EuroGraphics

My main source of news, The Christian Science Monitor, recently posted a wonderful summation of the EuroZone economic crisis. As is often the case with the CSM, their analysis is thoughtful and well balanced. Let's take a look at the five graphics they provided. First we have the shadow economy graphic.

When nearly a quarter of your economy is untaxed (as is the case with Greece and Italy), you're going to have problems. Couple this with all the tax evasion that goes on in Greece, for example, and it's both a revenue and spending problem. Next up we have the export issue.

Germany is obviously the behemoth here. Greece is the lowest which is another explanation as to why they are in so much trouble. They aren't selling anything in the global marketplace. To put it simply, they aren't competing. Of course, we also have the issue of public sector size.

And the issue of deficit spending as a percentage of GDP.

Note here the stability of Germany. Finally, we have the main thing that the right in this country focuses on nearly to a fault.

My main point in showing all of these graphics is to stress that it is the summation of all five of these issues (plus interest rates, of course) that is causing the problem. To say that it's simply an issue of spending is ridiculous. Germany, for example has fairly high debt as percentage of GDP but their deficit spending is low and their exports are high. Their shadow economy is much lower as well.

So, it's the whole meal and not just the salad.

The .1 Percent

"...uncertainty. As a small business owner..."

were the first words I heard when I flipped on NPR the other day. The caller was a guy named Steve and my ears waited for the inevitable rip on the president. Instead, this is is what I heard.

"The federal government, and I mean all of them but most specifically Congress, needs to let me know what they are going to do. See, I'm part of the 1 percent who they are calling the job creators and I have no problem if they raise my taxes. I can afford it. But where I am uncertain is if I hire more people, will I get a tax break? If they came to me and said, "Hire more people and we will give you a tax break," then I would at least be able to adjust and calculate what I'm going to need if they do raise taxes."

We then found out that Steve had three small businesses and made millions a year. So, the uncertainty for him was simply a matter of figuring out his balance sheet which, quite honestly, is all the rest of us do. It made me wonder how many of the 1 percent who were uncertain would also be willing to pay more in taxes.

Then Steve said something that the 99 percenters and occupiers should understand.

"It's not the 1 percent that are the problem. It's the .1 percent. People that are with me in the other 9/10ths of 1 percent are doctors, lawyers, and wealthy small business owners. We have the same issues that most Americans have with money. We just have more of it. What we do adds to our society in the way of jobs and economic growth. But the .1 percent? That's the people on Wall Street with whom I invest my money. All they do is move money around. They add no value to society whatsoever. "

And there it is. It's not the one percent. It's the .1 percent. They are the ones that are really the problem right now and they always have been. These are the folks that nearly ruined our economy 3 years ago and that have, more or less, created a Wall Street government. People like Steve got fucked over by them just like we did.

In a recent column, Paul Krugman echoed this sentiment with some interesting numbers.

The recent Congressional Budget Office report on inequality didn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, did. According to that report, between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted, after-tax income of Americans in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. The equivalent number for the richest 0.1 percent rose 400 percent.

For the most part, these huge gains reflected a dramatic rise in the super-elite’s share of pretax income. But there were also large tax cuts favoring the wealthy. In particular, taxes on capital gains are much lower than they were in 1979 — and the richest one-thousandth of Americans account for half of all income from capital gains.

Clearly, there's gross inequality within the 1 percent as well. So is Steve right about who makes up the .1 percent?

For who are the 0.1 percent? Very few of them are Steve Jobs-type innovators; most of them are corporate bigwigs and financial wheeler-dealers. One recent analysis found that 43 percent of the super-elite are executives at nonfinancial companies, 18 percent are in finance and another 12 percent are lawyers or in real estate. And these are not, to put it mildly, professions in which there is a clear relationship between someone’s income and his economic contribution.

Not all in the financial sector but certainly not the "job creators" that we hear about all the time.

I took a lot away from Steve's call. I think it was important to hear from someone who is indeed a job creator and would happily pay more in taxes if the federal government would get its shit together. Based on the poll numbers and Steve's call, it appears as if most of the blame is being laid at the feet of Congress.

Will the American people let them know what they think next November?

Saturday Potpourri

Here's a piece from a few weeks ago on voter rage.

Even newcomers swept into office in 2010 on an antigovernment tide worry that they could be just as easily swept out after only a two-year stay since they have become part of the government that much of the public seems to abhor.

I agree. The myth that the Tea Party is immune to voter outrage is effectively over with Congress's approval rating below 10 percent. In fact, one could argue that it's gotten worse. Will voters make them aware of this?

Here's one big reason why conservatives don't like Mitt Romney.

I use Mankiw quite a bit on here as sound source for fundamental economics. The fact that the Mittser is using him is one of a few reasons why I don't think he'd be a bad president. Yet the fact that he is using Glenn Hubbard certainly gives me pause. Hubbard (along with Tim Geithner) should not be allowed anywhere near our economy as they (along with many others) were responsible for the collapse of 2008. If you want to know what Hubbard's all about, check out this clip from Inside Job.



Here's something I found a while back that I thought was interesting.

Fareed Zakira has been saying the same thing on CNN for the past couple of years. I'm not sure if I agree given the issue of consumer spending and demand. If those tax cuts go away for most Americans, I think that will affect our growth without a doubt. So, Colbert's logic is a little off. But I do like this line!

America does not have a national debt problem, instead, the U.S. has a negative revenue problem.

Sing it, brother!

Newt is Not the One

I read an interesting post over on Slate, asking whether Newt Gingrich is nuts:

We’re quick to describe politicians whose views we find extreme or whose behavior seems odd as “crazy,” and perhaps anyone who runs for president in some sense is. But I’ve long wondered whether Newt Gingrich merits that designation in a more clinical sense. I’m not a psychiatrist, of course, and it’s impossible to diagnose someone at a distance. Without medical records that he hasn’t released, we can’t know whether Gingrich may have inherited his mother’s manic depression. Nevertheless, one observes in the former House Speaker certain symptoms—bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees—that go beyond the ordinary politician’s normal narcissism.

But it's not just Newt: all of the Republican candidates for president have some degree of weirdness or craziness.

Michele Bachmann has the crazy eyes, the crazy conspiratorial ideas that constantly well up in her mind, a willingness to believe any unsubstantiated rumor, and the whole mission from God thing about being a tax accountant.

Herman Cain is a sex addict, a nonaphile, apparently unable to read, and terminally confused about everything except how great he is.

Rick Santorum is a religious fanatic who believes his win in the Senate was granted to him personally by God, but somehow doesn't think his subsequent loss means anything. His preoccupation with gays seems to be his way of stifling hidden urges.

Rick Perry has some kind of deteriorating dementia that prevents him from forming lucid and coherent thoughts and remembering what the hell he's talking about, from secession to abolishing federal agencies. You get the idea he'd just rather be out shooting coyotes.

Ron Paul is just a nice, batty 76-year-old man who thinks prostitution and drugs should be legal and corporations should be able to screw us any way they like.

