Grave Danger, Use Round Wheel Now!

Round wheel rolls

Shocking Revelation: Humans Do Not Always Act Rationally!

A recent NPR report on economists who do not assume that humans always act rationally:

Using Psychology to Save You From Yourself

...behavioral economics — a school of economic thought greatly influenced by psychological research — which argues that the human animal is hard-wired to make errors when it comes to decision-making, and therefore people need a little "nudge" to make decisions that are in their own best interests.

What I found interesting is that this approach is not exactly the traditional liberal, managed economy approach, although it does involve a degree of intervention that is probably offensive to the Ayn Rand school of economic conservatives. What they suggest in not so much taking decision-making power away from those irrational people who otherwise might make bad choices, but rather in considering behavorial understanding to steer them towards the "right" choices.

They cited as an example, that if you want people to participate in their companies' retirement plans (eg 401(k) etc), rather than having them elect to do so, as is the current norm, that they be automatically enrolled unless they opt out. Same choices, in theory, but clearly many more people would actually participate.

For more on this, see NUDGE, coauthored by Carl Sunstein, Obama's choice to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the main subject of the NPR story linked above.

Enhanced Obfuscation Techniques

I Have a Dream

What a Dick

Click on the picture to see the whole thing.

Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down

Perhaps not terribly timely, but still, a great song. Kris still has some great songs to write.

They're killing babies in the name of Freedom
We've been down that sorry road before
They let us hang around a little longer than they should have
And it's too late to fool us anymore

We've seen the ones who killed the ones with vision
Cold-blooded murder right before your eyes
Today they hold the power and the money and the guns
It's getting hard to listen to their lies.

Chorus:
And I've just got to wonder what my Daddy would've done
If he'd seen the way they turned his dream around
I've got to go by what he told me, try to tell the truth
And stand your ground
DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN


Mining roads
Killing farmers
Burning down schools full of children
Fighting communism


Chorus:
And I've just got to wonder what my Daddy would've done
If he'd seen the way they turned his dream around
I've got to go by what he told me, try to tell the truth
And stand your ground
DON'T LET THE BASTARDS GET YOU DOWN

Perspective on Torture (hint: the real issue is not what Pelosi did or did not know)

Los Rolling

(as the Rolling Stones are called in Spain) This photo is apparently what was used for the "Sticky Fingers" album cover in Spain, as the famous "Zipper" cover was considered too racy by Franco's Spain.

More from the great For the Sake of the Song blog -- this time some wonderful Rolling Stones outtakes from Sticky Fingers. In my opinion, better than what did make the cut on that album.

Los Rolling

Maggot Brain

Thanks to For the Sake of the Song for this (a site well worth following for anyone whose musical tastes are at all similar to my own).

Funkadelic at its best!

Scroll down and click on the links to play (and perhaps record) the song. The alternative mix included is nice too, but I much prefer the original.

Sex, God and Rock n Roll

I guess I have had my head up my ass, or something, but I had not heard of this show until listening to NPR this morning. Seems to be worth looking into.

Legal Reach-Around from Sex, God, Rock 'n Roll on Vimeo.

Godka from Sex, God, Rock 'n Roll on Vimeo.

Be Here to Love Me

Some of you who have known me for awhile are aware that I am really fond of the music of Townes Van Zandt. I had been looking for this dvd, and found this link which allows you to watch it for free (you do get to sit through a couple of commercials, however).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

Dylan on Thomas Paine

So, Where Will We Bloggers Get Our News When the Newspapers Close?

I suppose we will all just make up shit and quote each other's shit as authority?

I understand that print editions are approaching dinosaur status, and if the major papers want to survive, they need to figure the economic model that works for an on-line only publication.

Meantime, the major papers still hire the bulk of those investigative journalists that are working, and the steady loss of newspapers means that there is progressively less and less real investigative journalism being done.

Hey Paul Krugman

Thanks to tartuffe at BOTF for pointing me to this link:

About as Good an Explanation of the Prospects...

... for our success in Afganistan as I have read anywhere.

Thanks for that, Fritz.

More like Parthia than Carthage
by Fritz Gerlich
03/20/2009, 1:01 PM #

Essentially, the United States is attempting to pacify a vast, traditionally "lawless" (i.e., subject to tribal law), frontier between India and Iran. It is, as usual, attempting to do it without any secure political footing in the host countries. And in the case of inland areas, it suffers from a critical logistical vulnerability.

Not only has such a task never been accomplished by anyone before (though many have tried), but there is no reward for the United States even if it should, by some definition or other, succeed. The only consistent rationale advanced for our presence in Afghanistan is to "prevent international terrorism from taking root" there. That is an inherently unmeasurable benefit even if it should occur, for how do you measure the probability that "international terrorism" (whatever that means) based in that part of the world would either "take root" there, or strike the United States, in the absence of our war effort? And even if the benefit should be in some way provable, what does achieving that objective in Afpakistan do to prevent the same individuals and organizations from simply "taking root" elsewhere, as they have already shown an ability to do?

The sole reason the Obama administration is gearing up an allegedly new plan in Afghanistan is that, eight years after Bush committed us, it is simply too embarrassing for any American administration to admit that this war has accomplished whatever it might have, that it has no future, and to decide to cut our losses by winding it down. Obama as a new and untested president is particularly vulnerable to this "lost face" fear, as was Kennedy in the 1960's. For this reason, we will blunder on, getting deeper and deeper into a political vaccuum and spending vast sums of money to buy nothing more than cover for our politicians to claim, "We didn't fail." In terms of tangible benefits, we get nothing important. The real action is elsewhere, as Russia seeks to reassert itself in Europe and China begins its disengagement from the dollar.

Hard to honestly imagine any way that this can turn out well.

