Global Parents

A recent discussion with my daughter's principal regarding the image below

ended up going a lot longer than I expected (nearly 30 minutes!) and produced a term that I'm going to be using a lot on this site: Global Parents.

The biggest challenge in education today are the parents. There isn't even an issue that comes close. Our schools aren't collapsing. In fact they are doing much better these days (more on that in a future post). It is the parents that are collapsing. Crappy parents, far too many crappy parents, are the reason why our country's education system has problems. At the crux of their shittastic personalities is the flaw of being in constant negotiation mode over the grades their child receives. This, in turn, leads to the much larger problem of not understanding what globalization truly means.

Many parents thinks their child deserves a better grade and they constantly whine about how they think their child did enough for an A. They are essentially fighting for and rewarding mediocrity. Ultimately, this type of approach works against the future of their children as they are inadequately preparing them for the future. If we are going to be competitive in the global marketplace and continue to be a superpower, it must start with excelling at the core subjects. They have to think globally, not locally. In the moment of trying to finagle a good grade for their son or daughter they miss the bigger picture. Do they honestly think that Chinese parents are bartering for a better grade when their kid did average work?

We always talk about demanding more of our children and our education system. But what about the parents?

Good Words

"At this time we see a resurgence of the far right within the Republican Party because the base -- a small minority of the American population, mostly concentrated in the south -- is becoming hysterical now that they think the end is nigh. They seem to believe that if what they're doing isn't working, screaming louder will win them more elections. They will never go away, but as older southern voters motivated by fear and paranoia die they will become less and less influential." 

(Nikto, 21 February 2014)

The Gap Closes The Gap

It looks like retail clothing firm The Gap has joined Costco and other businesses in economic intelligence. Hmm...pay people more money...they spend more money in the economy...businesses hire more people and earn more profit...weird how that works:)

No Pendulum and No Coming Out of Nowhere

Last Saturday I had the honor and pleasure of catching a film with former commenter and all around great guy, Last in Line. We went out for meat loaf afterwards and, as is usually the case, the discussion turned to politics. He wondered if I had any complaints about the president other than my main one (military assaults up on his watch). I told him I really didn't. Considering the choices that he has made, what better ones were there? I remained convinced that presidents have to choose the best worst choice because the problems they have to deal with are so awful and convoluted that no human can actually fix them. The president has done his best considering what he was handed 5 years ago.

Our conversation turned to 2016 and the election. Last gave his usual line, seen many times in comments, about the pendulum going back and forth and that some candidate, likely a conservative governor, would come out of nowhere, be the nominee for the GOP, and win because everyone hates Obama. I tried to explain to him that Republicans haven't gotten over 300 electoral votes since 1988 but he was having none of it. We moved on to talk about other topics but something stuck in my mind about his mindset that was inherently flawed and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. After some reflection, I figured it out.

Aside from the obvious fact that the pendulum has not really been moving much in the GOP's direction for quite some time, the advent of social media and how we get our political news (via the internet) makes it virtually impossible for a candidate to "come out of nowhere." This technology has led us to elections that run year round as opposed to every four years. There are no unknowns in politics any longer. All of the names being bandied about for the 2016 nomination likely contain the eventual nominee. Each one has massive flaws and can't win a national election if Hillary Clinton is the nominee. She will win all the states Barack Obama won in 2008 and at least two red states. Period. If she decides not to run, the GOP might have a shot but if they nominate Ted Cruz or another hard right candidate, forget it. The GOP is a dying party. Gerrymandering will keep them alive for the next couple elections in Congress but unless they change, that's it.

And I wouldn't be too sure about the "everyone hates Obama" meme. Yesterday, conservative polling outfit Rasmussen had him at a 50-49 approval rating. It could be just statistical noise but they have had him above 45 for quite some time now. Perhaps we need to stop listening to "the experts in the liberal media" and realize that a good chuck of those who disapprove of the president are liberal and will never vote for a conservative. This simple fact should guide Democrats in 2014, 2016 and beyond.

Guns In Bars and Churches

Georgia House votes to allow weapons in bars, churches.

Well, I'm sure this will work out well...

Please Notice Us!!

Sarah Palin backs Greg Abbott 

“If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!” Palin wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday.

Wow. They must really be getting insecure these days and in desperate need of attention:)

Convicted of Being a Bad Shot

Here we go again. A white guy in Florida starts hassling a black kid, then pulls a gun and shoots him dead. And the jury somehow can't convict the guy of murder.

Michael Dunn pulled into a gas station in 2012, where some kids were parked playing loud music. He told them to turn it down, and apparently they complied, but Dunn shot the victim, Jordan Davis, anyway. Davis died almost immediately. As the kids' car pulled away Dunn pumped several more shots into it.

Dunn was convicted of attempted murder of the other kids in the car, but the jury deadlocked on the murder charge.

Apparently the only real crime in Florida is being a bad shot.

One of the jurors said that the final vote was 9-3 to convict on the murder charge, but three jurors were convinced that Dunn felt he was in danger.

The juror explained that jurors got a glimpse into Dunn’s ego when he said he asked people to turn down their music several times before in his hometown. Valerie told "Nightline" that Dunn’s insistence during his testimony that he was in danger was an important moment in the trial.

So, this jerk goes around town hassling people playing music, secure in the knowledge that if anyone gives him any lip he can just shoot them, then say that he thought he saw a gun and was afraid for his life.

Florida's stand your ground law is custom made for letting people get away with murder. All the "evidence" you need is the ability to give weepy fear-laden testimony to a gullible jury.


Personal responsibility is supposed to be the hallmark of conservative jurisprudence. Stand your ground laws let liars and bullies get away with murder. Maybe Florida should just bite the bullet and institute the death penalty for texting in movie theaters, playing loud music and walking down the street in hoodies.

It looks like Dunn will go to prison for decades, which is a life sentence for the middle-aged man. But you gotta ask: if he had killed all four kids and the car never moved, would those three jurors would have thought him not guilty of any crime at all?

How can not killing three kids be a greater crime than killing one?

The UN Report on North Korea

The United Nations has released a scathing report of the situation inside of North Korea and I say this long overdue. I am so thoroughly disgusted by this that I can hardly write to be honest with all of you.

Some of the key points:

Arbitrary detention, torture, executions and prison camps

The police and security forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it. The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns.

Violations of freedom of thought, expression and religion

The state operates an all-encompassing indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood to propagate an official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.

Discrimination

It is a rigidly stratified society with entrenched patterns of discrimination... Discrimination is rooted in the songbun system, which classifies people on the basis of state-assigned social class and birth, and also includes consideration of political opinions and religion. Songbun intersects with gender-based discrimination, which is equally pervasive.

