Back to late 1982. I moved to the northeast to start my first adult job. Housing was horrendously expensive. Reagan had cut income taxes, people had more income, and that inflated the markets for houses and rentals. From my point of view it was a zero sum event. The extra money in my paycheck all went to pay for housing. Without the tax cuts, I calculated, I would have taken less money home but spent less on housing. Some people benefited. Realtors and home builders topped that list. Older. long established homeowners were a tier down. Higher selling prices were offset in part by capital gains taxes.
Six years later, I moved again. Home prices were down, cancelling out the Reagan tax cut infused bubblet.
Here's the point. If Reagan had maintained -- not cut -- income tax rates, the government's extra funds could have produced lasting value. Schools, roads, scientific research, upgrading the electrical grid, and fighting AIDS. Didn't happen. In the end we had neither tangible benefits nor home equity. The money went poof.
Sound familiar? Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations fueled a stock market boom. Companies bought back their own stock. People at the top, wise enough to cash out before November did great. All other investors watched their portfolios drop 15% in just three weeks. Reagan redux. The nation has again been taken for a ride and left with nothing to show. No infrastructure, no added health care, no Federal projects supporting renewable energy. Just another Poof!
Republicans cannot learn. They make the same stupid mistakes again and again. Their anti-tax fetishism produces the same predictable results.
Throw the bums out. Now
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Friday, December 21, 2018
An Infinitely Deep Swamp
Yesterday I finished listening to the final episode of Rachel Maddow's podcast, "Bagman," which is the mostly untold details of Spiro Agnew's crash & burn. Agnew was, even more than Nixon, the index case of the modern Republican party. He did not mention the charges against him publicly. No. Agnew played to the rubes and racists in his party. Disdain for the press, hatred of liberals, and unrepentant racism. The Republican base remained attack dog loyal.
I remember watching a televised get together of VP candidate Agnew and a group of college age or early-20's African-Americans. The event was presented as the Republican's olive branch to the black community following some of Agnew's racist remarks. I was stunned. Agnew would not -- perhaps could not -- understand anything the black people said. Not a word penetrated. He blathered over them and around them. Not even whitesplaining as much as not even being in the same room or possessing the same vocabulary. Now, I understand that Agnew was playing to his base. He was verifying his racist bonafides to them and pumping up Nixon's southern strategy.
He started out in politics taking bribes and kickbacks when Baltimore County Executive, increased the sleaze when Governor of MD, and then increased again as Vice President. The guy was accepting envelopes filled with $100 bills in his White House office. Although Doc Maddow repeats herself frequently in the podcast as she does on her TV show, she lets the listener draw the connections between then and now.
The Republicans pushed their VP out to avoid the highly likely double play of both Nixon and Agnew impeached and removed from office for their respective crimes. Then, as will happen in less than two weeks, a Democrat was speaker of the house. But, before Nixon threw Agnew under the bus, they conspired to obstruct justice by trying to coerce a Maryland Senator to get his younger brother, the US attorney who was running the Agnew investigation, to shutter the investigation. Nixon and Agnew's conspiracy can be heard on one of the White House tapes. (Hugs and kisses to you, Alexander Butterfield.) Melvin Laird was Nixon's first choice for emissary to the Maryland Senator. When that didn't work -- not clear why -- he found another flunky: George Herbert Walker Bush. That good soldier was then head of the Republican National Committee.
"Bagman" gives me hope. The good guys won 45 years ago. I was a junior in college, sitting in a computer programming course lecture. My memory says about 50 students in an old-fashioned lecture room with two or three sets of chalkboards that could be raised and lowered like window blinds. The room sloped upward from front to back. Chairs were bolted to the floor in neat, slightly curved rows, and a small writing surface would fold up onto the right side armrest like the tray tables on the seats at airplane bulkheads. A teaching assistant strode down from the back of the lecture hall, taking the shallow steps two at a time, until reaching one of the blackboards where he wrote, "Spiggy is out!"
Thursday, November 15, 2018
A Cancer
It really is cancer. The metaphor is accurate. Malignancy may start in a myriad of locations and a myriad of ways. But, the progression towards death follows a narrowing path as rapidly multiplying tumor cells mutate and mutate, ever progressing towards the worst case, deadliest genetic changes. Victims are bystanders at a light-speed craps table. Cancer rolls the dice again and again, always faster, until, inevitably, snake eyes.
Violent, murderous anti-Semitism was a certain destination for right wing America's modern trajectory. Only the starting points and initial steps were unpredictable. The disease simmered, boiled, went cold, and popped. Some anti-Semites were shamed into quiet by the Holocaust and they, instead, focused on racism. Communist witch hunts including the Rosenbergs' executions were cover for low level anti-Semitism.
