fox Chicago has spotted a fat pile of government waste: public libraries.
There are 799 public libraries in Illinois. And they're busy. People borrow more than 88 million times a year.
But keeping libraries running costs big money. In Chicago, the city pumps $120 million a year into them. In fact, a full 2.5 percent of our yearly property taxes go to fund them.
That's money that could go elsewhere – like for schools, the CTA, police or pensions.

But why spend more money on education when the schools could eliminate their own wasteful shelves of books? Bob Herbert quotes the AP:
As the school budget crisis deepens, administrators across the nation have started to view school libraries as luxuries that can be axed rather than places where kids learn to love reading and do research.

And he comments:
What a country. We'll do whatever it takes to make sure the bankers keep living the high life and swilling that Champagne while at the same time we're taking books out of the hands of schoolchildren trying to get an education.

Could anything be more unfaithful to the vision of the Founders or the sovereignty of the People? (See previous article.) All our discussions about the value of education for the individual miss the point. If we were a monarchy, we would spare no expense educating the Crown Prince, and consider ourselves fortunate if he showed any interest in our efforts.

In a democracy, the children collectively are the Crown Prince. We are educating the future sovereign -- not for his or her benefit, but for ours. Far more than sending troops to distant corners of the world, educating American children to wield their future sovereignty wisely is the cost of freedom. We should pay it, even in hard times.

Now let's talk about libraries. A lot of Americans don't really need libraries any more. If we're rich, we can buy all the books we want. If we're middle-class, we can afford a broadband internet connection. Probably our homes have at least one quiet room where we or our children can think and study.

But if you're poor, or just struggling, you may not have any of that. Lots of children are growing up in homes without books, without the internet, and without quiet places to do their homework. They may or may not use the library for those purposes -- that's up to them and their parents. But as long as the library is open, the door to our culture is not completely closed.

What's that worth to you? What's that worth to our country?
While we're talking about education and democracy, it's worth looking at an article in the Boston Globe from last week:
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds.

They studied popular political falsehoods (like "we found WMDs in Iraq") and whether people who believe them change their opinion when given the facts. For the most part they don't, and many people just dig in deeper, believing even more strongly after someone has tried to correct them.

I'll quibble with the idea that this is a "recent" discovery. My journalism reading project includes Walter Lippmann's 1921 classic Public Opinion:
The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them

When I think about how majority stereotypes of women, blacks, and gays/lesbians has changed since my childhood in the 1960s, though, I despair less about democracy than the Globe does. Stereotypes change, but only when people are confronted with new facts again and again, over a period of years.

Democracy works, but it works slowly, and only if lots of people are willing to insist on the truth day-in, day-out, while talking to their friends and co-workers over coffee.

Which brings us to the next story.
Respectable, Sensible Bigotry

Ever notice how often somebody portrayed as an innocent victim of political correctness turns out later to have been a flaming bigot all along?

Frank Rich connects the Mel Gibson dots. Critics who found Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" anti-Semitic were themselves tarred as anti-Christian bigots -- until Mel got drunk and started ranting to police about "the f**king Jews". More recently, tapes of Mel's verbally abusive remarks to his girl friend have come out, laced with the N-word and other slurs.

That poor guy, victimized by those over-sensitive Jews and their baseless charges.

This week, it's the Tea Party. The NAACP passed a resolution asking the Tea Party to "repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches" .

So of course recent Tea Party Express VP Mark Williams was all over the airwaves telling us who the real racists are: the NAACP, making their hateful charges against the fine upstanding white people of the Tea Party. Centrists and even some liberal pundits were taking a head-shaking why-did-you-have-to-start-this attitude towards the NAACP.

Then Williams overplayed his hand: He posted a parody letter from the NAACP president to President Lincoln asking to have slavery back:
We had a great gig.  Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.  Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Yeah, that's not racist. It's -- you know -- funny. Right? And so was the suggestion that the NAACP finds tax cuts racist because ...
How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?

