Keep the Hippies Out at All Costs

Atrios points to this passage from a Washington Post editorial Tuesday:

Whether Germany’s insistence on austerity and restructuring is correct in principle or not — and there’s ample room for debate on that point — the worst thing to do would be to abandon it in the face of a populist revolt by Syriza or other extremists of the left and right. That would send the wrong signal to those who would create similar mischief across Southern Europe.

Translation:

Some people might be wrong, and other people might be right, but the worst thing to do would be to give in to the people who might be right, because they are the wrong sort of people. Better to prolong the suffering of millions to keep the hippies away from the cocktail party.

This is the mindset of our government right now.  It belongs to the elites, and it doesn't matter how much they screw things up, we have to keep the hoi polloi out. 

Astronomy Pic of the Day

Warped Spiral Galaxy ESO-510-13:

From NASA:

How did spiral galaxy ESO 510-13 get bent out of shape? The disks of many spirals are thin and flat, but not solid. Spiral disks are loose conglomerations of billions of stars and diffuse gas all gravitationally orbiting a galaxy center. A flat disk is thought to be created by sticky collisions of large gas clouds early in the galaxy's formation. Warped disks are not uncommon, though, and even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a small warp. The causes of spiral warps are still being investigated, but some warps are thought to result from interactions or even collisions between galaxies. ESO 510-13, pictured above digitally sharpened, is about 150 million light years away and about 100,000 light years across.

Our Undemocratic (small "d") Senate

Ken Thomas at Angry Bear reflects on a point that has bothered me for quite some time - the vastly disproportionate representation in the Senate (and, by extension, the Electoral College). 

While it is true that some small states do have Democratic senators, I think you will find that on many important issues rural v. urban is a big determinant of how senators vote, rather than just by party.  I personally think this is a much bigger issue than Ken makes it out to be.

And don't expect this to change under our existing constitutional amendment process.  You need 38 states to sign on to get an amendment to the Constitution, and in this day and age that seems extremely unlikely. 

Our only hope lies in a Constitutional convention.  Remember the last time we had one of these?  It was called to consider amendments to the Articles of Confederation, and soon jetisoned that in favor of startinf from scratch.

Which is why we have never had one since, and in the absence of a complete social upheaval probably won't again.

The Constitution provides that if two-thirds of the states (34) request a convention, one must be convened.  I do note that 32 states have requested a constitutional convention to consider an amendment requiring a balanced budget for the federal government.  While I personally believe this would be an unmitigated disaster from a policy perspective, I would almost be tempted to try and get two more states to make the request, just so we could re-open the whole book again....

Speaking of Charlie Pierce....read this.

New Additions

I'm adding two more additions to my blogroll today.  First is Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon.  Amanda writes about a lot of different things - politics, tv shows, food, music and more.  She writes from a distinctly feminist perspective, but with a lot of insight that most feminist bloggers lack that I find very intriguing.  And even when it comes to just plain old politics, she looks at things in a way I haven't thought about.  Her post on the Cory Booker flare-up earlier this week came from a direction most others didn't and hit the nail on the head:

Why the Campaign Season is Exhausting and Demoralizing

Because there's so much fighting about what we can and can't talk about that no one ever gets around to talking.

The Cory Booker situation is just the latest example. As you may have heard, Booker, the mayor of Newark and until now beloved icon amongst Democrats, went on "Meet the Press" and put his foot in his mouth.*

"This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides," Booker said. "It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity."

He was immediately and rightly denounced for false equivalence. His insistence that entire sectors of the American economy are off-limits for discourse in American politics led reporters to find out exactly how much money Booker had received from Bain. Booker ate some crow, but did so ineptly, embodying the slippery politician on "Maddow" and basically saying out loud that Obama had silenced him. So, a C level shit storm, in other words. But oh so indicative of the most tiresome part of our politics these days, the constant refereeing that's almost completely eclipsed any actual discussion of the issues.

I mean, I've done it, I'm sure. It's hard not to get caught up in it. And it is true that some people, in their eagerness to score political points, say stuff that's genuinely offensive. But by and large, the issue of "what you're allowed to say" and trawling around, looking for offense at every little thing in hopes of silencing people, has become the dominant form of political discourse. What makes it tiresome is the vast majority of it is disingenuous. Booker was just the most obvious example of this, because claiming that a presidential candidate's actual resume was irrelevant to the campaign was so nakedly greedy that even the most Beltway-intoxicated could see what was going on.

Good stuff.

My second addition is Charles Pierce, who writes the politics blog at Esquire Magazine.  I've already linked to him a couple of times, most recently his take-down of Russ Douthat's book Bad Religion, where he evinces knowledge on a subject near and dear to my heart. He's very smart with just enough snark to be interesting and fun.  Here's a sample from yesterday:

This Week in the Laboratories of Democracy


Welcome back to our weekly survey of hot pol-on-pol action in the various states where, as we all know, the real work of governmentin' takes place and where the voice of the people is most clearly heard... speaking in tongues, shouting inchoate appeals to the Goat God, and howling at the moon.

We begin, quite hilariously, in the state of Rhode Island, to which former Red Sox pitcher and noted Republican blowhard Curt Schilling moved his video-game start-up company down there two years ago after the Ocean State gave him a $75 million loan guarantee. (Curt is a "small government" conservative. He would like the government to be just small enough to fit into his wallet.) Well, Curt's business is rather after cratering at the moment, and he's come to the state, asking for more help against the merciless pasting The Invisible Hand is dealing out to him. Meanwhile, everybody in Rhode Island's state government feels really bad about it, but they have declined to offer Schilling any further goodies. (In fact, the head of the agency that gave him the loan guarantee recently resigned and did so with a sort of bizarre literary flair.) This should be no surprise since the current governor, Lincoln Chaffee, opposed the original loan package while he was running and now appears to have quite mastered the difficult art of mournful snark....

