ANS -- Pictured: The giant pink rabbit that can be seen from space

and now for something completely different. 
Find it here:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1077767/Pictured-The-giant-pink-rabbit-seen-space.html  
--Kim

Pictured: The giant pink rabbit that can be seen from space

Last updated at 12:19 PM on 15th October 2008


A giant pink rabbit has been created in the Alps that can be seen from space.

Visitors are encouraged by those who made it to climb all over the 200ft toy sculpture and even sleep on it.

But the Austrian art collective who created the bunny were amazed to find that it is so large the rabbit can be seen from space via the Google Earth programme.
Enlarge  

The giant pink bunny that can be seen from space, thanks to satellite images from Google Earth

The pale-pink bunny which lies flat on its back in the Italian Alps took more than five years to build and is set to stay there until 2025.

It is made of soft, waterproof, materials and stuffed with straw to make it comfortable to rest on.

It was placed in a rural spot called Artesina in near Cuneo and attracts many visitors each year.

Wolfgang Gantner of the Vienna-based art group, Gelitin, said: 'It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can't help but smile.

'We like to see hikers climb up the bunny's 20ft sides and relax on his belly.'
Enlarge  

I spy...The 200ft bunny as seen from space via Google Earth

The group have posted the rabbit's location on its Gelitin website along with a poetic description of the creation.

It reads: 'Behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.

'Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woollen landscape of the rabbit's body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.'

The rabbit was moved to the 5,000ft-high Fava region in 2005.
Enlarge  

We made this: The Vienna-based artists who created the rabbit


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1077767/Pictured-The-giant-pink-rabbit-seen-space.html#ixzz1P2nFl9wY

ANS -- The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths: David Schwartz, Psychotherapist

Here's a sadly amusing article about the psychopaths that run this country and its corporations now. 
My computer warns me that it has bad words in it, if you care about such things....
Find it at:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10880  
--Kim

The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths: David Schwartz, Psychotherapist

This piece was brought to my attention by Jim Oberg.

*****************************

The Rise of the Second-String Psychopaths

by David Schwartz
Common Dreams, June 5, 2011

The great writer Kurt Vonnegut titled his final book A Man without a Country. He was the man; the country was the United States of America. Vonnegut felt that his country had disappeared right under his – and the Constitution's – feet, through what he called "the sleaziest, low-comedy Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable." He was talking about the Bush administration. Were Vonnegut still alive in the post-Bush era, he would not have felt that his country had returned.

How had our country disappeared? Vonnegut proposed that among the contributing factors was that it had been invaded – as if by the Martians – by people with a particularly frightening mental illness. People with this illness were termed psychopaths. (The term nowadays is anti-social personality disorder.) These are terms for people who are smart, personable, and engaging, but who have no consciences. They are not guided by a sense of right or wrong. They seem to be unaffected by the feelings of others, including feelings of distress caused by their actions. Straying from a decent way of treating people, or violating ethical codes causes no anxiety, the anxiety which is what causes the rest of us to moderate our more greedy impulses. If most children feel anxiety when they are pilfering the forbidden cookie jar, psychopaths feel just fine. They can devour the cookies, shatter the jar as evidence and stuff it in the trash can. When accused, they can argue with apparent sincerity that the cookie jar has been missing for at least a week. They suffer no remorse, no guilt, no shame. They are free to do anything, no matter how harmful.

Psychopaths can be very tricky to recognize. As psychiatrist Dr. Hervey Cleckly wrote in his classic The Mask of Sanity in 1941, psychopaths are not technically insane. They don't have a psychosis, like schizophrenia. They are experts in appearing normal. They can act the role of a caring, concerned executive, even though they actually do not seem to experience such feelings. If they hurt somebody, they don't modify their behavior.

The United States corporate and government spheres have become, Vonnegut suggested, a perfect habitat for psychopaths. What has allowed so many psychopaths to rise so high in corporations, and then government, he wrote, "is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich!

In a country in which much of human culture has been rendered into machines for the manufacture of money, psychopaths are the ideal leaders. They are very focused. They are outcome oriented. They are frequently charming, and usually very bright and able. They can lay off thousands of people, or deny people health care, or have them waterboarded, and it does not disturb their sleep. They can be impressively confident. Psychopaths can be dynamic leaders of enterprises, but are handicapped by their lack of feelings for relationships. They may be accomplished captains of industry, or senators, or surgeons, but their families are frequently abused and miserable. Most psychotherapists have seen the wives or husband or children of such accomplished people.

Since psychopaths are usually very smart, they can be quite competent at impersonating regular human beings in positions of power. Since they don't care how their actions affect people, they can rise to great height in enterprises dealing with power and money. They can manufacture bombs or run hospitals. Whatever the undertaking, it is all the same to them. It's just business.

The economic system that remains after the destruction of American local cultures has created an excellent employment picture for psychopaths. But the opportunities open to them are now so vast that there is apparently now an actual labor shortage. At least that is the only explanation I can find for the rise of a cadre of psychopathic leaders who resemble the usual type in all ways but one: they're simply not that smart. One has only to look at right-wing not-so-Christian fundamentalists to see the peculiar emergence of a second-string of psychopaths.

The US has been endowed with abundant resources, and there have always been a more than sufficient supply of psychopaths of the first intellectual grade to supply corporate suites and their subsidiary, the Congress. Why is there now a downgrade to the dumb ones, like the lowering of standards for military recruits to deal with a shortage of cannon fodder?

It is no secret that the Koch brothers and others of the super-rich seem to have undertaken a final push to consolidate control through the conversion of a marginally democratic to an essentially fascist state; extreme right-wing, authoritarian, and demagogic. This kind of government is ideal for control of a populace by the moneyed elite. To carry this out requires the employment of many 'kept' politicians to excite and misdirect scared and angry – and ignorant – voters. Lest the citizenry realize who stole their money and storm their castles with torches, the rapacious elite need politicians who will carry out the work of re-directing anger at teachers, or labor unions, or the poor. I can only conclude that the people who now own the country couldn't find any first-rate psychopaths to carry out their work. Or maybe the smart ones were all occupied. So they had to go to second-stringers, people who could actually believe what they were told to say.

We are a country who has become second-best, even in the quality of our psychopaths.

David B. Schwartz, Ph.D practices psychotherapy in Ithaca, NY. His books include Who Cares? Rediscovering Community and the forthcoming The Sidewalk Psychotherapist.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 9:13 pmand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

ANS -- New Law for Electric Cars Announced

Here's the latest news on hybrids and electric cars. 
Find it here:  http://www.newsjunkyjournal.com/new-law-for-electric-cars-announced/2511639/   
--Kim

New Law for Electric Cars Announced

What began as Senate bill 841 in 2009 is now officially signed into law as the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act (PESA) of 2010 after being passed by both houses of Congress in December of 2010 and signed by President Barack Obama on January 4, 2011. The new law sets the stage for all electric or electric/gas hybrid vehicles to come equipped with some manner of noise-generating device that alerts pedestrians to their otherwise silent operation.

Why Was This Law Introduced?

As electric and electric/gas hybrid cars, trucks and SUVs became more prevalent, the vast differences between them and traditional internal combustion engine vehicles were finally revealed to the world. The vehicle types are not only different in the way in which they are powered or the amount of emissions produced. One of the key traits that set electric vehicles apart from gas-powered vehicles is the level of noise that each emits. The motors in electrics are virtually silent; the only noise produced by the vehicle is the result of the tires hitting the asphalt or the shocks engaging/bouncing to produce some squeaking or rattling noises.

While idling at a traffic control signal or just upon start-up, an electric vehicle would be basically invisible to a sight-impaired pedestrian. The danger inherent with any intersection of sightless pedestrians and silent vehicles led some safety advocacy groups and lawmakers to propose the idea of the PESA. The idea is that electric vehicles need some way to announce their presence to blind people in the vicinity since traditional noises like the revving or humming of an engine are not present in the admittedly more eco-friendly battery-operated and hybrid cars of today.

What Will the Law Do?

At the moment, the law doesn't really have the "teeth" necessary to result in a huge change for car makers, drivers or pedestrians. The purpose of the law now is to effectively research and determine what types, sounds, decibel levels and tones would be sufficient to adequately warn pedestrians, bicyclists and passersby that an electric vehicle is in their vicinity.