And the two "normal" guys in the race, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, are members of what many mainstream Christian denominations consider to be a cult that espouses ideas that most Americans consider to be weird and wacky, not to mention heretical.

And don't even get me started about Trump and Palin...

One begins to wonder whether there's something inherently unstable about Republicans who run for president. Many people considered George W. Bush to be suffering from a range of psychological problems, from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, to sociopathy or psychopathy. Reagan was suffering from symptoms of Alzheimers as early as his first term, and probably even during the 1980 election campaign. And Richard Nixon was paranoid criminal mastermind. But George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole were normal enough, so there have been bouts of normalcy in recent Republican presidents and candidates.

Yet now the constant roller coaster of the polls in the Republican primary race indicates that the Republican electorate shares these same concerns about the candidates at some level. First Bachmann is up, then Perry, then Cain, then Paul, then Gingrich.

Where are the regular Republicans, the fiscal conservatives that don't have daddy issues or aren't hell-bent on some wacky crusade? What happened to all the guys like George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole? The "normal" guys, like Mark Sanford and John Ensign. These men were once considered major contenders for 2012, but were put out of the running by their propensity for crazy extra-marital affairs, the same thing that just shot down Herman Cain. Somehow this hasn't stopped Gingrich's recent rise in the polls, though he's a serial philanderer and cad for ditching his wives as soon as they become ill.

One can only assume that Newt's past will catch up with him again in the next month and reverse his bump in the polls. That past includes flip-flopping on numerous issues like global warming and health care mandates, his history as a (not-)lobbyist, his divorces, his cynical conversion to Catholicism, his treasonous embrace of amnesty for illegal aliens who've lived in the US for decades, and the sheer hypocrisy of his pushing through Clinton's impeachment while banging his aide. Not to mention his shutdown of the federal government because Clinton made him sit in the back of Air Force One.

Sure, some Democratic candidates have been wacky: Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. Jimmy Carter wasn't a very inspirational leader, and said some silly things about lust in his heart. But he wasn't nuts. Though Bill Clinton was apparently a terrible horn dog, he was still competent in other arenas. Al Gore and John Kerry suffered mostly from lack of charisma, though despite that both only barely missed being elected president by a single state. And I would be remiss if I omitted mention of Gary Hart's foolish challenge to the press and John Edwards, who nearly matched Gingrich's caddishness when he impregnated Ariel Hunter while his wife was ill with cancer, and then tried to deny it. But the last two Democratic front runners, Hilary and Obama, are completely normal.

What is it about the GOP these days that makes it impossible for rational men and women to run for president under the Republican banner?

Mea Culpa

Check this out.

The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver — perhaps literally.

So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."

I wonder how many more of these stories we are going to here over the next few months and years.

And It Continues...

The last few days have seen some remarkable statements and calls to action by the so called 1 percent. James Theckston, a regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, recently detailed exactly how the financial industry led us into such a disaster.

“You’ve got somebody making $20,000 buying a $500,000 home, thinking that she’d flip it,” he said. “That was crazy, but the banks put programs together to make those kinds of loans.”

Theckston, who has a shelf full of awards that he won from Chase, such as “sales manager of the year,” showed me his 2006 performance review. It indicates that 60 percent of his evaluation depended on him increasing high-risk loans.

“The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

Kristoff also does a great job of explaining why the Occupy movement is resonating so much with the American public and, as a result, the tide continues to turn in some very interesting places.

Ruth Porat, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley, had this to say at the Economist's World in 2012 summit.

"The wealthiest can afford to pay more in taxes. That's a part of the deal. That makes sense. I don't know anyone that doesn't agree with that," Porat said. "The wealth disparity between the lowest and the highest continues to expand, and that's inappropriate."

"We cannot cut our way to greatness," she added.

Right. People need to sit back, breathe, and think about what government spending less will do to our economy. Even though it does need to happen, they really aren't thinking right now.

Perhaps the best illustration of the turning tide can be read in Nick Hanauer's recent article for Bloomberg titled, "Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators." Folks, this is the best piece I have read since Jim Manzi's "Keeping America's Edge." He starts off by introducing himself.

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

So, he is one of these "job creators," right? Nope.

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

No shit. This is exactly what I have been saying all along. The simple fact that Hanauer and others like him are now saying this means we can finally obliterate this ridiculous myth and start working on our problems. The first thing that needs to be fixed?

When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.And that’s what has been happening in the U.S. for the last 30 years.

Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent. At the same time, effective tax rates on the superwealthy fell to 16.6 percent in 2007, from 42 percent at the peak of U.S. productivity in the early 1960s, and about 30 percent during the expansion of the 1990s. In my case, that means that this year, I paid an 11 percent rate on an eight-figure income.

And why exactly is this a problem?

One reason this policy is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, I go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.

So, it's simply a matter of numbers. When you have an economy that is 70 percent based on consumer spending and consumers that aren't spending, you...have what we have now. So what does Hanauer recommend we do?

Significant tax increases on the about $1.5 trillion in collective income of those of us in the top 1 percent could create hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our economy, rather than letting it pile up in a few bank accounts like a huge clot in our nation’s economic circulatory system.

Finally, someone actually admits it. They don't really invest in anything.

Consider, for example, that a puny 3 percent surtax on incomes above $1 million would be enough to maintain and expand the current payroll tax cut beyond December, preventing a $1,000 increase on the average worker’s taxes at the worst possible time for the economy. With a few more pennies on the dollar, we could invest in rebuilding schools and infrastructure. And even if we imposed a millionaires’ surtax and rolled back the Bush- era tax cuts for those at the top, the taxes on the richest Americans would still be historically low, and their incomes would still be astronomically high.

Why some folks can't understand this is completely beyond me. Obviously it has a lot to do with hubris and admission of error but perhaps it's more than that. When the central purpose of your life is being threatened with change, what meaning does your existence have?

Post Office Blues

Facing bankruptcy, the US Postal Service is considering closing hundreds of distribution centers and eliminating next-day delivery. The Post Office cites declining first-class mail volume as the main cause, partly due to people turning to electronic media for communication.

The Post Office does not receive any tax money, but it still answers to Congress. USPS can close offices and fire employees on its own, but it has to get approval from the Postal Regulatory Commission to increase rates, and approval from Congress for something as drastic as ending Saturday delivery. The cost of a first-class stamp will go up to 45 cents in 2012, which many have complained is an unreasonably high cost indicative of how inefficient and wasteful the Post Office is.

Actually, 44 cents is not at all unreasonable. When I was a kid in 1965, a stamp was a nickel. Now it's 44 cents. Back then gas cost 31 cents a gallon. Now it's $3.20, and has been as high as $4.00. The price of a stamp has gone up 8.8 times, while the price of gas has gone up 10.3 to 13 times. Considering that a large part of the cost of a stamp is transportation, first class mail delivery is a totally amazing deal.

For the sake of comparison, I went to the UPS website to see how much UPS charges to deliver a "letter" from Minneapolis to a residence in the 12008 zip code in New York. The cost ranged from $21 to $71, depending on time. FedEx wanted between $42 and $151 if they picked the envelope up from a residence. Sending a similar 9x10 envelope via first class mail costs $1.08 (the 44 cents is for a regular number 10 envelope). But the mailman will pick it up from my house at no extra charge.

