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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

29 Sept - Morning Surfing

September SunsetImage by Dave McLear via Flickr

Just the facts, please, re taxes and economic growth

For the life of me, I don't know why "news" networks put opinions on the air instead of actual content.

For example, who cares whether someone thinks tax cuts will help the economy? Why not examine the actual facts to see if they support such an assertion? 

 

casse  Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy 

"Somehow, we have come to think the whole purpose of the economy is to grow, yet growth is not a goal or purpose. The pursuit of endless growth is suicidal." ~ David Suzuki  

Muddled Media Messages

With great regularity and often a touch of subterfuge, a certain message crops up in the offerings of the mainstream media. Like a powerful riptide to an unsuspecting swimmer at the beach, the message tries to grab our attention and pull it out to dangerous seas. And that message is, “Consume!” Let’s examine for a moment an ironic example.

 Behavioral economics: a breath of fresh air

For anyone who has ever cracked an econ 101 book, behavioral economics is like a breath of fresh air. The approach of behavioral economics differs from that of orthodox economics in essentially one way. Instead of assuming people to be completely rational maximizers of their own self-interest, behavioral economists actually examine how people behave! They accept that (a) our cognitive capabilities may be limited and (b) our decisions are frequently based on something other than pure logic. This difference produces a change in the methods behvioral economists use. Rather than believing a priori that economics is a science that can be reduced to a set of mathematical equations, they actually design scientific experiments to figure out how people make economic decisions.
To understand how good it feels to breathe in the fresh air of behavioral economics, you first have to know what it’s like to be stuck in the stale air of orthodoxy. Economics students have certainly grown tired of gasping and wheezing their way through standard econ courses (see my description of the Econ Scream or take a look at the Post-Autistic Economics Movement). My own troubling experience in the foul air of professional economics taught me quite a lesson.

 mycarnac.org

Shocker! Over 90% of Americans Choose Sweden’s Socialism

Nearly every American in a survey chose Sweden’s Socialist wealth distribution over America’s Capitalist system. Over 90% of Americans when presented Sweden’s Socialism chose that system.

More interesting than that, the report says, is that the respondents (a randomly selected 5,522-person sample, reflecting the country’s ideological, economic and gender demographics, surveyed) believed the top 20 percent should own only 32 percent of the wealth. Respondents with incomes over $100,000 per year had similar answers to those making less than $50,000.
The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth. Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they’d rather live in a country with Sweden’s wealth distribution…..(america blog)
It is clear Americans don’t know what Socialism is. The corporate media has Americans thinking fascism is socialism. But it is clear that Americans could make sound economic judgments on the governing of the economy if they weren’t scared into thinking only in a constrained, indoctrinated way.

 Democracy Now!

"The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration": Isabel Wilkerson Tracks Exodus of Blacks from US South

They left because they wanted to be able to have better opportunities. They left because they were living under a caste system, which dictated and controlled every aspect of the lives of African Americans. In some ways I describe it as a defection as much as it was a migration. In many ways, they were seeking political asylum from a caste system that determined, for example, that in Birmingham, for example, a black person and a white person couldn’t play checkers together. Someone actually sat down and wrote that out as a law. There were places—there were courtrooms in the South where there was actually a black Bible and a white Bible to swear to tell the truth on. 

Administrations Never Give Up A Power, And Extend It When They Can: Example 2,942, 

If the President has the power to order American citizens killed with no due process, and to do so in such complete secrecy that no courts can even review his decisions, then what doesn't he have the power to do?

The five most alarming right-wing ballot initiatives

Measures targeting abortion rights, taxes, healthcare and climate change are all on ballots in November

 Obama: 'We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan'

( Pakistan being the nation that murders people worldwide, one presumes. If agents wear uniforms - sometimes - they aren't 'terrorists.' Find the distinction without a difference. 

Patriotism ? Silly me. That's partisanship covering lying with a sheen of self-interest. Don't tell me Sales Techniques are not part and parcel of 'reporting'.  )

 

Ex-CIA Chief Says US Gov't Should Be Able To Shut Down The Internet

( Now works for Chertoff's group...the ones that make the airport 'scanner' that doesn't work )

Thousands of Nigerian women 'found in Mali slave camps'

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