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By CNu at January 17, 2012 8 comments
Labels: unspeakable
It might start with a minor incident, possibly involving an Iranian armed small craft manned by the Revolutionary Guard. Though the Strait of Hormuz is generally considered an international waterway, the Iranians claim that half of the strait is within their territorial waters. Tehran, in response to intensified sanctions, declares that it can determine who can use the strait and says that it will take steps to keep American warships from entering. The frigate USS Ingraham, patrolling off of Bushehr, is confronted by the small craft and ordered to heave to, an order it rejects. The Iranian commander, ignoring instructions to back off when confronted directly by the U.S. Navy, opens fire with rocket-propelled grenades. The frigate’s Phalanx rapid-fire battery immediately responds by blasting the Iranian boat, killing the entire Revolutionary Guard crew, but two American sailors are also killed in the exchange and four are wounded.
Fighters from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis are immediately launched under standing orders, and they devastate the naval base that the Iranian boat departed from. President Obama holds a press conference and calls the incident an act of war and vows to do everything necessary to support U.S. forces in the region, but he stops short of a commitment to stage a full-scale attack on Iran. A hastily called meeting of the U.N. Security Council results in a 17–1 vote urging the United States to exercise restraint, with only Washington voting “no.” In the General Assembly, only the United States, Israel, Micronesia, and Costa Rica support possible military action.
The United States is effectively alone, but Israel takes advantage of the growing war fervor in the United States to launch an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. The recently completed nuclear reactor at Bushehr is destroyed, killing 13 Russian technicians working on the site, and the aboveground buildings at the Natanz nuclear research facility are leveled. Russian-supplied Iranian air defenses shoot down six Israeli aircraft. Washington receives no prior warning of the Israeli attack, though it does pick up the signal traffic that precedes it and knows something is coming. It makes no effort to stop the Israelis as they fly over undefended Iraqi airspace.
By CNu at January 17, 2012 1 comments
Labels: WW-III
Even though these donors direct more money to the candidates than anyone else, disclosure can be spotty, candidates generally release bundlers by ranges of fundraising, indicated in this chart with the "max" and "min" columns, and with the top ranges being simply "$500,000 or more." Together, 357 elites are directing at least $55,900,000 for Obama's re-election efforts -- money that has gone into the coffers of his campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee.
Industry | Min. Raised | # of Bundlers |
---|---|---|
Lawyers/Law Firms | $9,900,000 | 78 |
Securities & Investment | $9,400,000 | 62 |
Business Services | $5,950,000 | 31 |
Real Estate | $5,050,000 | 27 |
TV/Movies/Music | $4,150,000 | 15 |
By CNu at January 17, 2012 1 comments
Labels: Obamamandian Imperative
By CNu at January 16, 2012 4 comments
Labels: History's Mysteries , Living Memory , unspeakable
By CNu at January 16, 2012 0 comments
Labels: People Centric Leadership
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By CNu at January 15, 2012 1 comments
Labels: Collapse Crime , Peak Capitalism , psychopathocracy
By CNu at January 15, 2012 7 comments
Labels: psychopathocracy
By CNu at January 15, 2012 0 comments
Labels: as above-so below
If you observe their endless debates and expensive attack ads and get a sense that these candidates are out of touch with many of the pedestrian problems faced by the rest of us -- oh, say like trying to balance a family budget -- it's not just your imagination.
While most Americans saw their incomes and wealth slip in the past several years, the wealth of our reps in Washington, D.C., has grown by leaps and bounds. The key takeaway here: Being a millionaire would make any normal person a One-Percenter, a member of the nation’s wealthiest group. In Congress, it just makes you average.
So rather than a CEO this week -- we’ll get back to them – I’m making Congress my One-Percenter of the Week.
Consider these numbers:
"It's no surprise that so many people grumble about lawmakers being out of touch," said Sheila Krumholz, CRP executive director. And it's not only the news of their costly yachts and expensive vacations that rankles.
It's also the sense that our One-Percenter reps in Washington aren't doing enough to help the rest of us, perhaps because they are so distracted by their embarrassingly rancorous bipartisan arguing -- which has earned them their most unfavorable ratings in years.