To be fair, it must be noted that the Post Office will also charge between $5 to $21 for other delivery modes, such as next day express delivery. And the Post Office, which was set up to deliver light-weight first-class mail, won't deliver packages that weigh more than a certain maximum. So obviously UPS and FedEx have their place.

But the first-class mail service that the Post Office currently delivers is, well, first class. And ridiculously cheap. When I subscribed to NetFlix the Post Office delivered the discs between the NetFlix processing center and me in one day. Every time. Direct to my door. For $8 a month I could easily watch 6 to 8 DVDs a month. I can't send even one disc via UPS or FedEx for $8 with one-day delivery.

A lot of newspapers and magazines depend on the Post Office to deliver their periodicals in a timely manner. Without a reliable, cost-effective postal service, those publications are in even greater danger of extinction. Many direct-mail businesses and catalog outlets depend on the Post Office for their very existence. And even FedEx and UPS hand off packages to the Post Office for many rural destinations.

The Post Office has several intrinsic problems that hamstring them:

• The Post Office can't make the simplest business decisions without the approval of the Postal Regulatory Commission. The Commission is heavily lobbied by companies who use the mails. In essence, those companies make their profits off the Post Office's losses. UPS and FedEx can simply raise rates when they need to.
• The Post Office is required to deliver first class mail to everyone in the country for one low price, even people who live in Hawaii, Alaska or rural Montana. UPS and FedEx aren't required to deliver to anyone, and can charge any price they like.
• The Post Office has a large workforce that makes a decent living wage, between $38K to $60K. Its labor and pension costs are a big part of its financial problems. But they need congressional approval to make necessary changes for the way they do business, including the way they pre-fund pensions to make sure they don't go bust (like the pensions that many airlines defaulted on in the past several years).

Some people are calling for the abolishment of the Post Office, and selling it off to UPS or FedEx or Walmart. Sure, these companies could make more money delivering the mail. First, they'd raise the price of a first class letter to several dollars, and charge variable rates based on destination. Then they'd stop delivering mail to places like rural Alaska and Montana. And then they'd hire a bunch of part-time "contractors" to deliver the mail at minimum wage, making them use their own cars (which the Post Office has sometimes already done in rural areas).

Heck, the best candidate for buying the Post Office's business is Domino's Pizza -- they already have the delivery network in place. Pizza, a large Coke and your mail for only $9.99.

And this is no idle speculation. FedEx and UPS already franchise their delivery routes, and people bid competitively for ground routes. Since these subcontractors are stuck with FedEx, they have little negotiating room. They pretty much have to accept whatever FedEx decides to pay them when their contract is renewed. If the subcontractors can't cut their costs, they lose the routes. Then FedEx gets some other suckers to bid for it.

Another thing to consider is the monopoly positions of the delivery companies. There used to be three: UPS, FedEx and DHL. DHL stopped express deliveries in the US in 2008. Giving the Post Office's business to UPS or FedEx would make one of them an effective monopoly, which would make them an expensive and grossly inefficient bureaucracy that answered to no one.

But the worst thing about ending the Post Office would be the transfer of wealth from the employees to the corporate bottom line. The Post Office employs half a million workers, who make a living wage. The first thing a private company would do would pull a Walmart and hire only part-time non-union workers, cutting wages and eliminating health care and pensions. Instead of paying 500,000 full-time workers $50,000 a year plus benefits, a private company would hire a million half-time workers and pay them $10,000 or $15,000 a year with no benefits. The company would brag about hiring half a million new workers! It would also save billions in wages alone. But the economy as a whole would fare much more poorly, as local businesses saw a drastic decline in spending by postal employees. And what would the company do with the extra profits, after giving themselves hefty bonuses? Like many American businesses, it would use the extra billions they save on wages to expand into growing markets like China and Latin America. Sending our money to a foreign country. And the profits they make there go into off-shore accounts, and are exempt from US taxes.

The Post Office is in a lot of trouble, but getting rid of it would make the majority of the country much poorer, and a very few rich people a whole lot richer.

A Matter of Personal Preference

Some of my high school friends and I used to have the classic "Beatles v. Stones" debate. Some were Beatles fans and some were Stones fans. Often the debates became quiet heated as each side was passionate that they were right and the other was wrong.

Obviously, there was no right and wrong because it was simply a matter of personal preference. To me, this is exactly what is going with President Obama. For most folks, it's a matter of personal preference and they really don't spend the amount of time someone like me does in researching the various issues.

This is particularly true of the people that don't like the president. In general, there's nothing rational about it. He could fix everything wrong in the world while personally saving their families from drowning and these folks would still not admit that he has been a good president. There are several reasons for this. First, he won and they just can't accept that. Second, he's doing a better job than George W. Bush, the man they pinned all their hopes and dreams on only to watch him fail in several key areas (nearly ruining our country), and they just can't accept that. Third, he's black (side note: don't even try to wriggle out of it, reverse race card players, and do your little schitck) and they just can't accept that.

So, one can indeed look at these reasons and see that they are purely emotional. So why don't they just admit it? Is it so hard for them to say, "I just don't like him and it's not based on anything factual" ? Honestly, it's like pulling teeth but that's the pride and seemingly infinite hubris of the right.

It's not that difficult for me. I like Dennis Kucinich but know that there is no fucking way on earth that he should be president. I like Mitt Romney but wouldn't vote for him because I ideologically disagree with him on a number of issues. I dislike the Bushes but have to admit that the elder Bush was partly responsible for the economic boom of the 90s. And the younger, for all of his colossal fuck ups, literally shifted the tide in Africa regarding health and human services.

My confusion is best illustrated by the issue of taxes. Take a look at these figures, courtesy of Politifact and the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.

Second-lowest 20 percent

2008 tax burden: $1,715
2011 tax burden: $1,396
Decline of $319

2008 tax rate: 6.7 percent
2011 tax rate: 5.7 percent
Decline of 1 percentage point

Middle 20 percent

2008 tax burden: $6,290
2011 tax burden: $5,535
Decline of $775

2008 tax rate: 13.6 percent
2011 tax rate: 12.4 percent
Decline of 1.2 percentage points

Second-highest 20 percent

2008 tax burden: $13,749
2011 tax burden: $13,078
Decline of $671

2008 tax rate: 17.4 percent
2011 tax rate: 16.5 percent
Decline of 0.9 percentage points

So for each of the three middle quintiles, both the amount of tax paid and the effective tax rate paid declined. A significant portion of these three groups are: a) conservative and b) complain about their taxes being raised. Yet here is a president who lowered their taxes. Does he get credit?

Nope.

Why?

Because of personal preference.

What a craptacular way to run a country. Imagine where would be if people took the time to educate themselves on the facts and voted without feeling...without their pride. Now imagine if, instead of 55 percent of us voting, 95 percent of us voted.

What sort of country do you think we would have?

