3338 We know where our priorities are

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

You can chill with the owls at night, or you can fly with the eagles in the morning,
but likely not both.

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Read this article from the Miami Herald:

True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone’s guess

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/15/v-fullstory/2360960/true-cost-of-afghan-iraq-wars.html#ixzz1VIMQsJSX


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The averaged-out cost per service member in Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is now approaching $700,000 per year, while school districts are cutting budgets and firing teachers. One month's war budget could launch six space shuttles.

And in the meantime, Gramma eats Ken-L Ration and Grampa can't afford his blood pressure pills, Mom and Pop can't make the house payments, and Junior can't find a job, and Congress has voted to make that a lot worse.

But don't worry - the jet setters, corporations, and CEOs are doing fine, and they'll take care of us.
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3335 Trickle

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Preserve wildlife - pickle a squirrel.

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Have they figured out yet that the Trickle Down theory isn't working? There's stuff trickling down all right, but it looks and smells suspiciously like urine.

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The Republiclowns are making sure you know that Obama's Gallup approval rating is down to an all-time low of 39%. What they're not telling you is that according to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, Congress has a disapproval rating of 82%, and a new Rasmussen survey has found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress “are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people.”

Wow. Let's give corporations and fat cats another tax break. Maybe that'll fix it.
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3326 What's wrong?

Friday, August 5, 2011

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that
any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress
are ineligible for re-election."
-- Warren Buffett --

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Many people have many theories as to what's wrong with the economy, why we're in such a mess.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told MoveOn.org he could explain the problems with the economy in less than 2 minutes, 15 seconds. So they gave him a shot, and he did it (with illustrations to boot).

Watch Reich Connect The Dots:


[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE&feature=player_embedded]
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3254 Capitalism

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

"An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex."
-- Aldus Huxley (alleged) --

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The only people who think capitalism is the best system ever are those who directly benefit from it. (...not counting people who don't think for themselves and believe what they're told.)

Unfortunately, nothing else seems to work any better.

The advantage of capitalism is that the people who benefit from it have, as a result of that benefit, the power to protect it, expand it, and keep it going.

The disadvantage, which we are feeling now, is that capitalists move to places where workers are oppressed and do not have the concessions American workers have, and where environmental restrictions do not exist.

There's no loyalty in capitalism, by definition.
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3224 More conspiracy theory

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

On abstract art: The subject is limited, and there's no emotional connection.

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Wow! Companies are hiring! 60% of employers report that they plan to hire this year, and almost none plan layoffs. The economy is in danger of improving. (Much of this is due to a little-known initiative of the Obama administration last year which allows writeoff of capital equipment. Republicans were solidly against it, and now they're claiming credit for it. Oh, well. To be expected.)

However, now we have a panic. We can't allow the economy to improve while the beige man is in the White House! Oh, my, what to do? Hey, great idea! Whisper a few words to our friends and raise the price of oil! That'll do it! And with the disruption in the middle east and the growth in China, no one will ever blame it on us!

Snork snork....

(Think I'm blowing smoke? I'm not. I'm perfectly serious.)

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I took many pounds of paper that I brought from the old house to the recycle center today. It felt good.
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3218 Thoughts on despair

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

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In a recent post I took issue with the declaration that this is the greatest nation in the history of the world (or maybe the phrase was "that the world has ever known", whatever).

I'll back that up.

The US spends less on infrastructure than any other developed nation, by far. Other nations spend three to five times as much.

Our dams, roads, and bridges are deteriorating.

Generating plants of all kinds are aging and inefficient, and we aren't seriously considering the development of alternate sources of energy.

Railroads are falling apart. We have no high speed rail. Every time it comes up, it's stomped down. In Europe, you can get anywhere you have to go by train and bus, quickly and cheaply, and even in Asia trains are efficient. And fast.

All of our materials are transported all the way across the continent by truck! That's incredibly inefficient, given how little one truck can carry, the amount of gasoline it requires to do it, and the amount of additional wear on the roads. Trains can do it quickly and cheaply, with trucks used only for local delivery.