Section Three of the new law directs that the Secretary of Transportation and those in his employ (the United States Department of Transportation, a/k/a the USDOT) have 18 months from the date of enactment (effective the day the President signed the bill into law ­ January 4, 2011) to begin the process of making a formal rule standardizing:
- Performance requirements for whatever type of alert noise would be necessary to make an idling or slow-moving electric or hybrid vehicle's presence known to nearby blind and sighted pedestrians alike
- Ensuring that new electric, hybrid and alternatively powered vehicles are equipped with an alert sound that conforms to whatever standards the USDOT deems necessary to meet the standards established during the 18-month research period

Lawmakers hope the law will make the roadways safer for all people ­ those in cars and pedestrians alike. As the numbers of electric and hybrid vehicles increase, highway noise as a whole will decrease, so PSEA aims to ensure that the newly quieted roads are as safe as possible.

While it has been signed into law now, there aren't yet standards established to ensure that near-silent electric vehicles can be heard by all. Until such a time as those standards are in place, if you or a loved one has been struck by an electric or hybrid vehicle and injured, contact an experienced motor vehicle injury attorney in your area to learn more about your legal rights and options.

Article provided by Galligan & Reid, P.C.

ANS -- Let the Real OWNERS of the Corporations Decide on the Politics: John C. Bogle with a post-Citizens-United Idea

More about the economy.  This one is about the stock-holders voting how the corporation uses its political money.  Instead of it automatically going to pro-business greed-heads, it could actually consider the environment or the health of the middle class.  Think of it!
At least, read the intro to the article by Andy Schmookler.  It has an important idea in it. 
Find it here:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10707&cpage=1#comment-491556  
--Kim

Let the Real OWNERS of the Corporations Decide on the Politics: John C. Bogle with a post-Citizens-United Idea

As I've said here on NSB a couple of times over the years, I have proposed –in my book of almost twenty years ago, THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE: HOW THE MARKET ECONOMY SHAPES OUR DESTINY– that the present-day publicly owned corporation is like a machine on automatic pilot.

Contrary to the principles of "private property," the real owners of the modern corporation do not really have any meaningful say in how their company conducts itself in the world. Their interests are ASSUMED to be purely financial, purely for maximal return on their investment, as if they had no other values, no concerns not of a selfish nature.

The management then declares that they are OBLIGATED to maximize their service to the shareholders thus REDUCED to mere loci of greed, indifferent to values that do not enrich themselves.

In THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE, I propose a way to change that.

The ideas in this piece do not nearly go as far as I'd like, but they represent a meaningful step in the right direction.

*******************

The Supreme Court Had Its Say. Now Let Shareholders Decide.

by John C. Bogle
New York Times, May 14, 2011

SHOULD Home Depot's board report each year on the company's political policies and spending? In a groundbreaking vote at the company's June 2 annual meeting, Home Depot's shareholders will have the chance to vote on a nonbinding resolution of support for the company's policies on, and future plans for, political contributions.

The vote was made possible because the Securities and Exchange Commission rightly decided in March to allow proxy proposals that require public companies to permit their shareholders to weigh in on their political spending.

This means that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's decision last year that laws limiting corporate political contributions violate constitutional free speech principles, the game is far from over. Shareholders ­ not self-interested corporate managers ­ should, and can, decide policies on corporate political contributions.

What makes this strengthening of shareholder rights particularly important is that over the past 50 years control of corporate America has shifted from individual stockholders to institutional stockholders. But these institutional investors have been unwilling to challenge political activities by corporate boards, even when those activities are not in their shareholders' interests.

Our nation's money managers now hold 70 percent of all shares of American corporations, compared to a mere 8 percent in the 1950s, giving them absolute voting control. To be sure, these money-management agents are duty-bound to represent their principals ­ mutual-fund shareholders, for instance ­ but have not always honored this responsibility.

In fact, for decades, with a handful of exceptions, the participation of our institutional money managers in corporate governance has been limited, reluctant and unenthusiastic. Perhaps they feared angering clients whose pension and thrift funds they manage ­ that is, the very corporations whose shares fill their investment portfolios. It is an obvious conflict of interest, however often denied.

To make matters worse, most of our large institutional money managers are themselves owned by giant United States and global financial conglomerates. The shares of those conglomerates, in turn, are held in their own portfolios. I don't expect this web to be easily untangled.

And yet I believe that, in the wake of the Supreme Court case, known as Citizens United, the institutional investor community has an obligation to act. Institutional investors should insist that the proxy statement of each company in which they invest contain the following: "Resolved: That the corporation shall make no political contributions without the approval of the holders of at least 75 percent of its shares outstanding."

Such a "supermajority" requirement is necessary because of the inevitably wide range of views that characterize any shareholder base. As it happens, 75 percent is halfway between a simple majority and the standard (under Delaware corporate law) that requires a unanimous shareholder vote to ratify a gift of corporate assets other than for charitable purposes.

For all its faults, the Citizens United ruling upheld the disclosure requirements of the campaign financing law, and I had hoped full disclosure might limit corporate contributions. But in fact, corporations are able to exploit provisions in the law governing nonprofit groups to make lavish political contributions without disclosure, making it easier than ever for cash to subvert our political system. Action to limit contributions at the corporate level is therefore urgent.

Indeed, the Supreme Court itself put the onus on shareholders to control corporate political giving. In his opinion for the majority in Citizens United, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy predicated the First Amendment right of free speech on the ability of shareholders to ensure that the speech reflects their views rather than diverting corporate assets for the benefit of executives. He suggested that any abuse could be corrected by shareholders "through the procedures of corporate democracy."

In the Home Depot case, which was brought by NorthStar Asset Management, a Boston money manager, a vigilant S.E.C. has allowed our shareholders to take that first step toward democracy. The critical battle over political spending by corporations has now been joined. For the first time, the financial institutions that now control corporate America will have to stand up and be counted: the ballots are before them, and they will have to vote yes or no, or abstain. While mutual funds, our largest holders of stocks, are now required to publicly report how they voted during the year, pension funds are not; they should be.

Fortunately, the Home Depot shareholders aren't alone: similar proposals are also included in the proxy votes now being solicited by Citigroup, I.B.M., Charles Schwab, Prudential, JPMorgan Chase and others. From this modest beginning, I hope a groundswell will develop that will give corporate owners a say not only over political contributions, but many other policies ­ executive compensation being the most obvious example.

The outcome of these votes this proxy season will be a powerful indication of whether our money managers are observing their fiduciary duty and putting the interest of the small investors and pension funds that are their clients before their own. America's institutional investors must stand up to the Supreme Court's misguided decision and bring democracy to corporate governance, recognize conflicts that arise from the interlocking interests of our corporate and financial systems, and take that first step along the road to reducing the dominant role that big money plays in our political system.

John C. Bogle is the founder and former chairman and chief executive of the Vanguard Group.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 8:10 pmand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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One Response to "Let the Real OWNERS of the Corporations Decide on the Politics: John C. Bogle with a post-Citizens-United Idea"

1. ToddR Says:
2. June 10th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
   
3. I like Bogle's idea a lot, and hope it "has legs" and goes somewhere.
   
   
4. kim Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
5. June 10th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
   
   
6. I've been suggesting that we all get rid of our stocks. Maybe I was hasty: If you don't get rid of your stocks, vote them! Let the corporations know that their fiduciary duty to us does not rest on making the most money at all costs: it must be balanced by concern for the environment and jobs and the health of the middle class as a whole, as well as our spiritual and moral health.

ANS -- The Truth About the American Economy

Here is a good summary of what has happened to the economy and why. 
Find it here:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10859 
--Kim





The Truth About the American Economy

By Robert Reich
Robertreich.org, May 30, 2011

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate. It's growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, which is barely growing at all. Consumer spending is down. Home prices are down. Jobs and wages are going nowhere.

It's vital that we understand the truth about the American economy.

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Great Prosperity

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.

During these three decades everyone's wages grew ­ not just those at or near the top.

Government enforced the basic bargain in several ways. It used Keynesian policy to achieve nearly full employment. It gave ordinary workers more bargaining power. It provided social insurance. And it expanded public investment.

Consequently, the portion of total income that went to the middle class grew while the portion going to the top declined. But this was no zero-sum game. As the economy grew almost everyone came out ahead, including those at the top.
The pay of workers in the bottom fifth grew 116 percent over these years ­ faster than the pay of those in the top fifth (which rose 99 percent), and in the top 5 percent (86 percent).

