Still Not So Much

Remember how the whole one percent-ninety nine percent narrative was dying? Or dead? Yeah, still not so much. Take a look at this photo that I snapped near my house.

Safe? Safe from what exactly? Financial sector guys running an anti-Wall Street ad to get people to invest...I love it!

And their company name isn't bad either:)

Another Example Of How Wrong I Am!!

Challenge Accepted

Put this column in a drawer and take it out on the date below. Let me know how many of these predictions I got right.

You got it, Bill!!

I wonder what is going to happen when this particular Cult member is proved wrong. I predict he will....MAKE A BUNCH OF SHIT UP AND SAY IT HAPPENED JUST LIKE HE SAID.

Fun Math Facts

To go along with the post below...

And those are Fun Math Facts!!!

The Future is Now!

Sometimes it seems like the future will never get here. We don't have flying cars, or personal jetpacks, or vacations on the moon. Well, today the future is now!

This morning the first commercial spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. SpaceX's Dragon capsule was captured by the station's robotic arm after performing several maneuvers to demonstrate the safety and maneuverability of the spacecraft.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, one of the cofounders of PayPal, the online payment service. Musk was originally from South Africa. In 2008 SpaceX got a NASA contract to delivery supplies to the space station.

Musk also founded two other companies: Tesla Motors, which makes electric cars, and SolarCity, which builds solar power systems. He recently joined the Giving Pledge, founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

How are other high-tech millionaires moving us into this brave new world?

After leaving Microsoft Bill Gates has worked full-time at the Gates Foundation. The organization is focused on improving global health, agriculture, and financial services for the poor, and libraries and education in the United States.

Peter Thiel is another of PayPal's cofounders. Originally from Germany, Thiel was recently in the news for his support of Super PAC supporting Ron Paul. Thiel is now a hedge fund manager and venture capitalist. He has also donated half a million bucks to the Seasteading Institute, which envisions building platforms out in the middle of the ocean to form independent micronations and abandon their home countries to avoid taxes and regulations.

Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin got very rich when Facebook went public. He recently came under fire for giving up his American citizenship (he was originally from Brazil) and moving to Singapore to avoid paying capital gains taxes on the Facebook IPO. Note that capital gains are taxed at the measly rate of 15%.

Saverin came under fire by many, including New York Senator Charles Schumer, for dodging $67 million in taxes. Schumer has proposed legislation to hold ex-patriots accountable for skipping out on taxes. This prompted Grover Norquist to defend Saverin and compare Schumer's proposed legislation to Nazi-era German law.

One issue in the 2012 election is the huge disparity of wealth in his country. Conservatives seem to now believe that the wealthy don't owe anyone anything. Republicans who once prided themselves as the party that stood for patriotism and loyalty now think it's just fine to desert their country for a few bucks.

Being rich in and of itself doesn't make you good or bad. It's what you do with the money that matters. Gates and Musk are helping their country and the world by improving education, energy efficiency, creating new technologies and opening a new frontier in space.

Conservatives like Thiel and Saverin's defenders seem to feel no responsibility toward the country that made their vast wealth possible. They see no problem jetting off to Singapore or setting up their own island fiefdoms to avoid the taxes that pay for the defense, education and infrastructure of the country that made their great wealth possible.

To make this concrete, Saverin's flight to Singapore means the Defense Department will be out about $13 million. That would buy a lot of body armor for our troops in Afghanistan.

Musk and Gates are working to make this country and the world a better place, while Thiel and Norquist seem to be all about the Benjamins. Who are the real patriots?

A Really Big Lie

These days, when someone from the right will make a statement, the first thing that pops into my head is a question.

"Do I really want to waste my time researching this when I know it's likely completely bullshit?"

Take, for example, the assertion by Mitt Romney and virtually everyone on the right that President Obama has been spending like crazy. An "inferno" is what Mr. Romney called it.

Well, a new piece by Marketwatch has this to say.

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

There damn well better be some numbers to back that up!

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget. 

 • In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion. 

 • In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion. 

 • In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August. 

 • Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook. 

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%. 

Huh. I guess we can put the lie away now along with the raising taxes and apologizing to everyone nonsense.