The company released its much-anticipated first game, "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning," to strong reviews in February. But Chafee said the state has consulted industry analysts who say the game was a commercial failure. "As one of the experts said, `This is an industry that punishes people that don't know what they're doing,'" Chafee said.

Schilling, alas, is ducking questions about the whole mess, commenting only occasionally on Facebook. The Free Market's hitting him harder than Jeter ever did....

More good stuff.  Both of them are now part of my daily reads....

Astronomy Pic of the Day

The Waterfall Nebula:

From NASA:

What created the Waterfall Nebula? No one knows. The structure seen in the region of NGC 1999 in the Great Orion Molecular Cloud complex is one of the more mysterious structures yet found on the sky. Designated HH-222, the elongated gaseous stream stretches about ten light years and emits an unusual array of colors. One hypothesis is that the gas filament results from the wind from a young star impacting a nearby molecular cloud. That would not explain, however, why the Waterfall and fainter streams all appear to converge on a bright but unusual non thermal radio source located toward the upper left of the curving structure. Another hypothesis is that the unusual radio source originates from a binary system containing a hot white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, and that the Waterfall is just a jet from this energetic system. Such systems, though, are typically strong X-rays emitters, and no X-rays have been detected. For now, this case remains unsolved. Perhaps well-chosen future observations and clever deductive reasoning will unlock the true origin of this enigmatic wisp in the future.

Astronomy Pic of the Day

Stephan's Quintet:

From NASA:

The first identified compact galaxy group, Stephan's Quintet is featured in this eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive. About 300 million light-years away, only four of these five galaxies are actually locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. The odd man out is easy to spot, though. The interacting galaxies, NGC 7319, 7318A, 7318B, and 7317 have an overall yellowish cast. They also tend to have distorted loops and tails, grown under the influence of disruptive gravitational tides. But the predominantly bluish galaxy, NGC 7320, is closer, just 40 million light-years distant, and isn't part of the interacting group. Stephan's Quintet lies within the boundaries of the high flying constellation Pegasus. At the estimated distance of the quartet of interacting galaxies, this field of view spans about 500,000 light-years. However, moving just beyond this field, above and to the left, astronomers can identify another galaxy, NGC 7320C, that is also 300 million light-years distant. Of course, including it would bring the interacting quartet back up to quintet status.

A Week's Worth of APODs

Catching up.  Enjoy!

Supernova Remnant:

From NASA:

The expanding debris cloud from the explosion of a massive star is captured in this multiwavelength composite, combining x-ray and optical images from the Chandra and Hubble telescopes. Identified as E0102-72, the supernova remnant lies about 190,000 light-years away in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. A strong cosmic source of x-rays, E0102 was imaged by the Chandra X-ray Observatory shortly after its launch in 1999. In celebration of Chandra's 10th anniversary, this colorful view of E0102 and its environs was created, including additional Chandra data. An analysis of all the data indicates that the overall shape of E0102 is most likely a cylinder that is viewed end-on rather than a spherical bubble. The intriguing result implies that the massive star's explosion has produced a shape similar to what is seen in some planetary nebulae associated with lower mass stars. At the distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud, this field of view spans about 150 light-years.


The Owl Nebula:
 

From NASA:



The Owl Nebula is perched in the sky about 2,600 light-years away toward the bottom of the Big Dipper's bowl. Also cataloged as M97, the 97th object in Messier's well-known list, its round shape along with the placement of two large, dark "eyes" do suggest the face of a staring owl. One of the fainter objects in Messier's catalog, the Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula, the glowing gaseous envelope shed by a dying sun-like star as it runs out of nuclear fuel. In fact, the Owl Nebula offers an example of the fate of our Sun as it runs out of fuel in another 5 billion years. As we see it, the nebula spans over 2 light-years making it roughly 2,000 times the diameter of Neptune's orbit. Beautiful to look at, this color image shows impressive details within the cosmic owl. The composite includes images made through narrow-band filters for a total of 24 hours of exposure time.


Andromeda:
 

From NASA:

Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our Galaxy is thought to look much like Andromeda. Together these two galaxies dominate the Local Group of galaxies. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it. The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front of the background object. Andromeda is frequently referred to as M31 since it is the 31st object on Messier's list of diffuse sky objects. M31 is so distant it takes about two million years for light to reach us from there. Although visible without aid, the above image of M31 is a digital mosaic of 20 frames taken with a small telescope. Much about M31 remains unknown, including how it acquired its unusual double-peaked center.

Colliding Galaxies:

 

From NASA:

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.

Moved this week

Hence the light posting.  Back to normal schedule next week.

In the meantime, today's Krugman column scares the pants off of me:

Failure of the euro would amount to a huge defeat for the broader European project, the attempt to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to a continent with a terrible history. It would also have much the same effect that the failure of austerity is having in Greece, discrediting the political mainstream and empowering extremists.

Given European history for the past 2000 years - or even the past 100 - how can you not be concerned when things are starting to fall apart as they are?

Killing the American Community Survey

The American Community Survey is the annual report done by the Census Bureau.  I've actually referred to it quite often over the years - it's chock full of interesting information.

But the Republicans want to kill it.

According to Kevin Drum, they say they want to kill it because it is an "intolerable invasion of privacy."