Hilarious. Where does that humorless NAACP get off implying folks like this are racists?

I'll let Ta-Nehisi Coates wrap up:
Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry

His point: We can't let that grade-school "I'm not but you are" taunt intimidate us away from pointing out bigotry wherever it shows up.
Immigration Economics

Do illegal immigrants help or hurt the U.S. economy? Arguments both ways sound very convincing, but have a lot of holes. I haven't yet found an analysis I can endorse wholeheartedly.

A report put out by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) finds that illegal immigrants get a net government subsidy (benefits minus taxes) of $113 billion a year. But if you crunch some numbers in the report itself, you find that $38 billion of that goes to educating the American-citizen children of the immigrants. Thats us investing in our citizens' future, not a "benefit" to illegal immigrants. I've got to wonder how many similar factors inflate the numbers.

A report by the Perryman Group estimated that making undocumented workers suddenly vanish (as in the movie A Day Without a Mexican) would lower GDP by $245 billion a year. However, its assumptions about the labor shortage in the native-born population are a lot less convincing now than they were when the report was published two years ago.

Since I can't find or generate any trustworthy economic analysis, I'll have to settle for a more anecdotal understanding.

One of the main characters in Nick Redding's nonfiction book Methlandis Roland Jarvis, a native-born white American who starts out working in a meat-packing plant in Iowa, making $18 an hour with benefits. Over several years, the plant gets sold and resold, with each new owner slashing jobs and cutting wages (under the threat of closing the plant or moving it to Mexico), until workers make $6.50 an hour with no benefits. Jarvis tries to keep up his lifestyle by working extra hours (and smoking meth for extra energy), but eventually he gives that up to cook and deal meth full time.

A bunch of the people who take the low-wage no-benefit meat-packing jobs are illegal immigrants with some kind of phony paperwork. They do a hard, dirty and sometimes dangerous job that used to pay enough for an American worker to support a family and also pull his or her weight in the larger community through taxes. Now it doesn't, so the plant workers (legal and illegal alike) are generating the kinds of costs the FAIR report tabulated: Their emergency-room visits and their kids' education cost government more than their taxes cover. In essence, the workers are subsidized.

But who's getting really getting that subsidy? Looking at the work and lifestyle of the immigrants, I don't think it's them. They earn what they get, and probably more.

Here's what I see happening: The company pays its workers less than a living wage, and the government makes up the difference. To the extent that the meat-packing industry is competitive and efficient -- not all industries are -- the cost-reduction gets passed on to the consumer as lower meat prices. The rest is profit.

I think that's typical. Whether we're talking about cheap factory work, cheap child-care in our homes, cheap kitchen workers in our restaurants, cheap janitors in office buildings -- the presence of illegal immigrants drives down costs. Some of that shows up in increased business profits and some in a lower cost-of-living for the rest of us. But it costs the government money.

It also costs unskilled American workers by driving down their wages -- though it's hard to tell how many of those jobs would just vanish overseas (maybe to be done by the same people who come here to do them now) if wages were higher.

Summing up: The subsidy FAIR noticed is just the visible piece of a larger social/economic policy decision to have a low-price low-wage economy . If we had an economy that respected hard work -- one that paid workers a wage that allowed them to support both their families and the larger community -- the subsidy would go away. But things would cost more.

In the absence of reliable numbers, I'll just give my gut impression: I think middle and upper-class Americans do well out of illegal immigration, the working class not so well.
Disinformation Watch

Most people don't want health care reform repealed.

Illegal votes by felons did not give Al Franken his seat in the Senate.

The "scandal" about the Justice Department "protecting" the fringy New Black Panther Party is completely trumped up. Newsweek concludes:
it's not about a real investigation; it's about staging an effective piece of political theater that hurts the Obama administration.

New British and Dutch reports say the same thing as every other official investigation: The only scandal in Climategate was stealing the researchers' emails. Unfortunately, they can't get the front-page coverage that the bogus stories got.