This would be why I don't like to waste my very valuable time. It always turns out to be another bullshit lie.

Still Waiting

I'm still waiting (and so is Guard Duck, apparently) for retractions from Kevin Baker on the out and out lies in the image he put up last Sunday. Since he can't be bothered to check the veracity of those statements, I will offer another link which demonstrates that the list contained in the image likely originated in this very much false Columbo email which made the rounds TWO YEARS AGO.

Foreign student aid' as a college student? Nope. April Fool's Day Hoax.

Foreign Passport in Pakistan? Nope. Complete BS. 

The Birth Certificates? Proved time and again to be real. 

Michelle can't practice law? Not true. The Illinois bar lists her as being voluntarily inactive. (The president is listed as voluntarily retired)

Michelle has 22 assistants? No.Actually, she has 24 and Laura Bush had 18.

College Records? Well, as FactCheck notes, this would be illegal under federal law ((the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974). This, along with the medical records, is odd coming from the far right as they are supposed to be champions of right to privacy.

Oh, and he never did a thesis at Columbia so it's not sealed.

Illinois State Senate Records and Schedule? All available here. 

As to the remaining claims not listed on FACTCHECK...

Selective service registration? Yep. Right here courtesy of (wait for it) Volokh and Pajamas Media! 

Law practice client list? Uh...anyone every heard of attorney-client privilege? Again, the right to privacy thing apparently only applies to libertarians, not statists like Barack Obama.

All that leaves is the baptism record which I'd put under the birth certificate category.

So, there you have it. One giant list of complete lies and Kevin has yet to retract a single one.

For more insane Obama conspiracies, check out this site (my third link with supporting evidence). 

An Anarcho-Capitalist Pleasure Palace

With the Wisconsin recall election less than two week away, it looks as though Scott Walker will hold off the recall efforts. I predict he will win. Of course, he may not be able to govern in the way he would like because I also predict that one of the four senate recall elections will flip back to the Democrats and tie him up at the State House. Honestly, though, I don't think this matters to him as he now has his sights set on the national stage.

Politico has a great piece on how the recall elections have turned Walker into a conservative hero. Indeed, the right wing media industrial complex with its all too willing audience will welcome him with open arms and shower him with money on how he stood up to the evil teachers and civil servants who are ruining our economy on a daily basis.

So why did the recall effort fail? Again, Politico lays it all out here.  In my view, there were several factors that inhibited the Democrats. Tom Barrett is a great guy and would be a magnificent governor but he already lost that election once. The alternative (Kathleen Falk) was far too liberal. Had the Democrats put up a great candidate...someone like Russ Feingold, for example....Walker would have been toast. There was also the issue of recall fatigue. People these days just can't pay attention that long and give a shit. Believe me, I know, I'm a teacher:)

I guess what frustrates me the most about all of this is the ignorance of the facts. When it comes to jobs, neither side in the recall election can claim victory. The latest jobs numbers show no real significant movement either way. Certainly Walker is well short of the 250,000 jobs that he promised to create but no one really thinks is was serious (he is a politician, after all) and it won't matter if he ends up with a net loss. His supporters will still be there because they don't want to admit they were wrong (shocking, I know).

Lost in all of this is Walker's promise to create 10,000 new businesses in his first term with his private sector friendly policies. How's that going? Well, not so good. 

The scorecard: After one year of the Walker era, there were 9,485 fewer businesses than at the end of 2010, Gov. Jim Doyle's final year in office. It's improved somewhat in recent months, but the total of existing entities was still down 4,338 as of April 30, 2012, compared with December 2010. The picture is worse if you look only at Wisconsin business entities doing business here, and exclude out-of-state businesses that must register here to transact business. Those "domestic” business entities were down 10,189 after Walker"s first year, and down a total of 5,741 after 16 months. So the numbers have gone backward.

Hmm....sort of reminds me of all the numbers I have been putting up about how the economy does worse when there is a Republican in the White House. Of course, this doesn't matter, though. Again, to admit fault....

