Latest political news

S&P 500 Dividends: The Futures Flatline... Again

2012-01-09T02:49:00.000-08:00

The stock market's forward looking economic prediction for the next six to nine months of 2012, in one picture:

Commentary from today's picture:

Between 9 December 2011 and 9 January 2011, the expected future for S&P 500 dividend payments have essentially "flatlined". This repeats the year-end pattern we saw in 2010.

In early 2011, the U.S. economy slowed down into what we describe as a "microrecession", characterized by very low economic growth rates, which lasted through 2011Q3.

The U.S. didn't leave those economic doldrums until the fourth quarter of 2011.

Is this a signal that forward looking investors believe the U.S. economy is about to repeat that performance?

Your Paycheck in 2012

2012-01-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

How much money will you really take home from your paycheck in 2012?

To find out, we've created the tool below so you can run the numbers that matter the most for you! In addition to finding out how much money Uncle Sam will be taking straight out of your paycheck for income tax withholding and FICA (which we've broken down into your Social Security and Medicare tax components), our tool will also work in your 401(k) or 403(b) retirement plan contributions, as well as the effect of any flexible spending account arrangements you may have set up through your employer.

Better yet, our tool will also let you see how you take home pay might change if you earn a raise during the year!

Just enter the indicated data into our tool, and we'll run your numbers for 2012, or at least your numbers through February 2012, depending upon what happens with that temporary Social Security payroll tax cut. If and when that changes, we'll post a new version of the tool!

Your Paycheck and Tax Withholding Data
Category	Input Data	Values
Basic Pay Data	Current Annual Pay
Basic Pay Data	Pay Period
Federal Withholding Data	Filing Status
Federal Withholding Data	Number of Withholding Allowances
401(k) or 403(b) Contributions	Pre-Tax Contributions (%)
401(k) or 403(b) Contributions	After Tax Contributions (%)
Flexible Spending Account Annual Contribution Data	Health Care Spending Account
Flexible Spending Account Annual Contribution Data	Dependent Care Spending Account
What if You Had a Raise?	Desired Raise (%)

Your Paycheck Data
Category	Calculated Results	Values
Basic Income Data	Proposed Annual Salary (Including Raise!)
Basic Income Data	Typical Paycheck Amount
Federal Tax Withholding Amounts	U.S. Federal Income Taxes
	U.S. Social Security Taxes
	U.S. Medicare Taxes
401(k) or 403(b) Contributions	Pre-Tax Contributions
	After-Tax Contributions
	Total Contributions
Flexible Spending Account Contributions	Health Care Spending Account
Flexible Spending Account Contributions	Dependent Care Spending Account
Take Home Pay Estimate	Net Paycheck Amount

That's all well and good, but how does your paycheck compare to what it would have looked like in 2010, the last year before the Social Security payroll tax cut? And for that matter, when both Single and Married tax filers had lower federal income tax withholding rates in place as well? Did you really get the benefit of that full 2.0% reduction of your income more in your pocket? Our results table below shows how you take-home pay would have been....

Compared to 2010
Category	Calculated Results	Values
Major Changes	Payroll Tax Cut "Savings" per Paycheck (*)
	Change in Income Taxes Withheld per Paycheck
	Net Gain (+) or Loss (-) to You per Paycheck
	Your Personal "Stimulus" (Percentage of Income)

(*) As part of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, the taxes collected from all Americans with wage or salary income to support Social Security was reduced by 2.0%, from 6.2% to 4.2%. This change only affects what individuals see on their paychecks, as the employers' portion of these taxes will remain at 6.2% of their employees' wage or salary incomes.

To make up any resulting shortfall in the Social Security tax collections used to pay benefits to today's Social Security recipients, the U.S. Treasury will increase its borrowing to cover the cost of providing those benefits at their current level. The Social Security payroll tax cut was extended for most wage and salary earners through February 2012 by the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011.

As for why President Obama's promise of a 2.0% payroll tax cut really doesn't add up to 2.0% of your salary or wage income, see the charts here (if you file as Single) and here (if you file as Married), for the explanation of those tax withholding dynamics....

And remember, one of the consequences of not putting that extra 2.0% of your paycheck into Social Security is that the program will run more deeply in the red, which will force the government to have to borrow more money just to pay benefits to today's Social Security recipients.

Our advice: if you'd like to put Social Security on a more sound footing, and keep your take-home pay from being reduced by 2.0% when the temporary Social Security payroll tax cut is set to expire in February 2012, have your U.S. Representative or Senators reduce all the other income tax rates (and withholding tax rates) by 2.0% (or more). As far as President Obama is concerned, it will make no difference to how much money the federal government will borrow on his watch.

Previously on Political Calculations

We've been in the business of calculating people's paychecks (not including state income tax withholding) since 2005!

Your 2005 Paycheck

Your 2006 Paycheck

Your 2007 Paycheck

Your 2008 Paycheck

Your 2009 Paycheck

Your Paycheck in 2010

Your Paycheck in 2011

But before we forget, your employer pays a lot more to keep you on the payroll than just your paycheck! The tool below shows how much it costs to employ you in 2011-12!

How Much Does It Really Cost to Employ You? (2011-12 Edition)

Meet the Married Rich of 2012!

2012-01-05T02:56:00.000-08:00

We're following up our look at the payroll and income tax withholding plight of Single tax filers today with a look at the plight of those who have their income taxes withheld at the IRS' initial 2012 married tax rates:

Once again, we're comparing the initial tax withholding rates for 2012 against those that applied in 2010, the last year before the employee's portion of the Social Security FICA payroll taxes of 6.2% of the employee's income was "temporarily" reduced to 4.2%.

What we find is that the benefits of extending the Social Security payroll tax cut into 2012 is limited to roughly 51% of those who might choose the Married filing status for their federal tax withholding, namely those whose incomes might fall between $7,900 and $78,800.

For all practical purposes, no individual who has their taxes withheld under the Married filing status whose income equals or exceeds $78,800 can expect to see any meaningful increase in their take-home pay with respect to what they might have done under the tax withholding rules of 2010. The increase in the income tax withholding rates will offset the reduction in they might otherwise see from the payroll tax cut.

In the chart above, we've used two different shading levels to indicate the range of incomes for which the 2.0% income surtax incorporated into the December 2011 temporary payroll tax cut extension might apply.

The lighter gray zone indicates the incomes where a married individual's income may be affected by the surtax while the darker gray zone indicates the incomes where a married couple will definitely be exposed to the surtax (since married filers combine the incomes of two people, it's possible for their combined income to be above the $110,100 level, yet still not be individually subject to the new 2.0% surtax.)

All in all, we're not sure it's worth forcing Social Security to run more deeply in the red for the sake putting a smidgen more take-home money into just 51-53% of American income earners' paychecks. It would benefit way more people, and put way more disposable income into the economy, if the federal government would let the temporary Social Security payroll tax cut expire and cut regular income and withholding tax rates across the board by 2-3% instead.

But if nothing else, at least we now know that President Obama's definition of who is "rich" really starts at $37,500 for single tax filers and $78,800 for married tax filers.

References

Internal Revenue Service. Payroll Tax Cut Temporarily Extended into 2012. IRS-2011-124. 23 December 2011.

Internal Revenue Service. Early Release Copies of the 2010 Percentage Method Tables for Income Withholding. Notice 1036. Released December 2011.

Internal Revenue Service. Early Release Copies of the 2010 Percentage Method Withholding and Advance Earned Income Credit Payment Tables. Notice 1036. Released November 2009.

Internal Revenue Service - Statistics of Income Division. 2009 Individual Complete Report (Publication 1304), Table 1.2 - All Returns: Adjusted Gross Income, Exemptions, Deductions, and Tax Items: Size of Adjusted Gross Income and Marital Status. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 2 January 2012.

Meet the Rich of 2012

2012-01-04T03:15:00.000-08:00

Two days before Christmas 2011, the U.S. Congress acted to pass a temporary extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut that had originally been passed a year earlier, and which had been set to expire at the end of 2011. To celebrate the occasion, the White House issued the following statement describing who would benefit from extending the Social Security payroll tax cut:

President Obama today signed into law a two month extension of the payroll tax cut, which means that 160 million American workers will not see their paychecks shrink starting Jan 1, 2012. The President thanked Congress for ending the stalemate and urged them to keep working to reach an agreement that extends this tax cut as well as unemployment insurance through all of 2012, saying it is the right thing to do for American families and for the economy, and called it "a boost that we very much need right now."

While technically true, we find that the White House's statement is misleading.

The part that's true is that had the Social Security payroll tax cut that had originally passed into law as part of the Job Creation Act of 2010, as many as 160 million individuals would indeed have seen their paychecks shrink as the Social Security payroll tax would have risen back to the level it was in 2010.

The only problem is that just over half of those wage and salary earning individuals ever saw any benefit from the Social Security payroll tax cut on their paychecks in the first place!

We'll illustrate why that was the case with the following chart, which presents the withholding income tax rates for individuals having money withheld at the "Single" tax filing status rates throughout the year for both 2010 and 2012.

The 2012 withholding tax rates shown in the chart above are nearly identical to those for 2011 - the only difference is that the incomes at which the withholding tax rates apply for 2012 have been adjusted upward slightly from 2011's levels to account for the effect of inflation over the past year.

What we find is that for all practical purposes, the only individuals who really benefitted from the payroll tax cut of 2010 were individuals with incomes between $6,050 and $37,500.

Assuming that the income distribution given by the IRS' adjusted gross income data for single tax filers from 2009 is representative of today's single tax filers, we estimate that roughly 53% of the wage and salary earners who have their taxes withheld at the Single filing status will see any significant benefit on their paychecks from the extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut. At least, as compared to what their paychecks would have looked like for earning the identical incomes in 2010, before the temporary Social Security payroll tax cut was enacted.

Much of the same math applied for 2011, which is a major reason why there was so little economic "stimulus" from the payroll tax cut - instead of having more money to take home, a very large percentage of individuals took home less money after all tax withholding from their paychecks than they would have in 2010.

And for all practical purposes in 2012, almost all individuals with incomes above $37,500 will see the federal government's withholding and payroll taxes claim a larger share of their paychecks than they would have seen in 2010. With almost exactly the same economic benefit from the "stimulative" effect desired by President Obama.

But at least now the pain of higher federal taxes taking more money out of every paycheck is being spread among all those single tax filers with incomes above $37,500.

Meet the rich of 2012!

References

Internal Revenue Service. Payroll Tax Cut Temporarily Extended into 2012. IRS-2011-124. 23 December 2011.

White House. President Obama: Extending Payroll Tax Cut Is a "Boost We Need Right Now". 23 December 2011.

Median Adjusted Gross Incomes by Tax Filling Status

2012-01-03T02:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, as we work on our various projects, we stumble across data that's kind of interesting in and of itself.

To that end, today's example of that would appear to provide more evidence that social factors have more to do with the perceived rise in income inequality in the United States over time than do economic factors:

In the chart above, we've presented the median adjusted gross incomes we've estimated for 2009's income tax filers according to their tax filing status. The number in parentheses below each column in the chart indicates the number of tax returns filed in 2009 for each group.

It would seem that just marital status has a lot to do with the observed differences between the various kinds of income tax filers.

Data Source

U.S. Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income Division. 2009 Individual Complete Report (Publication 1304), Table 1.2. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 2 January 2012.

Solving the Biggest Civil Rights Crisis of 2012

2012-01-02T03:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2012! We're kicking off the new year by solving the biggest civil rights crisis in America today, at least according to the United States Department of Justice: the racial disparity in the percentage of individuals without current photo identification needed for voting in South Carolina!

The editorialists of the Wall Street Journal were a bit taken aback by the apparent priorities of the U.S. DOJ:

Eric Holder must be amazed that President Obama was elected and he could become Attorney General. That's a fair inference after the Attorney General last Friday blocked South Carolina's voter ID law on grounds that it would hurt minorities. What a political abuse of law.

In a letter to South Carolina's government, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez called the state law—which would require voters to present one of five forms of photo ID at the polls—a violation of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Overall, he noted, 8.4% of the state's registered white voters lack current photo ID, compared to 10% of nonwhite voters.

This is the yawning chasm the Justice Department is now using to justify the unprecedented federal intrusion into state election law, and the first denial of a "pre-clearance" Voting Rights request since 1994.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 66.2% of South Carolina's 4,625,364 entire population were racially classified as being "White alone", while 27.9% were racially classified as being "Black or African American alone", who make up the lion's share of the state's "non-white" population. We will assume these percentages hold for the state's voting age population, which would put the number of individuals Age 18 or older at 3,544,890.

Simple multiplication then tells us that there are approximately 2,346,717 "whites" and 989,024 "blacks" of voting age in South Carolina.

Using Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez' figures, we can now estimate the number of each racial subset of South Carolina's voting population that he claims lacks current photo identification. For whites, that works out to be 201,818 individuals, while for blacks, the number estimated to not have current photo identification is 98,902, bringing the combined total of current photo-ID-less potential voters to 300,720.

These figures assume that 100% of the state's voting age population is registered to vote. In reality, an estimated 65.6% of South Carolina's voting age population actually voted in the 2008 election, which suggests that the actual number of registered voters in the state who might be affected by not having a current photo ID will be nearly one-third smaller than our figures suggest. We'll assume the 100% figure for our remaining calculations however, because they would represent a worst-case scenario.

Using those larger numbers then, all it would take to make the percentage of blacks without current photo IDs be equal to the percentage of whites without current photo IDs to achieve Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez' vision of perfect racial equality is for 13,846 blacks to take the simple action of renewing the photo IDs they have previously been issued by the state of South Carolina, and which have since expired.

After all, common sense tells us that individuals who have previously been able to obtain valid state-issued photo identification should have a pretty simple time doing so again. Apparently, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles will even pick you up and drive you to their office for the sake of getting you a valid and current photo ID to support your desire to vote in the last days to register ahead of an election!

Going back to the numbers, South Carolina's Department of Elections reports that 240,000 state voters lacked current ID cards as of October 2011. The state's Department of Motor Vehicles has indicated that 200,000 of those represent a combination of individuals whose existing photo IDs have expired (most often), or who have moved to other states, or who have passed away.

For those who haven't moved to other states or died, perhaps the easiest solution for obtaining a current photo ID would be to follow the directions provided by South Carolina's Department of Motor Vehicles for renewing their expired driver's license to make them current.

And to help "nudge" them in the right direction, we would recommend that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez take steps to prevent these particular individuals from doing things like boarding aircraft, buying alcohol, tobacco or firearms, depositing a check at a bank, applying for a loan, or voting in a union election, to name just a few ways the government might use its power to compel such people to eliminate the specific racial disparity of which he is so concerned.

At least then, perhaps Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez will feel like he is achieving something meaningful in his career!

Data Sources and References

U.S. Census Bureau. 2010 Census Data. Accessed 2 January 2012.

File, Thom and Crissey, Sarah. Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2008. Current Population Reports. U.S. Census Bureau. May 2010.

Howden, Lindsay M. and Meyer, Julie A. Age and Sex Composition: 2010. 2010 Census Briefs. May 2011.

Wall Street Journal. Holder's Racial Politics. 30 December 2011.

Best Albums of 2011

2012-01-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

It may have been a bad movie year, but the music industry did not disappoint. I actually had a hard time narrowing down this list to fifteen. There are certainly others that were in the running, others that didn't make the list because of one track or another--it was that hard. Here it is:

Tom Waits: Bad As Me
Bon Iver: Bon Iver
Wilco: The Whole Love
Black Keys: El Camino
The Civil Wars: Barton Hollow
Trampled by Turtles: Palomino
The Roots: Undun
Glenn Campbell: Ghost on the Canvas
Foo Fighters: Wasting Light
HARDTOBREATHE: The Reckoning
Bush: Sea of Memories
Miranda Lambert: Four the Record
Lucinda Williams: Blessed
Matt Nathanson: Modern Love
Christina Perri: Lovestrong

Narrowing it down to fifteen may have been difficult, but picking the number one album of 2011 was incredibly easy. After listening to one track of Tom Waits' seventeenth studio album, I was sold. If you haven't listened to it, go. Now! It's that good.

It was a great year for upstarts (Christina Perri and The Civil Wars) and artists that have been around for what seems like ages (Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits and the incomparable Glenn Campbell). And that I can only think of two disappointments (return of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ryan Adams' Ashes & Fire) is saying something. The music industry better get cracking because 2011 is going to be hard to beat.

Smorgasbord Saturday (New Year's Edition)

2011-12-31T17:02:00.000-08:00

"New Rules for the New Year"/Bill Maher, New York Times
"Alcohol and the Idaho legislator"/Randy Stapilus, Ridenbaugh Press
"12/30/1905 - Today In History"/John T. Richards, Idaho Meanderings
"A brainpower revolution"/Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
"Perry's Abortion Stance Gets Even More Extreme"/Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
"25 Literary resolutions for 2012. What's yours?"/Jacket Copy (via L.A. Times)
"2011: A Year of Transitions"/Greg Johns, MLB.com
"Keynes Was Right"/Paul Krugman, New York Times
"Why Is Nepal Cracking Down On Tibetan Refugees?"/Jon Krakauer, The New Yorker
"Pudge would welcome return to Rangers"/Texas Rangers Report, ESPNDallas.com
"A Drug That Wakes the Near Dead"/Jeneen Interlandi, New York Times Magazine

The Cost of Executing Monsters

2011-12-31T16:46:00.000-08:00

This week the Idaho Department of Correction released the amount the state's execution of Paul Ezra Rhoades cost the state of Idaho. Not surprisingly for those who are familiar with the cost of carrying out the death penalty, the cost was great. The exact cost IDOC released to the press was $53,411, not including the construction of the new execution chamber (F Block, as it is named).

In an interestingly timed release, the IDOC stated the following:

BOISE, December 30, 2011 – The recent execution of Paul Ezra Rhoades, IDOC #26864, cost the Idaho Department of Correction $53,411.

Of the total, $25,583 went to employee overtime and $27,828 went to operating costs [...]

[...] Operating expenses include medical supplies, equipment rentals and meals. The total cost figure does not include salary and benefits paid to IDOC staff who would have been working regardless of whether or not there had been an execution. Only overtime costs that were accrued as a result of the event were included in the final tally.

The press release went on to compare the cost of the state of Idaho's execution of Rhoades with that of the state of Oregon as they prepared for the execution of an inmate who was ultimately granted a reprieve when the governor of that state placed a moratorium on executions. The two states were separated by merely a few thousand dollars. The insertion of this information in the press release may only be a way for the IDOC to explain to the general public that the cost is comparable to other states and other executions, but it seemed inappropriate to be announcing that we can kill a man in the name of our people for cheaper than another state can.

When the new execution chamber was revealed to the people of the state of Idaho prior to Rhoades' execution, we were told that the necessity presented itself when the state began to realize there would be several more executions in the coming years. Maybe that is so, unfortunately to those of us who would rather our state not take lives in our name, but it doesn't erase the cost.

As long as we choose to execute the monsters among us, there will be a cost.

The Finder

2011-12-31T16:33:00.000-08:00

It's official, The Finder has it's own page on the FOX website! And they've been running ads for the hour-long show that will premiere on January 12, 2012 at 9/8c.

Check out this video for a preview of the show:

If you're not a regular watcher of Bones, you may have missed FOX introducing The Finder (aka Walter Sherman). They're calling it a spin-off of Bones, but the only connection I see is that both shows are based on a series of books and have the same creator. There isn't much of a connection between the two, other than the story line devised to introduce one show in the time slot of the other. The Finder is based on two amazing books by Richard Greener. Called The Locator series, Greener wrote The Knowland Retribution and The Lacey Confession centered on the unique gifts of a military veteran who can find nearly anything or anyone--lost, missing or stolen. Not unusually, there are some differences between the books and the soon to premiere tv show (just as there are differences between the books by Kathy Reichs and the Bones show). Most notably, there are far less characters in the tv show than in the book, one major character specifically. Differences aside, it looks to be a very entertaining show.

Given my track record of liking shows of late that are cancelled after a season or even less, I hope that Bones fans and fans of the Greener books will tune in and give this show a chance.

Why Kim Jong-il is Not Really So Funny or So Strange

2011-12-27T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Kim is dead, long live the Kim.

Kim Jong-il, The second Stalinist autocrat of the House of Kim in North Korea has passed away, and the third, Kim Jong-un, now takes his father's place. This has received a lot of coverage in the American media, with a slight sense of regret, being that the elder Kim had provided so much entertainment for Americans who loved to laugh at the odd, portly dictator with a love of Hollywood films and nuclear missiles. Having visited South Korea several times, I know the anguish Koreans feel about the Cold War division of their country into two opposing halves, and I have observed with sadness how each successive effort by the government and people of the South to reach out to the North has been rebuffed with the situation ending up where it began, with the North engaging in saber-rattling, missile-launching and other acts of symbolic or actual aggression to extort food and other aid out of South Korea and the USA in a kind of bizarre protection racket. How very weird, ridiculous and awful North Korea and its leaders are; how very far removed from us in wonderful, democratic America; or so we would like to believe.

I have been reflecting on Korea and reaching a different kind of conclusion, one that is not especially cheerful or reassuring. In a number of ways, I see the USA becoming more and more like North Korea.

Resemblance #1: Dedication to military power over all else. North Korea is as poor and economically dysfunctional as a country can be, but it still manages to have the fourth largest army in the world. Add to that the development of nuclear missiles, and you can see why military force is so important to North Korea. The rulers know that no one will ever dare to attack them, because any attack on North Korea would result in a devastating counter-attack on South Korea. The modern,high-tech magnificence of Seoul, the South Korean capital, could be attacked within hours by the North Korean army, and if the nuclear missiles ever become fully functional, the threat will be even more acute.

What does this have to do with the USA? Well, we are the number one military force in the world, we have more military bases around the world than anyone else, and in the last several decades we have engaged in more invasions and wars than anyone else. Whoo-hoo! Most Americans almost wet their pants with love of the military, and since 9/11, it has been considered very poor taste, unpatriotic, and maybe even a potential sign of terrorist sympathies to ever EVER question or criticize our wars, our occupations, our bases, the size of our armed forces, our huge expenditures on military matters, and so on and so forth. So we are rather North Korean-like in our devotion to the military and the almost sacrosanct position that military matters occupy in our national psyche. The North Koreans cheer when their missile launches threaten South Korea, and we love to "support the troops" when they invade other nations, no questions asked by the "patriotic" majority.

Resemblance #2: Just as the North Koreans show no remorse for the pain or suffering their aggressive acts cause to others, so do we have very hard time ever admitting, let alone apologizing, for death and destruction caused to other people by our military. For both the USA and North Korea, military action is a conscience-free zone of thought. There are of course Americans who oppose and critique our militarism and aggression, but I am referring to the majority, for whom being "strong on defense"(i.e., aggressive and unapologetic) is a key qualification of national political leadership. Note that,with the exception of Ron Paul, all the current Republican candidates for President continually heap scorn on President Obama for being a "weak" and "apologetic" President, despite his continuation of the Bush wars with expansions into Yemen, Libya and Pakistan, with ever-increasing use of drones to make the killing of "bad guys" even easier.

Resemblance #3: Like North Korea, we are dedicated to maintaining our huge military at any cost, even if our society is crumbling and resources are badly needed elsewhere. In the last two rounds of budgetary brinkmanship on Capitol Hill, the one thing that has given the Republicans pause in their zombie-like, headlong rush to cut back government programs and services despite the toll that such reckless and random amputations would take on non-wealthy Americans was the possibility that defense spending might also have to be cut. Suddenly the Republicans felt a sense of hesitation about their budget-cutting gospel! It is one thing to cut off unemployment benefits to people who can't find work, withhold food stamps from people on the edge of starving, destroy union contracts that provide a decent living to people who do not live off investments, or cut back funding to roads, bridges, schools or water systems that are disintegrating and collapsing. Things like that the Republicans can do without a moment's hesitation or any apparent remorse. But cut back the military by even one penny? Oh no, that is INCONCEIVABLE! That would be a CATASTROPHE! I suspect that if the current right-wing extremists of the Republican party manage to take over the Senate, the House and the Presidency, we will see a massive devastation of most social services and government programs and at the same time, a massive buildup of the military, all wreathed in a beautiful, red, white and blue patriotic afterglow. And then will come the wars, and more "support the troop" mass hypnotism as we send our young men and women to kill and be killed, all in order to "defend our freedom," to finally return maimed and mad to a country whose decline can only be disguised so long by massive military extravaganzas.