Bickering over the budget last summer, for example, brought the threat of a U.S. credit rating downgrade, helping to shave billions off our stock holdings in just a few painful weeks.
A recent Congressional Budget Office study found that public policy efforts -- in the tax code and through programs like Medicaid -- now do less to combat income inequality than they did in 1979.
And three years after the worst financial meltdown in decades -- which many blame on lax oversight of the financial sector by Washington -- our economy is improving, but not fast enough to provide jobs for the millions who are unemployed.
It’s not hard, either, to suggest a little bias toward the One Percent, and a bipartisan one. For all the talk about rescinding the portion of the Bush tax cuts that apply to the highest income brackets, they survived two years with a Democratic president and Democratic majority in both houses of Congress as well as the current, divided Congress. And late in 2011, House Republicans took lots of criticism for stalling on a 2% payroll tax that by its nature helped those in the lower brackets more than the One Percent.
So who's richest in Congress?
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., tops the CRP list as the wealthiest of the lot, with an estimated 2010 net worth of $448 million. He's followed by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, with an estimated net worth of $380 million. (For a look at a list from Roll Call and CNBC, read "The 15 richest members of Congress.")
Just how did these reps get so wealthy? Probably not on the $174,000 they make a year, despite the juicy perks like extra pay for senior posts and generous medical and pension benefits. Most likely, they're so much richer than the rest of us simply because campaigning is expensive, so politics naturally attracts wealthy people. Many of them made their riches in real estate, or they got their wealth through inheritances and marriage.
But shrewd stock picking also clearly help. Studies by Alan Ziobrowski at Georgia State University conclude that our reps regularly outperform the markets by large amounts due to the “significant information advantage” they derive from their jobs.
Our reps may actually be a lot wealthier than the numbers provided by CRP suggest, since so much of their wealth goes unreported. The top bracket for assets of spouses is "more than $1 million," which means that family net worth is likely undervalued in many cases. Plus their annual filings exclude the value of government retirement accounts, primary residences and personal property not held for investment -- like artwork and cars.
By CNu at January 15, 2012 0 comments
Labels: accountability , governance
When President Obama last January announced the departure of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, many liberals were furious that his replacement was the Midwest Chairman of JP Morgan and Boeing Director William Daley, who was also an opponent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a critic of Obama’s health care bill as too leftist...
Rachel Maddow harshly condemned the choice ... and sardonically observed: “mmm – a banker and a lobbyist: smells like change.”
I don't have much use for Rachel Maddow, but she got that right. What will Daley do now?
Yesterday, the White House announced Daley’s departure — he will now co-chair Obama’s re-election campaign, which basically means raising huge amounts of money from his Wall Street friends — and unveiled his replacement as Chief of Staff: Jacob "Jack" Lew.
And what about the new guy? What was he doing prior to the financial crisis?
By CNu at January 15, 2012 0 comments
Labels: Obamamandian Imperative , odors
It’s not hard to forget just how nonsensical, simplistic and childish the so-called theory of marginal utility is. Personally, I hadn’t encountered it directly for a number of years. But reading a review copy of Steve Keen’s excellent new revised edition of ‘Debunking Economics’ encouraged me to pull out the old Samuelson and Nordhaus textbook once more.
While Keen shows quite clearly in that book that even within its own narrow and absurd definitions the theory is internally inconsistent, I propose here to take a more general look at this intellectual masturbatory appendage that passes for a theory of individual and societal desire – and to try to substantially demonstrate that, far be it from being an expression of individual liberty, it is, in fact, a vision of a controlled and deterministic society, not unlike it’s father Jeremy Bentham’s other invention, the Panopticon.
“But it’s not psychological!”
The theory of marginal utility is, like most concepts in neoclassical microeconomics, quite simple. It begins, also like most concepts in neoclassical microeconomics, with a tautology. The economists claim that people choose that which maximises their pleasure and minimises their displeasure. They refer to this as people ‘optimising their utility’ – ‘utility’ here being this supposedly innate tendency to choose that which satisfies us most.
As any even a half-blind observer will note this is complete claptrap. People often make choices that turn out later not to ‘maximise their satisfaction’ (whatever that crude phrase might mean). Have you ever gone clothes shopping and bought an expensive pair of jeans that you never wore? Well, that’s hardly utility maximising behaviour.