Abductions and enforced disappearances from other countries

Since 1950, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has engaged in the systematic abduction, denial of repatriation and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons from other countries on a large scale and as a matter of state policy.

Violations of the freedom of movement and residence

The state decides where citizens must live and work, violating their freedom of choice... This has created a socioeconomically and physically segregated society, where people considered politically loyal to the leadership can live and work in favourable locations, whereas families of persons who are considered politically suspect are relegated to marginalised areas.

Violations of the right to food and related aspects of the right to life

The state has used food as a means of control over the population. It has prioritised those whom the authorities believe to be crucial to maintaining the regime over those deemed expendable.

Essentially, nothing that we did not already know. So what can we do about it?

At first glance, the answer seems like nothing, given that China's feathers will be ruffled and the American voter is very weary of war. North Korea doesn't seem to want to advance beyond her current borders and obviously has a vested interest in keeping their little concentration camp of a country intact. Yet the human rights violations demand action. Perhaps we could ramp up our covert activity in the country and get a more clear assessment of what it would take to take out the people that are engaging in these actions.

Clearly, this is one of the greatest humanitarian crises we have faced since World War II. It's been going on a long time and it needs to stop...by force, if necessary.

Chucking Gun Background Checks Means More Murders

Speaking of the debate on gun control...

A study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research provides evidence that background checks help reduce the murder rate:

The 2007 repeal of a Missouri law that required background checks and licenses for all handgun owners appears to be associated with a significant increase in murders there, a new study finds.

The law’s repeal was correlated with a 23 percent spike in firearm homicide rates, or an additional 55 to 63 murders annually from 2008 to 2012, according to the study conducted by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and to be published in the Journal of Urban Health.

“This study provides compelling confirmation that weaknesses in firearm laws lead to deaths from gun violence,” Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and the study’s lead author, said in a news release. “There is strong evidence to support the idea that the repeal of Missouri’s handgun purchaser licensing law contributed to dozens of additional murders in Missouri each year since the law was changed.”

The spike in murders only held for those committed with a gun and was consistent throughout the state. Neither Missouri’s border states nor the nation as a whole saw similar increases.

Eliminating the background check essentially makes it legal for criminals to buy guns. And when you make it legal for criminals to buy guns, criminals shoot more people.

Simple math, really.

A Feller Can Dream, Can't He?

Check out this debate regarding gun control over at debate.org.

Wow.

So, that's how civilized people conduct themselves. No wonder none of my regular commenters have accepted my challenge to debate in that forum. How could they possibly do it?:)

"Bridgegate Has Become MSNBC's Benghazi."

So sayeth Bill Maher is a recent blog post and he's absolutely right. MSNBC has officially become the Fox News of the Left and it really sucks. I used to DVR Morning Joe and watch it if I had time later in the night but they just can't lay off Christie. Again, so what? How is what he did any different than what Lyndon Johnson used to do? Add in Mika Brzezinski's tar and feathering of Woody Allen (which is completely devoid of fact, mind you) and we are really only left with Al Jazeera America...still the most honest and best reporting out there.

They don't tell Americans what we want to hear. They tell us what we need to hear. Check out their YouTube feed for what their content is like and why it is superior.

When Not Seeing Leads to Believing

Humans have always searched for explanations for the unknown. When we can't see a rational cause for something, we inevitably conclude that there's some kind of mystical, supernatural force at work.

Even Albert Einstein did this, in a manner of speaking, when he added the cosmological constant to his theory of general relativity in order to achieve a static universe, which was the accepted theory at the time. Einstein later called this his "greatest blunder."

More recently astrophysicists came up with something called dark matter to explain the "missing mass problem": astronomers cannot find enough mass with telescopes to account for the gravitational effects they observe in the galaxies around us.

Galaxy and its halo

By the 1930s astronomers had found that nearby galaxies were rotating faster than could be explained by the estimates of the masses of their visible components (stars and gas clouds): there had to be some kind of invisible matter providing most of the mass that held these galaxies together. Even accounting for the black holes that we know are at the center of most galaxies, there still wasn't enough mass.

Current theory postulates that most dark matter is some kind of special "nonbaryonic" matter, hypothetical axion particles completely unlike mundane protons, neutrons and electrons. However, the theory does grant that a small portion of the missing mass is regular "baryonic" matter, residing in massive compact halo objects.

They also came up with something called dark energy to explain why the universe keeps expanding faster and faster. Dark energy is sort of like antigravity, an idea that raises a lot of hackles. One current theory goes into great detail, calculating that the universe is composed of 4.9% regular matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.4% dark energy.

This is the mirror image of seeing is believing: not seeing mundane physical matter led scientists to believe in the existence of strange and esoteric dark matter.

I admit to being skeptical about dark matter (and dark energy). It smacks of the sort of mystical answer that I distrust: we can't see the missing mass, so that must mean there's something special and weird going on. I've always thought that the simpler Occam explanation is that we just can't see the missing mass because it's dark out there. Dim red dwarf stars, brown dwarfs (starlike objects too small to emit visible light) and cold dust clouds are essentially invisible to our telescopes, or the masses of galactic core black holes could be underestimated, or there could be smaller undetected "loner" black holes orbiting in the galactic periphery.

Well, now it turns out that someone may have found that missing mass, in exactly the place we should have expected it. This discovery has the potential to completely upend decades of theoretical astrophysics.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Jessica Werk and her team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used light from quasars to detect haloes of cold gas around galaxies ("cold" is relative: the gas is at 10,000 degrees Celsius). The gas previously observed in galactic haloes is about 1 million degrees -- at that temperature the gas emits photons and can be detected by our optical and radio telescopes.

The cold gas clouds absorb some of the quasar's light as it passes through, allowing Werk's team to detect traces of carbon, silicon magnesium and hydrogen. They calculated that there may be 10 to 100 times the amount of cold gas than astronomers previously thought existed, potentially making up all of the missing mass.

If these observations hold up and the cold gas haloes do account for all the missing mass, that doesn't mean the scientists who theorized about dark matter were wrong to do so. They were working with the best data they had, and some aspects of the theory could still be true. And this finding still doesn't explain why the universe's expansion seems to be accelerating (though that could be another observational inadequacy).

The biggest mistake we can make in science is assuming that our observations are complete, that the beliefs we have now are final and can't possibly be changed. Even with the best tools and techniques at their disposal, scientists could not detect the missing mass. So, rather than just assume it was there -- which would definitely have been wrong -- scientists sought out other explanations. And those explanations led them into really esoteric places.

