Just two weeks ago Monsanto won its case in the Supreme Court against an Indiana farmer for violating their patents by replanting genetically modified "Roundup Ready" soybeans. These seeds make growing soybeans easier because they allow farmers to indiscriminately spray Monsanto's Roundup herbicide on their fields without worrying about killing their crops.
Now Japan and Korea have suspended US wheat imports from the Pacific Northwest because a strain of GMO wheat that Roundup cannot kill has been found on an Oregon farm. Monsanto supposedly abandoned nine years ago, but Monsanto's Frankenwheat has come back from the dead. And Europe is now threatening to require all US wheat to be tested before being imported.
Other countries are not so sanguine about the safety of genetically modified crops. America has bought into them big time because we care more about profit more than the possible adverse health effects of consuming large quantities of genetically engineered plants.
The scientific jury is still out on whether such crops are safe -- mainly because companies like Monsanto quash that research immediately, just as many states make it illegal to videotape illegal practices on factory farms. Monsanto has soybean farmers over a barrel: the farmers are convinced they need Monsanto's GMO seeds in order to compete, but they have to buy that expensive patented seed from Monsanto. If they replant the seed they'll get sued like the farmer in Indiana.
While it's still not clear that GMO crops are inherently bad, it is becoming more obvious that insecticides and herbicides (like Roundup) are not as safe as Monsanto pretends they are. There are potential links between pesticide exposure and neurological conditions such as Parkinsons and autism, ADHD in children, Alzheimers in adults, and immunosuppressive disorders. The herbicide Atrazine has been implicated in the feminization of amphibians and potentially humans.
Monsanto wants us to think that the poison in Roundup just washes away and could never be incorporated into the soybeans themselves, but I have my doubts. It's becoming increasingly obvious that even minute concentrations of environmental toxins are behind many of the once-obscure medical conditions that have become so mysteriously prevalent in recent years. Developing fetuses are extremely sensitive to even the most minute concentrations of chemicals that resemble natural estrogens.
Perhaps farmers in Oregon should file a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto for contaminating their fields with weeds that cannot be killed, and sue for damages for loss of income because they can't export their crops.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Becoming China's Pigsty
Shuanghui International, a Chinese company, is going to buy Smithfield Foods, the largest American pork producer, for $4.7 billion. Chinese demand for pork is ratcheting up and they're going to want it as cheap and fast as possible. Which portends disaster on several fronts.
First, corporate corruption in China is endemic. There isn't a week that goes by without a story of a Chinese official going to jail for accepting bribes.
Then there's the Chinese penchant for placing profits above the health and even lives of their customers. It was just 2008 when a Chinese company intentionally put melamine in baby formula to boost its protein content to fool a quality test, sending 50,000 babies to the hospital with kidney damage and killing at least six. Several Chinese corporate executives have been executed for such crimes.
Then there are disease outbreaks. The first case in the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic was in La Gloria, Mexico, near a Smithfield Farms' Mexican subsidiary. Animal husbandry practices in China already make it the perfect breeding ground for diseases like SARS and bird flu. With a Chinese corporation in charge of the largest pork operation in the world the 1918 flu pandemic may soon look like a case of the sniffles.
Then there's the callous Chinese disregard for environmental quality, most obvious in the noxious pall of coal pollution that constantly shrouds Chinese cities like Beijing. Recently a Chinese company dumped thousands of dead pigs into the Huangpu River in Shanghai. American factory farms and slaughterhouses already have a terrible record when it comes to the environment, with massive repeated spills from manure lagoons that kill millions of fish.
The Texas House and Senate recently passed a law that prohibits citizens from using drones. You would think concerns over geeks spying on women sunbathing in their backyards would have prompted this. But no: a Texas slaughterhouse was recently caught dumping pig blood into a creek by a guy playing around with a drone. This resulted in fines from the EPA and indictments from a Dallas County grand jury. And it prompted the Texas legislature to prevent citizens from monitoring the illegal activities of corporations.
There are laws on the books in several states making it illegal to videotape operations on factory farms and in slaughterhouses after a spate of bad publicity and fines levied on businesses that were caught breaking the law by undercover activists. Crazily, these states have made it illegal to record evidence of illegal activities.
Then there is immigration: Smithfield Foods has already been charged numerous times for violation of immigration laws. The vast majority of its slaughterhouse employees are foreign workers. To increase pork production to meet Chinese demand the new owners are going to need more workers. And they're not going to want to pay them very much. So they'll have to import them. Probably from Mexico and Central America. Combine those captive workers with Chinese labor practices like FoxConn's, and we'll have an epidemic of severed fingers, hands and arms from overworked meat packers. The inevitable squalid conditions in these slaughterhouses will become the perfect vector for introducing E. coli infections and communicable diseases into our food supply.
To keep all these problems under control and to get the laws changed to suit their needs the new Chinese owners will have to exert political power. And the Supreme Court's incredibly naive Citizens United decision gives them the perfect vehicle. The tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations at the heart of the IRS scandal provide will allow Chinese corporations to anonymously affect policy and buy influence in American elections.
If Chinese executives have no compunctions about poisoning Chinese babies, do you think they'll give a damn about breaking campaign finance laws in a foreign country where the only punishment their flunkies will face is just a fine and a slap on the wrist?
Executives of multinational corporations have historically shown a callous disregard for the health and welfare of the people in the countries where their foreign operations are conducted. American corporations have acted with impunity in banana republics for centuries, but with incidents such as the BP oil spill the tide has turned against us.
The usual business cheerleaders who tout how wonderful it will be having a new export market neglect to mention that all the profits will be heading to China. Won't it be great when the United States is China's pigsty?
First, corporate corruption in China is endemic. There isn't a week that goes by without a story of a Chinese official going to jail for accepting bribes.
