Tuesday, October 22, 2013
On Stiglitz: Part Nine
The penultimate chapter in Joseph Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality illustrates how macroeconomic policy in this country is essentially made for the 1 percent because macroecomic policy, in a broad sense, affects distribution of income. Stiglitz notes that policymakers are not often aware of this and that's why we have the problems we have. People worked hard, studied hard and played by the rules but the best most can hope for in the last decade+ is just to get by. Worse, many were not even doing that as we have seen in earlier chapters in the book.
A basic rule of economics is that life involves tradeoffs. One alleged tradeoff is the balance between inflation and unemployment. If there is low unemployment, generally speaking, there is inflation because there are more people buying things. If there is high unemployment, inflation is low as there are less people fueling the economy. In some ways, this is exactly what the 1 percent (see: financial sector) want. They make more money if inflation is low so the bondholders interest is for the focus is on inflation, not unemployment. This is where the structural problems with our economy begin. According to Stiglitz, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, there is no such tradeoff.
Imagine, Stiglitz notes, if the focus were on unemployment instead. Finding that right number on the lower end (4%?, 5%?) of unemployment that still keeps inflation low is tricky but if you start from the other side (inflation), the policy that is made tends to benefit the least amount of people...those in the financial sector. If you start from the side of unemployment, or at the very least, look for a balance, you benefit more people and the macroeconomic policy of the country as a whole. This is why the Fed fell asleep in the collapse of 2008. They had no balance, Further, they thought the banks could take care of themselves and needed no oversight. When solutions to the crisis were presented, they focused on inflation (the interests of the bankers and the financial sector) not everyone else.
But the problem, as I have always said, was really with the regulations themselves. The obsessive focus on interest rates erroneously led to the Fed believing that they had some sort of magic "lever," as Stiglitz puts it, that can manipulate the economy.
Lower the interest rate and the economy expand; raise the interest rate and it slows down. And though there are times and circumstances in which the interest rate may have those effects, at other times the links are at beast weak and other instruments might have been more effective. For instance, in response to the real estate bubble , it would have made more sense to raise the down payment requirements for mortgages than to raise the interest rates; one didn't want to slow down productive investments, just to dampen the bubble. Such regulations were anathema to the Fed, with its religious devotion to the price system and the wonders of the market.
Exactly. We're talking about a massively rigid ideology here that sadly, to this day, has not been broken.
Getting back to unemployment, such a high level of joblessness doesn't simply hurt those who are unemployed. It also hurts the rest of us because a natural effect of this is lower wages. People entering the work force for the first time are forced to take a salary that they simply can't live on. Less money goes into the economy as consumer confidence and spending shrinks due to a lack of aggregate demand. The financial sector may enjoy this "labor market flexibility" but the rest of us do not. And it's clear that the economy has suffered due to these magnanimous gifts bestowed to bankers from our monetary policy. This policy, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, has been a disaster.
The Fed's low interest rate policy hadn't led to the resurgence of investment as it had hoped. It did encourage those who were planning investments to substitute cheap capital labor. Capital was, in effect, at a temporary artificially low price , and one might as well take advantage of an unusual situation. This reinforced distorted patterns of innovation that focused on saving labor at a time when it was increasingly in abundance. It is curious that at a time when unemployment among the unskilled is so high, grocery and drug stores are replacing checkout clerks with automatic machines. The Fed was making it more and more likely that, when recovery set in, it would be a jobless one.
My only gripe about this line of thought is that it really isn't a good thing to fight progress. This is the same complaint I have about the Right on issues such as energy, climate change, and education. Our nation has one direction: forward. If low skilled workers are losing their jobs to innovation, then it's time that we retrain them and give them the skills they need to compete in the age of globalization. Other than that, though, Stiglitz is spot on.
How did we get such a crappy monetary policy? Deregulation. I've talked about this extensively so there's no need to repeat myself. Instead, let's take a look at the consequences, via Stiglitz.
This deregulation had two related consequences. First, it led to the increasing financialization of the economy-with all its distortions and inequities. Second, it allowed the banks to exploit the rest of society-through predatory lending, abusive credit card fees, and other practices. The banks shifted risk toward the poor and toward the taxpayer: when things didn't go as lenders had predicted, others had to bear the consequences. The Fed not only didn't discourage this; it encouraged it. It is clear that, from a social perspective, the banks did not help people manage their risk; they created it. But when it came to managing their own risk, the bankers were more successful. They didn't bear the consequences of their actions.
Stiglitz identifies a common ground here where liberals and conservatives could work together. At the time of the crisis, there wasn't really a choice in terms of letting the banks fail. It would have collapsed the economy. Now, however, we can regulate the industry so that none of these institutions are "too big to fail" or, better yet, too interconnected to fail. In short, Glass-Steagall for the 21st Century. Dodd-Frank is a start but it still gives the Fed responsibility for implementing the new regulations. Its track record thus far has shown that it is less than average in doing this.
At this point in the chapter I realized that Mr. Stiglitz should be the new Fed Chair! Obviously, it's never going to happen especially now that we have Janet Yellin but we do need someone who will kick the inflation obsession.
It should be apparent at this point that the banks should be focusing on banking and not macroecomic policy. How did we get to this point? More importantly, can we ever break free of this framework and have government leaders who are not influenced by the financial sector of this country? Even the evidence that the Fed was forced to reveal, which showed that the large banks were both borrowing substantial amounts of money from them while also claiming publicly that they were in great shape, was not enough to change the system. Indeed, our problem, as Stiglitz notes, is "more ideological conviction than economic analysis." This, of course, comes directly from the NUMERO UNO free market fundamentalist himself, Milton Friedman, a colleague of Stiglitz.