We may have good doctors and hospitals, and medical research, but only if you are rich. The average citizen can't afford decent medical care. And even if you can afford it, many treatments and options available in the rest of the world aren't allowed here.

We don't take care of our elderly. It's a scandal the way we turn our backs on them.

All we're really good at is making money and waging war. And the top 1% makes all the money while the bottom 50% does all the dying.

This is not "great".

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I have enormous admiration for the Japanese people. In all they've been through, the devastation, the dislocation, note that there has been no looting. None. A shortage of food? Rather than grab and run, they share. Looting from destroyed homes and stores? They have actually gathered salvageable bits and pieces and put them in small bins in reclamation centers, where people can go and look for their belongings and claim them. They have centers where people are cleaning found photographs and then posting them on a bulletin board so people can find them. People stand very patiently in long lines, waiting for food distribution. No pushing, crowding, or shoving.

And then there are the people who volunteered to work in the damaged reactors, with the certainty of early death, but no promise of reward beyond the knowledge that they are helping the country and their people. I can't imagine that anywhere else.

The Japanese people are working together for the good of all, and they don't seem to be aware there is any other way to act.

(Yeah, ok, I know about what they did in China, and in WWII, and whatever else "Jap Haters" want to bring up, which is also an outgrowth of the culture. Go away.)

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Every single time I have gone north to the old house, The Hairless Hunk has seen me, even if I didn't see him. It's getting creepy.

I drive past his house on the way to my house, and I always automatically look to see if he's working in the yard, or if his vehicle is there. Mostly I don't see him --- but he always sees me. Often he passes going the opposite direction on the road. It's weird.

Last Tuesday, I took the tax documents to Piper's office in the village, but I didn't go to the old house, which is 2 miles farther north. I was in the village, in Piper's office, then walking with Piper up the street a little less than a block to the diner, then back down to my car outside Piper's office, then I left to head back south.

The next day, I got an email from THH that he'd seen me in the village!

It's like he has a GPS tracker on me or something. ESP. Strange.

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I guess everyone has heard by now about the young woman who drove her car, with her four children in it, off a boat ramp and into the Hudson River in N3wburgh, NY, last Tuesday evening. The oldest of the four kids was 10, and he managed to get out of the sinking car and swam to shore.

And people are wondering why?

She was 25 years old (although I've also heard 24). The oldest of her four children was 10. That means she was pregnant at 14 (or 13), which means she likely has no education, training, or skills to support herself and her children. She was married to the father of her youngest three, but I gather he was not living with her. She had recently moved to N3wburgh, into an apartment in a slummy area of God-forsaken N3wburgh (if you've ever been there, you'd know what I mean. The newspaper describes it as a "humble river city").

According to neighbors, she was a good mother, and had a job. There was apparently a "domestic dispute" that evening. She finally had confirmation that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had been a serial cheater all along.

This is speculation, but I think I can figure it out. The husband had probably left her wherever they had lived and "went north" to find work, so he could support her and the children. That happens a lot. She probably moved to N3wburgh because she didn't like the separation. He'd been able to hide the girlfriend(s), but now he couldn't. He didn't want to move in with her. She suddenly realized that she couldn't count on him any longer.

What else is there to understand? Her world collapsed and she could see no other possibilities.
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3228 Sad Souls

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the
principles on which it was founded."
- C. L. De Montesquieu; The Spirit of the Laws, VIII ---

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The following was a post to the Mensa online group from our local scientist, Andi. I don't know how much is is her words, and how much is from an article she's quoting, but since I make no money on this blog, I don't think anyone will object either way.

The article is interesting. I think we all are already fully aware of the social effects of economic inequality, but this is a higher view.

--------------------------

Op-Ed Columnist
Equality, a True Soul Food
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: January 1, 2011, "New York Times"

John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground

That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.

There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.

That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.

“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police,” they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.”

The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies. For example, a long-term study of British civil servants found that messengers, doormen and others with low status were much more likely to die of heart disease, suicide and some cancers and had substantially worse overall health.

There’s similar evidence from other primates. For example, macaque monkeys are also highly social animals, and scientists put them in cages and taught them how to push a lever so that they could get cocaine. Those at the bottom of the monkey hierarchy took much more cocaine than high-status monkeys.