Then there's the Chinese penchant for placing profits above the health and even lives of their customers. It was just 2008 when a Chinese company intentionally put melamine in baby formula to boost its protein content to fool a quality test, sending 50,000 babies to the hospital with kidney damage and killing at least six. Several Chinese corporate executives have been executed for such crimes.
Then there are disease outbreaks. The first case in the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic was in La Gloria, Mexico, near a Smithfield Farms' Mexican subsidiary. Animal husbandry practices in China already make it the perfect breeding ground for diseases like SARS and bird flu. With a Chinese corporation in charge of the largest pork operation in the world the 1918 flu pandemic may soon look like a case of the sniffles.
Then there's the callous Chinese disregard for environmental quality, most obvious in the noxious pall of coal pollution that constantly shrouds Chinese cities like Beijing. Recently a Chinese company dumped thousands of dead pigs into the Huangpu River in Shanghai. American factory farms and slaughterhouses already have a terrible record when it comes to the environment, with massive repeated spills from manure lagoons that kill millions of fish.
The Texas House and Senate recently passed a law that prohibits citizens from using drones. You would think concerns over geeks spying on women sunbathing in their backyards would have prompted this. But no: a Texas slaughterhouse was recently caught dumping pig blood into a creek by a guy playing around with a drone. This resulted in fines from the EPA and indictments from a Dallas County grand jury. And it prompted the Texas legislature to prevent citizens from monitoring the illegal activities of corporations.
There are laws on the books in several states making it illegal to videotape operations on factory farms and in slaughterhouses after a spate of bad publicity and fines levied on businesses that were caught breaking the law by undercover activists. Crazily, these states have made it illegal to record evidence of illegal activities.
Then there is immigration: Smithfield Foods has already been charged numerous times for violation of immigration laws. The vast majority of its slaughterhouse employees are foreign workers. To increase pork production to meet Chinese demand the new owners are going to need more workers. And they're not going to want to pay them very much. So they'll have to import them. Probably from Mexico and Central America. Combine those captive workers with Chinese labor practices like FoxConn's, and we'll have an epidemic of severed fingers, hands and arms from overworked meat packers. The inevitable squalid conditions in these slaughterhouses will become the perfect vector for introducing E. coli infections and communicable diseases into our food supply.
To keep all these problems under control and to get the laws changed to suit their needs the new Chinese owners will have to exert political power. And the Supreme Court's incredibly naive Citizens United decision gives them the perfect vehicle. The tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations at the heart of the IRS scandal provide will allow Chinese corporations to anonymously affect policy and buy influence in American elections.
If Chinese executives have no compunctions about poisoning Chinese babies, do you think they'll give a damn about breaking campaign finance laws in a foreign country where the only punishment their flunkies will face is just a fine and a slap on the wrist?
Executives of multinational corporations have historically shown a callous disregard for the health and welfare of the people in the countries where their foreign operations are conducted. American corporations have acted with impunity in banana republics for centuries, but with incidents such as the BP oil spill the tide has turned against us.
The usual business cheerleaders who tout how wonderful it will be having a new export market neglect to mention that all the profits will be heading to China. Won't it be great when the United States is China's pigsty?
Amelia Earhart Found?
A sonar image may yield the final piece of the puzzle as to what happened to Amelia Earhart over 75 years ago. This image, in the republic of Kiribati, shows an underwater object that is the right shape and size to match the wreckage of the aviator's Electra plane, according to the specialist who analyzed it.
Interestingly, a man named Richard Conroy found the photo in an online forum sponsored by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). I've always been fascinated by this mystery and it would be cool to find out if this is really her plane.
Interestingly, a man named Richard Conroy found the photo in an online forum sponsored by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR). I've always been fascinated by this mystery and it would be cool to find out if this is really her plane.
The Bee in My Bonnet
Another National Spelling Bee has come and gone, and the winner is Arvind Mahankali. Like most years, the winner was of Indian descent, and he won by spelling a foreign word (knaidel).
If you can believe it, the Bee elicited an organized protest outside the Grand Hyatt in Washington. The protesters weren't demonstrating against the South Asian lock on spelling bees (kids whose ancestors hail from the subcontinent have won 11 of the past 15 Bees). No, they're protesting spelling itself.
With the slogan "I'm Thru with Through," members of the American Literacy Council stood outside the hotel and denigrated the efforts of thousands of American kids who study etymology and word lists night and day.
To be honest, I've always thought spelling bees were silly, even though I would have probably done well in them (though like everyone I'm occasionally the victim of a stray typo). I disdain computer spell checkers because they don't catch the most egregious and embarrassing spelling error — the homonym, or my main bugaboos — omitted or correctly-spelled extra words resulting from over-editing.
My problem with spelling bees is that the vast majority of their words are not English: they're just imported foreign words, typically used only in obscure scientific or literary circumstances. If you've ever watched a bee you know what I mean: the first question a contestant asks after being presented with a word is "Language of origin?"
Since most languages have much more regular spelling rules than English, that single piece of information can be a dead giveaway, even if you don't know the word. That's particularly true for languages such as Spanish and Italian, but it's also true for German and even French. So the spelling bee isn't so much a test of English spelling proficiency, but spelling in any language English has co-opted, which is all of them.
But there's a problem: when words come from languages that don't use the Latin alphabet, such as Russian, Chinese or Japanese, what's the "correct" spelling? There are at least 10 different ways to romanize Chinese. Russian can be romanized in several different ways, depending on the native language of the person who does it. We always spell Tchaikovsky with a T, but we do so because we took the French spelling — the "proper" English transliteration should be Chaikovsky. And you still see it occasionally spelled the German way: Tschaikowskij. To make things even more confusing, Russians usually pronounce it Chikovsky.
The Russian word указ is usually spelled ukase in English, but that's a French transliteration of a Russian word: the English should be ukaz.
And so it was that this year's bee opened with with a Russian word: glasnost. (Glasnost was the policy of openness introduced by Mikhail Gorbachov [1] that ultimately brought the downfall of the Soviet Union.) And here's where that transliteration problem comes in: the spelling proffered by the Bee is wrong [2].