And finally, I'm not sure how you debunk something this nutty: A Republican Congressional candidate in Missouri claims Obama and the Democrats are taking away "the freedom -- the ultimate freedom, to find your salvation, to get your salvation. And to find Christ, for me and you." Don't look at me -- I said at the time that deporting the Holy Spirit was a bad idea.
Short Notes

Follow-up to last week: The NYT has yet another Israel/Palestine article with no precipitating event. Like the Kristof column I quoted last week, these reporters see the blockade failing to undermine Hamas:
Today Hamas has no rival here. It runs the schools, hospitals, courts, security services and ­ through smuggler tunnels from Egypt ­ the economy.

The best soap operas always find some way to stay fresh. Unwed pregnancy, break-up, acrimony, drug charges, nude photos -- and now the Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston wedding is back on.

Meanwhile, those family-values-destroying Clintons are having a wedding of their own: Former first-daughter Chelsea is getting married at age 30. There's no baby. She's just marrying a guy she's known since her teens, after getting her bachelors from Stanford and a masters from Oxford. Dull, dull, dull.
An illuminating graph from Nate Silver:

ssm.png
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Our Beaker Is Starting to Boil ANS

I'm giving you a link here because of the pictures.  I got referred to this article by one of our readers. 
He says, "Pretty clever coding, to let you drag the divider across and see the glacier in 1921 and in 2009.

Also, the content!!!! "
It's about the retreating glaciers, and has a stunning picture that's interactive.  It's an op-ed from the New York Times, called

Our Beaker Is Starting to Boil

find it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opinion/18kristof.html?_r=1
--Kim
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Sunday, July 18, 2010

Obama’s Chicago Tactics ANS

this is an article from February of this year about what's wrong with how Obama is trying to do things, but from a very different perspective than what I have heard before.  The author, Michael Gecan, is a very effective community organizer and author.  this man knows what he's talking about, and he talks about solutions.  Basically, he says the problem is Chicago.  Read it. 
Find it here: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.2/gecan.php
--Kim


ONLINE FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Obama's Chicago Tactics

Michael Gecan

The first quarter of the Obama administration is finally over. The key issue was not health care, not terrorism, not jobs. Nor was it the promise of "transformational change" that permeated the presidential campaign. The key issue was power­how the power of Washington's political culture would respond to the power of the Chicago political culture imported by the Obama team.

When the media mentioned the administration's "Chicago tactics" or when opponents complained that the White House staff behaved like "Chicago pols," they were saying that the Obama team could be aggressive, tough, even mean.

That mild and broad critique missed the more important features of the Chicago way of doing politics: an approach that translated brilliantly in the presidential campaign and miserably after the inauguration. Here are those features­as I've observed them for 50 years, first as a young person growing up in a blue-collar Chicago neighborhood, then as an organizer in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere­and a look at how Washington has responded to their presence.

The Man on Five. The mayor's office in Chicago is on the fifth floor of City Hall. The Man on Five is the hub, center, source of all good, generator of all punishment. This has nothing to do with charisma. The two mayors named Daley and most other machine mayors have had little personal pizzazz, no speaking skills, and a more transactional than transformational approach. Decade after decade, they have methodically consolidated and centralized power and influence. There is no counterweight­no House of Representatives, no Senate, no independent committee chairs. The City Council is a vaudeville show directed by the mayor. His power is unilateral, one-way, top-down. The key White House staff­Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett­inhaled this culture and carried it with them to Washington.

But their new reality includes an outnumbered opposition that will not cringe at a call from the White House, fellow Democrats who value self-preservation over sweeping legislation that may cost them votes, and middle-level bureaucrats who have seen administrations come and go. The Washington crowd knows how to play defense, if nothing else­how to block, obstruct, stymie. At this stage, Obama may be more like Eisenhower than any other American president. When Ike, the victorious general who had commanded millions of men, took office, outgoing President Truman said, "Poor Ike, he'll say do this and do that; and nothing will happen."