I remember long discussions with him on the consequences of imperfect information or incomplete risk markets; my own work and that of numerous colleagues had shown that in these conditions, markets typically didn't work well. Friedman simply couldn't or wouldn't grasp the results. He couldn't refute them. He simply knew they had to be wrong. He, and other free market economists, had two other replies: even if the theoretical results were true, they were "curiosities," exceptions that proved the rule; and even if the problems were pervasive, one couldn't rely on government to fix them.
Sounds familiar, eh?:) Many of the problems we have with our modern economic policy can be attributed directly to Mr. Friedman. His cult-like worship of the free market has led to far too many people turning brain dead in terms of economic analysis.
Recall that the Fed's main purpose should be focused on inflation, employment and growth. The second of these three has fallen by the wayside as the bankers have more or less taken over the show. So, the government is the problem but not in the way conservatives would have you believe. It's not that it's too big. It's that it simply doesn't function in the way it is supposed to function due to monetarists' obsession with inflation and their complete ignorance of unemployment. This obsession is based on three very questionable hypotheses. First, inflation is the supreme evil. Second, maintaining low and stable inflation is necessary and almost sufficient for maintaining a high and stable real growth rate. Third, everyone benefits from low inflation. Stiglitz wraps up the chapter explaining that none of these beliefs are true and that inflation hawks have been basically telling tales out of school.
For inflation hawks economy is always at the edge of a precipice: once inflation starts, it will be difficult to control. And since the cost of reversing inflation-disinflation, as it's called-is so large, it is best to address it immediately. But these views are not based on a careful assessment of the evidence. There is no precipice, and mild upticks in inflation, if they look as if they might become persistent, can easily be reversed by tightening credit availability. In short, it was simply wrong that the best way to maintain high employment and strong growth as to focus on inflation. The focus on inflation distracted attention from things that were far more important: the losses from even moderate inflation were negligible in comparison to the losses from financial collapse.
So, we need to remove ourselves from the shackles of obsession over inflation. Our monetary policy should strive for the best possible balance between inflation, employment, and growth. We can't continue to make trickle down policy that is made specifically for the benefits of the banks. In a preview of the last chapter, Stiglitz argues that there is no single best policy. Certainly the obsession with inflation has proved that. Further, there is nothing natural about our currently very high state of unemployment or the low level of aggregate demand. It is the result of policy that caters to serve the small number of people in the financial sector in this country and they have scammed us into thinking that any changes will result in another economic collapse.
Therefore, the first step in changing the system is to not believe them anymore.
A basic rule of economics is that life involves tradeoffs. One alleged tradeoff is the balance between inflation and unemployment. If there is low unemployment, generally speaking, there is inflation because there are more people buying things. If there is high unemployment, inflation is low as there are less people fueling the economy. In some ways, this is exactly what the 1 percent (see: financial sector) want. They make more money if inflation is low so the bondholders interest is for the focus is on inflation, not unemployment. This is where the structural problems with our economy begin. According to Stiglitz, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, there is no such tradeoff.
Imagine, Stiglitz notes, if the focus were on unemployment instead. Finding that right number on the lower end (4%?, 5%?) of unemployment that still keeps inflation low is tricky but if you start from the other side (inflation), the policy that is made tends to benefit the least amount of people...those in the financial sector. If you start from the side of unemployment, or at the very least, look for a balance, you benefit more people and the macroeconomic policy of the country as a whole. This is why the Fed fell asleep in the collapse of 2008. They had no balance, Further, they thought the banks could take care of themselves and needed no oversight. When solutions to the crisis were presented, they focused on inflation (the interests of the bankers and the financial sector) not everyone else.
But the problem, as I have always said, was really with the regulations themselves. The obsessive focus on interest rates erroneously led to the Fed believing that they had some sort of magic "lever," as Stiglitz puts it, that can manipulate the economy.
Lower the interest rate and the economy expand; raise the interest rate and it slows down. And though there are times and circumstances in which the interest rate may have those effects, at other times the links are at beast weak and other instruments might have been more effective. For instance, in response to the real estate bubble , it would have made more sense to raise the down payment requirements for mortgages than to raise the interest rates; one didn't want to slow down productive investments, just to dampen the bubble. Such regulations were anathema to the Fed, with its religious devotion to the price system and the wonders of the market.
Exactly. We're talking about a massively rigid ideology here that sadly, to this day, has not been broken.
Getting back to unemployment, such a high level of joblessness doesn't simply hurt those who are unemployed. It also hurts the rest of us because a natural effect of this is lower wages. People entering the work force for the first time are forced to take a salary that they simply can't live on. Less money goes into the economy as consumer confidence and spending shrinks due to a lack of aggregate demand. The financial sector may enjoy this "labor market flexibility" but the rest of us do not. And it's clear that the economy has suffered due to these magnanimous gifts bestowed to bankers from our monetary policy. This policy, supported by both Republicans and Democrats, has been a disaster.
The Fed's low interest rate policy hadn't led to the resurgence of investment as it had hoped. It did encourage those who were planning investments to substitute cheap capital labor. Capital was, in effect, at a temporary artificially low price , and one might as well take advantage of an unusual situation. This reinforced distorted patterns of innovation that focused on saving labor at a time when it was increasingly in abundance. It is curious that at a time when unemployment among the unskilled is so high, grocery and drug stores are replacing checkout clerks with automatic machines. The Fed was making it more and more likely that, when recovery set in, it would be a jobless one.
My only gripe about this line of thought is that it really isn't a good thing to fight progress. This is the same complaint I have about the Right on issues such as energy, climate change, and education. Our nation has one direction: forward. If low skilled workers are losing their jobs to innovation, then it's time that we retrain them and give them the skills they need to compete in the age of globalization. Other than that, though, Stiglitz is spot on.