So, while we may enjoy snickering and sneering in remembrance of Kim Jong-il and the completely miserable state of the country that he presided over, I see him and the way he ruled North Korea as a frightening foretaste of what America may become if we continue in our blind worship of the military to the exclusion of all other needs and concerns.

But hope springs eternal. Maybe in 2012, Americans will decide that they have had enough of war and that is is time, at long last, to direct our energies to non-military matters, like taking care of each other and preserving our precious planet rather than seeking to blame and attack others. However, I am not at all confident that this runaway train can be stopped in time.

Counting Down to Christmas...

2011-12-23T03:07:00.000-08:00

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - we'll see you again in 2012! Until then, for the sake of all those people who are spending way too much time wrapping presents this season, here's our official countdown clock until the big day....

The Strangeness of the American Political Election

2011-12-22T12:24:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one who finds the American elections for President, well.....weird? A few weeks ago or sometime then, I first tuned into the DNC convention in Denver. "DNC?" even that sounded odd to me. It reminded of me of some type of medical procedure. Okay, it's Democratic National Convention. The first bias I noted was in the political reporting and coverage from the different networks and cable affiliates. I had to check to see if the different "commentators" were actually at the same event.

If I wanted to get a spin more favorable from the republican side, I stayed on Fox. I tried to be fair and though I didn't connect with the democrat candidates, mostly because there's something sinister that hangs over Hillary and Bill, I would tune into CNN. My God, I wish I wasn't so shallow, but at least Osama is relatively appealing to look at and listen to. Old man McCann, it's hard to think how long he can hold up.

But anyhow, very little of the "reporting" felt like actual hard news, and the candidates? Such posturing. I couldn't get over how much they have to play to each other. Poor Obama, he was so left out on the porch to appease Hillary's supporters. It's obvious these people don't really like each other. By the time Hillary came on to "strongly" express her unwavering support for Obama's presidency, it felt more like a dry run for her own candidacy. Give her credit, she finally showed up, in a strong and confident address, but for her it was too late. This was all about creating "party unity" but even one of those covering the convention exhumed, Hillary, probably hope's Obama loses, so she can run in 2012. Now, that's somebody I'd want watching my back.

I never did see Obama's acceptance speech, but I conceded he can hold up for himself. He's a lawyer after all? It's funny because a lot of political commentators use what we would call sales language to describe the process. "Oh, Obama will finish the deal on Thursday" I'm kind of Glad Obama can be counted on to "close" for himself. Maybe we should be looking for that in a President. Then there is the whole description of what were in the various messages by both parties supporters. Phrases like "red meat" I guess that means substance and also the role of different speakers, well, so far McCain has not been required to be an attack dog,I guess somebody else will "relish" that role.

The whole playing up on the conventions are quite a spectacle. It's even more of an irony watch the political "experts" dissect both the impact and intentions how what the candidates have said, both through specifics and when they trip up. Larry King had a panel of four women who were racing to interrupt each other and nullify or build up what the candidates meant by what they were saying. Everybody seems to know or seem to know what the American people want. You get the feeling that the whole thing needs to be explained to most Americans. I wonder how many people know what a caucus is, or how the parties elect their nominees. What are delegates anyway? How about a "super delegate?" Now that impressive. Some of the women on Larry King seemed intent on slamming Sarah Palin and insisted "women" would be insulted that just any woman would do.

Maybe women like Sarah Palin for reasons "they" like her and it's not the same as women who like Hillary for. Everybody seems to think they know the "intelligence" of the American voter. The same voters that stay up and record "reality shows" and watch dancing with the stars. Face it part of who gets elected will be because of popularity. Isn't that why they call it the popular vote? I must admit John McCain looks a lot better with Sarah Palin standing next to him. He's just too colorless to get elected by himself. It's also a little mystifying how effective the Republican Party wants to portray John McCain as a war here, because he was a prisoner of war. How do we know what happened during his time as a captive? Did you know his Father and Grandfather were Admirals? I remember this scene from a popular movie called "The Recruit" that depicted Colin Farrell as breaking under torture. Afterwards when Farrell found out his capture was staged he lamented, yeah but I broke. Al Pacino as his CIA Svengali quipped they (we) all do. How many of us wouldn't rat out in those circumstances.

All of this played out even weirder when my hotel cable went out and I happened to be watching a Library DVD of the Manchurian candidate. That was eerily similar to some of today's issues. A certain writer friend insists that the whole of the American Elections is already forgone. "It doesn't matter when you own all the ponies in the race" It is interesting noticing the engagement of both "regular people" and the easily obvious controlled and bias media.

I started taking my own poll, just talking to people about their thoughts. A lady in Sacramento working in a deli offered she didn't trust Obama, referring to some obscure mention about his patriotism. Though she was vague in details and she was in a mostly white suburb. Two women at a real estate convention who were friends gave differing opinions of Governor Palin, one woman who offered she was a Mother liked Palin. The other woman just kind of gave non approving body language. At least on woman "expert" of the Larry King Panel of four women called out that the "other women" might be jealous of Sarah Palin's opportunities or her looks.

Now that would be unprecedented. It almost seems like the political machinery is not altogether ready for the unusual ness and complexity of a woman like Sarah Palin not only on the political stage but her influence on both men and Woman. I noticed the other day how Cindy McCain who would be the First Lady is not even receiving hardly any notice. Finally I notice her in a pretty revealing outfit with a cleavage portal, getting a little cranked up. Yes, this is getting a little fun.

It seems like most people vote for who they are going to vote for as President because of their personal preferences. Maybe is somewhat of a sad indication but a lot of people might choose a candidate just for the reasons we all buy different kinds of cars. I'm not that certain that is all bad. Maybe things like intuition and someone a person can relate too are just as important. The whole thing of experience and qualifications are very much central themes of these campaigns. I wonder how some of these candidates would hold up in the real world (yikes!) like trying to get a top corporate job.

I have heard Google, for examples has like twelve layers of interviews and processes including going before groups who actually present real time scenarios, where you have to demonstrate your competence. Not in the American Presidency though. Then again who is to really blame Obama if he decided NOT to pick Hillary as a running mate? Is this any different than a head of a company choosing someone they have a better chemistry with or somebody that will be willing to be loyal to them or plays a better wingman?

No, I cannot really see Hillary being comfortable deferring to the big O. She doesn't seem like a good loser. It seemed like years ago, elections seemed, well....more Presidential. It started with seeing Bill C playing sax on Saturday Night Live. Since then, it's been nothing like I remember when John Kennedy was President.

If we are to believe what the "experts" are telling us, we will see what the candidates are really about in the next remaining days. It seems like more, a war of attrition. Who will hold up? Who will not get tangled up in a mess bigger than their phalanx of image handlers can dig them out from? It's a wonder if the "right" candidate will really make it or will it be really, the one that can survive. I have expected Obama to be a little more skilled with some of the things he's let spill from his mouth. Unguarded moment or subconscious meanings?

Palin already seems to have already trumped her own candidates star. Meanwhile, we are facing the latest failure and government bail-outs of Wall Street Investment banks. First the housing and Mortgage industry, now this. If these people can't run their own businesses, who can? What about the business of running America? Oh, we're back to that again. I kept hoping, really praying that I would see some evidence of both congress and the senate that we actually have some degree of impartiality in standing up to the insane ruse being put forth about these economic bail-outs.I also wanted to see if McCain or Obama would do something.

The fact that neither did had me sense their is no real difference in the fundamental buys in the parties are attached to the real power elite that controls the apparent governing of our nation. Somewhere in all of this is the possibility that more and more people will actually ferment in a swelling of intelligence and do something for themselves, we hope the candidates will...Think and act in accordance with a reasonable plan for America. Hopefully the truth about these elections is out there somewhere, amongst all the spins, the disenchanted, the non-believers and the fervent hopefuls.

Hopeful that the true Spirit of democracy and freedom is instilled in people, not bound up in a big fat wedggie, regardless of the pollsters, media and even the candidates themselves.

Iraqi Dinar - The Role of Oil, Politics, and Foreign Investment

2011-12-22T12:22:00.001-08:00

There have been many developments in the Iraqi economy since the 2003. Efforts of the nation's government and foreign aid have focused on the following goal: increasing security and stability in Iraq via legitimate political representation, infrastructure building, and economic growth.

Possible domestic capital markets were created with the objective of cutting down their massive pre-war debt. The Paris club was generous enough to forgive 80% of Iraq's debt. Their policies towards growth and their near future economic stability attract investors worldwide.

Foreign bank licenses were also issued after many decades to banks such as HSBC, National Bank of Kuwait, Commercial Housing Bank, Iranian National Bank, Bahraini Arab Banking Institute and Standard Chartered bank. Interest rates were further liberalized in the aim to form a vibrant free market economy. The rejuvenated banking system was expected to have a positive effect on the value of Dinar. Besides, the Central Bank of Iraq became an independent agency, without influences from political parties of Iraq.

The Iraqi Dinar was being traded at 3.35 per US dollar before the sanction of United Nations and at 0.33 per US dollar before the Iraq war. The Iraqi Dinar was affected mostly by the major combat operations of the nation and had declined to an all time low value.

After the combat operations, however, the government succeeded in bringing up the currency value by 25% and currently the value of Dinar is 1400 against the USD, an enormous increase from 3500 against the USD during the US invasion. Even Germany and Kuwait underwent a similar devaluation postwar but both recovered.

The recovery of Iraqi Dinar is astonishing and the Iraqi government's efforts towards global market integration will still spur the value of the currency. Iraq after recovery is also expected to benefit from its abundant natural resources.

Political Cartoonists and Their Views

2011-12-22T12:21:00.001-08:00

As a proper dictionary definition, a cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. A political cartoonist is a person who creates caricatures on a daily basis as a commentary on a political news event. Like every writer, the cartoonist is trying to make a point. They see themselves as a visual journalists rather than artists. They think analytically and share their opinions and views. Political cartoonists are different from ordinary cartoonists. They are "visual anarchists" of the satirized political scene.

In order to really understand a political cartoon one needs to have some background information on the political subject in question. Cartoonists use a series of techniques to get their message across. Caricature is the first and most important technique. It often exaggerates an individual's characteristics to make them more easily recognizable. Analogy is another much encountered technique. Cartoonists often use words and images to better explain a complex situation.

People should look critically at a political cartoon for a better interpretation of the actions. They have to first possess the necessary political background knowledge, understand the tackled subject, identify the techniques used by the cartoonist and try to interpret and understand the cartoon.

Political cartoonists are also considered to be opinion-formers. Their opinion helps and the more vicious the cartoonist, the more satirical the cartoon. Everything for them is wrong within the nowadays political system and their drawings help make things right. They all try to define political figures not to eliminate them from the political life or to offend them in any way.

Cartoon Bank is a permanent online political cartoons resource. Political cartoons and books can be found gathered together in an interesting selection of collections. Here one can always find political cartoons and cartoon prints and covers at affordable prices.

Should You Wait to Take Social Security?

2011-12-22T03:40:00.000-08:00

Does it pay to delay taking Social Security benefits?

Let's say you're considering one of three options: taking early retirement at Age 62, retiring at the traditional Age 65, or really holding off on retiring until you've reached Age 70. Which choice might be better for you?

The question matters because people who wait longer before drawing Social Security benefits can draw larger benefits than those who don't wait.

To find the answer, we've tapped Social Security's estimate of the maximum possible Social Security benefits that would be paid for individuals choosing to begin receiving payments in the first month after they've reached each of these ages in January 2012.

We then projected the accumulated total amount of benefits each individual would receive all the way out to Age 100.

But since most Americans won't live quite that long, we also projected how much longer a typical American can expect to live once they've reached the age at which they begin receiving Social Security benefits.

We've presented our results in the following chart, where we've used a solid line to indicate the portion of benefits that would be accumulated based upon a typical American's likely remaining life expectancy, and a dashed line to cover the period from that age all the way out to Age 100.

What we find is that based upon the typical life expectancy for most Americans, it does indeed pay to wait longer to draw Social Security benefits after becoming eligible.

For example, an individual who waits until the traditional Age 65 to begin receiving Social Security benefits will accumulate more money from the program than an individual who begins drawing benefits at Age 62 by the time both have reached Age 77. Since most Americans who reach either age can expect to live into their 80s, they would do better to wait than to take early retirement.

Likewise, by the time an individual reaches Age 82, they will have accumulated more benefits from Social Security by having waited to start receiving them at Age 70 than they will have by beginning to take them at Age 65.

There are two big wild cards in all this however. First is the major unknown of how long you will actually live - if you knew that, then you would know exactly which option might be better for your situation.

That's also complicated by whether or not you have a spouse. In that case, your Social Security benefits would continue to be paid to them in the form of survivor's benefits throughout the rest of their lives, which matters because they might live long beyond your years. That factor would argue in favor of waiting.

The second big wild card however is whether you have another source of income that can carry you from Age 62 through Age 70. Whether that's from regular retirement income that you set aside throughout your working years or from a job, both of which might be at the mercy of the economy, you might find it necessary to begin drawing benefits long before you would otherwise have chosen to do so in an ideal world.

How Much Does It Cost to Own an ETF?

2011-12-21T03:38:00.000-08:00

If you're an investor looking to possibly put your money into an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), how much can you expect that will that cost you?

ETFs are a lot like mutual funds, in that they are made up of a number of individual stock or bond holdings and have operating expenses that will be charged against your account, but they're not exactly. Unlike mutual funds, which are only allowed to change hands at the end of a business day, you can actively trade an ETF - placing market orders to buy and sell at any time when the market is open, just like the shares of stock or bonds you might own.

Combined, those characteristics make an ETF something of a hybrid between mutual funds and regular stocks. Which means that figuring out how much it costs you to own an ETF is a little more involved than looking at the fund's Operating Expense Ratio.

If you're shopping for an ETF, and you're looking to minimize your costs as a way to help maximize your return on your investment, you'll also need to consider the funds Bid-Ask Spread, the value of any trading commission you might have to pay, as well as how long you plan to keep your money in the ETF and also how much money you'll keep in the ETF.

Fortunately, our newest tool is here to do the job for you! Based on math presented by Michael Iachini in the Winter 2011 edition of Charles Schwab's On Investing magazine (the link will work once the print edition is published online), our latest tool can help you find out how much it owning an ETF will really cost you!

Just enter the relevant data below, and we'll do the rest!

ETF and Investment Information
Input Data	Values
ETF Operating Expense Ratio [%]
ETF Bid-Ask Spread [%]
Commission per Trade [$]
Time You Plan to Hold the ETF [years]
Amount You Plan to Invest in the ETF [$]

Annual Cost of Owning an ETF
Calculated Results	Values
Your Annual Cost of Ownership [%]
Your Annual Cost of Ownership [$]

Using the default values in the tool, we find that the approximate annual ownership cost for investing $10,000 for half a year in an ETF with an Operating Expense Ratio of 0.10%, a Bid-Ask Spread of 0.15% and a per-trade commission of $8.95 is 0.76%, or $75.80.

Different ETFs and different brokers however will have very different numbers. Using our tool will help give you a good way to compare the relative costs of owning those ETFs when it matters most: before you choose to invest in them!

Image Credit: The Digerati Life

Building Your Groupon Discount Promotion

2011-12-20T03:03:00.000-08:00

If you run a business and are looking at running a marketing campaign offering discounts on your products or services through social media marketing sites like Groupon or Living Social, what kind of discounts can you really afford to offer?

That question comes up because of a recent story from the United Kingdom, where Woodley baker Rachel Brown was forced to make 102,000 cupcakes to satisfy a torrent of customers who took advantage of the discount she had offered via Groupon, losing $20,000 in the process. Mashable's Stan Schroeder reports:

Group discounts can be a nice thing for both the seller and the customers, but you have to know your limits. A UK baker learned that the hard way, when she was forced to bake 102,000 cupcakes, after offering a 75% cupcake discount on Groupon.

The discount obviously sounded too good to Grouponers, 8,500 of whom signed up to buy 12 cupcakes for £6.50 ($10), down from the standard £26 ($40) price. Rachel Brown, who operates the Need a Cake bakery in Woodley (near Reading, UK), had to hire extra workers and try to bake the cupcakes to satisfy the swarming customers.

"Without doubt, it was my worst ever business decision. We had thousands of orders pouring in that really we hadn’t expected to have. A much larger company would have difficulty coping," said Brown, who lost up to £12,500 ($20,000) on the deal.

There's a lot that went wrong for our cupcake-baking heroine, but thanks to the folks at TheDealMix, who developed the formulas, we can now present a tool using simplified math that can help any business owner set up a deal for discounts to avoid the pitfalls into which Rachel Brown's bakery fell.

Just answer the following questions as they apply for your business - our tool will do the rest to help ensure that your business can handle the demand from your deal while still running in the black!

Data About Your Business' Promotion
Input Data	Values
How much does your average customer typically spend on the goods or services you'll be featuring in your promotion?
What is your cost for the goods and services you'll be promoting?
What amount, above your Cost of Goods Sold, will you add to the offer price for your promotion?
What percentage of your business' capacity do you use when not running a promotion?
How many monthly transactions do you have on average when not running a promotion?
How many months would you like to run your promotion?

Your Promotion
Calculated Results	Values
Your Promotion (aka "The Deal")
Total Number of Deals to Offer

Our tool's results are designed to ensure that your business can afford to support the discount promotion you're thinking about running in two ways. First, by adding a positive amount to your Cost of Goods or Services Sold, you'll avoid the situation where you might discount your promoted item too greatly.

Second, by placing a limit on the number of deals that will be offered through your promotion, you'll largely avoid having to go to extraordinary means to satisfy customer demand should your promotion prove to be extremely popular.

And now, you shouldn't have to worry about whatever the equivalent of losing $20,000 to bake 102,000 cupcakes is for your business!

S&P 500: In the Zone!

2011-12-19T03:11:00.000-08:00

Nobody can predict where stock prices will go next, can they? Especially given the volatility of stock prices, especially in today's market, where the market can swing by more than 3% in any given day, right?

It's just not possible, is it?

To really find out, we ran a two-year long experiment, from April 2009 through April 2011, to see if we could forecast the average value of stock prices for a month at the end of the previous month. Here were our final results:

As you can see, we offered a split final forecast option for April 2011. Here's what we believed would happen instead:

What we believe is likely is that stock prices will track upward from the average level of 1304 they recorded in March 2011 toward the 1393-1429 level our primary method would forecast as the noise currently in the market subsides.

And that's what happened. In April 2011, stock prices did indeed track upward, rising to an average level of 1331 for the month, with the S&P closing the month at 1363.61.

We took the next several months off from offering public forecasts of where the S&P 500 would head next, but by 26 September 2011, we couldn't resist any more, and posted the following chart, which presents a graphical prediction that happens to cover the period through the end of 2011:

And here's what the updated chart looks like, through the end of 16 December 2011:

What can we say? We're still in the zone! And that concludes, for real this time, our public experiment in forecasting the future for the S&P 500!

Innovation Beyond Technology

2011-12-17T14:51:00.000-08:00

I have grown weary of people repeating the apparently widespread belief that "innovation" is the solution to all our problems. I don't deny that the difficult problems facing modern-day societies require new ideas and approaches. What bothers me is that when people talk about innovation, they seem to mainly be talking about TECHNOLOGICAL innovation. It's as if the Beatles song "All You Need is Love" has been re-engineered ("re-purposed," to use the latest innovative jargon sweeping the mass vocabulary) as "All You Need is Tech," available now on Ipad, pod and Kindle. Now, again, I am not opposed to technology. This blog is not written on a blackboard nor traced in the dirt with a stick nor conveyed by carrier pigeon. I am happy to embrace technology that is useful.

What concerns me is the assumption that technological innovation is all that matters in today's world, which overlooks the fact that technological change can be for good or for ill,and that technology often comes with all kinds of hidden costs that we only recognize belatedly. Technology used with wisdom and a sincere regard for human needs and human welfare can indeed be very beneficial, but technology used thoughtlessly without regard for its consequences or only for the purpose of amassing profits can be incredibly harmful and destructive, at the individual level, at the social level, and at the planetary level. Consider nuclear energy. Splitting the atom was an enormous scientific breakthrough, but we now live in fear of nuclear war and meltdown catastrophes such as happened in Fukushima last spring. How quickly today's innovation can turn into tomorrow's nightmare, based on how human beings choose to apply these new techniques and devices. If you are reading this blog, I assume that you are a person with some kind of spiritual awareness and also some degree of social concern. I like to imagine that you are not the kind of person who takes at face value the assertion that "all you need is tech."

There are other kinds of innovation just as important. There can be social and economic innovations, changes in how we live, work and distribute money and other resources, with incredible benefits for humanity. The creation of the labor union was one such innovation, a rearrangement of the work situation for the benefit of laborers. From the viewpoint of nineteenth century industrialists, labor unions were a huge pain in the ass that got in the way of the efficient use of up-to-date technology to maximize profits. The creation of public education and public libraries were other such innovations, based on an innovative vision of public good and welfare as opposed to private ownership and profit. Giving women the right to vote was another social innovation that helped move us toward a more gender-equal world in which women could claim equal citizenship alongside men. The Civil Rights movement in America helped to clear away the shameful racial prejudices and policies that all the technological innovation of the preceding century had done nothing to address.

Much has been made of the role played by new high-tech communication methods such as computers, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter in the revolutionary uprisings across the world in recent years, from Iran in 2009 to Egypt in spring of 2011 and Occupy Wall Street in recent months. Unfortunately, this line of thinking seems to take a serious wrong turn toward overly simplistic technological determinism in suggesting that such uprisings were only possible due to such "social media," and that without Facebook, the people who rose up in revolt would have been inert and helpless. Facebook, Twitter and other high-tech paraphernalia were no doubt useful tools of communication, but there had to first be bold and serious political ideas constructed in response to widespread grievances, or all the Twittering in the world might have just involved a sharing of celebrity gossip or sports scores. Let's not forget that "social media" do not create society, and that is first and foremost human beings, human thoughts and feelings, and the human capacity for desiring justice and social change that lead to uprisings and revolutions, not the latest technological fad.

Yes, we need innovation. We badly need to change the way our economy distributes wealth and resources, or we will continue to see technological innovation used to destroy employment for the many to increase the wealth of the few. We need to be careful about how information and media are owned and managed, or we will find that our supposedly infinite multiverse of digital information and electronic media will be in the hands of a small number of companies like Apple, Amazon and Google, and we will have no recourse when they decide to increase prices, censor unwelcome viewpoints, or limit access to types of information that are either politically inconvenient or unprofitable. I would feel much better having a strong public entity like the Library of Congress as the reservoir of information and media, because it would not then be subject to the whims of investors and profiteers. But then again, I believe in the public sphere in a time when most people seem to believe that all you need is private property and that kind, benevolent corporations are more trustworthy than the evil, intrusive government.

As a college professor, I feel that the world of higher education that did so much to nurture my generation and open doors of awareness and opportunity for millions of Americans is under increasing threat from high-tech entrepreneurs and Wall Street investors who see education as their next target for corporate takeover and privatization. Share in private companies offering educational services like charter schools are booming. It seems obvious to me that such companies would love to put all public education out of business, most of all we pesky teachers, so that education can be made into a commodity that will be bought, sold, traded, downsized to squeeze our maximum profit and delivered by low cost, increasingly less highly trained labor, providing the same benefit to American society that we have seen come from the wise, innovative management of American manufacturing and real estate over the last thirty years.

And then there is the environment. A few years ago there was widespread concern about global warming and environmental degradation and serious interest in new, less polluting, innovative energy technologies like solar power. However, the old guard struck back, and how! With a massive public relations campaign to discredit so-called "environmental extremists," old-school, carbon-based energy companies, including such good friends to the earth as EXXON, BP and Koch Industries, aided and abetted by the talk radio, television stations, Twitter feeds and other media outlets owned and operated by Murdoch, FOX and others of like mind and purpose, have been able to shift a substantial chunk of American public opinion back in favor of relying on oil, gas and coal, scorning the potential of still-developing alternative energy technologies, the environment be damned! One failed solar power company, Solyndra, to which the Obama administration had provided financial assistance, is now seen as proof positive that solar power is a silly waste of time, an inept leftist plot based on shoddy science and even worse economics. Meanwhile, large swathes of the United States are being subjected to the rapacious greed of the old guard energy companies, armed with the "innovative" new technology of "fracking" (hydrofracturing), which poses a horrible risk to water supplies for large regions of the country.