Control is God. The organizing principle in the Chicago political culture is control­control of who gets to the Man on Five and who doesn't, control of how a bill or event burnishes the mayor's myth or doesn't, control of who runs for other offices and who doesn't. The mortal sin of this culture is independence based in any value higher than loyalty to the Mayor.

The organizing principle of Washington is also control, but scores of power brokers exercise it, each with his or her own turf and perks, each resisting encroachment. Mutual deference is fundamental. This leads to a perfectly calibrated and balanced system of non-action or minimal action. Many people were puzzled when they heard wailing from the White House over the loss of the 60th Senate vote, but the administration's despair was logical in the context of the Chicago political culture. In the Windy City, if you don't have total control and the ability to dominate, you have no control and are check-mated. The art of using an overwhelming majority of 59 to 41 has not been practiced for generations in Chicago. Faced with anything other than uncontestable clout, the Chicagoans who went to Washington might as well have been asked to speak Greek.

Elections Mean Everything. The one thing that the political machine excels at is managing the electoral process from start to finish. Selecting and grooming candidates. Buying or scaring off reformers. Marshaling election lawyers to knock out other candidates' petitions. Using only paid public employees to work (illegally, but with almost no chance of being caught and prosecuted because of the care taken to avoid detection) in campaigns and on election day. Filling vacancies produced by indictments and convictions of insiders with even tighter insiders. Nobody does it better. This is why the presidential campaign did so well in caucus states and less well in those with open elections: the machine thrives on narrow or limited voting situations. But it founders on the kind of fluid and shifting series of skirmishes that, say, the health care struggle became. The president's decision to bring his Chicago team into the White House may, therefore, have been his worst. Axelrod, Jarrett, and even Emanuel are much more suited to electoral than legislative campaigns. Imagine if a different threesome­Richard Ravitch, Donna Shalala, and George Mitchell­had filled those positions this past year.

The way forward is not bigger government or more bureaucracies in Washington. It is government revenue directed back to local people and local projects.

Other People's Money. The Chicago political culture is run by families or tribes­Daleys, Strogers, Madigans, Mells, Jacksons, and others­that have been on the public payroll for as long as 85 years. Most members of these tribes have never earned a dollar in the private or nonprofit sectors. They have grown accustomed to drawing their salaries from public agencies, sequestering and spending tax dollars, and using their public positions to grow even richer as lawyers and consultants to private interests who need public favors, ultimately drawing pay for their private efforts from the public coffers. Back in Illinois, leaders of both parties­Democrats in the northern part of the state, Republicans in the suburbs and central parts of the state­have grown up in this culture, reinforced it, and prospered because of it. They take other people's money for granted the way most people take oxygen for granted. Suddenly, the Chicago cohort finds itself surrounded by an opposition party and moderates within their own party who come from states and regions where there is no such sense of entitlement.

Does all this add up to the end of this administration, as some have suggested? Not at all. I'd argue this could mean that the administration, having squandered the first quarter, is finally ready to play.

But first it would have to draft some new players, remove most of the Chicago crowd and shed many of the political habits developed in a machine political environment.

Then it would have to stop playing by the rules set by the permanent elite in Washington and approach the nation's core concerns in a very different way.

The administration's proposal to create a new federal agency to hold financial institutions accountable is an excellent example of not doing things differently. It plays right into the hands of the Washington political and bureaucratic establishment. Metro Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)­the organization I work for­proposed a much simpler and more targeted solution: reestablish limits on interest rates­our goal: 10 percent­so that the extraordinary drain of wealth that still harms scores of millions of Americans could be stanched. Until the late 1970s, the United States capped interest rates at 9 percent in most circumstances, and banks were still profitable. Since then, the economy has operated without fiscal speed limits. Reestablishing those limits on credit cards, payday loans, and other predatory credit vehicles would do more for the majority of Americans than another new agency or several thousand pages of regulations. The appeal for this basic restraint has been heard even by titans of finance: the CEO of Citigroup surprised the financial industry by recently agreeing that a cap on interest rates, with certain conditions, would be possible.