How did we get such a crappy monetary policy? Deregulation. I've talked about this extensively so there's no need to repeat myself. Instead, let's take a look at the consequences, via Stiglitz.
This deregulation had two related consequences. First, it led to the increasing financialization of the economy-with all its distortions and inequities. Second, it allowed the banks to exploit the rest of society-through predatory lending, abusive credit card fees, and other practices. The banks shifted risk toward the poor and toward the taxpayer: when things didn't go as lenders had predicted, others had to bear the consequences. The Fed not only didn't discourage this; it encouraged it. It is clear that, from a social perspective, the banks did not help people manage their risk; they created it. But when it came to managing their own risk, the bankers were more successful. They didn't bear the consequences of their actions.
Stiglitz identifies a common ground here where liberals and conservatives could work together. At the time of the crisis, there wasn't really a choice in terms of letting the banks fail. It would have collapsed the economy. Now, however, we can regulate the industry so that none of these institutions are "too big to fail" or, better yet, too interconnected to fail. In short, Glass-Steagall for the 21st Century. Dodd-Frank is a start but it still gives the Fed responsibility for implementing the new regulations. Its track record thus far has shown that it is less than average in doing this.
At this point in the chapter I realized that Mr. Stiglitz should be the new Fed Chair! Obviously, it's never going to happen especially now that we have Janet Yellin but we do need someone who will kick the inflation obsession.
It should be apparent at this point that the banks should be focusing on banking and not macroecomic policy. How did we get to this point? More importantly, can we ever break free of this framework and have government leaders who are not influenced by the financial sector of this country? Even the evidence that the Fed was forced to reveal, which showed that the large banks were both borrowing substantial amounts of money from them while also claiming publicly that they were in great shape, was not enough to change the system. Indeed, our problem, as Stiglitz notes, is "more ideological conviction than economic analysis." This, of course, comes directly from the NUMERO UNO free market fundamentalist himself, Milton Friedman, a colleague of Stiglitz.
I remember long discussions with him on the consequences of imperfect information or incomplete risk markets; my own work and that of numerous colleagues had shown that in these conditions, markets typically didn't work well. Friedman simply couldn't or wouldn't grasp the results. He couldn't refute them. He simply knew they had to be wrong. He, and other free market economists, had two other replies: even if the theoretical results were true, they were "curiosities," exceptions that proved the rule; and even if the problems were pervasive, one couldn't rely on government to fix them.
Sounds familiar, eh?:) Many of the problems we have with our modern economic policy can be attributed directly to Mr. Friedman. His cult-like worship of the free market has led to far too many people turning brain dead in terms of economic analysis.
Recall that the Fed's main purpose should be focused on inflation, employment and growth. The second of these three has fallen by the wayside as the bankers have more or less taken over the show. So, the government is the problem but not in the way conservatives would have you believe. It's not that it's too big. It's that it simply doesn't function in the way it is supposed to function due to monetarists' obsession with inflation and their complete ignorance of unemployment. This obsession is based on three very questionable hypotheses. First, inflation is the supreme evil. Second, maintaining low and stable inflation is necessary and almost sufficient for maintaining a high and stable real growth rate. Third, everyone benefits from low inflation. Stiglitz wraps up the chapter explaining that none of these beliefs are true and that inflation hawks have been basically telling tales out of school.
For inflation hawks economy is always at the edge of a precipice: once inflation starts, it will be difficult to control. And since the cost of reversing inflation-disinflation, as it's called-is so large, it is best to address it immediately. But these views are not based on a careful assessment of the evidence. There is no precipice, and mild upticks in inflation, if they look as if they might become persistent, can easily be reversed by tightening credit availability. In short, it was simply wrong that the best way to maintain high employment and strong growth as to focus on inflation. The focus on inflation distracted attention from things that were far more important: the losses from even moderate inflation were negligible in comparison to the losses from financial collapse.
So, we need to remove ourselves from the shackles of obsession over inflation. Our monetary policy should strive for the best possible balance between inflation, employment, and growth. We can't continue to make trickle down policy that is made specifically for the benefits of the banks. In a preview of the last chapter, Stiglitz argues that there is no single best policy. Certainly the obsession with inflation has proved that. Further, there is nothing natural about our currently very high state of unemployment or the low level of aggregate demand. It is the result of policy that caters to serve the small number of people in the financial sector in this country and they have scammed us into thinking that any changes will result in another economic collapse.
Therefore, the first step in changing the system is to not believe them anymore.
Monday, October 21, 2013
A Link Between Sleep and Football Dementia?
Scientists have long wondered why people and animals need to sleep. We all know that not sleeping is bad for us, but we didn't know exactly why.
For decades scientists have known that sleep is associated with the consolidation of short-term to long term memory. Recently they discovered that during sleep neurons fire backwards, which they think strengthens the electrical signals of nearby and frees up space in the brain for new memories (sort of like defragging your computer's hard disk).
But a new study has found an even more basic mechanism that explains the need for sleep: housecleaning. While asleep, brain cells appear to shrink and cerebrospinal fluid is pumped through the brain to wash out toxins that accumulate during wakefulness. These toxins are beta amyloids, the proteins that are associated with dementias like Alzheimer's.
Interestingly, dementias are frequently associated with sleep disorders, which could explain why Alzheimer's occurs in the first place. With this information new therapies may be developed to prevent dementias that leave their victims empty husks of the people they once were.