When it comes to the environment and energy, we need "innovation" that goes beyond technology. We need the innovation of courage of conviction along with the innovation of caring about the earth. We need the innovation of standing up and saying, sorry, profit is not everything. Profit is not worth degrading the earth. You cannot breath profit and you cannot drink quarterly dividends. Or maybe the super-wealthy few can, the financial super-elite; surely they can afford to develop and purchase new "innovative" technologies to provide them with clean air and water in their "innovative" gated communities, with "innovative" high-tech security systems to prevent lesser mortals from scaling the walls in search of oxygen, non-toxic food and healthy drinking water.

The greatest innovation is never technology. It is the capacity of human beings to stand up,join together and fight for a better world, a better world for all, not just the privileged few. It is wisdom to see a value in the world that goes beyond dollars and euros and corporate profits. Now, you might argue that this is not really "innovation," this is ancient tradition, this is spirituality or religion. Well, perhaps in our technology-bedazzled time, this is exactly the kind of "innovation" that we need, one that can help us to pause from our headlong rush forward and reflect on and learn from the past,and consider what is truly important, not only for today and our bank balance right now, but for tomorrow and for the generations to come. We need to look for values and practices that may not have made Steve Jobs or Bill Gates billionaires, but which have sustained the earth and the human spirit and which can still speak to us today, if we have ears to hear, even if that means disengaging from our electronic devices for a few moments now and then.

Smorgasbord Saturday

2011-12-17T11:54:00.000-08:00

"My Occupy LA Arrest"/Patrick Meighan, Family Guy
"Thousands Sterilized, North Carolina Weighs Restitution"/Kim Severson, New York Times
"Idaho Supreme Court will decide Bujak documents case"/Kristin Rodine, Idaho Statesman
"NPR Music's 100 Favorite Songs of 2011"/Music Staff, NPR
"Accounts of a Massacre, Saved From Junkyard Flames"/Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times
"An Early Holiday Hangover"/Gail Collins, New York Times
"Has Gingrich ever heard an idea he didn't like?"/Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
"Extended labor peace a credit to Selig"/Richard Justice, MLB.com

The Invisible Hand App

2011-12-16T03:32:00.000-08:00

If you use Google's Chrome web browser, there's a relatively new app that can make shopping a lot more economical: InvisibleHand.

When you're reviewing a commercial web site when shopping for a product, such as airline tickets, rental cars, or even dog food, InvisibleHand will let you know if you can buy the product more cheaply at other sources and link to them. We snapped the screen shot below to show what the discreet prompt looks like when it finds a lower price, which appears at the top of the browser window:

We've only been test driving it for a little while, but our initial impression is that the app is pretty cool! The app is free and versions are also available for the Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer web browsers from InvisibleHand's web site.

Elsewhere on the Web

Carolyn Nicander Mohr offers a positive review of the InvisibleHand app.

C|net's Rafe Needleman reconsiders his initial positive review for the app based upon privacy issues related to cross-site data leakage, where his search for a product on one site was unknowingly communicated to Amazon's site.

Revisiting the U.S. Housing Bubble

2011-12-15T03:43:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, we developed a better method for detecting housing bubbles. Today, we're going back to the data mines to do some refinement and to see where things stand today!

Our first chart shows the relationship between median new house prices in the United States and median household income for the years from 1967 through 2010.

Here, we've revised our earlier look to better define the major trends evident in the data. Here, we see one major trend running from 1970 through 1986, then a second trend running from 1987 through 1999. After 1999, we see the housing bubble beginning its inflation phase as the relationship between median new house prices and median household income became decoupled, running through 2007. Since then, the U.S. housing bubble has been in its deflation phase, which appears to still be ongoing, as the relationship between the median prices of new houses and median household income remains decoupled.

One important thing to note is the shift in the trend that occurred after 1986. We believe this shift was triggered by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which eliminated a number of debt-related tax deductions, but which left the long-standing mortgage interest deduction in place, even increasing the amount of the deduction.

The changes brought about by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 had two main effects. First, it incentivized home ownership by enhancing the tax benefits associated with owning property and having a mortgage. Second, in eliminating the favorable treatment of other debt interest, it made the home mortgage the primary channel by which people would choose to accumulate debt thanks to the interest on that debt being tax advantaged.

These changes however are not the cause of the U.S. housing bubble, as there is no correlation between the shift in trend and the beginning of the bubble in 2000. More interestingly though, we see that both trends would project nearly the same median new home price given the current level of the U.S. median household income.

Looking at the more recent trend that was defined in the period from 1987 through 1999, we can see that the relative affordability of a median new home in 2010 is still well elevated above where it would have been during that period. The following chart shows the percentage deviation between the 1987-1999 trend and actual median new home prices from 1987 through 2010, which gives a sense of how overpriced the median new home has been since 1999 thanks to the U.S. housing bubble:

Here, we see that the relative affordability of the median new home with respect to where it typically was from 1987 through 1999 peaked in 2005, with a percentage deviation of 25.7%. Since then, the median price of a new home has fallen, bottoming in 2009 at a level 11.9% over where the linear trend that ran from 1987 through 1999 would place it, before bouncing back up to be 14.4% higher than the level of the projected trend in 2010.

What's interesting to us is that it appears that we stumbled directly into something that looks very much like the Case-Shiller house price index!

Here, looking at both the 10-city and 20-city composite indices, we find that our representation above closely follows the pattern traced out by the Case-Shiller 20-city composite data - at least with respect to the linear trend we created in the chart for the period from 1987 through 1999.

But unlike the Case-Shiller data, because our method correlates house prices with household income data, it will better communicate the relative affordability of homes in the U.S. over time!

Since the Case-Shiller data has been updated more recently than the Census data, it appears that house prices in the U.S. have resumed falling in 2011. And even though those falling prices are making homes more affordable today, they would have to fall by roughly another 12-14% before they would be in the same ballpark for affordability that they were in the years from 1987 through 1999.

Or as the projected trend works out to be from our first chart, the same level of affordability that they were for Americans in the years from 1970 through 1986 as well.

Data Sources

U.S. Census. Median and Average Sales Prices of New Homes Sold in United States. http://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf. Accessed 13 December 2011.

U.S. Census. Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements. Table H-5. Race and Hispanic Origin of Householder--Households by Median and Mean Income: 1967 to 2010. [Excel spreadsheet]. Accessed 13 December 2011.

Standard and Poor. Case Shiller Seasonally Adjusted Home Price Index Levels, September 2011. [Excel spreadsheet]. Accessed 13 December 2011.

How Many Calories Are You Really Eating?

2011-12-14T03:56:00.000-08:00

How many calories does your body need to maintain its current weight? Or rather, if we were to take your current weight level and assume that you're consuming enough Calories to maintain it, how many Calories is that per day?

Your Personal Data
Input Data	Values
Age [years]
Weight [lb]
Height [in]
Gender
Your Daily Activity Level

Approximate Daily Calorie Requirements
Calculated Results	Values
Basal "Resting" Metabolic Rate [Calories]
Estimated Total Calories Consumed per Day

Math is a wonderful thing and yes, we can use it to work out approximately how many Calories you're eating every day! Our tool below uses the math developed by M.D. Mifflin, S.T. St. Jeor, L.A. Hill, B.J. Scott, S.A. Daugherty and Y.O. Koh in their 1990 paper "A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals" to estimate your basal metabolic rate, or rather, the number of Calories your body would consume when it's "resting", which we then mashed with the old Harris-Benedict approximations for taking your daily level of physical activity into account.

All you need to do is to enter your age, gender, weight and your approximate level of daily physical activity into our tool below. Unless you're a true athlete, with lots of lean muscle mass that burns even more Calories, or perhaps have a thyroid condition that directly affects your metabolic rate, you can expect the results to be pretty close to the actual ballpark in which your body burns Calories to maintain your current weight!

Best of all, if you're getting set to do something about your weight or fitness level, you now have some idea of how many Calories you're really consuming every day!

And really, that might be the most surprising result you'll find out from our tool!

Snapshots of the Expected Future Dividends for the S&P 500

2011-12-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

A quick story in two snapshots. First, the expected future trailing year dividends for the S&P 500 through the fourth quarter of 2012:

Second, the tax rates that apply to dividend income from 2003 through 2012, and the expected tax rates that will apply for 2013 onward, given current law in the U.S.:

What effect do you think those much higher tax rates will have upon stock prices beginning in 2013? Especially since the long-term capital gains tax rate will be so much less? Here's what history says, but remember, it ends badly, except perhaps for the insiders....

Speaking of which, here's what they're up to today!

U.S.-China Trade: Reaching an Inflection Point

2011-12-12T03:18:00.000-08:00

In October 2011, China set a new record for its exports to the United States, with the value of its goods and services being imported into the U.S. reaching an all-time high of $37.807 billion.

Unfortunately, the year over year growth rate of China's exports to the U.S. indicates that the U.S. economy, while doing a bit better than the months of May through September 2011, is still near recessionary levels.

Worse, we find that the year over year growth rate of U.S. exports to China has also reached near-recessionary levels, even as the value of the goods and services exported by the U.S. to China is still on track to peak by December 2011.

What we suspect is that the respective growth rates of the trade between the two nations are reaching a near-simultaneous inflection point, where instead of growing, which we would expect if the economies of China and the U.S. were both healthy, they are instead set to go flat or to become negative, as both nations would appear to be now experiencing near recessionary conditions.

It would seem that not even the kind of massive Keynesian economic stimulus spending that China engaged in back in 2009 and 2010 is sustainable for more than a couple of years, as all bubbles end. It's only ever a question of when and how....

Scheduling the Next U.S. Recession

2011-12-09T03:11:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Fed's excursion into Zero Interest Rate Policy (aka "ZIRP"), we can't use our dedicated tool that reckons the odds of a recession up to a year in the future.

But we can do the next best thing and listen to what the stock market is trying to tell us:

Here, we find that the private sector of the U.S. economy is set to slow down in a big way going into the second quarter of 2012, which we see as the decrease in that quarter's expected dividends per share.

Keep in mind the extremely slow growth of just once cent per share from the second to third quarters of 2011 directly coincided with what we've described as a microrecession in the United States, which we've since confirmed using international trade data.

But what does that mean for jobs? After all, as we've seen previously, the big job losses following the beginning of a recession often occur quite a bit after it has begun.

Fortunately, we have another tool we can use to predict how the U.S. unemployment rate will change, up to two years in the future! The relationship between inflation-adjusted motor gasoline prices and the unemployment rate in the U.S.!

Here, we've shifted the red curve indicating the level of real motor gasoline prices in the U.S. some two years into the future. Here, we see that the recently announced unemployment rate of 8.6% for the U.S. is right about exactly where the gas prices of two years ago would predict they would be.

(Technically, they had been higher than anticipated until the most recent employment situation report, but then, remember the U.S. went through that whole microrecession thing!)

Looking into the future, we see that the unemployment rate through 2012 is likely to fall into the range between 8.5% and 9.0%. But very early in 2013, it would seem set to skyrocket back up over the 10% mark, after beginning to rise sharply toward the end of 2012.

That won't be any microrecession. And now, you can't say you weren't warned about what now looks like is coming this way!

Elsewhere on the Web

Doug Short compares the track record of two leading economic indicators and notes that the two have diverged in recent months, with one signalling recession and the other chirping along merrily - only one can be right!...

7 Effective Ways to Read and Understand African Political News

2011-12-08T20:54:00.000-08:00

Whether you are an African expatriate hoping to stay in touch with what is going on in your home country, a potential tourist hoping to do research on the best place to visit, a political student striving to understand the development in Africa, or simply well-wisher dedicated to unload of few bucks to chip in the aid for Africa, translating the information you read into valuable knowledge is an important task

Like any other continent, Africa offers a set of complex realities that can offer conflicting outcome for the party interested; moreover, accessing the information you need is not always evident between the information you look for, and the information you find.

Below is a short description of criteria to consider when reading or researching news on Africa. While the list is not exclusive, and can certainly be extended, I believe this initial guidepost may help. Feel free to add or consider additional helpful points.

1. Consider the source of the information

Africa is a very complex place, that combines many world and realities, the gap between the rich and the poor creates in many places two different societies whose world rarely collide. For that reason, news sources are often tailored to one group or the other.

Understanding the source of the information will help you assess the legitimacy of the information you have. For example, is it a local or foreign news source? Foreign sources often have greater access to political circles because the government is more concerned about the way it is portrayed to the outside world; however, foreign sources rarely give you the real pulse of the nation. If the source is local, consider the accreditation that is reflected by interviews or first hand accounts. In Africa, Official news is often given unofficially, while official news is a front. That means that those sources that have close access to the government are more likely to give credible news, compare to unaccredited sources to whom is given generic news. (More on it further down)

2. Try to capture the perspective of the information

In Africa, the freedom of the press is not a sacred duty, and as mentioned above, free and transparent news are not evident. As a result, news often reflects the perspective of the source. The information you will get is based on the perception of the source. In the West, Africa is widely primarily viewed as a continent ravaged by war and diseases, where impoverished people and government are struggling very hard to survive, and thus their lives and activities are geared toward Help and how the global community can help them. As a result, most African news coming from the West will treat topics such as aid, sanction, peace and war, and oil discovery. Human rights, rigged election and corruption are other subjects often treated; in other words, Western media tend to chronicle Africa's efforts to "join" or emulate them.

When it comes to local media and news sources, the dilemma is different. Elite and well positioned news sources depicts the political life of the country, meaning that their news are mostly geared toward accounts of big political activities, such as Presidential travels and visits, opposition complaints, foreign investment, dignitaries visits, Diaspora news and international events in which the government participate. In short, those news sources attempts to present information from the perception of Africa to the rest of the world.

Finally, local media perception is often directed at the local population, therefore offers information on issue that matters to locals; energy and gas issues, employment, government promises kept or not, education, political freedom, cultural and social safeguard, etc...

3. Acknowledge the Biases

In the U.S, it is often assumed that CNN is Pro-democrats, and Fox News is a Republican arm, regardless if true or not, that perception is very present in Africa as well; not in form of Republican or democrats of course, but they still play a short role.

From the day of colonization, Western Nations had strategic interests in Africa, and Political propaganda has insured that many Westerners view some African countries internal policies as beneficial or threatening to their way of life.

If your African news information is from a Western source, always consider the position of your country with the African country you are researching. Popular opinion is critical and very few Western media will say nice things about the Zimbabwe government for example. Western media will offer news based on the national interest of their home country. You will rarely read negative report about the Egyptian Government that has good relations with Washington, although it is not a beacon of Democracy, yet Zimbabwe, which has been a torn in their side, is demonized. This is not an attempt to justify the evil of some people, but it is worth considering that Western media will report information according to the way they wish a certain country to be viewed.

If you wish to avoid the biases of Western news outlet, you are better off searching for African news by African news outlets. There again, there is an often bias between Pro and anti government. Some news sources are government sponsored, while other are dedicated to discredit the government regardless of good deeds or not. In Africa the contrast is usually very strong, as you can read full articles of "official" news feed that praises the government unashamedly, while others are almost littered with insults. Very rarely will you find news source that are impartial, and it is usually very evident to distinguish the sources political leanings.

Given the polarity of African societies, and the actuality of International Relations, one must not look at news Biases with pure disgust, but as a component and vital actor of global politics; filling between diverse biases can actually help uncover valuable information. But in case it doesn't help, always consider independent news and...

4. Identify the agendas

If for some reasons you are unable to filter official and supposedly professional news sources, do make use of independent news sources such as NGO's and Think Tank. Because they are usually unaffiliated with any government, and their work is mainly based on empirical data and research, NGO and Think Tank do paint an educated and comprehensive picture of what is going on in Africa. Most of their works are expanded toward a wide range of subjects that reflects a non-partial view of government activities, social realities and international implications.

If you obtain your news via NGOs or Think Tanks, you are most likely to have access to strong data, depending on the Think Tank, and hard core evidence of what is going on in the country you research.

The only problem presented by NGOs and Think Tanks is that they do have an agenda. The nature of their strong work is usually motivated by the mission to influence or advice a government to act toward an issue they view as important. Because of that agenda, those organizations often accentuate an issue to the point where it overshadows others, making it look like an exaggeration.

For example if an NGO has for agenda to reduce arm trafficking in Africa, their information may offer solid leads on the pulse of a country, with credible evidence; however, their extensive research on the impact of arm trafficking may minimize other positive information, to the point of giving the impression that you can buy Ak47 at a candy store. This of course is not with the intent to deceive or dramatize, but with the objective of using the data to convince world powers to act on arms trafficking.

If you know how to extract your information from those sources, they are an excellent balance to local and international news.

5. Check the blogs

Africa sends millions of its bright Sons and Daughters abroad to study in higher education, and loses other millions professionals in search of a better living. While the damages of this brain drain are considerable, the attachment all those Africans retain for their homeland represents a glimpse of hope.

Since they cannot directly be involve in official affairs in their home countries because of the distance or political threats, many member of the African Diaspora voice their opinions in blogs or personal websites.

The advantage of reading those opinionated blogs is that it offers a personal touch and reaction to all the other news you may have read.

Many are very knowledgeable in what they are writing, and approach it in a very professional way. They are not constrained by editorial control, so are free to give their honest, educated opinion on what they read, heard or experienced in and out of Africa.

If they are not that knowledgeable on African affairs anymore, many still have families abroad who can give them first account to report on what is happening.

Because they are so many blogs related to Africa, you can not only compare information and news, but also engage the writers and have a better feel on how and where they get to say what they are saying.

For most people, this is a valuable source, because on top of general political views, they can offer a personal one, as well as giving an insight on how and where people live their everyday, not to mention, where the hotspots are.

The disadvantage of Blogs is that it is after all just personal opinions, and personal opinions can be motivated or inspired by perception, Bias, and /or agenda. It is not uncommon for exile politicians to mount an opposition from abroad, something blogs tend to make easier, so caution is advised for that reason.

6. Search for supportive news

Every news agency is in search of a scoop, and none wants to be left out of considerable information.

Whenever you stumble on interesting information for your research, after identifying the source, always make sure to search if that information is reprised by other news outlets.

When it comes to Africa, it is very common for news to be generalizing, but if you feel you came across useful information, always double check if you can locate it in other Western sources (if those where your primary sources), and then in local African sources. Check in Blogs and social sites if it is being discussed, or better create a new discussion.

The fact of the matter is that if you are looking for information on Africa, the complexity of its state does not favor taking any information at face value, but insuring that it is shared, discussed and not hostage to any perception and bias will help you have good grip on what is going on.

7. Use common sense

In Politics like in everything, things happen for a reason, from a coup d'Etat, to a social uprising, and political instability to international sanction.

Africa is not another planet we know nothing about, and it did not appear without a past or history.

In everything you read or learn about Africa, consider the context and remember history. Famine and poverty did not come suddenly; wars all have a spark plug, poor countries should not be able to buy weapons they do not manufacture.

The context and the historical reality that today links nearly all countries on Earth presents the fertile ground on how you will receive the news you receive, they way you receive it.

Knowledge is a light to which is drawn a bug called interest, and common sense should help you navigate the waves of misinformation toward the land of comprehension of the subject you research.

As mentioned, this is a list that can be extended and perfected, but for all who have at one point or another, read African news or wanted to understand what is going in Africa, I hope that little list will be helpful the next time it happens.

Over-reliance on popular media is like over relying in anything, it cripples one's ability, and dilutes the quality of the need sought.

Stay thirsty for knowledge; you might very well quench your thirst yourself.

Your Maximum and Target Heart Rate

2011-12-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

How many times per minute should your heart beat while you're exercising?

Age and Gender Data
Input Data	Values
Your Age
Your Gender

Your Maximum and Target Heart Rates
Calculated Results	Beats per Minute
Your Maximum Heart Rate
Your Target Heart Rate Range

It used to be really easy to calculate what your maximum and target heart rate for working out should be - you just took your age, subtracted it from 220 and that gave you your maximum heart rate. You would then try to keep your heart rate between 50% to 80% of that number to get the best cardiac workout that medical professionals could recommend.

But then, while that math works for men, it turns out that math doesn't work for women!

Fortunately, a new math formula for finding the maximum and target heart rates for women has been developed: all a woman needs to do is to subtract 88% of their age from 206 to find their maximum heart rate number, then keep their pulse rate between 50% and 80% of that result while exercising!

Since that really isn't the kind of math that people can do in their heads, our latest tool is designed to take your head out of the picture, so you can focus on that workout of yours, regardless of whether you're a man or a woman!

Just enter the indicated data into the tool, and we'll tell you just how fast you need to get your blood pumping while you're working out on that new-fangled treadmill....

So there you go - now give us 20!

Image Credit: NASA's G-Trainer. Why, it's our tax dollars at work!

TDIH: Pearl Harbor (70th Anniversary)

2011-12-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

As today marks the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entering World War II, I thought the best place to find material to share would be the records from Hawaii. First word of the attack came through official channels and began the sending of this naval dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor. This image is available through the Library of Congress American Memory website and comes from the papers of Admiral John Jennings Ballentine (1896-1970).

A simple search on the American Memory page for 'Pearl Harbor' brought up 859 items, though surely there are hundreds more related to the attack as well as our involvement in World War II. I highly recommend taking a look at their site and the items available on the site of the National American History Museum website, not just today on the 70th anniversary of this historic event, but as often as you have time. These items exist for us to examine and study so that we do not lose our understanding of history over generations.

To the men and women who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor as well as those who subsequently joined the armed forces, out of patriotism, duty or conscription, we will never forget you. Yours is our story.

Winter 2011 Edition: Who Owns the U.S. National Debt?

2011-12-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

As of the end of the U.S. federal government's 2011 fiscal year on 30 September 2011, the United States' total public debt outstanding was recorded to be approximately $14.790 trillion. From the end of the U.S. government's Fiscal Year 2010, the amount of the U.S. national debt has increased by 9.1% in just one year, or $1.2 trillion.

The chart below provides a preliminary look at who the biggest holders of all the U.S. government's public debt outstanding were as of 30 September 2011:

Comparing this new chart with ones we've previously featured, we've broken out the U.S. Federal Reserve's holdings from the U.S. Individuals and Institutions category, reflecting the Federal Reserve's massive purchases of U.S. Treasuries as part of its quantitative easing programs.

Overall, in the year from 30 September 2010 to 30 September 2011, the U.S. Federal Reserve increased its purchases of U.S. government-issued debt from $966 billion to $1,773 billion, an 83.5% year-over-year increase.

These figures only include the value of securities issued by the U.S. Treasury or other federal government agencies. It does not include mortgage-backed securities, such as those issued by government-supported enterprises such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) or the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac).

Our look at who owned the largest shares of the U.S. national debt is only preliminary since the data for foreign nations will be revised at some time in 2012.

How Much Will Upcoming Revisions Change This Picture?

We've created an animated version of our two primary charts revealing the major holders of U.S. government issued debt through the end of Fiscal Year 2010, our original version and the updated version incorporating the U.S. Treasury's revised data, to help give an idea of how much the values and percentage shares presented in our new chart above might change when the data spanning Fiscal Year 2011 is revised:

Note that the biggest change is that the share of U.S. government-issued debt held by China increases at the expense of the originally reported level of U.S. Treasuries held in the U.K. We anticipate a similar change when the data is revised in 2012, although this year, Europe's ongoing debt crisis might be playing a role in inflating the U.K.'s reported share of U.S. Treasury securities as well.

Previously on Political Calculations

Who Owns the U.S. National Debt

To Whom Does the U.S. Government Really Owe Money?

Summer Update: To Whom Does the U.S. Really Owe Money

Data Sources:

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Monthly Report on Credit and Liquidity Programs and the Balance Sheet, October 2011. Table 1. Assets, liabilities, and capital of the Federal Reserve System.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Monthly Report on Credit and Liquidity Programs and the Balance Sheet, October 2010. Table 1. Assets, liabilities, and capital of the Federal Reserve System.

U.S. Treasury Department. Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities. Accessed 6 December 2011.

U.S. Treasury Department. Monthly Statement of the Public Debt of the United States, September 30, 2011. Table III – Detail of Treasury Securities Outstanding, September 30, 2011.

Can Increasing the Minimum Wage Boost GDP?

2011-12-06T03:44:00.000-08:00

Does increasing the minimum wage increase GDP?