The White House should take advantage of all of its current administrative powers to limit the widespread­and, according to many religious traditions, sinful­practice of usury. It could deposit federal funds only in financial institutions that agree to refrain from toxic practices such as payday lending, rapid tax refunds, and predatory home financing, and that operate with a reasonable limit on interest rates and fees. Government could reward responsible institutions with massive deposits and punish others with massive withdrawals. Metro IAF leaders recently met with New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli­who happens to be the sole trustee for approximately $130 billion of pension funds­and asked him to consider a strategy of this sort.

The same approach could be applied to the foreclosure issue. Those financial institutions that begin to renegotiate loans in earnest and reduce principal would benefit from billions of new federal, state, and local deposits. Those that don't would not. Financial institutions would still be free to operate irresponsibly. But there would now be a price to pay for their irresponsibility.

The crisis in unemployment and underemployment can't be solved with simple carrots and sticks, but equally requires that the administration repudiate both the Washington and Chicago styles. There are only three ways to create jobs: encourage business expansion, consumer spending, or government spending. The notion of putting two million unemployed Americans back to work is far removed from our imagination and discussion. In addition, the ability to put that many people to work­the institutional capacity­is disappearing from our culture. China and India mobilize workers at this level, not the United States. How to do this? Perhaps something like Race to the Top would work here. The Department of Education has essentially released a request for proposals for states to respond to. Each state that chooses to apply is graded based on criteria established by the Department. The winners will receive large grants. The losers will not.

This process could be used to stem unemployment. Each state would be asked to apply for a portion of the $60 billion needed to stimulate employment for as many as two million Americans (the equivalent of a subsidy of $30,000 per worker). Here are the criteria:

• Commitment to hire new people (so that the funds aren't used to plug budget gaps and support the existing workforce, and so that unscrupulous employers do not use the effort to fire veteran workers and hire lower-cost and subsidized new employees).

• Large-scale public works included in the proposal (cleaning and beautifying the dreadful Amtrak corridor in the northeast; maintaining national and local parks; removing blight from the burned-out and shrunken cities of the Midwest; painting and upgrading school buildings everywhere).

• Reliance on capable institutions­not political machines­to organize and deploy workers. One institution that has proven effective in many states is the military. Young veterans with experience in leading and motivating others could play an important role here. Those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to face minimal employment or unemployment would have an option of two years of continued, paid domestic service through this effort.

• Reinforcement of small business development (still a main generator of new jobs). This is a challenge requiring supple responses­just enough incentive to buttress true entrepreneurs, just enough judgment to ferret out the hustlers and opportunists who will see the absorption of subsidy as a business opportunity in and of itself.

The states, counties, organizations, and businesses that bring the most value to the effort­preexisting support, supervision, and productive workforce training­would be rewarded with greater funding.

This scale of expenditure would require legislative action, but it would be in the interests of every congressional delegation­left, right, and center­to take this option seriously. It would place local elected officials in the position of rejecting federal support that would both put constituents to work and address local infrastructure and other needs. Local residents could organize to identify and prioritize the projects and initiatives addressed by this effort. It would be up to members of local communities to determine the number of people who would be employed and types of projects undertaken. This is not bigger government or more bloated bureaucracies in Washington. It is government revenue directed back to local people and local projects. The ownership of this effort must be real, deep, and close to the ground.

As presently constituted, the White House cannot undertake these sorts of necessary and far-reaching initiatives. The president packed his staff with those who grew up in the unique political culture of Chicago and Cook County, one of the last remaining islands of machine domination in the nation. When the machine went to Washington, it did what it has always done and what worked back home: try to crush or co-opt opponents, project and promote the image of a mythic leader, tightly control the media, and rely on those who helped win the election. The disarray that the administration finds itself in after its first year is a direct result of the failure of this culture to function under new circumstances.

Different players, with a different approach, can tackle the lingering and deepening problems that plague huge numbers of Americans. These Americans have a mind to work and are waiting to support and lead effective action.