But I view it as another example of how the conservative mind has become increasingly anti-knowledge.

Because, as we all know, reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Are Payroll Taxes Really Taxes?

Here is an article from Angry Bear regarding the social security that really gets my dander up.  The author, who supports an increase in the social security tax, argues that this really isn't a "regressive tax" because the social security tax really isn't a tax:

The people who say Social Security is a regressive tax are suffering from brain damage caused by parrot fever. Having been taught to say "regressive tax, regressive tax" when they were young and impressionable, they can't stop themselves. They don't mean anything by it, but they think they do.

They don't know what a regressive tax is. They don't know what a tax is. They don't know what regressive means. And above all they have no sense of proportion.

The "tax" increase needed by Social Security is forty cents per week. This is the cost to the average worker of saving a program that will give them about twenty thousand dollars a year when they retire. But the "liberals" call that forty cents a "regressive tax, regressive tax" and would see the poor loose that twenty thousand dollars in order to save forty cents worth of "regressive tax, regressive tax."

A regressive tax is a tax that falls more heavily on the poor than on the rich as a percent of income. The usual case is a "sales tax" as compared to a graduated "income tax." As long as either tax is used to pay for the same government expenses, the sales tax is more "regressive" than the graduated income tax because the poor spend a larger percentage of their income than the rich on items covered by the usual sales tax schemes.

But Social Security does not pay for government expenses. It pays for the retirement of the person paying the tax. So it is not a tax in the usual sense in which a tax is a payment to the government for government expenses.

Wrong.  Social Security does pay for government expenses.  Everybody knows this.  We have been engaging in this fiction for decades now about the fact that Social Security is being placed in a "trust fund" and being held for future payments of the working who are "contributing" to it.  Nonsense.

What are the assets in this so called trust fund?  Treasury obligations!  That means the government is taking the money being paid in by workers and using it to pay general government expenses.

Now you may say that this is no different than me having my IRA invest in a treasury bond fund.  True, that is the case.  But I have a choice as to whether I want to make that investment.  I have a choice as to whether I want to make any investment at all, or spend the money instead.  I have no choice when it comes to social security.  My money goes in, and it goes out in the same year, to pay of the expenses of the government.  And I get an from the government, promising to pay me when I retire.  And if I die before I retire, I and my heirs get nothing.

This is not how a retirement plan is supposed to work.  At least, it's not how my IRA and my 401K plans work.

But, you say, the amount I pay in gets credited to an account, which determines how much I get paid when I retire.  Again, true, but that's just bookkeeping.  The money isn't there.

And just so we are clear that this is the case, why are there so many proposals to start cutting benefits for future retirees?  It's because at some point in the future, the amount the government receives in payroll taxes from the workers will not be enough to fund current social security benefits.

"But I have an account with money credited to it!"

No, you don't.  The money isn't there.  The government has used it for other purposes.  When those bonds mature, the government is going to have to get the money from somewhere to pay your benefits.  And when the money from the repayment of the bonds runs out (which is expected to happen in 2031), the government will either find another source of revenue to pay your benefits or cut those benefits.  If they choose to cut them, you will have no recourse.  The law establishes how much you are entitled to get, and Congress always has the power to change the law.

In fact, Congress could change the law and cut benefits now, and cancel what ever obligation they have to repay those "bonds" being held in the "trust fund."  And other than the political backlash, you would have no recourse.  You have no contractual rights to receive those payments in the future.  You only have the expectation because that's what current law provides and you have no expectation that it will be changed.

This is not how any retirement plan I know of works.

Now, I don't have a problem with a tax that is based on compensation for services, with everyone having to pay a certain percentage of their income (although I believe that all compensation should be taxed - there shouldn't be a cap on the amount of income subject to the tax).  I don't mind a system of retirement benefits paid to the workers who, while they were working, paid those taxes.  I don't even mind that the system provides that the more taxes you paid the higher your retirement benefits will be.

But this is not a retirement plan.  Social security benefits are current government expenditures paid for out of current government revenues.  Social security taxes are current government revenues being used to fund current government expenditures.

That makes it a tax.  Any other characterization is pure fiction.

Another Form of Gambling

Will Greece leave the Euro?  Looks like the betting window is closed.

Quote of the Day

From Under the Lobsterscope:

“I give my full support to Mitchell Romney. He has the makings of a great dictator. He is incredibly wealthy, but pays no taxes. And it’s not much of a leap to go from firing people to firing squads, and from putting pets on the top of a car to putting political dissidents on top of them.”


                                       - Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as The Dictator.

Helicopter Ben, Where Are You?

Via Atrios comes this CNBC article (believe it or not) wherein an economist from Citibank of all places advocates for helicopter drops:

Specifically, Citi advocates a three-pronged approach: First, lower interest rates “all the way to zero” in the two regions, the U.K. and euro area, where they aren’t basically at zero already. Second, carry out “more imaginative forms” of quantitative easing of any or all types of “less liquid and higher credit risk securities” beyond government bonds. And third, engage in “helicopter money drops,” by which they mean the fiscal authorities in each region should join forces with the central bank to pump money directly into their respective economies.

I'm assuming that he means the money should reach ordinary people.  The banks have received theirs by the C-130 load.

When you've got one of the big banks saying this needs to be done, maybe, just maybe, there is hope.  Sooner or later these people will realize that if people don't have enough money to buy goods and services, it's not good for business....

Astronomy Pic of the Day

I'm falling behind on my APODs!