And this may explain other forms of dementia. A few weeks ago PBS aired a Frontline special on concussions in football called "League of Denial." It documents the stories of numerous football players who suffered various forms of dementia after taking dozens of knocks to the head every day they play, from the age of eight or ten until they retire at 30 or 40. That results in literally thousands of minor concussions over a career. Many football players have become confused, short-tempered violent and some have even committed suicide and murder.
When the brains of these players have been examined after death, they were found riddled with the same beta amyloid plaques that affect Alzheimer's patients, though their brains looked otherwise normal. With this new understanding of how the brain normally cleans these plaques out, the exact mechanism for dementia in football players may become clearer.
When you get a concussion, your brain is slammed against the inside of your skull, essentially bruising it and rupturing capillaries, which causes swelling and inflammation. This may in turn prevent the brain cells from shrinking during sleep and interfere with the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid that should remove the beta amyloid plaques.
The NFL has downplayed the effects of concussion on football players for years, but last August they settled a lawsuit brought by 4,500 former players for $765 million dollars. And it's not just football that has this problem, we've known forever that boxing causes dementia, and hockey and rugby have the same problem.
This new science may explain why dementia occurs, but it doesn't provide any solutions for preventing concussions in the first place. No matter how much you change helmet design, the basic problem is the rapid deceleration of the brain when it hits the inside of the skull as the head collides with another player or slams into the ground.
The only real way to prevent concussions is to reduce the overall velocity of the skull, which means eliminating crushing tackles and brutal takedowns. But many football fans would say that changing the rules to minimize concussions would turn it into touch football and rip the heart out of the game. Because, though they say they love watching the skill and speed of the players on the gridiron, what they really love is the brutal hammering the players take.
As we understand the connection of minor brain trauma to dementia, the question now is how many parents will be willing to sacrifice their children's futures so that football fans can watch them get pounded into the astroturf?
For decades scientists have known that sleep is associated with the consolidation of short-term to long term memory. Recently they discovered that during sleep neurons fire backwards, which they think strengthens the electrical signals of nearby and frees up space in the brain for new memories (sort of like defragging your computer's hard disk).
But a new study has found an even more basic mechanism that explains the need for sleep: housecleaning. While asleep, brain cells appear to shrink and cerebrospinal fluid is pumped through the brain to wash out toxins that accumulate during wakefulness. These toxins are beta amyloids, the proteins that are associated with dementias like Alzheimer's.
Interestingly, dementias are frequently associated with sleep disorders, which could explain why Alzheimer's occurs in the first place. With this information new therapies may be developed to prevent dementias that leave their victims empty husks of the people they once were.
And this may explain other forms of dementia. A few weeks ago PBS aired a Frontline special on concussions in football called "League of Denial." It documents the stories of numerous football players who suffered various forms of dementia after taking dozens of knocks to the head every day they play, from the age of eight or ten until they retire at 30 or 40. That results in literally thousands of minor concussions over a career. Many football players have become confused, short-tempered violent and some have even committed suicide and murder.
When the brains of these players have been examined after death, they were found riddled with the same beta amyloid plaques that affect Alzheimer's patients, though their brains looked otherwise normal. With this new understanding of how the brain normally cleans these plaques out, the exact mechanism for dementia in football players may become clearer.
When you get a concussion, your brain is slammed against the inside of your skull, essentially bruising it and rupturing capillaries, which causes swelling and inflammation. This may in turn prevent the brain cells from shrinking during sleep and interfere with the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid that should remove the beta amyloid plaques.
The NFL has downplayed the effects of concussion on football players for years, but last August they settled a lawsuit brought by 4,500 former players for $765 million dollars. And it's not just football that has this problem, we've known forever that boxing causes dementia, and hockey and rugby have the same problem.
This new science may explain why dementia occurs, but it doesn't provide any solutions for preventing concussions in the first place. No matter how much you change helmet design, the basic problem is the rapid deceleration of the brain when it hits the inside of the skull as the head collides with another player or slams into the ground.
The only real way to prevent concussions is to reduce the overall velocity of the skull, which means eliminating crushing tackles and brutal takedowns. But many football fans would say that changing the rules to minimize concussions would turn it into touch football and rip the heart out of the game. Because, though they say they love watching the skill and speed of the players on the gridiron, what they really love is the brutal hammering the players take.
As we understand the connection of minor brain trauma to dementia, the question now is how many parents will be willing to sacrifice their children's futures so that football fans can watch them get pounded into the astroturf?
Give That Man A Medal
Apparently, someone at the WWII memorial rally (see: co-opted, takeover, without permission) shouted that Sarah Palin was an idiot. That man should get a medal.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Good Words
“The legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion.”
~Charles Pinckney, Constitutional Convention, 1787
Saturday, October 19, 2013
What Passes for "Science" at the Creation Museum
The Creation Museum has obtained a dinosaur fossil that they claim "proves" their theory that the world was created only a few thousand years ago. According to a statement from the museum,
First off, there's more than one way a skeleton can remain intact. The dinosaur could have fallen off a cliff and into a lake, where it drowned. It could have been chased into a swamp by a larger predator and been stuck in the mud. It could have been standing at the bottom of a hill and buried alive by a landslide. There are millions of possible ways that a skeleton could remain intact.
And let's say it did die in a flood. Was Noah's flood the only flood that ever occurred? There are thousands of floods every year, caused by thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and so on. How do they know that this one dinosaur died in Noah's flood? Because Dr. Snelling says most of the bones -- but not all -- were found properly articulated. That's it. That's the "evidence." But all that proves is that the body wasn't torn apart by scavengers.
Did they use radiocarbon dating to determine that the dinosaur died exactly 4,500 years old, and was therefore killed in Noah's flood? Did they find spearheads from human hunters in the dinosaur's skeleton, or toolmarks on the bones, or potsherds scattered among them? No? I didn't think so.