Which brings us back to the spelling reform advocates. The problems with reforming English spelling are threefold.
First is assimilation of foreign words: we literally have millions of them. Reforming English spelling to mangle words of foreign origin such as derailleur, menage à trois and Weltschmerz into duhrayler, menahzh a twah and veltshmairts is just plain silly: no two people will decide on the same spelling.
Second is an issue with language in general: pronunciation changes over time. In words like thought and through the "silent" letters used to be pronounced. You get an inkling of the original pronunciations by comparing them to their modern German counterparts dachten and durch. This process isn't going to stop just because we reformed spelling. Pronunciation will continue to evolve, ultimately rendering the phonetic spellings the reformers want us to adopt just as lacking as our current orthography.
Third is the problem of differences in pronunciation across dialects (which is just the end result of the second problem). The spelling reformers want to spell English the way it's pronounced: but whose pronunciation should we use? Take the phrase Today is a good day to die. Listening to certain Australians you'll hear To die is a good die to doi. Or compare the Midwestern, Boston and Georgia pronunciations of car, or the Eastern and Southwestern American pronunciations of pen and pencil.
If we abandon current English orthography and have everyone spell it the way they say it, written English would degenerate into mutually unintelligible dialects, creoles and pidgins. No one would spell things the same way because everyone pronounces things differently. I'm not just making dire predictions: it's the natural course of language development. All the Germanic languages started from a common protolanguage that evolved over the centuries into English, German, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and several languages that have since died out, such as Gothic and Norn.
The benefit of standard spelling is that it provides a lingua franca that everyone understands. It also pushes speakers back to a common pronunciation. There's a definite tendency for people to pronounce words the way they're spelled. For example, the t in often was dropped over the centuries, but many modern speakers have reinserted it because, seeing it spelled that way, they think it's proper to pronounce the t. Words like waistcoat and mainsail were so commonly used that they became slurred and the "proper" pronunciation became weskit and mainsl. Modern readers, encountering these words long after they've fallen out of common usage, pronounce them as they're spelled.
With increased literacy it seems that the rate of language evolution decreases. We can still read Shakespeare's plays 400 years after they were written (understanding his literary and social references is another story...). But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from 1138, a mere 300 years before Shakespeare, looks like gibberish: "... ] flemden þe king æt te Standard ] sloghen suithe micel of his genge." [3]
With the popularity of global mass media like popular music, summer blockbuster movies and the Internet it seems that the rate of language evolution should slow even more, as differences between regions are smoothed over quickly and may never have a chance to develop in the first place.
But then you consider the influence of popular cultural phenomena like hip hop music on English, and you realize that instantaneous global communication may actually accelerate language evolution. But at least we'll all be in on it.
Notes
[1] Gorbachov's name is almost always transliterated incorrectly. In Russian newspapers it's usually spelled Горбачев, but the actual spelling is Горбачёв (in the olden days Russian typesetters apparently didn't have enough lead to make a separate letter for the e with two dots). The ё is usually pronounced "yo" (Yo!), but after a ч you don't pronounce the "y" part. So, for some stupid reason the people who transliterated Russian names for American publications used Gorbachev, rather than the actual pronunciation of Gorbachov, which means most Americans pronounce his name incorrectly.
[2] In Russian glasnost is spelled "гласность". If you look carefully, you'll notice that the Russian has one extra letter compared to the English. That extra letter is the "soft sign," which means the final t is "palatized." Russian differentiates palatized consonants in cases where English treats them the same. Palatization in English is usually just part of your accent. For example, an American from the Midwest will pronounce the word "tune" as toon (an unpalatized t) while an educated Briton will pronounce it tyoon (with a palatized t). Americans usually palatize the first n in union (yoonyun), while many Britons don't palatize it, pronouncing it yoo-nee-un.
Thus, the "proper" English transliteration of гласность should be glasnost' (the apostrophe designates the soft sign). The official bee spelling omits the soft sign, surely as grievous an error as spelling derailleur derailer! Yes, that's ridiculously nitpicky. But the whole point of a spelling bee is to be as nitpicky as possible!
Another of the words in the first round of the Bee was perestroika (перестройка), which could just as easily be spelled perestroyka using the standard transliteration of the letter "й".
[3] "... and routed the king at the Standard, and slew very many of his gang"
If you can believe it, the Bee elicited an organized protest outside the Grand Hyatt in Washington. The protesters weren't demonstrating against the South Asian lock on spelling bees (kids whose ancestors hail from the subcontinent have won 11 of the past 15 Bees). No, they're protesting spelling itself.
With the slogan "I'm Thru with Through," members of the American Literacy Council stood outside the hotel and denigrated the efforts of thousands of American kids who study etymology and word lists night and day.
To be honest, I've always thought spelling bees were silly, even though I would have probably done well in them (though like everyone I'm occasionally the victim of a stray typo). I disdain computer spell checkers because they don't catch the most egregious and embarrassing spelling error — the homonym, or my main bugaboos — omitted or correctly-spelled extra words resulting from over-editing.
My problem with spelling bees is that the vast majority of their words are not English: they're just imported foreign words, typically used only in obscure scientific or literary circumstances. If you've ever watched a bee you know what I mean: the first question a contestant asks after being presented with a word is "Language of origin?"
Since most languages have much more regular spelling rules than English, that single piece of information can be a dead giveaway, even if you don't know the word. That's particularly true for languages such as Spanish and Italian, but it's also true for German and even French. So the spelling bee isn't so much a test of English spelling proficiency, but spelling in any language English has co-opted, which is all of them.
