New Economic Perspectives has the article Halfway There.  It discusses the implications of a NASA study and a WWF study.

If you graph this wildlife population loss, it looks uncannily similar to the graph-line of “Nature” in the HANDY Model: a point is reached where, suddenly, after a steady rise, or a gradual equilibrium, the graph-line of “Nature’s” population changes direction and begins to plummet. What is startling about the HANDY Model is that when this happens, the human populations of “Elites” and “Commoners” continue to rise, crossing the falling graph-line of “Nature.” This is called “overshoot”—the point where the human population begins consuming “Nature’s” resources faster than “Nature” can replenish them. The human population, after some period of “overshoot,” begins (of necessity) to collapse as well. The population of “Commoners” collapses first because the “Elites” are able, for a period of time, to thrive on their “Wealth.” In some iterations of the model, “Nature” recovers after the “Elite” population finally base-lines; in other iterations “Nature” fails to recover at all—the world becomes simply a wasteland, like one of those planets we keep investigating to see if it ever supported life.

This is a food for thought kind of article.  I am not claiming that these studies proved anything, or that we should jump right on it and change our behavior immediately as per the prescriptions in the article. The discussion of no-tillage farming and of a new kind of prosperity were very interesting.

The American Prospect has the article Warren’s Challenge to Clinton: A more insurgent campaign, like the one Elizabeth Warren waged for the Senate, could make Hillary Clinton a stronger candidate by Robert Kuttner. This is an updated version of an article they have previously published (and maybe something I already blogged about).

There is a good analysis of Warren’s possible moves.  Although it does leave out any consideration for what may happen if the Republican’s take over the Senate in 2016.   The ramifications of this possibility were brought up in an article I blogged about in my previous post 6 reasons Elizabeth Warren should run for president.

One of the things that struck me in Kuttner’s piece was the following quote:

Populism is damned in some quarters as demagogic, but there is a progressive brand of populism epitomized by Franklin Roosevelt that mobilizes the frustration of regular Americans against elites, in an entirely salutary form of class warfare. Progressive populism has been in short supply lately.

In my tirades on “the class war” that you will see from time to time on this blog, I am aiming for “an entirely salutary form of class warfare”.  Hence the need to bring this up explicitly.

Not all people in the top 1% are waging class warfare against us.  However, the people who are not waging the war present no significant obstacle to the ones that are waging it.  If we should be so fortunate as to win a couple of battles in this war and start to turn the tide, let us not go off the deep end.  This is not even a war against the oligarchic people.  It is a war against what they are doing to us.  If we  can build in enough protections against the bad behavior like this country did in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, then there would be no need for further punishment of the oligarchs.

In a casual retelling of the aftermath of World War I, we tried stringent punishment to hold Germany down so that they would not repeat what happened.  That effort totally backfired.  We must not dehumanize our enemies as they would dehumanize us.

Al Jazeera has the Empire episode War on Terror, War on Muslims?

Thanks to Andre Nasr for posting this on his Facebook page. I am still not sure how to take his reaction to this video. You may agree with him or this video or you may disagree (for all I know, they could be the same thing or different things), but at least it is a worthwhile attempt to hear what other people think, if you can hear.

Please keep in mind that criticizing the bad acts of some people in your own country has nothing to do with condoning the bad acts of other people in other countries. I’d like to dispense with the argument, “But look at what they do. Doing it back to them is thus justified.”

Thanks for Carol Goodwin for bringing this to my attention. Martha Coakley’s campaign has the web page Senator Warren asks, who is on your side?

“While Martha was out there, doing the work on behalf of people across this Commonwealth, well what Charlie was doing, largely, was firing people and outsourcing jobs.” -Senator Elizabeth Warren

On the YouTube post, it says:

While Charlie Baker outsourced jobs, Martha Coakley helped save 30,000 homes in Massachusetts. Together, we can set the record straight, on which candidate for governor will spend every day fighting for you and your family. Watch this video and share.

Most people are in denial about the class war that the oligarchs of the world are waging against the rest of us. For those few who are even aware that such a war is going on, some of them don’t seem to know which side is their own side.

For those in the 99% who think they are high enough up that they can afford to ally themselves with the top 1%, they just don’t seem to get how happy the 1% would be to go after the wealth of the 90% to 99%, after they suck all the wealth out of the 0% to 89%. Who do they think is going to stand with them when the top 1% comes after their money?