The one thing that I do feel pretty good about (aside from one of the state senators likely getting the boot) is that guys like Walker always end up with the same fate. Indeed, the FBI probe that is currently going on in Wisconsin may come back to haunt him if not something else. But for now, though, it's a pretty bitter pill considering the nearly one million people in Wisconsin who are currently cheering to be ruled by the Koch Brothers.

Hey, maybe Wisconsin could be part of RandLand as well. I'd have to get my mom and John Waxey out of there first, though, before it turns into an anarcho-capitalist pleasure palace!!

The Obama Vetting Obsession

I had been working on a post about the vetting obsession that seems to be going on these days with President Obama but then I read this.  Paul Waldman seems to have stolen my thunder. Oh well. It's everything I wanted to say and more.

So on the right, the desperate search for the appropriate "vetting" material continues. For instance, the late Andrew Breitbart's constellation of web properties continues in its founder's spirit, breathlessly promoting one "revelation" about Obama's pre-political life after another. Obama was friendly with a Harvard Law School professor with strong views on race! In 1991, Obama's literary agency mistakenly said in a promotional brochure that he was born in Kenya! There is so much to be learned that breitbart.com has created a whole series entitled "The Vetting."

Sadly, this is all true. I don't get it.The president has been pretty forthcoming about his past both in his books and interviews. There have been thousands of stories about folks like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and the president's college years and birth certificate. Why?

The mistake that so many conservatives make is in believing that in some (or all) of these details of his life lies the key to Obama's undoing. If only we can find the radical mentor, the girlfriend holding on to a decades-old secret, or the revealing document, then Obama will be unmasked, his true horrifying self revealed at last for all to see. Then the scales will fall from the voters' eyes and they'll boot him from the office he never deserved to occupy in the first place.

This is so incredibly odd. The latest polls show the race is pretty tight in the swing states and the election is 5 months off. People are unhappy about unemployment and uncertain about the economy. Certainly, they can win on that, right? Are they that insecure about Mitt Romney?

In my view, they don't want to beat him that way. They have to personally destroy him because that is what the right has become today. They did the same thing with Bill Clinton (now, of course, they love him in typical juvenile emotional fashion and will likely be the same way with President Obama someday) and many other Democrats. Funny, the same thing is done to me in comments on a regular basis:)

I guess they don't know any other way.

Keystone XL Pipeline Will Make Gas Prices Go Up

For some time now I've been contending that the Keystone XL pipeline would cause the price of gas to go up because the fuel refined from it would be shipped off to China at world market prices instead of being "stuck" in the American Midwest where it winds up being sold as gasoline, often at lower prices than those paid on all three coasts.

Now we have confirmation. According to an analysis from the NRDC:

The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would divert oil from the Midwest to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Midwestern refineries produce more gasoline per barrel than refineries in any other region in the United States. That gasoline is then sold to U.S. consumers. In contrast, refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas produce as much diesel as possible, much of which is exported internationally. By taking oil from midwestern gasoline refineries to Gulf Coast diesel refineries, Keystone XL will decrease the amount of gasoline available to American consumers. 

Meanwhile the Keystone XL pipeline will increase the price that gasoline producing refineries in the Midwest pay for crude oil. TransCanada, the company sponsoring the pipeline, pitched the pipeline to Canadian regulators as a way of increasing the price of crude in the United States (emphasis mine).

Right now, Midwestern refineries are buying crude oil at a discount—a deep discount. This allows them to produce products more cheaply than they would otherwise be able to. Building Keystone XL would change that. If TransCanada’s analysis is accurate, under current market conditions, Keystone XL would add $20 to $40 to the cost of a barrel of  Canadian crude—increasing the cost of oil in the United States by tens of billions of dollars

I was unaware of the propensity for diesel refining of the Gulf Coast, but that only increases the likelihood that Canadian oil will be sold to China. Most interesting is TransCanada's selling point to Canadian regulators was that it would increase gas prices for Americans.

The lesson: don't believe anything the oil industry says about oil prices. Their goal is to maximize profits, which means they want to maximize prices.

The Definition of the Election

I've never understood the Republican obsession with thinking that a successful CEO would make a good president. The two jobs are completely different. Yesterday, the president eloquently illustrated this in Chicago.