Following that path wasn't wrong: it's what scientists are supposed to do. But once we have the new data, and we have reverified that data several times to ensure that we aren't being misled this time too, we have to go back and revisit and revise everything, and chuck out the theories that don't support the facts.

That's the process of science: going back, testing our assumptions, making the same observations again and again, in new and different ways and from different directions. Making sure that we get the same results, or if we don't get the same results, understanding why we didn't, maybe correcting our experimental methods, or possibly stumbling upon another secret of the universe.

When we do, we often find we no longer need supernatural explanations to explain what we see -- or don't see.

President's Day Good Words #13

"Citizenship demands a sense of common purpose; participation in the hard work of self-government; an obligation to serve to our communities."

(Barack Obama, Sixth State of the Union Address delivered on January 28, 2014 during a joint session of the United States Congress)

President's Day Good Words #12

"Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."

(Bill Clinton, First inaugural address, Washington, D.C. January 20, 1993)

President's Day Good Words #11

"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that's crazy. It's time we stopped it."

(Ronald Reagan, Remarks at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia, June 6, 1985)

President's Day Good Words #10

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose."

(Jimmy Carter, "Malaise Speech," July 15, 1979)

President's Day Good Words #9

"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

(John F Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10, 1963)

President's Day Good Words #8

"I am not worried about the Communist Party taking over the Government of the United States, but I am against a person, whose loyalty is not to the Government of the United States, holding a Government job. They are entirely different things. I am not worried about this country ever going Communist. We have too much sense for that. "

(Harry Truman, Responding to a question at his press conference (February 28, 1947); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947, p. 191) 

President's Day Good Words #7

"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. 

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. 

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. 

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world. 

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation."

(Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms Speech, January 6, 1941)

Presidents Day Good Words #6

"The government is us; we are the government, you and I." 

(Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at Asheville, North Carolina, 9 September 1902)

Presidents Day Good Words #5

"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves."

(Abraham Lincoln, Address Delivered in Candidacy for the State Legislature, 9 March 1832)

A Global Science Experiment

The physics of climate change can be complicated to figure out because of all the different systems on earth: we know that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide increase global temperatures by trapping heat from the sun, but how does that interact with the ocean, the plants, and so on? How do scientists validate their models when they predict that temperatures will rise when the CO2 level goes up, and so will sea levels?

The answer's pretty simple: historical data. From the Times:

From studying air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists know that going back 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level oscillated in a tight band, from about 180 parts per million in the depths of ice ages to about 280 during the warm periods between. The evidence shows that global temperatures and CO2 levels are tightly linked.

For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was relatively stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far larger changes in the future.

Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geological research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.

The concentration of CO2 is currently at about 400 parts per million. Before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration was 270 to 280 ppm. In just a few hundred years humanity has burned enough wood, gas, coal and oil to overpower all the natural CO2-absorbing mechanisms. We burn more than 20 billion tons of fossil fuels each year, and only half of that crap is absorbed naturally; the rest is still floating around in the air.

People frequently argue that people are "too small and insignificant" to change the planet's environment: but without even trying, we puny humans have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide across the entire globe by more than two-fifths in the time since the Declaration of Independence was signed.

If we continue on our current path, with China, India and other undeveloped countries increasing their use of fossil fuels as well, by 2100 we will increase CO2 levels to 900 ppm, more than three times the preindustrial level.

Some argue that historically, high CO2 levels were just a symptom of a warmer planet, and not the cause. We do know that there are cascading effects from a warming planet: CO2 and methane are escaping as the permafrost melts in the frozen tundra in Siberia, Alaska and the Yukon. But we also know the physics: as CO2 and methane levels increase, the greenhouse effect causes higher temperatures.

Once the temperature starts spiraling upward, it doesn't really matter what is cause and what is effect: adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is like throwing gasoline on a fire. If global warming isn't ultimately "our fault," it's especially important that we don't exacerbate the problem by tripling CO2 concentrations.

Do we really want to conduct an irreversible global science experiment to see who's right?

Presidents Day Good Words #4

"Religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."

(James Madison, Letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822)

President's Day Good Words #3

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law." 

(Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, p. 459.)

President's Day Good Words #2

"I read my eyes out and can't read half enough. ... The more one reads the more one sees we have to read." 

(John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams 28 December 1794).

President's Day Good Words #1

"Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country" 

(George Washington, letter to Benedict Arnold, 14 September 1775)

Protecting Numbskulls

The doorknobs in Georgia now want to make it legal to try to bring guns aboard airplanes.  That's not how they phrase it, but that's the effect:

Now gun-friendly lawmakers in Georgia want people licensed to carry a gun to avoid arrest if they accidentally bring their firearms into the security checkpoint at the country’s busiest airport and willingly leave the security line. It comes as gun rights groups in Georgia push state lawmakers to broaden the places where people can legally take guns, including churches and other houses of worship.

Why do they need this law? They don't want forgetful and incompetent gun owners to be arrested for trying to board a plane with a loose gun in their pocket or briefcase. They can't be bothered to think ahead or plan.

Of course, having a loose gun is dangerous in so many ways: it can simply go off if bumped or dropped (like the loaded shotgun some nitwit had in their baggage, or the pistols that fall out of suitcases, pockets, purses and waistbands and sometimes shooting their owners, spouses and innocent bystanders). A kid could find it while searching daddy's pocket for loose change. The attendant at the coat check at a restaurant could find it and give it to her drug-addict boyfriend.

Finally, this gives terrorists a free pass to find the best way to sneak guns onto planes.They can keep probing security without fear of arrest until they eventually learn to sneak a weapon in. I'm sure these gun nuts will write the law so that security can't track how often and who attempts to smuggle guns aboard airplanes, the same way they make the FBI discard background check data. You wouldn't want those forgetful nitwits to get a black mark against them for trying to bring a gun aboard a plane 20 times, or track terrorists amassing a major arsenal.

Oh, and the "license to carry" proviso is meaningless, since places like Georgia basically require that anyone who wants such a license will get it.

The main reason airport security works is that the bad guys don't know exactly what the TSA is looking for. If allowed to experiment without repercussions, terrorists will eventually learn the best way to sneak weapons aboard airplanes.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are still wasting our time taking our shoes off and screwing around putting shampoo and toothpaste into stupid little plastic bags.

As with stand-your-ground laws, guys with guns want a free pass to screw up and not suffer the consequences for their mistakes. The problem is that when armed idiots make mistakes people wind up dead.

