If the government won’t spend money on infrastructure to stimulate the economy, the I will.  See, I put my money where my mouth is when it comes to economic theory.

See the slide show directly without WordPress as an intermediary.

If you have trouble seeing the pictures, let me just tell you that we paved our driveway.

The Boston Globe has the article Warren plans Israel trip after midterm elections.

WASHINGTON – With Hillary Clinton seeming to express a more hawkish view of world affairs than President Obama and publicly questioning his decisions on Syria, liberals may be wondering what an Elizabeth Warren alternative would look like.
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In general, Warren seems anti-interventionist and takes a skeptical eye to any US military action. In February, during her only speech on foreign policy in the year and a half since she took office, she warned of using military might without considering the implications.

Ever since my previous post Hillary Clinton: The Goldwater Girl Reveals Herself in an Atlantic Interview,  I have been thinking that I hope Elizabeth Warren will come up with a credible counter-strategy to Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy statements.  I saw that as a necessity if she ever decides to run for President in 2016.  The Boston Globe has exactly figured out what I have been wondering.

The article reminds me of the few times that Warren has made foreign policy pronouncements other than to back whatever Obama has said.  It gives me hope that Warren can be a counter-weight to the Clintonistas in the Democratic Party.

Yahoo has the story 20 U.S. companies that paid 0% in taxes.

It is amazing that these people can see the problem, but pretend not to see the obvious solution.

There needs to be international coordination of tax laws. There are countries that don’t want to play along, and want to offer low taxes for a fee that is large enough to support the small population. The rest of the international community can decide how they want to deal with those countries. No trade agreements or special tariffs for those countries might be some ideas.

It was George W that put a stop to the efforts at coordination. I don’t know if those efforts have been restarted.

For those people who think lowering taxes will increase business investment enough to make a difference, I have to ask “What part of no freakin’ customers do you not understand?” If there are not enough customers to buy stuff, why would any company want to invest in producing more stuff?

Elizabeth Warren has a post on her Facebook page where she says the following:

Last week, federal regulators acknowledged that all of the biggest banks remain Too Big to Fail. I’ve pushed these regulators to use the full extent of their authority, including breaking up the biggest banks, to make sure no bank’s failure can bring down the economy again.

Her posts leads to an article in USA Today and ultimately to the video below.

As the USA article says:

While the legislative process in Washington seems to be broken, congressional oversight shows occasional signs of being alive and kicking.

Case in point: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., skewered Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen at a hearing in July on the subject of living wills that large banks are supposed to be submitting — credible plans on how bankruptcy of these behemoths could be handled in a rapid and orderly fashion without taxpayer bailouts.

Maybe what these plans may need to have is an estimated time that would be required to liquidate the banks with the proposed plan.

We need to make sure that the voters know that at least some parts of our government are working and just who the people are that are making it work.

The Daily Kos has the article Obama slams reporter’s right-wing adopted talking point as bogus.  The article provided the following excerpt of a transcript from the video below.

What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.
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So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis were—a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq.

This is the kind of answer the President needs to give more often. He needs to educate the voters on why the premise of the question is all wrong. I have no idea how we get this answer to the Faux Noise viewers. The more we propagate this around the internet, the more chances that people, at least on the fringe of Faux Noise viewers, might stumble across this.

It won’t work to claim that placing the blame on George Bush is putting it in the wrong place. If George Bush did it, he has to own it. Nobody else should be forced to take ownership of what George Bush did.

Sunday, as we were driving in the car, my granddaughter asked me how it was possible for a bee to cling to the front passenger window despite the breeze of the car moving through the air.  I said something vaguely like “Tufts of microscopic hairs …”

Coincidentally, today I found an  article on Tech Times Geckos control toe hairs to be sticky or not, inspiring bioengineers to do the same.  Explaining how the geckos hang on, they gave a more complete sentence than I was able to remember.

Those tufts of microscopic hairs can conform so closely to the surface contours of a surface that an effect known as the van der Waals force can operate.

I was also trying to imagine how the grip could be released.  Of course, the headline of the article indicates that the explanation for that is also in the article.

Engineers study the most fascinating stuff.  The next time you sneer at a government (or other source) funded study of  bugs as a waste of time, try to open your mind to the reasons for such studies.  Maybe you can’t  imagine the reason, but that does not mean that there isn’t a reason.

Sneering is an easy reaction, but it is not likely to be the most intelligent one.

The Daily Kos has published the Tom Tomorrow cartoon Press conference.

I repost this cartoon because I believe the cartoonist expressed what I think better than I ever could have.

The cartoonist has a subscription page, Sparky’s List, where you can help support the cartoonist.

Read my previous post Monetizing Internet Content – Refresher Course to see my suggestion for how authors on the internet could be paid for their efforts.

The July 31 Edition of The Town Common has the article Alleged union job talk spurs ethics complaint.  The article is on the last page.

STURBRIDGE – An ethics complaint filed last week by the town manager against Zoning Board of Appeals member Christopher Mattioli got its start with a chance meeting at the gym.
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Patel went further in a recent interview with the Town Common.  He said Mattioli also approached him about his project and Patel’s plan to use non-union labor. Patel said he felt intimidated by Mattioli.

I am a supporter of the value that unions bring to our society, and I would like to see the laws rebalanced to bring back some of the power of the unions that has been under attack since before 1980.  I was also hoping that Christopher Mattioli would have a successful tenure on the Zoning Board of Appeals.  However, I do not support the people on the town boards using that position to further personal goals over the good of the Sturbridge community.  If, in fact, that is what Mr. Mattioli did, then I am strongly opposed to such behavior.

When I first came to Sturbridge I supported a candidate who promised to bring the views of local business people to the Board of Selectmen.  His behavior on the board appeared to me to represent his own personal business interests to the detriment of the interests of competing local business people. That decided me to never vote for that Selectman again.

I cite this case just to show that my standard for local office holders is looking out for the best interests of the town and its citizens.  My support is not based on party politics, business versus labor, nor class, nor any other side issue.  I would hope that the majority of citizens in Sturbridge would put the best interests of the town at the top of their priorities when voting for  candidates for office.  Of course, I realize that people can have legitimate differences over what is best for the town, and that is why we have elections.

Elizabeth Warren posted on her Facebook page a graphic from The Huffington Post article At Least $128 Billion in Bank Settlements Since ’09.

Warren’s comment began with the following:

Since 2009, the big banks and financial institutions have paid at least $128 billion to regulators for the tricks and traps that brought down our economy. But they are happy to pay the fines – in fact, JP Morgan gave its CEO Jamie Dimon a 74% raise for negotiating its settlement. If these settlements are so weak that Wall Street is celebrating, it’s not a good deal for the American people.

One trait that I like about Elizabeth Warren is her ability to find an easy to understand observation that simplifies separating truth from fiction. In this case it is the observation that if a company celebrates a decision that seems to go against them, then it can’t really be all that bad for them.

One similar observation came to my mind many years ago when the CEO’s of companies were complaining how the rules and regulations and taxes were killing business and sending them to the poor house. I thought, “when I see CEOs brown-bagging their lunches, then maybe I will start to believe them.”

This is one of several ads that Don Berwick has run.

This is the kind of ad that I think it is important for candidates to run. Not only does it promote his candidacy, but it also promotes an idea for action. He tells you what the idea is and the benefits that will accrue from implementing it. It attempts to get the positive benefits of the idea into the public forum no matter what is the outcome for his own political campaign.