Bloggingstocks' Joseph Lazaro outlined the theory that it might back on 1 August 2009, shortly after the U.S. federal minimum wage reached its current level of $7.25 per hour (emphasis ours):

... the U.S. Federal Reserve will be monitoring prices and costs to see if the higher minimum wage is creating inflation havoc at a time when U.S. businesses least need another concern to deal with. Businesses have enough to worry about; and some are struggling just to maintain operations for another quarter or two -- the recession has been that damaging.

But the Fed will also be looking for signs of another side-effect, and this one is a positive one: a GDP boost. That's because millions of workers are going to get a raise that they otherwise would not have gotten, and that will increase their purchasing power.

The significance? Some of those increased-pay workers will choose to spend -- perhaps buying a washer or drier, making a down payment on a used car, or paying down a debt. It's quite possible -- although in these "frugal consumer" economic times no one is certain- - that the wage hike will increase U.S. GDP, serving as a small engine of growth as the U.S. economy inches back toward health.

It's an intriguing possibility isn't it? But has it worked out that way?

One way we can find out if boosting the federal minimum wage has boosted GDP is by examining the economic fortunes of the people most likely to be earning minimum wages in the United States: teenagers and young adults!

Together, individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 have consistently made up approximately one half of all minimum wage earners, so we should be able to use the personal income data the U.S. Census has collected and published for this age group for each year since 1994.

First, let's consider the population of 15-24 year olds in the United States, and the number of those individuals counted as having income from 1994 through 2010.

Over this time, the federal minimum wage has increased from $4.25 per hour in 1994, to $4.75 in 1996 and then 50 $5.15 per hour in 1997, where it held level until 2007. Beginning in 2007, it was increased by 70 cents per hour once a year up until it reached its current level of $7.25 per hour in 2009.

What we see however is that the number of teens and young adults with incomes has fallen over time. Our next chart shows the percentage of Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 who were counted as having income in the U.S. Census' Current Population Survey for each year from 1994 through 2010.

In this chart, we find that the percentage of teens and young adults who had incomes peaked in 1995, with 75.3% of the entire Age 15-24 population counted as having earned income in that year, which has since fallen to 59.9% as of 2010.

So far, both these charts indicate that the number of teens and young adults in the U.S. workforce has fallen from 1995 through 2010 - these charts don't tell us anything about how teens and young adults might have benefited from higher pay obtained through a rising minimum wage over time!

For that, we'll dig deeper in the U.S. Census' data and extract the data for the aggregate amount of income earned by individuals Age 15-24. Since one way of measuring the U.S. Gross Domestic Product is to add up all the income earned by people in the United States, we can use the Census' estimate of the aggregate income earned by U.S. teens and young adults to represent their contribution to the U.S.' GDP.

The easiest way to do that is to compare the amount of income earned by all U.S. teens and young adults in 1995, when the percent share of teens in the U.S. workforce peaked with the total amount of income earned by all U.S. teens and young adults in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data.

Coincidentally, selecting these particular years for comparision works especially well for our purposes, since it spans the increases in the U.S. minimum wage from $4.25 per hour to $7.25 per hour, with 1995 being one year before the first minimum wage increase in our period of interest occurred, and 2010 being one year after the most recent increase in the U.S. minimum wage took place.

We'll also adjust the numbers to account for the effect of inflation, using an animated chart to show the results.

What we find in examining this chart is that for the 15 year span from 1995 to 2010, the nominal aggregate income of U.S. teens and young adults increased by 14.75%, from roughly $302.9 billion to $347.5 billion.

But mnst remarkably, in terms of constant 2010 U.S. dollars, the aggregate income of U.S. teens and young adults fell by 0.56% from $349.5 billion in 1995 to $347.5 billion in 2010. For all practical purposes, despite a 70.6% increase in the nominal value of the U.S. federal minimum wage from $4.25 to $7.25 (a 21.8% increase in real terms), the total amount of income collectively earned by the predominant earners of the U.S. minimum wage in the United States is unchanged.

Let's take a step backwards and consider the nominal income distribution of teens and young adults in both 1995 and 2010 in nominal terms.

Our next animated chart shows how many thousands of Age 15-24 individuals the U.S. Census counted within each $2,500 increment of total money income in both 1995 and 2010.

Here, we find that the distribution of income has shifted primarily at the lower end of the income spectrum. Our final chart quantifies the changes for each of the U.S. Census' measured income increments.

Here, we note that an individual earning the U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in 2010 who works full time (2,080 hours per year = 8 hours a day, 5 days per week, 52 weeks per year), would earn $15,080 in a year. That puts all the income affected by increases in the U.S. federal minimum wage over time below this level.

What we find is that this income range at the lowest end of the income spectrum for Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 is the only income range where there have been reductions in the number of individuals with incomes between 1995 and 2010.

We also find that the number of individuals with incomes below $15,000 has fallen by 5,045,000 from 1995 to 2010. Meanwhile, we find that the number of Age 15-24 individuals with incomes over $15,000, which would be considered to be largely unaffected by increases in the U.S. federal minimum wage over time, has increased by 3,105,000.

Overall, there are 1,940,000 fewer individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 with incomes in 2010 than in 1995.

Consequently, we find that increasing the federal minimum wage has failed to increase GDP over time. Worse, we find that increasing the federal minimum wage has actually increased income inequality within the Age 15-24 population from 1995 through 2010, as the same aggregate income, when adjusted for inflation, is effectively being spread among nearly two million fewer people.

Returning to Joseph Lazzaro's thoughts on the topic:

... if the Fed and other organizations can verify that the minimum wage increase has boosted GDP without a loss of jobs, or inflation, Congress may to consider another decision in the quarters ahead: a decision to raise the federal minimum wage again, this time to $8.25 per hour.

In our view, the only reason the U.S. Congress would choose to increase the federal minimum wage again would be to ensure the onset of a new recession.

This concludes our annual anniversary post, where we celebrate the biggest ideas we've developed during the past year! This year's anniversary post was a bit unique in that it combines two of the areas in which we've made a mark (or left one!): the real impact of minimum wages on the U.S. teen population and the real nature of income inequality in the United States.

As for the biggest ideas we've developed in previous years, here's the list:

2005: A Year's Worth of Tools - we celebrated our first anniversary by listing all the tools we created in our first year. There were just 48 back then. Today, there are over 259....

2006: The S&P 500 At Your Fingertips - the most popular tool we've ever created, allowing users to calculate the rate of return for investments in the S&P 500, both with and without the effects of inflation, and with and without the reinvestment of dividends, between any two months since January 1871.

2007: The Sun, In the Center - we identify the primary driver of stock prices and describe a whole new way to visualize where they're going (especially in periods of order!)

2008: Acceleration, Amplification and Shifting Time - we apply elements of chaos theory to describe and predict how stock prices will change, even in periods of disorder.

2009: The Trigger Point for Taxes - we work out both when, and by how much, U.S. politicians are likely to change the top U.S. income tax rate.

2010: The Zero Deficit Line - a whole new way to find out how much federal government spending Americans can really afford!

Thank you for joining us for our anniversary! We appreciate that there are a lot of ways you can choose to spend your time, and we greatly appreciate your willingness to share so much of it with us over the past year.

After Ragnarok

2011-12-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Today, I want to share an idea that keeps coming to me when I reflect on how the American economy, like the American people, is working--or rather NOT working--these days. How often have you heard journalists and so-called experts tell us that the economy is improving, the stock market is looking healthier, but unfortunately, the job market just isn't getting better as there are still so many unemployed people? It seems to me that there is a fundamental problem in how our nation's economic health is perceived and discussed. In a nutshell, I see the problem as this: there is too much emphasis on how the stock market is doing, not enough on how the labor market is functioning. I think the order of things here should be exactly reversed. The priority should be on jobs, which PEOPLE need, not on the ups and downs and whims of the stock market.

For too long, we have accepted a schizophrenic and unsustainable idea of what constitutes a healthy economy. We have accepted, largely because it is constantly drummed into our heads every time we turn on the television or open a newspaper, that the well-being of the stock market is more important than the state of the working people. We are told that if the stock market index goes drastically down, that is Armageddon, which requires immediate full-throttle attention, but if the unemployment rate is high and people are being crushed by joblessness or underemployment or having to work multiple jobs to reach the standard of living that one job used to make possible, that is sad, but something that we will just have to bear with until things somehow someday get better; that is to say, acceptable collateral damage.

To put it another way, we all been brainwashed to believe that the needs of those who make or lose fortunes from investing in the stock market are more important than the needs of lower-class people to have steady employment and living wages. That is to say, the needs of Finance, of Capital, are always put ahead of People.

Now, however, this equation is breaking down. To look at the economy right now is to behold the collapse of a house of cards, an illusion of prosperity for all built up by the wizards of high finance and their government enablers over the last 30 years, ever since the Great Prophet Reagan led us to the Promised Land where tax cuts are sacred, the rich are worshipped and the idea of a public good that transcends personal gain and corporate profit is viewed as laughable. From late 2008 to the present, we have seen the national government first under Bush then Obama make far more effort to assist and support the Lords and Ladies of High Finance, the large investment houses and multinational banks in their hour of crisis, than to provide aid and comfort to the unemployed, the poor and those in the middle class who now realize that they are far more likely to join the ranks of the poor than to ever enter the posh private clubs of the wealthy.

However, the policy of propping up the financial nobility and hoping that the economy in general would revive along with the fortunes of the super-wealthy is proving a failure. Furthermore, the more recently fashionable policy of focusing on balancing the budget through austerity measures is also not working. It turns out that if you have an economy with massive unemployment and then slash at government jobs, you actually --and of course no one could have possibly foreseen this!-- create more unemployment and further drag the economy down, so that you have even more unemployed people competing for jobs that do not exist. Cutting government services also does not improve the economy; it just damages our society by removing forms of assistance and support that would have otherwise helped to make people's lives more bearable and the society more secure, and laid the foundations for long-term social and economic development and thus future prosperity.

The austerity policy, the budget cutting fever and deficit fixation that seems to be taking hold worldwide will also make it impossible to do things like repair public works and invest in things that the private sector either has no interest in or feels no responsibility towards, like public transportation, including roads and highways, public parks, clean air, water, and energy, and decent health care and education for the unwealthy. No terrorist or foreign power will need to drop a bomb on us to bring about mass destruction if we are willing to destroy our society through inertia and decay and a refusal to redirect resources for the public good, out of a tragically flawed belief that all that matters is private and corporate profit. We simply decay and implode. Considering our level of military spending, our military will probably remain strong and able to inflict damage on enemies abroad, but it won't do us much good at home.

What is my counter-proposal? Take the focus away from the stock market and make the state of the workforce the priority. Make providing jobs the priority. When people have money in their pockets, they can actually go out and buy things. They will eat out more, supporting restaurants. They will shop more for both small and large things, making it more attractive to employers to hire more workers, and also more appealing to manufacturers to produce more things. To put it another way, it is a matter of supply and demand. When people have jobs and money, they can fire up the engine of demand, and then spur the overall economy into greater motion to create more goods, more supply, to meet the rising demand. In contrast, the austerity policy will only lead us to further contraction of employment, consumption and production. Not a good outlook.

Instead of a Dow Jones index, we should have a Workers' Well-Being index. When the workers have jobs and money, the positive numbers on the workers' index will also lead to profits for the Lords and Ladies too, though maybe not the kind of fast and crazy profits that they used to get through mass lay-offs, slashing wages and benefits, and tricky high-finance deals. They'll just have to be patient and wait like the rest of us for a brighter tomorrow that comes slowly through hard work, not razzle-dazzle financial wizardry devoid of human caring. But first, we have to stop believing that all that REALLY matters is the stock market and the state of the Down Jones. We first have to believe that the general welfare really is more important than high finance.

Many ancient religions teach that there is an underlying order to the world that includes a regard for human welfare. I think the collapse of the current economic system is the cosmic order reasserting itself. There has been too much greed and social inequality for too long. After the financial Ragnarok that the world is now suffering through, let us hope for rebirth and a restoration of a more humane and sharing world, one less focused on private and corporate selfishness. If all we do is continue to prop up corrupt financial institutions and do the bidding of the stock market, there will be no end to the misery produced by greed and inequality.

Our civilization will continue to implode, and it will deserve to do so.

A Four Year Milestone for U.S. Jobs

2011-12-05T03:15:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, the number of employed Americans peaked at 146,584,000 in November 2007, just ahead of the U.S. economy itself peaking in December 2007, which marked the starting point for the nation's most recent economic recession.

Through November 2011, four years later, the number of employed Americans has fallen to 140,480,000. Just over six million fewer Americans are working today than were four years ago.

Overall, the jobs situation in November 2011 brightened for most Americans from October 2011, especially for those Age 25 and older, whose numbers in the U.S. workforce grew by 405,000 during the month.

Young adults however were on the losing side of the employment picture however, as 145,000 fewer individuals between the ages of 20 and 24 were counted as being employed than were in October 2011. That's disappointing because young adults had been seeing the largest gains in the number of employed in each month since July 2011, at least, until now.

Meanwhile, the employment situation of American teens continued to improve very slowly, as only 18,000 additional individuals between the ages of 16 and 19 were counted as having jobs in November 2011.

Today, the jobs lost by teens account for nearly 1 in 4 of all jobs lost since the United States entered into recession in December 2007. That's remarkable because teens represented just 3.1% of the entire U.S. workforce in November 2011. Four years ago, teens made up just 4.0% of the 6,004,000 member larger U.S. workforce.

Continuing to break down the data, young adults today represent 9.4% of the U.S. woorkforce, while accounting for 13.1% of the total number of jobs lost in the U.S. economy since November 2007.

Adults Age 25 or older make up the remaining 87.5% of today's U.S. workforce. Through November 2011, these individuals account for 62.0% of all the jobs that have been lost in the last four years.

Only in Washington

2011-12-02T03:25:00.000-08:00

If you live in the state of Washington, and you would like to do "work that matters", the State of Washington might have just the right job for you!

The inside joke here is that prior to the passage of Initiative 1183 on 8 November 2011, only the State of Washington could operate liquor stores. As a result, all the employees of the state's liquor store outlets were really employees of the state government. Because of the initiative's passage, the state is being forced by its voters to get out of the liquor business.

But apparently, the State of Washington still feels that its liquor store jobs are doing "work that matters"! (We agree, but we'll still drink to the privatization of liquor sales in Washington!...)

HT: Stefan Sharkansky.

New Jobless Claims: Still On Track

2011-12-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

Today's news that the number of initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits being filed for the week ending 26 November 2011 ticked back up over the 400,000 mark is right on track with the prediction we published over a month ago.

Here's that prediction:

... since that slowly downward trending line is currently projected to stay above the 400,000 level through the end of 2011, we can therefore expect that there is over a 50% probability that the number of new, seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims will be above the 400,000 mark through the end of the year.

In fact, what we can expect as we go forward in time is that we'll see an increasing number of times in the weeks ahead where the number of new jobless benefit claim filings will fall below the 400,000 mark, as the number of layoffs from U.S. employers each week continues to decline gradually.

Lo and behold, that's pretty much exactly what has happened so far in the time between 21 October 2011 and today, as shown in our chart below, which adjusts the trend line slightly:

For the six most recent observations of the number of new jobless claims, which cover the period of time since we made our prediction, three have been at or above the 400,000 mark, while three have been under.

We also see that the mean trend line has shifted to be slightly steeper, which suggests that the number of initial unemployment insurance claim filings each week will be more likely to fall under the 400,000 mark in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the uptick in new jobless claims is "unexpected":

Jobless claims climbed by 6,000 to 402,000 in the week ended Nov. 26 that included the Thanksgiving holiday, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 43 economists in a Bloomberg News survey called for a drop to 390,000. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls and those getting extended payments increased.

Whoops! There's 43 economists whose forecasting ability is now in doubt, which is a shame because the number of new jobless claims filed each week is perhaps the easiest of all economic data to forecast while its basic trend is intact!

And at present, it appears that the current trend for weekly new jobless claims remains well in force.

The Effect of Quantitative Easing on Stock Prices

2011-11-30T03:51:00.000-08:00

What effect did the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing programs have on U.S. stock prices in the three years from November 2008, when it was first suggested, and today?

To find out, we'll do an event analysis - we'll match up the level of stock prices as measured by the S&P 500 with the timing of the Federal Reserve's announcements and implementation of its two rounds of quantitative easing (aka "QE1" and "QE2").

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis maintains a timeline of the events and policy actions that have been taken with respect to the financial crises since 2007. Here are the key milestones with respect to the Fed's quantitative easing programs, along with some other notable events. Our chart below shows the overall timeline over the past three years:

Beginning the timeline:

A. 25 November 2008

The Federal Reserve Board announces a new program to purchase direct obligations of housing related government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)—Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Home Loan Banks—and MBS backed by the GSEs. Purchases of up to $100 billion in GSE direct obligations will be conducted as auctions among Federal Reserve primary dealers. Purchases of up to $500 billion in MBS will be conducted by asset managers.

B. 16 December 2008

The focus of the Committee's policy going forward will be to support the functioning of financial markets and stimulate the economy through open market operations and other measures that sustain the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet at a high level. As previously announced, over the next few quarters the Federal Reserve will purchase large quantities of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities to provide support to the mortgage and housing markets, and it stands ready to expand its purchases of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities as conditions warrant. The Committee is also evaluating the potential benefits of purchasing longer-term Treasury securities.

C. 28 January 2009

The Federal Reserve continues to purchase large quantities of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities to provide support to the mortgage and housing markets, and it stands ready to expand the quantity of such purchases and the duration of the purchase program as conditions warrant. The Committee also is prepared to purchase longer-term Treasury securities if evolving circumstances indicate that such transactions would be particularly effective in improving conditions in private credit markets.

D. 13 February 2009

U.S. Congress approves President Barack Obama's "Stimulus Package". The measure will inject an estimated $787 billion (the CBO estimates that $821 billion was actually spent) into the U.S. economy through a variety of tax credits, transfers to support state government programs and "shovel ready" infrastructure projects. The measure is signed into law on 17 February 2009.

E. 9 March 2009

The stock market bottoms. After this point, stock prices begin rising as the rate at which business conditions are worsening begins to decelerate.

F. 18 March 2009

The FOMC votes to maintain the target range for the effective federal funds at 0 to 0.25 percent. In addition, the FOMC decides to increase the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet by purchasing up to an additional $750 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities, bringing its total purchases of these securities to up to $1.25 trillion this year, and to increase its purchases of agency debt this year by up to $100 billion to a total of up to $200 billion. The FOMC also decides to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months to help improve conditions in private credit markets. Finally, the FOMC announces that it anticipates expanding the range of eligible collateral for the TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility).

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York releases more information on the Federal Reserve's plan to purchase Treasury securities. The Desk will concentrate its purchases in nominal maturities ranging from 2 to 10 years. The purchases will be conducted with the Federal Reserve's primary dealers through a series of competitive auctions and will occur two to three times a week. The Desk plans to hold the first purchase operation late next week.

G. 16 March 2010

The FOMC announces that "The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve has been purchasing $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt; those purchases are nearing completion, and the remaining transactions will be executed by the end of this month. The Committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and will employ its policy tools as necessary to promote economic recovery and price stability.

"In light of improved functioning of financia markets, the Federal Reserve has been closing the special liquidity facilities that it created to support markets during the crisis. The only remaining such program, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, is scheduled to close on June 30 for loans backed by new-issue commercial mortgage-backed securities and on March 31 for loans backed by all other types of collateral."

H. 31 March 2010

QE1 ends.

At first, investors appeared to have shared the Fed's assessment that it had successfully combatted the deflationary forces that had appeared set to overrun the U.S. economy, as stock prices continued to rise for nearly a month after the end of QE1. But over the next several months, expectations for deflationary conditions in the U.S. re-established themselves, sending stock prices approximately 10-15% lower. The Fed responded to the resurgence of deflationary expectations by launching a new round of quantitative easing, now known as QE2.

I. 10 August 2010: The FOMC agrees to keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their curreent level by reinvesting principal payments from agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in longer-term Treasury securities. The Committee will continue to roll over the Federal Reserve’s holdings of Treasury securities as they mature.
J. 27 August 2010: Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke states that "The committee is prepared to provide additional monetary accommodation through unconventional measures if it proves necessary, especially if the outlook were to deteriorate significantly", and that he believes "that additional purchases of longer-term securities, should the FOMC choose to undertake them, would be effective in further easing financial conditions."

The Fed's first announcement was aimed at reassuring investors that the Fed wouldn't seek to immediately unload the securities it had bought up in its first round of quantitative easing, which could negatively impact markets in that a sudden increase in the supply of these securities being unloaded would push their prices downward.

But that wasn't enough to assure investors, which eventually led Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to firmly commit to a new round of quantitative easing.

Here, it appears that the announcement that the Fed would indeed initiate a new round of quantitative easing had a strong effect upon stock prices, leading them higher well before the program actually went into effect. The lack of a similar effect when the Fed first announced it would initiate QE1 might be attributable to the unfamiliarity of investors at the time with what the Fed might be able to achieve with such a program, which had never previously been attempted in the United States. The Fed's apparent "success" with its previous round of quantitative easing gave it credibility among investors ahead of the second round, who responded positively.

Resuming the timeline:

K. 3 November 2010: The FOMC announces its decision to expand its holdings of securities in order to promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate. The Committee will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings and to purchase a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month.
L. 22 June 2011: The FOMC announces that "The Committee continues to anticipate that economic conditions--including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run--are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period. The Committee will complete its purchases of $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of this month and will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings. The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings and is prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate.
M. 30 June 2011: QE2 ends, with no immediate plans for a third round of quantitative easing.

Since QE2 ended, stock prices have been fairly volatile, with the S&P 500 ranging from a high of 1353.22 on 7 July 2011 to a low of 1099.23 on 3 October 2011. At present, they're approximately 10% below where they were shortly after the end of QE2, as the S&P 500 closed at 1192.55 on 28 November 2011.

The Fed's "turning on" and "turning off" of its quantitative easing programs gives us the ability to measure how much they've affected stock prices in the United States. Judging by how much stock prices have changed from the "on" to "off" conditions, we estimate that the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing programs, which have affected investors' expectations of future inflation, contributed approximately 10-15% to the value of stock prices when "on".

One interesting observation we have is that it appears that investors "buy into" the Fed's initial assessment that there's no additional need for its quantitative easing programs for up to about a month afterward. And then, they adjust their perceptions to reflect changing conditions.

It would be interesting to observe the stock trades of Federal Reserve officials to see if they have the same kind of investing "luck" as the members of the U.S. Congress or their staffs.

From Brazil, With Love

2011-11-29T03:29:00.000-08:00

How dependent has the United States government under President Barack Obama become upon borrowing money from foreign sources to support its spending?

Would you believe the answer is: "enough to exclude a long-time U.S. manufacturer from consideration for a defense contract in favor of a foreign-based manufacturer, despite the U.S. manufacturer having invested considerable time and profits earned from their other products to develop a product that specifically satisfies the government's needs?"

AINonline's Chris Pocock reports:

The U.S. Air Force has apparently chosen the Embraer Super Tucano to meet the Light Air Support (LAS) requirement. Hawker Beechcraft's AT-6 was the other contender. No official announcement has yet been made, but Hawker Beechcraft said it received a letter from the USAF that excluded the AT-6 from the hotly contested competition. The company is protesting the decision to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The LAS competition was designed to produce an alternative to jet combat aircraft for counter-insurgency operations. The Air Force planned to buy 15 aircraft for a training school at Eglin AFB, Fla., but had not confirmed plans to equip any of its own squadrons.

However, the U.S. was expected to supply or sell LAS aircraft to various countries, starting with 20 for Afghanistan. It was this potential that led Hawker Beechcraft and partners to spend “more than $100 million to meet the Air Force's specific requirements,” the company said.

Last month, Hawker Beechcraft completed weapons drop tests with the AT-6, a modification of the successful T-6 primary trainer on which all U.S. military pilots graduate.

Meanwhile, Embraer teamed with Sierra Nevada Corp to offer the EMB-314 Super Tucano, and said it would assemble the aircraft in a new facility at Jacksonville, Fla.