Gun nuts in Georgia are still actively campaigning to bring their weapons into churches and college campuses. Why not airports and airplanes? I mean, the logic is exactly the same: the more guns we have on airplanes, the safer we'll be. Right?

Do we really want laws that promote incompetent and careless weapons practices, allowing these folks to be even more oblivious about the guns bouncing around in their suitcases, pockets and waistbands?

Climate Change Lies

With John Kerry's pointed remarks on climate change yesterday, it's important to note the various arguments that the Church of the Climate Denier uses all the time and illustrate how they are lying. Here is a complete list of their assertions by popularity which are all linked to the evidence that shows how they are completely false. Take note of how one can examine the data from a basic, intermediate or advanced point of view with many of the falsehoods.

So, the next time you encounter the adolescent climate skeptic who just can't stand the fact that liberals are correct about something, show the this list. Ask them to refute the evidence using the same scientific method used in each of the links. Remind that "No, you are!!" and a stomp down the hallway with a door slam are not logic based arguments.

Inequality Myth #10

The Storming of the Bast--er--The Pick N Save

Dereck Simonsmeier loves his gun a lot and feels the need to carry it with him everywhere he goes. Of course, that means that he is attacked for his freedom loving at places like Pick N Save. Never mind the fact that it's private property and the owners of said firm can bounce his ass whenever they want. He needed to stand his ground! Why?

The cold had numbed my arms and severely restricted the movement of my hands and fingers. If I had needed to draw my weapon in the Pick ’N Save parking lot, I would have been unsuccessful.

That's right, kids! Villains lurk around every corner waiting to pounce and attack!!! Look out!!! There's Barack Obama and his commie pinkos comin' to gin us!! Perhaps Simonsmeier was the victim of just such a dastardly plot when he was arrested for threatening a man with a gun. What a shining example of a responsible gun owner.

And people wonder why I don't want armed civilians in our schools.

US Assets Outweigh US Debt

The next time you here someone blow a bowel over federal debt, show them this.

• More than 900,000 separate real assets covering more than 3 billion sq. ft. 
• Mineral rights, on and offshore, covering 2.515 billion acres of land, more than the total surface land in Canada -45,190 underutilized buildings, the operating costs of which are $1.66 billion annually 
• Oil and gas resources on and offshore worth $128 trillion, roughly eight times the national debt of the country

This doesn't even include all of our military resources. Add that in and all of the obsessive focus on our debt is seen clearly as being irrational and hysterical. Even the Heritage Foundation agrees.

So, given these very simple facts, it seems that some folks have been trying to pull the wool over our eyes (see: lying) simply because they have a pathological hatred of the federal government (see also, unresolved issues with parents, authority, massive insecurity) and can't admit when they are wrong. 

Anecdata a la Markadelphia

If I used the same logic as a conservative, I would say that MN Sure is doing just fine. Every person I know who has signed up for it has had no problems whatsoever with the site or the registration process. Yet that is not the actual case in reality. There have been some improvements of late but the web site has encountered significant problems during its tenure. This would be a great example of why anecdata is complete bullshit.

Any time you hear "Everyone I know..." at the beginning of a sentence, don't listen.

Younger People Signing Up For Health Insurance

Looks like younger folks are starting to sign up for health insurance.

Even more promising, the percentage of young adults — the coveted demographic considered key to making the insurance pools viable — rose 3 percentage points during January. People ages 18-34 now account for 27 percent of the total exchange enrollment, up from 24 percent in December. "The 65 percent growth rate" of young adults signing up "is larger than all other age groups combined," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters in a conference call.

Good news!

Inequality Myth #8

A Health Club Instead of Health Insurance?

A friend wanted to talk about the new health care law. First he heaped damning praise on Obama for frankly admitting that the young are expected to help pay for the old. Then he joked about how the ACA mandates that policies cover maternity care, which was supposed to be funny because my wife is beyond her childbearing years.

He seemed unaware of the irony. Obviously, it's the only fair thing to do: if the young are expected to help pay for the problems of old age, then the old should help pay for the problems of youth, as well as the care and upbringing of the next generation.

Policies under Obamacare also cover contraception, prenatal care, vaccinations for various childhood diseases like mumps and measles, as well as HPV and influenza: many of those conditions affect only babies, children, and young women. Even if you have moral objections to contraception, you shouldn't stand in the way of other people taking responsibility to avoid accidental pregnancy. Childrearing is expensive.

Policies also cover the problems old age brings: degenerative orthopedic conditions, stroke, cancer and heart disease. But young people aren't immune to car accidents, sprained ankles, broken legs and tumors. My sister had brain surgery to correct an aneurysm in her twenties. A couple of years ago our friends' 24-year-old daughter came down with non-Hodgkins lymphoma -- at first they diagnosed it as mumps. She was cured and the family didn't lose everything they owned in the process, because she was still on her parents' policy, courtesy of Obamacare.

The whole point of health care policies is to spread risk among a large population. We all pay in to help everyone else out when they need it, and they in turn help us out when we need it. When the people who are young now get old, their kids will pay in to help them out.

Everyone will need some kind of health care in their lifetimes, much of it non-emergency. That's why insurance is really the wrong concept. Having a child shouldn't be something that you insure against; it's not like your house getting hit by a tornado. It's a normal and necessary aspect of life, something that everyone needs to happen, even if we ourselves are childless. We need all sorts of regular health care: flu vaccinations, dental exams, physical checkups, breast and cervical exams, and so on.

Instead of thinking in terms of a car insurance policy where we choose whether we get coverage for liability and not collision, we should be thinking of health care premiums like a membership at a health club: I might not use the tennis and racquetball courts, but I do use the gym and the weight machines. And if want to take tennis lessons the courts are there.

By trying to segment up society, pretending that we're all independent islands that should survive on our own, that we'll never face certain problems, we isolate ourselves and make the nation as a whole weaker. We also create smaller risk pools that are more likely to have financial difficulties.

The private health insurance model we have now is clearly flawed and inefficient. There are huge cost discrepancies in different areas of the country, and still not everyone is covered. Those are the problems we should be working on. Together, in good faith, to make it better, instead of using fear to score political points.

The Best Two Minute Rant I Have Ever Seen

The Rump Kamikaze Caucus (Good Words)

From the Wall Street Journal...

Not coincidentally, activist groups allied with Mr. Cruz announced they will use those votes in GOP primaries this year against Messrs. McConnell and Cornyn. Mr. Cruz claims to be neutral in Senate primaries, but he knew exactly what he was doing.