Blessed Are The Poor

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.' (Matthew 25:41-45)

The above is but one example of the many instructions in the Bible on how God wants us to serve the poor. It's not just the New Testament either. Deuteronomy 24:14 tells us: "Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns." Psalm 12:5 says: "Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise, says the LORD, I will protect them from those who malign them."

And Psalm 41:1-2 states: "Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble. The LORD will protect him and preserve his life; he will bless him in the land and not surrender him to the desire of his foes."

In looking at all of these teachings, I'm wondering if Newt Gingrich has picked up a Bible recently or, quite frankly, has ever read one. Take a look at this.



Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and one around them who works? Are you fucking kidding me? I can't believe that we are still on this crap. What is it about this country and disdain for poor people? They're all lazy, I guess, and they don't teach their kids good values. They're poor for a reason, dammit, and how dare they stink up our country with their poor BO.

Some have suggested that Newt's comment was a dog whistle for bigots (the lazy blacks who don't work). Based on this line from a recent comment, they may be right.

What I am suggesting is that culture matters. And black culture, at this point in history, does not celebrate academic achievement.

I will never understand this mindset. I'd like to try to give folks like this the benefit of the doubt and simply say that they are massively tone deaf but perhaps I'm being too kind. This view, illustrated quite well by Newt Gingrich, is so antiquated that it makes me physically ill. What fucking country do these people live in? They claim to be Christian but what goes through their minds when they read this passage?

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.

Are you KIDDING me??!!???!!????!!???

Some party officials were surprised by both the size of the debt and the ongoing spending.

Any Minnesotan who continues to support the GOP in my home state has just reached 11 on the hypocrisy dial and infinity on the moron scale.

Friday Funnies

These two caught my eye today.

The Occupy! Trifecta

Three stories today about the OWS movement that I found interesting...

First, apparently someone in the OWS movement is reading this blog. Both Nikto and I agree that the time to stand around a park is over. It seems they are transitioning away from this and into a legitimate social movement. Good deal!

Sadly, though, this article illustrates my chief criticism of the movement.

Despite the strategizing under way in the Occupy Wall Street office space, no one in the movement can say where it will be in six months.

As for a clear set of goals, Goldberg said, “It would be wonderful if the media stopped looking for demands because I think you will be unsatisfied."

He added, "Many of us in the movement don’t want a list of demands because that is empowering someone else to create a change for us.”

Goldberg said he and the others are creating change from the bottom up in their leaderless movement.

“It’s the core of who we are, which is a decentralized, people-driven process," Carey added.

Funny, that sounds almost (gasp!) libertarian, right?

To me, though, they still lack a focus and thankfully, I'm not the only one.

Asking Occupy protesters what, exactly, they would do to reform government and the financial system is a loaded question and a source of internal conflict. Collinge, 41, of Tacoma, Wash., said he has unsuccessfully lobbied Occupy's general assembly meetings in New York to develop a strong platform.

"They should come up with a short-term list of no-brainer agenda items," said Collinge, wearing a huge sign in the rain at New York's Zuccotti Park calling for student loan reforms.

Collinge has his list ready. Return bankruptcy protection to student loans. Bring back banking reform regulations that were removed from the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. End corporate personhood.

Absofuckinglutely. The Occupy movement has entered the zeitgeist of the world now and is not going away. For the first time, the political left is driving the conversation and the right is being forced to respond (more on that in a moment). They've successfully been able to create a populist movement around concepts such as the "99 percent" and the "1 percent." People from all areas of life are responding to this positively because...well...they are the 99 percent!

But the ambiguity sans action won't be enough to bring about any real change. This is where I agree with Collinge and it's not surprising really considering he is in my age cohort. There needs to be a focus around the three issues he lists above and each needs to be followed up with action. I'm not sure how this is going to happen considering the OWS folks trust the government about as much as the Tea Party does.

For a group that has "lost the narrative," they sure are making the right nervous. Why all the fuss if that is indeed the case? Here are a few of my favorites from Luntz.

1. Don't say 'capitalism.' "I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral.And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."

Yeah, you do. Because the American public knows who caused our economic problems. Of course, capitalism isn't immoral...what has been done to it, however, IS.

6. Don't ever say you're willing to 'compromise.' "If you talk about 'compromise,' they'll say you're selling out. Your side doesn't want you to 'compromise.' What you use in that to replace it with is 'cooperation.' It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you're selling out those principles."

Like I needed a pollster to tell me that!

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: 'I get it.'"First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system." Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

Let's see if any of them can actually do this because it involves being empathetic. I doubt it.

The simple fact that they are getting this involved in how they talk about this movement tells me that: a) the talk of the narrative being lost is ridiculously wrong and b) they're nervous.

Good.

Oh, Really?

Occupy Economics from Softbox on Vimeo.

So much for losing the narrative...

Wait, Huh?

Most right wingers I know these days are frothing at the mouth about Europe. It makes sense if you stop and think about it for a moment as it flies on the face of the basic foundation of their "enlightened self interest" ideology. Countries banding together and creating a single currency? Sheesh...might as well start stocking up on the canned goods. If only the markets were allowed to work on their own and government would stay well out of the way, they foam.

Yet, a closer examination of the current woes in Europe reveal a far more complex situation. What a shock. First of all, there's this.

World stock markets, glimpsing hope that Europe might finally be shocked into stronger action, staged a big rally. The Dow Jones industrial average in New York rose almost 300 points. In France, stocks rose 5 percent, the most in a month.

Wait, STRONGER action? I thought markets only responded favorably when governments were laisez faire and shit. So what sort of "stronger action" are we talking about?

One proposal gaining prominence would have countries cede some control over their budgets to a central European authority. In a measure of how rapidly the peril has grown, that idea would have been unthinkable even three months ago.

Allowing a central European authority to have some control over the budgets of sovereign nations would create a fiscal union in Europe in addition to the monetary union of the 17 countries that share the euro currency.

HOLY SHEE-IT!! A central European authority? JAY-SUS H. JOHNSON!!! Time to add a fuck load of guns and ammo to the bunker. There is no doubt in my mind that we're going to start hearing an uptick in paranoid shrieking from this side of the pond about the "Amero."

And I'm still wondering why the free market wants stronger government action.

The problem in Europe has always been that they have a monetary union but not a fiscal one. Certainly, this monetary union has added strength to the idea that economic cooperation prevents military confrontation-something the continent sadly knows all too well. But having a monetary union isn't enough. A fiscal union (as we have here between our states) is also important. If you're going to have one, you have to have the other and that's been the mistake all along.

Now, it's no problem to debate whether it's in their best interests to even have both. On the one had, the EU's combined GDP is greater than ours. On the other, however, decades old squabbles and ancient tax policies seemingly make working together impossible. And there are a myriad of issues in between that warrant serious thought.

Where I draw the line, however, is the paranoia about control. Honestly, it's not even warranted. If there's one thing that this entire crisis has proved, ineptitude, not totalitarianism, is usually what prevails these days when it comes to interstate unification. I mean, we're still working out the kinks on ours out, right?