Manufacturing.net carries the Associated Press' article, which describes the size of the contract, as well as the Hawker Beechcraft's investment in its AT-6 program (emphasis ours):

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- The Air Force has notified Hawker Beechcraft Corp. that its Beechcraft AT-6 has been excluded from competition to build a light attack aircraft, a contract worth nearly $1 billion, the company said.

The company had hoped to its AT-6, an armed version of its T-6 trainer, would be chosen for the Light AirSupport Counter Insurgency aircraft for the Afghanistan National Army Corps. The chosen aircraft also would be used as a light attack armed reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.

The piston planes are designed for counterinsurgency, close air support, armed overwatch and homeland security, The Wichita Eagle reported (http://bit.ly/ud7FDM).

Hawker Beechcraft officials said in a news release that they were "confounded and troubled" by the Air Force's decision. The company said it is asking the Air Force for an explanation and will explore all options.

Hawker Beechcraft said it had been working with the Air Force for two years and had invested more than $100 million to meet the Air Force's requirements for the plane. It noted that the Beechcraft AT-6 had been found capable of meeting the requirements in a demonstration program led by the Air National Guard.

It's all the more remarkable because the U.S. company has been laying off its workers given the current economic climate.

By contrast, Hawker Beechcraft's competition for the defense contract, Brazil's Embraer, is under investigation by the SEC into possible corrupt practices. The Wall Street Journal's Paulo Winterstein reports:

Brazil's Embraer SA, the world's No. 4 aircraft maker, said Friday that an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into possible corrupt practices shouldn't hurt the company's chances of selling planes to the U.S. military.

The company said Thursday that it was subpoenaed by the SEC, but Chief Executive Frederico Curado said Friday the investigation in itself shouldn't affect its ongoing bid to sell Super Tucano aircraft to the U.S. Air Force. Mr. Curado said he expects the government to announce a decision within "weeks" on a contract reportedly valued at $1.5 billion.

"This is a new process for us but as far as we understand it, the investigation won't have an impact," he said in a conference call with journalists. "Restrictions in dealings with the U.S. government would come only after a conviction."

Embraer said that the SEC and U.S. Justice Department are investigating possible breaches of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits company officials from making payments to government officers to get or keep business. The company declined to give details beyond saying that the investigation is related to Embraer business dealings in three countries.

So how does the United States' federal government's need to borrow large amounts of money from foreign sources perhaps come into play in stacking the deck against of a mid-size U.S. manufacturer against the fourth-largest maker of aircraft in the world for a U.S. defense contract?

As the fifth largest major foreign holder of U.S. debt, one whose share of that debt has been growing consistently for several years, the Obama administration may well have made a strategic decision to favor Brazil's Embraer company as a reward for Brazil's growing ranking among all foreign holders of U.S. government-issued debt.

With a good portion of Embraer's Super Tucano aircraft being manufactured outside the United States, the move will increase the U.S.' trade deficit in goods and services with Brazil, which in turn, will be balanced by the U.S. government's "export" of U.S. Treasury securities to Brazil.

The move is strategic because developing Brazil as a major holder of U.S. government-issued debt would offset China's outsize influence over the United States given its status as the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities. Since China has previously flexed its muscles with respect to its interests through the markets for U.S. Treasuries, the Obama administration is likely seeking to reduce its potential influence.

That influence is substantial. Through the end of September 2011, the U.S. Treasury reports that China holds $1.15 trillion in U.S. government-issued securities directly, and another $109 billion indirectly through Hong Kong. Meanwhile, a very large portion of the United Kingdom's reported U.S. government debt holdings of $421.6 billion are actually controlled by Chinese interests. The figure currently recorded for the U.K. is largely a consequence of the nation's position as a major international banking center, which will be revised in several months time to reflect actual holdings by nation.

The bottom line is that if a comparatively small U.S. manufacturer of airplanes with a major investment in its future to develop an aircraft that can do what the U.S. government wants and can demonstrate that's the case needs to be pushed aside in favor of a foreign manufacturer with considerable ethical issues regarding its business practices, and if doing so will help it borrow more money to spend, then that's what the Obama administration will do.

Lackluster GDP in 2011-Q3, More in 2011-Q4

2011-11-28T03:48:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has revised its initial estimate of GDP in the third quarter of GDP downward. We've adjusted our GDP forecast for the fourth quarter of 2011 accordingly.

Using our preferred Modified Limo method for forecasting GDP, we anticipate that U.S. GDP for the fourth quarter of 2011 has roughly a 68% probability of being between $13,252.9 billion and $13,533.7 billion in terms of constant 2005 U.S. dollars. It has a 99.7% probability of falling between $12,972.5 billion and $13,814.5 billion. The midpoint for our forecast range for GDP in 2011-Q4 using the data available to us now is $13,393.3 billion, in terms of constant 2005 U.S. dollars.

Looking at where U.S. GDP for the third quarter of 2011 has now been adjusted, we note that the midpoint of our forecast range for this quarter is now within 0.28% of where the BEA has revised its GDP estimate.

There will be one more scheduled revision of GDP data for this quarter. We will update our forecast for 2011-Q4 GDP accordingly when this third estimate is released.

Looking backward, our GDP temperature gauges show how the United States' economy has performed over the past three to four quarters with respect to its historical performance since 1980.

In these charts, the temperature spectrum runs from the "cold" purple range, indicating recessionary conditions, through the "cool" blue range, the "comfortable" green range, which indicates solid economic growth, and on through the more "heated" yellow range on up to the "overheated" red range, which are self-explanatory.

Of these two charts, the Two-Quarter GDP Temperature Gauge provides the better indication of how the U.S. economy has performed over time. We present the One-Quarter GDP Temperature Gauge since its data corresponds to the annualized GDP growth rates reported for each quarter in the media.

Here, the Two-Quarter GDP Temperature Gauge, which covers the two-quarter long intervals of 2010-Q3 through 2011-Q1 (two periods ago), 2010-Q4 through 2011-Q2 (one period ago) and 2011-Q1 through 2011-Q3 (the most recent period) reveals that the U.S. economy over the past year has ranged from recessionary levels, as indicated by the very "cold" purple color to near-recessionary levels, as indicated by the "cool" blue color, which are characterized by lackluster economic growth.

Since the U.S. economy's performance is largely driven by inertia, we anticipate that this lackluster performance will continue well into 2012.

Make All Mankind Your Tribe

2011-11-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

My joy and pride in observing the rise of the Occupy-99% movement continues to bring a smile to my face. For this unexpected ray of hope in a time of such darkness and despair I do give heartfelt thanks! It has been sometime since I commented on anything distinctly Pagan, as I have been preoccupied with the cruel, brain-dead forces dominating our political life in recent months, but today I want to again speak of things Pagan and attempt to suggest some links to the Occupy movement.

Something I have observed and reflected on with growing concern for many years is a tendency in certain forms of modern-day Paganism to not merely value and seek to revive and revision religious traditions of the pre-Christian past, but to also idealize the social forms and norms of those past times. I am very comfortable with the religious motivation, but quite uncomfortable with the social agenda. Specifically, there is the idea, detectable in some forms of Asatru-Heathenry but also elsewhere, that the best thing for Pagans today is to return, to whatever degree possible, to the kind of tribal society of the medieval past or earlier. This society is romanticized as more heroic and more honorable than that of today, but is also valued, implicitly if not explicitly, for its more narrowly circumscribed ethnic horizons: "the good old days when we could be with people of our own kind." This often ties in with a sense of ethnic or ethno-national identity: "the religion (and society) of the Germans, the Swedes, the Russians, the _____ "(fill in the blank with ethnic or national group identity of your choice.)

What concerns me about this retro-tribalism is how well it lends itself to racial and ethnic exclusiveness, and ultimately, racial animosity. I know a good number of Astruar and other Pagans who do not see themselves as racist, who bear no particular grudge against people of other racial or ethnic backgrounds, who may be kind and warm with people of such backgrounds, but who fail, in my view, to grasp that despite their own good hearts and good intentions, their concern with ethnic identity and the tribal life of times past has a dangerous potential to function as a building block for the most hateful forms of racism, including such ugly developments as Nazism and neo-Nazism.

I have had repeated arguments with people from Asatru and other groups about this, and this posting will undoubtedly generate a few more, but I stand my ground. Anyone who reads late nineteenth century or early twentieth century texts like Vilhelm Gronbech's "Culture of the Teutons" which recount, and often romanticize, the myths and folklore of the Northmen/the Germans/the Scandinavians should be aware that certain lines of ethno-nationalistic thinking contained in such texts ultimately fed into Nazi beliefs about the master race and Nordic superiority. The extreme hatred for Jews, Roma, Slavs and others that fueled the Nazi death machine was predicated upon a sense that people of Germanic descent were fundamentally different from these others, fundamentally superior, and fundamentally in need of "lebensraum" or living space that would be cleansed of these unwanted others.

I have studied Old Norse. I have enjoyed and been inspired by the closest thing to sacred texts for Norse-Germanic Pagan traditions, the Eddas and the Sagas of Iceland. I have spent substantial time in Iceland, in fact, as well as other parts of Northern Europe, all of which are very dear to me. I have no problem with anyone wanting to rework the old religious traditions alluded to in those texts. I have made my own experiments in this area. Thus far I am on the same page as many other enthusiasts for recreating Germanic Paganism.

So what is my problem? It is my acute awareness that in today's multicultural, postcolonial, post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima society, our heritage can never just be that of some chosen or assumed mono-ethnic identity from the distant past. As much as we may love having ancestors from this or that part of Europe or any other region of the world, our heritage did not stop developing in the year 1200 or whatever convenient cut-off point one may want to use to distinguish the imagined world of his/her Pagan ancestors from the world we live in today. Our heritage as modern people also includes slavery, colonialism, genocide, mass hatred, mass killing, mass ecological destruction, and a mixing of peoples, traditions, races, identities that would have been unimaginable 800 or 1000 years ago. To idealize that past society, to yearn to again be in an ethnically defined, ethnically exclusionary tribe, is at best a kind of escapism from modern social complexity, at worst an implicit, even if unacknowledged and unintentional endorsement of the same kind of ethnic and racial separatism that drove the Nazis.

My problem is I don't want to be a Nazi, nor a neo-Nazi, nor a supporter of nor a participant in anything remotely related or conducive to such hateful ideologies. As a child of the 20th century now living in the 21st, I see it as my heritage and responsibility to seek a positive way forward in the ethnically mixed, socially diverse, globalized world I live in. Retreating into an imagined past of ethnic purity that ignores the current day strikes me as silly at best, repulsive at worst.

Do I deserve then to call myself a Pagan or participate in Paganism? I have pretty much parted ways with American Asatru, because I encountered great hostility and experienced precious little satisfaction in attempting to discuss the above issues. I still struggle with how to take inspiration from religious traditions of the past without falling into the potential racism of retro-tribal agendas. I believe the only solution is through dialogue with a wide variety of religious traditions, in keeping with the ethnically and religiously pluralistic character of our world today. We may prefer the gods, the poems, the folklore of this or that tradition from this or that part of the world, but let us never forget that the world has opened and mixed many times since those traditions were first developed. Let us celebrate whatever god or gods or goddesses we find most meaningful, but also strive to see the meaning others find in theirs. Perhaps in time we can develop shared ritual forms that celebrate more than one tradition, that reach across the ghostly barriers of tribal, ethnic and national identity and animosity to embrace common humanity. I do believe that this is what the highest spirituality of any and all traditions, Pagan or not, calls us to.

I am inspired on this account by the Occupy Wall Street movement, with its coming together of many people from different backgrounds to seek the common good. Perhaps in time the day will come to occupy Paganism with a similar spirit.

Modern-day Paganism or Neo-Paganism means working with traditions remaining from the past. It should not mean being limited by them. A realization of common humanity is something from contemporary human experience, something nicely highlighted by the Occupy protests and encampments, that should be factored into that reworking. I say, make all humanity your tribe, and celebrate the day you did this!

Thanksgiving 2011: What to Do with the Leftovers?

2011-11-25T03:29:00.000-08:00

It's the age old American dilemma of what to do with the remains of the bird following the Thanksgiving holiday, while not doing any more to continue sending your Body Mass Index in the wrong direction. This year, we're featuring Cooking Light's recipe suggestions for what to do with all that's left behind!

Turkey burnout is insidious. One minute your bird is beautiful and fragrant, floating majestically to the table, its crisp skin glistening. You could eat every last bite all by yourself. But in a twinkling―or, to be exact, after a couple of servings―the feast loses its luster. By the time the candles have been snuffed, the good china put away, and the wine glasses washed, what's left of your 20-pounder looks like just one more responsibility. Worse, the week ahead looms with the dreary prospects of turkey hash, turkey supreme, and turkey a la king. For a moment, you consider getting a really big dog.

Not to sound unsympathetic, but snap out of it! Strip that bird straightaway with a sharp knife, and quickly refrigerate the white and dark meat in separate airtight containers (for up to five days or freeze for up to two months). Don't labor over the bones and fatty "parson's nose," telling yourself you'll boil them down into soup stock―you know you won't be in the mood for that anytime soon. Toss 'em, and be done with it. Feel better? You should. You've cleared the slate for a fresh approach to this versatile, forgiving meat and stocked a ready-to-use supply.

These recipes give your leftovers a new life, without ever resorting to a turkey-noodle surprise.

Cooking Light's recipe suggestions include:

Curried Turkey Soup

Chutney-Turkey Salad on Focaccia

The Classic Hot Brown

Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Creamy Triple-Mushroom Bisque with Turkey

Fiery Turkey-Pâté Crostini

Devil in Your Pocket

White Turkey Chili

Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T03:47:00.000-08:00

We couldn't resist sharing the following image, stolen from here, which brings our love of food, math and Thanksgiving all together:

Have a Happy Turkey Day!

Staying Connected With the News Headlines

2011-11-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

There are some businesses where you simply can not do without the latest news updates. Although the news headlines keep you abreast of the latest development in and out of the country whenever you wish to know about the same, there are some businesses, such as the trading in financial instruments and commodities, in which being early in catching the latest updates provides the competitive edge. For this reason, you would like to remain in constant touch with these updates wherever you are.

The politicos would like to know through the political news what is being done on the front of domestic and world politics, the businesses would be evaluating what all factors are likely to impinge on their business in what all ways by constantly monitoring the business news and similarly, the people would watch, hear or read these news updates for the same of gaining the knowledge or to use these actively in one way or the other.

With a range of media options to deliver the news, it is now possible to remain in touch with the news items on real time basis. Two of the most significant ways of achieving it are by making use of the cellular phones and the computers with internet connectivity. Mobiles provide an avenue where the information can be transmitted seamlessly either by way of short messaging services (SMS) or by logging in to the internet facility provided in the mobiles. Mobiles ensure that you get the information right into your hands. By registering with some mobile news services providers (you can find a lot of them on the internet), you can continue to receive the SMS for news on a particular area of interest even if you are connected to the internet on your mobile.

Another way of receiving the news updates is by making uses of the internet based services on your computers. You might want to remain logged in to some website which is delivering the news. Or, if you are busy on some other work but need to keep an eye on the news headlines, then remaining logged in to some news site all the time may not be feasible. There are also chances that you might keep flipping between the websites for different news items wasting much of your productive time. Making use of the RSS feeds is one of the ways in which you can aggregate all the news headlines that you want from different sources at one single place. Subscribing to the email newsletters is another popular way of getting not only the headlines but also the full news stories into your email inbox every day.

Different media have their own peculiarities of delivering news. Some might be providing the news on real-time basis (RSS streaming) while some others on daily basis (newsletters). Some will provide only news headlines (SMS), some others provide headlines with links so that you can users click on links to read the full stories (RSS) and some would be providing the full stories (newsletters). All these facilities provide a lot of flexibility to users for staying connected to news.

The Latest Insanity From The American Political Class

2011-11-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

The antics, insanity, and waste that continues to emanate from the American political class seems to keep coming to us on an almost daily basis. You eventually start to wonder how any level of government can function in this country, given how poorly it is run by our politicians. It also makes you wonder how much our taxes could be lowered, our lives made better, and our future improved if only we could only get people into office who had just a little bit of common sense.

Let's start with our best source of political class insanity, the latest monthly issue of Reason magazine:

- The insanity that comes out of the California state legislature never ceases to amaze. Remember, California is a state in financial crisis - revenue shortfalls, high levels of debt, extreme cutbacks in all state government programs, and high unemployment would you lead you to hope that the political class in the state would focus on some the critical programs that affect just about every state resident.

However, that hope would be dashed. State Senator Kevin Leon recently introduced legislation that would require every hotel in the state of California to use fitted sheets in their hotel rooms rather than regular sheets that get tucked under the mattress by the maids of California. His intent of the legislation was to make life easier and safer for the maids since he felt the maids would not have to lift as many mattresses when the make up the hotel rooms.

This could add up to $50 million in expenses to hotel budgets every year, increased costs that would be passed onto hotel visitors.

However, according to Reason, there is no scientific proof that fitted sheets are safer than non-fitted sheets. Think about that last sentence: can you imagine we can even write about something like this as the country and California are in such dire economic straits? How many Californians do we think this proposed, fitted sheet legislation will affect vs. how many Californians are affected by high unemployment, school budget cutbacks, high taxes. etc.?

Talk about bad priorities. Or is it possibly the fact that the state senator does not know how to fix the real problems and wastes time, resources, and energy working on an issue that probably does not make the top 100 list of issues faced by Californians.

- Let's leave California and move east to Pennsylvania. The state of Pennsylvania rolled out a program in 2010 that put wine vending machines in Pennsylvania supermarkets. That is correct - let's get a bottle of wine for dinner...from the local wine vending machine. The state of Pennsylvania viewed this program as a consumer-friendly alternative to the network of state-operated liquor stores.

The problem with this program is that apparently no one asked consumers whether this was a good idea. Not only did the vending machines have recurring mechanical problems, but the process of accessing the vending machine contents was extremely cumbersome.

In order to use the vending machine, a resident has to present a valid id in front of an online camera that is reviewed remotely by an actual state employee, has to breathe into a blood alcohol meter, and swipe a valid credit care before the machine will spit out a bottle of wine.

The state political class obviously did not recognize these problems ahead of rolling out the program since within a year or so, the program had already cost Pennsylvania state taxpayers over one million dollars. Not only is the program severely cash negative already, the program never attained its original objective of having 100 vending machines up and running by now. Only 32 every got installed, which may be a good thing.

If 32 machines resulted in a negative financial results of losing one million dollars, if they had actually been efficient and installed three times as many to hit their objective, the Pennsylvania taxpayers might be out three million dollars after one year. The state expected each machine to disperse 35 bottles of wine a day, a level that was never attained in a consistent basis.

The Reason article reports that Wegman's supermarkets has already shut down ten of the 32 machines and Walmart has decided to cancel plans to install 23 machines in their stores. Great program, it did not meet its financial objectives, it did not meet its penetration levels as far as getting machines installed, and the installed machines never made their daily quota objective. Strike one, strike two, strike three. Insanity, and millions of dollars wasted.

- Congressman Jeb Hensarling was quoted in the August 17, 2911 edition of the New York Times: "This committee (the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) has very serious work to do, but it should not be confused with Captain America or any other superhero."

Let's be very clear, did any American citizen ever confuse any politician or any U.S. political institution with a super hero? I would settle for a Congressman or Congresswoman who just applied a little dedication, a little focus, some unselfish, and some compassion to their job, a super hero is a little too much to expect, given our politcians' track records.

- The city government of Chicago has gotten so unwieldy and inefficient, that anyone who wants to open a business has to go through an extremely complex and bewildering licensing process. It has gotten so bad, that you can now get a city license to help other people get a city license.

Yes, things are so complicated in Chicago that people are now available, called expediters, to help other people get through the maze of bureaucracy. Rather than fix the root cause of the problem, city licensing procedures are too complicated and complex, better to add another layer of complexity by allowing for another level of licensing to address the confusing level of licensing. Only a politician could make a bad situation worse.

But Reason magazine is not the only source of political class insanity:

- The November 11, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, discussed the pros and cons of getting rid of the one dollar bill and replacing int with a one dollar coin. The article quotes a source that estimates the country would save $5.6 billion over the next 30 years if we went to only coins for one dollars since paper dollars wear out ad need to be replaced.

Two things wrong with this situation. First, the Federal government is incurring over a TRILLION dollars in debt every year. And our politicians are now concerned about saving $5.6 billion over 30 thirty years relative to paper dollar bills? This is only.02% of a TRILLION dollars. Sounds like more bad priorities.

Second, according to the article this is not a done deal. The Federal political class is proving again that they cannot agree to do anything worthwhile. Congressional people are divided along industry lines, with some politicians trying to make the change to a dollar coin in support of mining and steelworker interests and other politicians supporting ink and paper interests.

The article concludes if the political class cannot agree on this minor issue, how can we expect them to agree on the major issues of our time including Social Security reform, Medicare reform, national debt resolution, etc.? Very scary stuff.

- An editorial in the July 14, 2011 Washington Post reached the following conclusion: "A balanced budget amendment would deprive policymakers of the flexibility they need to address national security and economic emergencies." By extension, does that mean without a balanced budget amendment, our political class will keep us safe and handle all of our economic problems?

Given the 9-11 attacks, the Fort Hood shootings, 14 million unemployed Americans, an 9% unemployment rate, chronic underemployment, almost $15 TRILLION in national debt, high taxes, and low economic growth, I hate to see how bad things would be if our politicians did not have this flexibility.

- An NPR report from mid-October, as reported by the Heritage Foundation on October 21, 2011, concluded that the Cash For Clunkers program was, as expected, a dismal disaster. According to NPR, a study published in September, 2010 showed that Cash For Clunkers increased car sales 360,000 during the two months that it was active.

However, the NPR report went on to state "in the seven months that followed, sales were down by 360,000 compared to what they would have been without the program." NPR concludes that the program did not incent people to buy a car, it just moved the demand for new cars up into the two months of the program's existence. Of course, we knew that months ago, as reported in this blog.

Let's see what this political class insanity cost the American taxpayer. An average of $4,000 in taxpayer given to each of 360,000 purchasers comes out to just under $1.5 billion wasted for no incremental economic activity. Insanity.

- In October, the state of Kansas launched an anti-obesity program extolling the value of drinking plain water. The taxpayer funded program will include TV commercials, billboards, and posters. The program wants to get Kansas kids to drink less soda and theoretically become less obese.

Couple of problems here. Nowhere in the press release from the state government, and political class of Kansas, is there any sign that this program has been successfully implemented before in any other location. There is also no indication that an inexpensive market research program was done ahead of time that quantified how effective this program might be. It looks like this program was just thrown out to see what might happen, taxpayer dollars be damned.

The second problem is that this is a very tactical program, replace soda usage with water usage. There is no overarching strategic plan in this country or anywhere else regarding obesity, just a bunch of unproven, scattered, non-strategic, and disconnected programs like this one. Without an overall, coherent strategy, taxpayer dollars just get wasted for very little in return.

Wasted dollars with nothing in return, it never ends. The insanity never stops. Every time we hear about this type of insanity and waste, the need for term limits come to the forefront. Reminds one of an old Henny Youngman joke:

Youngman: Doctor, my arm hurts when I hold it up like this.

Doctor: Don't hold your arm up like that.

Politically, this joke would go as follows:

American taxpayer: Doctor, my wallet hurts when I elect these politicians.

Doctor: Don't elect these politicians.

Next November, can take this doctor's advice and stop the insanity?

Latest News Online - Duties Enhance Our Vision

2011-11-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

What if the news is incorrect at the headline and we are unable to see? The obligation of a news correspondent is to be present instantly and straight get to the conclusion of recapturing the incident. News cannot be manufactured but only to be introduce and then to wait on, for the consequences to happen. Latest News Online is getting prepared to publish pure truth with same amount of details and hidden theories. News is best described by them as "an expedition in time with courage to continue on". These qualified also dissemenate that human souls across the planet experience hurt and suffering just like us, it is just that we all cried out load and make ourselves heard. The respective site is trying to established a platform to be the color and clothes of all such daily news. Sports have got the mightiest human soul. speculations have been tamed on sports arena before.

This is one area of human knowledge that has left nothing to be dominated or attain. Sports News Online is making such occasion monitored at every step of the way. faith has no fixed set of timings and probably it does not hold any clock. The obligation of news headlines is ever the more necessary for appropriate functioning of our society or for that matter of fact any society. We take steps, answer fast and then hold somebody else accountable. Human culture is susceptible to curiosity. With all the dignity and respect to all creatures, do we destructed to Political news. Does news overpower us at times? Let these issues circulated before we gather here again and give proper action on it.