Great Parody by Schmutzie

I have long admired Carl Sandburg's poetry, even though it is somewhat out of fashion these days, and Chicago is one of the works I like best -- so this one really appeals to me:

"Fray-cago"
by Schmutzie
03/19/2009, 9:20 PM #

Pig Butcher for the World,
Feud Maker, Stacker of Strawmen,
Gazer at navel, and Slate's excess Baggage Handler;
Boring, dreary, bawling,
Fray of the Big Haunches:


They tell me you are evil and I believe them,
for I have seen your trolling feminists,
under the gold stars luring the farm boys.


And they tell me you are banal and I answer:
No, I have seen the banned unbanned, free to troll again.
And they tell me you are snarky and my reply is:
I've forgotten more about knowledge than you'll ever know.

And having answered so I turn
once more to those who sneer at this my Fray,
and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another Fray with baby Himmler singing
So proud to be anonymous and coarse and relevant and ambiguous.


Flinging chimp feces amid the toil of piling snark on snark,
Here is a graying meth-head set vivid against the little soft cities;
Rabid as a bat on the shuttle, with tongue flapping for action,
Slimy as a worm, pitted against the burning sun.


Baldheaded,
Sniveling,
Wrecking,
Scheming.


Building, breaking, rebuilding, always e-mailing.


Under the sockpuppets, dust all over its mouth, laughing with chipped yellow teeth,
Under the terrible burden of truth, crying as a young man laughs,
Laughing, just as an ignorant fighter laughs, who has never won a battle,
Bragging and laughing that inside her keyboard is the pulse,
and under her ribs the heart of the people,

Laughing!


Laughing the boring, dreary, bawling laughter of lost youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Pig Butcher, Fued Maker, Stacker of Strawmen, Gazer at navel, and Excess Baggage Handler for Slate.


(I kinda plagiarized this. It's a loose interpretation of Carl Sandburg's Chicago.)

Excellent work, Schmutzie!

Just for comparison, here is the original LINK:

CHICAGO

HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Train Wreck

In case there is any doubt why I need to stay away from the Best of the Fray for the moment -- the insanity of this thread (no reflection at all on the top post, mind you).

Contacting the Secret Service

No More Money 'till They Tell Us What the Fuck They are Doin' With It!

Tell Congress -- no more money for banks until they tell us where it has all gone. We'll be delivering your comments personally to members of Congress this Wednesday, when Barney Frank's Financial Services Committee holds an AIG hearing on Capitol Hill:

Sign the petition at FireDogLake

Angry Bear's Take on AIG

The AIG Bonuses... A Letter to Our Leaders ~ Angry Bear

Boiled down, that proposal amounts to a flat 200% tax on the income of all AIG executives receiving the bonuses.

And a clear statement that any other financial executives pulling that sort of shit are in for the same.

Blame Dodd?

This from Salon

Guts of that article:

That is simply not what happened. What actually happened is the opposite. It was Dodd who did everything possible -- including writing and advocating for an amendment -- which would have applied the limitations on executive compensation to all bailout-receiving firms, including AIG, and applied it to all future bonus payments without regard to when those payments were promised. But it was Tim Geithner and Larry Summers who openly criticized Dodd's proposal at the time and insisted that those limitations should apply only to future compensation contracts, not ones that already existed. The exemption for already existing compensation agreements -- the exact provision that is now protecting the AIG bonus payments -- was inserted at the White House's insistence and over Dodd's objections. But now that a political scandal has erupted over these payments, the White House is trying to deflect blame from itself and heap it all on Chris Dodd by claiming that it was Dodd who was responsible for that exemption.

For Archaeopteryx (and the rest of my scientist friends)

More on AIG

Not that it happens all that often, but I have to agree with Jack Dallas here:

Re: Schrodinger..
by JackDallas
03/17/2009, 12:44 PM #

Schrodinger wrote the following post at 03/17/2009 11:25 AM: What about if the bonus payout isn't on the taxpayer's dime? Do executives who didn't earn the bonus still get it?


Well, that of course is up to the company directors. They can give a bonus to whomever they please, for a good reason, or no reason at all. It is my personal opinion that a bonus should be based on performance. If a company is privately owned, it can give away money in any manner it decides to. If it is a corporation, it could catch flak from stockholders for issuing bonuses that are not warranted.

The catch in the AIG story is that it has received billions in taxpayer money as a bail-out. That changes the equation. I would simply tell those who are contractually expecting bonuses, that used to be's don't count anymore. If they leave, they leave. Let them go find another bankrupt company, not getting money from the government, and see how big a bonus they can get for poor performance.

Jack

The Case for AIG Bonuses?

In an editorial in today's New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin makes the case for why we need to allow AIG to pay out the infamous bonuses.

I have so far only skimmed the article, but it seems that his arguement hinges on the assumption that the promised bonuses are matters of contract, and that undermining that would have huge negative implications.

As I posted yesterday, I personally have real doubts whether the bonuses in question are really contractually established......and in any case, I note that the UAW employees at General Motors and Chrysler also had contracts that got torn up as a part of our bail-out of those companies. And, as far as I can tell, those union workers rank fairly far down the list of those most responsible for those companies financial failure.

Sounds to me like another case of a double standard. Big company executives fuck up, they get paid for it, and the workers get buggered without lubricant.

Another One Bites the Dust

Close on the heels of the announcement of the closing of the Denver Rocky Mountain News, we learned late yesterday that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("the P-I") will cease publication. Each of these papers is (was) from a city in which I was a former resident, and each is a paper with which I have long maintained some emotional ties, so it is with a real sense of loss that I see them close.