Productivity also grew quickly. Labor productivity ­ average output per hour worked ­ doubled. So did median incomes. Expressed in 2007 dollars, the typical family's income rose from about $25,000 to $55,000. The basic bargain was cinched.

The middle class had the means to buy, and their buying created new jobs. As the economy grew, the national debt shrank as a percentage of it.

The Great Prosperity also marked the culmination of a reorganization of work that had begun during the Depression. Employers were required by law to provide extra pay ­ time-and-a-half ­ for work stretching beyond 40 hours a week. This created an incentive for employers to hire additional workers when demand picked up. Employers also were required to pay a minimum wage, which improved the pay of workers near the bottom as demand picked up.

When workers were laid off, usually during an economic downturn, government provided them with unemployment benefits, usually lasting until the economy recovered and they were rehired. Not only did this tide families over but it kept them buying goods and services ­ an "automatic stabilizer" for the economy in downturns.

Perhaps most significantly, government increased the bargaining leverage of ordinary workers. They were guaranteed the right to join labor unions, with which employers had to bargain in good faith. By the mid-1950s more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie. Non-unionized companies, fearing their workers would otherwise want a union, offered similar deals.

Americans also enjoyed economic security against the risks of economic life ­ not only unemployment benefits but also, through Social Security, insurance against disability, loss of a major breadwinner, workplace injury and inability to save enough for retirement. In 1965 came health insurance for the elderly and the poor (Medicare and Medicaid). Economic security proved the handmaiden of prosperity. In requiring Americans to share the costs of adversity it enabled them to share the benefits of peace of mind. And by offering peace of mind, it freed them to consume the fruits of their labors.

The government sponsored the dreams of American families to own their own home by providing low-cost mortgages and interest deductions on mortgage payments. In many sections of the country, government subsidized electricity and water to make such homes habitable. And it built the roads and freeways that connected the homes with major commercial centers.

Government also widened access to higher education. The GI Bill paid college costs for those who returned from war. The expansion of public universities made higher education affordable to the American middle class.

Government paid for all of this with tax revenues from an expanding middle class with rising incomes. Revenues were also boosted by those at the top of the income ladder whose marginal taxes were far higher. The top marginal income tax rate during World War II was over 68 percent. In the 1950s, under Dwight Eisenhower, whom few would call a radical, it rose to 91 percent. In the 1960s and 1970s the highest marginal rate was around 70 percent. Even after exploiting all possible deductions and credits, the typical high-income taxpayer paid a marginal federal tax of over 50 percent. But contrary to what conservative commentators had predicted, the high tax rates did not reduce economic growth. To the contrary, they enabled the nation to expand middle-class prosperity and fuel growth.

The Middle-Class Squeeze, 1977-2007

During the Great Prosperity of 1947-1977, the basic bargain had ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. But after that point, the two lines began to diverge: Output per hour ­ a measure of productivity ­ continued to rise. But real hourly compensation was left in the dust.

It's easy to blame "globalization" for the stagnation of middle incomes, but technological advances have played as much if not a greater role. Factories remaining in the United States have shed workers as they automated. So has the service sector.

But contrary to popular mythology, trade and technology have not reduced the overall number of American jobs. Their more profound effect has been on pay. Rather than be out of work, most Americans have quietly settled for lower real wages, or wages that have risen more slowly than the overall growth of the economy per person. Although unemployment following the Great Recession remains high, jobs are slowly returning. But in order to get them, many workers have to accept lower pay than before.

Starting more than three decades ago, trade and technology began driving a wedge between the earnings of people at the top and everyone else. The pay of well-connected graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs has soared. But the pay and benefits of most other workers has either flattened or dropped. And the ensuing division has also made most middle-class American families less economically secure.

Government could have enforced the basic bargain. But it did the opposite. It slashed public goods and investments ­ whacking school budgets, increasing the cost of public higher education, reducing job training, cutting public transportation and allowing bridges, ports and highways to corrode.

It shredded safety nets ­ reducing aid to jobless families with children, tightening eligibility for food stamps, and cutting unemployment insurance so much that by 2007 only 40 percent of the unemployed were covered. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70 to 90 percent that prevailed during the Great Prosperity to 28 to 35 percent; allowed many of the nation's rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax; and shrunk inheritance taxes that affected only the top-most 1.5 percent of earners. Yet at the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which took a bigger chunk out of the pay the middle class and the poor than of the well off.

How America Kept Buying: Three Coping Mechanisms

Coping mechanism No. 1: Women move into paid work. Starting in the late 1970s, and escalating in the 1980s and 1990s, women went into paid work in greater and greater numbers. For the relatively small sliver of women with four-year college degrees, this was the natural consequence of wider educational opportunities and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But the vast majority of women who migrated into paid work did so in order to prop up family incomes as households were hit by the stagnant or declining wages of male workers.

This transition of women into paid work has been one of the most important social and economic changes to occur over the last four decades. In 1966, 20 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home. By the late 1990s, the proportion had risen to 60 percent. For married women with children under the age of 6, the transformation has been even more dramatic ­ from 12 percent in the 1960s to 55 percent by the late 1990s.

Coping mechanism No. 2: Everyone works longer hours. By the mid 2000s it was not uncommon for men to work more than 60 hours a week and women to work more than 50. A growing number of people took on two or three jobs. All told, by the 2000s, the typical American worker worked more than 2,200 hours a year ­ 350 hours more than the average European worked, more hours even than the typically industrious Japanese put in. It was many more hours than the typical American middle-class family had worked in 1979 ­ 500 hours longer, a full 12 weeks more.

Coping mechanism No. 3: Draw down savings and borrow to the hilt. After exhausting the first two coping mechanisms, the only way Americans could keep consuming as before was to save less and go deeper into debt. During the Great Prosperity the American middle class saved about 9 percent of their after-tax incomes each year. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, that portion had been whittled down to about 7 percent. The savings rate then dropped to 6 percent in 1994, and on down to 3 percent in 1999. By 2008, Americans saved nothing. Meanwhile, household debt exploded. By 2007, the typical American owed 138 percent of their after-tax income.

The Challenge for the Future

All three coping mechanisms have been exhausted. The fundamental economic challenge ahead is to restore the vast American middle class.

That requires resurrecting the basic bargain linking wages to overall gains, and providing the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce. As we should have learned from the Great Prosperity ­ the 30 years after World War II when America grew because most Americans shared in the nation's prosperity ­ we cannot have a growing and vibrant economy without a growing and vibrant middle class.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 11:49 amand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

ANS -- Supreme Court rejects illegal immigrants' tuition case

We heard something about this on the radio this morning.  We thought it odd that it was the first we heard of it.  Have you heard about it?
Find it here:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/06/us-usa-immigration-education-idUSTRE7553KV20110606   
--Kim

Supreme Court rejects illegal immigrants' tuition case

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON | Mon Jun 6, 2011 11:24am EDT

(Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to a California law that gives illegal immigrants the same in-state college tuition rates as legal state residents, another contentious issue in the nation's immigration policy debate.

The justices refused to hear an appeal by group of out-of-state U.S. citizens after the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law and dismissed their lawsuit.

The 2001 law provides that any student who attends a California high school for three years and graduates can get in-state college and university tuition. Illegal immigrants who qualify must swear they will seek to become U.S. citizens.

Nine other states, including New York, Texas and Illinois, have adopted similar laws. Opponents said California unlawfully discriminated against U.S. citizens in favor of illegal immigrants and said the case involved a question of great national importance.

Attorneys for the students who pay higher out-of-state rates said about 25,000 illegal immigrants receive the tuition breaks every year. The state put the number at 6,500 students.

California, which faces a worsening budget crisis, spends more than $200 million each year subsidizing the tuition of illegal immigrants, attorneys for the out-of-state students said.

They said the California measure was trumped by a 1996 federal law barring any state from providing illegal immigrants any higher education benefits based on residency unless U.S. citizens were eligible for the same benefit.

The California Supreme Court ruled the state law was based on attending high school in the state, it says nothing about state residency and it does not violate federal law.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal without comment.

In a separate case, the justices last month upheld an Arizona law that allows a state to shut down businesses that hire illegal immigrants, a different issue in the immigration policy debate.

The Supreme Court case is Robert Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, No. 10-1029.

(Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by Bill Trott)

ANS

This is a quote that is important.  From Deer Hunting with Jesus.
Find it here:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10823  
--Kim




If we abandon the playing field to the other side, they win by default.

ANS -- America Becoming an Idiocracy: Dr. Brian Moench on Common Dreams

Here is an interesting article about a really misinformed, or is that just misinforming, "leader". 
Find it here:   http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10814  
--Kim

America Becoming an Idiocracy: Dr. Brian Moench on Common Dreams

This piece was brought to my attention by George Vye.

******************

America Becoming an Idiocracy

by Brian Moench
Common Dreams, May 22, 2011

In the 2006 satirical science fiction comedy, Idiocracy, the protagonist Joe Bauers, "Mr. Average American", is selected by the Pentagon for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakens 500 years in the future, to discover a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive and their only hope for survival.
With the Republicans bullying their way through state and federal legislation, the movie has become prophetic to the point where the only thing that isn't believable is that this devolution will take another 500 years. Idiocracy already has its living, fire-breathing poster child, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking Republican and former chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
You may remember Rep. Barton as the Congressman who on behalf of the American people apologized to the CEO of British Petroleum, Tony Hayward, for having our Gulf of Mexico get in the way of Hayward's oil spill. "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure. [It] amounts to a shakedown, so I apologize."
How about Barton's grasp of CO2 as a greenhouse gas? "It's odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn't cause cancer… there's nobody that's ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning. Hell, "CO2 is in our Coca-Cola!"
Even better is Barton's explanation of how wind power could speed up climate change. "Wind is God's way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it's hotter to areas where it's cooler. Wouldn't it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can't transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It's just something to think about." Yes, Joe, that sure is something to think about!
If Barton's awareness of why we must stop building wind turbines isn't enough to blow you over, how about his penetrating insight into just how innocuous air pollution is. At a Congressional hearing in April, Barton insisted that an EPA estimate that pollution controls on coal power plants would prevent 17,000 premature deaths a year had been "pulled out of thin air."
Unfortunately, the air coming out of coal smoke stacks is hardly thin, but Barton's understanding of medicine certainly is. "To cause poisoning or a premature death, you have to get a large concentration of mercury into the body. I am not a medical doctor, but my hypothesis is that is not going to happen. You are not going to get enough mercury exposure or SO2 exposure or even particulate matter exposure."
The only remotely true part of Barton's statement is that he is indeed not a medical doctor. Real medical doctors from the American Lung Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association and other health groups were so outraged and stunned at Barton's statement they sent him a letter pointing out decades of medical research contradicting everything he said.
Mercury is the second most toxic substance on earth, after only plutonium, and is capable of causing brain damage in fetuses and children at unimaginably small concentrations. One out of every six women of child-bearing age has enough mercury in her blood to cause measurable brain damage in any child she might conceive.
The largest source of this mercury contamination is the emissions of coal fired power plants. Nonetheless, industry lobbyists and their allies in Congress, like Barton, have vowed to fight any attempt by the EPA to correct this deplorable public health disaster. Without a shred of supportive evidence, pollution control and environmental protection of any kind is suddenly being smeared as "job-killing", ignoring all the while that science clearly proves that pollution itself is "heart-killing, lung-killing, brain-killing and people-killing". Which Joe could argue does create job openings.
If Rep. Barton was just your crazy uncle who everyone avoids at family reunions, this would just be entertainment. But he is only the most outspoken of an entire legion of Republican politicians from their Presidential contenders on down who are strutting their disdain for science and the environment like a fully spread peacock's tail. Even many Democrats are tagging along with this menacing flock.
In a normal world people who repeatedly lose their arm wrestles with reality would also lose the next election, their careers, and the right to leave the house without their medication and a chaperone. But in an idiocracy, they rise to power, ignore the facts, re-write the laws, cash the lobbyists' checks, and force us all into their asylum. Idiocracy has indeed come to America, 500 years ahead of schedule.

Dr. Brian Moench is President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 at 3:55 amand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
 

ANS -- People’s Imperviousness to Evidence and Reason is Being Overstated: Prof. Jonathan Baron

This is about whether or not people can be persuaded by reasoned argument.  It brings in the scientific findings on the subject.  I've included the comments thus far. 
Find it here:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=10816
--Kim

People's Imperviousness to Evidence and Reason is Being Overstated: Prof. Jonathan Baron

Some years ago, my researches brought me into contact with Professor Jonathan Baron, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in matters like cognitive processes and decision-making.

Recently I went back to Jon because I wondered about the validity of assertions, said to be based on good scientific research, and much heard these days in the blogosphere, about how futile it is, in seeking to persuade people in general, to speak to them as rational beings. As a candidate these days for public office, thus one who seeks to persuade people, and as one whose values and habits are both oriented toward the appeal to empirical evidence and logic, I wanted to know if people are as impervious to rational argument as these much-circulated reports suggested.

Below, Professor Baron quotes the question as I posed it to him, and then provides his response.

*************************

You asked me the following question, and my answer follows:

Question:

An idea has been making the rounds over the past four or five years.

It's said to be supported by a fair amount of social-psychological research, and it takes various forms, but the essential point is this:

PEOPLE'S OPINIONS, it is reported, SEEM TO BE INVULNERABLE TO MODIFICATION THROUGH THE PRESENTATION OF FACTS (OR LOGIC) THAT ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THEIR BELIEFS. Some research is said to indicate that … people will become even more deeply entrenched in their original beliefs when confronted with evidence that refutes those beliefs. …

What I want to ask you is this: how true is all this? How robust are these studies? Should I, as a candidate, give up on the notion that if I present people with certain clear and well-supported facts they can be led to reconsider beliefs that those facts refute? Is it futile to speak to people as if logic mattered?

Response:

This issue is one of my pet peeves. All the findings that people cite are correct. But they are almost all based on aggregates, averages, over many subjects. This is in part a statistical issue. Suppose you do an experiment looking for "myside bias". This is a general term (invented by David Perkins) for all the things you describe. The bias can be positive (that is, present), zero (no bias, complete fairness), or even negative (bias against one's own position, excessive self-criticism). And each subject in the experiment gets a number indicating the degree of bias. The usual thing is to show that the average number is positive. But this does not mean that everyone is biased. All it means is that the average positive bias is stronger than the average negative bias.

It turns out, though, that in all these experiments, many people do not show very much bias. I don't know of any clear demonstrations of negative bias. But what seems to be happening is that the average is positive because some number of people – 50%, 25%, 75%, depending on the study – show a substantial bias and others show very little or none. But the study gets reported as "people are biased". This often happens in the original articles, but it almost always happens when findings are reported in the news.

If you think the way that business firms think when they do marketing, you are interested in market share, not in convincing everyone that your product is the best, but in getting a reasonable percent. That percent is there. There are people who listen to reason, even in the U.S.

The fads in psychology right now emphasize cynicism. I think they over-do it, so that people give up and don't even try to use reason.
Of course, those studies are right in showing that many people display "myside bias" all the time, probably most of us display it some of the time, and certain conditions, such as group identification, make it more likely. Still, there is room.

Reasoning with people is hard. My first impulse is to say just lay out the arguments and try to engage them. When I do this, though, I often find that my opponents start citing "facts", which I think are just wrong, like "global warming is in dispute" or "economic analysis shows that lower taxes bring prosperity". At this point the discussion stops because, if I am to back up my position, I have to go find citations. (If you do this by email, it can eat up hours and hours, as you end up critiquing each others' sources.) So I usually just say, "I think you are wrong" but give up further discussion. It _might_ help to add in a little lesson about the psychology of biases, but if your opponents are smart they will just play that back, accusing you of displaying the same bias.

Most of the advice that psychologists give now (implicitly, through their research emphasis) is to appeal to emotions such as empathy or fear. But I think this just encourages irrationality, and it is a tool that can be used by both sides.

Jon

For more about Professor Baron:

Home page: www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron

Blog: judgmentmisguided.blogspot.com/

*****************

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2011 at 4:31 amand is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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7 Responses to "People's Imperviousness to Evidence and Reason is Being Overstated: Prof. Jonathan Baron"

1. David R Says:
2. June 3rd, 2011 at 5:36 am
3. What do people want (and need) in the way of government -and from government ?A convincing SENSE OF LEADERSHIP over public affairs so that they can lead their own private lives without being distracted by idiocy and self-seeking in those managing and mis-managing public affairs.
4. Simple ! F D R again !
5. Most people were glad when school days were ended and happy to leave the classroom behind.They are now immersed in the social/ economic enterprise up to their ear-balls. Want to lead now ? Don't BE a problem !
6. They do not need government in their face nor in their way nor taking their money nor undermining their nation in favor of other nations or a so-called United Nations, and certainly NOT contradicting their common sense by which they solve their own problems and live Their Own lives every day . . day after day . . as the 'leaders' come and go !
   