The Boston Globe has the editorial Charlie Baker for governor: To move Mass. forward, state government must work better.  I responded online to the editors with the following comments:

Charlie Baker has a habit of finding state agencies that are not performing up to snuff, but he doesn’t fix them. He just closes them and let’s the people who depended on them fend for themselves. The local cities and towns are left to make up for what the state government just stops doing. No wonder the cities and towns are starving for local aid from the state.

The state’s finances look great because the state fobs off its responsibilities on the cities and towns.  You can have a great looking record if you force others to do your job.  The beauty is that if they fail, it doesn’t reflect on what you did.  You can always blame the cities and towns for not being capable.  Maybe nobody will notice that the cities and towns can’t do the job because they can’t collect taxes to pay for the work the way the state used to do before the Charlie Baker’s  came on the scene to pillage the state.  Is this the kind of behavior we  ought to reward?

Charlie Baker’s so called economic plan would be devastating to the state. Here we have a state that has high quality advantages that corporations strongly desire, but Baker wants to compete with other states on price. He wants to give corporations financial incentives to locate in Massachusetts rather than invest our precious tax revenues in enhancing what makes Massachusetts so desirable for companies. Martha Coakley is the first candidate for Governor that I have ever heard understanding that when you have a quality product like Massachusetts, you tout its qualities rather than try to sell it on the lowest price.

Does the Globe try to sell its papers by competing on price with the Herald? Or does the Globe sell its papers on the premise that it is a better product? If you, the editors,  have fallen for the price competition, maybe that is why the Globe is struggling to continue to put out a quality product. No wonder your editors aren’t smart enough to endorse Coakley.

Another comment on the editorial states:

zauberfriend10/26/14 09:48 PM –
This is not your father’s Globe, it’s John Henry’s Globe. Still a great paper. Deal with it.

My response to this comment was:

But John Henry is not going to keep it as a great paper if he decides that cutting costs and prices is the best way to compete for readers. The Red Sox don’t have loyal fans because they sell seats at Fenway for the lowest price.

Charlie Baker claims that he saved Harvard/Pilgrim by making it the best health care company around. Harvard/Pi;grim does not compete on price.  Charlie Baker actually raised premiums. He didn’t compete for the job as CEO by cutting his salary, in fact he tripled it.

So why is Baker so smart because he wants to do state government on the cheap? Not only that, but what revenues the state does collect he wants to pay out to corporations to attract them to Massachusetts. Doesn’t he realize what a quality state Massachusetts is, and that he ought to be spending tax revenues to keep it that way?

If we don’t get online to dispel the fiction about Charlie Baker, then have we really done enough to insure that the state gets the governor that it needs at this time?

Jacquelyn Wells unexpectedly started a useful discussion about guns when she announced on her Facebook page that she had joined the NRA.

Jim Glickman posted a link to The New York Times opinion piece Once Again, Guns.

I think we gun control advocates have misdirected our efforts a bit.  Rather than advocate tougher gun purchase restrictions, we should concentrate some of our efforts on trying to control the consequences of mis-handled, but legally purchased guns.

One way to do this would be to pass laws that make gun owners responsible for any damages caused by their guns, whether legally owned or not.

I haven’t heard the details of how the latest high school shooter came into possession of his gun, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were owned by one of his parents in a legally acceptable way including background checks.

One way to make gun owners much more circumspect in how they handle, control, and give access to their guns, would be to make them have some legally recognized liability for the consequences of their gun ownership.

If you knew that you could be fined and possibly sent to prison if your gun fell into the wrong hands and was used to commit a crime, then you would really try harder to make sure such a thing could not happen.  If you knew that you could not own a gun safely enough to protect yourself from this liability, it might give you second thoughts on your need or desire to own a gun.

The really basic problem with gun ownership is not merely restricting ownership to people who seem like they wouldn’t personally use them illegally.  The basic problem is controlling what happens with a gun after its sale.

Thanks to Rebecca Deans-Rowe for posting this on Facebook.

How many of you are old enough to remember when news in the USA was reported like this? I bet you young ones think I am kidding when I say that our news media once were capable of this. I don’t say all of them always acted this way. However, the ones that acted like most of today’s media in the USA used to be called by the pejorative term “tabloid media”.

Elizabeth Warren sent me the following email:

Steven,

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is supposed to be responsible for regulating the nation’s biggest banks.

But 46 hours of secret audio recordings released by a former New York Fed regulator – a woman who says she was fired for being too tough on Goldman Sachs – indicate that the big banks are the ones in charge, not the Fed.

When regulators care more about protecting big banks from accountability than protecting the American people from risky behavior on Wall Street, it threatens our whole economy.

Join Senator Sherrod Brown and me in calling for a Congressional oversight investigation into the disturbing issues raised by the Goldman Sachs tapes.