They have presented no forensic evidence obtained during the excavation of this fossil that proved it died when they claim it did. They provided no stratigraphic analysis that proved this fossil was concurrent with humanity. (The "human" footprints at the unrelated Paluxy riverbed site were shown to be dinosaur footprints almost 30 years ago.)
We now know that DNA breaks down over time, and under perfect conditions it can survive for at most 1.5 million years (it has a half life of 521 years). Did the creationists find any DNA in the bones of this supposed 4,500-year-old dinosaur?
Scientists have found intact DNA in the bones of Neandertals from 30,000 years ago, and woolly mammoths that have been frozen for 39,000 years. They have even found soft tissue inside the bones of dinosaurs, which creationists falsely claimed as their proof. Scientists have also found organic material inside the bones of dinosaur embryos. And recently a mosquito was discovered with blood in guts (shades of Jurassic Park!).
However, no intact dinosaur DNA has ever been found. The material found in the bones was deteriorated organic goo. Yet we have found 10,000-year-old human mummies in peat bogs. We have found skeletons of a woman, giant sloths, camels, bear, sabre-tooth cats, birds and so on in the La Brea tar pits. We have found hundreds of extinct animals like woolly mammoths frozen in the arctic tundra. Buried everywhere we have found intact DNA in the bones of every kind of creature that has lived over the past 10,000 years, many of them extinct for centuries like the moas of New Zealand, giant ground sloths and sabre-toothed cats. But we've never found a frozen or mummified dinosaur. We've only found fossilized bones, in which the actual bone is replaced with minerals deposited by water that permeates the structure. And there is never any DNA.
And it's not like scientists don't want to find dinosaur DNA. Dinosaur DNA would be the paleontologist's holy grail. It would answer so many questions: were they related to birds (as most scientists now think), or reptiles? Were they warm-blooded? Did they have feathers or reptilian skin? We don't even know this basic information because we've never found an intact dinosaur: only fossilized bones.
In 1991 two German tourists found a frozen mummy in the Alps. Scientists determined he died about 3,300 BCE, or 5,3000 years ago (well before the time of the supposed flood). They know how he was killed (blood loss from an arrow wound). They knew how lived (around a campire that blackened his lungs). They know what tools he used (his axe was 99.7% pure copper). They analyzed his DNA (he belonged to Haplogroup K, maybe European, Kurdish, Ashkenazi or Middle-Eastern). They even know what he ate for breakfast -- an ibex (they analyzed the DNA).
From this it's obvious that scientists can glean a great detail of information from even a frozen human mummy. But we have never found dinosaurs under any such conditions.
There is no shortage of dinosaur remains: we've found thousands of them, on every continent, pretty much everywhere conditions were conducive to preserving their remains. If they lived concurrently with mankind for 1,500 years, why are they the only creatures from that era whose flesh and DNA have never been preserved? Why are dinosaur skeletons always encased in stone and never in loose soil?
Let me guess: Lucifer and his minions have been destroying dinosaur mummies in peat bogs and planting evidence in solid rock to trick scientists since before science even existed...
As a geologist, Dr. Snelling added that unlike the way most of the Morrison Formation bones had been found scattered and mixed, the intact skeleton of this allosaur is testimony to extremely rapid burial, which is a confirmation of the global catastrophe of a Flood a few thousand years ago.This is an example of the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty and fallacious "science."
First off, there's more than one way a skeleton can remain intact. The dinosaur could have fallen off a cliff and into a lake, where it drowned. It could have been chased into a swamp by a larger predator and been stuck in the mud. It could have been standing at the bottom of a hill and buried alive by a landslide. There are millions of possible ways that a skeleton could remain intact.
And let's say it did die in a flood. Was Noah's flood the only flood that ever occurred? There are thousands of floods every year, caused by thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and so on. How do they know that this one dinosaur died in Noah's flood? Because Dr. Snelling says most of the bones -- but not all -- were found properly articulated. That's it. That's the "evidence." But all that proves is that the body wasn't torn apart by scavengers.
Did they use radiocarbon dating to determine that the dinosaur died exactly 4,500 years old, and was therefore killed in Noah's flood? Did they find spearheads from human hunters in the dinosaur's skeleton, or toolmarks on the bones, or potsherds scattered among them? No? I didn't think so.
They have presented no forensic evidence obtained during the excavation of this fossil that proved it died when they claim it did. They provided no stratigraphic analysis that proved this fossil was concurrent with humanity. (The "human" footprints at the unrelated Paluxy riverbed site were shown to be dinosaur footprints almost 30 years ago.)
We now know that DNA breaks down over time, and under perfect conditions it can survive for at most 1.5 million years (it has a half life of 521 years). Did the creationists find any DNA in the bones of this supposed 4,500-year-old dinosaur?
Scientists have found intact DNA in the bones of Neandertals from 30,000 years ago, and woolly mammoths that have been frozen for 39,000 years. They have even found soft tissue inside the bones of dinosaurs, which creationists falsely claimed as their proof. Scientists have also found organic material inside the bones of dinosaur embryos. And recently a mosquito was discovered with blood in guts (shades of Jurassic Park!).
However, no intact dinosaur DNA has ever been found. The material found in the bones was deteriorated organic goo. Yet we have found 10,000-year-old human mummies in peat bogs. We have found skeletons of a woman, giant sloths, camels, bear, sabre-tooth cats, birds and so on in the La Brea tar pits. We have found hundreds of extinct animals like woolly mammoths frozen in the arctic tundra. Buried everywhere we have found intact DNA in the bones of every kind of creature that has lived over the past 10,000 years, many of them extinct for centuries like the moas of New Zealand, giant ground sloths and sabre-toothed cats. But we've never found a frozen or mummified dinosaur. We've only found fossilized bones, in which the actual bone is replaced with minerals deposited by water that permeates the structure. And there is never any DNA.