The 2008 crash marked the transition from Stage II to Stage III. The cancer spread from initiation to nearby tissue. The old tropes emerged. Cabals of Jewish bankers. Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Rothschilds. Goldman, Sachs, Rubin and Blankfein.
Now, stage IV. Nazis in Charleston chanting, "Jews will not replace us." A Senator from Iowa allowing George Soros possible involvement behind women protesting Brett Kavanaugh, "It fits in his attack mode and how he uses his billions and billions of resources." A US Senator born in 1933. High school students in Wisconsin giving the Hitler salute in their class photo. Swastikas and vandalism at synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.
Mass murder in Pittsburgh.
Violent, murderous anti-Semitism was a certain destination for right wing America's modern trajectory. Only the starting points and initial steps were unpredictable. The disease simmered, boiled, went cold, and popped. Some anti-Semites were shamed into quiet by the Holocaust and they, instead, focused on racism. Communist witch hunts including the Rosenbergs' executions were cover for low level anti-Semitism.
The 2008 crash marked the transition from Stage II to Stage III. The cancer spread from initiation to nearby tissue. The old tropes emerged. Cabals of Jewish bankers. Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Rothschilds. Goldman, Sachs, Rubin and Blankfein.
Now, stage IV. Nazis in Charleston chanting, "Jews will not replace us." A Senator from Iowa allowing George Soros possible involvement behind women protesting Brett Kavanaugh, "It fits in his attack mode and how he uses his billions and billions of resources." A US Senator born in 1933. High school students in Wisconsin giving the Hitler salute in their class photo. Swastikas and vandalism at synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.
Mass murder in Pittsburgh.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Global Warming Science: The Basics
Listening to Republicans talk about global warming is like listening to middle-schoolers talk about sex. Lots of ignorant bluster, and not much else.
Larry Kudlow, Trump's senior economic advisor spewed word salad when asked by George Stephanopoulos about the UN IPCC report, “I’m not denying any climate change issues, George, I’m just saying, ‘Do we know precisely ― and I mean worth modeling ― things like how much of it is man-made, how much of it is solar, how much of it is oceanic, how much of it is rainforest and other issues?" Gibberish, straight up.
Nearly all of the basic science about global warming was known before the end of the 19th -- yes, 19th, not 20th -- century. The remaining piece was completed by the early 1960's: global warming was real and caused by human activity. Understanding the basic science starts with common sense life experience. The sun warms the Earth. The sun's effect is obvious. Early mornings are the coolest times of the day. Temperatures rise with the sun and continue to increase throughout the day. We see the sun's light, feel its warmth on our skin, and know it is cooler in the shade than in direct sunlight.
Then, in late afternoon or early evening, as the sun starts to set, temperatures drop. Where does the day's heat go? That's a question few people ponder. Nighttime cooling just happens. When I ask non-scientists, most just shrug or say, "Up." That is a reasonable answer because we know that heat rises. But, rises to where? And how? If the adage of heat rising is truly correct, then why is it cooler in the mountains than at low elevations? Why is the temperature outside an airplane about 40 below? "Up" doesn't really answer the question.
The mechanism of daytime warming is obvious but the mechanism of nighttime cooling is not. Why the difference? The answer helps explain why it's so easy to hoodwink so many people about global warming. Our senses tell us about daytime heating. We see the sun and feel its warmth. But, our senses fail when it comes to nighttime cooling. Our eyes and skin don't provide any information. The situation would be different if we could see infrared light. We can't. Yet, if we could, we would know as instinctively as we know about the sun's warmth that everything around us glows with infrared light. Warm objects glow more brightly than cool ones. And, it would be easy to understand that warmth gets broadcast up into the night sky. Infrared light streaming up from Earth, through the atmosphere and in to outer space carries the day's heat away. Temperatures drop.
Infrared eyesight would also let us know that air is not transparent to infrared light the way it is transparent to visible light. Some infrared wavelengths zip through the air unimpeded. Other wavelengths get absorbed by gases in the air. Carbon dioxide is the most significant of those gases. The absorbed light never makes it to outer space. It heats the carbon dioxide that, in turn, warms the rest of the atmosphere. When more carbon dioxide is added from burning fossil fuels, more of the infrared light gets absorbed. Less escapes into outer space. Nighttime cooling becomes less efficient. The planet warms.
Larry Kudlow, Trump's senior economic advisor spewed word salad when asked by George Stephanopoulos about the UN IPCC report, “I’m not denying any climate change issues, George, I’m just saying, ‘Do we know precisely ― and I mean worth modeling ― things like how much of it is man-made, how much of it is solar, how much of it is oceanic, how much of it is rainforest and other issues?" Gibberish, straight up.