Other experiments found that low-status monkeys suffered physical problems, including atherosclerosis in their arteries and an increase in abdominal fat. And as with monkeys, so with humans. Researchers have found that when people become unemployed or suffer economic setbacks, they gain weight. One 12-year study of American men found that when their income slipped, they gained an average of 5.5 pounds.

The correlation is strong around the world between countries with greater inequality and greater drug use. Paradoxically, countries with more relaxed narcotics laws, like the Netherlands, have relatively low domestic drug use — perhaps because they are more egalitarian.

Professors Wilkinson and Pickett crunch the numbers and show that the same relationship holds true for a range of social problems. Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.

They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. More unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better.

So why is inequality so harmful? “The Spirit Level” suggests that inequality undermines social trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole. It also suggests that humans, as social beings, become stressed when they find themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy.

That stress leads to biological changes, such as the release of the hormone cortisol, and to the accumulation of abdominal fat (perhaps an evolutionary adaptation in preparation for starvation ahead?). The result is physical ailments like heart disease, and social ailments like violent crime, mutual distrust, self-destructive behaviors and persistent poverty. Another result is the establishment of alternative systems in which one can win respect and acquire self-esteem, such as gangs.

Granted, humans are not all equal in ability: There will always be some who are more wealthy — and others who constitute the bottom. But inequality does not have to be as harsh, oppressive and polarized as it is in America today. Germany and Japan have attained modern, efficient economies with far less inequality than we have — and far fewer social problems. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor fell during the Clinton administration, according to data cited in “The Spirit Level,” even though that was a period of economic vigor.

“Inequality is divisive, and even small differences seem to make an important difference,” Professors Wilkinson and Pickett note. They suggest that it is not just the poor who benefit from the social cohesion that comes with equality, but the entire society.

So as we debate national policy in 2011 — from the estate tax to unemployment insurance to early childhood education — let’s push to reduce the stunning levels of inequality in America today. These inequities seem profoundly unhealthy, for us and for our nation’s soul.

3159 The rich get richer and the poor, well, what do they matter?

Friday, November 12, 2010

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
-- Aristotle --

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Piper and I have some social and political differences. He is Republican to the point of thinking Sarah Palin makes sense. When you get him started he rails against lazy people who don't work, don't save, and who are experts at "working the system". Yeah, I saw a lot of that when I was doing court and family mediation, and I don't like it either. Where we differ is that he wants to eliminate all government social programs. He doesn't seem to realize that there are people who are in honest need of assistance. He seems to think that it is always their own stupidity that puts them in that position, and he shouldn't have to pay for their lack of planning.

Here's where that kind of thinking leads:

The real 'death panels' are coming from the GOP

Read the article. It's frightening, and I believe it to be absolutely true. Giving tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, and giving tax dollars to the military industry, creates deficits that some people, mainly the beneficiaries of those programs, want to use as an excuse to reduce or cut out social programs.

My tin hat is buzzing so hard it's giving me a headache.
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2276 - I just don't get it.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

When the current governor of New York took office, he noted that the real estate situation in the Albany area was terrible, not so much foreclosures as that nothing was selling. Nobody was buying houses. Nobody could sell a house. He said somebody should do something about that. So he fired 3,000+ state government workers.

I don't understand. Good luck with that relocation, folks.

Meanwhile, in Saratoga, Marylou Whitney has canceled her annual ball celebrating the opening of the racing season. The ball is huge, themed, enormously extravagant. Costumed invited guests are inside, but outside, the masses, anybody who shows up, are also fed and entertained. It's the biggest thing in Saratoga, I guess. She can afford it.

She and her husband have decided that the ball is "inappropriate" in this economy.

Inappropriate? What about the local businesses that depend on the ball to make their nut every year? How many jobs will this move cost?

In this economy, spending, if you have the money, is the most appropriate thing to do! Keeping money out of circulation is the absolute worst thing.