Hermanizer, Hermanizer, You're a Hermanizer

Political campaigns often adopt popular songs as their anthems. Earlier this year Michele Bachmann played "American Girl" at rallies until Tom Petty got his panties in a bunch. Petty also went after George W. Bush for playing "I Won't Back Down." Bush backed down and stopped playing the song.

In 2008 John McCain angered John Mellencamp, Van Halen and Jackson Browne for playing their songs at rallies, in part because the McCain campaign wasn't paying ASCAP fees to the artists.

Not long ago Jimmy Fallon raised a ruckus for playing the song "Lyin' Ass Bitch" when Michele Bachmann appeared on his show. NBC forced Fallon to apologize, but if you look at Michele Bachmann's long, long record of outrageously incorrect statements of fact, it's obvious that Fallon's choice was dead on.

Herman Cain got into the act by playing the song "I Am America" at his rallies. Cain, however, got permission from the singer, Krista Branch. The song is as jingoistic as you'd expect from the title, but also has some very creepy lines: "I've got some news; we're taking names, We're waiting now for the judgment day."

Cain, who loved to call himself the Hermanator before he became enamored with Black Walnut and being the flavor of the month, is now "reassessing" his campaign, according to an article in the National Review.

Why? A woman named Ginger White says that she carried on a thirteen-year affair with Cain, that he paid for her to fly to cities around the country, lent her money, and called her frequently for years. As proof of the affair she showed reporters her phone bills, which showed that he called and texted her frequently. She even gave reporters Cain's number, and Cain himself called them back.

Cain says he's just friends with White, but -- and Cain has admitted this -- how many men give money to other women without telling their wives about it? Unless they're having an affair? At this point, it seems more and more likely that Herman Cain really has done all the things the things the half-dozen woman have claimed he has. Since White claims that Cain bought her many plane tickets to cities coinciding with his appearances, a thorough investigation of his credit card and travel records will reveal the truth in short order.

So, I think it would be fitting for Herman Cain to adopt a new theme song to play at his appearances for the remaining few days of his campaign. One would be tempted to just take Britney Spears' "Womanizer" and use it as is.

But that's not the Hermanator way. The Black Walnut should hire Weird Al Yankovic to write a parody of "Womanizer" called "Hermanizer," and adopt Hermanizer as his new nickname. Don't deny it. Revel in it!

But really, this is just the last nail in the coffin for Cain. Over the last few weeks we've seen how truly weak a presidential candidate he was. And it had nothing to do with his womanizing, and everything to do with him not having a clue on Libya, or the president of Ooz-becky-becky (Uzbekistan, you nitwit!), or what health care options are best for the country, or his pizza-priced tax plan.

Cain was never a serious presidential contender. It was all about his ego, getting his name out there, and selling his book. Just like Trump, and Palin, and Bachmann, it was only ever all about self-promotion. These four "candidates" have absolutely no intention of ever actually becoming president. They were just running to cash in.

Paying for Not Playing

Illinois coach Ron Zook was fired Sunday after winning the first six games of the season and then losing the next six games. The last game was an embarrassing loss to Minnesota. The price of his failure? A whopping $2.6 million. Paid to him!

Zook was 34-51 in seven seasons with the Illini. He will be paid $2.6 million in a buyout, according to his contract.

This wasn't the first time Zook was fired for poor performance, only to walk away with a boatload of money. In 2004 the University of Florida fired Zook after only two years. He was paid $450,000 for each remaining year on the contract. That's almost 10 times the average American's salary, for having done a terrible coaching job.

Zook is not the only coach to get a contract like this. Jerry Kill recently signed a contract with the University of Minnesota for $1.1 million a year, with a $600,000 payout for each "unfulfilled season" (that's doublespeak for getting canned). In late October, when the contract was signed, the U of M had so far won only a single game under his leadership. The Gophers are currently 3-9 overall. One of Kill's three wins came Sunday over Zook's Illini, the game that was the last straw for Zook.

These are public taxpayer-financed institutions paying inflated wages for dismal failure. Supporters argue that the coaches deserve outrageously high pay because the football programs are such moneymakers. But most programs don't actually make a profit, though they do bring in TV money and alumni donations are often driven by football.

Paying football coaches high salaries might be a reasonable argument if salaries were based on success. But coaches like Kill will still get millions of dollars if they're fired after one season. Kill's contract guarantees that he will make between $4.2 and $7.7 million over the next seven years.

Salaries are supposed to provide an incentive for performance. Coaches like Zook have shown that money simply doesn't work as an incentive. Yet universities continue to pay these outrageous salaries because wealthy alumni in the good old boys club demand these men be hired at these exorbitant rates.

This myth of entitlement pervades American society at the highest levels. When men like these reach the lofty pinnacle of head football coach or CEO of a corporation, they and their adulators think they deserve to paid handsomely regardless of how poorly they actually do their jobs. They get golden parachutes and non-fulfillment clauses that guarantee they'll never have to work another day in their life. So how can money be any kind of motivating factor for them?

The average Division I-A football coach earns more than a million dollars a year, when you include bonuses, benefits, housing allowances and the lavish perks. By comparison the president of the United States makes $400,000 annually.

College football coaches should be paid $150-200K a year, which would be in line with the highest paid university professors. But a million bucks a year for a football coach at a public university is ridiculous. A million bucks a year for a losing football coach is obscene.

What's truly disgusting is that the players these men coach are amateurs who are prohibited from receiving any kind of monetary compensation. Yes, some of the players will go on to play professional football and make millions. But the majority will never make a nickel off the game after four years in the college football meatgrinder. Ten percent of college football players will suffer brain injuries, while thousands every year suffer serious knee, back, neck and head injuries that will hamper them the rest of their lives.

A Sunday Dedication

For -just dave-

Saturday Potpourri

Here's a piece by Ruth Marcus from right before the election last year that I never got around to linking. This line made me laugh out loud.

The difference between the British conservative leaders and the ones we're stuck with in the United States is the difference between rational conservatism and magic-wand conservatism.

And then there were these...

[British] Conservatives call for shared sacrifice, starting in a place Republicans seem never to look -- at the top. "It's fair that those with broader shoulders should bear a greater load," Cameron said.

[British] Conservatives do not embrace the Tea Party vision of government as malevolent force. "I don't believe in laissez-faire," Cameron said. "Government has a role not just to fire up ambition, but to help give it flight."

Remember, it was our government that developed the internet which led to massive amounts of innovation in the private sector (sorry, Ms. Rand, but your predictions of apocalypse were wrong).

*******

When studies like this come out, I always have to chuckle...like we didn't know any of this stuff anyway!!

The surprise here is the sexual exclusivity issue in men. As a man with a very high IQ who is liberal (but not atheist), I can say that I desire only one mate. The idea of multiple partners was fun when I was younger but as I have aged, the romantic inside of me has firmly taken hold and pretty much vanquished the Hef side of me. Ah well....

******

Apparently, I still have far too much work to do...groan.... Who are these people's parents and what the hell did they do with them for 18+ years?

My First Christmas Present

Today is Black Friday and thousands of Americans have descended (and likely still are) on department stores and shops around the country. Someone out there got me an early gift and I feel like there is some justice in the world. Actually, it was several someones. Remember the law firm of Steven J. Baum and Associates?