Nearly all of the basic science about global warming was known before the end of the 19th -- yes, 19th, not 20th -- century. The remaining piece was completed by the early 1960's: global warming was real and caused by human activity. Understanding the basic science starts with common sense life experience. The sun warms the Earth. The sun's effect is obvious. Early mornings are the coolest times of the day. Temperatures rise with the sun and continue to increase throughout the day. We see the sun's light, feel its warmth on our skin, and know it is cooler in the shade than in direct sunlight.
Then, in late afternoon or early evening, as the sun starts to set, temperatures drop. Where does the day's heat go? That's a question few people ponder. Nighttime cooling just happens. When I ask non-scientists, most just shrug or say, "Up." That is a reasonable answer because we know that heat rises. But, rises to where? And how? If the adage of heat rising is truly correct, then why is it cooler in the mountains than at low elevations? Why is the temperature outside an airplane about 40 below? "Up" doesn't really answer the question.
The mechanism of daytime warming is obvious but the mechanism of nighttime cooling is not. Why the difference? The answer helps explain why it's so easy to hoodwink so many people about global warming. Our senses tell us about daytime heating. We see the sun and feel its warmth. But, our senses fail when it comes to nighttime cooling. Our eyes and skin don't provide any information. The situation would be different if we could see infrared light. We can't. Yet, if we could, we would know as instinctively as we know about the sun's warmth that everything around us glows with infrared light. Warm objects glow more brightly than cool ones. And, it would be easy to understand that warmth gets broadcast up into the night sky. Infrared light streaming up from Earth, through the atmosphere and in to outer space carries the day's heat away. Temperatures drop.
Infrared eyesight would also let us know that air is not transparent to infrared light the way it is transparent to visible light. Some infrared wavelengths zip through the air unimpeded. Other wavelengths get absorbed by gases in the air. Carbon dioxide is the most significant of those gases. The absorbed light never makes it to outer space. It heats the carbon dioxide that, in turn, warms the rest of the atmosphere. When more carbon dioxide is added from burning fossil fuels, more of the infrared light gets absorbed. Less escapes into outer space. Nighttime cooling becomes less efficient. The planet warms.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Are People This Stupid?
Yes. They are. The mantra: Half of all people are below average intelligence. First corollary: average intelligence ain't much.
Jury duty two weeks ago. A one and done. Jury selection, trial, and deliberation all completed between 8 AM and 5 PM. That includes 90 minutes wasted as the jury pool was seated, reseated, and questioned. The case ended without resolution. 8-to-4 to acquit on the first count and an even 6-6 split on the second. The judge said it was OK for us to discuss the trial, then reversed herself after the DA went up to the bench to explain that the State might retry the case and might even select jurors from the same pool. Not bloody likely when the jury was so far from conviction. But, that's just one part of the day's stupid.
One juror looked exactly like the Gilda Radner's Roseanne Rosanadana character from SNL. The makeup matched. The real woman's hair was even worse. Straw thatch dyed blue-black and covering half her face. Everything she said was painfully stupid. i don't know how she can get out of bed without getting hurt.
The case was a domestic dispute. One detail is that the father was annoyed by his 7-year-old son's disrespectful comment over the phone. Several jurors including RR referred to the boy's attitude. His lip. (We never learned what was said. Only that the content was disrespectful.) Men and women shook their heads, clucked their tongues, became indignant about the boy's sassiness.
Jurors projected their experience onto the poor schlubs whose lives were exposed to us in court. "There's still a lot of love, there," the fat middle-aged guy told us. Two women explained how they had dealt with emotionally abusive partners and damned the women for not doing the same. She didn't go for counseling! She didn't take photos! She didn't have her mother testify! The youngest juror, a woman with green hair, became exasperated: She is not you. Her experiences are not your experiences. Blank looks in response. Average intellects grinding on data and spitting nonsense.
A few days later the NY Times published over a dozen pages describing the Trump crime family's financial history. About 10% tax evasion and 90% tax fraud. In response, not a creature stirred, not even a mouse. Numbers and math. Boring. Reading and understanding the lengthy article required time and focus. And several days after that the most conservative international climate study organization -- the UN's IPCC -- published an exceptionally scary report on global warming. Blink. Blink. Snore.
Politicians and most reporters have learned that people don't respond to global warming news. Reporters blame scientists for lacking communications skills. Have you ever tried to explain science to a newsman? Simplify, simplify, simplify until there's nothing left. You have to travel so far back to find a common bit of shared understanding that the forward process takes forever. John Oliver once tried to cover the long term effects of annual fees paid on 401(k) funds. He kept having to slap the audience in the face to keep viewers awake, "I know this sounds boring, but it's really important." Imagine, having to condescend to your audience when you are explaining how their savings are being pissed away. But, numbers and compounded interest. Too much to expect average people to understand.