But there's a problem: when words come from languages that don't use the Latin alphabet, such as Russian, Chinese or Japanese, what's the "correct" spelling? There are at least 10 different ways to romanize Chinese. Russian can be romanized in several different ways, depending on the native language of the person who does it. We always spell Tchaikovsky with a T, but we do so because we took the French spelling — the "proper" English transliteration should be Chaikovsky. And you still see it occasionally spelled the German way: Tschaikowskij. To make things even more confusing, Russians usually pronounce it Chikovsky.
The Russian word указ is usually spelled ukase in English, but that's a French transliteration of a Russian word: the English should be ukaz.
And so it was that this year's bee opened with with a Russian word: glasnost. (Glasnost was the policy of openness introduced by Mikhail Gorbachov [1] that ultimately brought the downfall of the Soviet Union.) And here's where that transliteration problem comes in: the spelling proffered by the Bee is wrong [2].
Which brings us back to the spelling reform advocates. The problems with reforming English spelling are threefold.
First is assimilation of foreign words: we literally have millions of them. Reforming English spelling to mangle words of foreign origin such as derailleur, menage à trois and Weltschmerz into duhrayler, menahzh a twah and veltshmairts is just plain silly: no two people will decide on the same spelling.
Second is an issue with language in general: pronunciation changes over time. In words like thought and through the "silent" letters used to be pronounced. You get an inkling of the original pronunciations by comparing them to their modern German counterparts dachten and durch. This process isn't going to stop just because we reformed spelling. Pronunciation will continue to evolve, ultimately rendering the phonetic spellings the reformers want us to adopt just as lacking as our current orthography.
Third is the problem of differences in pronunciation across dialects (which is just the end result of the second problem). The spelling reformers want to spell English the way it's pronounced: but whose pronunciation should we use? Take the phrase Today is a good day to die. Listening to certain Australians you'll hear To die is a good die to doi. Or compare the Midwestern, Boston and Georgia pronunciations of car, or the Eastern and Southwestern American pronunciations of pen and pencil.
If we abandon current English orthography and have everyone spell it the way they say it, written English would degenerate into mutually unintelligible dialects, creoles and pidgins. No one would spell things the same way because everyone pronounces things differently. I'm not just making dire predictions: it's the natural course of language development. All the Germanic languages started from a common protolanguage that evolved over the centuries into English, German, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and several languages that have since died out, such as Gothic and Norn.
The benefit of standard spelling is that it provides a lingua franca that everyone understands. It also pushes speakers back to a common pronunciation. There's a definite tendency for people to pronounce words the way they're spelled. For example, the t in often was dropped over the centuries, but many modern speakers have reinserted it because, seeing it spelled that way, they think it's proper to pronounce the t. Words like waistcoat and mainsail were so commonly used that they became slurred and the "proper" pronunciation became weskit and mainsl. Modern readers, encountering these words long after they've fallen out of common usage, pronounce them as they're spelled.
With increased literacy it seems that the rate of language evolution decreases. We can still read Shakespeare's plays 400 years after they were written (understanding his literary and social references is another story...). But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from 1138, a mere 300 years before Shakespeare, looks like gibberish: "... ] flemden þe king æt te Standard ] sloghen suithe micel of his genge." [3]
With the popularity of global mass media like popular music, summer blockbuster movies and the Internet it seems that the rate of language evolution should slow even more, as differences between regions are smoothed over quickly and may never have a chance to develop in the first place.
But then you consider the influence of popular cultural phenomena like hip hop music on English, and you realize that instantaneous global communication may actually accelerate language evolution. But at least we'll all be in on it.
Notes
[1] Gorbachov's name is almost always transliterated incorrectly. In Russian newspapers it's usually spelled Горбачев, but the actual spelling is Горбачёв (in the olden days Russian typesetters apparently didn't have enough lead to make a separate letter for the e with two dots). The ё is usually pronounced "yo" (Yo!), but after a ч you don't pronounce the "y" part. So, for some stupid reason the people who transliterated Russian names for American publications used Gorbachev, rather than the actual pronunciation of Gorbachov, which means most Americans pronounce his name incorrectly.
[2] In Russian glasnost is spelled "гласность". If you look carefully, you'll notice that the Russian has one extra letter compared to the English. That extra letter is the "soft sign," which means the final t is "palatized." Russian differentiates palatized consonants in cases where English treats them the same. Palatization in English is usually just part of your accent. For example, an American from the Midwest will pronounce the word "tune" as toon (an unpalatized t) while an educated Briton will pronounce it tyoon (with a palatized t). Americans usually palatize the first n in union (yoonyun), while many Britons don't palatize it, pronouncing it yoo-nee-un.
Thus, the "proper" English transliteration of гласность should be glasnost' (the apostrophe designates the soft sign). The official bee spelling omits the soft sign, surely as grievous an error as spelling derailleur derailer! Yes, that's ridiculously nitpicky. But the whole point of a spelling bee is to be as nitpicky as possible!
Another of the words in the first round of the Bee was perestroika (перестройка), which could just as easily be spelled perestroyka using the standard transliteration of the letter "й".
[3] "... and routed the king at the Standard, and slew very many of his gang"
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Fuck This. Let's just sabotage it!!
Now that the Right has finally given up on repealing the Affordable Care Act, I guess it's time for out and out sabotage.
While opposition to the health care program is nothing new, the tactics are changing. Rather than focusing on repealing the law in Congress and the courts, two avenues that have failed so far, the groups are aiming to prevent the cornerstone of the legislation, the insurance exchanges, from succeeding. Their goal is to limit enrollments, drive up costs, and make it easier to roll back all or part of the law later.
It's a good thing they are being mature about it.
While opposition to the health care program is nothing new, the tactics are changing. Rather than focusing on repealing the law in Congress and the courts, two avenues that have failed so far, the groups are aiming to prevent the cornerstone of the legislation, the insurance exchanges, from succeeding. Their goal is to limit enrollments, drive up costs, and make it easier to roll back all or part of the law later.
It's a good thing they are being mature about it.
No More Asterisk
I think it is now safe to say that our economy has turned the corner and we are doing quite well.