I don't understand.
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1936 Freakonomic Economics

Thursday, July 31, 2008

The new NYS governor has been all over the news, with his economic plan for the state. When he took office he was startled to find that the current state deficit is $5 billion. That's billion. With a "B". And next year it is expected to go to $6.5 billion if major spending cuts are not made.

In his various speeches and interviews, he talked about how the people of the state are suffering, that people are losing jobs and are unable to find work, that people are losing their homes, that they'll have to choose this winter between heating the house or feeding the children. He actually declared that NYS is experiencing a recession - a word Wall Street and the federal government have been careful to avoid.

His solution? Drastic cuts to state government spending. Cuts in state programs. Cuts in state employees. He hopes that the employee cuts (no solid number yet, but it's above 1,000) can be achieved through attrition and hiring freezes, but layoffs are not off the table.

Ok, supposedly, nobody understands economics. Supposedly, common sense does not apply. But it sure does seem to me that laying people off and removing jobs, and cutting state supported programs that help economically challenged people, with the resulting domino effect of more jobs disappearing, sure isn't going to help.

I guess I have to be wrong, because it's common sense.
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1877 Gloom and Doom

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

[Rant on]

I'm reading a lot about how people can't afford the necessities and how it's going to get worse. About how families have to decide between filling the gas tank or filling the grocery cart. Mostly, it ticks me off.

Ok, yeah, there are families that are living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day, and they're not the ones that bug me. It's the ones that make bad financial decisions to start with that really get me going.

The ones with the huge cars, and iPods, and Sirius, and fancy cell phones with expensive phone plans and who don't pay attention to how much they use them, and "name" athletic shoes, and rotating wardrobes. Like the recently seen couple who "cannot afford health insurance", with the kids on Wii on a 5-foot-wide TV in the background of the interview.

People might say, "Well, you're financially comfortable. You don't understand."

These are usually people whose grocery carts are full of snacks and expensive ready-prepared foods, at $7 per person per meal, instead of the fresh vegetables and meats that will run $2-3 per meal. The same folks who will pay $6 for a cup of fancy coffee, and pay for it out of a designer purse. Please! You can afford groceries. You just can't afford YOUR groceries, and you certainly can't afford that purse.

Some people seem to think that they need everything new that comes along. If something is advertised as "better", faster, bigger, they think they need it. Who really needs an SUV?! A Hummer?! Come on! Sheep led by corporate advertising, that's who.

All bull poopy. How do you GET comfortable, and BE comfortable with what you have? You understand the difference between "want" and "need". That's how.

I don't need cable. I don't need an iPod, or a phone that takes pictures, or texting on my cell phone. In fact, I don't need the cell phone. The only time I turn it on is when I travel, and it's more for the convenience of others than my own.

My car is five years old. I bought it used two years ago for $9,000. My thinking included not only the cost of the car, but the ongoing cost to insure it. It works just fine - more than meets my needs.

I have a lot of clothes and shoes, I'll admit. But what most people don't notice is that a large portion of my closet is ten, twenty, or even thirty years old, because I don't buy "fashion", I buy classic. And I see no need to pay retail.

My house is furnished in antiques, purchased at local estate auctions for less than I'd pay for new furniture of equivalent quality and craftsmanship. It's sturdy, strong, and never goes out of fashion.

When Jay was job-hunting around the country, we looked at houses hither and yon. He'd point to McMansions, and say, "We can afford that." My response was always, "That's more space than we need, and I'd have to clean it all! No way!" I cannot understand why people buy more house than they need. And don't tell me it's an investment. It's an investment only if you pay cash. If you've got a mortgage, you'll spend more than you'll ever make on it - unless you pay the mortgage off early, which I have always done, and Daughter and Hercules are doing now (I've taught her well).

Yes, I have four television sets, but I didn't pay more than $200 for any of them.

Yes, I do treat myself well. I do buy some things I merely want, like my Pleo Clyde, and the recent Waterford lamp. (Note that in neither case did it cost more than half retail.) And one of these days I will present myself with a swoopy sportscar, just 'cause I want it.

That's the one argument I have over and over with Piper. He chides me for never spending principal, only income. He says I could afford almost anything I want. I respond that I have everything I need, precisely because I don't buy everything I want.

[Rant off]
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