Our regulators seem to think they’re being tough on the big banks. But when I ask them about the last time they took a big bank to trial, or the last time they referred a senior bank executive for criminal prosecution, they’re stumped.  

They claim that closed-door settlement agreements – agreements that don’t hold any individuals accountable – are enough to teach the big banks a lesson.  

Call me skeptical, but when Wall Street CEOs like Jamie Dimon are getting massive pay raises for negotiating sweetheart deals with the regulators, it doesn’t seem like the American people are getting a good deal. That’s why I introduced a bipartisan bill earlier this year to require detailed, public disclosures of all settlements so we can see what’s hidden in these secret agreements.

But the tapes from this whistleblower show that the problem isn’t simply that the big banks get sweetheart deals. It shows that the relationship between the regulators and the financial institutions they oversee is far too cozy to provide the tough oversight that’s really needed – and calls into question whether the Federal Reserve is up to the task of protecting us at all.

This is simple: Bankers on Wall Street need to follow the law – and when they don’t, they should be held accountable. For that to work, regulators in Washington and New York need to enforce the law – and when they don’t, they should be held accountable.

Join Senator Sherrod Brown and me in calling for a Congressional oversight investigation into issues raised by the Goldman Sachs tapes.

We can keep making the rules on Wall Street tougher and tougher, but it won’t make an ounce of difference if the regulators won’t enforce the rules that are there. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

I love the bulldog nature of Elizabeth Warren. Once she gets her teeth into an issue, she does not let go. Imagine if the Republicans take over the Senate, and she loses her power to hold hearings.

It finally dawned on me that I ought to write some letters to the editor of various newspapers in the area.

Editor:

The beauty of Martha Coakley’s economic plan for Massachusetts is that it focuses on investing in enhancing the advantages that Massachusetts already has for attracting businesses to the state. Corporations want to come to Massachusetts for its educated work force. We also have concentrations of expertise in many fields of technology, health sciences, and research. Companies on the leading edges in these fields want to be located where there are centers of excellence in those fields.

What Charlie Baker refuses to acknowledge is that you don’t have to give away our precious tax revenue to companies to entice them to come here. He fails to recognize that we have advantages that companies are eager to get. His short sighted policies rob the state of the money it could use to enhance the value of Massachusetts as a place to do business. No wonder we seem to be unable to afford investments in education and infrastructure. People like Baker would rather give the money away to corporations that don’t need it rather than to spend it wisely on enhancing what attracts business to the state.

Charlie Baker’s policies end up driving away the very corporations we seek to attract, and these policies impoverish us at the same time.

It’s no wonder that Charlie Baker’s ads would rather have you believe that Martha Coakley has no economic plan for Massachusetts. If you didn’t believe his big lie, you might realize that the Coakley plan is outstanding compared to his tired old formula of giving tax cuts to the wealthy corporations.

Does this give anybody else any ideas?

The Daily Kos has the article The Official Michael Brown Autopsy Report Doesn’t Say What the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Says It Does.  In the article there is a list of discrepancies between what the newspaper said the expert said and what she actually said.  I picked one which may or may not be representative.

The article claims the expert said the autopsy didn’t support witnesses who said Michael Brown was shot while running away or with his hands up. She apparently said nothing of the sort.

The Daily Kos article mentioned interviews and reports by Lawrence O’Donnell.  Rather than read second, or third hand info, I decided to look up those broadcasts. The two segments are ‘Inaccurate and misleading’ on Brown autopsy and Paper obtains official Michael Brown autopsy.  Each one of these segments may be way more than you want to listen to.  O’Donnell certainly pinpoints the issues of incompetence by reporters and newspapers.

In one of the video segments O’Donnell interviews the expert, Dr. Judy Melinek, who was so badly misquoted by the newspapers.  She does a good job of clarifying exactly what she did say and what seh didn’t say.  At first O’Donnell seems to be scrupulously separating what you can learn from an autopsy from what you can’t by getting the expert to talk about these issues.  Unfortunately toward the end, even O’Donnell wants her to say things that she cannot say from the autopsy report she was given to review.   However, if you listen to what the doctor says in answer to his questions, she just refused to play along and give him the answers he wants that are just not concusively proven by the evidence she had at her disposal.

Even though O’Donnell seems to be orders of magnitude more careful in what he says than the newspapers were, he still falls down a little.

I think this is a perfect example of how important it is to get to original sources if you want to know what was really said.  Even this expert  who reviewed the autopsy report, and is trying to be extremely cautious in what she says, is not an original source.