Jury duty two weeks ago. A one and done. Jury selection, trial, and deliberation all completed between 8 AM and 5 PM. That includes 90 minutes wasted as the jury pool was seated, reseated, and questioned. The case ended without resolution. 8-to-4 to acquit on the first count and an even 6-6 split on the second. The judge said it was OK for us to discuss the trial, then reversed herself after the DA went up to the bench to explain that the State might retry the case and might even select jurors from the same pool. Not bloody likely when the jury was so far from conviction. But, that's just one part of the day's stupid.
One juror looked exactly like the Gilda Radner's Roseanne Rosanadana character from SNL. The makeup matched. The real woman's hair was even worse. Straw thatch dyed blue-black and covering half her face. Everything she said was painfully stupid. i don't know how she can get out of bed without getting hurt.
The case was a domestic dispute. One detail is that the father was annoyed by his 7-year-old son's disrespectful comment over the phone. Several jurors including RR referred to the boy's attitude. His lip. (We never learned what was said. Only that the content was disrespectful.) Men and women shook their heads, clucked their tongues, became indignant about the boy's sassiness.
Jurors projected their experience onto the poor schlubs whose lives were exposed to us in court. "There's still a lot of love, there," the fat middle-aged guy told us. Two women explained how they had dealt with emotionally abusive partners and damned the women for not doing the same. She didn't go for counseling! She didn't take photos! She didn't have her mother testify! The youngest juror, a woman with green hair, became exasperated: She is not you. Her experiences are not your experiences. Blank looks in response. Average intellects grinding on data and spitting nonsense.
A few days later the NY Times published over a dozen pages describing the Trump crime family's financial history. About 10% tax evasion and 90% tax fraud. In response, not a creature stirred, not even a mouse. Numbers and math. Boring. Reading and understanding the lengthy article required time and focus. And several days after that the most conservative international climate study organization -- the UN's IPCC -- published an exceptionally scary report on global warming. Blink. Blink. Snore.
Politicians and most reporters have learned that people don't respond to global warming news. Reporters blame scientists for lacking communications skills. Have you ever tried to explain science to a newsman? Simplify, simplify, simplify until there's nothing left. You have to travel so far back to find a common bit of shared understanding that the forward process takes forever. John Oliver once tried to cover the long term effects of annual fees paid on 401(k) funds. He kept having to slap the audience in the face to keep viewers awake, "I know this sounds boring, but it's really important." Imagine, having to condescend to your audience when you are explaining how their savings are being pissed away. But, numbers and compounded interest. Too much to expect average people to understand.
Experiment
What will the religious right do with their lives should the Kavanaugh-containing Supreme Court overturn Roe? Abortion was the perfect issue for the religious right. It let mean-spirited, hateful, authoritarians claim to protect innocent children. These cynics cry on cue, wave gruesome photos, and demonize Planned Parenthood. But, the tells have always been there. Too many men in charge. Can anyone believe Ralph Reed, that pasty-faced opportunist, gives a damn about children? The wretched lying about late-term abortions. Conservatives can't stop punching down. Can't stop mocking other people's tragedies. Malformed, dead or dying, fetuses were portrayed as cherubic Gerber babies. Grieving, devastated women portrayed as lazy sluts terminating pregnancies so they could fit into prom dresses.
And, the biggest tell of them all: abortions allowed in cases of rape or incest. Why? Are those fetuses any less innocent? Any less alive? Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop is the only politician I've heard -- this was many years ago -- decry those exceptions. It did not make him popular among the anti-abortion crowd who needed the double standard. Forcing a woman to carry to term her rapist's baby was too cruel to be popular. Yet, few people among the pro-choice crowd say the obvious: fights against abortion are fights against women's rights and have nothing to do with children.
Speaking of being on cue, Rep Steve King of Iowa tweeted a photo of a sleeping infant and an anti-abortion message. Steve King: bigot, white supremacist, and pro-pollution toady.
Speaking of being on cue, Rep Steve King of Iowa tweeted a photo of a sleeping infant and an anti-abortion message. Steve King: bigot, white supremacist, and pro-pollution toady.
Friday, October 5, 2018
Kavanuts
The title of one opinion piece is, "How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying." I don't bother to read more than the lede because the answer is obvious: his mouth is open.