Democrats beat the odds and retained their Senate majority in 2010 and 2012 in part because they stuck together. If Republicans fail again this November, a big reason will be their rump kamikaze caucus.

Man, the Wall Street Journal really doesn't like the Tea Party and the right wing bloggers much, do they?

But they are right, of course. All this talk in February about the GOP taking back the Senate when we don't even know who the candidates are in some of these states is hilarious. I'm thinking we are going to see some Todd Akins again. They just can't help themselves...

Inequality Myth #7

Why The GOP Surrendered On The Debt Ceiling

Politico has a good piece up about why the GOP caved on the debt ceiling. The political reality is obvious. The Senate and the White House weren't going to budge and if the federal government defaulted, that would be the end of the Republicans chances in this year's election. It's interesting to watch Reince Priebus riding herd over the nutters in his party. It will be interesting to see if he can keep the moonbats locked up for the next 9 odd months.

For those out there who feel that our debt is steering us into collapse, I have one simple question: does the debt of the United States outweigh our assets?

Thomas Jefferson's Bible

Conservatives love to heap adulation on the founding fathers and bloviate about how they were all Christians founding a Christian nation...at least their version of Christianity. Certainly, Thomas Jefferson, our nation's 3rd president, is one of those heroes who is held up as a champion of the Right and a defender of more local government power.

I have to wonder, though, what those same conservatives think about the fact that Jefferson created his own version of the New Testament.

Thomas Jefferson, together with several of his fellow founding fathers, was influenced by the principles of deism, a construct that envisioned a supreme being as a sort of watchmaker who had created the world but no longer intervened directly in daily life. A product of the Age of Enlightenment, Jefferson was keenly interested in science and the perplexing theological questions it raised. Although the author of the Declaration of Independence was one of the great champions of religious freedom, his belief system was sufficiently out of the mainstream that opponents in the 1800 presidential election labeled him a “howling Atheist.” 

In fact, Jefferson was devoted to the teachings of Jesus Christ. But he didn’t always agree with how they were interpreted by biblical sources, including the writers of the four Gospels, whom he considered to be untrustworthy correspondents. So Jefferson created his own gospel by taking a sharp instrument, perhaps a penknife, to existing copies of the New Testament and pasting up his own account of Christ’s philosophy, distinguishing it from what he called “the corruption of schismatizing followers.” 

In some ways, Jefferson had a point but I wouldn't go as far to cut and past my own version of the Bible nor accuse Christ's followers as corrupt. They were simply trying to understand something that was way beyond them which we can understand in greater clarity today. That's why I'm hoping that in a decade or two, we can leave behind the anti-science of the Right and start a new Age of Enlightenment in which we truly do "His works and greater than these." We can't allow angry, hateful, insecure, irrational people filled with fear to bully their way into being the "official" spokesmodels for God. He is much bigger than their petty obsessions with gay sex and lady parts which, honestly, is an extension of their own sexual hangups.

I wonder what would happen if Barack Obama did what Jefferson did with the Bible...:)

Inequality Myth #6

Debt Ceiling Raised

House passes clean debt ceiling bill

Yes, I believe they have learned the folly of their ways...especially in an election year.

This Winter Alaska is Warmer than Atlanta on Some Days

About the same time thousands of Atlantans were stuck in their cars on a frozen freeway, NPR reports that the temperature in Seward, Alaska reached 61 degrees:

FEIDT: Alyeska is known for getting a lot of snow. The upper mountain averages more than 50 feet each season. But this winter is different. It's been nearly a month since any significant snow fell. And in January, the mountain, along with most of Alaska, endured two weeks of rainy, warm weather that's more typical of early June. The same weather pattern that sent the polar vortex diving into the lower 48 pushed warm air and moisture from the subtropics up into Alaska. The result? Temperatures that were hard to believe.

RICK THOMAN: Seward's 61 degrees, the warmest January temperature ever recorded.

FEIDT: Wait. Seward was 61 or 51?

THOMAN: Sixty-one.

FEIDT: What?

THOMAN: Six-one, yes. That's correct.

Now, the average high in July and August for Seward is just one degree higher, 62 degrees.

Computerized climate models have long predicted these sorts of counterintuitive weather patterns as a result of global warming; it's one of the reasons climatologists prefer to call it "climate change" instead of "global warming." Not all places will get warmer, but the climate pretty much everywhere will be changed somehow: some places will get more rain, others less rain. In general coastal areas will have higher sea levels. As higher temperatures and migrating insect infestations kill off trees, temperatures will get even higher, because vegetation is a very powerful cooling mechanism.

Locally, this winter's cold snap will help stave off the arboreal Armageddon facing Minnesota: up to 90% of the the emerald ash borers that have infested ash trees in Minnesota will be killed by the cold.

The old saw about the cold winters in Minnesota keeping out the riff-raff has a grain of truth after all.

Michael Sam Is An American Hero

Missouri defensive end Michael Sam told The New York Times and ESPN he is gay, and the 2014 NFL Draft prospect plans to become the first openly gay player in the NFL. Sam figures to be one of the top defensive draft picks this year. I was born in Columbia, Missouri and have been a Tiger fan since birth so his honesty makes me very proud indeed.

Some are saying that Sam has diminished his chances from being picked high in the draft but I don't. The people that run teams in the NFL want to win. Period. If Sam is a good player, he will get picked and it looks like he is top notch. He ranks among the top pass rushers in the SEC last year with 10.5 regular-season sacks (he had another one in the Cotton Bowl), boosting his NFL draft stock despite his lack of size for the defensive end position (6-foot-2, 255 pounds). He was also voted Team MVP by his coaches and teammates this year who have known for the past five seasons that he is gay.

Make no mistake about it, though, this is a big deal and Michael Sam, like Jackie Robinson before him, is an American hero. The NFL's culture is notoriously anti-gay with the locker room stuck in the 1950s. Most people under the age of 30 won't give a shit about this but the older folks might get bunged up. It will be interesting to see what happens. For me, it's just another wonderful indicator of the progress we have made as culture.

Michael, good luck with your career. I know it will be a bloody magnificent one!

Inequality Myth #5

And the Band Plays On

My father-in-law asked me to record the Minnesota Orchestra concert last Friday. He has Parkinsons and couldn't listen to the concert live. This presented a problem: I, like most everyone else, don't have a tape recorder any more.

So I had to dig around for the right cable and hook my receiver up to a computer and use Audacity to record the program, then export it as an MP3 file, which I burned to a CD.

The program, directed by laureate conductor Stanisław Skrowaczewski, included the Star-Spangled Banner, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Strauss's Don Juan, and Beethoven's Third Symphony.