No doubt, print newspapers are a declining business. It has been years since I regularly subscribed to one myself. It is much more convenient to be able to read from a number of on-line papers, to be able to link or C&P into blogs and other documents, to be able to search, etc -- and it is all free, with none of the large quantity of old newspapers to recycle.... And, no doubt, the current economic recession has put substantial additional pressure on what was already a stressed business model.

But, I really wonder if the on-line versions of our nation's newspapers are really economically viable on a stand-alone basis. Can they ultimately afford to hire the investigative reporters, the columnists, the political cartoonists that those of us who work in our pajamas rely on for so much of our material?

WTF With Bonuses for AIG Execs?

First off, I must clarify that I do not really know anything at all about the situation beyond what was reported on the news today. So perhaps they are right that they were contractually obligated to pay out those bonuses.

However, it doesn't smell right to me. I have worked for a number of companies, large and small, that utilized some form of incentive compensation as an important part of their compensation package. And one common denominator is that in every case, there was no contractual obligation to pay out the bonuses. And, I note that in virtually every case, the bonuses were tied to meeting performance goals -- and those goals generally included both individual and corporate goals. So, if the corporation results really sucked, probably there was no payout, regardless of how the individual performed.

Given that AIG managed to get themselves in a position such that the needed a huge bailout to survive, and especially if it is true, as reported, that many of the bonuses are to executives in the divisions most closely involved in the derivative cluster-fuck that lead to that melt-down, it is hard to imagine what superior performance is being rewarded.

I suppose that it is possible that the bonuses are actually related to specific performance goals of a prior period -- and that the actual payouts were approved, to be paid out considerably later -- in which case, the current payouts are legitimately the payment of legal liabilities, but even there, I note that without the Fed bailout, those bonuses would not have been paid.

Fray Business Model

Yesterday, on Slate's Best of the Fray ("BOTF"), my friend Archaeopteryx made the following comment:

Geoff doesn't want to shut down BOTF.

But everybody else at Slate does want to do so. It's a giant pain in the ass for them, and despite what several folks around here think, it generates exactly zero revenue for them.

I am afraid I have to doubt the accuracy of what Arch says, because I am almost certain that the advertisements that appear on my Fray page (right now, they are for the Ford Fusion Hybrid) are offered free of charge. I do not doubt, however, that the revenue generated does not cover the costs -- although the incremental costs cannot be too high. I mean, it is not like they spend much on moderators for the Fray. Certainly not lately.

A major part of my real-world professional live involves strategic planning, so understanding the business model is something I often find myself attempting. I have no professional experience in the on-line publishing industry, so I am doing a lot of speculating here.

I assume that Slate gets paid by advertisers based on the number of page views -- the number of times each page on which the advertises' adverts appear. It is also possible that the are paid on a "pay-per-click" basis. Either way, the revenue stream depends on the ability to attract readers to the pages in question.

My guess is that even the more active discussion boards draw significantly fewer readers than do the articles for the magazine itself. The most active board is Ballot Box, which lately generates about 1,500 to 1,600 posts per day. The third most active board, the BOTF, lately averages about 400 posts per day. It is hard to guess just how the number of posts correlates to the number of site visits. My gut reaction is that there are not many people reading Ballot Box other than the participants in the discussion. I suspect that BOTF might be a bit better, but in any case, I am skeptical about any of them drawing huge readership.

Slate seems to be trying to steer the boards to discussion of articles in the magazine. This does not seem to be very successful, at least based on the number of posts. With the exception of Today's Papers, and to a much lessor extent, Human Nature and Dear Prudie, none of the discussion boards tied to Slate articles generates significant discussion. Now, it is possible that they might have a higher number of readers per post, as those reading the article might want to see what comments other readers have made to the article, and I can understand that there could be a symbiotic relationship between a discussion forum tied to articles and the numbers of people viewing the articles themselves.

I can easily imagine that advertising revenue from the discussion boards might be relatively insignificant compared to that from the on-line magazine itself. It is not hard to imagine that they would not find much to be gained from operating general discussion forums for people who rarely, if ever, visit the e-zine itself (eg Ballot Box and BOTF).

My own guess? Most, if not all, of the Slate discussion forums are soon to be history. The ones tied to articles might remain, but only to enhance the interest in those articles.

Message of the Day

Re: Let's clear up some misconceptions.
by Schadenfreude
03/13/2009, 11:25 PM #

Dear Customers:

Fuck you. We're not making enough money off of you.

Please stop complaining about the service we promised, but didn't deliver. If you do that again, we'll burn down the shop. But first we'll bore the shit out of you talking about our non-existent costs for our non-existent services.

I've been asked to tell you to fuck off because the owners are too cheap to hire someone to tell you to fuck off, even though they said they were going to when we all quit three months ago.

Now, since you've figured out that nobody checks the messages in the Complaints box, you've started bothering actual people with your complaints about the lack of service you were promised. These people are supposed to be working for the readers of our magazine, which you clearly are not. If this doesn't stop, we'll burn down the shop.

Sincerely hoping you just fuck off,

Slate Magazine

Time Magazine on CNBC

Perhaps one of the more perceptive descriptions of CNBC that I have read:

CNBC may pay lip service to the long term, but it has the time horizon of a fruit fly.

Crime and Punishment

I have recently been thinking more about the concepts of justice and punishment in the context of modern criminal justice systems.

A couple of recent events brought this to the front of my list:

The first of these was yesterday's The Best of the Fray thread about John Demjanjuk, a retired Ohio auto worker accused of being an accomplice to the murder of 29,000 Jews for his role as a prison guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland in 1943.

The second was watching TV coverage of Bernie Madoff entering court to plead guilty to multiple charges in connection with his $50 Billion ponzi scheme.

My point in this post is not to discuss the specifics of either case, so much as to raise the questions of what it is we expect our justice system to accomplish.

