Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
Surprised
Flying under the radar of nearly everyone was the recent SCOTUS ruling on Arlington vs. FCC. The essential question of the case was this: if the law is ambiguous, who gets to interpret it? My local paper details why this ruling was nothing short of stunning.
The divisions within the court defied the usual ideological predictions. In a powerful opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s majority ruled that even when an agency is deciding on the scope of its own authority, it has the power to interpret ambiguities in the law. Scalia was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas.
Are you FUCKING kidding me? Clarence Fucking Thomas is saying that a government agency has the power to interpret ambiguities in the law? How can this be?
For almost three decades, the court has ruled that when Congress gives a federal agency the power to issue regulations, that agency is usually authorized to interpret ambiguities in the original legislation. For example, does the word “source” in the Clean Air Act mean each smokestack in a plant or the entire plant? The court has ruled that the agency is entitled to interpret such ambiguities as long as its interpretation is reasonable. The idea is that by giving rulemaking authority to agencies, Congress implicitly delegated interpretive power to them as well. The court also has noted that, compared with the courts, the agencies are politically accountable and have technical expertise.
Scalia contended that Roberts was quite wrong to say that courts could identify a separate category of cases — those involving the scope of an agency’s authority. The question is always whether the agency is acting within the bounds set by Congress. “There is no principled basis for carving out some arbitrary subset of cases,” Scalia wrote. Forcing lower courts to draw ad hoc lines would make the law unpredictable and produce chaos. Scalia also insisted that the danger of agency overreaching is to be avoided, not by an arbitrary carve-out, but by requiring agencies to respect congressional limits on their authority.
So, the government agencies must be watched by Congress, not the courts. This means that the Congress has to start doing its fucking job and actually govern which makes me very, very happy.
The divisions within the court defied the usual ideological predictions. In a powerful opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s majority ruled that even when an agency is deciding on the scope of its own authority, it has the power to interpret ambiguities in the law. Scalia was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas.
Are you FUCKING kidding me? Clarence Fucking Thomas is saying that a government agency has the power to interpret ambiguities in the law? How can this be?
For almost three decades, the court has ruled that when Congress gives a federal agency the power to issue regulations, that agency is usually authorized to interpret ambiguities in the original legislation. For example, does the word “source” in the Clean Air Act mean each smokestack in a plant or the entire plant? The court has ruled that the agency is entitled to interpret such ambiguities as long as its interpretation is reasonable. The idea is that by giving rulemaking authority to agencies, Congress implicitly delegated interpretive power to them as well. The court also has noted that, compared with the courts, the agencies are politically accountable and have technical expertise.
Scalia contended that Roberts was quite wrong to say that courts could identify a separate category of cases — those involving the scope of an agency’s authority. The question is always whether the agency is acting within the bounds set by Congress. “There is no principled basis for carving out some arbitrary subset of cases,” Scalia wrote. Forcing lower courts to draw ad hoc lines would make the law unpredictable and produce chaos. Scalia also insisted that the danger of agency overreaching is to be avoided, not by an arbitrary carve-out, but by requiring agencies to respect congressional limits on their authority.
So, the government agencies must be watched by Congress, not the courts. This means that the Congress has to start doing its fucking job and actually govern which makes me very, very happy.
Sunday, June 09, 2013
Saturday, June 08, 2013
Friday, June 07, 2013
The Question They Can't Answer
Simple question, via Salon.com...why are there no libertarian countries?
My answer has always been this: the same reason why socialist fantasies never work in reality is the same reason why libertarian fantasies never work in reality...people. They really suck. If the state planned everything, they'd have too much power and corrupt people would be naturally drawn to it. If the state planned nothing and let the free market just sort everything out, the corrupt people would get away with everything they wanted.
Michael Lind, the writer of the piece, makes a few interesting points on this subject.
When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling. But this isn’t an adequate response.
Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.
Yet they can't do it. It's been my experience that these same people are often "based in science and logic" and require "hard evidence" before they can justify something. Thus, it's quite odd that they continually perpetuate this myth that a libertarian society would be the best. Where is the proof?
While the liberal welfare-state left, with its Scandinavian role models, remains a vital force in world politics, the pro-communist left has been discredited by the failure of the Marxist-Leninist countries it held up as imperfect but genuine models. Libertarians have often proclaimed that the economic failure of Marxism-Leninism discredits not only all forms of socialism but also moderate social-democratic liberalism.
But think about this for a moment. If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world? Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world.