   
7. Want to 'lead' ? Don't BE a problem
8. Robin Pettit Says:
9. June 3rd, 2011 at 7:05 am
10. In the past, I tried to reason with global warming deniers, even looking at a research article they cited to support their global warming denier side and discovered that the research was misinterpreted by them and actually supported global warming supporters, they then called into question the research that they earlier had cited. I agree with Dr. Baron to some degree, but there are definitely those who are impervious to reason out there.
11. Arthur Says:
12. June 3rd, 2011 at 9:34 am
13. This dialogue was preempted already decades ago, when von Neumann and Morgenstern wrote their THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. Their conclusions are competent and decisive. Those who battle on nevertheless only disclose their ignorance of the established results in this genre. They also disclose a troubling reality about the secular trends in our educational establishment! /Arthur /arthur.gillman@gmail.com/ 204-896-4967 (CT Zone)
14. Andrew Bard Schmookler Says:
15. June 3rd, 2011 at 10:11 am
16. Why be such a tease, Arthur? Instead of ALLUDING to all sorts of important knowledge –"conclusions" that are decisive, "established results" and "troubling reality"– give us some succinct statement about what the conclusions, results and realities ARE.
17. Bob F Says:
18. June 3rd, 2011 at 10:38 am
19. I agree with the professor, but I don't think that means that it is easy, or even feasible in some situations, to win political arguments by reasoned argument and fact. When we try to win people over, we are not just working against any internal bias they may have. I agree that if that were all we had to face, we could find that reasoned persuasion works better than we give it credit.
20. However, in a political setting, we are also working against those making arguments against our position. Some of those arguments may be based on reason and fact-based logic, but there is another factor as well.
21. Reason isn't the only way to reach people! Appeals can also be made to their emotions, especially fears. We can do that; our opponents can do that. It seems that in modern politics people are flooded with such appeals.
22. I think that "myside bias" has relatively little to do with the net effect of political appeals on voters; however, unfortunately, that doesn't mean that reason rules the day.
23. Arthur Says:
24. June 3rd, 2011 at 10:51 am
25. Unfair, Andy! Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (say) contains durable wisdom of great power. But how could anyone boil it down to an Elevator Message? ("Obey the 'Categorical Imperative'!") Those who come to trust that Kant's offering is worthwhile considering must be prepared to invest seriously in reading, studying, working through Kant. Or else they must pass him by. Any true friend of theirs could do no more than point this out; and take care not to cheat them into a Flash Comics caricature! (Of course the same argument runs for the discoveries of Marx, von Mises, Darwin, and Pavlov.) /Best! Arthur
26. Andrew Bard Schmookler Says:
27. June 3rd, 2011 at 11:49 am
28. That may be. But as your comment is written, I could not say with any degree of certainty anything about what you are saying. It would seem that you are taking sides in this "dialogue," but you refrain from any clear statement about what side you are taking. I've been in the idea business for a very long time, and I have plenty of experience in saying things concisely and clearly. Brevity often gets in the way of saying things altogether satisfactorily, but one can always say SOMETHING worth saying that has a clear import and meaning.

ANS -- Social Security: Take early bird special?

This is one expert's opinion.  How likely am I to live to 81?  What happens when it runs out?  this was linked from a cartoon one of our readers posted on Facebook.
Find it here:  http://www.bankrate.com/finance/retirement/social-security-take-early-bird-special.aspx?ec_id=m1078090  
--Kim


retirement

Social Security: Take early bird special?

By Dr. Don Taylor, Ph.D., CFA, CFP • Bankrate.com

Dear Dr. Don,
You said you would wait until you were 70 to collect Social Security because you were concerned about your retirement income in your 80s and 90s. You're joking, right? What makes you so sure you're going to see 80 or 90? I mean, really, do you have a crystal ball or is the government asking you to give out that sort of advice?

I say retire and file for Social Security as soon as you can, if you can afford it, cause you might be dead tomorrow.
-- Joe Jumble

Dear Joe,
I'm no shill for the government. You're right, either of us might be dead tomorrow, but if you're 62 and married to a spouse who's also 62, there's a roughly 41 percent chance that one of you makes it to age 90. It's those later years that make you wish you were the ant instead of the grasshopper and had waited to start receiving Social Security retirement benefits. The combination of the higher monthly benefit and the larger base qualifying for cost of living adjustments makes it an attractive option to delay if your finances allow it.

Taking retirement benefits at age 62 reduces your monthly retirement benefit from 20 percent to 30 percent, depending on your full retirement age. Spousal benefits taken at age 62 are reduced from 25 percent to 35 percent, depending on the spouse's full retirement age.

According to the Social Security electronic fact sheet on when to start receiving retirement benefits: "If you live to the average life expectancy for someone your age, you will receive about the same amount in lifetime benefits no matter whether you choose to start receiving benefits at age 62, full retirement age, age 70 or any age in between."

So on average, there's no advantage to taking benefits early or to waiting to start benefits. Since I'm more concerned about longevity risk then I am about the risk of dying early and not receiving Social Security payments, I'm planning to capture those delayed retirement credits. You feel differently. That's OK. It's why they call it personal finance.

The break-even point between taking benefits at age 70 versus taking benefits at your full retirement age is about age 81½ (ignoring inflation adjustments). Before that point, starting retirement benefits at full retirement age is preferred. Past that point, delaying retirement until age 70 is preferred. It's only at the break-even point that you receive the same dollar amount in benefits.

A joint life mortality table shows an 83 percent chance that either you or a spouse is still with us at age 81. Since survivor benefits reflect the additional credits for delayed retirement, waiting to start receiving Social Security retirement benefits can have a major impact on the survivor. However, spousal benefits don't include any bump for delayed retirement credits. They max out at 50 percent of a worker's full retirement age benefits, except for future cost of living adjustments, or COLAs.

Get more news, money-saving tips and expert advice by signing up for a free Bankrate newsletter.

Read more: Social Security: Take early bird special? http://www.bankrate.com/finance/retirement/social-security-take-early-bird-special.aspx#ixzz1NtfRav3R

ANS --- Where to turn?

Here is Doug Muder's Weekly Sift for last week.  It includes a really good summary of the "jobless recovery". 
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.blogspot.com/   
--Kim

ANS is Access News Service.  We appreciate feedback. Thanks.

Where to turn?

If their elected officials depend on the corporation for campaign funds, there is no one to whom the miners can turn to make sure their workplace is safe.

-- GIIP Report: " Upper Big Branch"

In this week's Sift:

• Jobs of the Future. Two consecutive jobless recoveries raise a question: Does the economy work differently now? And is concentration of wealth the culprit or technology?
• Why I Hate Vouchers. Private-sector competitors to public programs achieve their "efficiency" by skimming off the easy-to-serve. That begins a vicious cycle of erosion, which continues until the public program serves only a small group of very needy, very powerless people -- who can then be ignored. If we had the stomach for it, we could achieve the same savings by ignoring the needy without going through the voucher charade.
• Short Notes. An independent report lays it on the line: Massey Energy's calculated neglect killed 29 miners. What can we learn from the Rapture? Obama offers substance -- and is mostly ignored. Now that we have a Democratic president and a Republican Senate minority, judicial filibusters are back. The Catholic Church's Woodstock defense. I refuse to care about Arnold. The Onion outs the Facebook-CIA connection. It's OK to be Takei. And more.
• This Week's Challenge. If not "plastics", then what should we tell this year's graduates?

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Jobs of the Future

We've now had two jobless recoveries in a row. The 2001 recession technically ended in November, 2001 (see Wikipedia's list of recessions), but the total number of American jobs didn't return to its pre-recession level until October, 2003. And while the 2007-2009 recession ended in June, 2009, we're still nearly 7 million jobs short of the March, 2007 peak.

So recessions end, but jobs return slowly. Worse, the new jobs aren't as good as the old ones. Laid-off welders don't get rehired at Chrysler, they become shelf-stockers at WalMart.