If your main argument for how to grow the economy is 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity, but that's not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure that the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now and 20 years from now. 

This is what the election is going to be about.

I Stand Corrected!

As I have said many times in the past, I'm happy to be wrong!!

Planet of the Valley Girls?

Last week Facebook went public. Its IPO netted the company $38 a share, making it worth more than $100 billion (and earning $176 million for the banks that handled the underwriting). That's more than companies that sell real products to real people, like McDonald's, VISA, Volkswagen and Disney. Even after Disney made hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide with a single smash hit movie a couple of weeks ago.

But at this writing Facebook's stock is worth $33 a share. Many people expected its share price to jump tremendously in value, like LinkedIn's did. That hasn't happened yet, and the banks who issued the IPO may be betting against people who bought the stock. Facebook has yet to come up with a way to make the kind of money off its users that such a high value could justify. It doesn't yet push ads to mobile devices, and more than half of Facebook users access the social network through their phones. Yet doing that could alienate users and discourage them from using the service.

Facebook likes to brag that it's got almost a billion users. That number is deceptive. You can make any number of Facebook accounts, so that number could be almost anything. This is an important point because advertisers pay for their ads to be seen by real people.

Companies generate buzz on Facebook with "likes." They often have promotions to get people to like them, giving them something in an on-line game or entering them in an iPad drawing.

There are also companies that for a fee will generate likes for companies that want to increase their apparent Facebook popularity. The question is, how real are those likes? Are they simply thousands of phony Facebook accounts, or thousands of real Facebook users who are liking someone because they're paid to? It seems that if you're paying for likes, they're all fake, no matter how they're generated. Facebook is trying to root out fake likes, but it's a non-trivial problem.

So what's the point of Facebook for companies? Does it have any real value, or is it just another MySpace or AOL?

Then there's the question of what people actually use Facebook for. Every time I look at my feed I see that several friends checked in through FourSquare. I see pictures of pets and kids and what people ate for dinner. I get harangued by friends to try out some on-line game. I see articles that other people read. I see political rants. I see cryptic numbers from a neighbor that might be geo-tagging or bible study or a terrorist plot.

This is what thirteen-year-old girls do: obsess about what all their friends are doing and wearing and saying. Now full-grown adults are fretting about how many friends they have. Just recently a friend wondered why a mutual friend had defriended him. Is Facebook devolving the entire planet into, like, Valley Girls? Don't we have more important, or at least interesting, things to do?


Facebook is extending their grasp beyond their site into every nook and cranny of the Internet. Your Facebook login can be used on thousands of websites, allowing Facebook to track your every move. And this grasp is extending into the real world, because millions of people are using their mobile phones to tell Facebook where they are at every waking moment.


My Facebook feed also tells me what videos one friend watched, that another friended someone I've never heard of and another liked some company. And yesterday I saw an ad for Zoosk that said one of my acquaintances was looking for single women. I wonder if he has a girlfriend who saw the same ad?

It's these things that may ultimately be Facebook's downfall. Facebook plans to make its money by pimping out your personal data. Do you really want to be Mark Zuckerberg's whore?

Well, I Guess It Had To Happen

Kevin Baker has gone Birther.

(sigh)

I suppose it was inevitable. Here is a list from Snopes that shows that many of these claims are completely  false.  I expect retractions, Kevin.

Too Political?

My oh my, what an interesting turn of events.

The sticking point appears to be Hanauer assertion that "rich businesspeople like me don't create jobs," but rather it's the middle class consumers who fuel business growth and subsequent job creation by spending their hard earned money on stuff.

How exactly is the illustration of a simple fact considered political?

(sniff sniff)

Smells to me like the Cult of Both Sides is up to its usual tricks again.

A Trifecta of Tactics

In the past few months, the tactics the right uses on a regular basis have been laid plain for all to see. First we had the 14 points, nearly all of which I saw on The Smallest Minority during my time there. Then we had the purest definition of The Rove, as explained by Richard Clarke. That one we can see nearly every day, squirting forth from the right wing media industrial complex and all the way into my comments section.