My father-in-law had subscribed to the Orchestra's concert series for decades. He's heard all this music a dozen times before. Why was this concert so special?

It was the first Minnesota Orchestra concert after a 16-month lockout. After spending $52 million dollars renovating Orchestra Hall, Michael Henson, CEO and president of the Minnesota Orchestra Association (MOA), thought there were too many players and they were making too much money.

Somehow Henson doesn't understand that standard orchestral repertoire, such as Mahler and Bruckner symphonies, can require more than a hundred players.  Like the emperor in Amadeus, I suppose Henson thinks there are too many notes.

These players are world-class musicians, having spent decades perfecting their art, and commanding top salaries, in the neighborhood of $100-200K. While that's much more than the average American's salary, it's typical for trained professionals: engineers and programmers in California make about the same, and many lawyers and doctors make far more.

During the grueling lockout the players of the Minnesota Orchestra put on their own concerts at university and college halls around the cities. They were always sold out. Throughout the Twin Cities you could find orange signs supporting the musicians. Never once did I see anyone voicing support for management.

Former US senator George Mitchell, who helped broker the peace accord in Northern Ireland, was brought in to negotiate, but management was recalcitrant.

Exactly how good was the Minnesota Orchestra before the lockout? It just won a Grammy for a recording of two Sibelius symphonies on the BIS label, which were made before the lockout. Osmo Vänskä, the orchestra's former music director, is the leading interpreter of Sibelius in the world.

A few months ago Vänskä gave management an ultimatum: end the lockout or he would resign. Henson continued to dawdle, so Vänskä followed through. When the Minneapolis city council started to make noises about taking Orchestra Hall away from the MOA because they weren't putting on concerts, Henson capitulated. The new contract gives the players a 15% salary cut in the first year, with raises in the next two. It was exactly the sort of contract the the musicians would have accepted the whole time.

The lockout cost the Minnesota Orchestra a recording contract, a tour in top concert venues in Europe, a conductor, 30-odd players who had to move on, millions in lost ticket sales and charitable contributions, its world-class reputation and much good will. It will take many years to recover.

This story has become typical in America. Lockouts have now become the main tactic of management. In 2012 the NHL locked the players out. In 2011 the NBA locked the players out, and the NFL did the same. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra had a lockout in 2012. Companies have been using lockouts with increasing frequency, such as American Crystal Sugar, which locked out employees for years, and Kellogg cereals.

But the orchestra and sports lockouts are stunningly stupid, because the players are the product. Management can't step in and play the instruments or throw the football, and scabs are the ones who just don't make the cut. World-class musicians aren't interchangeable gears that just plug into the lowest rungs of the orchestra association's org chart.

The Minnesota Orchestra spent $52 million to upgrade Orchestra Hall, only to have it stand empty for a year and a half. Meanwhile, the players staged their own concerts around town, raising more than half a million dollars on their own.

There have been numerous calls for Osmo Vänskä to return. He has stated that he will not come back unless CEO Michael Henson resigns.

Even if Vänskä doesn't come back, Henson has to go. He has demonstrated massive managerial incompetence and a destructively antagonistic attitude toward the artists that are the very product he is trying to sell. What decent conductor would work for a man like Henson?

To top it off, Henson is paid the big bucks: he got a $200K bonus in 2011, for a total of $619K in the year before the lockout. In 2012 he received $589,416, which was almost 2% of the orchestra's expenses, even though the musicians were locked out for the last three months of the year! Someone so incompetent has no right to that job, especially since the orchestra is a non-profit charity!

At more than half a mil, Henson is well-entrenched as a one-percenter. He seems to consider himself one of the elite, rubbing elbows with fellow one-percenters constantly, hitting them up for contributions. Like too many of that ilk, he seems to have made it his life's work to cut everyone else's salary while raising his own. Corporate hacks might be able to sell that line of bull to shareholders, but the CEO of a charitable organization needs to get a clue.

Henson -- like so many CEOs -- just doesn't understand that he's the one that's completely disposable: without musicians an empty hall stands silent; without a CEO the band plays on.

Wal Mart Takes A Hit

Wal Mart is closing stores and has a dim outlook for the future. The primary reason for this is the reduced food stamp benefits to millions of Americans. Competition from other big box stores like Costco and Amazon (where they pay their employees a decent wage) are also causes for bearish view of Wal Mart's future finances.

I wonder if the execs at Wal Mart are going to get the message. If you pay your employees more money, they will spend more money, not simply at Wal Mart, but in the economy at large. This will, in turn, lead to more people being hired at other firms and then...spending more money at Wal Mart. This means that the execs make more money anyway.

Perhaps a review of Adam Smith is in order for them.

Inequality Myth #4

Time, Frozen

Time is like a river, the old saying goes. Always changing, yet ever the same. Summer is like the river; an eternal now, always the same, one day indistinguishable from the next.

But come winter, time freezes. We can see in four dimensions. Last night a deer walked through the woods. It lay down here and slept with several of its fellows. Sometime around dawn a coyote bounded through the snow, chasing a rabbit. A squirrel climbed down this tree, ran across the driveway and went up that tree. Here, a skier fell down. There, a man walked his dog. He was an inconsiderate lout, based on what he left behind.

Winter gives us second sight and superhuman powers of locomotion: we can see through thick forests and find animal trails that are completely hidden in the summer. Mere mortals become expert trackers. We can stroll through marshy bogs and dense thickets with nary a scratch; winter has stripped the leaves away, snow has crushed the brambles, our coats are armor against the thorns. But lakes cloud our X-ray vision: they are still mysterious broad snowy expanses, seemingly solid, but slush and thin ice could be lurking out there anywhere.

On the river, time is frozen on the surface. Our vision still extends into the past. As we walk we can look back to see exactly where we've been. But beneath the snow and ice time is still flowing forward, always beyond our sight.

Winter gives us time to remember, to look back, and to look forward. Snow is a physical manifestation of memory. Looking back at their tracks in the snow, two men walking along a river must agree on where they have been.

But we as a nation have come to a juncture where those same two men, if they are from opposing political parties, will look back at the last few years and completely disagree on the basic facts of everything that has happened.

If we cannot agree on where we've been, how can we possibly hope to find a way forward?

Rand Paul: Texas Will Turn Blue

Rand Paul is clearly gearing up for a presidential run. Yesterday he said the following

What I do believe is Texas is going to be a Democrat state within 10 years if we don’t change. That means we evolve, it doesn’t mean we give up on what we believe in, but it means we have to be a welcoming party.