Republicans are standing by their man. They set out to find a SCOTUS justice who will overturn Roe, protect Trump from investigation, and destroy workers' rights. No way they were surprised when a pig applied for the job. Who else would appear? Bill Kunstler? It was also a given that the pig would show up carrying pig baggage. A bit inconvenient, but not surprising. He is, after all, a pig. It was just another week for the Republican PR machine.
If the Senate votes Kavanaugh down, then the Republicans will nominate Kavanaugh 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them are waiting for the call. And, somewhere a factory manufactures even more soul-less, Kavanauvian droids and programs them to protect the wealthy by riling the rubes. Think of the truck loads of pods in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
Republicans are standing by their man. They set out to find a SCOTUS justice who will overturn Roe, protect Trump from investigation, and destroy workers' rights. No way they were surprised when a pig applied for the job. Who else would appear? Bill Kunstler? It was also a given that the pig would show up carrying pig baggage. A bit inconvenient, but not surprising. He is, after all, a pig. It was just another week for the Republican PR machine.
If the Senate votes Kavanaugh down, then the Republicans will nominate Kavanaugh 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them are waiting for the call. And, somewhere a factory manufactures even more soul-less, Kavanauvian droids and programs them to protect the wealthy by riling the rubes. Think of the truck loads of pods in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
No Time for Nonsense
In my local supermarket, the widest, brightest aisle is shelved high with modern snake oil. On a good day, I am comforted by cynical self-interest. Sales of useless crap keep the supermarket profitable and allows them to reduce prices on the items I want. It's the same attitude that I can sometimes find to justify the nastiness of the rich kids who attend private school with my daughter. Call it affirmative action. The school accepts and tolerates privileged dolts to subsidize my daughter's education. But, I can generate only so much on-demand cynicism. Most times, I walk past the aisle of deceit, and sigh heavily knowing that, in my community, people are more likely, not less, to trust their health to homeopathics and cleanses and kelp.
Family and friends remind me that I was rude and dismissive when young. I laughed at people who applied 'quantum' to anything, I gave a two-handed brush off to astrology and sneered at religion. People who found comfort in crackpot ideas needed to be corrected and to learn why they were so wrong. Then, my wife socialized me. I began to keep my mouth shut and nod sympathetically. When asked directly about some bit of nonsense technology, I would answer with, "I've not read anything in the scientific literature about that idea." True, but bland, and easily heard by believers as approval.
Now, my young self is back. I've not patience for ignorance and stupid. My eye-ball rolling muscles are again in teenage fighting trim. My favorite movie line is George Sanders' Shere Khan in the 1967 Jungle Book when he squashes the Kaa the snake saying, "I can't be bothered with that. I have no time for that sort of nonsense." Indeed. If you want to talk reality; great. If you want to talk chakras or astrology or religion or homeopathy or angels or raw food, then just go away. I've no time for that nonsense.
Because, here we are, with an egomaniacal conman in the White House, a religious pervert next in line, and a cabinet of moneyed crackpots. The House and Senate are run by frauds and whores. There's no time for irrelevant distractions. No time to be polite.
Family and friends remind me that I was rude and dismissive when young. I laughed at people who applied 'quantum' to anything, I gave a two-handed brush off to astrology and sneered at religion. People who found comfort in crackpot ideas needed to be corrected and to learn why they were so wrong. Then, my wife socialized me. I began to keep my mouth shut and nod sympathetically. When asked directly about some bit of nonsense technology, I would answer with, "I've not read anything in the scientific literature about that idea." True, but bland, and easily heard by believers as approval.
Now, my young self is back. I've not patience for ignorance and stupid. My eye-ball rolling muscles are again in teenage fighting trim. My favorite movie line is George Sanders' Shere Khan in the 1967 Jungle Book when he squashes the Kaa the snake saying, "I can't be bothered with that. I have no time for that sort of nonsense." Indeed. If you want to talk reality; great. If you want to talk chakras or astrology or religion or homeopathy or angels or raw food, then just go away. I've no time for that nonsense.
Because, here we are, with an egomaniacal conman in the White House, a religious pervert next in line, and a cabinet of moneyed crackpots. The House and Senate are run by frauds and whores. There's no time for irrelevant distractions. No time to be polite.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Common Ground
Self-pity is the unifying trait of white working class Trump voters. Krugman recently suggested anti-intellectualism. That seemed almost right, but not exactly on target because anti-intellectualism is more mindset than a core emotion. Self-pitiers blame all misfortune on a hostile world. Store clerks are rude. Teachers are out to get my kid. Bosses pick on me. Fifty cars on the road are speeding, but the cop stopped me because he needed to get a white guy to avoid looking prejudiced and why wasn't he going after real criminals like murderers and rapists. And on and on. When everyone else is at fault, problems don't get solved. They just get repeated.