Exactly right and there's a reason for that perfectly summed up in one word: anarchy.
My answer has always been this: the same reason why socialist fantasies never work in reality is the same reason why libertarian fantasies never work in reality...people. They really suck. If the state planned everything, they'd have too much power and corrupt people would be naturally drawn to it. If the state planned nothing and let the free market just sort everything out, the corrupt people would get away with everything they wanted.
Michael Lind, the writer of the piece, makes a few interesting points on this subject.
When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling. But this isn’t an adequate response.
Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.
Yet they can't do it. It's been my experience that these same people are often "based in science and logic" and require "hard evidence" before they can justify something. Thus, it's quite odd that they continually perpetuate this myth that a libertarian society would be the best. Where is the proof?
While the liberal welfare-state left, with its Scandinavian role models, remains a vital force in world politics, the pro-communist left has been discredited by the failure of the Marxist-Leninist countries it held up as imperfect but genuine models. Libertarians have often proclaimed that the economic failure of Marxism-Leninism discredits not only all forms of socialism but also moderate social-democratic liberalism.
But think about this for a moment. If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world? Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world.
Exactly right and there's a reason for that perfectly summed up in one word: anarchy.
Thursday, June 06, 2013
An Unwarranted (But Not Warrantless) Invasion of Privacy
The Guardian reports that the NSA has been collecting data on all phone calls placed through Verizon:
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.Based on the timing this appears to be in response to the Boston Marathon bombings, which took place on April 15th. At that time it wasn't clear whether the Tsarnaevs were acting alone. Given that, it's likely that all carriers are providing the NSA this data; the other court orders simply haven't been leaked yet.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
While this total surveillance of everyone all the time is ethically and morally wrong, it isn't illegal, thanks to the Patriot Act that the Bush administration rammed through Congress. That wasn't good enough for George W. Bush, who broke the law and simply issued an executive order for the NSA to conduct domestic surveillance of Americans without warrants from FISA.
People like Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have long been warning against this kind of government surveillance, and they opposed the Bush administration when after 9/11 Republicans used the fear of terrorism to arrogate themselves unlimited surveillance powers.
Republicans are sure to pile on Obama with this. Which is totally ridiculous, because the NSA is acting completely within the laws that Republicans crammed down our throats. Republicans did this, in part, because men like Karl Rove had fooled themselves into thinking that they would have a permanent Republican majority and could never be dislodged from power again. Presidents, when they're Republicans, should have unlimited executive power, but when Democrats exercise that exact same latitude it's an abomination.
If Mitt Romney's NSA had been caught doing this Republicans would be falling over themselves telling us how absolutely necessary this was to protect ourselves from the likes of the Tsarnaev brothers and another Boston bombing. They would be saying, "better safe than sorry," and "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette."
But even at their worst, the Democrats are still bloody amateurs at privacy invasion compared to the professional Republican lawbreakers who never bothered with FISA in the first place.
Truly Disgusting
In looking at all the recent criticism of President Obama, this travesty is noticeably absent and I'd like to know why. The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces and, on his watch, sexual assaults have gone up by 30 percent. Why?
It's truly disgusting to me on a number of levels. The president claims to be a huge supporter of women's rights but he can hardly claim that after 26,000 incidents of unwanted sexual contact. 26,000....are you fucking kidding me?!? I'd say that this is, hands down, his biggest mistake since he took office. Grade=F.
The media also pisses me off here because they have largely ignored this story and have focused instead on the "scandals" that will generate the most viewers (see: retired old people who have nothing better to do than foam at the mouth about Blackie McBlackerson). Conservatives are also full of crap on this one because they'd rather leave the sacred cow of the military alone not to mention the fact that they probably think this kind of assault is somehow legitimate or that the women were somehow asking for it.
It's one giant shit show from top to bottom with most Americans not really caring at all which, in the final analysis, is truly the most despicable part of all of this.
It's truly disgusting to me on a number of levels. The president claims to be a huge supporter of women's rights but he can hardly claim that after 26,000 incidents of unwanted sexual contact. 26,000....are you fucking kidding me?!? I'd say that this is, hands down, his biggest mistake since he took office. Grade=F.
The media also pisses me off here because they have largely ignored this story and have focused instead on the "scandals" that will generate the most viewers (see: retired old people who have nothing better to do than foam at the mouth about Blackie McBlackerson). Conservatives are also full of crap on this one because they'd rather leave the sacred cow of the military alone not to mention the fact that they probably think this kind of assault is somehow legitimate or that the women were somehow asking for it.