Say buh-bye!!

Apparently all the recent press hasn't been good for his business and now they are through. Normally, I wouldn't do an end zone celebration dance for people going out of business but this whole company deserved exactly what they got, especially Mr. Baum. Have they learned their lesson? Based on the letter Mr. Baum sent to Joe Nocera, the New York Times columnist who published the photos of the company Halloween party in which people dressed up like the people they robo-foreclosed, it appears they have not.

Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices. Mr. Nocera — You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC. It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down.

So, it's Nocera's fault that Baum was a duplicitous foreclosure mill and had the Halloween Party? I love Joe's reply.

I think that’s what they call shooting the messenger.

I hope this whole affair will make some people in the financial sector think twice about how they do business. This is what happens when you go to far.

Today, I Am Thankful For...

...the rest of America starting to wake up...

...the support that the Occupy movement is giving to local businesses...

...Elizabeth Warren, current running for Senate against Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

....and our nation's 26th president for stating something so eloquently that is sadly still true today.

Mr. President, you and I are on the exact same page, sir!

Reality Meets Fantasy

This Thanksgiving, Jerry Danford doesn't have a lot to be thankful for and it's due to Alabama's new immigration policy.

“People are not informed about what it takes to do these special crops. Now a lot of people aren’t interested. The lawmakers that passed this law, they didn't come out here and interview people. If they had done their homework, they would have realized,” he says.

Spoken like a true socialist who wants to the skirt the law and not have to deal with the consequences. Except....

Danford is a lifelong Republican. He admits he did once vote for a Democrat for governor. But in every other race, at every level, he’s always been for the GOP. When I ask if he’s ever voted a Democrat into the White House he scoffs, making a face that says “you have to be kidding.” He voted for Alabama’s current governor, Robert Bentley, a Republican. But he now says he regrets that decision.

“It was an honest mistake,” Danford says, “but, you know, I feel bad over it.”

Danford, like many folks in business in Alabama, are now seeing what happens when lawmakers don't think about immigration and simply act with dogmatic impunity: it hurts the economy. Of course, Republican lawmakers in the state say it will actually help the state's unemployment record. So far, it's having the opposite effect.

“The people that you could get locally, they wouldn't -- regardless of what you offered them, within reason -- they wouldn't put in the long hours. It'd take probably three (of them) to do what two of the immigrant workers do,” he says.“They'd want to be on break all the time, going to the bathroom, going to get a drink, or, you know, something. They just don't have the initiative to work, just plain and simple,” Danford says.

That's a pretty sad statement considering I thought that folks from this part of the country, being the fine and upstanding conservatives that they are, knew how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get to work. Ah, these must be the small portion of stinkin' liberals who leech off the government. So what does Danford want?

“I would like for these lawmakers to go out and get me a pool of labor,” he says.

Millions of dollars are on the line, not just for the farmers but for everyone in the supply chain. When Danford planted watermelons last year, he estimates he paid a trucking company close to $10 million to transport them. A new forecast from the University of Alabama estimates the law will cost the state economy at least $40 million in lost revenue overall.

This whole debacle is a great example of how reality has smacked fantasy in the face hard with a shovel. The people who take a hard line position on this have to realize that thumping your chest and screaming, "It's illegal so fuck 'em" solves absolutely nothing. We have to look at this from the point of view that human capital means a better economy. Danford needs a pool of labor which means we need to embrace the people that are already here, legalize their status and make it easier for talent at all levels to immigrate to this country.

In other words, have some fucking common sense. I used to think that money would trump theology at all times on the right. Now, with the party moving more to the right, it's simply not the case. Meanwhile, our sole superpower status continues to erode...keep it up, folks. Your dreams of "less" government may soon come true!

Nothing Is Fine By Me

Many folks our there are deriding Congress for failing to act on the deficit. Yet by not acting, here's what happens

Sure, there would be painful cuts in both social programs and defense spending. But the Bush tax cuts would expire as well. In other words, we'd do what we have to do to reduce the deficit and, ultimately, the debt. Maybe a "Do-Nothing" Congress is just what we need!

Why We Have Elections

Yesterday, the poorly name "Super Committee" failed to reach a deal to cut spending and raise revenue before the self imposed deadline. This is not a shock to most folks and it's certainly not to me.

What does perplex me is that the main sticking point was the taxes on the wealthy. This was the GOP's line in the sand and it amazes me that they are sticking to their guns. According to the latest poll, 67 percent of Americans believe that taxes should be raised wealthy Americans AND on businesses. Add this in with the numbers from the same poll that show that 77 percent of respondents disapprove of the way Republicans handle their job.

This tells me that the election next year isn't going to be kind to Republicans at all. If they had made some compromises and not played the shell game with taxes, they would have likely held strong in the House, taken the Senate, and made the election painfully close with the president very possibly losing to likely nominee Mitt Romney. As it stands now, however, they have abandoned the independents (see: the ones who actually decided elections) and I think they are going to lose seats in the House (although still hold on to it), the Democrats will hold onto the Senate (possibly gaining a seat or two) and the president looks to be the likely winner.

Of course, we are still a little less than a year out and a lot could change between now and then but one thing I know that won't change is conservative intransigence. They are not going to back down and all the polling shows that's a terrible idea. This Congress has the lowest approval ratings in the history of Congress (between 9 and 13 percent). You thought the 111th Congress was bad? The 112th has now been called the worst ever.

This is why we have elections. The Tea Party brought a bunch of hard right folks into office and the American people can plainly see how they govern. They don't. Many of these folks have said they don't care if they lose next year's election and are in office for only one term. They just want to do the "right" thing.

Well, they aren't. And they will.

Film is Dead, or Why the Cloud is Evil

Movies are doomed. At least, movies on 35mm film are doomed. According to a report from IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service (via Scientific American):

A report from the IHS Screen Digest Cinema Intelligence Service said that 35 mm film, which has been the dominant projection format in movie theaters for more than 120 years, is nearing the end of its life, as the majority of cinema screens in the U.S. are expected to go digital in 2012. 

In fact, IHS expects 35 mm will be replaced by digital technology globally by 2015, the report said. By the end of 2012, 35 mm film in movie theaters is expected to decline to 37 percent on a global scale, which is a dramatic decline from 68 percent of global cinema screens in 2010.

A lot of people don't think this is a big deal. But I'm not so sanguine about losing these analog formats. Old technology, such as books, newspapers, sheet music, piano rolls, photographs, slides, 35mm movies, phonograph records, and even AM radio broadcasts are extremely simple to read and interpret. With a little bit of observation and ingenuity, anyone can simply look at them, run some experiments and figure out how to view or listen to them. But our new technology is not quite so simple.

Back in the 1950s 8mm cameras became cheap and popular, and anyone could afford to make home movies. This tiny, soundless movies were far cry from the glory of 35mm films with stereo sound, but they were the first step toward ubiquitous audiovisual entertainment industry. In the 60s Super 8 was developed, adding a magnetic strip to 8mm film. In the 1970s two competing home video recorder standards were introduced, Betamax and VHS. Ultimately VHS won out. LaserDiscs were introduced in the late 70s, and film aficionados loved them. But when DVDs were introduced they died off. As high definition TV was being developed DVDs just didn't have enough capacity, so two competing formats were (again) developed, and eventually Blu-Ray won out.

