Think Progress has the article The Only Place It Was Cold This Winter Was The East Coast Of The United States.

Globally, this has been the hottest winter on record, topping the previous record (2007) by 0.05°F.

The article has a nice picture from the NOAA.

Now we know that being able to bring a snowball into the chambers of Congress in Washington, D.C. is not a refutation of the idea of global warming. Perhaps some Congress people have a very distorted idea of what the globe is.

See the Addicting Info article Senator Who Brought Snowball To Congress ‘Disproves’ Global Warming Using Trusty Bible.

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, recently delivered unto the world comedy gold when he brought a snowball to Congress in a hilarious and failed effort to, using said frosty orb, prove global warming is a lie.

Yes, you read that right – chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Thanks to Cedric Flower for posting the Think Progress article on Facebook.

The ACLU has the article Be Careful With Your Micro-Expressions at the Airport.

You’re late for your flight, sweaty from having dragged your luggage to the check-in counter, and stressed about making it through security before boarding begins. For some of us, this is the rule, not the exception. For most of us, it’s a pretty unremarkable scenario.

Not so fast, says the Transportation Security Administration. Typical airport behavior like this could make you a suspicious traveler who should be subjected to questioning and additional screening – and possibly referred to the police for investigation, detention, or arrest.

They also have this video.

Contrary to what some people think, the ACLU is watching out for your civil liberties, too. Don’t be so quick to disparage what they do.

You can also see and share this video on Facebook.

Naked Capitalism has the story Bank Super Lawyer, Rodgin Cohen of Sullivan & Cromwell, Says Regulatory Capture is a Myth.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a credulity-straining account of how Rodgin Cohen, the dominant bank regulatory lawyer in the US, was trying with a straight face to convey a line that legitimates his role: move along, there is no such thing as regulatory capture.

The article refers to another Naked Capitalism article, Stanford Law School Covers Up SEC’s Andrew Bowden’s Embarrassing Remarks by Deep-Sixing Conference Video.

Fortunately, our Richard Smith, based on his considerable experience with scammers removing incriminating evidence from the Internet, had the presence of mind to download the entire presentation. NC has restored it to YouTube, and, unless Stanford Law School’s next tacky goof is to get cute with DMCA requests, you will always be able see it here.

I always thought that having the right wing nuts of the Hoover Institute on the Stanford campus was an embarrassment to Stanford.  Now I see that it fits quite nicely with the Stanford philosophy.

The embarrassing video had SEC regulator Bowden marveling at the huge profits of the private equity business.  One of the comments pointed out an obvious fact.

An actual regulator might find those large profit margins worthy of a second look…….

When I see all the stories of hedge fund managers going to jail for insider trading, I realize that the reason that hedge funds used to make such out sized returns for their investors was that they were cheating.  Since it is well known that it is next to impossible to beat the market averages over the long term, one must look askance at how some individuals defy this.  Many have done this by cheating.  You have to wonder if there are any who achieve this high level of performance honestly.

That’s right, I am asking you not to sign the petition.    The thing in the petition that really gets my goat is this excerpt:

The budget pays for these new investments by ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs and profits offshore and restoring the tax on the wealthiest to the Clinton-era rates.

I am hesitant to even post a link to it, but I can’t recommend not signing something without letting you see what it is and what my objections to it are.  You, of course, might have an entirely different opinion. Here is the link to Sign the petition: Be a citizen co-sponsor of the People’s Budget.

When I got an email asking me to sign it, this was my reply:

I will not support a plan that says “The budget pays for these new investments by ending tax breaks for companies…”

You perpetuate a misunderstanding of how the money system in our country works.  Since we are sovereign in our own currency, taxes are not needed to pay for government spending.  Taxes serve many essential purposes, but this is not one of them.

If you are even willing to entertain the idea of getting enlightened on this subject, I can provide you with the scholarly research that supports what I said above.

Whatever you do, do not play into the hands of the oligarchs by repeating their myths.

We really have to stop people from playing this game with the oligarchs of ceding the very basic premises they would like us to believe.  The financially astute ones in the oligarchy know this myth isn’t true.  However, it is mighty convenient for them if they can get us to believe it.

See my previous post The Truth About The Deficit for the simplest proof that there can be that the Republicans completely misrepresent the issue of the debt and the deficit.   What I said about taxes may be a little less obvious, but it is a corollary to what I presented in the previous post.  The connection is made in many of the posts on this blog.  If anyone wants me to make a list of posts to read, I would be happy to do so.

The Daily Kos has the article President Obama forces Republican politicians to eat their own words.

Here is the video at the center of the article.

You’ll really enjoy this. Here is Obama at his best. It would be great if more naysayers were held to their own records, especially when they are telling us how to proceed into the future.

Maybe the previous post, The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal, explains why people can have such poor records of identifying the right answer, but people still listen to them. Even some people, who have better performance records, sometimes listen to the losers.

Elizabeth Warren posted a video on Facebook.