I expect that the roots of our concepts of justice are with our most primitive sense of vengeance -- the idea that if you do something bad to me, I will do the same, or worse, to you. I can easily imagine that in primitive, family-oriented society, such a threat was likely one of the bases for the formation of rules of behavior. One family would attempt to somewhat control the behavior of their family towards members of other families, because of the risk of retaliation by members of the other families.

Early organized societies began to assume the role of the avenger, in place of the victim or the victim's extended family -- likely in large part because of the desire to prevent escalating rounds of violence. The Leviticus laws of the Hebrews would be a good example of this, with specific limits to the amount of vengeance to take for selected crimes -- the eye-for-an-eye idea, as well as reduced penalties when the offense was caused by accident, etc.

For thousands of years, most societies inflicted rather draconian punishments for a number of crimes -- often involving protracted, painful death. However, outside of a few Islamic nations, such punishments have been long abandoned in modern times -- even those few nations retaining the death penalty take great pains to assure that the death is as painless as possible.

I raise the question of whether there is any 21st Century reason why vengeance itself is a valid part of our concept of justice.

I am not specifically addressing the death penalty in this post, so I will assume for purposes of discussion that the penalty in question is imprisonment.

So What is Justice?

One one level, justice could involve some attempt to make the victim whole -- in the case of economic crime, this might involve economic restitution. But in the case of crimes against the victim's person, that is not so simple. Economic restitution may be part of the process -- some financial compensation for the suffering caused, for the economic losses incurred, etc, but it is hard to imagine what financial compensation would adequately compensate for someone being raped, for example, not to mention being permanently disfigured or crippled, and certainly not for being killed.

So beyond economic restitution, there is little that can be done to the perpetrator what will do much to un-do the damage to the victim. Killing or imprisoning the perpetrator will not do anything to unrape the young woman, to bring back someone's murdered son.

What punishment can do is two things:

First, it can be an effective deterrent to others who might be otherwise inclined to commit similar offenses. Certainly, for those of us who are reasonably rational, the fear of the consequences is one of the reasons we might resist the temptation to commit many crimes.

The second is that a convicted criminal who is imprisoned has far fewer opportunities to commit further crimes, at least for the duration of his/her incarceration. Locking up individuals who have proven themselves to be dangers to society can be seen as serving to protect the society. The same can be said of those committed to secure mental facilities. In this respect, it matters little, if at all, whether the perpetrator can be help personally responsible for his/her actions (ie moral culpability), but instead is a matter of whether the individual would constitute a danger to the community if left free.

My opinion is that the concept is justice as vengeance has long been obsolete -- that it should have no place in our justice system in the 21st Century. I see the desire to have revenge as an obsolete artifact of our earliest humanoid ancestors -- one that is at least as dysfunctional as are many of our "fight or flight" responses to the stresses of modern life.

Interesting Post from Today's Faith-Based

LINK to Thread

Religion and Human Arrogance
by einhverfr
02/27/2009, 11:26 AM #

I was thinking of recent posts by Star Twin and others and asking what makes her views different from the more thoughtful members of this board. Sometimes she can be capable of very interesting and intelligent conversation when she stops trying to prove that her views alone are right (or rather God has her views).

History has seen a large number of attrocities committed by one group who felt that they, and they alone were religiously correct. Whether we are talking about Baruch Goldstein, Mohammed Atta, David Koresh, or any number of other cases, this idea that we KNOW we are right and everyone else is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong is responsible for all sorts of bad things. I have met Kahanists who idolized folks like Mr Goldstein and thought that his massacre of Palestinains was a good thing.


I have come to conclude that the problem is how human nature is co-opted to produce unthinking loyalty. There are a number of basic elements to how this is addressed and some of them are deeply embedded in how we think.

The first element is an agonal view of the world. Everything centers on conflict. As Walter Ong and others have pointed out (Ong interestingly is a Jesuit), an agonal approach to the world is at the core of how primary oral societies approach the world because it helps organize thought in a world without writing. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have deeply ingrained this sort of worldview in our minds, so it is easier to see the world as conflict than it is in other ways.

The second component is that of simple monotheism: the belief in a singular deity with a knowable will. This doesn't have to be omnipotent. However, when you see this in an agonal way, it forces one to see the world as a onflict for or against this deity's will. Obviously such a conflict is logically meaningless if the deity is omnipotent because everything that happens is that deity's will, but this can be easy to gloss over because it is easy for us to organize thought in terms of conflict.

The last one is fear of being wrong. Such groups tend to argue that there are drastic hazards in being wrong either in this life or in the next. One is forced to choose what one is told is the right side and cover up one's insecurities with an image of certainty.

Does this seem to be a fair sketch of this sort of religious approach in any religion?

Crime and Punishment - Juvenile Division

NOTE: This is a work in process -- don't have time to finish it right now, but will come back to it.
RonB52 recently posted a very interesting top post at Best of the Fray, about a 10-year-old boy who apparently killed his pregnant step mother with his shotgun.

Apparently he is to be tried as an adult, and if convicted, will face a mandatory sentence of either death or life with no possibility for parole.

To me, this is a horrific situation, and an illustration of what is so wrong with our current treatment of juvenile violent offenders.

It seems to me that there are several fundamentally separate reasons for treating juvenile suspects differently from adult suspects:

First, there is the issue of whether a young offender is mentally and emotionally capable of understanding the consequences of his/her actions. Certainly, there is no magic age at which an individual suddenly has such capability -- each person is different, and such capability is something that happens progressively.

A second, somewhat related, issue is that, a juvenile suspect may not be sufficiently mature to represent his/her interests in the criminal process -- may not fully understand his/her rights, or the implications of his decisions (eg regarding pleas, waiving of rights, etc). I note that we do not generally allow individuals under age 18 to enter binding contracts for the same reason.