The self-pity gene also codes for high fear of non-existent threats. Obama will take away my guns. Sharia law is being let loose across the land. Global warming is a conspiracy that will force me to forfeit my V8's and pickups. Poor, poor self-pitying victims squint at the world from behind closed curtains, waiting for the next injustice to reinforce their paranoid narcissistic world view.
A family I knew well suffered multigenerational self-pity. Nature and nurture had dug a very deep hole. Six of six siblings were severely dyslexic. Education was torture. One of the boys was dragged down the street every weekday morning as he screamed, "No school! No school!" The parents, self-pitiers both, did not know how to get the help that the schools are required to provide. Instead they snarled about a teacher who suggested testing the youngest child for learning disabilities. "All they want to do is put a label on the kid. Why don't they realize that every kid is different?"
Tolstoy be damned. The family, like millions of other people, followed the same self-pitying path of lousy jobs, alcohol, drugs, early pregnancies and low-birth-weight babies, and guns. Pigeons oh so easily plucked by a master con man.
The self-pity gene also codes for high fear of non-existent threats. Obama will take away my guns. Sharia law is being let loose across the land. Global warming is a conspiracy that will force me to forfeit my V8's and pickups. Poor, poor self-pitying victims squint at the world from behind closed curtains, waiting for the next injustice to reinforce their paranoid narcissistic world view.
A family I knew well suffered multigenerational self-pity. Nature and nurture had dug a very deep hole. Six of six siblings were severely dyslexic. Education was torture. One of the boys was dragged down the street every weekday morning as he screamed, "No school! No school!" The parents, self-pitiers both, did not know how to get the help that the schools are required to provide. Instead they snarled about a teacher who suggested testing the youngest child for learning disabilities. "All they want to do is put a label on the kid. Why don't they realize that every kid is different?"
Tolstoy be damned. The family, like millions of other people, followed the same self-pitying path of lousy jobs, alcohol, drugs, early pregnancies and low-birth-weight babies, and guns. Pigeons oh so easily plucked by a master con man.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Death to Public Schools
School voucher plans don't add up. Here in paradise, Santa Fe public school funding is about $7500 per student. That comes close to the $9600 in tuition and fees charged by the city's largest parochial high school and is far less than the $22,000 charged by the city's largest non-sectarian private school. What will happen if the Amway-Blackwater Secretary of Education gets her way and it's vouchers all the way down? I predict chaos. The Archbishop will hit the fainting couch. There's no way that the parochial schools could expand to meet the likely free-market demand. No way to add more classrooms to cope with the new enrollment.
What about special services? That $7500 per student is an average. Many students with disabilities cost more. Where will the extra come from or are the students who require the most assistance going to get the least?
How will private schools find enough teachers to fill the demand? The only pool of experienced teachers are the teachers now in the public school system. In the grand delusion of free markets, the creme de la creme of those teachers will be lured away by offers of high salaries. But, there is a built-in salary cap that is tied to the size of the vouchers. Higher salaries require more students per class and that just perpetuates one of the big problems in public schools. Maybe some entrepreneur will create a guest worker business to bring in low-salaried teachers from abroad. There are excellent, English-speaking teachers in India and Africa who would happily work for a pittance.
The voucherized free market will become yet another race to the bottom. And that's part of the plan. Trump's proposed Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos,
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
76 Trombones
Trump is already kicking the rubes to the gutter. Imagine that. The chumps were warned. They heard about all the other scams. They didn't listen. Instead, the marks danced on delighted tiptoe to the polls. And now, Mexico won't be paying for a wall that won't be built. Hillary Clinton will not be jailed or even investigated. The Paris climate accord might be a good thing. The coal industry will stay dead. Obamacare will survive. Syria and ISIS will remain intractable.
How are you feeling now, suckers?
How are you feeling now, suckers?
On Matt Taibbi and Words
From a recent post by Matt Taibbi:
Many reporters, myself included, found themselves thinking about this film [Idiocracy] when we heard voters saying they were literally incapable of understanding the words coming out of Hillary Clinton's mouth.My God, it really is time to use the s-word. Voters are too stupid to understand simple declarative sentences and grade school vocabulary. What gives? How is it possible for people to reach voting age without absorbing enough information needed for the smallest amount of critical thinking? How do they manage to dress themselves in the morning or tie their own shoes?
"When [Trump] talks, I actually understand what he's saying," a young Pennsylvanian named Trent Gower told me at a Trump event a month ago. "But, like, when fricking Hillary Clinton talks, it just sounds like a bunch of bullshit."