The Cepheus Flare:

From NASA:

Spooky shapes seem to haunt this starry expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds faintly visible in dimly reflected starlight. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, they lurk at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over 2 light-years across the ghostly nebula and relatively isolated Bok globule, also known as vdB 141 or Sh2-136, is near the center of the field. The core of the dark cloud on the right is collapsing and is likely a binary star system in the early stages of formation. Even so, if the spooky shapes could talk, they might well wish you a happy Halloween.


Note: all of these pics are taken from NASA's APOD site.  Of course, I have a thing for pictures of Nebulae so I'm not at all following their order.  This picture was posted last Halloween.

Nicholas Katzenbach

Nicholas Katzenbach died yesterday. He was Deputy Attorney General under President Kennedy, and Attorney General under President Johnson. As this article describes, he was one of the key figures in the fight for desegregation in the 1960s.

He was the representative of the Kennedy Administration in the stand-off at the steps of the University of Alabama when George Wallace attempted to block admission of two black students to the university.  Here is a video of that event. 


A true hero in my opinion.

What I'm doing today

I'm working on a project which requires me to look at some old tax cases.  Basically, the cases involve a corporation which has incurred losses which are allowed to be carried forward and deducted in future years.  In the cases, another corporation has purchased the stock of the corporation and filed a consolidated return, taking the position it is allowed to deduct the losses of the purchased corporation in the consolidated return.  The Supreme Court, in Woolford Realty Corp. v. Commissioner, was appalled.  Justice Cardozo:

Doubt, if there can be any, is not likely to survive a consideration of the mischiefs certain to be engendered by any other ruling. A different ruling would mean that a prosperous corporation could buy the shares of one that had suffered heavy losses and wipe out thereby its own liability for taxes. The mind rebels against the notion that Congress in permitting a consolidated return was willing to foster an opportunity for juggling so facile and so obvious.

But I am more amused at the reaction of the Court of Appeals:

On the face of it, a ruling which permits a corporation, with a consistent record of gains, to affiliate with one having a large accumulation of statutory net losses for the purpose and with the result of using these losses in the year of affiliation as deductions from its income in that year, appears generally inappropriate to the federal scheme of income taxation, designed as it is, with the sole exception of the statutory net loss provision, to make each person subject to the tax pay taxes on his income for the year in which it accrues. The District Judge was impressed with this general inappropriateness; it impresses us.

A masterpiece of understatement....

Great Cartoon

Ben Garrison:

Global Tax Evasion

Headline from today's Guardian:  "Global action on tax evasion has largely failed, study shows."

This is not at all surprising.  For most countries, their heart is really not in it.  The US has taken the lead in trying to address this issue but to no avail.  They cannot get other countries to go along with them.

Frankly, given the rapid growth in our surveillance state, I'm really surprised we can't come up with a better way to enforce this stuff.  From today's Miami Herald, Ed Wasserman describes how the Obama Administration has been going after whistleblowers with nary a yawn from the press (h/t Glenn Greenwald):

The public is generally unaware of how essential nominally classified information is to coverage of diplomatic and strategic news. As Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ government secrecy project, put it: “The administration’s aggressive pursuit of leaks represents a challenge to the practice of national security reporting, which depends on the availability of unauthorized sources if it is to produce something more than ‘authorized’ news.”


What’s behind the administration’s fervor isn’t clear, but the news media have largely rolled over and yawned. A big reason is that prosecutors aren’t hassling reporters as they once did. Thanks to the post-9/11 explosion in government intercepts, electronic surveillance, and data capture of all imaginable kinds — the NSA is estimated to have intercepted 15-20 trillion communications in the past decade — the secrecy police have vast new ways to identify leakers.

So they no longer have to force journalists to expose confidential sources. As a national security representative told Lucy Dalglish, director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “We’re not going to subpoena reporters in the future. We don’t need to. We know who you’re talking to.”

If we have all this electronic firepower at our hands, surely we can use it to find out where are rich elite tax evaders are squirreling away their money, no?

Astronomy Pic of the Day

This is actually yesterday's pic - forgot to post it then (yikes!).  Another one to come later today.

SN 1994D:

Not much info on this one.  A picture of a supernova on the outskirts of a distant spiral galaxy.

This is socialism too....

As Atrios says, it's the only kind of Socialism Americans support:

The Vikings haven't openly threatened to leave Minnesota, and are committed to playing in the 30-year-old Metrodome this season.
But stadium boosters, led by Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, say punting on the proposal could set up a nightmare three-peat for Minnesota sports fanatics. After all, the state lost the NBA's Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960 and the NHL's North Stars to Dallas in 1993.
"Nobody wants the Vikings to leave the state of Minnesota. Nobody wants that to happen," said Rep. Sarah Anderson, a suburban Minneapolis Republican who is undecided how she'll vote on Monday. "It's just a matter of figuring out whether this package will work and is a good deal for our taxpayers."
Stadium support doesn't break down neatly — it has Democratic and Republican backers, but also plenty of opponents in both parties.
....

"I've got folks that I know are active in the tea party that have said, you know, I'm going to suspend my rational thought right now, Chris," Swedzinski said. "I know what I believe and I know where this country's headed if we continue down this path — but don't lose the Vikings."

The "tax poor people and give [the money] to rich assholes" kind of Socialism. 

We're great at that....

This is What Scares Me....