In fact people often make choices that lead to less than satisfactory outcomes. This seems to be by design rather than anything else. If we always made the choices that ensured constant satisfaction we would soon find that we had no motivation to do anything new and would simply sit and stew in our own narrow and static world. That we occasionally make less than satisfactory choices allows us to continue to pursue satisfaction all the more. Nothing would smother our drives, our ambitions and our aspirations quite like a constant state of satiation.
But saying any of this is far too psychological for the average economist. After all, they insist that the theory of utility is not psychological. From Samuelson and Nordhaus’ ‘Economics’ (15th Edition):
But you should definitively resist the idea that utility is a psychological function or feeling that can be observed or measured. Rather, utility is a scientific construct that economists use to understand how rational consumers divide their limited resources among commodities that provide them with satisfaction. (P. 73)
The sheer amount of qualifying statements in those sentences is outstanding. But let us ignore such brazen tautology and meandering qualifying rhetoric for a moment, as there is something far more important and interesting going on here.
Why does Samuelson insist that this is not a psychological ‘function’? After all, we have just shown that the theory of utility contains a strongly psychological dimension in which it gives a very definitive view of human psychology.
This is a classic shunning of intellectual responsibility on the part of Samuelson. He assures us – and with us, himself – that he is not passing psychological judgement. He does this by insisting that we are engaged here in ‘science’ (whatever that means).
Of course, the critical observer can see that this is a strongly psychological argument with absolutely psychological foundations, but Samuelson doesn’t want to know anything about this.
Why? Because that would lead him to be questioned regarding the psychological basis of his assertions and that would cause his neoclassical worldview to crumble, strip him of scientific authority and show him to be doing what he is, in fact, doing; namely, using a scientific ‘style’ to try to convince the reader that the unlikely psychology that he puts forward is in fact objective, scientifically verified reality.
By CNu at January 14, 2012 14 comments
Labels: Livestock Management
Googlequitthechamber | Google's unofficial corporate motto is "don't be evil". On many fronts, outlined below, Google's actions have lived up to its rhetoric. But the US Chamber of Commerce's positions on the key issues of the day are in direct conflict with Google's mission and hurt Google users all around the world. Google's membership in the Chamber of Commerce legitimizes the Chamber. If Google's staff and leadership are truly committed to not being evil, they need to end their membership in the US Chamber of Commerce.
But Google's commitment to the environment extends beyond one of its founders. Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA is powered entirely by solar energy, making it one of the world's largest solar-powered complexes. They are even advancing "Google Earth Engine", which allows scientists and developing countries to track activity causing climate change - like deforestation.
Google has entered into Power Purchase Agreements, committing to purchase power from clean energy facilities across the country. Long-term financial agreements with two wind farms in Oklahoma and Iowa are expected to produce 15% of Google's total energy use by next year. Google has touted its formidable investment in clean energy technology as a model for other corporations, challenging other companies to think about long-term benefits once renewable energy prices are competitive with coal.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest obstacles to ending our addiction to fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis. See more on the Chamber's climate and environmental policies here.
By CNu at January 14, 2012 0 comments
Labels: accountability , cognitive infiltration , facebook IS evil
The Supreme Court’s misguided Citizens United decision did damage enough to fair elections by freeing corporations to make unlimited donations to supposedly independent campaign expenditure groups. But the court said nothing about the basic 1907 reform law — enacted after the robber baron scandals — that bans corporate donors from wooing candidates directly with largess.
The R.N.C., in a brief filed in federal court in Virginia, would effectively spike that law by freeing candidates to solicit what could amount to a million-dollar-plus donation from any corporation seeking clout. The result would dash the anticorruption restrictions on candidates’ money seeking under the McCain-Feingold law, inviting a blizzard of money and favors directly between donors and politicians.
Republicans argue that the logic of Citizens United points toward scrapping the ban on direct corporate giving. This was the muddled reasoning of a federal district judge who overreached last year from the Supreme Court decision. The R.N.C. aimed to keep that possibility alive in the current appeal by filing a brief in opposition to the Justice Department’s defense of corporate restrictions.