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Global Warming Science (Part 1)
Global warming is real, is caused by people, and its consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
The deniers favorite lie is that climate scientists are greedy nerds spreading a false alarm in order to get grant money. You don't have to know anything about science or scientists to pop that bubble: the denialist side pays much better for almost no work. Real easy money for anyone with have Prof in front of thier name or PhD after it, and a middling talent for lying.
Thanksgiving is coming and will be an angry time around many US dinner tables. In preparation for the arguments about climate change, I am posting information about the basic science of global warming. The science is not new. It started in the 19th century and ended fifty years ago with a series of measurements that proved global warming's inevitability. Those results have been validated again and again.
The deniers favorite lie is that climate scientists are greedy nerds spreading a false alarm in order to get grant money. You don't have to know anything about science or scientists to pop that bubble: the denialist side pays much better for almost no work. Real easy money for anyone with have Prof in front of thier name or PhD after it, and a middling talent for lying.
Thanksgiving is coming and will be an angry time around many US dinner tables. In preparation for the arguments about climate change, I am posting information about the basic science of global warming. The science is not new. It started in the 19th century and ended fifty years ago with a series of measurements that proved global warming's inevitability. Those results have been validated again and again.
Global Warming Science (Part 1)
Global warming is real, is caused by people, and its consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
The deniers favorite lie is that climate scientists are greedy nerds spreading a false alarm in order to get grant money. You don't have to know anything about science or scientists to pop that bubble: the denialist side pays much better for almost no work. Real easy money for anyone with have Prof in front of thier name or PhD after it, and a middling talent for lying.
Thanksgiving is coming and will be an angry time around many US dinner tables. In preparation for the arguments about climate change, I am posting information about the basic science of global warming. The science is not new. It started in the 19th century and ended fifty years ago with a series of measurements that proved global warming's inevitability. Those results have been validated again and again.
The deniers favorite lie is that climate scientists are greedy nerds spreading a false alarm in order to get grant money. You don't have to know anything about science or scientists to pop that bubble: the denialist side pays much better for almost no work. Real easy money for anyone with have Prof in front of thier name or PhD after it, and a middling talent for lying.
Thanksgiving is coming and will be an angry time around many US dinner tables. In preparation for the arguments about climate change, I am posting information about the basic science of global warming. The science is not new. It started in the 19th century and ended fifty years ago with a series of measurements that proved global warming's inevitability. Those results have been validated again and again.
Global Warming Science (Part 1)
Global warming is real, is caused by people, and its consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
The deniers favorite lie is that climate scientists are greedy nerds spreading a false alarm in order to get grant money. You don't have to know anything about science or scientists to pop that bubble: the denialist side pays much better for almost no work. Real easy money for anyone with have Prof in front of thier name or PhD after it, and a middling talent for lying.
Thanksgiving is coming and won't it be a angry time around many US dinner tables. In preparation, I am posting information about the basic science of global warming. The science is not new. It started in the 19th century and ended fifty years ago with a series of measurements that proved global warming's inevitability. Those results have been validated again and again.
The deniers favorite lie is that climate scientists are greedy nerds spreading a false alarm in order to get grant money. You don't have to know anything about science or scientists to pop that bubble: the denialist side pays much better for almost no work. Real easy money for anyone with have Prof in front of thier name or PhD after it, and a middling talent for lying.
Thanksgiving is coming and won't it be a angry time around many US dinner tables. In preparation, I am posting information about the basic science of global warming. The science is not new. It started in the 19th century and ended fifty years ago with a series of measurements that proved global warming's inevitability. Those results have been validated again and again.
A Question from the new SAT
Try this. "Global warming denier is to EPA as _______ is to _________." 10 points. Right now, my best shot is, "...as flat Earther is to NASA." It catches the parallel of buffoons leading science-based government agencies, but misses big time on smugness, cruelty, and real damage to real lives. Flat earthers may be anachronistic. Global warming deniers are criminally insane.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Krugman's Konundrum
I went to a meeting hosted by a firm that specializes in helping sell other companies. The presentation was surprisingly good and informative. And, I was not surprised or discomforted that 1/3 of the presentation was a sales pitch for the company that hosted the event. The talk was free; I went in assuming they were looking for new clients.
No. I was bothered by the right-wing snippets included in the presentation. Accepted-as-gospel fallacies about economics, finance, and recent history. For example, did you know that social security is broke? The so-called "lock box" is filled by $70 trillion in IOUs. The US is printing lots of money, and that is debasing our currency. No wonder that no one else but the US government is willing to buy our debt. China, India, and Brazil are all taking a pass on our treasury bills. And, income tax! Whoo boy! Here, my friends, is a facsimile of the very first 1040 form that was sent out by the IRS in 1913 and remained unchanged for 20 years. One page and a flat, 1% tax. Eminently fair. John Rockefeller and my grandfather at a sewing machine were treated equally. Nothing more democratic than that! Now, the IRS code is bloated to thousands of pages that get changed every year. Oh, and here is a quote from James Madison in which Madison rejected the idea of a national income tax. Jimmy knew that governments would just squander the money. And, he was right!