Surging stock prices and steady home-price increases have allowed Americans to regain the $16 trillion in wealth they lost to the Great Recession. Higher wealth tends to embolden people to spend more. Some economists have said the increase in home prices alone could boost consumer spending enough to offset a Social Security tax increase that has reduced paychecks for most Americans this year.
The Conference Board survey said consumers are also more optimistic about the next six months. That should translate into greater consumer spending, substantial growth in hiring and faster economic growth in the second half of 2013, says Thomas Feltmate, an economist with TD Economics.
The difference this time is that there are so many indicators pointing towards positivity that there really isn't an asterisk on this news. I wonder how all of this will be spun inside of the bubble.
Surging stock prices and steady home-price increases have allowed Americans to regain the $16 trillion in wealth they lost to the Great Recession. Higher wealth tends to embolden people to spend more. Some economists have said the increase in home prices alone could boost consumer spending enough to offset a Social Security tax increase that has reduced paychecks for most Americans this year.
The Conference Board survey said consumers are also more optimistic about the next six months. That should translate into greater consumer spending, substantial growth in hiring and faster economic growth in the second half of 2013, says Thomas Feltmate, an economist with TD Economics.
The difference this time is that there are so many indicators pointing towards positivity that there really isn't an asterisk on this news. I wonder how all of this will be spun inside of the bubble.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Well, There Goes Two Talking Points
Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium
“One reason for the misplaced expectations may be that actuaries have been making worst-case assumptions, even as insurers—eyeing the prospects of so many new customers—have been calculating that it’s worth bidding low in order to gobble up market share. This would help explain why premium bids in several other states have proven similarly reasonable. “The premiums and participation in California, Oregon, Washington and other states show that insurers want to compete for the new enrollees in this market,” Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said via e-mail. “The premiums have not skyrocketed and the insurers that serve this market now are continuing. The rates look like what we would expect for decent coverage offered to a standard population.”
RatesBig Three automakers, reinvented, eye consumers worldwide
Their evolution has been "transformative, like nothing that ever occurred in the past for the American auto industry," says Mike Smith, a labor historian at Wayne State University in Detroit. "American automobile workers and companies are more efficient than they have ever been during any time in history."
“One reason for the misplaced expectations may be that actuaries have been making worst-case assumptions, even as insurers—eyeing the prospects of so many new customers—have been calculating that it’s worth bidding low in order to gobble up market share. This would help explain why premium bids in several other states have proven similarly reasonable. “The premiums and participation in California, Oregon, Washington and other states show that insurers want to compete for the new enrollees in this market,” Gary Claxton, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said via e-mail. “The premiums have not skyrocketed and the insurers that serve this market now are continuing. The rates look like what we would expect for decent coverage offered to a standard population.”
RatesBig Three automakers, reinvented, eye consumers worldwide
Their evolution has been "transformative, like nothing that ever occurred in the past for the American auto industry," says Mike Smith, a labor historian at Wayne State University in Detroit. "American automobile workers and companies are more efficient than they have ever been during any time in history."
No Shit, Bob
Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole says he doesn't believe he could make it in the modern Republican Party.
"I doubt it," he said in an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday" when asked if his generation of Republican leaders could make it in today's GOP. "Reagan couldn't have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn't have made it, cause he had ideas. We might've made it, but I doubt it."
Dole, a wounded World War II veteran from Kansas and icon of the party, said he believes it needs to rethink the direction it's heading in.
"They ought to put a sign on the National Committee doors that says 'Closed for repairs,' until New Year's Day next year," he said. "And spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas."
How many elections are they going to lose before they get this message?
"I doubt it," he said in an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday" when asked if his generation of Republican leaders could make it in today's GOP. "Reagan couldn't have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn't have made it, cause he had ideas. We might've made it, but I doubt it."
Dole, a wounded World War II veteran from Kansas and icon of the party, said he believes it needs to rethink the direction it's heading in.
"They ought to put a sign on the National Committee doors that says 'Closed for repairs,' until New Year's Day next year," he said. "And spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas."
How many elections are they going to lose before they get this message?
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The Real Gun Walkers
As I was reading this morning's Times over breakfast, this piece on the gun industry made me realize why the gun community, especially the manufacturers, go into anaphylactic shock when the subject of Operation: Fast and Furious comes up. It's because their entire raison d'etre is one giant gun walking operation.
Think about it for a minute. The gun manufacturers know that their guns are used in violent crimes so they went out and bought protection for themselves from the federal government. The gun community knows that there are a giant collection of criminals and terribly irresponsible people in this country whose gun use results in the death of thousands. This simple fact is the result of a continued and persistent drive to loosen gun laws or, at the very least, prevent new ones from being made.
They are partly responsible for incidents that occur every day in this country because they allow guns to get into the hands of criminals just as the Justice Department did in 2009. Their loudly stated beliefs clearly shows that they are doing this on purpose.
So, the next time you hear someone from the gun community caterwauling about walked guns and the federal government, tell them that they are simply doing what they always do...heading off at the pass.
Think about it for a minute. The gun manufacturers know that their guns are used in violent crimes so they went out and bought protection for themselves from the federal government. The gun community knows that there are a giant collection of criminals and terribly irresponsible people in this country whose gun use results in the death of thousands. This simple fact is the result of a continued and persistent drive to loosen gun laws or, at the very least, prevent new ones from being made.
They are partly responsible for incidents that occur every day in this country because they allow guns to get into the hands of criminals just as the Justice Department did in 2009. Their loudly stated beliefs clearly shows that they are doing this on purpose.
So, the next time you hear someone from the gun community caterwauling about walked guns and the federal government, tell them that they are simply doing what they always do...heading off at the pass.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
They're Thinking, "Uh, Oh..."