But there has always been something missing...a tactic that I've experienced many times. It's kind of like "Projection/Flipping" but not quite. Sort of like  The Rove but not nearly there. Some recent comments have lead me to an epiphany. Here's how it works for you first time users.

Step 1: Whether knowingly or unknowlingly, use ad hominem attacks, genetic fallacies, straw man arguments, hand waving, and any other sort of nonsense that pops into your head.

Step 2: While the liberal is reflecting (silly liberals), accuse HE or SHE of using any or all of those tactics.

Step 3: As the silly liberal sputters out a comment which will likely be along the lines of "But wait, that's what you are doing" laugh, point at them and reply, "BWAAHAHAHA! That's your response? 'No, YOU are!' Hahahahahaha! What a child!"

Congratulations! You have just completed The ARWB Three Step (that's arrogant right wing blog or blogger, depending upon on your situation).

Add this to the 14 points and The Rove and you have pure magic, my friends.

Pure Magic

Actual Handwaving

A few months ago, one of my regular commenters that migrated over from Kevin's site brought out that ol' chestnut about small business. Haplo9 (a small business owner) informed me that not only do I not know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business but that people like me and other Democrats/liberals/etc are actively seeking to destroy small business and, indeed, the free market.

Let's look past all the facts and evidence to the contrary that I have been putting up of late and focus on some small business owners themselves. First, I worked for a small business before I became a teacher. We were a small, four person multimedia company that handled medium sized businesses first forays into online commerce back in the mid to late 1990s. I had left an ad firm where I worked to help out two friends of mine who were the owners of the business.

Not once did I hear any discussion about the government inhibiting them from making money. The onus was on all of us to grow the business and we certainly never played the victim card and blamed the government. Our concern was getting more clients and in order to do that, we wanted to see state and federal policies that supported consumer spending which would lead to more revenue for our clients  and, in turn, more money to spend with us. It wasn't taxes or fear of possible future regulation that altered our decisions. It was customers coming through the door.

This is also true for our very own John Waxey, an owner of a manufacturing concern in Wisconsin that makes a product that helps with shipping and commerce. His company does about 20 million a year in business. I had the occasion to chat with him recently when I visited his cottage.

"How's the company doing?" I asked.
"Never better," he replied. "In fact, we are moving in to a new facility to accommodate all our new business."
"So, Barack Obama and the Democrats aren't destroying your company?"
"No," he chuckled. "We do well when our clients have more customers. Then they come and spend money with us."

John's family has owned this business for his entire life, thirty three years of which he has been my best friend. So, to say that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to small business (or any size business for that matter) is wrong. That being said, no one should take our lives and anecdotes as gospel. Perhaps we are outliers? Biased?

No, not so much...because of this little thing called How The Free Market Actually Fucking Works. Yesterday, I was perusing the MPR site for some post-mortem on the recently ended state government session and I came across this. House Republican Majority Leader Matt Dean was a guest on the program and they took a call from a small business owner named Andy. 


Here is the audio below. Start it at the 13 minute mark. 

Giving tax breaks to small business owners leading to more hiring is NOT how the free market works? Representative Dean (a REPUBLICAN...GASP!!) doesn't know how the free market works? That it's actually more consumer spending leads to more hiring? Oh, Andy. Don't you dare question one of the central creeds of their rigid dogma! Only THEY are Sacred Keepers of the Free Market. Don't you know you're just going to get glassy-eyed nonsense for an answer?

And that's just what happened. Rep. Dean (sounding as if he was both under hypnosis and attempting to hypnotize Andy) gave a response which (ahem) can best be described as hand waving. Shocking, I know, that someone from the right is actually doing the very thing that I am wrongfully and continually accused of doing. And doing it to someone who actually owns a small business! Well, he owns a hair salon so he's probably gay anyway so he doesn't really know what he's talking about, right?

What all of this perfectly illustrates is how the right really doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to this stuff. If small businesses are given tax breaks without new customers coming through the door, why would they hire anyone? They're just going to sit around just as Andy described.

But no. Oh no. It's taxes. It's supply side. Never aggregate demand.  They are only interested in making sure that their ideology is pure and, in behaving in this manner, they completely ignore the core of what drives growth in this country.

Watch as consumer spending magically disappears in my hat!