It's one giant shit show from top to bottom with most Americans not really caring at all which, in the final analysis, is truly the most despicable part of all of this.
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
"Misspoke" = "Accidentally Told the Truth"
A Dallas Tea Party activist has yet again made headlines by accidentally telling the truth. At a GOP event in May Ken Emanuelson said that "The Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-1 for Democrats."
He has since said he misspoke, and sought to explain his comments with the following:
I expressed a personal opinion about what the Republican Party “wants.” That was a mistake. I hold no position of authority within the Republican Party and it wasn’t my place to opine on behalf of the desires of the Republican Party.What I meant, and should have said, is that it is not, in my personal opinion, in the interests of the Republican Party to spend its own time and energy working to generally increase the number of Democratic voters at the polls, and at this point in time, nine of every ten African American voters cast their votes for the Democratic Party.
Even in his clarification, he's still saying that he thinks it's in the Republican Party's best interests to minimize the number of African Americans (who in his mind are all Democrats) at the polls. Republican efforts at reducing minority turnout have been fierce, with the scrubbing of blacks from voter rolls in Florida in 2000, the firings of US attorneys for failing to toe the political line, the harassment of voter registration groups like the League of Women Voters, and the passage of Republican-backed voter ID laws across the country that overwhelmingly disenfranchise minority and elderly voters.
You know, it doesn't really matter if it's this guy's personal opinion, if his personal opinion coincides with the personal opinions of all the other guys in his party, and is reflected in the political strategy and legislative actions of their party.
He just screwed up and by saying it out loud.
Bee Stung
Last week I wrote about the Scripps National Spelling Bee, mainly whining that they rely on too many foreign words that are transliterated incorrectly. Well, the organizers of the Bee were stung again.
This time around a lot of other people have been complaining about the Bee spelling a word wrong. The winning word in the Bee was knaidel, a Yiddish word for a type of dumpling. The problem is, that's not the official transliteration of the word. It should be kneydl, according to YIVO, the Yiddish Scientific Institute.
The knaidel spelling came about because some guy decided he'd transliterate it according to "English pronunciation rules." The problem with this idea is that English has multiple ways of spelling the same sound, or phoneme.
That means it could have just as easily been transliterated as knaidle, knaidl, knadel, knadle, knaydel, knaydle, knaydl, kneydel, kneydl, kneidl, kneighdl, kneighdel, kneighdle. Or knödel, which is the spelling of the word in German, where the word comes from. Or ×§× ×™×™×“×œ, which is the actual Yiddish spelling in the Hebrew alphabet [1]. (Man, you cannot believe what a pain in the neck it was to copy and paste that single word!)
The Bee defends itself by saying their official dictionary spells it this way. But if Arvind Mahankali had spelled it correctly, with the official YIVO transliteration or the actual Yiddish spelling, would the Bee have ruled him wrong?
This brings up the most basic question about dictionaries, which linguists and lexicographers still debate: should dictionaries reflect how people use, pronounce and spell words, or should they dictate proper usage?
These two camps are the descriptivists and the prescriptivists. Who's right?
In my heart I want to be a prescriptivist: there's a right spelling, there's a right definition, there's a right pronunciation. But in my head I know that's nonsense: a century ago those things were completely different, and in another century they'll have changed again. And even today they're not the same in Boston, Atlanta, LA, London or Canberra. The reality is that dictionaries can only describe currently accepted usage in one place, which will only change as the demands on language change.
So the next time someone corrects your pronunciation or spelling of a word, just tell them, "Stuff it! I'm on the bleeding edge of linguistic evolution, old man!"
Notes
[1] Yiddish itself is an exercise in spelling weirdness. It is a dialect of German spoken by European Jews, but is written from right to left and spelled with the Hebrew alphabet. Its vocabulary is heavily influenced by Hebrew and and several eastern European languages.
The problem is that Hebrew typically doesn't bother to put vowels in their words (neither does Arabic), because they're basically unneeded. When they do feel the need (in children's books, for example), Hebrew writers put diacritical marks or "points" on the consonants to indicate the vowels. Hebrew only has five vowels.
But European languages have many more vowels: modern German has 17 vowels, while modern English has between 11 and 14 vowels depending on dialect (American, British and Australian speakers not only use different pronunciations for the same words, Australians have a wider palette of sounds to choose from).