From The New York Times:
What motivated the Tsarnaev brothers to bomb the Boston Marathon? The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What motivated the underwear bomber? A desire for religious jihad to protest the continued killings of Muslims in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In all of these cases, terrorists attacked the United States because they felt that we were fighting unjust wars against Muslims or maintaining an unnecessary military presence in their countries. Did we need to station troops in Saudi Arabia, even though we knew our bases there were wildly unpopular with Saudis? No: George W. Bush very quietly pulled them out in 2003. Many of them went to Kuwait, where there was actual public support for their presence as protection against Saddam.
After 9/11 pretty much the entire world was on America's side, and applauded our invasion of Afghanistan. But W. blew all that good will, first by letting bin Laden escape at Tora Bora through incompetent management of the initial phases of the war there, and then by being duped by Iranian agents like Ahmad Chalabi and the infamous Curveball, who gave Bush phony stories of WMDs in Iraq.
The Iranians manipulated the Bush administration into invading Iraq, thereby eliminating their greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, and saddling the United States with two simultaneous wars that will ultimately cost this nation $2 trillion. The Iraq war proved to be the greatest recruiting tool Al Qaeda ever had. And today Iraq is ruled by a Shiite regime friendly to Iran.
Bush and the Republicans let the Iranians lead them around by the nose. Bush should have finished bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 instead of immediately distracting himself with Iraq and letting bin Laden escape to live in luxury with his wives outside Abottabad in Pakistan.
We should have got in, got 'er done, and got out, instead of letting the Afghan war drag out into the longest war in the history of this nation. It should have been obvious from the get-go that a long war is unwinnable: the Soviet Union's 10-year long invasion of Afghanistan was probably the greatest contributor to its breakdown.
Had we not invaded Iraq in 2003 terrorist attacks in the US, Spain, Britain -- and Boston -- would never have occurred. Thousands of American military personnel would not have died. Hundreds of thousands would not have suffered horrible mutilations and PTSD.
Had we pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia after clobbering Saddam in 1991 bin Laden would not have attacked us on 9/11.
If we had not been caught up in Afghanistan and Iraq the North Koreans might not have dared develop nuclear weapons because the wars so severely limited America's options. Indeed, without Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech and invasion of Iraq, it's quite possible that the North Koreans and the Iranians would not have felt they were going to be invaded next, and wouldn't have felt an urgent need to go nuclear.
Again and again, in their desire to appear strong and resolute and to project power into places where we were simply not wanted or were not specifically needed for our long-term goals, Republicans have only caused foreigners to needlessly hate this country. By frittering away trillions of dollars on pointless and very public wars against "terrorism," Republicans have elevated terrorist criminals like bin Laden to Muslim war heroes and martyrs.
If we weren't fighting giant wars killing lots of Muslims, Middle Eastern governments might find it a lot easier to cooperate with us on catching terrorists who have killed far more Muslims than they have Americans. The NSA, CIA and the FBI should be quietly hunting down these dogs, capturing them with as little "collateral damage" as possible. Then we should very publicly try them like the spineless murderers they are. But when American conservatives dignify these criminals as "jihadis" -- a derogatory term in the minds of Fox News viewers, but a badge of honor to Muslims -- they are only falling into the terrorists' propaganda trap.
So to answer Graham's question: after Obama's speech the Iranians are probably thinking, "Uh, oh... Looks like the bull isn't going to be lead around by the nose anymore."
Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized President Obama’s vision for winding down the war on terrorism, using talk show appearances to accuse him of misunderstanding the threat in a way that will embolden unfriendly nations.Republicans haven't learned one damned thing in the last 22 years: they are still being duped by the Iranians and the terrorists. What motivated bin Laden to blow up American embassies and fly planes into American buildings? The massively unpopular presence of US military forces in Saudi Arabia, left there after the 1991 Gulf War, which ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
“We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “What do you think the Iranians are thinking? At the end of the day, this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine.”
What motivated the Tsarnaev brothers to bomb the Boston Marathon? The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What motivated the underwear bomber? A desire for religious jihad to protest the continued killings of Muslims in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In all of these cases, terrorists attacked the United States because they felt that we were fighting unjust wars against Muslims or maintaining an unnecessary military presence in their countries. Did we need to station troops in Saudi Arabia, even though we knew our bases there were wildly unpopular with Saudis? No: George W. Bush very quietly pulled them out in 2003. Many of them went to Kuwait, where there was actual public support for their presence as protection against Saddam.
After 9/11 pretty much the entire world was on America's side, and applauded our invasion of Afghanistan. But W. blew all that good will, first by letting bin Laden escape at Tora Bora through incompetent management of the initial phases of the war there, and then by being duped by Iranian agents like Ahmad Chalabi and the infamous Curveball, who gave Bush phony stories of WMDs in Iraq.
The Iranians manipulated the Bush administration into invading Iraq, thereby eliminating their greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, and saddling the United States with two simultaneous wars that will ultimately cost this nation $2 trillion. The Iraq war proved to be the greatest recruiting tool Al Qaeda ever had. And today Iraq is ruled by a Shiite regime friendly to Iran.
Bush and the Republicans let the Iranians lead them around by the nose. Bush should have finished bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 instead of immediately distracting himself with Iraq and letting bin Laden escape to live in luxury with his wives outside Abottabad in Pakistan.
We should have got in, got 'er done, and got out, instead of letting the Afghan war drag out into the longest war in the history of this nation. It should have been obvious from the get-go that a long war is unwinnable: the Soviet Union's 10-year long invasion of Afghanistan was probably the greatest contributor to its breakdown.
Had we not invaded Iraq in 2003 terrorist attacks in the US, Spain, Britain -- and Boston -- would never have occurred. Thousands of American military personnel would not have died. Hundreds of thousands would not have suffered horrible mutilations and PTSD.
Had we pulled our troops out of Saudi Arabia after clobbering Saddam in 1991 bin Laden would not have attacked us on 9/11.