Exactly right, Rand. Maybe now that you are saying it, some people will listen. Still, I wonder being more inclusive is going to be possible with people like this?

The core of the problem with the Right today is all they have is pettiness. That's what the majority of their base is all about. One need only look at my comments section for evidence of this. They are an angry, hateful, bitter and fearful people who have not matured past the adolescent level of development. I wonder if Rand Paul is the one to help them grow up. It sounds like he certainly is, in terms of immigration.

“We won’t all agree on it,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, what I will say and what I’ll continue to say, and it’s not an exact policy prescription … but if you want to work and you want a job and you want to be part of America, we’ll find a place for you.”  This is the exact kind of positivity the Right needs right now. Will more follow suit?

Inequality Myth #3

Going To Hell!

Right around this time of the year we talk about Charles Darwin in class and every year, I get a few students that question Darwin and evolution. This year, I was asked by a young woman what I thought.

"Evolution is scientific fact but that doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. What if He began the process for evolution? I think there is room for everyone to be right here."

I realize that's kind of a cop out answer (everyone wins!) but being open minded is something I try to pass on to my students. After class was over, the young woman came up to me and said, "I didn't want to say anything in front of class but people that believe in evolution are going to hell." She stormed out of the room in all her seventh gradedness and left me pretty much speechless. What sort of parents does a person like this have to have to bring them to this point? Worse, this recent poll shows that Republican belief in evolution is actually falling. Seriously?!?

I guess in some ways I was hurt by what she said but as the next class rolled in, another young woman came up to me and asked me how old I was. I told her I was 47 next month. Her jaw dropped to the ground.

"Everyone thinks you are 35!"

Ah, the life of a teacher...

Your Logical Fallacy Is....

Recently, Kent from Minnesota wrote me.

Hey, Mark, what's the deal with these standard responses that your commenters always quote. Aren't those all ad hominem? 

Yes, Kent they are. It should also be pointed out that ad hominem is part of the genetic fallacy family of logical fallacies. Kent also sent along this link which I found to be most helpful.

ad hominem: 

You attacked your opponent's character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument. Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone's case without actually having to engage with it. 

Example: After Sally presents an eloquent and compelling case for a more equitable taxation system, Sam asks the audience whether we should believe anything from a woman who isn't married, was once arrested, and smells a bit weird.

And...

genetic:

You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came. This fallacy avoids the argument by shifting focus onto something's or someone's origins. It's similar to an ad hominem fallacy in that it leverages existing negative perceptions to make someone's argument look bad, without actually presenting a case for why the argument itself lacks merit. 

Example: Accused on the 6 o'clock news of corruption and taking bribes, the senator said that we should all be very wary of the things we hear in the media, because we all know how very unreliable the media can be.

Click here for more illustrative examples of how the TSM commenters consistently use ad hom and genetic fallacy. As to why they do it, they are obviously insecure about their own arguments. This explains why they only criticize and never make any of their own, living in a constant state of terror that they might be "proved wrong."

What a sad and pathetic way to live your life...

Inequality Myth #2

Economic Growth Retreat

Great editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about just how stupid the Republican Party is these days. After criticizing the president, they had this to say.

Conservatives and the GOP are as responsible for the failure on immigration. The populist wing of the party has talked itself into believing the zero-sum economics that immigrants steal jobs from U.S. citizens and reduce American living standards. Neither claim is true, but Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions and the Heritage Foundation might as well share research staffs with the AFL-CIO.

So great is the House GOP fear of a talk-radio backlash that it won't even pass smaller bills that 75% of Republicans agree on. There will be nothing to codify the legal status of children of illegal immigrants who have lived here for decades. And no expanded green cards for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, a policy Mitt Romney endorsed. And no cleaning up the work-visa morass that has obliged U.S. farmers to hire illegals to harvest their crops. 

The result of doing nothing will be a de facto "amnesty" in which 11 million illegal immigrants will continue to work using fake documents. Mr. Obama will look for ways to grant more of them legal status using executive power, and the GOP will look even more unwelcoming to minorities.

This last bit is all too revealing. Republicans actually do favor amnesty and are granting it every day by doing nothing. Further, they will end up making the president look even better than the fears of an immigration win would by forcing him to do all he can with his executive power.

The GOP has a real shot at taking back the Senate this year but without immigration reform, I don't see it happening. Louisiana, where Mary Landrieu is going to have a very tough race, Latinos make up over 5 percent of the population. The New Orleans metro area has the 3rd largest Honduran American population in the country. Arkansas also has a growing immigrant population and Mark Pryor is very beatable. Both of these states could turn on the Latino and Asian vote. Pass reform this year and you can say goodbye to both of these Democratic senators.

It seems that the fear is too great, though...

Inequality Myth #1

The Real Story Behind Global Cooling

Right wing commenters on the inter webs love to do their little adolescent dance about how global cooling was all the rage back in the days when they didn't have man tits and could still see their penises. But Doug Struck's recent piece in Scientific American (you know, that magazine for scientists that has been published for nearly 170 years with past contributions from people like Albert Einstein) details exactly how the Church of the Climate Denier has lied about this theory.

For example, the author of the global cooling piece...

"When I wrote this story I did not see it as a blockbuster," Gwynne recalled. "It was just an intriguing piece about what a certain group in a certain niche of climatology was thinking." And, revisionist lore aside, it was hardly a cover story. It was a one-page article on page 64. It was, Gwynne concedes, written with a bit of over-ventilated style that sometimes marked the magazine's prose: "There are ominous signs the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically..." the piece begins, and warns of a possible "dramatic decline in food production." 

"Newsweek being Newsweek, we might have pushed the envelope a little bit more than I would have wanted," Gwynne offered.

Oh really? I'm most shocked that they would leave out these details...

The Explanation

Herewith is the explanation that was asked for:

Corporate boards are populated by executives of other corporations. To set salaries for executives they form "compensation committees" consisting of themselves and their underlings. They conduct "salary surveys" of other corporations to determine what appropriate levels of compensation should be.

The boards then tell themselves that to attract (or maintain) marvelous corporate leadership, they need to set compensation a bit higher than the median. CEOs are constantly fired when the stock doesn't perform. But every time CEOs change seats in their game of corporate musical chairs, no chairs are removed: the salaries are just increased.

Thus, companies see an endless parade of CEOs whose salaries just keep getting higher and higher, while cycling the same old cast of characters through various executive suites and boardrooms across the country.

This inflationary spiral would be deemed completely unsupportable for maintaining a high quality labor force, but since each large corporation only has a few dozen execs, keeping the best talent around is "worth it."

