Author's posts
Apr 29 2010
Who Can Save The Democrats In November
There is, I suppose, a remote possibility that Obama and the democrats might finally wake up and realize they need the independent and liberal votes they’ve thrown away since inauguration day last year, and that all the corporate donations in the world aren’t going to save them without those votes, and start producing some useful progressive legislation and pass it in time for the midterms.
They could have independents and liberals all across the country rewarding them for results instead of turning their backs on empty promises and the largest landslides in history this November with just a few simple moves.
Creating and passing a universal single payer health care bill for example might do it all by itself, for example.
Although they could probably sew it right up it for themselves by also starting torture and war crimes trials for Bush and Cheney, while withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan and breaking up the big Wall Street investment banks and doing Ken Lay numbers on Goldman Sachs‘s Lloyd Blankfein and Magnetar‘s Alec Litowitz, while firing Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Rahm Emanuel.
They’ve got 4 whole months, after all.
They’re smart people, right? They should be at least half as smart as all those independent and progressives who won’t vote for them unless they do those things, right?
I mean, Obama and the democrats can’t possibly be stupid enough to actually believe that independents and liberals are stupid enough to vote to continue being screwed by them, can they?
Apr 28 2010
Michael Moore: “Deport Wall Street”
“… any illegal immigrant they catch in Arizona, they should let him keep doing his job because he’s adding to the economy. For every one they catch, they should send one Goldman Sachs guy to Mexico.” – Michael Moore on Larry King Live, Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
Apr 26 2010
Moksha: It Was Hid So Carefully
Are not merrier than I
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly
No: I may not tell the best
Surely, friends, I could have guessed
Death was but the good king’s jest
It was hid so carefully
— G.K. Chesterton
Apr 24 2010
State Of The Climate – March 2010
March 2010
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
- The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 13.5°C (56.3°F), which is 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F).
This was also the 34th consecutive March with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average. - The March worldwide land surface temperature was 1.36°C (2.45°F) above the 20th century average of 5.0°C (40.8°F) – the fourth warmest on record.
- The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average of 15.9°C (60.7°F) and the warmest March on record.
- For the year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 13.0°C (55.3°F) was the fourth warmest January-March period. This value is 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average.
Apr 23 2010
Stop Too Big To Fail: Astroturfing The Anger Over Wall Street
Justin Elliott writes at TPM Muckraker Wednesday April 21, 2010:
Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform
In the last few weeks, a new player entered the financial reform fray with a $1.6 million ad buy, a respected economist on board, a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning websites, and a message, cooked right into the group’s name — Stop Too Big To Fail — that liberals could love.
But as TPMmuckraker has looked into the group, every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform.
The group’s leader has a long history running a rent-a-front operation: offering up his services to large corporations who are willing to pay top dollar for a “consumers group” that will engage in stealth advocacy on behalf of industry. The group refuses to divulge its funding sources. The respected economist whose support the group touts now says he was deceived. And Stop Too Big To Fail has links to DCI Group, one of Washington’s best-known astroturf operators.
Besides all that, Stop Too Big To Fail’s real goal is clear: kill the financial reform bill.
Apr 23 2010
There Ain’t No Easy Way Out
Apr 21 2010
Re-Creation: Can The US Dollar Collapse? Part 4
In the first three segments of this six part interview we’ve heard Jane D’Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving ‘engine’ of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income – – – finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person, but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the ‘American Dream’ through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.
In this fourth segment D’Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to give us the broad outlines of a solution she proposes to help reorganize the US and global economies – “an investment fund…in which you can attract, also, not only the savings that end up in central banks and government treasuries around the world, but the private savings, the important private savings, which are pension funds, not only in the US and other developed countries, but also in emerging market countries where pension funds are growing like crazy and they have no place to put them”, an alternative in a world where “politicians in the US, but certainly not only the US, in much of the world-are so entwined with the finance sector that the politics is pretty much as parasitical as the banks”
Real News Network – April 20, 2010
Can US dollar remain world’s currency? Pt.4
D’Arista: The world wants a new reserve currency – would be good for Americans too
Transcript here
Part 1 of this interview is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
All four parts are under the tag Jane D’Arista
Apr 20 2010
Inside Job: Bet Against The American Dream!
This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.7 million listeners. Produced by Chicago Public Radio, it’s distributed by Public Radio International, has won all of the major broadcasting awards, and is often the most popular podcast in the country, with more than a half million downloaders each week. They’ve won three Emmys for a television version of This American Life on the Showtime network, and they co-produce with NPR News an economics podcast and the blog Planet Money.
On April 9, 2010 This American Life produced a one hour radio show/podcast titled “Inside Job”, to tell the story in an entertaining way of how scams like what Magnetar and Goldman Sachs did happen:
A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities… while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money‘s Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story. Jake and Jesse pored through thousands of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of Wall Street Insiders. We bring you the result: a tale of intrigue and questionable behavior, which parallels quite closely the plot of a Mel Brooks musical.
Listen to podcast stream here (opens new window)
Apr 20 2010
Midterm Storm Brewing: Jobs and Housing Crisis Lost Democrats Massachusetts
Thomas Ferguson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a Senior Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught formerly at MIT and the University of Texas, Austin, and is the author or coauthor of several books, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political System (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Right Turn (Hill & Wang, 1986).
Most of Ferguson’s research focuses on how economics and politics affect institutions and vice versa. His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economic History. He is a long time Contributing Editor to The Nation and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the Historical Society and the International Journal of Political Economy.
Apr 19 2010
The Longest Bridge
The biker pulled over and said: ‘Build me a bridge to Hawaii so I can ride over anytime I want.’
God replied: ‘Your request is materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking. The supports required reaching the bottom of the Pacific and the concrete and steel it would take!’
‘I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of something that could possibly help mankind.’
The biker thought about it for a long time. Finally, he said: ‘God, I wish that I, and all men, could understand women.’
‘I want to know how she feels inside, what she’s thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says nothing’s wrong, why she snaps and complains when I try to help, and how I can make a woman truly happy.’