If we had not been caught up in Afghanistan and Iraq the North Koreans might not have dared develop nuclear weapons because the wars so severely limited America's options. Indeed, without Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech and invasion of Iraq, it's quite possible that the North Koreans and the Iranians would not have felt they were going to be invaded next, and wouldn't have felt an urgent need to go nuclear.
Again and again, in their desire to appear strong and resolute and to project power into places where we were simply not wanted or were not specifically needed for our long-term goals, Republicans have only caused foreigners to needlessly hate this country. By frittering away trillions of dollars on pointless and very public wars against "terrorism," Republicans have elevated terrorist criminals like bin Laden to Muslim war heroes and martyrs.
If we weren't fighting giant wars killing lots of Muslims, Middle Eastern governments might find it a lot easier to cooperate with us on catching terrorists who have killed far more Muslims than they have Americans. The NSA, CIA and the FBI should be quietly hunting down these dogs, capturing them with as little "collateral damage" as possible. Then we should very publicly try them like the spineless murderers they are. But when American conservatives dignify these criminals as "jihadis" -- a derogatory term in the minds of Fox News viewers, but a badge of honor to Muslims -- they are only falling into the terrorists' propaganda trap.
So to answer Graham's question: after Obama's speech the Iranians are probably thinking, "Uh, oh... Looks like the bull isn't going to be lead around by the nose anymore."
Adultery Schmultery
I guess adultery is OK now:)
Pat Robertson, the network's 83-year-old founder, was not condoning adultery when he answered a viewer's quesion on "The 700 Club" this week, the network said.
The viewer said she was having difficulty forgiving her husband for cheating. Robertson said the “secret” was to “stop talking about the cheating. He cheated on you. Well, he’s a man. OK.”
Robertson went on to suggest the woman focus on why she had married her husband and whether he provided for her needs and those of their children, adding, “Is he handsome? Start focusing on these things and essentially fall in love all over again.”
“Males have a tendency to wander a little bit. And what you want to do is make a home so wonderful he doesn’t want to wander.”
Pat Robertson, the network's 83-year-old founder, was not condoning adultery when he answered a viewer's quesion on "The 700 Club" this week, the network said.
The viewer said she was having difficulty forgiving her husband for cheating. Robertson said the “secret” was to “stop talking about the cheating. He cheated on you. Well, he’s a man. OK.”
Robertson went on to suggest the woman focus on why she had married her husband and whether he provided for her needs and those of their children, adding, “Is he handsome? Start focusing on these things and essentially fall in love all over again.”
“Males have a tendency to wander a little bit. And what you want to do is make a home so wonderful he doesn’t want to wander.”
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Oh Really?
Meet the group the IRS actually denied: Democrats!
In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan status apparently disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”
In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan status apparently disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”
How Far Should They Go?
A recent piece in the New York Times echoes what I said yesterday.
With the House set on Friday to convene the first of its hearings into the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, the lessons learned from the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, which cost Republicans in elections in 1998, have been on display in recent days. Republicans took obvious pains to balance their investigatory zeal with a promise to stay committed to a legislative agenda.
“Our job is to legislate, and we’re trying to legislate things that will help create jobs in our country,” Mr. Boehner said. “But we also have a responsibility, under the Constitution, to provide oversight of the executive branch of government.”
It's going to be interesting to see if they can control themselves.
With the House set on Friday to convene the first of its hearings into the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, the lessons learned from the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, which cost Republicans in elections in 1998, have been on display in recent days. Republicans took obvious pains to balance their investigatory zeal with a promise to stay committed to a legislative agenda.
“Our job is to legislate, and we’re trying to legislate things that will help create jobs in our country,” Mr. Boehner said. “But we also have a responsibility, under the Constitution, to provide oversight of the executive branch of government.”
It's going to be interesting to see if they can control themselves.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Scandals Redux
Now that all the dust has settled down from the "big" three scandals things have pretty much played out like I predicted. Conservatives don't really give a shit about the AP phone tapping flap because they hate the media anyway. Hasn't the media always been comprised of traitors and always been a threat to national security? Yes. Yes they have.So no mas on the AP shizzle.
And the IRS flap was greeted by people with a resounding ho hum. The president's approval rating has remained about the same...a little lower of a little higher depending on which outfit you are looking at. It's pretty clear at this point that the IRS was put in a really crappy position by Citizen's United and then went off the rails after that. Had Citizen's not turned out the way it did, the targeting of Tea Party groups would likely have not happened as there would not have been as much pressure to root out the tax dodgers (side note: I'll have post about Apple coming in the next few days).
Benghazi, of course, is still going strong inside the bubble even with people outside of the bubble not really caring about it all. Clearly, this is all the Right has to stop a Hillary Clinton presidency so they are getting an early jump. It continues to amaze me how tone deaf conservatives are on the priorities of voters. This simple fact was summer up recently in my Honors Civics class when students in all three blocks wondered why DC was talking so much about scandals and not actually governing. Even the libertarian kids find the continued personal attacks on the president and Democrats to be counter productive and have wondered to me many times if Republicans simply want to keep losing election after election.
Voters want to see action on immigration, the budget, and jobs. Some Republicans are getting this message and don't want to see a repeat of 1998. But far too many want to "win." That's why I say, keep it up, dudes! We'll take back a few more seats in the House and hold the Senate in 2014 followed by a Hillary Clinton presidency and full control of both houses in 2016 at this rate.
And the IRS flap was greeted by people with a resounding ho hum. The president's approval rating has remained about the same...a little lower of a little higher depending on which outfit you are looking at. It's pretty clear at this point that the IRS was put in a really crappy position by Citizen's United and then went off the rails after that. Had Citizen's not turned out the way it did, the targeting of Tea Party groups would likely have not happened as there would not have been as much pressure to root out the tax dodgers (side note: I'll have post about Apple coming in the next few days).