And it's not like scientists don't want to find dinosaur DNA. Dinosaur DNA would be the paleontologist's holy grail. It would answer so many questions: were they related to birds (as most scientists now think), or reptiles? Were they warm-blooded? Did they have feathers or reptilian skin? We don't even know this basic information because we've never found an intact dinosaur: only fossilized bones.
In 1991 two German tourists found a frozen mummy in the Alps. Scientists determined he died about 3,300 BCE, or 5,3000 years ago (well before the time of the supposed flood). They know how he was killed (blood loss from an arrow wound). They knew how lived (around a campire that blackened his lungs). They know what tools he used (his axe was 99.7% pure copper). They analyzed his DNA (he belonged to Haplogroup K, maybe European, Kurdish, Ashkenazi or Middle-Eastern). They even know what he ate for breakfast -- an ibex (they analyzed the DNA).
From this it's obvious that scientists can glean a great detail of information from even a frozen human mummy. But we have never found dinosaurs under any such conditions.
There is no shortage of dinosaur remains: we've found thousands of them, on every continent, pretty much everywhere conditions were conducive to preserving their remains. If they lived concurrently with mankind for 1,500 years, why are they the only creatures from that era whose flesh and DNA have never been preserved? Why are dinosaur skeletons always encased in stone and never in loose soil?
Let me guess: Lucifer and his minions have been destroying dinosaur mummies in peat bogs and planting evidence in solid rock to trick scientists since before science even existed...
How To FactCheck Health Care
Eric Stern over at Salon.com gives a shining example of how to expose the bullshit being peddled about the Affordable Care Act. This was my favorite one.
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent. Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, a 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
A great example of willful ignorance and the very real monetary cost it brings with it. More importantly, however, this illustrates the trap that people can fall into when they believe the Big Lie. Stern echoes this as well.
Strangely, the recent shutdown was based almost entirely on a small percentage of Congress’s belief that Obamacare, as Ted Cruz puts it, “is destroying America.” Cruz has rarely given us an example of what he’s talking about. That’s because the best he can do is what Hannity did—exploit people’s ignorance and falsely point to imaginary boogeymen.
Once people realize how the law works, the ignorance will fall away and there won't be any more boogeyman they can pull out of their hat.
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent. Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, a 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
A great example of willful ignorance and the very real monetary cost it brings with it. More importantly, however, this illustrates the trap that people can fall into when they believe the Big Lie. Stern echoes this as well.
Strangely, the recent shutdown was based almost entirely on a small percentage of Congress’s belief that Obamacare, as Ted Cruz puts it, “is destroying America.” Cruz has rarely given us an example of what he’s talking about. That’s because the best he can do is what Hannity did—exploit people’s ignorance and falsely point to imaginary boogeymen.
Once people realize how the law works, the ignorance will fall away and there won't be any more boogeyman they can pull out of their hat.
Gerson Nails It
Micheal Gerson is one of the good ones on the Right and his latest piece on climate change is brilliant. His second paragraph pretty much nails it.
The intersection of science and policy, of climate and politics, has become a bloody crossroads. Blog-based arguments over ocean temperatures and the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet are as shrill and personal as any Tea Party primary challenge. And the IPCC report — designed to describe areas of scientific consensus — has become an occasion for polarization.
Shrill, indeed. Scientific matters and their validity should not be decided based on fucking blog posts or comments. These sorts of discussions should be looked upon in the same way one views TMZ news on Molly Ray Cyrus.
Gerson astutely points out that the warming hiatus, which has elicited adolescent cries of GOTCHA!, is misleading and quite irrelevant. Climate change is something that occurs over several decades, not one and a half. And this trend doesn't take away from obvious facts.
The IPCC report is used or abused, it represents a consensus and not a conspiracy. “Each of the last three decades,” it concludes, “has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.” The oceans have warmed and grown more acidic. Ice sheets are losing mass. Sea ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere are shrinking. Ocean levels are rising.
This is what is meant be settled science.
The rest of his piece defines the political problems that climate change has caused and, I hope, a solution to solving them.
The intersection of science and policy, of climate and politics, has become a bloody crossroads. Blog-based arguments over ocean temperatures and the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet are as shrill and personal as any Tea Party primary challenge. And the IPCC report — designed to describe areas of scientific consensus — has become an occasion for polarization.
Shrill, indeed. Scientific matters and their validity should not be decided based on fucking blog posts or comments. These sorts of discussions should be looked upon in the same way one views TMZ news on Molly Ray Cyrus.
Gerson astutely points out that the warming hiatus, which has elicited adolescent cries of GOTCHA!, is misleading and quite irrelevant. Climate change is something that occurs over several decades, not one and a half. And this trend doesn't take away from obvious facts.
The IPCC report is used or abused, it represents a consensus and not a conspiracy. “Each of the last three decades,” it concludes, “has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.” The oceans have warmed and grown more acidic. Ice sheets are losing mass. Sea ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere are shrinking. Ocean levels are rising.
This is what is meant be settled science.
The rest of his piece defines the political problems that climate change has caused and, I hope, a solution to solving them.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Turning Our Attention To Health Care
Now that Shutdown 2013 is over the political world's attention will turn to Affordable Care Act. The Right are likely kicking themselves for wasting two weeks of being able to hyper-obsessively focus on the three people out there whose rates are (allegedly) going up now that the exchanges are open (see: Hasty Generalization). Yet their bloviating does bring up an interesting puzzle. How does one honestly gauge the effects of the ACA in an unbiased fashion? It is it even possible? If such a site exists, I'd sure like a link.