And that crash of 2008?. All caused because that year 80% of mortgages -- all forced upon the lenders by Congress -- went to subprime borrowers. And, when they defaulted, the economy went kablooey.
We also learned that now is the greatest time ever for people to sell their companies. It is a true sellers' market. Interest rates are at 70 year lows. Capital gain taxes are low. Companies looking for acquisitions are flush with cash because they've had nothing to spend it on since 2008. Europeans think US companies are bargains because the euro is strong compared to the dollar. Why, just compare today's economic environment with the 1980's when interest rates on 10 yr treasuries were at 21%. Back then, it was tough to find someone willing to take a risk on a buying a small company when they could earn a 21% return, risk free and backed by thefullfaithandcredit of these United States. I was too polite to ask why conservatives love them some Ronnie Reagan who oversaw that awful business climate and despise the Socialist Kenyan Muslim Usurper.
The biggest mystery of all. How is it possible for so many money guys to believe the right wing nonsense? This passion for political dogma over facts has got to lose them money. I have experienced two-score and more years of listening to ignorati making ludicrous false claims about science. I have met physicists who dismiss evolution; but, I can't find any other examples of people who remain so steadfastly loyal to nonsense within their supposed areas of expertise. What is going on?
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Wake Me When It's Over
I am a few chapters in to James Risen's, "Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War." Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. There's the story of Dennis Montgomery who conned DoD and the CIA with software that could detect and decode messages from Al Qaeda hidden in Al Jezeera's bottom-of-the-screen logo displayed during their broadcasts. Montgomery literally got rich by watching TV. All he needed was a big screen television, a computer, and a few credulous connections within Nevada and DC. No one could make this stuff up. Members of Team Montgomery included the aptly-named Congressman Jerry Lewis. Did all these clowns use Scott Joplin ring tones?
When the first set of deals soured, Montgomery found a new billionaire sugar-momma who made a connection to Jack Kemp and, through him, to the White House. Surprisingly, one of Cheney's aides was the only person in Washington who demanded source code for evaluation before diverting a palette of C-notes out of the river of money that flowed from the NJ Fed to Baghdad and into Montgomery's bank account. The software also failed the Israeli's sniff test.
For those of you under 50, Kemp was a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, Republican Congressman, Housing Secretary, and failed VP candidate in 1996. He was a member of the fancy-schmancy, private, Wyoming ski resort owned by the billionaire sugar-momma and her soon-to-be ex-husband. Dennis Montgomery best skill was finding a mark within that exclusive realm, where money and connections far exceed intellect and facts.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Blame the Victim: Cancer Edition
H disclosed to my wife that he is committing slow
suicide – or not – by treating his prostate cancer with diet. A naturopathic fraud
cured H's wife of some long term ailment. Obviously, the naturopath is the best choice for treating the prostate cancer that H may or may not be there. H is certain of the diagnosis and certain that the diet is beneficial. I am the skeptic. Diagnosis and follow-up were based entirely on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests and measurements of "liver function."
PSA tests don't work. It was a good
idea that failed. High rates of false positives and false negatives. The K-Y jellied gloved hand digital exam is the most reliable screening test available.
My wife asked H about the naturopath's
success rate with prostate cancer. Oh to be a shameless fraud! Diet-based cancer cures are just
like abstinence-only contraception. H explained that the method succeeds for people who are 100% faithful to the regimen. The treatment can't fail the patient; but the patient can fail the treatment. (I need to translate that into
Latin.) Blame the victim. We learned all about that scam when another friend died after treating his prostate cancer with tanker loads of
carrot juice plus cabbage juice chasers. After the cancer killed him, his wife found a hidden Spam stash. Aha! She just knew he had been cheating on his diet. And, there was the evidence. I wonder if his death certificate reads "cancer" or "Spam."
H's wife elaborated on the healthy diet theory to my wife. The naturopath believes that good food crucial to good health. But, don't cancer cells benefit just as much -- if not more -- from nutrition? What is the saying, "Feed a cold and starve a fever" or vice versa or "Feed a cold and starve a cancer."
H's wife elaborated on the healthy diet theory to my wife. The naturopath believes that good food crucial to good health. But, don't cancer cells benefit just as much -- if not more -- from nutrition? What is the saying, "Feed a cold and starve a fever" or vice versa or "Feed a cold and starve a cancer."
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