Benghazi, of course, is still going strong inside the bubble even with people outside of the bubble not really caring about it all. Clearly, this is all the Right has to stop a Hillary Clinton presidency so they are getting an early jump. It continues to amaze me how tone deaf conservatives are on the priorities of voters. This simple fact was summer up recently in my Honors Civics class when students in all three blocks wondered why DC was talking so much about scandals and not actually governing. Even the libertarian kids find the continued personal attacks on the president and Democrats to be counter productive and have wondered to me many times if Republicans simply want to keep losing election after election.
Voters want to see action on immigration, the budget, and jobs. Some Republicans are getting this message and don't want to see a repeat of 1998. But far too many want to "win." That's why I say, keep it up, dudes! We'll take back a few more seats in the House and hold the Senate in 2014 followed by a Hillary Clinton presidency and full control of both houses in 2016 at this rate.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Is It Time For Graphene?
I ran across this piece a few weeks ago and thought it time to share it as I'm still not really in the mood to talk about politics all that much.
Graphene is the thinnest material in the world, basically a sheet or layer of carbon only one atom in thickness, which has led it to be described as the world's first two-dimensional material. It's transparent, yet it's a superb conductor of heat and electricity. It's stretchy and flexible, yet it's harder than a diamond and hundreds of times stronger than steel. And it's so cheap and easy to make that a smart high school student probably could create a sample of graphene.
Well, that's cool but what could it do?
Among the few ideas being suggested for potential uses of graphene are flexible electronics, such as a cellphone that you could fold or roll up into a tube or a piece of clothing or a even a potato chip bag that could function as a digital device. Rust-proof metal coatings, medical sensors, seawater desalination, even a potential replacement for silicon in semiconductors are among the ideas being considered as graphene applications.
Wow. A cellphone you could roll up....crazy!
There is no doubt in my mind that, in the next 25 years, we are going to see some of the most amazing and awe inspiring innovations the world has ever seen.
Graphene is the thinnest material in the world, basically a sheet or layer of carbon only one atom in thickness, which has led it to be described as the world's first two-dimensional material. It's transparent, yet it's a superb conductor of heat and electricity. It's stretchy and flexible, yet it's harder than a diamond and hundreds of times stronger than steel. And it's so cheap and easy to make that a smart high school student probably could create a sample of graphene.
Well, that's cool but what could it do?
Among the few ideas being suggested for potential uses of graphene are flexible electronics, such as a cellphone that you could fold or roll up into a tube or a piece of clothing or a even a potato chip bag that could function as a digital device. Rust-proof metal coatings, medical sensors, seawater desalination, even a potential replacement for silicon in semiconductors are among the ideas being considered as graphene applications.
Wow. A cellphone you could roll up....crazy!
There is no doubt in my mind that, in the next 25 years, we are going to see some of the most amazing and awe inspiring innovations the world has ever seen.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Was the IRS Scandal Just "Stop and Frisk" for Rich White Guys?
The two-month-long Stop and Frisk trial in New York is winding down:
Plaintiffs in Floyd v. City of New York claim the New York Police Department, its supervisors and its union pressured police officers to stop, question and frisk hundreds of thousands of people each year, even establishing quotas. They argue that 88 percent of the stops involved blacks and Hispanics, mostly men, and were in fact a form of racial profiling.This idea of profiling is not limited to stopping black and Hispanic men on the street. Conservatives like Ann Coulter think random searches of airline passengers are ludicrous. They're convinced we should stop wasting time searching random passengers and concentrate on ethnic profiling, which means going after any young men who look vaguely "Muslim," whatever that is.
So in the conservative mind, the New York cops were just doing their jobs: catching the bad guys.
It's therefore ironic that conservatives are outraged. The IRS was just conducting their own form of profiling. The people in the Cincinnati determinations office claim they had no partisan motivations whatsoever. The claim is plausible. They were overworked and doing a terribly boring job that no one in the IRS wants to do. Naturally they're going to take some shortcuts.
Just like beat cops "know" that blacks with droopy pants and Hispanics with loads of tats are carrying illegal drugs and guns, isn't it completely possible that IRS employees think they "know" that angry white conservatives constantly screaming about taxes are trying to cheat the IRS? Their profiling may have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with prior experience.
Think about it. If it was your job to ferret out non-profit tax cheats and you saw an application from a liberal group clamoring to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and then one from a Tea Party group that's bitching mightily about taxes, which one do you think is more likely to be a tax-evasion scam for wealthy billionaires spreading anonymous propaganda to get their guys elected?
Non-profit social welfare groups are supposed to promote social welfare issues, not get involved with electoral races. But many of these conservative groups, including the American Future Fund and the Government Integrity Fund, explicitly stated on their IRS applications that they would not spend money politics and then immediately ran political ads in favor of specific candidates. Is it any surprise that the IRS would then view similar groups with suspicion?
The IRS's singling out of "Tea Party" and "9/12" named organizations was just as wrong as the actions of cops who harass men on the street based on their skin color. But so far the IRS case appears to be nothing more than misguided profiling, a concept that conservatives wholeheartedly endorse when applied to Muslims, blacks and Latinos.
So, when Ann Coulter starts expressing sympathy for the thousands of minority men minding their own business getting hassled, beat up and jailed by cops trying to fill out a quota, I'll start expressing sympathy for all those poor billionaires and corporations who were subjected to filling out more forms and answering more questions in order to anonymously buy tax-free TV ads for their political minions.
What We Do
"We had to pull a car off a teacher and she had three little kids underneath her," one first responder, in tears, told KFOR. "Good job, teach."
"I was on top of six kids," one sixth grade teacher said, working her way across the rubble. "I was lying on top. All of mine are OK."
Teachers helped tear through several feet of rubble to rescue sobbing students, some of them injured.
"I was on top of six kids," one sixth grade teacher said, working her way across the rubble. "I was lying on top. All of mine are OK."
Teachers helped tear through several feet of rubble to rescue sobbing students, some of them injured.
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