That means Yiddish had to invent new ways of representing sounds that didn't exist in Hebrew.
This time around a lot of other people have been complaining about the Bee spelling a word wrong. The winning word in the Bee was knaidel, a Yiddish word for a type of dumpling. The problem is, that's not the official transliteration of the word. It should be kneydl, according to YIVO, the Yiddish Scientific Institute.
The knaidel spelling came about because some guy decided he'd transliterate it according to "English pronunciation rules." The problem with this idea is that English has multiple ways of spelling the same sound, or phoneme.
That means it could have just as easily been transliterated as knaidle, knaidl, knadel, knadle, knaydel, knaydle, knaydl, kneydel, kneydl, kneidl, kneighdl, kneighdel, kneighdle. Or knödel, which is the spelling of the word in German, where the word comes from. Or ×§× ×™×™×“×œ, which is the actual Yiddish spelling in the Hebrew alphabet [1]. (Man, you cannot believe what a pain in the neck it was to copy and paste that single word!)
The Bee defends itself by saying their official dictionary spells it this way. But if Arvind Mahankali had spelled it correctly, with the official YIVO transliteration or the actual Yiddish spelling, would the Bee have ruled him wrong?
This brings up the most basic question about dictionaries, which linguists and lexicographers still debate: should dictionaries reflect how people use, pronounce and spell words, or should they dictate proper usage?
These two camps are the descriptivists and the prescriptivists. Who's right?
In my heart I want to be a prescriptivist: there's a right spelling, there's a right definition, there's a right pronunciation. But in my head I know that's nonsense: a century ago those things were completely different, and in another century they'll have changed again. And even today they're not the same in Boston, Atlanta, LA, London or Canberra. The reality is that dictionaries can only describe currently accepted usage in one place, which will only change as the demands on language change.
So the next time someone corrects your pronunciation or spelling of a word, just tell them, "Stuff it! I'm on the bleeding edge of linguistic evolution, old man!"
Notes
[1] Yiddish itself is an exercise in spelling weirdness. It is a dialect of German spoken by European Jews, but is written from right to left and spelled with the Hebrew alphabet. Its vocabulary is heavily influenced by Hebrew and and several eastern European languages.
The problem is that Hebrew typically doesn't bother to put vowels in their words (neither does Arabic), because they're basically unneeded. When they do feel the need (in children's books, for example), Hebrew writers put diacritical marks or "points" on the consonants to indicate the vowels. Hebrew only has five vowels.
But European languages have many more vowels: modern German has 17 vowels, while modern English has between 11 and 14 vowels depending on dialect (American, British and Australian speakers not only use different pronunciations for the same words, Australians have a wider palette of sounds to choose from).
That means Yiddish had to invent new ways of representing sounds that didn't exist in Hebrew.
It's About Time
A shout out today to Jim McDermott (D-WA) for finally asking why the tea party groups, who supposedly loathe government handouts, wanted to be subsidized in the first place.
“But as I listen to this discussion, I’d like to remind everyone what we are talking about here. None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not the American taxpayers would subsidize your work. We are talking about a tax break”.
Recall that the tea party groups in question were applying to become tax exempt 501(c)4 groups, also known as social welfare organizations. McDermott noted the purpose of such groups was to advance the common good and general welfare a community. Political organizations, on the other hand, are categorized under section 527 of the federal tax code.
“Each of your groups is highly political”, McDermott said. “From opposing the President’s healthcare reform, to abortion restrictions, to gay marriage, you’re all entrenched in some of the most controversial political issues in this country – and with your applications you are asking the American public to pay for that work. Many of you host and endorse candidates. The line between permitted political activity and non-permitted political activity can be very fine, and it’s important that tax payers know which side you fall on”.
Here's the video.
“But as I listen to this discussion, I’d like to remind everyone what we are talking about here. None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not the American taxpayers would subsidize your work. We are talking about a tax break”.
Recall that the tea party groups in question were applying to become tax exempt 501(c)4 groups, also known as social welfare organizations. McDermott noted the purpose of such groups was to advance the common good and general welfare a community. Political organizations, on the other hand, are categorized under section 527 of the federal tax code.
“Each of your groups is highly political”, McDermott said. “From opposing the President’s healthcare reform, to abortion restrictions, to gay marriage, you’re all entrenched in some of the most controversial political issues in this country – and with your applications you are asking the American public to pay for that work. Many of you host and endorse candidates. The line between permitted political activity and non-permitted political activity can be very fine, and it’s important that tax payers know which side you fall on”.
