It’s amazing how not running for re-election can free you up to say what you really think. Who knew Barney Frank had been holding back?
The Republican’s may be able to strike these words from the official record, but I defy them to strike these words from the web.
The headline writers at The New York Times must be channeling the book 1984 when they came up with headline Ignorance Is Strength for Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece. The take-away paragraph from the piece is:
So whenever you hear Republicans say that they are the party of traditional values, bear in mind that they have actually made a radical break with America’s tradition of valuing education. And they have made this break because they believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt them.
Thanks to Art Bushkin for posting this on his Facebook page.
The Christian Science Monitor, in the article New Obama campaign video: what it may say about his reelection strategy, was nice enough to include a link to the following trailer:
Elizabeth Warren even gets to say a few words in the trailer.
Time magazine has the story, Einstein Was Right All Along: ‘Faster-Than-Light’ Neutrino Was Product of Error.
Today, the CERN team announced that the GPS system used to adjust the mechanism that timed the neutrinos’ journey had a loose fiber optic cable. When it was fixed — and its mistaken readings scrubbed from the data — the 60-nanosecond difference disappeared.
That did not come as much of a surprise to generations of physicists and students who have come to see Einstein’s word as law. And, according to Ars Technica, it did not come as a surprise to Sergio Bertolucci, CERN’s head of research. When asked before the glitch was discovered if he believed the neutrinos really did get to the Apennine Mountains so fast, he said he had his doubts, “because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time.”
It’s good to know that I don’t have to relearn everything I have known about physics since my college days, if you can believe what you read in Time. I stopped reading Time when I realized they cared more about the aesthetics of the pages of the magazine than they cared about the truth of the magazine. In the case of these two article I quote today, you see that Time articles must have some breezy humor in them. That makes me suspicious that style is still more important to Time than substance.
Time magazine web site has the story, The Higgs Boson: Have Scientists Found the Mystery Particle?
“I don’t think there’s any place for the Higgs to hide,” Fermilab physicist Rob Roser told the Associated Press. “We’ll know the answer one way or another by the end of 2012.”
The article does have a nice layperson’s explanation of the Higgs, if you can believe what you read in Time. I stopped reading Time when I realized they cared more about the aesthetics of the pages of the magazine than they cared about the truth of the magazine.
I have heard the comment that Democrats complained about Bush’s deficits, but they are not complaining about the deficits that Obama is incurring.
Perhaps I can put this in other words that make sense of what the Democrats say and nonsense of what the Republicans say.
Democrats complained that Bush was spending the economy’s rainy-day funds while the sun was shining. Republicans are now complaining that Obama is spending what little rainy day fund that George Bush didn’t give away while the rain is pouring down around us.
To me the seeming Democratic inconsistency makes complete sense when you use the right words to explain their policy. It is the Republican inconsistency that is absurd when viewed in the right framework.
If you don’t like the analogy above, you might ask when would be a good time to sock money away if you are worried about losing your job? Would it make sense to spend every nickel while you have a job and then be left to starve when you lose your job? Or would it make more sense to save money when the income is rolling in and then tap your reserves when the income stops flowing for a while?
Spending all you have and saving nothing is not always the right policy, but sometimes you have no other choice. So reserve that policy for the times when you have no other choice.
Is it really that hard to understand? I suppose it is hard to understand it when the money is rolling in and you can’t imagine it ever stopping. When the money stops rolling in, then it is easy to see what you should have done, but by then it is too late.
Is it asking too much for the American people to have a teensy-weensy amount of foresight?
In the video below, Jon Stewart says:
With threats and taunts mounting, can we get a responsible party to break up this Iranian-Israeli schoolyard fight before someone gets hurt?
People, that’s all I am saying. Maybe Jon Stewart can get it across better with some humor.
If the embedded video above does not work, here is the direct link which does work.
Without a subscription, you can still access The Boston Globe story, Obama scolds Republican foes on Iran. Let me just emphasize one paragraph that appears near the end of the story.
The nation’s top spy, James R. Clapper, told Congress in January the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies have concluded that while Iran is laying the groundwork for a bomb, there is no evidence it has made the decision to actually build a weapon.
I just quote this paragraph to prove to readers of this blog that I am not fantasizing when I say that our intelligence agencies don’t even believe the saber rattling that Obama sometimes spews.
Finally, at least, in this press conference, Obama tries to quell the war mongering that he started.
If you cannot get the rest of the story from The Boston Globe, you can get it from the McClatchy article Obama defends Iran policy, charges Republican rivals of politicizing issue.
The mention of the testimony of the nation’s top spy does not appear in the McClatchy story. Maybe only the truly left-wing radical papers like The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times dare to print the truth about what our intelligence agencies say about Iran. (I hope you can detect the sarcasm in my statement about the two newspapers. After all The Boston Globe is owned by the chief war mongering newspaper in the country, The New York Times. What I just said about The New York Times is not sarcasm, but merely the truth.)
Here is an email from the Elizabeth Warren campaign about the first violation that Scott Brown’s backers made in breaking his agreement with Elizabeth Warren. (You might not be able to tell from the logo, but Elizabeth Warren is running for U. S. Senator from Massachusetts. I don’t know of any office called Massachusetts for which you can run.)
In light of Brown’s recent runin with President Obama over mandatory insurance coverage of contraceptives, I think that Planned Parenthood would be the most appropriate recipient of Brown’s charitable gift. We have made that suggestion to the Warren campaign, and you can too.
Truth-out is carrying the blog post Bye Bye American Pie: The Challenge of the Productivity Revolution by Robert Reich.
Insufficient demand – as everyone but regressive supply-siders now recognize – is a big reason why the current recovery has been so anemic and the pie isn’t growing faster.
So while the productivity revolution is indubitably good, the task ahead is to figure out how to distribute more of its gains to more of our people.
For a long time I have been promoting this understanding of the problems and potential of productivity growth.
Reich proposes a solution to the problem:
One possibility: higher taxes on the rich that go into wage subsidies for lower-income workers, combined with job sharing.
I have a “market” based solution to the problem that I think will work much better. It is time for the U.S. Government to start enabling the formation of labor unions instead of trying to strangle them. Rather than centralize the planning of wealth distribution in the government, let each union in each industry help decide what will work best in their particular situation. Let the workers negotiate with the capitalists on how the rewards of productivity growth should be shared. Since we are now in a more global economy, we also need to ensure that other countries promote real labor unions also. Unions are not the problem, they are the solution.
Without unions, the only way that people have of enforcing their power of numbers is to take action that will be much less acceptable to the 1% who are hoarding all the wealth.
I think Reich’s post also falls into the category of Greenberg’s Law of Economic Progress:
Any measure of economic growth that counts progress as an increase in the total amount of wealth in the country while a large number of people are still unemployed is a faulty measure.
Corollary:
Any measure of economic growth that counts progress as achieving full employment while decreasing everybody’s wealth to the poverty level is a faulty measure.
The Republicans (and probably the Democrats, too) have tried to fool the public about the health of our economy. While many individuals have realized that their personal economic situation was getting worse, the politicians have been trying to fool the people into thinking they are alone in their problems. They use the faulty measure of growth to pretend the overall economy is growing, when, in fact, the only growth is in the money flowing to the 1%.