Krugman:

I don’t think you want to read European elections in terms of any particular ideological tide. This is very much a Larry Bartels world in which voters toss out incumbents and reward insurgents if the economy is bad, never mind the specifics of their platforms. Hollande’s victory in France is no more a harbinger of a general leftward shift than Rajoy’s victory in Spain a little while ago heralded a general rightward shift; these are just the “outs” benefiting from the fact that they aren’t in, and the economy stinks.
But now consider Greece, which had a government of national unity — an alliance between the center-right and the center-left, dedicated to following what the VSPs consider responsible policies. Think of it as Michael Bloomberg with retsina. Sounds great, doesn’t it? (Not to me, but I’m not a Serious Person).
The trouble is that the responsible policies aren’t — the austerity program that has defined being Serious in Europe is an abject (and predictable) failure. So voters take their anger out by voting against the insiders. And since all the respectable people are inside the political tent, backing and being identified with failed policies, that means a big vote for extremists right and left.
And yes, the echoes of the 1930s are very strong.

History's lessons were so clear on this.  You wonder why our leaders didn't learn from it.

Well - actually I don't.  The rich elites used their power to do ensure they did not suffer from the financial crisis like the rest of us.  And in their short-term, get all you can now mentality, austerity benefited them.

In the long run, of course, it doesn't.  That's what the 1930s taught.  They just don't believe it....

.

.

Great Cartoon

Via Booman

Tom Hayden on the Port Huron Statement

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

via Digby.

Astonomy Pic of the Day

The Rosette Nebula:

From NASA:

Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244. These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot gas. Ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars causes the surrounding nebula to glow. The Rosette Nebula spans about 100 light-years across, lies about 5000 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

Is the Tide Turning?

For years I've felt that our government has been doing too little to help the economy recover from the Great Recession.  There has been a worldwide trend towards thinking that the problem was too much government spending and too much government debt.  But in reality what triggered the crisis was an excess of private debt - debt of consumers and debt of financial institutions.  And economics - basic first year Econ 101 the I took in college - said that when private parties retrench because they need to pay their debts, government must step up and spend or demand falls and the economy falls with it. 

Over the past three years governments in North America and Europe have basically rejected the classical economic solutions.  We see the damange that this has wrought - the US economy is slowing with a risk of another recession, and Europe already there.

Not to mention what's been happening to democratic institutions when financial austerity is being imposed by outsiders against the wishes of the people.

What is encouraging is that governments are beginning to think maybe they need to change direction.  Articles like this one in Bloomberg  and this one in the Los Angeles Times make me think maybe - just maybe - we'll start doing what we really need to do to get us out of this mess.

And this from the LA Times as well.

Let's hope so....

Funny...

I was reading a blog post about conservative talk radio host Howie Carr when I came across this anecdote from a commenter:

Many years ago, I was stuck in a car with a friend who listened to talk radio. Howie had a show back then. And one item that was in the news back then was the flawed mirror in the Hubble Space Telescope.

Howie spent a good hour ranting and raving about WHY the HELL is this BROKEN PIECE OF GOVERNMENT JUNK named after CLINTON’S LAWYER, Webster Hubble? And why is the LAMESTREAM MEDIA not investigating this? THIS IS A COVERUP AS BAD AS WATERGATE!

And in the hour it took until we, mercifully, drove out of reception range of the station, not a single caller brought up Edwin Hubble.

Something Uplifting...

After all this bad news, need something to lift my spirits.  How about this?

Feel better already....

Astronomy Pic of the Day

Gomez' Hamburger:

From NASA:

What, in heaven, is that? Sometimes astronomers see things on the sky they don't immediately understand. In 1985 this happened to Arturo Gomez, and the object became known as Gomez's Hamburger for its distinctive yet familiar shape. After some investigation, the object was identified as a proto-planetary nebula, a gas cloud emitted by a Sun-like star just after its central hydrogen fuel has all been fused to helium. Gomez's Hamburger is on its way to becoming a full-fledged planetary nebula in a few thousand years. The light seen (the bun) is reflected by dust from the central star, although the star itself is obscured by a thick dust disk that runs across the middle (the patty). Gomez's Hamburger, pictured above in a recent image from the Hubble Space Telescope, is only a fraction of a light year across but located approximately 10,000 light years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius.

The April Jobs Report

This report is really a disaster. 

I have long ago ceased looking at the unemployment rate as a reasonable proxy for the economic health of our workers.  The fact that it excludes people "no longer in the labor force" means that excludes huge numbers of people who could be working and aren't. 

The economy created 115,000 new jobs last month.  That's not enough to keep up with population growth.  But the unemployment rate went down because 522,000 people left the labor force last month.  Over half a million people!  As Felix Salmon points out, "When more than half a million people in one month decide that they’re not even going to bother looking for work any more, there’s no way you can say you’re in a healthy recovery."

Felix points us to this scary chart:

Felix also points to a tweet by Dan Alpert:  "[A]s Dan Alpert noted, in a country of 314 million people, there are only 115 million full-time workers and 27 million part-time workers. It’s really hard to get a robust recovery when the number of people earning money is so anemic."

One other point.  Many people who don't know any better point to the Obama stimulus and say that it failed.  But in fact, the government as a whole has been a huge drag on the economy.  Why?  Because the number of people working in government jobs has actually fallen dramatically over the last three years.  From Paul Krugman:

Here’s a comparison of changes in government employment (federal, state, and local) during the first four years of three presidents who came to office amid a troubled economy.  That spike early on is Census hiring; once that was past, the Obama years shaped up as an era of huge cuts in public employment compared with previous experience. If public employment had grown the way it did under Bush, we’d have 1.3 million more government workers, and probably an unemployment rate of 7 percent or less.

Kind of interesting how government grew faster under Bush than under Clinton or Obama.  Who'd have thunk it?