Here's the video.
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
The Pro-Life Thing to Do
Every time there's a natural disaster you get people asking questions like, "Why do people live in Twister-Prone Oklahoma?" It's kind of ironic because a lot of the people asking those questions live in places like California along the San Andreas Fault, or in the hills where mudslides and wildfires are an annual event. Or in Florida or Louisiana, which get hammered by hurricanes. Or in North Dakota, parts of which are constantly inundated by floods. Or in Wyoming, the state with the highest suicide rate. Or in Flint, or Detroit, or New Orleans, or St. Louis, the cities with the highest murder rates in the country.
The fact is, people become complacent about risks they face every day. They have to, otherwise they'd go crazy from fear. Thus, we obsess about the possibility of dying in a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or a crazed gunman, when the fact of the matter is we're much more likely to die in car accident, be shot by a husband, or even hit by lightning.
The question isn't why people live in places that are subject to natural disasters. The answer to that is easy: they have to. No, the real question is why people don't take even the simplest and logical precautions to protect themselves from those disasters.
Moore, Oklahoma, has been hit by four massive tornadoes in recent years: once in 1998, again in 2003 and twice now in 2013. Yet schools don't have underground basements or above-ground tornado shelters. The kids just huddle in the hallways, with only the bodies of their teachers to protect them. As a result seven children died at Plaza Towers elementary school.
Don't the people of Oklahoma care enough about their children to provide shelter for them? These people live in Tornado Alley, damn it. They know the risks better than anyone. But what did the Oklahoma legislature concern itself with in the year following the 2009 tornado in Moore? Forcing women to get invasive ultrasounds and suffer through a grotesque lecture before getting an abortion.
Why do lawmakers in Oklahoma care more about forcing women to gestate unwanted fetuses than protecting living, breathing, talking children whose parents love them dearly?
The sticking point, they always claim, is the money. "Where, oh where, could we possibly get the money to pay for tornado shelters for our children?"
The answer's pretty simple. In the single month of March, 2013, Oklahoma produced nearly 9 million barrels of oil. Production had been averaging around 7 million bbl a month, but it's been growing steadily. At today's price of around $93 a barrel, that's worth almost a billion dollars a month.
Oklahoma should immediately begin issuing "Tornado" bonds to finance construction of tornado shelters for schools. They should also change housing codes to require shelters for all new homes and apartments, improve construction standards to make houses withstand high winds better, and institute a program to provide low-interest loans to people who wish to build tornado shelters for existing homes (these can be had for a few thousand dollars).
To pay for those bonds they should increase their Gross Production Tax rate on natural gas and oil, which is currently 7% per barrel. In comparison, the tax rate on gas in Texas is 7.5%, 8% in Alabama, 8% in Kansas, 5% in North Dakota, 8% in California, etc.
Alaska has an incredibly complex tax structure, which appears to be 25 to 50% depending on the oil field, plus a surcharge when the price of oil is greater than $40/barrel, plus a conservation surcharge of 4%, plus an additional 1% if the oil spill fund contains less than $50 million.
What does Alaska use all that money for? They cut $2,000 checks to residents.
And who was the conservative Republican governor behind all that? Why, none other than Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president. She increased taxes on oil companies when the state already had a large surplus. She also demanded an extra $1,200 check be cut to every Alaskan just two months before McCain selected her.
If Sarah Palin can get away with a massive program to redistribute wealth from oil companies -- and the rest of the country -- to Alaskans, I don't think the nation or the oil companies would begrudge Oklahomans a minor increase in oil taxes to protect the lives of their children safe from deadly natural disasters.
It's the pro-life thing to do.
The fact is, people become complacent about risks they face every day. They have to, otherwise they'd go crazy from fear. Thus, we obsess about the possibility of dying in a plane crash, a terrorist attack, or a crazed gunman, when the fact of the matter is we're much more likely to die in car accident, be shot by a husband, or even hit by lightning.
The question isn't why people live in places that are subject to natural disasters. The answer to that is easy: they have to. No, the real question is why people don't take even the simplest and logical precautions to protect themselves from those disasters.
Moore, Oklahoma, has been hit by four massive tornadoes in recent years: once in 1998, again in 2003 and twice now in 2013. Yet schools don't have underground basements or above-ground tornado shelters. The kids just huddle in the hallways, with only the bodies of their teachers to protect them. As a result seven children died at Plaza Towers elementary school.