A similar thing occurred with phonograph records. Originally wax cylinders were used, but 10" 78 rpm records soon became the standard. They were two-sided and could hold several minutes of music. As technology improved, the size and rotation rate were reduced and 45 rpm records were introduced, and then 12" 33 rpm albums came out that could hold a dozen songs. The introduction of stereo culminated in what some people still think the ultimate in audio perfection: the vinyl stereo record. As LPs reached their pinnacle audio cassettes were introduced (and later, 8-track tapes which were used almost exclusively in cars), but tapes were never able to reach the same high level of quality that records achieved. After briefly flirting with quad, vinyl LPs gave way to CDs in the early 80s, though in some quarters LPs are still preferred. Now MP3 audio files are replacing CDs.

Proponents view this constant progression of ever-obsolescent formats as the natural advance of technology. Skeptics consider it a marketing ploy to get you to buy the same thing over and over. You only ever need to buy one copy of Philip K. Dick's book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. But you could buy Bladerunner, the movie based on the book, on VHS. Then you could buy it on LaserDisc. Then you could buy the Criterion collection edition on LaserDisc. Then you could buy the director's cut on LaserDisc. Then you could buy the theatrical release on DVD. Then the director's cut again on DVD, with an alternate ending. Then you could buy the whole sequence again on Blu-Ray.

The same thing happened with records. You could buy an album on vinyl, then on cassette, then on 8 track, then on CD, then as an MP3 download, and then again as part of a subscription to an online music service.

And I'm certain to have missed dozens of formats that shone briefly, only to be found decades later in people's basements, causing them to wonder what possessed them to waste so much money on something that so obviously had no future.

In parallel with audio and video technology, computers were becoming more sophisticated, and now they've been recruited to replace all other forms of media: records, film, video, books, and newspapers.

When I was a kid in junior high people used teletypes and yellow paper tape punched with holes to store data. When I was in college we used punched cards to write programs in FORTRAN for big mainframes, or used CRT terminals to dial in to those mainframes. Personal computers started appearing in the late 70s. With computers like the TRS-80 programs were stored on cassette tape. Then 8" floppies came into vogue, to be quickly supplanted by 5.25" floppies with the Apple ][ and the IBM PC, then the 3.5" floppy with the Macintosh.

In the early 80s personal computers started getting hard disks, first 5MB, then 10MB, then 20MB. At the same time the CD started to supplant vinyl records, and later CDs were used to store computer data. A profusion of different types of double-sided, high-density floppies, Bernoulli boxes, and myriad digital tape formats came and went.

To save disk space, many operating systems began to compress data in files. Compressed data is essentially encrypted, and the more sophisticated the compression algorithm, the more difficult it is to read.

Like most people, I wound up getting a new computer every few years. With each upgrade I would copy important data from the floppies and hard disks on to the new computer. I would keep the old disks around for a decade, but then, when I no longer had a computer that could read the format, I'd ultimately toss them all out. The 8" floppies went in the 90s in the first big media purge. The 5.25" floppies went in the early 2000s. The 3.5" floppies got tossed a couple of years ago.

In the 2000s computers started having DVDs, and fortunately the drives that read them can still read CD and CDROM formats from 20 and 30 years ago. Now Blu-Ray discs are becoming common.

Digital cameras and cellphone cameras started supplanting film cameras ten years ago, and now most people store pictures on their hard disks in JPEG format, which is a compressed "lossy" format. Because the pictures are so big and people take so many, most people never back them up or print them out. Most families' picture albums will therefore be lost the next time their hard disk crashes.

The once ubiquitous book is disappearing. Millions of people now read books solely on e-readers, tablets and cellphones.

And now even the upstart CD format is becoming obsolete. People aren't buying CDs anymore, they get MP3 downloads and put them on MP3 players or phones, or they're subscribing to music services and don't actually own their own music.

The latest thing that Apple and Amazon and other companies are pushing is "The Cloud." The idea is that you don't even have your own data: they keep it all on their servers. This supposedly solves the disk crash problem because your family picture album and home videos will be in the cloud. But what are the odds Apple and Amazon will still be in business in 40 years? Forty years ago the big names in computers were IBM, Univac, Control Data, Burroughs and DEC. IBM is no longer in the computer business, having sold its line of PCs to the Chinese company Lenovo several years ago, and all those other companies are long gone. So what are the odds your grandkids will be able to find pictures of their grandparents, the way my mom could find sepia-toned images of her nineteenth-century ancestors?

And instead of having billions of books and photos and videos and records in every house in every country, we'll have only a few hundreds of single points of failure, all run by companies that will probably not last for more than a few decades. If even they don't go under, how long are people going to pay subscription fees to house ancient data that they never look at on server farms in the cloud? Despite what YouTube and PhotoBucket might have you think, they can't store that stuff for free forever.

Now consider how much power it will take to keep those hard disks spinning at these mammoth server farms day and night for decades, on the off chance that you'll want to look at the video of the kids horsing around in the pool. Already it's estimated that the Internet consumes 1% of all electricity generated in the world. Archiving infrequently used data on spinning hard disks is a ridiculously outrageous waste of energy. At some point it will simply become unsustainable.

The point of this litany is: formats are fleeting, but information should be forever. That was true with paper books, newspapers, vinyl records and 35mm film, as long as you took care of them. Those media can literally last for centuries, perhaps even thousands of years if properly preserved.

Floppies and computer tape are notoriously fragile. Tape starts to stick to itself after decades of sitting on the shelf. Magnetic domains on tape and floppies start to wander. Mylar becomes brittle with age and trying to read these media can destroy them. That's if you can find a compatible tape drive or floppy disk drive, which would be doubtful in five years and impossible in 50 or 500. Someone finding an old floppy could easily erase it by exposing it to electric and magnetic fields during their analysis.

The e-books on the Kindle and Nook are stored in non-volatile ("flash") memory, which stores data as puddles of electrons in floating gate transistors. These electrons will simply leak out after a few years. By comparison, there are still copies of the Gutenberg Bible that are more than 500 years old, and hand-written scrolls that have survived for millennia.

Newspapers have documented world history in tremendous detail for the last three centuries. But papers are being slowly strangled by the Internet. The problem is, the web is a notoriously poor historical record: websites come and go by the minute, and data in computer files is completely mutable. Finding an article in a century-year-old newspaper at the library might be time consuming, but finding a day-old web page can be impossible: it may simply no longer exist anywhere.

CDROMs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs may last longer than magnetic media, perhaps several decades, but they are compressed or  intentionally encrypted to prevent theft. Since they're optical, future generations will find them easier to read than magnetic media just by examining them with powerful microscopes, as long as they don't degrade too much.

But future archaeologists may still be hard pressed to read what few surviving discs and tapes they might find in few hundred years. If they can cobble together the hardware to read this stuff, they'll still have to figure out the compression and the encryption.