And lest you think that fewer workers means more government spending (?), think again:



Obama, far from presiding over a huge expansion of government the way the right claims, has in fact presided over unprecedented austerity, largely driven by cuts at the state and local level. And it’s therefore an amazing triumph of misinformation the way that lackluster economic performance has been interpreted as a failure of government spending.

At this point, with gridlock all over, it's hard to see how any of this is going to change.  And millions of people are hurting because of it.

CNN's Low Ratings

There's been a lot of chatter about the latest rating for CNN and how low they are.  I tend to agree with Booman's take on this. 

And as bad as CNN per se is, its Headline News Channel is even worse.  I posted this about HLN awhile back, and frankly my guess is that it's even worse now.

Early this week I posted the following on my Facebook page (why not here I don't know)...

A very good article about what is going wrong in what used to be my world. The comments are worth reading as much as the article. Two in particular: One by William Banzai7: "Toothless regulators have debased the value of regulatory compliance." Speaking as someone who thought his job was to help his clients comply with the tax law, I can attest to this in spades! The second by Bathsheba Robie: "I'm a 4th generation lawyer. I am glad my father isn't around to see the profession he loved. The business model is killing the legal profession, as it is the medical profession. I would not recommend law school to anyone." Curious what my doctor friends think about this one....

Years ago journalism, like law and medicine, was a profession.  Now they are businesses.  Personally, I think the world is a lot worse off for the transformation.

Obama's Early Career

What does it mean to be a community organizer in Chicago?

A paper posted by Yves Smith says fronting for powerful interests.

Disappointing, but not surprising.

Taxes and Economic Growth

Interesting post from Mike Kimel at Angry Bear earlier this week. 

There is a growing body of literature that is supporting the notion that economic growth actually increases when tax rates are higher.  The idea is that higher tax rates encourage more investment (because investment costs lower taxable income, by investing more you lower the tax you have to pay), and more investment spurs economic growth.

Intuitively this makes sense.  But try convincing our political leadership of that.

Is This Good News or Bad?

The building I work in has television monitors in the elevators where you can see the latest headlines from the Wall Street Journal (why this is viewed as necessary I don't know, but that's a whole different issue).  Headline seen this morning:

"US productivity fell in the first quarter, suggesting companies are reaching the limit of what they can squeeze from their employees."

Astronomy Pic of the Day

The Helix Nebula:

From NASA:

Explanation: A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. A total of 10 hours of exposure time have gone in to creating this remarkably deep view of the nebula. It shows details of the Helix's brighter inner region, about 3 light-years across, but also follows fainter outer halo features that give the nebula a span of well over six light-years. The white dot at the Helix's center is this Planetary Nebula's hot, central star. A simple looking nebula at first glance, the Helix is now understood to have a surprisingly complex geometry.

naked capitalism

I've just added Naked Capitalism to my blogroll.  I should have done it a long time ago.  Here is Wikipedia's description of the blog and its main author, Yves Smith:

Naked Capitalism is a blog published by Susan Webber, the Principal of Aurora Advisors, Inc., a management consulting firm. Webber authors the blog under a pen name, Yves Smith.
The blog deals with finance and economic news and analysis, with a focus on legal and ethical issues of the banking industry and the mortgage foreclosure process. Naked Capitalism is also critical of economic inequality, American politics, and Marxism.

Webber's use of "Quelle surprise...." has been cited as her catch phrase to voice her tongue-in-cheek disbelief on the subject matter of her blogs.

The blog was ranked seventh in business authority by Technorati in 2011. In 2011 Naked Capitalism was the third most visited business and economics blog on the web.

I've been reading this for awhile, and am always impressed by her command of the facts and her erudite analysis.  As an example, this is from her main post from today, an excellent takedown of Edward Conard, a former Bain Capital partner and current bankroller of Mitt Romney who was profiled in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this past weekend:

The article is chock full of blatant falsehoods. Let’s start with Conard’s personal Big Lie: that he is a risk taker and risk taking is good. All you have to do is look at his career to see that it contradicts both claims. He sees himself as a risk taker because…hold your breath…he went to Harvard Business School rather than going to law school! I graduated from HBS the year before Conard, and was accepted by both top law schools and business schools. Anyone with an operating brain cell will tell you that the fancy grad school route, particularly back then, when tuitions were vastly lower, was a risk averse strategy. You get good grades, show up for job interviews wearing a decent suit and exhibit at least adequate social skills, and you are guaranteed a well paid job.

And of the career choices of a newly minted MBA in the early 1980s, the big consulting firms were the least risky path on offer. Unlike Wall Street, where even first year pay had a meaningful bonus component, consulting firms pay high salaries. And they hysterical thing is he repeatedly rags on lawyers as prototypical people who “don’t maximize their wealth creating potential.” Yet he went on a path exactly like that. Consulting firms take fees, like law firms, and have explicitly modeled their pay and promotion structures on law firms’. He then went to Wasserstein (another firm which takes fees, albeit largely dependent on whether deals get done), which was already an established powerhouse, hence pretty much nada in the way of financial downside in joining them. And partners in private equity firms do not take risk either. PE firms get 2% of the funds under management and 20% of the upside. Partners may but are not required to invest along side the limited partners.

Conard has absolutely no clue about what entrepreneurship is about. Experts on entrepreneurship, like Amar Bhide, who has done considerable research into Inck 500 companies and entrepreneurship generally, have found that the top performers have founders who have very high ambitions and are good at minimizing risk.

She has other contributors who are excellent as well - as in this post from David Graeber regarding police violence against protesters in New York City including - apparently increasingly - sexual violence against female protesters.  Here's a snippet from that as well.