After all, power, properly understood, is still just that: the ability to act.
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Saturday, July 17, 2010

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime ANS

"New York Governor Eliot Spitzer connects the dots: The states tried to regulate against predatory mortgage lending, and the Bush administration stopped them. Remember that the next time somebody tells you that government regulations are bad for the economy. "

Here's the article about that paragraph above. (Note, it is from 2008.) Yes, the Bush Whitehouse actively stopped the states from protecting consumers.  That's one reason the economy crashed: the neo-robber barons think that you can rob people endlessly and there will never be an end to how much wealth is there to steal, but they forget what happens when you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. 
Find it here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html
and here is where the quote at the top is from: http://dougmuder.blogspot.com/
--Kim

washingtonpost.com > Columns

Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime


How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers

Click here!  
 
By Eliot Spitzer
Thursday, February 14, 2008

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
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What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

The writer is governor of New York.








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James Kroeger’s Nontrivial Pursuits ANS

Hi Everybody -- this is an old "blog" from Non-Trivial Pursuits.  those of you who have been reading this newsletter from the beginning have probably seen it before.  But I hope you read it again, as I think it is really important for The American People to start having some understanding about economics again.  The American People -- that's you.  this short article includes links to longer ones; I especially recommend the one called Republican Nemesis, which is really more psychological than economic or political. 
Find it here:  http://nontrivialpursuits.org/WordPress/
--Kim

James Kroeger's Nontrivial Pursuits

December 17th, 2005

Important links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice
Nontrivial Pursuits. That's what I decided to call my new website. I think it captures reasonably well the fact that I spend a lot of time thinking about nontrivial matters, like political threats and wars and economic injustice and the ultimate basis for morality. My thinking on these various topics is what I will be putting on this website. The old website concept, Taxwisdom.org, defined my interests much too narrowly.

Why Taxwisdom.org? Well, when I first started putting my stuff on the Internet, the first thing I wanted to share was my analysis of the economic theory that current tax policy is based upon. I put it on a website I called Taxwisdom.org because I entertained hopes that it could lead to an internet-based organizational effort to enlighten the public regarding the ultimate price that we pay­-or don't pay­-when the government taxes the incomes of its citizens in a certain way.

I still entertain those hopes. But since that early effort, the 2004 election came to its disappointing climax. Like others, I decided to put down my analysis of why the Democrats lost and entitled it The Republican Nemesis. Apparently a lot of people liked what I had to say in that article. It soon became clear to me that far more people were interested in what I had to say about political matters than were interested in what I had to say about economic policy. After all, economic theory can get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

I'm still entertaining hopes for the tax policy advocacy effort, but it is no longer the priority in my mind. Right now, I'm focused on an effort to articulate my ideas on how we can achieve an 'almost ideal' level of economic justice in America: economic security and prosperity. I know, I know, that's the kind of language that convinces many orthodox-types you are a crank, but I really don't know how to modify it. I really believe we can make great improvements in our economic lives and that it's just not that difficult a thing to do.

The vast majority of professionals have been conditioned to believe that Painful Imperfection is something we just have to accept in our economic experience. They are unenthusiastic about efforts to eliminate poverty because they are convinced that they would have to give up some of their 'standard of living' in order to make poverty go away. They hold this view because they don't keep their attention focused on the real economy.

If you reduce the economy to its most essential elements, you will be looking at the real economy. Forget about the numbers. The ultimate thing that determines how many rich people and middle-class people there are in a society is relative scarcity. Generally speaking, you will have as many rich people in your society as you have scarce "experience opportunities." Nothing you can do with 'money' is going to change that.

That means that you can tax the hell out of the rich and it will change nothing for them for they will remain just as rich as they ever were, in real terms. None of the mansions or yachts or beach front property would disappear. Everything that the rich normally buy would continue to be just as affordable to them as before because prices would drop to levels that they could afford. The Marketplace guarantees that this will happen.