There generally has also been the assumption that a young offender is more likely to be rehabilitated to become a productive member of society than is an older offender. Accordingly, the juvenile system is, at least in theory, intended to be more corrective than punitive.

And, of course, there is the matter of society not being comfortable with the idea of incarcerating a juvenile in the adult prison system, where it would be virtually impossible to protect the young convict from abuse and exploitation.

Christianity Summarized

Perhaps as good, and concise, a summary of the history of Christianity as one could imagine, taken from Slate Magazine's Faith-Based discussion forum:

They're all crazy
by Arlington
01/31/2009, 9:33 AM #

A deity with three different personalities created everything in six days, then had to rest because He exceeded His omnipotence. He sent His son, who is actually one of Himselves, to be born of a virgin, wander around for thirty years, make trouble for the Romans, and be executed. This saved the world. Okay, it only saved the world from sin, not from war, famine, floods, volcanoes, etc.

His followers invaded numerous countries in His name, tortured people into believing in Him, executed people for believing in Him the wrong way, stole from the poor, raised huge armies and generally made themselves grievous nuisances for a couple thousand years. Now they're worried because a few of them broke away and formed a splinter group.

This could be a Woody Allen movie. Or maybe a Marx Brothers film.

From Todays Faith Based

Link

Let's talk.......God
by dumb_blonde
01/15/2009, 12:30 PM #

This was on the sign in front of the church in my neighborhood.

When I saw it, I said: "OK, God, let's talk, I am listening, what do you want to talk about?"


I waited a few minutes & He didn't say anything. So I talked to Him & let know how effed up I though the world is, kids dying, people starving, lack of world peace, morals & humanity. I asked Him what was he going to do about all that. He still didn't say anything. So I said "Fine, next time you want to talk, I'm all ears, but do not expect me to do all the talking"

When I said I needed a sign that He exsists, I didn't mean an actual LCD screen sign.

Maybe we DO Need Another Hero

One very brave young woman -- guess the spirit of Gandhi and Dr King is still alive:



According to an anonymous comment at Informed Consent (from which I pirated the above video):

Huwaida Arraf (born 1976 in Detroit, Michigan), co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)..... Arraf majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor....

I'm Back...

... in somewhat revised form. Took my blog private for awhile for personal and artistic reasons.

In its new form, I intend to concentrate this blog on my original mission -- the defense of reason. Accordingly, I have created a new blog to address more personal, literary, artistic etc interests -- this blog is called "An Unreasonable Man." I have moved many of my posts here to that blog.

I also created another new blog, "Ghost of Sacco and Vanzetti," to address my interest in the anarchist roots of modern radical politics (I had a grandfather and great-grandfather who were active in the IWW in the early years of the 20th Century).

Racism, Sexism Redux

Just a quick followup to my last post on Racism and Sexism:

I had posted a similar submission at Slate's "Best of the Fray" (BOTF) where it generated a fair amount of discussion (much of which was to take exception to some part of what I had written.

I don't intend to address all of the comments here (or there), but I did want to elaborate on one particular point.

It is my position that what we now call racism or sexism is rooted in the ideology that holds some races to be superior to others or one gender superior to another, even though, in many cases, the actual belief in such superiority is not consciously held by the persons whose beliefs or actions are racist or sexist.

My point is that the underlying assumptions of white superiority and male superiority are so deeply ingrained in our culture that it is not necessary that one consciously hold to such a view in order to absorb the underlying racist and/or sexist attitudes.

-isms, as eg Racism, Sexism

Terms such as racism and sexism are frequently thrown around with little thought to precise meaning.

According to The American Heritage® Book of English Usage:

The suffix -ism is a noun suffix. That is, when added to words or word roots, -ism forms nouns. It comes from the Greek noun suffix -ismos and means roughly “the act, state, or theory of.” Nouns that end in -ism often have related verbs that end in -ize (criticism/criticize), related agent nouns that end in -ist (optimism/optimist), and related adjectives that end in -istic (optimistic).

Racism

The primary definition of racism is the belief that race accounts for significant differences in human character or ability, and generally, the corollary belief that as a result of such differences, some races are superior to others.

Based on this definition, racism is not necessarily synonymous with racial discrimination or racial hatred, although they are often linked in reality. One can, for example, believe that some races are inferior without supporting discrimination against them and without hating them. And it seems quite possible that one can practice discrimination or feel hatred towards another race without believing that race to be inferior. For example, affirmative action (which is discrimination in favor of a group intended to counter previous discrimination against that group) would not necessarily imply that one race was inferior. Similarly, members of a race which have been victims of oppression by another race might hate that race without believing that race to be inferior.

I should note that not all claimed differences in racial capabilities are considered to be racism, for example, the observation of differences in typical body size, differences in susceptibility to certain diseases, etc.

Note that the definition does not depend on whether the claimed racial differences are true, so those scholars such as Rushton who claim significant racial differences in human intelligence are by definition racists, irregardless of whether their claims might be proved true.

At least based on this definition of racism, the claims made during the past presidential race that Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was a racist because of his strongly-worded sermons attacking white oppression would not be supported, as there is no evidence he considered whites to be inferior to blacks.

Many dictionaries also include a second meaning of the term "racism" also can apply to discrimination based on race as well as hostility towards other races. I agree that these do reflect common usage, but I think this is mostly sloppy use of the language, and prefer to use more specific terms to describe what I mean.

Sexism

I believe that the term "sexism" was derived circa 1968 from the term racism. However, it is not a perfect analogue to racism, due to the obvious gender differences, the recognition of which are not considered to be "sexism," In fact, the many of primary dictionary definitions for sexism more closely parallel the secondary definitions of racism -- ie discrimination against or hostility towards women, with the secondary definition of gender stereotyping more closely paralleling the primary definition of racism.