News has everything the characteristics of cleaning away the dirt particles and time has come to regain the favor over here by doing what was mainly asked to do so. In recent times, we have been made to view things when there was nothing at all. Look at the case study of just concluded recession session. Economic news always repeating the same topic for hours at times when all of us were already have the knowledge of the happenings. The point was blank and more of higgledy-piggledy in costumes.

News has also got a prediction characteristic connected to it. If not convince, one should try to there the location of any unnatural catastrophe. Even after the days of happening, situation would be alive and aloud. It is always satisfactory to find things with our own eyes. Latest News Online has transpire the habit of being foreseeable and marching ahead in time.

Is Obama The Latest Political Puppet - It Appears To Be Probable

2011-11-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

President Obama obviously seems to have some help in getting elected, and there seems to be a number of groups putting him up on top and helping with the massive money flows needed to get elected. I ask who and what groups. One gentleman, I talked to, who is quite paranoid, but also a brilliant analyst and world politics expert talked with me about this for about two-hours the other day. Here are some his conspiracy suspicions;

Big Commodity Trading Groups in Chicago.
Big Money from the Middle East funneled through groups to his campaign
George Soros funneling money through MoveOn.org
Organized Crime with the help of Union Backers
Investment Banks, Hedge Fund Groups and former CIA folks

Now, I do not know about you, but I am not too into conspiracies, so I am not sure how much of any of these groups is influencing President Obama individually or how much all these groups are conspiring to get him elected so they can push their own interests. It would appear to me that each of these groups is plausibly deniable, but I must say that studying politics myself as a favorite pastime, something is very wrong with this picture. Something is not right.

President Barack Obama is no more qualified to run this country than half of my graduating HS class, most of which did not do drugs or ditch class and later write a book bragging about it. Will the Honorable Senator from Illinois please explain to the American People, where on Earth you got all that money to spend on TV ads, which have shaped the public opinion in your favor?

Inquiring minds want to know, I want to know and I'd like you answer before the next state primary so I can tell my coffee shop buddy and retired professor the whole truth about this shooting star we are about to call President Obama.

Changing the Conversation--At Last!

2011-10-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

For a very long time,I have felt extremely depressed and dispirited by the state of American politics and society. My disillusionment goes back decades, in fact, all the way to the 1980 presidential campaign, when President Carter battled in vain against the rising tide of American conservatism which would deliver Ronald Reagan, with his promises of tax cuts, smaller government, and more "freedom" to the White House. Carter warned that the election of his opponent would result in a tearing apart of American society with an increasing division of rich from poor, black from white, and so forth. Boy, was Carter ever right, and was America ever wrong to follow the siren-song of Reagan's smiling, flag-draped conservatism, with its grim undertones of racism, greed and militarism.

In the three decades since President Raygun took office, the conservative vision of America has dominated our political life and determined some very important social trends. Accomplishments of this era including an ever-increasing prison population, with a disproportionately high number of African-American males incarcerated, with devastating social consequences for African-American communities; an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, which has now become better and more widely understood thanks to the "Occupy" movement; stagnation in wages for most Americans who live through paychecks rather than stock portfolios and investment dividends; an ever-expanding and ever-more expensive military domination of the world, from Reagan's Star Wars fantasies to Bush's invasions to Obama's love affair with remote control political assassination by drone; and a triumph of anti-tax, anti-government, anti-regulation, tax-cutting-solves-everything rhetoric, typified by Grover Norquist's "No New Taxes Ever For All Eternity" pledge, now followed religiously by nearly all Republican Presidential candidates, the intention of which Norquist explained as "shrinking the federal government so that it can be strangled in a bathtub," with the result that apart from blank-check military spending, our government is constrained from engaging in any kind of large government programs that might actually improves the lives of average people, from infrastructure repair to mass transit development to more support for public schools to lower cost higher education to the development of green technologies. This is Reagan's "Morning in America," and it has had a good long run of 30 plus years in ruling the mindset of the vast majority of Americans and setting the parameters of American public life...UNTIL NOW.

Occupy Wall Street has blown this tired old set of ideas and assumptions out of the water, and opened up a whole new menu of questions and possibilities for Americans to ponder. FINALLY people are realizing that government is not to blame for stagnant wages, a crashed economy, and immense suffering grounded in extreme social and economic inequality: it is the financial and corporate elite who are most responsible, as they are the ones who have been reaping great benefits while raping the rest of us. They are the ones who have made great profits with every increase in oil prices, every rise in penalties and fees on credit cards and bank accounts, every ingeniously misrepresented mortgage, every foreclosure on the poor, every lay off of workers, every pay cut to employees, every movement of factories to China and other low-wage, low-regulation havens, every reprehensible trick in the book to evade taxes, deceive investors and reward their tight little incestuous circle of crony capitalists. We have all been told this was the only way it can be, that we must simply accept and obey that we are all doomed to sinking wages, rising debt,disappearing pensions and diminishing futures...but now there is an alternative.

Let the great struggle begin! Now is the time to make a new economy and a new society that serves human needs over corporate profits! OCCUPY wherever you are!

I have been waiting thirty years for this, through the initially promising but ultimately disappointing presidencies of Bill "The Triangulator" Clinton and Barrack "The Compromiser" Obama. I really hope that this time, some change is actually going to happen.

Keep the pressure on and the questions and conversations going!

The Strangeness of the American Political Election

2011-10-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

Globalised Economic World and Regionalised Political Orders Must Harmonise

2011-10-12T23:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, called for a "new global order" to deal with the economic crisis and warned against the protectionist policies that were put in place in the 1930s.

Tackling issues on the global economy, the prime minister said that a "radical step-up in global cooperation" was necessary to prevent the emergence of "financial mercantilism".

On the same day, Timothy F Geithner asserted that "China manipulates its currency". This was indeed unhelpful, to say the least, as Sino-American detente and cooperation is the essence of Brown's statements on creating a new global order.

Just prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, Henry Kissinger wrote the most erudite piece, "The world must forge a new order or retreat to chaos".

In it he analysed the "grave financial and international crises", saying that the financial collapse represents a "major blow to the standing of the United States in the eyes of the world", and that "every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse".

Because of the economic exuberance, he said, a "gap had opened up between the economic and the political organisation of the world." What he meant by this, and this is by far the most pertinent idea in the article, is that while the economic world has been globalised, the political order has not and that "every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point."

Both America and the UK are in a woeful economic state, with one The Daily Mail editorial pointing out that if the second tranche of the bank bailouts fails to stimulate the economy, the country itself will be bankrupt. One could argue it has been since the Second World War but if Gordon Brown's so-called saving the world policies fail at home, which the financial press largely think it might, it would send an almost doomsday-like message to the world and its markets.

Rescue packages have been set up on a piecemeal, national basis and, for most countries, with unlimited credit guarantees by governments. So far, none of these tactics seem to have reined in the maelstrom from rescuing more industries from bankruptcy.

In part, it was run-away domestic credit that produced the crash in the first place and these measures have not been able to stem the panic since. According to Kissinger, "international order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves," and also that "in the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonised in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units. A new Bretton Woods kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome."

This underlying threat is perhaps what sparked the euphoria surrounding President Obama's inauguration and the unrealistic and unprecedented expectations put on his new administration. And while that was going on the actors on the world's political stage were "avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States".

And in all this we cannot forget China, which has witnessed its export markets being mauled, with worries that should its growth rate fall below the 7.5% range, political stability in the country could become a real problem. It thus begs the question of how China and America deal with the crisis.

On the one hand Kissinger is asking that the globalised economic order and the silo-based political order to come tangentially into line. But how can the two systems, wholly different in both architecture and culture, be fused into a union that is able to deal with this depression? And what if protectionism grows in either country and becomes adversarial in nature? That would have long-lasting and devastating long-term consequences on every country the world over.

Kissinger argues that "the Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level", to reshape relations "into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the postwar period".

But can his vision of an international order be permanent? Can it work? Obama's inaugural address sought to build bridges in a vision of hope, but with all the conflicts that are currently dogging the world, will the depression be the healer of these divisions or will it explode into a disastrous new world disorder and war?

Maps of the World - Top 7 Changes in the Last Decade to World Political Geography

2011-10-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

Geographic and Political Changes in Maps of the World

Educational for children and inspiring their imagination, maps of the world really are interactive. Having one on the wall means you can quickly look at places you hear about in the news. Where are they exactly and who are their neighbouring countries.

With their bright colours and clear, easy to read designs, maps of the world look great on any walls. Did you know however, how many changes take place every day? Maps are being continuously changing and evolving to reflect our ever-changing world.

There are various changes maps of the world need to show to be fully accurate. These include country borders changes, place name changes, capital city changes and the emergence of new states. Some high quality maps of the world also contain country flags which also need to be updated.

Mapping out changes in the world
In the last ten years there has been a large variety of changes affecting maps of the world. The image below shows some of the changes that have occurred within the last ten years...

The top 7 changes on maps of the world in the last 10 years:

Map of the world Update 1: Kosovo
2008 - Kosovo declares independence with only partial recognition

Map of the world Update 2: Serbia and Montenegro
2006 - Dissolution of the state union of Serbia and Montenegro into two separate states Serbia and Montenegro

Map of the world Update 3: India
2001 - The city of Calcutta is renamed Kolkata

Map of the world Update 4: Country Flags
Various country flags updated or added including Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Venezuela and Saint Lucia

Map of the world Update 5: Myanmar
2005 -The capital of Myanmar is moved from Yangon (Rangoon) to Naypyidaw

Map of the world Update 6: East Timor

2002 - Independence of East Timor (Timor-Leste) from Indonesia

Map of the world Update 7: Palau
2006 - The capital of Palau is moved from Koror to Melekeok

Maps International sell a huge range of maps of the world in a range of sizes and styles. Maps international have physical maps of world, political maps of the world and even a map of the world with a panel of flags.

Local Politics, News Coverage, and Capitalism - Politics That Sell

2011-10-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

On September 14, 2010, the State of Tennessee held a debate in Cookeville between the two candidates for Governor, Bill Haslam and Mike McWherter.

I wonder which appalls me more, the actual debate or its news coverage?

Let's start with the political debate. We have reduced political debate to 5-10 categories around which politicians usually dance and parade or from which they divert to jab their opponents' political integrity.

Haslam and McWherter dribbled about the same tired topics: education, religion, and health care.

Fundamentally, the structure of this system endorses the status quo because categories over which politicians fight control and restrict political possibilities. Debating political issues isolates each topic from other realms of political concern and neglects the intricate interrelation of political categories.

For example, we hardly consider publicly that high health care prices encourage abortion. Or we do not consider that broadband encourages Internet users to buy from websites, name from large company websites, and discourages shopping locally. Politicians largely argue their positions in terms of dollar signs and not for the political well-being of the commonwealth.

The two-party system too restricts political possibilities. Each voter may find themselves cradling several different party lines on several different political categories. However, the two-party system forces us to choose either conservative or liberal campaigns, in which our personal political views are lost.

Furthermore, politics takes on the form of the capitalistic markets. Politicians compete in such a way to generate votes, just as companies compete for customers. Politicians capitalize on voters to extend the agendas of their respective parties.

Here the media encroaches as a means to sell newspapers, journals, and the like. Journalists highlight the competing views, particularly the political chattering and insults between candidates, as were exchanged between Haslem and McWherter.

Such a violent representation actually sells more newspapers, in the same way reality television sells "real" interpersonal conflict. By and large, such conflict incites the readers' emotions or own political viewpoints and thus intrigues the public as a mode to sell.

As it turns out, the front pages of newspapers headline political miscues or inappropriate conduct by politicians, along with big pictures. However, the results of a city council meeting grab a mere 100-words spot in the local section, unless the issue is controversial of course.

Therefore, we have transformed politics and political news coverage into commodity. We herald violence, not peace, in order to accumulate voters and paying customers. We have reduced politics to an ontology of capitalism.

5 Things to Look for in Online Conservative Politics News Sources - Choose Wisely!

2011-10-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

In this day and age there is such a flood of information online, that it can be tough to choose which sources to turn to for your daily blast of news updates. This can be particularly challenging in niche arenas, such as conservative political news as an example. We want to know that our attention, the short bit that we all have left after Facebook, Twitter, cleaning out our email inbox, and reading a blog post or two, are worth our time. Here's 5 tips that will help you to evaluate your conservative political online news options so that you make the choice that is best for you.

1) Is it objective? While we own have different political views, some news sources can lean heavily in one direction or another. I'm not talking about Republican or democratic, but rather within a republican news source, are both sides of the equation being presented?

2) Is there interaction? Look to see if there are comments on blog posts and articles, and if it's a forum type atmosphere, are there active conversations going on, an active community if you will.

3) Look at the advertisers on the site. Nearly all online publications make the bulk of their revenue through online advertising partners. Generally speaking, if the companies listed on their site with large banner ads are large, well known brands, you can assume they are charging a hefty fee for the space and therefore have the web traffic to support it, an excellent indicator of popularity and therefore, often quality as well.

4) If they publish their subscriber base, compare it to other similar publications.

5) Try testing a "contact" submission to see if you get a response. Do this to our top three choices and consider subscribing to the news source that gets back to you the quickest, after all, it's important that your choice for information regarding conservative political news is prompt in their customer response time.

Hopefully this is helpful. The barrage of information is truly overwhelming these days, so much so that I highly recommend unsubscribing to those emails that you constantly delete without even looking at. What's the point of keeping them coming in? Once you do that, and choose wisely a few solid sources that you turn to for your information, it will open up more time for more important activities, and in the process make you feel a little lighter.

Opening the Heart to Others

2011-09-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

A student's comment from Friday and a film I viewed on DVD today bring me to reflect on the great joy that comes from opening the heart to appreciate others in the world quite different from ourselves, bringing us to discover hidden kinship with them, and the great tragedy that can result from clinging to preconceptions and prejudices that wall us off from others and leave us isolated, bitter and fearful towards the world and its many unknown others.

In a class discussion about the growing numbers of Americans being locked away year by year in our ever-expanding prison system, a student opined that it was easier for other countries to cope with crime and social problems of the sort that result in mass incarceration in the USA because they did not have the ethnic diversity that was, in his view, a great problem in the USA. I was taken aback because this student, a young white fellow transplanted from Brooklyn to the Lower Upstate area, was one who I had previously judged as one of the most intelligent,animated and inquisitive of the new semester's group. Now I feared that he might also be one of the most racist. He helpfully clarified, "I am not a racist," (Whew! great relief! glad that has been taken care of!) "but I just think it's natural that every group prefers to be with its own kind." I was really knocked off-balance by these sentiments, because I might have expected them from others in the class, Lower Upstate having its share of small-town conservative white folks who have been known to support groups like the KKK, but now this fellow, my would-be (in my imagination) Golden Child!I fumbled for a response and then the discussion moved on.

One reason I had some trouble coming up with a snappy and illuminating reply is that I am aware that some very peaceful, progressive, semi-socialist places like the countries of Scandinavia are indeed fairly (though not completely, and less so as time goes on) homogeneous places, ethnically speaking, and it may well be that the absence of ethnic division does make it easier for people to arrive at and maintain a sense of common welfare and human community. However, ethnic homogeneity is much more the exception than the rule in human history, and tends to be a temporary state that inevitably gives way to mixing, moving and intermarrying of people from different ethnic, cultural and religious origins. Think of ancient Rome's barbarian and African emperors; Byzantine rulers marrying daughters of Khazaria, the medieval Jewish state north of the Caucasus; think of Celtic + Roman + Moorish + Jewish Spain; think of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian and now the American. All mixed and mixing, and as a result, better or worse off?

Therein lies the rub. In many places in our present world and also in many times and places in the past, we can certainly find evidence of social conflict related to or even centered on ethnic divisions. Score one for the racist call for ethnic purity, it would seem. But it must also be noted that it is not self-evident that ethnic variety was the original cause of such conflicts; it might rather be argued that ethnic variety provided convenient scapegoats and political targets for those looking for a way to sow fear, division and hatred in their societies, as opposed to those many who did find it quite possible to interact peaceably and happily with their new, slightly or greatly different neighbors. People of different ethnic looks and origins may at times separate into warring groups, but this is no automatic thing; they may just as well come together and enjoy one another's company and see great advantages in joining forces. Or they may war at first and then mix together later.

Put a bunch of three year olds of different ethnic or cultural origins into the same room, and they are not likely to form into opposing military units and start making speeches about ethnic purity and the joys of dying for the fatherland ("Better than ice cream!" cried one hopeful young ethno-patriot, waving his diaper-banner proudly). However, put a group of fifteen or fifty year olds into a room, and they may well divide along racial and ethnic lines and regard each other with suspicion. Somewhere along the way, happy-go-lucky kids become suspicious and even hostile adults. How do you get that way? It seems to me that they are taught to be so by the previous generation: much more nurture than nature.

What I now wish I had had the presence of mind to answer my student with is something along the lines of, "Ethnic diversity is the reality of the human condition. The great tragedy of our world is that this diversity often becomes the convenient target of political opportunists and a mythological monster for those fearful of cultural and physical difference, often due to lack of experience with any such difference. The great hope of the human future is learning to enjoy and share our differences."

Too pollyanna-ish? Maybe so, but for my part, I truly believe there can be no doubt that the future belongs to diversity. I can see this among my students. For every one of my young scholars who might spout the occasional semi-racist sentiment, and then feel the need to apologize for it, I see many others socializing with members of other ethnic and racial groups and forming friendships and love relationships, with much more ease and much less self-consciousness than among those of my generation two or three decades ago when we were of comparable age and interracial dating was still somewhat taboo. I saw the same on the streets of Stockholm and Oslo when I visited those supposed hotbeds of total homogeneity in recent years: lots of mixed couples, with dusky-skinned, mixed-ethnic babies in baby carriages, and lots of Turkish kebab sandwiches the fast food of choice.

This brings me to my film review. What I watched that I found so moving and delightful was "Nobody Knows About Persian Cats" (2010) from the brilliant Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi. The film seemed boring at first, following two twenty-something rock-pop musicians, a man and a woman, driving around Tehran as they attempt to assemble a band and obtain illegal visas and passports to get out of Iran to perform their music in London and possibly elsewhere in Europe. As the story progressed I became hooked by the plight of these young Iranians, possessed of the same urges and instincts as young people in the USA or anywhere else, being stifled by a socially repressive regime for the horrible crime of wanting to sing and play modern pop music. There are increasingly troubling run-ins with the Iranian police, who do not seem to be big music fans, to say the least, and the story does not have a very happy ending. Lots of interesting music along the way,though, which tugs at the heart strings for the glimpses it gives into the longings and sorrows of Iranian youth today.

I was struck by the different picture of Iran and Iranians that one gets from a film like this compared to the one that we get from fear-mongers like Dick Cheney and his minions in the American news media who have been programming Americans to believe that Iran is Enemy #1 almost nonstop for the last four or five years, giving the impression that the only thing worth knowing about Iran is that it is a nation of Islamic fanatics who might be developing nuclear weapons that might be a threat someday, somehow to the USA, and that we might have to go to war against them to crush their maybe conditional someday threat. After seeing this film, I am sickened to think that this is the image Americans have in their minds about Iran. We may have disagreements with the government, but we should think more of the people. The others of Iran may be much more like us than we have been led to believe. It felt good to open my heart to feel a simple but profound human bond with people of Iran.

Though the politics of our times can be so very discouraging, I am willing to bet on human diversity and our capacity to develop empathy with the others of the world to guide us to a better place. The fear-mongers and war-mongers will always be with us, but we can change the station and listen to other tunes if we want to.

The film is very strongly recommended!

Reasons of Failure of Pakistan's Politics

2011-09-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Democracy in Pakistan has never been successful and even after more than 65 years of independence, political setup in Pakistan has yet to mature and deliver. Unlike other democratic countries of the world, Pakistan's politics is badly under the control of bureaucracy and establishment where parliament sometimes acts like a rubber stamp.

There are many factors leading to this pathetic state of democratic process in Pakistan. Top three reasons of failure of Pakistan's politics are:

1. Lack of Political awareness in public:

Majority of the common people of Pakistan is unaware of the worth of vote and they just throw or sell their vote for some petty benefits or under some pressure of elite powerful lords. In a country where literacy rate is very low and people are trapped in several sectarian, ethnic and religious biases, political mafia plays a clever game to play with the sentiments of the people through hollow slogans and sentimental speeches and manages to get their support easily.

2. Military take-overs:

Democratic process in Pakistan has never been consistent and military has taken over the charge at different occasions by imposing martial laws in the country. This type of take overs severely affected the democratic system in the country. It also brought anarchy and riots in the country which resulted in more messy conditions directly affecting the people of Pakistan.

3. Lack of democratic culture inside political parties:

Most of the political parties of Pakistan have proved themselves as just family parties or one man show with all power concentrated in one family or one individual. Most of the parties don't have party elections and same leadership is being imposed for decades. Lack of democratic culture in the parties has resulted in a widening gap between rulers and masses and consequently, political parties have failed to strengthen their roots at grass root level.

Politics of Pakistan is an interesting, yet complex game of action with a lot of twists. It seems that years are required for politics of Pakistan to mature and deliver. Political setup of Pakistan won't change until the thought process of people of Pakistan is changed and their level of understanding for the political culture is groomed. Private media is working constructively in this regard to bring awareness in the masses and to educate them politically and one may hope for a change of thought process of people of Pakistan with the passage of time.

Is There Political Bias in the Mainstream Media?

2011-09-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

The mainstream media (sometimes referred to as "MSM") has been a target of Republicans for some time now as being somehow biased and unfair toward the GOP and conservative views in general. For their part, Democrats have targeted networks such as Fox as being unbalanced and unfair, even during times when pundits who openly share their political leans are not being featured. The intensity of these feelings about the media seems to be increasing as time passes and as social media outlets play a stronger role in politics.

The problem with these assertions of political media bias for both sides of the political aisle is that they are hard to prove. Republicans and conservative bloggers point out correctly that many mainstream media members do fit demographics more typical of Democratic voters - given the colleges they went to, the attitudes of the professors at those colleges, and the demographics of the states where they live. But then again, it would be unfair to assume that even if more mainstream media members vote for Democrats or hold personal liberal opinions that they would necessarily be biased in their reporting.

On the other hand, while many pundits employed by Fox news may have a conservative or right-wing lean, that does not mean that the regular news broadcasts on the network are equally biased. That also would be unfair, and may merely be the result of a hyper-sensitivity to that possibility by people who are charged up by the opinions of the political pundits on the station.

Several scientific studies have tried to explore whether there is any mainstream media political bias. One study out of UCLA found no evidence of a left-leaning bias in the mainstream media, and in fact found that political media reporting overall leaned to the conservative side. This study simply counted the number of times various media outlets mentioned liberal and conservative advocacy groups and political organizations, but these methods were faulted as not accurately measuring bias. Other studies have tried to measure potential political boas in the media by comparing the types of stories written during election campaigns and putting stories about different candidates and parties in "positive" and "negative" categories to see which party seems to get more of the latter. Still other studies have taken a retrospective view of political media bias by looking historically at whether more positive media reports tend to follow certain leaders, depending on their political lean. There has been no meta-conclusion reached as yet about media bias based on these studies.

The fact that in this age where statistical science is well advanced we have not been able to prove any "liberal bias" in the mainstream media or conservative bias in the non-pundit driven news broadcasts on conservative stations like Fox might suggest that perhaps there is none overall. A recent possibility that has gained steam is that the mainstream media stays so adamantly central and middle-of-the-road politically that those who have views on the far right or left do not feel they are completely covered or heard. That leads to claims of bias because the media reports seem to always disagree with their own off center political opinions and beliefs.

A News Flash From Texas Politics!

2011-09-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

I watched the debates last night. For a good bit. I couldn't take it all in. My heart and mind are a bit "shaky" these days. ( I sooo wanted to spell "Texas" with two "S"s!) Last nights debate was not as much a debate as a "debasement" of Texas Values!

I don't care how you "slice" it, that is; the Governorship, and thus supposedly the leadership; of Texas. The bare facts are all too evident! I'm not kidding your here!

There was a "Demoncrate" on the far "Left" of my TV screen. (Yes folks, I am aware that it is "stage right") This guy never said one thing, in answer to the "vetted" questions. He, basically, wants to ignore the new highway corridor, only giving a "nod" to the fact that it is owned and built by a SPANISH COMPANY. He wants to TAX; and I would suppose; SPEND. Big surprise there, huh?