Since last year, nearly a million more people have fallen behind on their student loan payments. Young people who are working hard to build a future deserve a real opportunity to succeed, and that means letting struggling borrowers refinance their student loans to take advantage of lower interest rates. Yesterday afternoon I gave a speech reintroducing the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act to give much-needed relief to millions of borrowers, help boost our economy, and strengthen America’s middle class.

As John Oliver might ask, “Republicans: How is this still a thing?”

Has anyone noticed that the YouTube videos that people share on Facebook no longer have the link back to YouTube, let alone a credit for YouTube? This may make some perverted sense to some business type at Facebook who doesn’t want to give credit to a competitor while benefiting from the services of that competitor. Somehow, though, I think making the life of your own customers more difficult is not going to be a winning strategy. We do notice such things.

For each video, we used to have a link to one item on YouTube. Now Facebook is forcing us to go fishing in YouTube land to find the video. Does that sound like a good business decision to you?

Politicus USA has the article Bernie Sanders Storms The Senate and Rips The Republican Rich Get Richer Budget.

Here is the YouTube video they feature.

The key is a full employment economy as Sanders mentions at the end of his remarks. If we have that, then the Government has done its job. The debt and deficit will be whatever they are, but, for the case of the USA, it doesn’t much matter what they are. The debt and deficit are not a measure that is related to the economic health of this country as directly as is the employment level and the living standards of the middle-class.

I am sure that with Sanders’ appointment of Stephanie Kelton as his chief economist on this committee, he is fully aware of how little importance the debt and deficit are for a country like the USA that is sovereign in its own currency. I wish he had the courage to either explain this more thoroughly or to at least stop talking as if these two measures were as important as the Republicans pretend that they are.

When the Federal government runs a deficit that is larger than our trade deficit, it is pumping net wealth into the private sector. When it runs a deficit lower than the trade deficit, it is sucking wealth out of the private sector. This is just simple arithmetic that is not changed by ones’ ideology.

When people understand this simple arithmetic, then they can decide on policy that is good for the country. If you get the arithmetic wrong, then you have no business deciding the federal government budget.

See my previous post The Truth About The Deficit for the very simple equation that cannot be denied and the one that explains my above statements about the debt and deficit. I just cannot see how people can accept the reality of these equations, but deny the logical conclusion of what they mean.

Think Progress has the article Republican Amendment Could Force Underage Trafficking Victims To Carry Their Pregnancies To Term.

Reproductive rights groups have also harshly criticized the abortion provision in the bill, accusing Republicans of playing politics with the vulnerable victims of human trafficking. They point out that victims often need access to abortion services because they have been subject to sexual violence, so a fund designed to help them shouldn’t cut off resources related to abortion.

This article has a link to a Huffington Post article, GOP Sneaks Anti-Abortion Language Into Bipartisan Human Trafficking Bill.

Even Democrats on the Judiciary Committee said they had no idea the abortion provision was in the bill. Some suggested they had been misled.

“There was a representation that the controversial provision was not included in this bill. It turns out that it was,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a Judiciary Committee member. “I don’t know how that happened or who was the author of it.”

“A list was sent to certain members saying, ‘Here are the changes from last year.’ This provision was not listed among them,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), also a Judiciary Committee member.

I don’t know why any Democrat still trusts a Republican colleague to tell the truth about a pending piece of Legislation,  “Oh, you don’t have to read the bill. I assure you that there is nothing in it that would make you want to oppose it.”

Talking Points Memo has the article Jon Stewart Slams GOP Blocking Sex-Trafficking Bill As ‘F**kery’ (VIDEO). I’ll share the video with you so Jon Stewart can explain it all.

Bernie Sanders posted this statement on Facebook.

I’ll display it below, but it seems to take a while to appear.

Bernie, give us Stephanie Kelton’s views on the deficit. There is no sense promoting a false idea. If the American people aren’t ready to hear the truth about it, then just stop mentioning it. You don’t want to be in a position when the American people are finally ready to listen to have to retract all the things you ever said about it.

The truth about the deficit is most easily seen by the following realization: you can divide up the net flow of US dollars every year into three pots – 1. The domestic private sector, 2. the government, and 3. foreign accounts. That accounts for the net flow of all U.S. money. If the government does not run a deficit at least as large as our foreign trade deficit, then the difference between the foreign trade deficit and the federal budget deficit must come out of the U.S. private sector. That means that if the federal government had a balanced budget in any given year, the domestic private sector would be drained of wealth that year by the size of the trade deficit.

Are you people sure that this is what you want?

The following equation defines the situation:

(domestic private sector surplus) = (government deficit) – (U.S. foreign trade deficit)

or

(domestic private sector net in flow of money) = (government net out flow of money) – (net U.S. money flowing to foreign recipients)

The word  net in the above is an essential part of the equation.  Money may flow among different sections of each pot, but between the pots, it is the net money flow that I am talking about.

If you do not think I have written the right equation to show the flow of net money among the three pots, you tell me what the right equation would be among those three pots.  If you don’t think these three pots cover every bit of net U.S. money flow, then you tell me what other pot there may be. If you think you have found another pot, I will explain to you where that new pot actually fits into one of my three pots.

If the concept of all this blows your mind, please pick up the pieces, and don’t spread the mess around here.