No matter how much you take away from the rich through taxation, if they continue to have more money than everybody else, they will still be the ones who end up with the scarcest things. Indeed, it is not possible to deprive the rich of any of their purchasing power through heavy taxation, as long as they are taxed in a way that preserves their 'rankings' within society's total distribution of disposable income (or money wealth, to be more precise).

You can get a more complete idea of the economic agenda I am proposing if you work your way through some of my articles on the Economics Justice pages of this site.
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Electrifying vehicles: A car and its drama ANS

Here is some upbeat news about electric cars (though the prices mentioned here are higher than in the article I just sent you, so maybe it's obsolete already?) and about what the Obama Administration is getting done.
Find it here:  http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/07/electrifying-vehicles-a-car-and-its-drama
--Kim


Electrifying vehicles: A car and its drama

Who will play the lead character in Who Revived the Electric Car?, the sequel that is bound to be made to the famous documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/.  Many are vying for the role: car manufacturers, battery producers, scientists and now the Obama Administration.

The White House issued a report July 14 that credits federal stimulus money for the rapid drop in costs for electric cars. Once written off as a technological mishap, the electric car now appears nearly road ready for American consumers. The price tag is dropping rapidly, in part because of the $12 billion the federal government has pumped into alternative vehicles, according to the report. Of that $5 billion went to electrifying the US transportation fleet. http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Battery-and-Electric-Vehicle-Report-FINAL.pdf

Electric cars will cost between $25,000 and $35,000, after tax credits, by the end of this year, says the White House. That�s down from $100,000 before passage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Electric cars are dropping in price because stimulus-funded manufacturers are producing batteries more cheaply.

Not long ago, it cost $33,000 for the battery of an electric vehicle with a 100-mile range. The Department of Energy expects the cost to drop by half between 2009 and 2013. By the end of 2015 some batteries should cost $10,000. The price of batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles, or PHEVs, is falling quickly too. PHEVs can travel 40 miles on electricity and then automatically shift to gasoline. Priced at about $13,000 in 2009, the PHEV batteries are expected to cost only $6,700 in 2013 and $4,000 in 2015, according to the DOE.

The new electric car is seen as a way to reduce reliance on oil, which now supplies 95% of our transportation fuel. But the electric car has several interesting side stories as well.

Electricity is cheaper than gasoline. So, consumers should find themselves paying the equivalent of only $1/gallon to fuel electric cars, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41410.pdf. In coming up with that figure, NREL assumed it will take 9-10 kWh per gallon to operate a typical mid-size car, with vehicle efficiency of 2.9 mile/kWh. Researchers also assumed an electricity cost of 9.4 cents/kWh as the cost of electricity. While that is a fair average, the truth is that the price of electricity varies significantly nationally, and the cost of driving an electric car will vary accordingly. For example, in North Dakota electric rates run about 7 cents/kWh, while in Connecticut they are 19 cents/kWh.

Keeping operating costs low will depend on wide-spread implementation by utilities of time-of-use pricing, and of consumer willingness to take advantage of electricity at bargain times. Prices for electricity fall at night when demand diminishes. Electric grid planners are hoping consumers will charge their cars at night. Otherwise we may have to build more power plants to accommodate the cars, and that will negate some of their environmental and cost savings. Time-of-use pricing, which reflects lower night-time costs, should help encourage consumers to plug in at night. But consumer behavior is hard to predict.

Another side story is that the electric vehicle gives consumers a chance to act as power producers. The car batteries can store power which consumers can sell back to their local utility, possibly at high prices if done when the grid is in short supply.

And finally, it looks like the electric car will help the US create manufacturing jobs. The White House report says that in 2009, we had only two factories manufacturing advanced vehicle batteries. Those factories produced less than two percent of the world�s advanced vehicle batteries. By 2012, the US should have 30 factories with a 20 percent market share and by 2015 a 40 percent market share.

Should all this come to be, it is hard to say who will get the credit. What�s clear is that the story offers lots of happy endings to today�s energy woes. Here�s hoping it is a tale told true.

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