Crucial to the R.N.C. position is having its own coffers keep pace with the new boom in corporate donations to “independent” so-called super PACs unleashed by Citizens United that do the candidates’ dirty work. “Traditional political parties and candidate committees are in danger of having their voices drowned out,” the R.N.C. wailed.
By CNu at January 14, 2012 0 comments
Labels: agenda , elite , establishment
By CNu at January 13, 2012 6 comments
Labels: hegemony , What IT DO Shawty...
By CNu at January 13, 2012 15 comments
Labels: psychopathocracy
That's right -- the conservative president of France wants to tax the financial traders and speculators.
Referring to the tax as a "moral issue" and blaming deregulation and speculation for the global economic meltdown, Sarkozy has said that traders must "repay for the damage they have caused."
What does it tell us about U.S. politics that the conservative president of France - on this issue and others -- is way to the left of President Obama? The U.S. president has not publicly promoted a Wall Street transaction tax (even though U.S. financial institutions, not the French, were largely responsible for the global crisis).
Sometimes called a "Robin Hood tax," a Financial Transaction Tax is endorsed worldwide by everyone from conservative European leaders to the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury to Bill Gates and Ralph Nader. The tax is tiny per transaction and would barely be felt by middle-class investors or their pensions or 401(k)'s, but it could raise big bucks from high-volume investors and impose a brake on the kind of speculation that tanked the world's economy.
French President Sarkozy keeps explaining to the people of France and Europe that a small transaction tax raises billions for countries facing deficits.
Wouldn't it be something if President Obama went to the American people with such a deficit proposal, instead of putting Medicare on the chopping block?
President Sarkozy invokes the "moral issue" of financial institutions repairing the damage they caused. What a shock it would be to see President Obama aiming the "moral issue" at Wall Street profiteers and demanding repair of damage, instead of rewarding them with top White House jobs.
After failing to get resistant allies among European countries to join him, Sarkozy is going forward on his own - declaring yesterday: "If France waits for others to tax finance, then finance will never be taxed."
Can you imagine Obama standing up to a resistant Congress on a Wall Street transaction tax? He can't even stand up to his own advisers on the issue, according to Ron Suskind's insider book on the Obama White House, "Confidence Men." Suskind reports that Obama briefly embraced the tax and declared at one meeting: "We are going to do this!" But after Obama's top economic adviser (and Wall Streeter) Larry Summers criticized the tax, the idea was buried at the White House.
By CNu at January 13, 2012 0 comments
Labels: Obamamandian Imperative
By CNu at January 12, 2012 8 comments
Labels: Farmer Brown , Livestock Management
By CNu at January 12, 2012 0 comments
Labels: Collapse Crime , Livestock Management
As the Inquirer points out in a detailed look, the move to cut food stamps is way out of line with what other states are doing: “Pennsylvania plans to make the amount of food stamps that people receive contingent on the assets they possess — an unexpected move that bucks national trends and places the commonwealth among a minority of states.”
The trend during the Great Recession, with millions falling into poverty, has been to remove such barriers to assistance. Gov. Ed Rendell eliminated the state's asset test in 2008. Pennsylvania now joins 11 states with asset tests — including Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota.
Eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is an old and recurrent refrain from those who seek to dismantle the country's social welfare system. But it's a cynical ruse: 30 percent of those eligible for food stamps in Pennsylvania don't receive them. According to federal data, the Inquirer notes, Pennsylvania has a fraud rate of just one-tenth of 1 percent.
Conservatives frequently bristle at the idea that poor people might have nice things while receiving public assistance ("they have a television on welfare!"). But Pennsylvania will now create the most bizarre of disincentives: dissuading poor people from saving.
“We all know that families need to save money to get off government assistance and achieve self-sufficiency,” according to a press release from Carey Morgan, Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. “So it’s not only inhumane, but counterproductive to force people to drain their savings before they can get any help. Someone with less than $2,000 in the bank would easily be wiped out by one visit to the emergency room.”
The City of Philadelphia has condemned the move, as have local retailers who stand to lose business from food stamp recipients. The food stamp program is a major economic stimulus: every dollar of public funds spent on food stamps grows GDP by $1.73.
There was a time not too long ago when even Republicans seemed to support the food stamp program.
By CNu at January 12, 2012 0 comments
Labels: clampdown , Livestock Management