The truth is, we’re not broke. The US dollar comes from the US government (not from China, as we’re led to believe). The US government is not revenue constrained. It is the Issuer of the currency, not the User of the currency like you and I. It plays by a completely different set of rules, yet it behaves as if it is still bound by the shackles of a gold standard. It behaves irresponsibly when it proposes policies to reduce the deficit when unemployment is high and inflation is low. We’re letting millions of Americans suffer because Pete Peterson and his ilk have convinced virtually everyone that we face a fiscal crisis in this country. We live in fear of the Chinese, the Ratings Agencies, the Bond Vigilantes, Indentured Grandchildren, and so on. And this fear is used by politicians on both sides of the political aisle to sell “sacrifice” to the rest of us. And we keep buying.

Link: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/10/pete-peterson-has-won.html

CNBC’s Becky Quick ... takes to the pages of Fortune to attack the Nobel-winning Princeton economist [Paul Krugman]’s 'downright dangerous' idea that we’re not in a fiscal crisis and don’t need Simpson-Bowles’ advice, writing that 'It is hard to find anyone who actually agrees with him.'

Link: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/inside_the_bubble_with_cnbc_an.php?page=all

Kalanick is a proud adherent to the Cult of Disruption: the faddish Silicon Valley concept which essentially boils down to "let us do whatever we want, otherwise we'll bully you on the Internet until you do." To proponents of Disruption, the free market is king, and regulation is always the enemy.

The pro-Disruption argument goes like this: In a digitally connected age, there's absolutely no need for public carriage laws (or hotel laws, or food safety laws, or… or…) because the market will quickly move to drive out bad actors. If an Uber driver behaves badly, his low star rating will soon push him out of business.

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Humanists and atheists are mourning the death of humanist Dr. Paul Kurtz, former editor of the American Humanist Association’s Humanist magazine and founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, who died on Oct. 21, 2012 at the age of 86. His death means the loss of one of secular humanism’s most prominent advocates.

“Paul Kurtz worked tirelessly for decades to see secular humanism become accepted as an alternative philosophy to traditional religion,” said Roy Speckhardt, the executive director of the American Humanist Association. “The attention and guidance he gave to the humanist movement had an unmistakable global impact.”

Paul Kurtz served on the American Humanist Association Board of Directors from 1968-1981 and as editor of Humanist magazine from 1967-1978 before establishing the Council for Secular Humanism.

In 1973 he worked with Edwin H. Wilson and the American Humanist Association to create the draft of what would become the Humanist Manifesto II (an updated Humanist Manifesto III was adopted in 2003).

“Humanism has been shaped by many people since the beginning of the 20th century, and Paul Kurtz was one of the greatest contributors to the development of our nontheistic philosophy,” Speckhardt said.

Full press release: http://www.americanhumanist.org/news/details/2011-11-humanists-mourn-death-of-paul-kurtz-humanist-philoso

How much do Public Broadcast Service viewers understand about the economy that led to the lifestyle of the wealthy Edwardian-era family in the hit series Downton Abbey? If one watched only PBS historical dramas, the British history leading up to the Abby era seems to run to the understanding that Horatio Hornblower (born imaginarily in 1771) and the Royal Navy defeated the French, and somewhere in there, Jane Austen came to her Sense and Sensibility (1811), and didn’t James Watt (1736-1819) invent the steam engine and thus power the Industrial Revolution upon which England built a mighty Empire on which the sun wouldn’t set until World War One came along and upset the elegance and gentility of the Edwardian Era? Well, there may have been a couple of social issues here and there, along with the Titanic, providing the PBS drama with some good plot points.

The historical truth is markedly different. The span of relevant history starts out with a major bailout of the landed gentry and the banking system, and ends with the rise of the financial sector providing much of the income for the Downton Abbeys of the time. It progresses through the Industrial Revolution to a late-Victorian English ruling elite that was smug, narrowly educated and scientifically illiterate, rich from the financial sector but with a manufacturing base that had been increasingly starved for the capital to keep up with the technological pace of change. It spans a time of tectonic social shift from an agrarian economy to one where a rising industrial middle class needed workers for its factories. Because of that fundamental change, the working poor were largely cut off from the land and social structure which produced the food they ate, making them dependant solely on the factories that provided their wages.