As different as they seem otherwise, both Bush and Obama followed the widely accepted get-the-jobs-back formula: run deficits and cut interest rates. Interest rates plunged near zero. Bush got his deficit mostly by cutting taxes; Obama mostly by increasing spending. Both fought wars. But neither got a clean bounce in jobs.

What's up with that?

Some economists blame the workers: They don't have the right training for the new jobs. ( Structural unemployment, it's called.) But if that were the whole explanation, some industry would be begging for workers, and some credential would be a magic ticket. What is it? If you were remaking The Graduate today, what word could plausibly replace "plastics "?

What if it's not the workers? What if the economy has changed in some sinister way?

Wealth and demand. Regular Sift readers have been down this road before. In November, I explained the argument Robert Reich makes in Aftershock: Concentration of wealth is the underlying problem. A mass-production economy requires a massive number of people with disposable income. If wealth gets too concentrated, demand lags, and then no one wants to invest in new production -- because who's going to buy the new products? So instead of productive investment, capital gets sucked into speculative bubbles like the dot-com bubble that popped in 2000 or the housing bubble that popped in 2007-2008.

Reich's theory solves the jobless-recovery mystery like this: Ordinary recessions start because investment and production get ahead of demand -- builders overbuild, factories over-produce, stores over-order. Then everybody puts the brakes on at once, and times are tough. But after six months or so, the over-stocked inventories run out, new merchandise gets ordered, factories start up again, and workers get re-hired.

By contrast, the expansion phase of a bubble isn't just over-optimistic, it's delusional. (The high-flying start-ups of the dot-com bubble had no business models. No amount of economic growth would have made them profitable.) When the bubble pops, the fantasy is exposed and there's no going back. So it takes longer for the unemployed to find jobs again, because so many of them will have to do something genuinely new.

Reich's diagnosis and prescription focus on politics: Since Ronald Reagan, tax cuts and de-regulation have tilted the playing field to over-favor the rich, leading to an over-concentration of wealth and a bubble economy. Undo that, and you return to the broadly shared prosperity of 1950-1980.

But what if it's not that simple? What if something other than politics has its thumb on the scale?

Technology and the neo-Luddites. Martin Ford's recent book The Lights in the Tunnel argues that concentration of wealth is itself an effect of something else: technology.

His argument is a refinement of the one Luddites made 200 years ago and that was made most entertainingly in the 1951 Alec Guinness film The Man in the White Suit: Eventually, automation and technology will eliminate the need for workers.

200 years ago, it didn't work out that way. Instead, demand expanded to match the increased productivity, which is how the average American or European now lives at a level of luxury that was unimaginable then.

Why won't that keep happening? Most economists are confident it will, but Ford makes two counter-arguments: First, we are approaching a game-changing point where machines become autonomous. The wages of machine-operators won't keep pace because there won't be any machine-operators. Second, the acceleration of technology may reach a point where economic forces can't keep up. In theory new markets would continue to be created, but those too would automate faster than human workers could be trained to fill the new jobs.

Low-demand dystopia. In either case, an unregulated market leads to a low-demand dystopia, where production depends entirely on capital, labor is irrelevant, and so only people with capital are economically viable. In short, income depends entirely on owning things, not doing things. So production shrinks to accommodate the needs of owners, and the unemployed masses subsist on welfare and charity.

If this seems incredible, Ford gives one very good historic example: the slave-holding South. Economically, slaves are capital, not labor. (The are bought and maintained like robots, not hired and incentivized like workers.) So the South was a society in which virtually all production came from capital. The result was a stagnant economy that worked well for the small owning class, but in which an ambitious young person without money had few opportunities. And the South only worked as well as it did because of exports -- external demand. An entire world based on such a model would be a low-demand dystopia.

Marx addressed a similar dystopian vision by having the government own the means of production. In practice, that didn't work out so well -- whether government takes over business (communism) or business takes over government (fascism), the combination becomes totalitarian because it's too powerful to control.

Instead, Ford proposes a complex system in which taxes shift away from wages to focus on capital and production, funding a complicated set of incentives for citizens to live in society-enhancing ways -- thus keeping income widely distributed and maintaining the mass market. I'm not sure this is any more workable than communism, but it does have the virtue that it can be implemented within our current economy, with the incentives supplementing wages rather than immediately replacing them.

Future jobs vs. futuristic jobs. Personally, I believe that Ford's vision is worth keeping in mind as a thought experiment that shows what's wrong with conservative economic policies. But I believe his dystopia is further off than he thinks, because economic forces have quite a bit of resiliency left if we stop sabotaging them by favoring capital over labor.

A short post by Matt Yglesias makes an excellent point: Most "jobs of the future" will not be futuristic. It has never been the case that new industries created the mass of new jobs needed. We're fooled by looking at the huge factories of the 19th and 20th centuries. They employed a lot of people individually, but collectively they didn't come close to absorbing the jobs lost when agriculture automated. (You can see the same phenomenon in China today. Even with a massive export market, Chinese factories are barely keeping up with the flow of peasants into the cities.)

Technology creates jobs through economic growth, not through new industries. For example, one of the growth professions of the 19th century was teaching. Teachers had been around forever, but until the 19th century only rich children had them. The growth industries of the late 20th century weren't rocketry or nuclear power, but health care and food preparation -- because prosperity let people live longer and eat out more.

Rich families today employ lots of trainers, coaches, therapists, decorators, and advice-givers of all sorts. If many more people suddenly became "rich" by today's standards, the economy would need a lot more such advisors -- and not a lot more nano-technologists.

I know it seems crazy to imagine an economy full of people advising each other -- who will make stuff? But it was just as crazy in 1800 to imagine an economy where hardly anybody farmed.

---

Why I Hate Vouchers

In an LA Times story running down the Milwaukee teachers' union, we get one small fact that sums up why I hate voucher programs.

Low-income parents can use vouchers to send their children to private and parochial schools, a decades-long experiment that [Governor Scott] Walker proposes expanding. That has left the [Milwaukee public school] district with a disproportionate share of students with learning disabilities ­ 19%. In voucher schools, which can return students to the Milwaukee district if they don't behave, the figure is 1% to 8.6%.

I'll bet it now costs the Milwaukee public schools more to educate their "average" student than the private schools spend. And no doubt voucher supporters are wielding such statistics to prove that private schools are more "efficient". But the underlying phenomenon isn't government inefficiency. It's that vouchers encourage the easy-to-teach students to leave while the hard-to-teach students stay.

That's how vouchers work -- not just in education, but in general. Government programs are based on the idea that we are a community, so we're all in this together. Voucher programs are based on the idea that we are all individuals, so if you can get a better individual deal, you should go for it.

The result is always the same: Fortunate people who are easy to serve can take their vouchers into the private sector and get a better deal. The pool that is left behind in the public program is harder to serve, so average costs go up, making the private-sector voucher a good deal for even more people, in a vicious cycle.

The Walker education-voucher program is eroding Milwaukee's public schools this way. The Ryan healthcare-voucher program will do the same to Medicare and Medicaid.

In the long run, there is only one way that vouchers will save taxpayers money: Eventually the public-program pool gets so small and so needy that it has no political power. Then we can lock them away in some cheap hellhole institution that doesn't serve their needs at all, and what are they going to do about it? Cha-ching!

Of course, we could get the same savings without involving the private sector: Just let public programs throw hard-to-serve people out on the street to fend for themselves. But that would be horrible and heartless, wouldn't it? The rest of us will sleep better if we achieve the same result by sleight-of-hand.

---

The same shell game is happening in states that privatize their prisons. Do private prisons save money? No. Even though (like private schools and private health insurance programs) they "steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates", they cost more.

---

Back in the 90s, Newt Gingrich owned up to the erosion strategy, saying that he favored letting Medicare "wither on the vine" rather than attacking the popular program directly. Afterwards, pundits agreed that it was scare-mongering to quote Newt accurately on this subject.

Now he wants to declare another mulligan: He retracted his criticism of Paul Ryan's Medicare-slashing voucher proposal after a firestorm of protest from the Right. So he says that it's unfair if Democrats use the tape: "Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate."

Democrats, as we all know, get to retract any gaffe they make, and no one ever mentions it again. Just ask Howard Dean and John Kerry and Bill Clinton.