But the problem isn't just future historians not being able to decipher our long-lost culture. If we store our data in the cloud, it doesn't belong to us anymore. It belongs to some big company. If they go out of business, or they get shut down by their networking provider in a lawsuit over networking tariffs, or their data center gets hit by a hurricane, or hackers infect it with viruses, we stand to lose everything. (And no, I don't think 40-year-old backups will be readable.)

Because our systems are so complex and interconnected they will not fail gracefully. The United States would be very vulnerable to persistent power failures. These could be brought on by underinvestment in power grid infrastructure, or failure to develop alternative sources of energy before fossil fuels run out, or outages caused by increasingly severe weather accompanying climate change, or intentional sabotage by foreign powers, or an EMP pulse detonated in the atmosphere above the central US. American businesses that depend on the cloud for day-to-day operations would all fail, and they would fail hard.

Worse, nearly all the technology we depend on for accessing this data is built in Asia, much of it in China. If for some reason the supply is disrupted it would have dire consequences. Already we're getting a taste of this: all disk drive manufacturers locate their factories in Thailand, which is now being inundated by a huge flood. The supply of disk drives will be severely affected, which affects American computer manufacturers and everyone who buys computers. A particularly ominous fact: the American military now depends on computers and components produced by companies owned by the Chinese Red Army.

I'm no Luddite. I like high-def TV, listen to MP3s on my phone, watch DVDs, and read e-books and stream movies on my tablet. But these technologies are extremely fragile. This is the information age, but all this information is so fleeting. A tremendous amount of technological infrastructure is needed to retrieve the data. If any part of the very long supply chain is broken, our capability to access our information is destroyed.

If we persist in storing our information in ever tinier and more fragile containers, and we persist in destroying the easily readable hard copies such as books, photos and newspapers, then even the slightest disruption in our highly technological society could bring everything crashing down. And since we would have no way of getting at any of the information without that technology, getting back up again may well be impossible.

It is thought that the greatest collection of knowledge in the ancient world was lost when Christians burned the Royal Library at Alexandria and presaged the dark ages. If we're not careful, we may suffer the same fate by placing all our knowledge in objects that we will one day be incapable of getting it out of.

The New Church

Today is Sunday and many conservatives around the country will be making their way to church to worship Jesus Christ. But Christianity isn't the only religion that many of these folks practice.

At first glance, this new religion seems completely at odds with our savior. It is a system of morality "not based on faith" or emotion, "but on reason." In fact, the leader of this new religion has stated on many occasions that Christianity (and all religions in general) are parasitic weaknesses. "Man's highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness," the leader of this new church has said.

What is this new religion? It's the Cult of Ayn Rand. And this recent story illustrates just how far her catechisms have permeated our government.

When I told my wife that my post about her reading of Atlas Shrugged had received 71 comments, she chuckled. "Made some people uncomfortable, eh?" We've had a few conversations about the book over the last week since she has completed reading it and both of us are still completely befuddled that the over the top characters in the book are equated with reality. "People just aren't that stupid as Rand portrays them in the book," my wife commented yesterday. "They're just so unbelievable I can't understand why anyone would fall for it." If your entire ideology is based around anger, hate, and fear, well...

What I can't understand is how one can claim to be a Christian on one hand and a Randian on the other. The two are honestly mutually exclusive. Rand talks of enlightened self interest and Jesus directs us to be as selfless as possible. Somehow, the conservative brain has melded these basic principles together to mean that the government is forcing us to do things, taking away our liberties and destroying capitalism. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The one thing that does make sense, however, is the shared belief between Randians and those folks who believe in Republican Jesus that the world is constantly ending (see: Mike Lofgren's Apocalyptic Cult).

I feel that it is terrible that you see destruction all around you, and that you are moving toward disaster until and unless all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected.

That's Rand in 1959. 50+ years later and...we're still here. In fact, we've accomplished quite a bit over the last 52 years and have remained the leading innovator in the world despite Rand's cries of a boiling pit of sewage coming "soon." Yet guys like Paul Ryan, a prominent GOP leader and current fave of the Tea Party, insist upon perpetuating the lie that innovators (as in the book) are on strike. It's not just him.

"Every time you submit to a regulation, it diminishes your liberty," says Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, speaking just off the House floor a few weeks ago. King says he loves Rand.

"If you start to demonize a certain segment of your society that are the producers, eventually they'll stop," says Allen West, a Tea Party favorite.

Freshman Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina Republican, has read Rand's novels six or eight times each."It's almost frightening how accurate a prediction of the future the book was," Mulvaney says.

Accurate? Really? I guess Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Steve Jobs (just to name a few) didn't get that memo on the demonization and the apocalypse.

It truly is a bizarre world they live in and when folks like King and Mulvaney proclaim to also be Christian, I have to wonder if they were kicked in the head a few times as youths.Or, perhaps they skipped over the parts in the Bible where Jesus said things.

Actually, I wonder sometimes if I've been kicked in the head as soon as recently in comments when I'm told that it's simply "less" government they want (but can't really seem to define what that means specifically), not "no" government but then embrace this view from Rand, who said, in a question about taxes, "That's right. I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy."

So which is it?

In looking at all of this, there's much more delusion going on and it's much deeper than I originally thought. Leading members of the GOP think that our country is constantly being destroyed and that the last 50 years of astronomical innovation never happened. They also think that one can be a Christian and also be a Randian. And, as always, if you don't believe any of this, then you are a Marxist.

As Gandhi said, "The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear."

Let Them Eat Cake

I wonder if these three ass hats have ever studied 18th century French History.

Saturday Potpourri

Starting today, I'm going to use Saturdays to clear out my "Ideas For Posts" links folder. I have so many and, sadly, most get thrown out or forgotten. Rather than write an entire post around each one (very time consuming), I'm going to highlight a point or two from each link and then hope that readers here at Markadelphia will take it upon themselves to read the rest of the post off site.

First up is a look at how the Bush Tax Cuts have affected our economy using quite a bit of data. The conclusion?

This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional. The evidence is in, and it shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts failed to achieve the promised goals.

How much more evidence do we need that we made terrible and costly mistakes in 2001 and 2003?

Well, the answer sadly is that there is no amount of evidence to convince them because they don't live in reality.

Speaking of that bizarro reality, here's a piece from a while back on patriotism.

How did Americans arrive at the obscene point where people routinely say, “If you don’t agree with me you aren’t a real Christian” or a “real American,” or a “genuine patriot”? By what measure of chutzpah did the Republican right challenge the patriotism of those who disagreed with their Iraq policy during the Bush years? That’s not American democracy. Rather it smacks of Europe’s bellicose totalitarian regimes of the past century.

The Tea Party and its supporters need a history lesson because this is how it starts.

How did waterboarding return to national attention? Apparently, GOP contender Michele Bachmann is a staunch supporter of it but, of course, would not want to undergo the process herself calling it "uncomfortable" but not torture.

Yeah....

81 year old Dorli Rainey after being pepper sprayed by police at Occupy Seattle.

I wonder who she raped and what drugs she did?