The bailout occurred when Parliament passed the Corn Laws, a steep tariff on cheap imported grain As the eminent British historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote, “The Corn Laws which the farming industry imposed on the country in 1815 were not designed to save a tottering sector of the economy, but rather to preserve the abnormally high profits of the Napoleonic war-years, and to safeguard farmers from the consequences of their wartime euphoria, when farms had changed hands at the fanciest prices, loans and mortgages had been accepted on impossible terms.” The linkage to the sub-prime debacle and subsequent bailouts is obvious. Then, as now, making risky loans based on bubble-inflated real estate was a recipe for trouble.

Full post: http://somewhatlogically.com/?p=702

When comparing electric vehicles (EVs) to gas-powered vehicles, most studies have focused on the electricity or fuel consumed while driving, and where those fuels come from. But a European study, published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology on October 4, provided a full lifecycle analysis that took into account not only the so-called “use phase,” but also the “production” (manufacturing) and “end-of-life” (disposal and recycling) phases. The results were dismaying.

The researchers found that in some ways, or in some circumstances, EVs are more polluting than gas-powered vehicles. But few reporters who covered the study explained those distinctions clearly, producing short stories that portrayed EVs as an unqualified “threat” to the environment instead.

What tripped up many reporters was the conclusion that while the majority of all vehicles’ “global warming potential” (i.e. direct or indirect greenhouse gas emissions) comes from their use phase, EVs produce twice the warming potential of gas-powered vehicles during the production phase. For instance, a CBS station in Connecticut reported that EVs produce twice the global-warming potential overall, but that’s not true. In fact, they usually counter the excesses of the production phase during the use phase—all the more so the longer they’re driven.

According to study, when powered by “average European electricity,” EVs have 20-24 percent less warming potential over their lifetime than gas-powered vehicles, and 12 percent less when powered by electricity made from natural gas. It’s only when powered by electricity from coal that EVs have 17-27 percent more warming potential. The conclusion that the “dirtiest” types of electricity erase EVs’ advantage is similar to one reached by the Union of Concerned Scientists back in April. But then, as now, gotcha-oriented coverage belied the fact that EVs are generally better than gas-powered vehicles where global warming is concerned. [Update: The author of the UCS’s April report wrote a helpful analysis of the European study that calculated that even when taking its conclusions about production into consideration, EVs are still a net positive for the climate.]

Full post: http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/electric_vehicles_versus_gas_p.php?page=all

Despite a certain number of limitations such as some heterogeneity among the studies, or lack of information about any kind of medication that could have contributed to obesity, the authors consider the results of their meta‑analysis as quite robust and tend to confirm the message the literature has been spreading for a while now: people who test positive for adenovirus 36 are more prone to weight gain and obesity than those that have never encountered the virus in their life. But as this work included observational cross‑sectional studies only, there is still the possibility that overweight or obese people may actually be more susceptible to this viral infection for some reason.

In addition, given that there does not appear to be an association between Ad36 and metabolic markers, infection may be linked with accumulation of relatively benign subcutaneous fat, which highlights the important distinction between adiposity and metabolic health. Anyway, the relationship between Ad36 and obesity in animals, including monkeys, is causal and Ad36 is increasingly shown to be able to impact lipogenesis in human cells. These findings suggest that further investigation may at some point lead to the demonstration of an infectious cause for weight gain and obesity in humans as well, at least to some extent.

Full post: http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2012/10/03/infectobesity-is-obesity-transmitted-through-a-common-viral-infection

One organization currently using the web to attract voters to the Republican cause is the American Future Fund organization.

According to Open Secrets, the AFF is a conservative-leaning organization that primarily raises money in support of candidates who back “conservative principles that sustain free market ideals focused on bolstering America’s global competitiveness across the country.”

...

Despite the controversial nature of The Pirate Bay, there can be little doubt that AFF will reach millions of potential voters with their ad campaign, but whether this is what they intended remains to be seen. Last week the Canadian government were quick to disassociate themselves from a campaign they inadvertently ran on The Pirate Bay.

...