The problem is that, when you add up the cost of all that compensation for the entire executive team, it starts to add to hundreds of millions to billions of dollars for the bigger companies. To pay for it, employees are laid off. Wall Street rewards the company by running up the stock price, lauding the CEO for his "tough management style" and "increasing productivity."

And the thing is, the average CEO is simply not worth what they're being paid. I've personally known CEOs, and they're just regular guys. The vast majority of them are not any smarter or faster than you or me. Most of them got where they are by being someone's son, someone's college roommate, or someone's drinking buddy. A rare few got there by being brilliant, innovative, hard-working. Almost all of them created nothing; most are just hired guns.

The only people who can make a claim that they deserve the big bucks are the real innovators, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But those guys are usually ill-suited to running a corporate bureaucracy; innovators and entrepreneurs are frustrated and stifled by the demands of shareholders and "Wall Street expectations."

The one thing most CEOs do have in abundance is the ability to project confidence. Corporate boards just love a CEO who projects confidence. But, just like all those confident and exciting boyfriends that so many women seem to fall in love with, only to find out they make absolutely terrible husbands, these supremely confident CEOs make absolutely terrible managers.

America Is Owed An Explanation

I think America needs an explanation as to why it's so difficult to raise the minimum wage yet incredibly easy to raise the pay of CEOs. Take a look at this recent piece in the LA times about CEO pay.

The great management guru Peter Drucker advised companies to stick to a ratio of about 20 to 1 between the pay of the CEO and that of the average worker. That's "the limit beyond which they cannot go if they don't want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies," Drucker wrote, according to a comment on the CEO pay rule submitted to the SEC by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. Drucker's standard was in line with the ratios of the 1970s and early '80s, when he wrote those words. Today they seem positively quaint. 

The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2012 was about 350 to 1. That's down somewhat from where it was before the 2008 recession, but it would have to come down a great deal more to return to the non-obscene range. It's plain that this ratio typically has little to do with an executive's performance. The CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio of the 250 largest companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index ranges from 1,795 to 1 (J.C. Penney's Ron Johnson) to 173 to 1 (Agilent Technologies' William Sullivan), according to Bloomberg, which ran the data for 2012. 

My wife used to work for Supervalu. They went through a few CEOs during her tenure there and it was always the same thing. Somebody would be brought in to "fix" the company. They would be paid millions of dollars. They would fail. And then they would leave with their millions, accomplishing nothing, with dozens (if not more) of average workers being laid off. The information in this link details how something similar happened with JC Penney. In so many ways, this is complete bullshit. If the CEO fails to do is or her job or makes it worse, they shouldn't get any amount of money. Take the money you are paying the CEOs and keep the average workers longer.

At least the SEC seems to be doing something about it.

I wholeheartedly support this new rule and think that the public (especially the investing public) needs to be aware of how these companies are doing business. Firms like Penney's don't seem to understand, as Drucker noted above, that the health of a company springs from its employees, not from the top. They aren't going to be successful unless they start paying better wages to everyone. Worse, the social cohesion in our society is fraying as a result. There are a lot of people hurting out there and seeing wealthy people bitch about poor people while they themselves are getting something for nothing is really FUBAR.

The Right likes to scream about "class warfare" but that's really code for desperately wanting to maintain aristocracy.

Obama Mental Meltdown Syndrome (And The Lying It Produces)

I didn't get a chance to catch the Bill O'Reilly interview with the president but apparently Dana Millbank did. 

O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.

Wow. Talk about playin' the hits for the hardcore fans. Does he actually think that most people give a shit about any of these issues?

Of course, this is their modus operandi. We now live in a society where you are not only entitled to your opinion but your own facts as well. Case in point...

Anti-Obamacare, facts be damned

“Sick kids denied specialty care due to #Obamacare,” his Twitter feed proclaimed on Saturday, linking to a conservative blog post based on a TV news report out of Seattle. His Facebook page weighed in on the same story, calling it “heartbreaking” and vowing that House Republicans “will continue working to scrap this broken law.” There’s just one problem: The shocking claim — that the President’s health reforms resulted in sick children being denied care — was flat-out false. Which Boehner’s staff must have known, assuming they actually read the material they were helping to spread across the Internet.

The anger and the hatred towards the president is so irrational that the Right is simply lying now and they don't really care.

Take The Citizenship Test!

Here is the test.

How did you do? 

How The Gun Laws Will Change

Last Friday, Bill Maher and his guests wondered on Real Time what it would take for our nation's gun laws to change to suit our current challenges. If Sandy Hook didn't change things, what possibly could? I kept waiting for them to say it and they didn't. Here is how it will happen.

There will be a mass shooting at some sort of gun event in which powerful people in the gun lobby will be affected personally and very deeply. They will lose family members and friends and will realize their own hubris played a part in causing this. And that's when the gun cult will completely fall apart.

Americans don't move to change until they are affected by things in an overwhelmingly personal way. Sandy Hook and the other shootings we've had in the last year haven't done that because they were incidents that occurred outside of the sphere of the gun lobby. Once they start happening within that sphere, things will change and very rapidly indeed. One need only look at the issue of gay marriage, for example, to see how it will happen. Republicans were very anti gay marriage until family members, friends and donors started coming out. The sphere was no longer closed. Cigarettes were nearly identical, as I have mentioned previously. When the pro smoking crowd started losing people to cancer and heart disease, it all fell apart. The same thing will happen with climate change.

So, we will see incremental changes, with people like Gabby Giffords and her husband making small gains, for what seems like a far too long of a time and poof! Suddenly, it will all change and we will wonder why we didn't have enough common sense in the first place. I realize this isn't much solace for the citizens of our country that have to endure the pain of losing someone to gun violence because a minority of people in this country are mentally unbalanced. People should take some heart, though, that we have made progress in identifying the underlying causes of mass shootings (in particular, school shootings) and talking about them more frequently. Check this recent article out.

Bill Bond, who was principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., in 1997 when a 14-year-old freshman fired on a prayer group, killing three female students and wounding five, sees few differences in today's shootings. The one consistency, he said, is that the shooters are males confronting hopelessness. "You see troubled young men who are desperate and they strike out and they don't see that they have any hope," Bond said. 

We can give the young men in our community hope right now. We don't need altered gun laws to do this. In addition, we can make sure that these troubled young men don't have access to firearms. If we can pursue this vigor and care, we will reduce the number of school and mass shootings in this country. This could be the beginning of a very necessary sea change in this country in which we wake up to the fact that American culture has some very deep flaws in terms of gun competency.