Obviously the Right is going to blow a bowel if anyone suggests that the president himself is an unbiased source. But he (like myself) finds the problems with the web portal to be more than just glitches and completely unacceptable. Apparently, the primary reason for these issues have to do with last minute changes requested by HHS and a substandard contractor (CGI). Of course, those people that live in states that aren't actively trying to destroy the ACA seem to have few problems using the website. Strange, I know:) Stranger still is that a website rollout with major demand and traffic has significant problems. That NEVER happens in the private sector, only with the government! And who in the fuck wants to sign up via phone (where there are very few problems) in this day and age?
As they do with everything else, we are already beginning to see the strategy that the Right is going to employ to try to prevent this law from working (see: sore losers, can't stand being wrong, fret over irrelevance). Any small problem with the law is going to be blown up to Biblical proportions. It's not a few people whose rates (may or may not) have gone up. It's millions. The people whose rates are going down are lazy, poor people who are spooning off our hard earned money. Anyone who is being helped by the ACA is not what they seem. They are the OTHER. This is generally true for any positive news about the law. Any information that puts the ACA in a positive light. It's all propaganda meant to send us all into government enslavement.
Things sure would be a lot easier if they didn't have such a pathological hatred of the federal government.
Obviously the Right is going to blow a bowel if anyone suggests that the president himself is an unbiased source. But he (like myself) finds the problems with the web portal to be more than just glitches and completely unacceptable. Apparently, the primary reason for these issues have to do with last minute changes requested by HHS and a substandard contractor (CGI). Of course, those people that live in states that aren't actively trying to destroy the ACA seem to have few problems using the website. Strange, I know:) Stranger still is that a website rollout with major demand and traffic has significant problems. That NEVER happens in the private sector, only with the government! And who in the fuck wants to sign up via phone (where there are very few problems) in this day and age?
As they do with everything else, we are already beginning to see the strategy that the Right is going to employ to try to prevent this law from working (see: sore losers, can't stand being wrong, fret over irrelevance). Any small problem with the law is going to be blown up to Biblical proportions. It's not a few people whose rates (may or may not) have gone up. It's millions. The people whose rates are going down are lazy, poor people who are spooning off our hard earned money. Anyone who is being helped by the ACA is not what they seem. They are the OTHER. This is generally true for any positive news about the law. Any information that puts the ACA in a positive light. It's all propaganda meant to send us all into government enslavement.
Things sure would be a lot easier if they didn't have such a pathological hatred of the federal government.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
The Big Lie Again
The last two weeks of shutdown have seen several mentions of the Big Lie that government spending does not increase economic activity nor is it a jobs program. It would be fine if those in the Tea Party said, instead, "I don't like the fact that government spending increases economic activity and is a jobs program" because that would be more accurate.
I've explained previously exactly how government spending increases economic activity and can create wealth, offering the example of the Grand Coulee Dam. The same hysterical complaints were heard then and were proven completely wrong. Even today, the government spends money in many sectors of our economy and is a partner in increasing economic activity and creating jobs. The defense industry stands as a shining example of how this works. So do the energy industry and the National Institute of Health. The list on return to government investment is quite impressive, actually, and it's very clear that they naysayers are having trouble with their emotions about government. One would think that they Right understands return on investment but I guess they don't.
The next few weeks will show what kind of an economic hit we are going to take as a result of the shutdown. I've talked about this before as well and, honestly, Americans are clearly understanding what life looks like when you aren't rational about the federal government. If the Right wants something to worry about, I think it should be this.
What exactly is sedition?
According to the US Code (18 U.S.C. § 2384 ), seditious conspiracy is a crime under United States law. The law states in part that, “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to… prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States… they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
That's exactly what Ted Cruz and his merry band of moonbats have done in the last few weeks. In fact, they attempted to hinder many laws, not just the Affordable Care Act. No doubt, if people like Darrell Issa were faced with these facts, a committee would have been formed yesterday. I think that the Right should be thankful that the president and the Democrats are much nicer and forgiving people.
So, moonbats, I wouldn't rock the boat if I were you.
I've explained previously exactly how government spending increases economic activity and can create wealth, offering the example of the Grand Coulee Dam. The same hysterical complaints were heard then and were proven completely wrong. Even today, the government spends money in many sectors of our economy and is a partner in increasing economic activity and creating jobs. The defense industry stands as a shining example of how this works. So do the energy industry and the National Institute of Health. The list on return to government investment is quite impressive, actually, and it's very clear that they naysayers are having trouble with their emotions about government. One would think that they Right understands return on investment but I guess they don't.
The next few weeks will show what kind of an economic hit we are going to take as a result of the shutdown. I've talked about this before as well and, honestly, Americans are clearly understanding what life looks like when you aren't rational about the federal government. If the Right wants something to worry about, I think it should be this.
What exactly is sedition?
According to the US Code (18 U.S.C. § 2384 ), seditious conspiracy is a crime under United States law. The law states in part that, “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to… prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States… they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
That's exactly what Ted Cruz and his merry band of moonbats have done in the last few weeks. In fact, they attempted to hinder many laws, not just the Affordable Care Act. No doubt, if people like Darrell Issa were faced with these facts, a committee would have been formed yesterday. I think that the Right should be thankful that the president and the Democrats are much nicer and forgiving people.
So, moonbats, I wouldn't rock the boat if I were you.
The Rant
Mark has been posting numerous quotes from the Founding Fathers about separation of Church and State, and I haven't commented much on them. There seems to be little point, because it's so obvious that single-party, single-denomination governments and theocracies are inherently evil: modern Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, England under Henry VIII, Italy under the medieval popes, and so on.