As stated above, I prefer to use definitions more precisely, so tend to not use the term sexism as a synonym for sex discrimination. Accordingly, to me, sexism is better taken to mean gender stereotyping, especially where the conclusion is that one gender is superior to the other.

Because the physical gender differences seem somewhat greater than the physical differences between races, the determination of exactly what gender-specific assumptions should be considered sexist is less clear.

My belief is that in large part, this is situationally determined. By that, I mean that, for example, a time prior to the availability of reliable birth control, and in an economy where many of the occupations require great physical strength, the assumption that females are best suited to bearing and raising children and maintaining the household, while males are more suitable to hard physical labor might not be thought as sexist at all. In a time when childbearing is a choice, and where most employment is more mental than physical, the same assumptions would be considered sexist.

I do not think misogyny or misandry are the same as sexism, although they may be related. I suggest that one may fear or hate the opposite sex for reasons having nothing to do with a belief in gender stereotypes or a belief in gender superiority. I make the distinction that sexism is an intellectual belief, while misogyny of misandry are emotional reactions.

Reversal of Fortune

A friend sent me this via e-mail -- I don't currently have a link to the sourse:

Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity.by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, is a professor at Columbia University.

November 2008

When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come.

Virtually all the indicators look grim. Inflation is running at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent, its highest level in 17 years. Unemployment stands at 6 percent; there has been no net job growth in the private sector for almost a year. Housing prices have fallen faster than at any time in memory—in Florida and California, by 30 percent or more. Banks are reporting record losses, only months after their executives walked off with record bonuses as their reward. President Bush inherited a $128 billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton; this year the federal government announced the second-largest budget deficit ever reported. During the eight years of the Bush administration, the national debt has increased by more than 65 percent, to nearly $10 trillion (to which the debts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should now be added, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Meanwhile, we are saddled with the cost of two wars. The price tag for the one in Iraq alone will, by my estimate, ultimately exceed $3 trillion.

This tangled knot of problems will be difficult to unravel. Standard prescriptions call for raising interest rates when confronted with inflation, just as standard prescriptions call for lowering interest rates when confronted with an economic downturn. How do you do both at the same time? Not in the way that some politicians have proposed. With gasoline prices at all-time highs, John McCain has called for a rollback of gas taxes. But that would lead to more gas consumption, raise the price of gas further, increase our dependence on foreign oil, and expand our already massive trade deficit. The expanding deficit would in turn force the U.S. to continue borrowing gargantuan sums from abroad, making us even more indebted. At the same time, the higher imports of oil and petroleum-based products would lead to a weaker dollar, fueling inflationary pressures.

Millions of Americans are losing their homes. (Already, some 3.6 million have done so since the subprime-mortgage crisis began.) This social catastrophe has severe economic effects. The banks and other financial institutions that own these mortgages face stunning reverses; a few, such as Bear Stearns, have already gone belly-up. To prevent America’s $5.2 trillion home financiers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from following suit, Congress authorized a blank check to cover their losses, but even that generosity failed to do the trick. Now the administration has taken over the two entities completely, a stunning feat for a supposedly market-oriented regime. These bailouts contribute to growing deficits in the short run, and to perverse incentives in the long run. Market economies work only when there is a system of accountability, but C.E.O.’s, investors, and creditors are walking away with billions, while American taxpayers are being asked to pick up the tab. (Freddie Mac’s chairman, Richard Syron, earned $14.5 million in 2007. Fannie Mae’s C.E.O., Daniel Mudd, earned $14.2 million that same year.) We’re looking at a new form of public-private partnership, one in which the public shoulders all the risk, and the private sector gets all the profit. While the Bush administration preaches responsibility, the words are addressed only to the less well-off. The administration talks about the impact of “moral hazard” on the poor “speculator” who borrowed money and bought a house beyond his ability to pay. But moral hazard somehow isn’t an issue when it comes to the high-stakes speculators in corporate boardrooms.

How Did We Get into This Mess?

A unique combination of ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence has brought us to our present condition.
Ideology proclaimed that markets were always good and government always bad. While George W. Bush has done as much as he can to ensure that government lives up to that reputation—it is the one area where he has overperformed—the fact is that key problems facing our society cannot be addressed without an effective government, whether it’s maintaining national security or protecting the environment. Our economy rests on public investments in technology, such as the Internet. While Bush’s ideology led him to underestimate the importance of government, it also led him to underestimate the limitations of markets. We learned from the Depression that markets are not self-adjusting—at least, not in a time frame that matters to living people. Today everyone—even the president—accepts the need for macro-economic policy, for government to try to maintain the economy at near-full employment. But in a sleight of hand, free-market economists promoted the idea that, once the economy was restored to full employment, markets would always allocate resources efficiently. The best regulation, in their view, was no regulation at all, and if that didn’t sell, then “self-regulation” was almost as good.