Why is all this not a national story? Back in September, when the now famous Tony Bologna arbitrarily maced several young women engaged in peaceful protest, the event became a national news story. In March, even while we were still hearing heated debates over a single incident of window-breaking that may or may not have been by an OWS activist in Oakland four months earlier, no one seems to have paid any significant attention to the first major incident of window-breaking in New York—even though the window was broken, by police, apparently, using a non-violent protestors’ head!

I suspect one reason so many shy away from confronting the obvious is because it raises extremely troubling questions about the role of police in American society. Most middle class Americans see the primary role of police as maintaining public order and safety. Instances when police are clearly trying to foment violence and disorder for political purposes so fly in the face of everything we have been taught that our instinct is to tell ourselves it isn’t happening: there must have been some provocation, or else, it must have just been individual rogue cops. Certainly not something ordered by the highest echelons. But here we have to remember the police are an extremely top-down, centralized organization. Uniformed officers simply cannot behave in ways that flagrantly defy the law, in full public view, on an ongoing basis, without having at least tacit approval from those above.

In this case, we also know precisely who those superiors are. The commander of the First Precinct, successor to the disgraced Tony Bologna, is Captain Edward J. Winski, whose officers patrol the Financial District (that is, when those very same officers are not being paid directly by Wall Street firms to provide security, which they regularly do, replete with badges, uniforms, and weapons). Winski often personally directs groups of police attacking protestors

Winsky’s superior is Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, former director of global security of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns.

And Kelly’s superior, in turn, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg – the well-known former investment banker and Wall Street magnate. The 11th richest man in America, he has referred to the New York City Police Department as his own personal army:

One of the great themes of Occupy Wall Street, of course, is the death of US democracy—the near-total capture of our political system by Wall Street firms and the financial power of the 1%. In the beginning the emphasis was on political corruption, the fact that both parties so beholden to the demands of Wall Street and corporate lobbyists that working within the political system to change anything has become simply meaningless. Recent events have demonstrated just how much deeper the power of money really goes. It is not just the political class. It is the very structure of American government, starting with the law and those who are sworn to enforce it—police officers who, as even this brief illustration makes clear, are directly in the pay of and under the orders of Wall Street executives, and who, as a result, are willing to systematically violate their oaths to protect the public when members of that public have the temerity to make a public issue out of exactly these kind of arrangements.

Great stuff.

Astronomy Pic of the Day

The Little Ghost Nebula:

From NASA:

This pretty planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 6369, was discovered by 18th century astronomer William Herschel as he used a telescope to explore the medicinal constellation Ophiucus. Round and planet-shaped, the nebula is also relatively faint and has acquired the popular moniker of Little Ghost Nebula. Planetary nebulae in general are not at all related to planets, but instead are created at the end of a sun-like star's life as its outer layers expand into space while the star's core shrinks to become a white dwarf. The transformed white dwarf star, seen near the center, radiates strongly at ultraviolet wavelengths and powers the expanding nebula's glow. Surprisingly complex details and structures of NGC 6369 are revealed in this tantalizing image composed from Hubble Space Telescope data. The nebula's main ring structure is about a light-year across and the glow from ionized oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms are colored blue, green, and red respectively. Over 2,000 light-years away, the Little Ghost Nebula offers a glimpse of the fate of our Sun, which could produce its own planetary nebula only about 5 billion years from now.

A Helpful Suggestion

A radio talk-show host suggests a cure for lesbianism:

A radio personality in Cleveland is facing tremendous backlash after telling a father that he should get one of his male friends to rape his daughter to force her to turn straight.


In response to an email from a father who suspected his daughter was gay after discovering her kissing another girl, DJ Dominic Deiter declared on the air that “You should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight.”

The General proposes an experiment to prove his thesis:

To them, you are a pig, an unenlightened neanderthal, one step above a pedophile and one below a grifter who steals a senior's savings. You need to change their minds. You can do so by proving that sexual orientation can be changed by sexual violence. I think I can help you with that.


Come down to my compound next weekend, and my men and I will ass rape you (in a purely violent heterosexual kind of way) until you're singing showtunes and speaking in grammatically correct sentences. Then, we'll have a bunch of not-men rape you back into the heterosexual lifestyle.

That'll show 'em.

Think it'll work?

Breaking News: FBI Foils its Own Bomb Plot - Again!

This is getting tedious.  How many times is the FBI going to convince impressionable, not-very-smart, down-and-outers to do something stupid then claim they foiled another terrorist act, before people catch on and realize what is really going on here?

1.  Justify their own existence and all the resources that have been poured into counter-terrorism.

2.  Undermine the legitimacy of those challenging a broken system.

Of all the plots supposedly foiled since 911, I can think of maybe 3 that weren't coordinated and funded by the FBI itself.

Disgusting....

Citizens Guide to Reading Political News Stories

From David Wong: 

5 Ways to Spot a B.S. Political Story in Under 10 Seconds.

Read the whole thing - it's priceless.  Here are a couple of choice passages:

You're probably asking why routine slips of the tongue continually become news headlines when they have absolutely no impact at all on the candidates' positions or platforms, or what they intend to do in office, or how capable they are of doing it, or anything else. Good fucking question! The answer is that many (if not most) people don't follow politics in order to find out who to vote for as part of their duty as citizens living in a democracy. They follow it purely as a form of entertainment. They're like sports fans, rooting for their "team" to win.

And as you're going to find out, virtually all political news coverage is written to appeal to those people. They're the most rabid "consumers" of news, and their traffic is the most reliable, so the news is tailored to appeal to them.

