Good News

A report from the UN says that we could double food crops with sound ecological farming techniques. Can we get of the oil teat now?

Did you know?

Check out Sony's take on the crazy acceleration of these times.

Meanwhile there's a dramatic redistribution of wealth occurring in the US. Republicans are stealing from the poor so they can give to the rich.

I didn't realize that over half the deaths of children came from suicide. I did know that there are a bunch of Republicans fighting against anti-bullying legislation.

I heard that the US Chamber of Commerce had right wing ties, but I could have known that they are this bad.

I did know that the Koch brothers seem to be dicks and Walker appears to their bitch.

It's nice to get new figures like this, "Columnist Sebastian Mallaby^{[dead link]} of the Washington Post reacted sharply to Perkins' book^[6]: "This man is a frothing conspiracy theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense, and yet his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is a runaway bestseller." Mallaby, who spent 13 years writing for the London Economist and wrote a critically well-received biography of World Bank chief James Wolfensohn,^[7] holds that Perkins' conception of international finance is "largely a dream" and that his "basic contentions are flat wrong."^[6] For instance he points out that Indonesia reduced its infant mortality and illiteracy rates by two-thirds after economists persuaded its leaders to borrow money in 1970. He also disputes Perkins' claim that 51 of the top 100 world economies belong to companies. A value-added comparison done by the UN, he says, shows the number to be 29. (The 51 of 100 data comes from an Institute for Policy Studies Dec, 2000 Report on the Top 200 corporations; using 2010 data from The CIA World Factbookand The Fortune 500 list the current ratio is 114 corporations in the top 200 global economies.)

Humm...114 of 200

class warriors

I had a little fantasy today about becoming a class warrior because it does seem that there is a class war being waged by some heartless super rich jerks like the Koch brothers. It's the working class vs. the greedy elite. People earning a million or even a few million dollars a year are still part of the working class, if they still go to a job every day.

There are a lot of silly people that harbor resentment at government workers. Yeah, they might have more secure jobs in these times of employment insecurity, but they really don't enjoy "rich benefits". Read about that here.

I've heard the argument that it was the unions that messed-up the American car companies, but I don't buy it. I remember when those first Japanese cars came to this country around the time of the energy crisis. Those cars sipped gas and lasted twice as long as the American cars that contained engineered obsolescence. Those cars we're no-brainer buys for working folk. But I digress, we should probably review the history of labor unions before making judgments.

It's those corrupt hedge-fund managers that everybody should be going after. After all, the salary and bonus from just one of those guys could pay the salaries of 300,000 teachers for a full year.

There are about 360 billionaires that live here in the USA. China comes in second with almost 80. Does anybody really need or even deserve that much money? That's a rhetorical moral question you should answer yourself.

Meanwhile unions and their relations with the middle class should be scrutinized.

Propaganda and crash courses

Just adding a few notes, simple reminders to review some crash courses like Fuzzy Numbers and a good discussion about propaganda.

Dumbpublicans

Dumbpublicans is what I call the masses of dummies who believe the conservative lies that have been fed to them. I know it's not nice to call people names, but I don't think it could cause much harm. What does cause very real harm is the agenda of a relatively evil few. I'm talking about the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdock, Dick Cheney and the rest of that bunch.

It's amazing that so many are so brain-washed. I talk with such people every day. They are a big part of the problem. They are unwitting traitors to the American Dream that vote for the wrong people, people who serve the narrow interests of a super-rich elite and work against the common good. I would like to shame them. I would like them to accept the facts and see the truth.

What are the facts? What is the truth? The simple truth is that narrow moneyed interests have subverted our government from serving the best interests of We The People. It's a simple fact of life that we need government to maintain a functional society and that the only way to properly fund said government is with an appropriate progressive tax structure.

It is a fact that from the late 1940's until the late 1960's, the top marginal tax rate was 90%. Some people just wont face the facts. The way out of our deficit problem is to tax the rich. The top 400 income receivers in this country profit as much as the lowest 100,000,000 people. That figure isn't a mistake. The income of the richest 400 families equals the income of the poorest one-hundred million people in this country.

Some of the richest people are just plain greedy and don't care that what they want kills innocent people and creates mass suffering. The Republicans are lying about Social Security, it's just budget baloney. Trickle down economics is also a lie. The Republican leadership are professional lairs. Any one who supports them are dumb-publicans.

To help us understand how ignorant many Americans are we refer to some polling results. The following partial paragraph was copied and pasted from a recent Newsweek article that you may read in it's entirety here....

A 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans want to tackle deficits by cutting foreign aid from what they believe is the current level (27 percent of the budget) to a more prudent 13 percent. The real number is under 1 percent. A Jan. 25 CNN poll, meanwhile, discovered that even though 71 percent of voters want smaller government, vast majorities oppose cuts to Medicare (81 percent), Social Security (78 percent), and Medicaid (70 percent). Instead, they prefer to slash waste—a category that, in their fantasy world, seems to include 50 percent of spending, according to a 2009 Gallup poll.

Mother Jones published an exceptional article, It's the Inequality Stupid, which contains lots of charts and graphs to illustrate the points. It is this graphic,

of Balance

A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable.

We can clearly see how ignorant many Americans really are. If you'd like to better understand The Ignorant American Voter then you can read that article or dive even deeper and read the book by Rick Shenkman.

Interlocking directorates

Interlocking directorates may be a factor that contributes to a lack of good reporting in major media. I've been impressed with the job that They Rule has done. Check it out and play with the site, it's interactive.

bank on this

North Dakota is the only state in the union that owns its own bank. It's been a wonderful recent success in these troubled financial times. North Dakota actually has a budget surplus when the other states are in dire fiscal straits. Are there lessons to be learned here? I think we all need to take a good long, hard look at the banking system that is the backbone of our economies. Here's a link to an article about this by Mother Jones.