The underlying idea was, on the face of it, absurd: that market failures come only in macro doses, in the form of the recessions and depressions that have periodically plagued capitalist economies for the past several hundred years. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that these failures are just the tip of the iceberg? That beneath the surface lie a myriad of smaller but harder-to-assess inefficiencies? Let me venture an analogy from biology: A patient arrives at a hospital in serious condition. Now, it may be that the patient has simply fallen victim to one of those debilitating ailments that go around from time to time and can be cured by a massive dose of antibiotics. In this case we have a macro problem with a macro solution. But it could instead be that the patient is suffering from a decade of serious abuse—smoking, drinking, overeating, lack of exercise, a fondness for crystal meth—and that it has not only taken a catastrophic toll but also left him open to opportunistic infections of every kind. In other words, a buildup of micro problems has led to a macro problem, and no cure is possible without addressing the underlying issues. The American economy today is a patient of the second kind.
We are in the midst of micro-economic failure on a grand scale. Financial markets receive generous compensation—in the form of more than 30 percent of all corporate profits—presumably for performing two critical tasks: allocating savings and managing risk. But the financial markets have failed laughably at both. Hundreds of billions of dollars were allocated to home loans beyond Americans’ ability to pay. And rather than managing risk, the financial markets created more risk. The failure of our financial system to do what it is supposed to do matches in destructive grandeur the macro-economic failures of the Great Depression.

Economic theory—and historical experience—long ago proved the need for regulation of financial markets. But ever since the Reagan presidency, deregulation has been the prevailing religion. Never mind that the few times “free banking” has been tried—most recently in Pinochet’s Chile, under the influence of the doctrinaire free-market theorist Milton Friedman—the experiment has ended in disaster. Chile is still paying back the debts from its misadventure. With massive problems in 1987 (remember Black Friday, when stock markets plunged almost 25 percent), 1989 (the savings-and-loan debacle), 1997 (the East Asia financial crisis), 1998 (the bailout of Long Term Capital Management), and 2001–02 (the collapses of Enron and WorldCom), one might think there would be more skepticism about the wisdom of leaving markets to themselves.

The new populist rhetoric of the right—persuading taxpayers that ordinary people always know how to spend money better than the government does, and promising a new world without budget constraints, where every tax cut generates more revenue—hasn’t helped matters. Special interests took advantage of this seductive mixture of populism and free-market ideology. They also bent the rules to suit themselves. Corporations and the wealthy argued that lowering their tax rates would lead to more savings; they got the tax breaks, but America’s household savings rate not only didn’t rise, it dropped to levels not seen in 75 years. The Bush administration extolled the power of the free market, but it was more than willing to provide generous subsidies to farmers and erect tariffs to protect steelmakers. Lately, as we have seen, it seems willing to write blank checks to bail out its friends on Wall Street. In each of these cases there are clear winners. And in each there are clear losers—including the country as a whole.

What Is to Be Done?

As America attempts to work its way out of the present crisis, the danger is that we will listen to the same people on Wall Street and in the economic establishment who got us into it. For them, our current predicament is another opportunity: if they can shape the government response appropriately, they stand to gain, or at least stand to lose less, and they may be willing to sacrifice the well-being of the economy for their own benefit—just as they did in the past.

There are a number of economic tools at the country’s disposal. As noted, they can yield contradictory results. The sad truth is that we have reached the limits of monetary policy. Lowering interest rates will not stimulate the economy much—banks are not going to be willing to lend to strapped consumers, and consumers are not going to be willing to borrow as they see housing prices continue to fall. And raising interest rates, to combat inflation, won’t have the desired impact either, because the prices that are the main sources of our inflation—for food and energy—are determined in international markets; the chief consequence will be distress for ordinary people. The quandaries that we face mean that careful balancing is required. There is no quick and easy fix. But if we take decisive action today, we can shorten the length of the downturn and reduce its magnitude. If at the same time we think about what would be good for the economy in the long run, we can build a durable foundation for economic health.

To go back to that patient in the emergency room: we need to address the underlying causes. Most of the treatment options entail painful choices, but there are a few easy ones. On energy: conservation and research into new technologies will make us less dependent on foreign oil, reduce our trade imbalance, and help the environment. Expanding drilling into environmentally fragile areas, as some propose, would have a negligible effect on the price we pay for oil. Moreover, a policy of “drain America first” will make us more dependent on foreigners in the future. It is shortsighted in every dimension.

Our ethanol policy is also bad for the taxpayer, bad for the environment, bad for the world and our relations with other countries, and bad in terms of inflation. It is good only for the ethanol producers and American corn farmers. It should be scrapped. We currently subsidize corn-based ethanol by almost $1 a gallon, while imposing a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol. It would be hard to invent a worse policy. The ethanol industry tries to sell itself as an infant, needing help to get on its feet, but it has been an infant for more than two decades, refusing to grow up. Our misguided biofuel policy is taking land used for food production and diverting it to energy production for cars; it is the single most important factor contributing to higher grain prices.

Our tax policies need to be changed. There is something deeply peculiar about having rich individuals who make their money speculating on real estate or stocks paying lower taxes than middle-class Americans, whose income is derived from wages and salaries; something peculiar and indeed offensive about having those whose income is derived from inherited stocks paying lower taxes than those who put in a 50-hour workweek. Skewing the tax rates in the other direction would provide better incentives where they count and would more effectively stimulate the economy, with more revenues and lower deficits.

We can have a financial system that is more stable—and even more dynamic—with stronger regulation. Self-regulation is an oxymoron. Financial markets produced loans and other products that were so complex and insidious that even their creators did not fully understand them; these products were so irresponsible that analysts called them “toxic.” Yet financial markets failed to create products that would enable ordinary households to face the risks they confront and stay in their homes. We need a financial-products safety commission and a financial-systems stability commission. And they can’t be run by Wall Street. The Federal Reserve Board shares too much of the mind-set of those it is supposed to regulate. It could and should have known that something was wrong. It had instruments at its disposal to let the air out of the bubble—or at least ensure that the bubble didn’t over-expand. But it chose to do nothing.

Throwing the poor out of their homes because they can’t pay their mortgages is not only tragic—it is pointless. All that happens is that the property deteriorates and the evicted people move somewhere else. The most coldhearted banker ought to understand the basic economics: banks lose money when they foreclose—the vacant homes typically sell for far less than they would if they were lived in and cared for. If banks won’t renegotiate, we should have an expedited special bankruptcy procedure, akin to what we do for corporations in Chapter 11, allowing people to keep their homes and re-structure their finances.