In the business, they derisively call it "horse race journalism," where the stories focus purely on the "sport" of politics rather than the consequences. A study found that in 1960, about half of the political news stories were about actual policy and the other half were these frivolous "who's winning the game" stories. Today, only 17 percent of stories are about stuff that matters.

This is my favorite:

OK, you know about the huge fight over health care reform in America, right? Whether you think it's a good or a bad plan, you can't deny that it's freaking huge (to the tune of a trillion dollars over 10 years, and 31 million people getting health insurance). It will impact almost every single human being living in the United States, either through their personal ability to get coverage, or their taxes, or changing health care costs, or changing rules to their existing coverage -- there are dozens and dozens of new regulations that completely change the landscape of one of the largest sectors of the national economy.

So, when the Supreme Court recently threatened to completely overturn this gargantuan piece of legislation, how did it get reported?

"Supreme Court's health-care ruling could deal dramatic blow to Obama presidency"  - Washington Post

The ruling could deal a blow to the "Obama presidency"? Fuck you.

I don't give two shits about the "Obama presidency" except in terms of what legislation it gets passed and how it changes the country and my life. I'm not following this story because I think it's a freaking Barack Obama reality show and I'm really eager to see how his life turns out. I don't see no goddamned crab boat. I'm following it because I want to know what it means for my own goddamned life and for the lives of the people I care about.

Again, I apologize if I come off like I'm angry, but I'm not kidding when I say that every goddamned important political story seems to get reported this way:

"Slowdown in US jobs growth deals a blow to Obama." - Independent.ie

A slowdown in U.S. jobs growth deals a blow to Obama? How about the millions of people who are out of work? Hey, guys, I don't know if you realize this, but the world actually exists. Those numbers on the screen represent actual humans who are actually suffering. No, really! It's not a video game! Come down to my home town, I have a neighborhood I want to show you. Bring your meth money!

And, as smarter commentators have pointed out, there's an even bigger problem with this: It actually implies that the issue itself is completely unimportant. For instance, if the courts overturn some regulation about mercury in the water or Congress blocks car mileage standards, it always gets reported as "A Blow to Environmentalists."

Oh, no, it's not a blow to the people who have to drink the water or breathe the air, or the taxpayers who have to fund the regulations, or the businesses that lose jobs over it. It's either a "blow to environmentalists" or it's not. They specifically make it sound like the effects extend purely to some fringe special interest group and absolutely no one else.

It's not only following the issue as a horse race/fight/reality show, it's actively prohibiting you from seeing it any other way. After all, if the building were really on fire, somebody would be telling me to evacuate. They wouldn't be calmly speculating about how this fire alarm is going to be a "blow to" the landlord. Not unless the person giving me the news had gone completely freaking insane.

And the conclusion:

I'm telling you from experience, watching political races this way is addictive as shit. You have thousands of years of violent tribal instincts pumping through your veins, itching for a fight. That makes you an easy tool for manipulation, and every good politician and pundit knows how to push those buttons to make people march neatly in formation.

Don't succumb. Or else you'll start supporting the most bullshit legislation just because your guy is for it. Or you'll start knee-jerk rejecting anything the other "team" proposes. Not because it's bad for the country, but because you want to deny them a "win."

It's a poisonous way of thinking. It will lower your IQ, it will rot your ability to think critically about the subjects that really matter. It's bad for you, it's bad for democracy, it's bad for the world. You have to be better and smarter than the person they think you are. Or else we're all fucked.

My guess is we're all fucked.

"Stand Your Ground Laws are Pro-Women!"

Yeah, right.

These people are really incorrigible....

Astronomy Pic of the Day

The Flaming Star Nebula:

From NASA:

Rippling dust and gas lanes give the Flaming Star Nebula its name. The red and purple colors of the nebula are present in different regions and are created by different processes. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible toward the image left, is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from surrounding gas. When a proton recaptures an electron, red light is frequently emitted. The purple region's color is a mix of this red light and blue light emitted by AE Aurigae but reflected to us by surrounding dust. The two regions are referred to as emission nebula and reflection nebula, respectively. Pictured above, the Flaming Star Nebula, officially known as IC 405, lies about 1500 light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).

Follow-up to Digby

Just want to clarify a few bits on the whole bin Laden thing.

First, I didn't really cheer that much when I heard about the raid that resulted in his death.  That's not to say that I'm not happy he's gone, it's just that I have always thought this was the wrong way to go about it.  My view has always been that if we could go in there and kill him, we could have brought him out alive as well, and that would have been the right thing to do if we actually believed in the ideals we espouse. 

Second, I am glad to some extent he's gone because I always thought the fact that he had never been captured or killed was a great excuse for starting or continuing our wars in the Middle East and building what can only be described as a police state here at home.  (If you want evidence of the latter, check this out.)  I honestly think that is why we failed to capture him at Tora Bora - if we had captured him, no doubt the country's desire for revenge would have been greatly satiated and its taste for what followed in Iraq greatly diminished.  For those who wanted to implement the New American Century, Osama was worth more alive than dead.

It's no surprise, then, that support for our continued presence in Afghanistan has continued to fall in the wake of his death.  Which, by the way, makes this sort of thing all the more frustrating....

Bottom line is I sympathize with Digby.  The world is ruled by old white men trying to prove to each other that their cajones are still functional.  They make our economic policy and they make our foreign policy.  And they have made a shambles of both.

What Digby Said, Part 2

About the posturing going on regarding the Bin Laden killing....

And make sure you read her first installment on this topic as well....

What Digby Said, Part 1

About the new Tennessee sex education (or non-education) bill.