Don't the people of Oklahoma care enough about their children to provide shelter for them? These people live in Tornado Alley, damn it. They know the risks better than anyone. But what did the Oklahoma legislature concern itself with in the year following the 2009 tornado in Moore? Forcing women to get invasive ultrasounds and suffer through a grotesque lecture before getting an abortion.
Why do lawmakers in Oklahoma care more about forcing women to gestate unwanted fetuses than protecting living, breathing, talking children whose parents love them dearly?
The sticking point, they always claim, is the money. "Where, oh where, could we possibly get the money to pay for tornado shelters for our children?"
The answer's pretty simple. In the single month of March, 2013, Oklahoma produced nearly 9 million barrels of oil. Production had been averaging around 7 million bbl a month, but it's been growing steadily. At today's price of around $93 a barrel, that's worth almost a billion dollars a month.
Oklahoma should immediately begin issuing "Tornado" bonds to finance construction of tornado shelters for schools. They should also change housing codes to require shelters for all new homes and apartments, improve construction standards to make houses withstand high winds better, and institute a program to provide low-interest loans to people who wish to build tornado shelters for existing homes (these can be had for a few thousand dollars).
To pay for those bonds they should increase their Gross Production Tax rate on natural gas and oil, which is currently 7% per barrel. In comparison, the tax rate on gas in Texas is 7.5%, 8% in Alabama, 8% in Kansas, 5% in North Dakota, 8% in California, etc.
Alaska has an incredibly complex tax structure, which appears to be 25 to 50% depending on the oil field, plus a surcharge when the price of oil is greater than $40/barrel, plus a conservation surcharge of 4%, plus an additional 1% if the oil spill fund contains less than $50 million.
What does Alaska use all that money for? They cut $2,000 checks to residents.
And who was the conservative Republican governor behind all that? Why, none other than Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for vice president. She increased taxes on oil companies when the state already had a large surplus. She also demanded an extra $1,200 check be cut to every Alaskan just two months before McCain selected her.
If Sarah Palin can get away with a massive program to redistribute wealth from oil companies -- and the rest of the country -- to Alaskans, I don't think the nation or the oil companies would begrudge Oklahomans a minor increase in oil taxes to protect the lives of their children safe from deadly natural disasters.
It's the pro-life thing to do.
Monday, June 03, 2013
And It Continues
Republicans just can't seem to stop talking about their views on women. They simply can't resist letting slip their true feelings on the place of women in our society.
“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science,” Erickson explained. “But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.”
“We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complimentary relationships in nuclear families, and it is tearing us apart,” he continued, adding that “reality showed” it was harmful for women to be the primary source of income in a family.
Fox News contributor Doug Schoen concluded the freak out by claiming all these so-called breadwinner moms “could undermine our social order.”
Wow. I guess they really don't want to hold on to the House in 2014. More amusing, though, is his doubling down.
Pro-science liberals seem to think basic nature and biology do not apply to Homo sapiens. Men can behave like women, women can behave like men, they can raise their kids, if they have them, in any way they see fit, and everything will turn out fine in the liberal fantasy world.
The only fantasy world being bandied about here is the one that Erickson thinks still exists. I'll never understand the perpetual "Golden Age" thinking trap in which the Right seems to be ensnared. They see any sort of change as a threat to a fantasy that never existed in in the first place.
“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science,” Erickson explained. “But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.”
“We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complimentary relationships in nuclear families, and it is tearing us apart,” he continued, adding that “reality showed” it was harmful for women to be the primary source of income in a family.
Fox News contributor Doug Schoen concluded the freak out by claiming all these so-called breadwinner moms “could undermine our social order.”
Wow. I guess they really don't want to hold on to the House in 2014. More amusing, though, is his doubling down.
Pro-science liberals seem to think basic nature and biology do not apply to Homo sapiens. Men can behave like women, women can behave like men, they can raise their kids, if they have them, in any way they see fit, and everything will turn out fine in the liberal fantasy world.
The only fantasy world being bandied about here is the one that Erickson thinks still exists. I'll never understand the perpetual "Golden Age" thinking trap in which the Right seems to be ensnared. They see any sort of change as a threat to a fantasy that never existed in in the first place.
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Facebook=Out
Talk to most kids these days and they'll tell you that Facebook is wayyyy out. Why should they be on the same social network as their parents? Instagram and Twitter rock the shizzle. I hear this around school all the time and it makes me feel even older than I already am...
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