---

Short Notes

The Governor's Independent Investigation Panel has issued its report on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 miners a little over a year ago. Let's skip to the conclusions on page 108:

Ultimately, the responsibility for the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine lies with the management of Massey Energy.  … The April 5, 2010 explosion was … a completely predictable result for a company that ignored basic safety standards.

Massey didn't ventilate the mine properly, let coal dust build up, and eventually the inevitable spark came that it all set off. Massey was warned, battled federal safety regulators tooth and nail, paid some wrist-slap fines, and did things its own way until 29 miners died. How could that happen? Easy.

Many politicians were afraid to challenge Massey's supremacy because of the company's superb ongoing public relations campaign and because CEO Don Blankenship was willing to spend vast amounts of money to influence elections. … If their elected officials depend on the corporation for campaign funds, there is no one to whom the miners can turn to make sure their workplace is safe.

And that's a lesson for all of us. Corporations are sociopaths. If they can make money by killing people, they will. And if elections depend on corporate money, governments will let them.

---

The failed Rapture prediction triggered two Interesting articles: When Prophecy Fails in Slate and Rapture-Ready: the Science of Self-Delusion in Mother Jones.

Summary: Rationalization has great power to resolve contradictions of all sorts, and religious people aren't the only ones who use it.

---

While the media has been focused on the antics of Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich, President Obama has given substantive and informative speeches on immigration reform and the Middle East and education.

Out of this, only one line drew national attention: "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps." The furor over this -- MIke Huckabee said "The President of United States betrayed Israel" and many other Republicans expressed similar feelings -- is a little mysterious. When has a U.S. president said anything significantly different?

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In the spirit of Emma Goldman ("If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution"), here are the biting-but-entertaining political videos of the week: John LIthgow performs a Newt Gingrich press release, a hippyish chorus on a hillside reminds us that the issue with the Koch brothers is "the evil thing", and George (Sulu) Takei offering his name to counter Tennessee's new don't-say-gay law. Also, WhoWhatWhy recalls the classic George Carlin "I'm a Modern Man" routine.

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The Onion News Network reveals that Facebook is actually a very efficient CIA program.

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BTW, the don't-say-gay bill got watered down before it passed. Now it's only prepared materials that can't mention homosexuality; teachers can still answer questions about it. [Full -- and proud -- disclosure: My nephew Mike Stephens interned for State Senator Andy Berke, who is quoted criticizing the bill.]

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Media Matters totals up the partisan split of Meet the Press guests, going back to the Clinton years. Conclusion: When Democrats control the White House, MTP splits its guests almost evenly between the two parties. Under Republican administrations, Republicans get a 60/40 advantage.

Ask yourself: Which failed presidential candidate have you seen more often on national networks: John Kerry or John McCain?

---

I just shook my head sadly during the John Edwards debacle, so I'm going to similarly restrain my reaction to Arnold Schwarzenegger. We'll have plenty of time to discuss their sex scandals if either of them runs for office again. And if they don't, I don't care.

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On his NYT blog, college professor Stanley Fish comments on the deals Florida State has made with the Koch brothers and BB&T, which I wrote about last week.

Is the [Koch] foundation funding the study of free-market economics ­ a perfectly respectable academic subject ­ or is it mandating that free-market economics be promoted in the classroom? Is it a gift intended to stimulate research the conclusions of which can not be known in advance, or is it a gift intended to amplify a conclusion ­ free-market economics is good; regulation is bad ­ the philanthropists have already reached and want to broadcast using Florida State University as a megaphone?

… If, in the judgment of an instructor, "Atlas Shrugged" will contribute to a student's understanding of a course's subject, there is every reason to assign it. But if assigning "Atlas Shrugged" is the price for the receiving of monies and the university pays that price, it has indeed sold its soul.

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It was fun to watch Jon Stewart debate Bill O'Reilly about the Fox-promoted, scary-black-guy controversy over the rapper Common (seen here with his monstrous friend Elmo). But I wonder if Stewart lost just by showing up, because his appearance helped Fox keep the story hot.

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Remember 2005, when the Democratic minority had just enough Senate votes to filibuster judges nominated by a Republican president? The Republicans threatened the "nuclear option" -- eliminating the filibuster -- until a bipartisan "Gang of 14" rode to the rescue with a compromise under which only "extraordinary circumstances" would justify a judicial-nomination filibuster.

As a result, centrist Democrats did not support a filibuster of the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, who turned out to be the deciding vote in Citizens United. (Justice O'Connor, the Reagan-appointed judge Alito replaced, has said that she still supports the decision that CU overturned.)

Well, now the Republicans have a Senate minority and a Democratic president is nominating judges, so of course that agreement is toast. Dahlia Lithwick assembles all the that-was-then-this-is-now hypocrisy.

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A church-funded study of sexual abuse by Catholic priests attributes the scandal to the social turmoil of the 60s and 70s. The NYT refers to this as the " blame Woodstock" theory.

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I agree with Matt Yglesias: It's fine if you want to make the case that a government program isn't working or costs too much. But once you have an arbitrary spending cap, what ends up mattering is the political clout of the beneficiaries, not the effectiveness of the programs.

This is why I get a chill in my bones any time I hear discussion of "caps" on federal spending. … Capping things is code for "let's keep all the spending that lobbyists love and make up the difference by slashing the incomes of poor people."

Evidence: Even at a time when the deficit is supposedly Public Enemy #1 and Exxon's profits are at an all-time high, the Senate can't muster the votes to eliminate tax subsidies for the oil companies. Let's take the money out of Medicaid instead, or cut more Pell grants.

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Lawrence O'Donnell relates the history of "starve the beast".

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This Week's Challenge

Several high school and college students are regular Sift readers. What advice would you give them about preparing for the future economy?

The Weekly Sift appears every Monday afternoon. If you would like to receive it by email, write to WeeklySift at gmail.com.   Or keep track of the Sift by following the Sift's Facebook page.
Posted by Doug Muder at 12:04 PM 2 comments

ANS -- The History of Social Conservatism

This is from a Republican.  It's a history of Social Conservatism.  I got to it via Brad Hicks.
Find it here:  http://republicans4freedom.net/2011/05/08/the-history-of-social-conservatism/  
--Kim

republicans4freedom

Advocates For The Rational Wing of the Republican Party

The History of Social Conservatism

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1860: Social Conservatives claim that slavery is supported by the Bible. Churches even split to create the Southern Baptist and the Methodist Church, South; completely separate denominations from  Northern churches. Social Conservatives claim that tradition, history and religion are on their side.

Social conservatives lose. Society doesn't devolve into race wars as predicted by social conservatives.

1919: Social Conservatives use the Bible, morality, and family, to argue for prohibition. Social Conservatives win.Violence ensues in many large American cities as gangs fight to bring alcohol to people. Moonshining takes off, creating more crime. Unsafe, unregulated alcohol poisons many Americans. 

1920: Social Conservatives use the Bible, history and tradition to justify why women should be denied the right to vote.

Social conservatives lose. Women get the right to vote.  Society doesn't fall apart as predicted by social conservatives.

1933: After seeing the results of prohibition, the country votes to legalize alcohol. Social Conservatives lose. Violence and accidental poisoning drops off as America becomes a safer and freer country.

1955:  Social Conservatives claim Elvis and Rock and Roll are evil and will lead to mayhem and a breakdown in the social order. Movies are evil, and playing cards are a sin. Social Conservatives lose; Rock and Roll is still around, Elvis Presley didn't lead young people into Satan Worship. Society continues to function.

1964:  Social Conservatives argue that the Bible, tradition, and history justify Jim Crow in the South. They warn that society will fall apart if blacks are given equal rights with white Americans.

Social Conservatives lose, society doesn't fall apart but becomes stronger.

1980 s – present:  Social Conservatives take over school boards in the South, and insist that "abstinence only" sex education be taught, despite overwhelming research that "abstinence only" sex ed is a huge failure.

Society loses, especially Southern families, as Southerners lead the nation in the rate of sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, and unwed mothers. Nonetheless, social conservatives claim to be "pro-family".

2000- present: The Family "Research" Council, The American Family Association, and Americans For "Truth" About Homosexuality are used as "expert" witnesses by reputable media despite lacking any academic or scientific credentials that would qualify them as experts on gay issues. Like their predecessors, they use the Bible, history and tradition to defend their positions, along with a healthy dose of lies, distortions and fake research. Eventually, these groups are labeled as "hate groups" by the KKK and Aryan-Nation busting Southern Poverty Law Center because of their repeated lies and distortions of truth. Nonetheless, the media continue to use them as "expert" witnesses and many Republican presidential candidates continue to associate with, and defend them.