Due to the site’s reputation, advertising there comes cheaper than some people might think. And with the New York Times revealing in 2010 that AFF won 76 percent of their House and Senate races making it the most successful big-spending Republican-leaning group, it’s possible that getting the most bang for their bucks naturally involves torrents these days. TorrentFreak asked AFF if it does, and we’ll post an update once we’ve received a response.

Link: http://torrentfreak.com/republicans-run-pirate-bay-skyscraper-ad-campaign-121004


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I was trying to baffle someone else at the conference, saying ‘Look, the thing you think conservatism should be is the thing the conservatives made a point of writing off in the 1950’s. You’re a neo-Rossiterian.’

...liberals, and the likes of David Brooks, often complain that conservatives have recently lost their way, turning radical. Oh, for the good old days when William F. Buckley could be counted on to write the crazies - the John Birch Society, and Ayn Rand - out of the movement, for the sake of preserving some modicum of sanity. ... The truth is that William F. Buckley wrote Rand out of the movement because she was an atheist, not because she was nuts. The trouble with the Birchers wasn’t that they were off the reservation but that they were perilously close to being on it. What Robert Welch believed wasn’t so different from what Buckley believed, but Buckley had the knack for saying it in a way that allowed, at the very least, for delicacy concerning more paranoid aspects and implications.

...

What liberals are hoping for, when they hearken back to the good old days, is not some of that good old Buckley non-craziness but something more like what Clinton Rossiter and Peter Viereck offered. But Buckley had the good sense to kill that off decades ago, since it was at odds with the spirit of the conservatism he wanted to champion.

Full review: crookedtimber.org/2012/09/29/who-remembers-clinton-rossiter

In 2007, George Kalman received notice that he had violated a law against blasphemy. But Kalman wasn't in Pakistan, Egypt, or any of the other Middle Eastern countries that have burst into violence over an anti-Muslim YouTube video. No, Kalman was right here in Pennsylvania. After filling out a form to register his new film company as "I Choose Hell Productions L.L.C.," the Downingtown resident got a letter informing him that his request was rejected under a state law barring "blasphemy, profane cursing, or swearing" in corporate names.

At the time, just five other states still had anti-blasphemy laws on the books. But such measures were ubiquitous across America for three centuries, from the founding of the colonies into the mid-20th century. As we try to understand the current anger and mayhem in the Middle East, then, we might pause to examine our own history of religious intolerance.

It starts, like so much else, with the Puritans. Although we still tell our kids that the Puritans came to the New World to find "freedom," their laws tell another story. In 1636, for instance, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made blasphemy - defined as "a cursing of God by atheism, or the like" - punishable by death.

So did the colony of Maryland, in its famous 1649 "Act of Toleration." We remember that law as granting rights to Catholics, forgetting that it omitted Jews; indeed, the measure made it a capital crime to deny Jesus Christ as the son of God. It also specified death at the stake as the penalty for blasphemy, defined as "acursing or wicked speaking of God."

Link: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20121002_America_s_war_on_blasphemy.html

Forbes touts its annual list of the 400 richest U.S. billionaires as evidence “that the American dream is still very much alive,” claiming that 70 percent of them “made their fortunes entirely from scratch.” I noted that in a post the other day, and questioned whether it was true.

Its not. The liberal group United for a Fair Economy has done the heavy lifting on Forbes’s bootstrappers, and its report, “Born on Third Base,” shows that the vast majority of the country’s plutocrats either inherited their money or had significant help from family members. What’s surprising is that this is surprising to Forbes.

Just 35 percent of the Forbes 400 last year were raised poor or middle class, compared to 95 percent of the broader public, as (reasonably) defined by UFE. Twenty one percent inherited enough money to join the 400 without lifting a finger, what UFE calls being “born on home plate.” Another 7 percent inherited at least $50 million or a “large and prosperous company,” 12 percent inherited at least a million bucks or a decent-sized business or startup capital from a relative, and 22 percent were “born on first base,” into an upper class family or got a modest inheritance or startup capital (UFE says it was conservative in assigning people to bases, so its report understates their advantages somewhat). So, at least 62 percent did not, in fact, make their fortunes “entirely from scratch.”

In other words, contra Forbes’s assertion, its 400 list is more a picture of class immobility and stratification than a portrait of an American dream of opportunity for all if who are willing to work hard. It has gotten the story exactly backward.

Full smackdown: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/made_from_scratch.php