If this sounds too much like coddling the irresponsible, remember that there are two sides to every mortgage—the lender and the borrower. Both enter freely into the deal. One might say that both are, accordingly, equally responsible. But one side—the lender—is supposed to be financially sophisticated. In contrast, the borrowers in the subprime market consist mainly of people who are financially unsophisticated. For many, their home is their only asset, and when they lose it, they lose their life savings. Remember, too, that we already give big homeowner subsidies, through the tax system, to affluent families. With tax deductions, the government is paying in some states almost half of all mortgage interest and real-estate taxes. But many lower-income people, whose deductions are meaningless because their tax bill is too small, get no help. It makes much more sense to convert these tax deductions into cashable tax credits, so that the fraction of housing costs borne by the government for the poor and the rich is the same.

About these matters there should be no debate—but there will be. Already, those on Wall Street are arguing that we have to be careful not to “over-react.” Over-reaction, we are told, might stifle “innovation.” Well, some innovations ought to be stifled. Those toxic mortgages were certainly innovative. Other innovations were simply devices to circumvent regulations—regulations intended to prevent the kinds of problems from which our economy now suffers. Some of the innovations were designed to tart up the bottom line, moving liabilities off the balance sheet—charades designed to blur the information available to investors and regulators. They succeeded: the full extent of the exposure was not clear, and still isn’t. But there is a reason we need reliable accounting. Without good information it is hard to make good economic decisions. In short, some innovations come with very high price tags. Some can actually cause instability.

The free-market fundamentalists—who believe in the miracles of markets—have not been averse to accepting government bailouts. Indeed, they have demanded them, warning that unless they get what they want the whole system may crash. What politician wants to be blamed for the next Great Depression, simply because he stood on principle? I have been critical of weak anti-trust policies that allowed certain institutions to become so dominant that they are “too big to fail.” The harsh reality is that, given how far we’ve come, we will see more bailouts in the days ahead. Now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in federal receivership, we must insist: not a dime of taxpayer money should be put at risk while shareholders and creditors, who failed to oversee management, are permitted to walk away with anything they please. To do otherwise would invite a recurrence. Moreover, while these institutions may be too big to fail, they’re not too big to be reorganized. And we need to remember why we’re bailing them out: in order to maintain a flow of money into mortgage markets. It’s outrageous that these institutions are responding to their near-monopoly position by raising fees and increasing the costs of mortgages, which will only worsen the housing crisis. They, and the financial markets, have shown little interest in measures that could help millions of existing and potential homeowners out of the bind they’re in.

The hardest puzzles will be in monetary policy (balancing the risks of inflation and the risk of a deeper downturn) and fiscal policy (balancing the risk of a deeper downturn and the risk of an exploding deficit). The standard analysis coming from financial markets these days is that inflation is the greatest threat, and therefore we need to raise interest rates and cut deficits, which will restore confidence and thereby restore the economy. This is the same bad economics that didn’t work in East Asia in 1997 and didn’t work in Russia and Brazil in 1998. Indeed, it is the same recipe prescribed by Herbert Hoover in 1929.

It is a recipe, moreover, that would be particularly hard on working people and the poor. Higher interest rates dampen inflation by cutting back so sharply on aggregate demand that the unemployment rate grows and wages fall. Eventually, prices fall, too. As noted, the cause of our inflation today is largely imported—it comes from global food and energy prices, which are hard to control. To curb inflation therefore means that the price of everything else needs to fall drastically to compensate, which means that unemployment would also have to rise drastically.
In addition, this is not the time to turn to the old-time fiscal religion.

Confidence in the economy won’t be restored as long as growth is low, and growth will be low if investment is anemic, consumption weak, and public spending on the wane. Under these circumstances, to mindlessly cut taxes or reduce government expenditures would be folly.

But there are ways of thoughtfully shaping policy that can walk a fine line and help us get out of our current predicament. Spending money on needed investments—infrastructure, education, technology—will yield double dividends. It will increase incomes today while laying the foundations for future employment and economic growth. Investments in energy efficiency will pay triple dividends—yielding environmental benefits in addition to the short- and long-run economic benefits.
The federal government needs to give a hand to states and localities—their tax revenues are plummeting, and without help they will face costly cutbacks in investment and in basic human services. The poor will suffer today, and growth will suffer tomorrow. The big advantage of a program to make up for the shortfall in the revenues of states and localities is that it would provide money in the amounts needed: if the economy recovers quickly, the shortfall will be small; if the downturn is long, as I fear will be the case, the shortfall will be large.

These measures are the opposite of what the administration—along with the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain—has been urging. It has always believed that tax cuts, especially for the rich, are the solution to the economy’s ills. In fact, the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 set the stage for the current crisis. They did virtually nothing to stimulate the economy, and they left the burden of keeping the economy on life support to monetary policy alone. America’s problem today is not that households consume too little; on the contrary, with a savings rate barely above zero, it is clear we consume too much. But the administration hopes to encourage our spendthrift ways.

What has happened to the American economy was avoidable. It was not just that those who were entrusted to maintain the economy’s safety and soundness failed to do their job. There were also many who benefited handsomely by ensuring that what needed to be done did not get done. Now we face a choice: whether to let our response to the nation’s woes be shaped by those who got us here, or to seize the opportunity for fundamental reforms, striking a new balance between the market and government.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, is a professor at Columbia University.

Failing Upwards

Apparently that is much easier when one has a powerful father with powerful friends. This from a recent Rolling Stone article:

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

Death of a Star

Quote for the Day

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

John McCain.