Society loses, as social conservatives twist facts to support their own private religious beliefs. American families are directly harmed by these "pro-family" groups who teach Americans lies about their own family members.   Fortunately, the history of social conservatism is one of repeated losses – and each time social conservatives lose America became a stronger, more free society.  Of course, as they claimed with ending slavery, allowing women to vote, and abolishing segregation, social conservatives now claim that  allowing gay Americans to have equal rights will somehow lead to society falling apart. Their is no logical reason to believe this is true, but they like to claim it nonetheless. Fortunately, polls show that Americans – even Republicans, increasingly see through the lies. It's only a matter of time before gay equality is the law of the land and social conservatives are proven wrong once again.

For the rational wing of the Republican Party

Ron Hill

"And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism'."

 ­ U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, aka "Mr. Conservative"

ANS -- Turning Marketshare into Mindshare

This is a very clear explanation of why we have to get back to government funded education, especially higher education.  The road we are going down now will destroy what's left of our democracy.  The article is from Doug Muder's weekly sift. 
Find it here:  http://weeklysift.blogspot.com/ 
--Kim


Turning Marketshare into Mindshare

As states continue to slash their budgets, the headlines focus on cuts to K-12 education. And that makes sense, both because that's where the big money is and because just about everyone cares about some child who might be immediately affected by K-12 cuts. But budgets are also being slashed at the state universities, and in the long run that might just as important.

The trend. The new budget from Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, for example, cuts Penn State's money in half, reducing state funding to 8% of the university's budget. And this represents a long-term trend, not just a reaction to the current economic situation. In 1970, Penn State got 37% of its budget from the state.

Other states have seen similar trends. The University of California was tuition-free until 1971. But under Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed budget, student fees in the U of C system will surpass state funding for the first time ever.

The student perspective. Federal aid to students trying to pay these fees is also being cut. President Obama's budget proposal cuts Pell grants, and Rep. Ryan's Republican alternative cuts them even more.

As a result, the days when a young person could "work his way through college" -- making enough to live on while paying minimal fees at a state university -- are over. To go to college today, you need either well-to-do parents or the willingness to take on massive debt.

And while taking on debt may be a reasonable financial move if you're getting a high-market-value credential like an MBA or an MD, it's hard to imagine degrees in special education or social work ever paying off, no matter how valuable such careers might be to society. A law degree may still be a profitable investment if you're going to Wall Street or becoming a lobbyist. But if you're planning to fight for social justice, it isn't.

Now put yourself in the shoes of a talented young minority student from a bad neighborhood. College already seems like a huge risk; few people you know have attended and perhaps no one has graduated. Cynical voices tell you that the powers-that-be don't want to hire people like you anyway. Are you willing to saddle yourself with, say, $100K of debt on the off-chance you'll be the exception?

The social perspective. Raising the costs and risks of college hardens the boundaries between economic classes. Even as we maintain the appearance of a meritocracy, the well-to-do children get the training they need to "merit" professional-class careers, while less privileged children don't.

Devil's bargains. Universities see this problem too, and it motivates them to chase after money that doesn't come from students or governments. So they press their alumni harder for gifts and manage their endowment portfolios more aggressively -- sometimes taking risks they shouldn't.

They also work harder to commercialize their research, which undermines their mission. The whole point of universities was to replace the guild system of the Middle Ages, where all technical knowledge was a trade secret, with a Republic of Letters, which distributes knowledge freely.

But in order to profit from something you have to put up toll gates, because people who can access your knowledge freely won't pay you for it.

Trust for sale. The most insidiously tempting way to raise money is to quietly sell off the university's greatest assets: trust and intellectual respect. Lots of willing buyers have lots of money. If no one trusts Lex Luthor but everyone trusts the University of Metropolis, then the solution is obvious: LexCorp needs to pay U-Met to distribute its message.

That's happening. This week, two Florida State professors drew attention to a deal FSU made with the Koch Foundation -- with the conservative Koch brothers, in other words -- to fund two professorships in economics. In exchange for their money, the Kochs get veto power on hiring for the two positions. Naturally, Paul Krugman's students need not apply.

Florida State has also made a deal with BB&T, an ultra-conservative bank holding company, to fund a course on ethics and economics. That sounds innocuous, but by "ethics in economics" BB&T means teaching that free-market capitalism is moral and socialism is immoral. So the deal specifies that Atlas Shrugged be covered, whether the course's professor finds it worthy or not. BB&T has made similar deals with James Mason University and Guilford College. Meredith College rejected $420K of BB&T money to protect their academic freedom.

BB&T also funds professorships at Clemson's Institute for the Study of Capitalism. Among its other activities, CISC runs an undergraduate summer conference on Atlas Shrugged. From its web site, I see no sign that CISC's "studies of capitalism" include, say, Karl Marx. (My nephew graduated from Clemson Friday. He had to read Atlas Shrugged, and endured a class from a global-warming-denying professor. Fortunately, his liberal antibodies were up to the challenge.)

For $30 million donated to George Mason University, the Kochs got the Mercatus Center, which specializes in giving academic cover to politicians who want to gut government regulation.

What's new? Billionaires have a long history of funding American higher education. That's why universities bear names like Carnegie-Mellon, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt. The University of Chicago -- where I got my Ph.D. -- is a Rockefeller project that he didn't bother to name after himself.

But something is different now. In the Gilded Age, the robber barons were buying their way into high society with their good works. Where a British financier might marry a cash-poor countess or otherwise induce the crown to give him a title, an American industrialist would build a library or save the local opera company from a financial crisis.

The best ticket into high society was a project with high name recognition, but none of the taints of filthy lucre. Hence the robber-baron universities have high academic standards and a great deal of independence.

Today those forces are reversed; money is prestige. So billionaires like the Kochs have no interest in high society, and they use their foundations to gain hidden influence rather than to build their names.

Propaganda U. Imagine being an impressionable young student at University of Alabama/Huntsville, and wandering into this talk at the College of Business. It's a Koch-funded professor from CISC and the Mercatus Center speaking in a Koch-funded lecture series. Are you being educated or indoctrinated? It's one thing to run into a politically motivated professor, but it is quite another to have professors who were hired by special interests to promote views beneficial to those interests.

As public funds for higher education dry up, that is going to become more and more typical. Right-wing political indoctrination will be the price students pay to get an affordable college education, in the same way that they sit through McDonalds ads to watch television.

Worse in the long run is that society is losing a platform for disinterested research, and a source of expertise that can challenge the "experts" manufactured by corporate PR departments. Decades ago, when doctors from the Tobacco Institute told us that the smoking-cancer connection was unproven, we knew what was going on. But how many people today realize they are getting energy-industry propaganda when a talking head from "the Mercatus Center at George Mason University" appears on their TV? And how many Mercatus Centers does it take to discredit all academic voices?

Democracy only works when the electorate has access to high-quality information, and has some way to verify the trustworthiness of the experts it listens to. Otherwise it's garbage-in/garbage-out. David Mindich put it best: "Government supported by an uninformed citizenry is not a democracy; it is a sham."

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If you're wondering what "ethics in economics" Atlas Shrugged promotes, it's a lot like what Rand Paul was saying Wednesday:

With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care you have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery.

Atlas Shrugged is filled with speeches like that.  Yeah, doctors in socialized-medicine countries like Canada are just like field slaves in the antebellum South. It's exactly the same thing, morally speaking.

I don't need to take Paul's statement apart, because Lawrence O'Donnell already did.

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A California school board has ordered that high-school science classes be " politically balanced" when they tackle issues like global warming. In other words: the science has to be balanced with oil-company propaganda.

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Wonder what those upbeat Exxon ads are about? Hydrofracking.

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A global-warming-denying think tank recently announced that 900 peer-reviewed papers shared their skepticism. Are those 900 independent looks at the topic? Not exactly.

The Carbon Brief blog took a closer look: Ten authors account for 186 of those papers. Nine of the ten "have links to organisations funded by Exxon-Mobil, and the tenth has co-authored several papers with Exxon-funded contributors."

For example, 67 of the papers were authored or co-authored by one person: Sherwood Idso, president the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which receives support from Exxon-Mobil and has even closer ties to the Western Fuels Association.