He would, if elected, TAX "Big Business". But that is a problem, as we still have a REPUBLIC, and not the DEMOCRACY he said we had. You see, in a REPUBLIC, taxing is done by the people. And we are, I hope, far enough along to clue our younger generation into the REALITY, of trying to put a TAX upon "Big Business". For the simple reason that no one can!

That's right! The Government actually got a "NEW TAX" into place. And it looked like it had the MAJORITY of the "Peoples" backing. Problem was, it was passed upon the recommendation of DEMON-CRATES that could not deliver! I ain't kidding you here!

They tried to put a huge TAX on new YACHTS. This did two things. Well, actually, three things, if you back up and look at the "big picture". ONE was that the SUPER RICH just flew to EUROPE, where they bought YACHTS at a very huge discount. I.E. no TAX!

Secondly, the hard working men, perhaps DEMONCRATES all; lost their jobs. To a man! You see; if you don't have buyers, you might as well not have a product! Simple economics. But you just try to tell that to the "FEELGOOD SOCIETY"! They won't listen. Just as they didn't listen before the NEW TAX was placed on the newly built Yachts!

You see; the real problem with the "Feelgood Society" is that they literally want to liberally base all the workings of our great nation upon the principle of CARL MARX! Yes! They want to live in a DEMOCRACY! They hate living in a REPUBLIC. The reason is simple. YOU have rights! That would be done away with, upon any MARXIST national government. They see that as being good, not bad. YOU are then only moving your carcass around sweating for their pleasure!

Actually, you do that now, to a point. As there is no real money, even script based on real money, in this country any longer. Why? Because evidently you cannot be trusted to hold it! You could be "ripped off" by some speculative hard COMMUNIST or REPUBLICAN! I ain't kidding you here.

OK, I went off on a tangent didn't I? Sorry about that. Back to TEXAS! Which ain't a bad thing, let me tell you.

There was a woman candidate on the far right of my TV. She is said to be running as an "Independent" candidate. But did she do so before? Ask yourself that. She was against the "Super-duper-highway", as well as against foreign ownership of the projects maintenance and construction. Good! So far, right?

She evaded all frivolous questions, such as; "Who is the President of Mexico?" You might think that is very important to TEXAS. But not to her. She carefully used her allotted time to DUCK the question. Quoting a lot of stuff about "ain't we great?", while not saying who was President of Mexico. Because she didn't know!

Now, you may think she just blew her chances to get elected as Governor of Texas. But she didn't! You see, Texas Politics is different from all other Politics of all other states in this country! I ain't kidding you here either!

NO ONE IN TEXAS cares one wit who is President of Mexico!

We want to get along with Mexico, but care less, as long as the "People of Mexico" pick the winner. And so long as we live in peace. Which we are not right at the moment! We are being "set upon" by both the Government of Mexico, and our own PRESIDENT's policy of "INCORPORATING EVERY OTHER COUNTRY THAT IS BORDERING OURS! That is a fact my friend! Like that or not. You just try and stop it.

Speaking of "done deals', the "Super-duper-you-can't-even-get-on-the-thing-highway" leading from MEXICO just south of TEXAS, Northward to MEXICO in the center of the U.S.! You see, MEXICO has been given an "INTERNATIONAL HIGHWAY" to bring its goods, unhindered and untaxed, to America, and to Canada! There is another small thing you need to know about this TRATIOROUS ACT!

After they construct and then use, this highway, it becomes, by its very use by non-citizens and corporations, a "WORLD OWNED" property! Yeah.

Just as the back of the NATIONAL PARKS that we bought and paid for and maintain, are all 'INTERNATIONAL WORLD PROPERTY designated as "UN BIOSPHERES". You cannot move, alter, and in the future; use them. The OWNERSHIP and management has passed into the PUBLIC DOMAIN OF THE WORLD! Like that? Probably not, if your a REPUBLICAN or DEMOCRATE. But too bad, because the REAL TERRORISTS in this country have control of our Government! And they are dictating all LAWS and RULES and OWNERSHIP! That is; within this country. Like that now?

The Third person on the "Panel to Abrogate" the Governorship of Texas was the INCUMBENT. If you don't already know that he is a "BUSH CLONE" then you are too stupid to understand what I might have to say about this "One World" "Tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear" Politician. You could jerk him out of his over-padded-shoulder suit, and replace him with George Bush Jr. and no one would hardly know it! Ok, maybe his wife, but no one else.

The only hope we have rests oddly enough on a CRAZY MAN, named "Freaky Friday" or something similar. I am not kidding you here about the name!

He is outstanding in his run for the election! He is smooth verbally. He is "right on the money" in his Political Platform. He is not really crazy, but sane and very OPINIONATED! Of course that trait is why I am drawn to him. But you already figured that out, din't cha?

He has only two drawbacks. One is RELIGIOUS BASED BIAS, which no one can fault him for having, not while this country is "simi-free". Religious bias is not a bad thing, not in my eyes. BUT, having said that, you should know, if you have not heard him speak on the subjects within his PLANK, that he hates the INTERNET! He calls it the "Devils Work"!

And who am I to negate or deny that/ Both his opinion, and his right to that opinion, and also his reason! I mean, don't we still have some liberty left within our own heads? Liberty to choose to see this trait for what it is? And that is all it is. He didn't say he wanted to end the Internet! Nor block funding. Nor, as the REPUBLICANS want to do, give it to the DEMOCRATES! Ok, I'm kidding you here. They want to give control of it to the UN. Who wants it badly, seeing it as a way to control your "hearts and minds." (as in "control their hearts and minds, war psy-ops!) which is a very bad condition to be in. If you are not already bought, or brought into the "SYSTEM" already.

The "FREAKS" other drawback. That will take a bit of communication. And understanding. You see, he loves to dress in the COWBOY manner. That was the think back in the 60's! Cowboy boots, hat, and belt, all matching. In this case, for the camera as much as a "trademark", is basic black. He also has a cigar in his mouth. Unlit. But still a cigar. He was asked if he thought that would have an affect upon any school children that saw him, that is, if elected. That question came from the Organization (one of several, not a bad thing.) that hates him! The corporation "big-shot media-types", especially in DALLAS, hate the "FREAK", because he tells it like it is! And to (H..oops! that's a no-no these days on this site. Good) with the resulting conditions after!

As if any school children would see or hear the Governor of Texas! Not if they can get out of it, they won't! And not if they get the "word" early enough to be "absent without leave" that school day! Nor do they have such small innocent hearts these days, nor taught anything except, "Strangers are Strange! Keep or run away from them!" You see, some children identify with the teacher, more than any man dressed as "Santa Clause"! As such I was labeled by tots as a "Stranger", so they would not sit in my lap! I don't blame them here, do you?
No way are they watching any Politician in order to be influenced into voting, let along smoking! I know most adults are not "plugged in" enough to have even watched the "Non-debate" last night, themselves!

Ok, he is a ..a..a..OK, a Freak! But weren't we all, as seen by our standards today? I would hate to be caught in a pair of Bleeding Madras Walking Shorts, along with this gray hair, today! Ready for that to come back? No? And so then we are not going for the pearl snap buttons and the outlined yoke shirt that matches the pants in color and material, right? Good! At my age, I need to at least not look like the FREAK that I am, that is, through the eyes of my Grandchildren. Who, seeing with the eyes of a child, can see my heart easily enough!

My opinion of the "Non-debate", which was that it was actually killed by and from, the "NEWSMEDIA" types on the questioning panel. And also, the limits placed upon time to answer the questions. The way it worked, the NEWS-LAST-YEAR Media Types, all full of "THEMSELVES", as most are, had longer for the question to be verbalized by them, than the time allotted for the answer from the CANDIDATES! Man, that is informing the "Public" ain't it?

Hey, freak or not, worn out hat and shoes, complete with unlit cigar, Freaky KINKY FRIEDMAN can carry the right tune when it comes to being Governor. He will be, at every "Media Feeding", an embarrassment to our State, in LOOKS. But not in BEING HIS OWN MAN! No one will claim that they own this guy! Think about that!

Do Not Let Politics and the News Get You Down

2011-09-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

Every day we watch the news on television or read a newspaper. Sometimes we leave the radio on so that we have a bit of company and know what is going on in the world. But the tendency for these programmes is to tell us all the bad news and none of the good. Occasionally they might throw in a good news story for good measure, but the most important thing for the media is to attract viewers, readers, listeners, and sad to say, bad news attracts an audience more than good.

So it is easy to begin to feel down whenever we hear that the financial problems of the economy have not gone away, that unemployment is up, that there are spending cuts on the way, and that war is brewing in some far off land. Or perhaps there has been a natural disaster somewhere and people are in trouble, or a murder, or an air crash. Guaranteed at any given moment of the day something awful will be happening somewhere, and the efficiency of our news services today means that we will hear about it almost instantly. But if there is nothing we can do to help, the important thing is not to let it get to us.

Bad news can spoil your day. If you hadn't have turned the telly on at that moment you wouldn't have known about it. But the fact is that the world has always been the same and nothing has changed. There will always be evil, there will always be accidents, and there will always be politicians wondering what to do with the ailing economy. There´s no point worrying about any of it. By all means stay informed, but also try and stay detached. Concentrate on your immediate environment and if you feel safe there you have nothing to worry about.

It is important, especially when you get to a certain age, to keep your peace. By concentrating on all the good things going on around you and ignoring the bad, you will feel much better in yourself and be more optimistic about the future. There is no sense in worrying about things you cannot change. On these occasions, when you feel depressed by circumstances that you have read about or seen on the news, read the Bible or say a prayer. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." As long as we stay true to.

The Current State of Unemployment in the United States

2011-09-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

Many Americans have been unemployed at some point during the course of the last few years. As a result of the recession, those that have not been unemployed, were on the cusp of becoming unemployed. Either way, the average American has been afraid of the mere possibility of becoming unemployed. Well, it is a new year in the day and age of politics in the United States of America. This new year in politics has afforded many opportunities in terms of job opportunities. A great deal of President Barack Obama's Recovery Act funding is now being released to help stimulate the economy. A large sum of the money has been allocated in order to take on a two-fold approach. The politics circuits have reported that in addition to the money being distributed in order to create jobs, the money will also serve the purpose of improving the quality of life that we, and generation to come, will have while living on earth. Additionally, these jobs that are created will also see to it that we gain more of the Independence that the country has fought so hard throughout its time in politics to get. So you will see a great deal of work going into the green movement, as well as the national development and refining of United State's solar, wind, and energy supplies.

1. Politics news reports state the nation's advances has caused the decline of employment to fall. There is so much promise that is shown in this regard that it is quite possible that there is going to be a boost in employment in the coming months. Many have said that they have seen there industries start to gain positive growth already.

2. Politics news stories say that there are also great data in the polls that express that there will be a positive jump in the nation's state of employment. Politics circuits say that many companies are going to largely expand over the course of the coming years.

3. Politics news circles state that this is one of the biggest boosts in the economy in the last few years. They say that there is evidence that shows the upward growth of the nation's employment.

4. Many politics reporters state that although the improvements are not enough to rapidly change the overall state of the nation's economy, many are going to reap the benefits of this growth pattern. Many in politics even say that we are not going to feel the effects of the growth of the nation in the coming years in its entirety, but we are certainly on our way there.

Global Warring vs. Global Warming

2011-08-31T18:56:00.000-07:00

The recent experience of destructive winds and catastrophic flooding brought by Hurricane Irene on her steady march up the Atlantic coast of the United States, which has washed away roads and bridges, crippled highways and rail lines across the region, and destroyed homes and businesses across the region, with New Jersey, New York and Vermont getting the worst of it and looking ahead to months, if not years, of recovery. This kind of massive flooding is exactly what has been predicted would occur as Global Warming sets in. Irene's unwelcome visit came two days after the six year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrine disaster, another extreme weather event which may be attributable to Global Warming, and about a week before the ten year anniversary of the 9/11.01 attacks, which launched America into two seemingly unending wars halfway around the world, with conflict now spreading to Pakistan and Yemen. Two different types of destructive events...which should we pay more heed to? Herein lies a tale of two perspectives, each of which carries with it different priorities and responsibilities.

The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.

The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.

Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.

If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.

I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."

As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.

I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.

It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.

I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.

This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.

So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.

Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.

The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.

I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.

To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.

Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.

Media and Politics - What Is the Role of Media in Politics?

2011-08-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

There has been some rumbling in the UK media about the plight of a US media company over what a British media company did. Now both of these companies do share the same parent company, and there has not been any evidence that the media company, which is based in the US, did anything wrong. That has not stopped British liberals from salivating over the demise of a media empire, an empire that could be said donates millions of dollars to the very causes they support. It just so happens that the media empire covers the news of the day from a perspective that they do not agree with. In fact the owner of the company does not seem to agree with the news his company produces, if campaign donations are an indicator of his political leanings.

You might be asking yourself what this all about and if you are American, it would be understandable. Because lets face it, British scandals do not compete well with the next missing blonde on national TV or cable news channels. The scandal in question is the News of the World alleged hacking of cell phones in Britain and apparently 9/11 families now. Which is quite a serious charge and as we know with Liberals it is the seriousness of the charge that matters, not the evidence.

So the story goes that the British paper, News of the World, hacked a murder victim's cell phone, hacked the cell phones of the 7/7 terrorists and even the phones of the royal family. Of course all of this is still being investigated and Rupert Murdoch has stated that it did not happen, he even said that his company investigated the issue when it first came up and found nothing. That has not stopped the British Parliament from trying to bring down News of the World though and Scotland yard is investigating the allegations.

All of this has not stopped the media in the UK and even in some European countries from writing sensationalized stories on the empire that Rupert built. This story is nothing more than red meat for the a demoralized Democrat base that does not have much to be excited about with their hope and change from 2008. And what is a little help from the Liberals on the other side of the pond?

Many of them are saying that broadcasting laws in the US are set in such a way that Fox News could lose its license because of the actions of another part of the parent companies media outlets. The problem is that the laws they are saying could lead to this, rest solely on Rupert Murdoch's involvement in the scandal. Because the law says that a license cannot be given to a owner of questionable character. So is it the law that a CEO or Owner is responsible for what the employees do? Even though there has not been any conclusive evidence to pin on said employees?

Looking over the US laws, it seems that they would need to prove that the order to hack the phones came from Murdoch himself, and barring that there is not much more that can be done to Murdoch or even Fox News. Granted if the FBI does find something tying Fox News to the hacking of 9/11 families, well that would spell doom for the network. And it would lose a lot of creditability with the very people they aim to put in chairs and on couches night after night.

So far there is not even evidence that supports bringing charges against News of the world in the UK, let alone speculation over whether or not Fox news will be allowed to broadcast in the US any longer.

Writing Political Comedy - An Intro to Laughing at Your Politics and the American Political System

2011-08-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

So political comedy is your thing, eh? The purpose of this article is to help you get started in making political jokes. It is also an attempt at thinning the paint that is our polarized politics, if you will. I want to add water to the orange concentrate that is our unwavering partisan views and beliefs in the United States. In the spirit of the Gulf oil spill, I want to take oil and water in a jar, and shake it until I get conservatives intermingling with liberals in an effort to bring the two sides together. Laughter is a powerful tool and it can bring people together. Poking fun at our political beliefs is a good way of creating humility and seeing what the other side sees. I have found this to motivate me and others to laugh at ourselves and work with our opposites not just in politics.

It pains me to see my country divided on almost all issues. Our political party system has divided the United States in two on things ranging from foreign policy to something as insignificant as clothing style! I heard an older gentleman say to a twenty something year old, "Uhm, kid? Your pants are too low and baggy." The kid responded, " Uhm gramps? Your pants are too high and tight." Where does the madness end? For a more serious example, there is uproar about an Islam group wanting to establish a mosque near Ground Zero in New York. In a struggle for power and public support, it didn't take very long for our politicians to turn the issue into politics. In turn I am seeing this create a civilian divide between those who believe the mosque is insensitive to the families of those who fell at Ground Zero and those who argue for religious freedom (i.e., conservatives and liberals, respectively). And of course, both sides are stubborn.

Enough with the serious stuff and let's get to the comedy. First, avoid your temptation to make jokes about your political opposite. I know that it's hard. They make it so easy for us, don't they? The problem is that it just adds to the stonewall partisanship and makes your opponents angry at you. You can poke fun at the other side when you give your politics equal time. Showing your opponent that you can joke about yourself will open them up for jokes about their beliefs.

Second, read the political sections in newspapers (including online) and watch political news on TV. As you read or watch the news, try not to think about what the issues mean or how they affect you (you can do this later). This helps us avoid embedding ourselves in the issue. I know that this seems difficult, but I will walk you through later.

Third, find the eccentricities in the news stories. Believe me, this part isn't hard. What you might find difficult is avoiding seriously analyzing the meanings of the topics. With enough practice, however, you'll be able to extract the comedy potential from the most serious of topics.

Let me walk you through a simple example. I used this very news story in a similar way in my political humor blog:

On August 15th, 2010, Tea Party members held a rally in Arizona on the border with Mexico. Let's forget about why the rally was held (remember: avoid the main topic/issue). What do you think was so eccentric about this news? Well, Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County addressed the crowd of Tea Partiers. Now, this guys is eccentric on his own, but put him on the border, allow him to speak, and comedy ensues. This purveyor of order and law enforcement told the crowd that he would climb the border fence if all of the country's television news was there to report it. If you don't see the comedy in this, don't worry, it takes practice for some. I don't care if you have even the most conservative ideologies. The SHERIFF, not even just a deputy, the Sheriff of a major U.S. county (1) wants to break the law, no, international law, and (2) he doesn't think the rest of the country will hear about it. He also said that border patrol should be allowed to cross the border and prevent migrants from crossing.

That part is the raw material. We need to shape it to make it funnier (or in some cases, funny at all). What can we add to make it funnier? Look at his picture. What does he look like? Is he on overweight side of the spectrum? How high is the fence? Bring in YouTube.com. Nothing gets past being posted on Youtube.com these days, so how can he think no one will see his lawlessness? Exaggerate it. Compare it to something funny or an exaggerated version of it. Make the connection between allowing border patrol to cross the border and preventing migrants with invading a foreign country and declaring preeminent illegal immigration sweeps. What does that sound like? Bush's preemptive war maybe? What else? Make a list and see what has comedy potential. Then try your joke on your opposite party friends. If they laugh, it's good. Then introduce it to the less partisan friends on your side of the fence.

That news story is comedy gold! If you can't laugh at that, keep thinking about the irony, the eccentricity, or made odd comparisons. The point is to find humor in your views. Then spend some humor time on the other side. Laughter is a powerful tool in bringing people together. Remember to find comedy in yourself before ripping the other side with your comedy genius. It helps to loosen you from your polar barrier.

The Role of a Journalist in World News Today

2011-08-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

It is a general fact that every journalist out there try's to find the most relevant world news. But it certainly is hard to find one. It involves a number of factors. From media sources to the event and from asking questions to taking answers, everything has to be on time and properly planned. Therefore, it will not be wrong to state that it is difficult to find news rather than writing news. News topics change every day! Today you might be looking for news that talks about technology while tomorrow the hottest topic would be some celebrity news. It is for this reason that a journalist is valued so high in today's society. Journalist is one whose role is an increased one from mere providing news. Now the journalists of all societies have turned to be social workers. They do not only highlight the issues but also provide suggestions and advises on the subject matter.

The increased role of these journalists cannot be overlooked in anyway. Now that we have come to know how important a journalist is for a society; I would like to share some quick while worth mentioning tips on How to find the latest news? If you are a journalist or are planning to go for this particular profession, you should be aware that this field is not limited to any particular idea. Therefore, your expertise should be based on generalized knowledge and not specialized. For instance; you should have knowledge to interview a sports icon as well as a politician. You should be aware of the code of conduct for both of them. This is one factor that has been troubling a lot of people out there. But I hope this is now clear now. Secondly, if you are out there to find news, you should start looking for common people instead of only celebrity stars or politicians.

The reason for this is that these days' people prefer to talk about common people and are actually tired of all those political news and mess. In simple words, you might get a better audience while writing on common people subjects rather than trying to find high profile people. One of the news sources for this has been a news agency with the name of News World Wide. This news source is doing a fabulous job in regards of including the most common news of the hour and day. There news scope is not limited to any one niche of news but they cover a wide range of topics. All these topics are addressed in the simplest way that an ordinary person can understand. World news today is certainly different what it was yesterday. By this I mean that the intensified role of technology news in general and computer technology news in particular has reshaped lives. Yesterday news was only about the current political happenings while today it covers a big deal of aspects.

The Response to Disorder in Britain: Punishment Uber Alles

2011-08-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

The recent disorder in London and other English cities with massive looting, destruction and arson was indeed a frightening and disturbing phenomenon,and there is a need for us all to think about how and why this happened and to come up with new ideas of how to create a better society in the future that will not be ripped apart by such violent expressions of mass discontent and anger. I am however even more disturbed by the response of British authorities, particularly that of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, than I am by the violent disorder itself. The PM has made clear that his number one priority is to punish, as harshly as possible, as many of the participants as possible. His attitude suggests no attempt to reflect on why these riots took place, only to use force to beat down what he seems to perceive as an antisocial element in British society. His solution to social disorder is punishment and oppression, nothing else. What I find scary is how common this approach is in many places in the world, especially the USA. In fact, Cameron seems to want badly to bring in a former US police commissioner,of Boston, NYC and LA vintage, to apply American-style policing to Britain, which has typically had a more gentle and less aggressive approach.

Cameron seems to feel that once enough force has been used to beat down and imprison enough people, everything will be fine and the UK can return to business as usual. His demeanor is very much that of the privileged upper-class creature that he is, someone upset that the less privileged lower classes would dare to act up and disturb the happy existence of the "right kind of people" like himself who would never dream of smashing in a storefront to grab a television or fighting against the police, because they have plenty of money to buy anything they would like to own, and have never had a bad experience of the police because they live in nice,upper-class neighborhoods where the police are courteous and friendly.

Cameron has one very good and very big political reason to stick with this "punish the miscreants" approach and disdain any discussion of trying to understand the disorderly poor. During the little more than a year that he has been in office, the British government has slashed social services to the poor, increased college tuition costs almost threefold, and called for a turning away from large government programs to a more locally-oriented, volunteer-based approach to social ills in Britain. This British version of the "austerity" policy which is also being applied to Greece and now, one fears, America, has not produced the glowing economic and social results that were promised. British economic growth has been close to zero for the last year, unemployment remains very severe, and people have either lost or are fearful of soon losing government services that they have long depended on and which may be particularly critical in a time of such difficult economic conditions. Therefore, when British cities descend into fiery fury after one year of Cameron's policies, which have given little hope to those at the bottom of the society,the question naturally arises as to what extent the government's essentially anti-government, anti-helping-the-poor policies have contributed to the frustration and rage that erupted in the streets the first weekend of August. By focusing all attention on the "lawbreakers" and "thugs" involved in the disorder, Cameron clearly hopes to sidestep any discussion of whether his policies are the wrong response to the current stagnation affecting economy and society in Britain.

There is a huge imbalance here, and indeed a huge irony. The horrible economic conditions that we are all suffering under now, the very poor most of all, of course, were not created by government spending or social programs, which now are being cut cut cut in so many countries as a kind of mass human sacrifice that will steal the health, security and futures of many. The disastrous economic conditions and the social destruction that has followed in their wake were also not caused by rioting hoodlums stealing televisions or young people starting fires. They were brought about by the sociopathic greed of large banks and financial service companies, led by the kind of people who Cameron would no doubt love to share a bottle of fine wine with in a swank London dinner club, who played dangerous games with the world's finances, such as the bundling of mortgages and debt on the international financial market in a highly deceptive and irresponsible manner, that led to a near-collapse of the world financial system. THE PEOPLE WHO LED THESE COMPANIES ARE CRIMINALS, and so are many who worked under them and aided and abetted their shamefully profitable crimes. THESE PEOPLE HAVE CAUSED MORE HARM TO THE WORLD THAN EITHER THE MAFIA OR AL-QAEDA. EVEN SO, THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PUNISHED, except for Bernie Madoff. In fact, they received huge government assistance to repair their companies and restore them to super-profitable status. Meanwhile, millions of others lost their jobs, their homes, their retirements, their savings, their futures, with no help from the government to match that generously bestowed upon the financial services "nobility."