But there are still some Americans who still disagree. They are epitomized by the woman who started ranting on the House floor during the vote on reopening the government.
He will not be mocked. He will not be mocked. [to someone next to her] Don't touch me. [to the chamber] He will not be mocked. The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been, it would not have been— no. It would not have been— constitution would not have been written by Freemasons. They go against God. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve two masters. Praise be to God, Lord Jesus Christ.This poor woman's emotions are clearly being manipulated by self-serving politicians and theocrats with ulterior motives that have nothing to do with god.
How does reopening the government mock him? In any case, why would the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful creator of the universe -- which contains billions of galaxies that each contain billions of stars and billions of planets -- give one whit about a political scuffle between groups of insignificant creatures like us?
What's really at stake here is the pride of the people who shut down the government. They are projecting all their own demands and desires on god, justifying their beliefs by dint of constant repetition that it's what god wants. They endlessly twist the teachings of the bible to rationalize whatever political agenda they have.
The irony is that the man they worship was famous for healing the sick and the poor. Yet they are heartbroken that they have failed to prevent our government from healing the sick and the poor.
They argue that healing is not the government's place. Yet they want the government to be "Christian," which would dictate that it do everything to help the sick and the poor. They only want separation of Church and State when the state is helping the less fortunate.
The men who wrote the Constitution (many of them in fact Freemasons) knew a few things about the history of religion, and that's why they kept Church and State separate. The Founders realized that members of religions endlessly compete for power, and use their own interpretations of scripture to justify why they should be in control. These personal ambitions and power struggles splinter religions from the inside out, over and over and over.
Christianity split off from Judaism, currently fractured into three main sects: Conservative, Reform and Orthodox. Christianity continued to splinter, resulting in countless Christian denominations -- the Catholic Church, the national Orthodox Churches (one per country, including Russia, Greece, Armenia, Romania, etc.), the Lutheran Synod, the Anglican Church, the Calvinist Reformed Tradition, various Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. And then you have the kooks, like the Branch Davidians and Warren Jeffs' FLDS.
And though most Tea Party types don't seem to to understand it, even Islam split off from Christianity. In the 14 centuries since then, it has also broken into numerous sects, including Shiites, Sunnis, Sufis, Alawites, and on and on.
Government cannot be controlled by religion because religion is too unstable. You can't give popes, archbishops and ayatollahs that kind of temporal power. Theistic religions are too autocratic and dictatorial, they cannot brook dissent nor allow heresy to go unpunished.
In short, the Founders knew that religion is incompatible with democracy.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Final Vote
The Senate passed the legislation to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling with a final vote of 81-18. The House vote was 285-144 with 87 Republicans supporting the bill. The president is signing the legislation this evening.
This is a giant win for the president. Clearly, the Tea Party knows they can't fuck with him anymore on the debt ceiling or funding the government. If they threaten to do this again, it will obviously be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Sort of like their entire ideology.
Monte Hall Time!
It looks like we have a deal to end the shutdown and increase the debt limit. Ted Cruz (see: fraud) will not block the vote on the Senate Floor and, as of this moment, John Boehner (or, I guess, Eric Cantor who is now the only member of the House that can bring bills to the floor...huh?...so much for following rules) will allow a vote on the floor of the House and rely on Democrats to get the bill passed.
So, WTF, was this all about again? Oh, right...kill Obamacare....meep morp...kill Obamacare...meep.
I wonder how much money all of this cost the taxpayers.
So, WTF, was this all about again? Oh, right...kill Obamacare....meep morp...kill Obamacare...meep.
I wonder how much money all of this cost the taxpayers.
The House of Right Wing Bloggers
Yesterday was Exhibit A in terms of what our government would be like if it was run by the right wing blogsphere. Adolescent, chaotic, emotional outbursts, no cohesion, bloviating with no real defined goals ...that was the House of Representatives yesterday. They tried to come up with a plan to counter the Senate's effort to end the shutdown but couldn't do it. Can they even govern anymore?
John Boehner may very well lose his speakership over this but then again he might not. Who else is going to take his place? The GOP is so fractured and splintered now that any power they may have held onto after the 2012 elections is now gone. Like an obstinate teenager, they have not improved their situation politically. They have not made any inroads with women and Latinos nor have they moderated their message to appeal to independents. In fact, their disapproval among independents is now at 70 percent with their approval ratings split 50-50 within their own party!
So, the lesson for folks like Kevin Baker (who oddly commented here recently after voting me off his own site...huh?) is this: you don't know what the fuck you are doing. You are completely out of your depth. You need to go to therapy and work on your problems with authority and losing. Your juvenile emotions cloud any ability you might have to solve our nation's problems. Time for you and your ilk to be sent to military school while the adults (as they always do) take care of the business of America.
In short, say goodbye to GOP control of the House of Representatives.
John Boehner may very well lose his speakership over this but then again he might not. Who else is going to take his place? The GOP is so fractured and splintered now that any power they may have held onto after the 2012 elections is now gone. Like an obstinate teenager, they have not improved their situation politically. They have not made any inroads with women and Latinos nor have they moderated their message to appeal to independents. In fact, their disapproval among independents is now at 70 percent with their approval ratings split 50-50 within their own party!
So, the lesson for folks like Kevin Baker (who oddly commented here recently after voting me off his own site...huh?) is this: you don't know what the fuck you are doing. You are completely out of your depth. You need to go to therapy and work on your problems with authority and losing. Your juvenile emotions cloud any ability you might have to solve our nation's problems. Time for you and your ilk to be sent to military school while the adults (as they always do) take care of the business of America.
In short, say goodbye to GOP control of the House of Representatives.
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