The message to the privileged members of the wealthy upper classes is: Don't worry. You can be a greedy, deceitful sociopath, you can play games with other peoples' life savings and investments and home ownership, you can cause massive destruction of people's lives, what amounts to a kind of financial mass-murder, AND YOU WILL NOT BE PUNISHED. YOU WILL BE CODDLED. YOU WILL BE PROTECTED. And then, as governments fall into financial difficulties due to the drop-off in revenues brought about by the financial meltdown, the response is NOT to ask the rich to contribute more to help government maintain services to those who now need them even more than before. No! Are you crazy? That would be ridiculous. The obvious, indeed the ONLY possible response is to strip down all government programs that help the poor, which are of no use to the privileged upper classes, and then, if the lower classes dare to rise up in anger, BEAT THEM DOWN with maximum force and THROW THEM IN JAIL. They are dangerous lawbreakers, even though the damage done by the looters and rioters is far less than what was done to the world economy by the the nicely-dressed, albeit sociopathic financiers, bankers and hedge fund managers in the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008.

The corporations and the super-rich are UNTOUCHABLE. It is only the poor that should be punished, and oh, how people like Cameron LOVE to punish the poor. Better than viagra, wot?

We have come to a point where many people, and I know this is true of many of the politically conservative college students that I teach in the USA, truly believe that the best way to respond to any kind of social unrest is through police suppression. Just beat them down and arrest them. The best state....is a police state?

The liberal-leftist alternative, to try to prevent social unrest by providing MORE, not less social services, and reducing the huge wealth gap that afflicts many societies by taxing the very rich to provide more services to the very poor, is seen as LAUGHABLE by many conservatives. The idea that the poor could be helped by government programs is seen as foolish. That includes a rejection of food programs to feed the poor, housing programs to shelter the poor, education programs to educate and elevate the poor, mass transportation programs to make it easier for people who cannot afford cars to get around, government support for rebuilding run-down neighborhoods, providing work-opportunities for socially useful things like infrastructure reconstruction and helping the poor start businesses. All this is seen as wasteful; spending money on more and more police and prisons, however, is seen as a good investment, a wise and prudent use of taxpayers' money.

This is the dilemma. I cannot speak for other countries or even for other parts of the USA, but I know that in my neck of the woods, many people no longer believe in using government power to help people, only to punish them. As long as that mindset remains popular, politicians like Cameron will be able to win election and preside over a transformation of our societies into police states, creating a kind of apartheid world where the people with wealth use massive force against the poor, who will increasingly rise up in violence and disorder out of their ever-growing despair and frustration. The poor are being put into a vise where their insides are being squeezed and crushed, with no hope of assistance from the government that is supposed to represent them. Can you blame them for rising up?

The Issue People Aren't Talking About: Palestine

2011-08-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

The desire of British-Mandate Palestine to gain statehood is growing ever vocal. The security council is putting the decision off, but the Palestinian Authority have support in this outdated and ineffectual organization.

Where do we stand on the issue?

Well poor old Dave has said that he wants a "two state solution" between Israel and a new Palestinian state, in other words Dave thinks that if the Palestinian authority is granted statehood then the issue will be resolved. This is naive, I am not alone when I say that Palestinian statehood would only be the beginning.

"Give them an inch and they'll want a mile" The Palestinian Authority don't want an inch, they've no interest in getting an inch, gaining statehood will merely renew their violent efforts against Israel and Zionism.

Israel is the only country recognized as 'free' in the region, Arabs in Israel have more rights than anywhere in the region.

Israel guarantees the religious rights of Christians and Muslims. Contrast this with the relentless persecution of Christians (and other minorities) in Arab countries.

The UK and Israel are alike in more ways than we are different. Both our nations face the same threat from ideological forces, blowing up tubes in London and Bars in Tel Aviv. These Muslim Extremist groups hate the UK and Israel because we are free and democratic.

I was horrified when I realized how many students at my University were supporters of Palestine. There is so much ignorance of the facts, and this is dangerous.

This move towards the UN is not a move towards statehood or peace; this is the beginning of renewed efforts against Israel. The vote in the UN is a continuation of the battle against Israel and Zionism by different means. Having failed to prevent Jewish immigration to British-Mandate Palestine and the establishment of Israel, having failed to defeat the Israeli military, having failed to strangle the Israeli economy and having failed to terrorize the Israeli citizens into submission, the Palestinians, and many Arab Muslim countries, are taking advantage of the current anti-Israel mood to isolate Israel diplomatically and present Israel and Zionism as fundamentally illegitimate.

The Jewish people have been persecuted and shunned around the world, they turned to the only territory which history recognizes as theirs, through the right to self determination that land evolved into Israel due to its majority Jewish population.

The Palestinian's have no government, they have no permanent population and no defined territory. The Palestinian Authority has no control over the West Bank, or over Gaza and no history of statehood, they should not have international recognition under any circumstances, and I for one would defend any means Israel feels fit to protect its borders and its citizens.

The British Israel Coalition wisely says; "Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East; it is what is right with the Middle East."

How to Recognize Political Fact From Fiction

2011-08-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, there are number of ways of communicating political news to the general public including television, newspapers, magazines, blogs, radio shows, websites, etc. We're bombarded with information, some conflicting. At times, information is put out there by a secondary source and perhaps re-written over and over. We read it or hear it so often, we think it's true.

How do we know what's true when different views are presented?

There are three main ways, that together, help to verify information on your own:

1. Is it logical? That is, when you break it down, does all parts of the situation make logical sense.
2. Can you prove the article is accurate?
3. Go to the initial source, when possible.

It was rumored for months on blogs and web sites that Barack Obama wasn't born in Hawaii because (a.) no one could accurately verify his birth certificate, (b.) the local Hawaiian hospitals would not verify his birth. And (c.) his father was from Kenya, so it was thought he was born there. It was blogged that his birth certificate had been tampered with. President Obama insisted he was born to Ann Dunham Obama in Hawaii.

Problem is "what's the truth"?

1. Let's look at the logic. What everyone agrees upon is that Ann met Barack, Sr. at the University of Hawaii. They married, and Ann gave birth to Obama several months later. Does it make sense that, in 1961, a woman flies into Kenya just to give birth to her son in a hospital that does not live up to the standards of U.S. hospitals? Does it make sense that she would give birth and then immediately fly back? I would say, no.
2. Can we prove that Barack was born in Kenya or that the birth certificate was altered. At this time, no, because both items were considered hearsay.
3. What about the primary source? If Obama were born in Hawaii, how would we know other than trying to view the birth certificate and, as non-experts, try to figure out if it's official?
When babies are born, their births are announced in the local newspapers. I looked up the Honolulu Advertiser, and sure enough, on August 13, 1961, a brief announcement appeared, "Mr. & Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy, son Aug 4."

So, logic and investigating primary source material can turn up the truth. It may take more work, but in the end, you'll be correct.

Why Conservatives Love Guns So Very, Very, VERY Much

2011-08-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

For many years, I have pondered the question of why so many conservative Americans have such a strong attachment to guns and make such a huge issue out of gun rights and the Second Amendment, which sometimes seems like the only part of the U.S. Constitution that they care about. Today, I want to share my own theories about this.

I think the root causes for conservatives' intense gun-love are (1) overwhelming fear of the changing world of increasing cultural and ethnic diversity that we live in, and in response to this fear, (2) a desire to cling to an idealized past version of America that they find more reassuring. That is to say, conservatives are both very very scared and very very nostalgic.

For quite some time now, beginning with the defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, American conservatives have found society changing in ways they didn't like, and have had a keen sense of frustration that they were losing the battle of ideas in American culture. What exactly do they so object to about trends in modern American (and indeed world) society? I think the main issue is loss of white privilege in the movement toward a more open society that is more accepting of equality between various ethnic, racial and/or religious groups. Remember, it was fierce resistance to Reconstruction efforts to empower blacks that set off the ugly Jim Crow laws and the paramilitary terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan.

It was the mystical "power of the gun," as well as other forms of violence including bombs and lynchings, that made it possible for white southerners to terrorize blacks and keep African-Americans in a fearful, subordinate position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also the power of the gun that subdued the Native American "savages" so that the West could be won for white settlement, a display of race-based violence to be long celebrated in games of cowboys vs. Indians and Western films. The current "Cowboys and Aliens" film shows how our society has, to some extent, moved away from this viewpoint with a narrative that requires white cowboys and "red" Indians to work together for mutual survival.

Anyway, let's go back into the conservative dream-world of beautiful, blood-white-and-blue patriotic violence, a harmonious, segregated world intoxicatingly scented with freedom-loving gunpowder. Thanks to his trusty gun, the White Man was indeed king of the country in the late nineteenth century. King of violence and racism, I would say, though I am sure conservatives would say that this use of violence in defense of the (white) "American Way" was something entirely noble and necessary. In the twentieth century, the KKK would form chapters all across the country, even in supposedly liberal strongholds like New York State and Connecticut, demonstrating that the violent defense of white privilege was not limited to the Southern states alone.

When the Civil Right movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, it was countered by massive violence in the South, and the cry of "State's Rights!", reaching back to Confederate slogans of the Civil War period to justify the right of states like Alabama to refuse equal rights to blacks and other non-white Americans. It would seem that they preferred returning to the Civil War rather than risk the unspeakable horror of granting Civil Rights to non-white Americans, and one must wonder if some such sentiment is among the motivations that have made Civil War reenactment so popular in recent decades. It certainly factors into the love for the Confederate flag in the South.

When the Democratic Party became the champion of civil rights for minorities, many white Southern former members quit the party to become Republicans. In every Presidential election since the 1960s, the majority of white voters, especially in the South, have gone Republican. Where Democrats have scored a victory, as with Carter in 1976, Clinton in 1992, and Obama in 2008, the Democrats' margin of victory came from African-American voters. The same demographic dynamic applies to the Tea Party, which is an almost exclusively white movement. The Tea Party desire to limit and dismantle government obviously appeals to those who see the national government and the Democratic party as overly concerned with the civil rights of minorities and allowing the country to sink into a sewer of mixed-race multiculturalism. (Note the endless sneering and sniping in the conservative media about "political correctness;" so many are nostalgic for the day when they could feel free to make jokes about niggers and Jews and faggots and whoever else they enjoyed insulting "back in the good old days.")

The gun issue has developed into a great vote-winner for the Republican Party, which has positioned itself as the protector of the seemingly sacred "right to bear arms," in opposition to the Democratic Party, which used to advocate for gun control and careful restriction of gun rights, though it no longer seems to possess the moral or political courage to stand up for this anymore. Many Democrats lost their seats in Congress the last time there was gun-control legislation, back in 1994, largely thanks to the efforts of the NRA. If one asks gun-loving conservatives, why do people need or want so many guns, the two pat answers are "hunting" and "self-defense." When one points out that no gun control effort has ever attempted to abolish all hunting in the USA, but only to place certain reasonable restrictions to prevent potential harm or abuse, just as we do with driving or alcohol, gun-minded conservatives will commonly express disbelief that gun control is anything other than an evil plot to eliminate ALL gun use and gun ownership in the USA, or they will pivot to the second issue of self-defense. This is something that conservatives are often quite passionate about.

It is particularly in the self-defense argument that you can see the latent, even unconscious racism, blended with FEAR, like an emotional accelerant: fear that the minute they let down their guard someone is going to break into their home, rob all their possessions, kill everyone in the family, fuck their dog, cook it on the backyard grill, and then eat it. Who exactly is it that they are thinking of in these fearful fantasies? The history of Republican political advertising,such as the Willie Horton advertisement from 1988, shows that the typical fear is of blacks, particularly black men. More recently, Hispanic men, increasingly mythologized as super-violent Mexican drug-runners, have been added into the paranoid mind-mix.

Here is how I see the race-fear/gun-love matrix speaking: "See, if you got your gun, and those black or brown-skinned devils, those niggers, Mexicans, Muslims, whatever, come to your house, you can blow them all away and defend your sweet wife and angel-faced children against the inevitable evils that come from all this modern multi-culturalism and civil rights bullshit: the savage, violent blacks, browns, and others who don't know their place and need to be reminded of the one primary fact of life in these United States, that the White Man's got the gun."

In the nineteenth century so idealized by conservatives, the blessed age before horrible transgressions of the American spirit like Social Security and civil rights, the violence-enforced "proper" place for non-whites like African-Americans and Native Americans was either on plantations or reservations. Our twenty-first century equivalent is prison for the blacks, with an absolutely skyrocketing rate of incarceration for African American men, deportation for Latinos,which has actually increased under the not-really-so-liberal Obama, and the various wars against Muslim populations, another brown-hued people to be put in their place.

In recent decades, the conservatives have succeeded marvelously in their "law and order" agenda, with gun rights always available as a sure-fire way to fire up the conservative masses and distract them from thinking about anything else. Fear is now ruling the national soul, and guns and threats of violence are everywhere. Funding priorities have shifted from schools to prisons, education replaced by incarceration. National security has replaced human rights and civil rights and, it would seem, almost any kind of rights other than gun rights as the top national priority. Criminal justice is a booming major on college campuses, replacing the fading idea of social justice that was once a common phrase on the campuses of the past. Real law is CRIMINAL law, you see; real justice is PUNISHMENT and nothing else. Invading other countries and brutalizing other peoples has become commonplace, and with new technology evolving rapidly, we will soon be able to do this without risking harm to any human American soldiers. The twenty-first century Sinatra will just have to sing, "Send in the drones..." The drone is the ultimate wet-dream of irresponsible violence, sanctified by the cult of technology: the gun acting alone, as it were.

Make no mistake: The gun, and with it the conservatives, are winning the national debate, for now, anyway. Fear rules the country, and the gun is our national sweetheart; the big, hot, red-white-and-blue penis that everyone wants to stroke and suck. Why do you think there are so many cop shows on television, so many variations of CSI, Law and Order, on and on? What picture of society and human nature is reinforced by this repetition?

Public figures of all sorts from politicians to newscasters to comedians know they cannot advance any criticism of our gun-wielding enforcers, from police to soldiers. Watch for how such supposed liberal icons like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert slobber and coo when they have military guests on their shows. Discussion of what these wars are doing to the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else we are invading this week? Maybe raise a question about the killer drones in Pakistan? Question whether the wars are morally defensible? Ask your guest how many people he has killed? Forget it; that kind of discussion doesn't happen in today's militaristic America. All must bow before The Gun and He Who Wields the Gun (or the missile, or the drone, or any other new form of the gun.)

Contrast this to critiques of police brutality and protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Why was there no sustained outcry or movement for more restrictions on guns after the near-assassination of Gabrielle Giffords earlier in the year, or the Virginia Tech massacre a few years back, or any other such events in our sad history of national violence? Because the right has won; guns have become sacred.

This has its effect on American Paganism too. In some forms of Asatru or Heathenry, there is a great devotion to weapons. Where is that coming from, and where does it lead? These are two questions that have so disturbed me that I have taken my leave of American Asatru. Whatever spirituality is to be found through the barrel of a gun or the swing of an axe is not something that makes any sense to me.

Resist the gun.

Speak up for peace.

Fight the fear.

I believe that in the long run, the future belongs to diversity and pluralism. There really is no going back. Conservatives may want to retreat to some kind of racially, socially, and ethnically cleansed past, and may be dreaming, as Anders Behring Breivik did, of using violence to achieve or enforce that, but they will never succeed. Yes, the law-and-order, gun-obsessed, anti-diversity crowd is riding high right now, but I don't think the majority of Americans are really with them. Once the intentions of the most extreme conservatives become clear, America will reject this and return to the path it was traveling in the past that led us from the Constitution to Emancipation to Civil Rights.

And praise be to the people of Norway for not becoming fear-and-punishment obsessed in the light of their national tragedy, and for striving to maintain their very open, very supportive society. They are showing an emotional maturity and social wisdom that seems sadly lacking in the United States.

Chronology of Recent Right-Wing Terrorism in the USA, from SPLC

2011-07-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

The bombing and massacre in Oslo raise the question of the danger of right-wing extremism in America. Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of right-wing terror plots and arrests of the last fifteen years. Here it is.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/terror-from-the-right?ondntsrc=MBC110770NOE&newsletter=newsgen-20110726

Accessed July 26,2011

[As the article is too long to reproduce in this blog, here are just the items from the last two years.]

June 12, 2009
Shawna Forde — the executive director of Minutemen American Defense (MAD), an anti-immigrant vigilante group that conducts "citizen patrols" on the Arizona-Mexico border — is charged with two counts of first-degree murder for her alleged role in the slayings of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter in Arivaca, Ariz. Forde allegedly orchestrated the May 30 home invasion because she believed the man was a narcotics trafficker and wanted to steal drugs and cash to fund her group. Authorities say the murders, including the killing of the child, were part of the plan. Also arrested and charged with murder are the alleged triggerman, MAD Operations Director Jason Eugene "Gunny" Bush, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, a local member of MAD. Authorities say that Bush had ties to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in Idaho, and that Forde has spoken of recruiting its members.

June 25, 2009
Longtime white supremacist Dennis Mahon and his brother Daniel are indicted in Arizona in connection with a mail bomb sent in 2004 to a diversity office in Scottsdale that injured three people. Mahon, formerly tied to the neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance (WAR) group, allegedly left a phone message at the office saying that "the White Aryan Resistance is growing in Scottsdale. There's a few white people who are standing up." In a related raid, agents search the Indiana home of Tom Metzger, founder of WAR, but he is not arrested. On the same day, white supremacist Robert Joos is arrested in rural Missouri, apparently because phone records show that Dennis Mahon's first call after the mail bombing was to Joos' cell phone. Joos is charged with being a felon in possession of firearms.

Oct. 28, 2009
Luqman Ameen Abdullah, identified by authorities as a member of a black Muslim group hoping to create an Islamic state within U.S. borders, is shot dead at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich., after he fires at FBI agents trying to arrest him on conspiracy and weapons charges. The FBI says Abdulla encouraged violence against the United States, adding that 10 other group members are being sought.

Feb. 18, 2010
Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

March 25, 2010
A man later identified as Brody James Whitaker opens fire on two Florida state troopers during a routine traffic stop on I-75 in Sumter County. Whitaker flees, crashing his vehicle and continuing on foot. He is arrested two weeks later in Connecticut, where he challenges the authority of a judge and declares himself a “sovereign,” not American, citizen. Sovereigns typically believe that police have no right to regulate road travel. Whitaker is later extradited to Florida to face charges of assaulting and fleeing from a police officer.

March 27-28, 2010
Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government.

April 15, 2010
Matthew Fairfield, who is president of a local chapter of an antigovernment “Patriot” organization called the Oath Keepers, is indicted on 28 explosives charges, 25 counts of receiving stolen property and one count of possessing criminal tools. Authorities searching his home discover a napalm bomb built by Fairfield, along with a computer carrying child pornography. Fairfield later pleads guilty to explosives charges, but still faces trial on other counts.

April 30, 2010
Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Duff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Duff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings.

May 10, 2010
Sandlin Matthew Smith detonates a pipe bomb at a rear entrance to a mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., while worshippers are inside. Armed only with a fuzzy videotape, authorities only identify Smith, based on talking to witnesses to whom he admits the attack, a year later. They track Smith, a bus driver from Julington Creek, Fla., to a campsite near Fairview, Okla., where he resists arrest with a gun and is killed. A search of Smith’s two homes turns up explosive materials.

May 20, 2010
A father and son team of “sovereign citizens” who believe police have no right to regulate road travel murder West Memphis, Ark., police officers Robert Brandon Paudert, 39, and Thomas William “Bill” Evans, 38, during a routine traffic stop on an I-40 exit ramp. The incident begins when Jerry Kane, 45, starts to argue with the officers over his bogus vehicle paperwork and then pushes Evans into a roadside ditch. Kane’s 16-year-old son then kills both officers with an AK-47 before the pair flees. Authorities catch up with them about 45 minutes later. In the ensuing shootout, two more officers are badly wounded and both Kanes are killed. The pair had been traveling the country offering seminars in bogus sovereign techniques for avoiding foreclosure and related matters.

June 8, 2010
A bomb packed into a soda can is planted outside Osage Baptist Church in Carroll City, Ark., where a polling station for a Democratic Senate primary runoff between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is located. The device does not explode, although authorities say it was capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. Officials later receive a tip from contractors who hired to clean out the foreclosed home of self-described “Patriot” Mark Krause, where they find bomb-making materials, manuals, and materials related to antigovernment militias. Krause, who earlier posted antigovernment messages to MySpace, eventually is arrested in Seattle.

July 18, 2010
An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byron Williams is shot in the arms and legs. Williams allegedly later tells authorities that he was on his way to attack offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that, although little known to most Americans, has been repeatedly pilloried on air by Fox News host Glenn Beck.

July 21, 2010
Attorney Todd Getgen is shot to death at a gun range in Cumberland County, Penn., and his weapon, a silenced AR-15 rifle, is stolen. Authorities arrest prison guard Raymond Peake nine days later, saying Peake was trying to accumulate weapons for an unnamed organization that intended to overthrow the government. Fellow prison guard Thomas Tuso is also arrested for allegedly helping Peake hide Getgen’s custom-built weapon.

Sept. 2, 2010
A pipe bomb is thrown through the window of a closed Planned Parenthood clinic in Madera, Calif., along with a note that reads, “Murder our children? We have a ‘choice’ too.” The note is signed ANB, apparently short for the American Nationalist Brotherhood. Six months later, law enforcement officials arrest school bus driver Donny Eugene Mower, who allegedly also threatened a local Islamic Center and has the word “Peckerwood,” a reference to a white supremacist gang, tattooed on his chest. Mower reportedly confesses to the attack.

Sept. 7, 2010
The FBI arrests 26-year-old Justin Carl Moose, a self-described “freedom fighter” and “Christian counterpart to Osama bin Laden,” for allegedly planning to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. After earlier receiving tips that Moose was posting threats of violence against abortion providers and information about explosives on his Facebook page, the FBI set up a sting operation to capture him. Moose later pleads guilty to distributing information on manufacturing and use of an explosive and is sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Sept. 19, 2010
An antigovernment extremist with ties to the separatist Republic of Texas organization allegedly opens fire on an oil company worker and two sheriff’s deputies who show up at White’s property in West Odessa, Texas, to access an oil well to which the company has rights. Victor White, 55, allegedly wounds all three men before they retreat, and a 22-hour standoff follows. White eventually surrenders and is charged with three counts of attempted capital murder of a peace officer, one count of attempted capital murder, and aggravated assault.

Jan. 14, 2011
Federal agents in Arizona arrest Jeffery Harbin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, for allegedly building homemade grenades and pipe bombs that he apparently intended to supply to anti-immigration groups patrolling the Mexican border. A prosecutor says that Harbin constructed the devices, using model rocket engines and aluminum power, "in such a way as to maximize human carnage." Harbin is indicted on two counts of possessing a destructive device and a third of transporting destructive devices. Jeffery Harbin is the son of Jerry Harbin, a Phoenix-area activist vith past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Council of Conservative Citizens.

Jan. 17, 2011
Bomb technicians defuse a sophisticated improvised explosive device (IED) found in a backpack along the Spokane, Wash., route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade with 1,500 marchers. Using forensic clues found in the dismantled bomb, officials about two months later identify and arrest Kevin William Harpham, a long-time neo-Nazi. Harpham had posted more than 1,000 messages to the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network since 2004, when he was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Harpham also had contributed to the white supremacist Aryan Alternative newspaper. He is indicted on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of possessing an IED. Later, federal hate crime charges are added.

March 10, 2011
Six members of the antigovernment Alaska Peacemakers Militia, including its leader Francis Schaeffer Cox, are arrested and charged with plotting to kill or kidnap state troopers and a Fairbanks judge. The group already has a large cache of weapons, including a .50-caliber machine gun and grenades and a grenade launcher. Cox earlier identified himself as a “sovereign citizen.”

May 14, 2011
Three masked men break into the Madrasah Islamiah, an Islamic center in Houston, and douse prayer rugs with gasoline in an apparent attempt to burn the center down. Images of the men are captured on surveillance cameras, but they are not identified. The fire is put out before doing major damage.

If you go to the web site mentioned above, you can download the full information as a PDF file. I recommend keeping this information to show people who may be skeptical that there is any non-Muslim terrorist threat in the USA.