Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Thursday
Government of the People, By the Corp., For the Corp.
Well Put! - from the Atlantic - do read!
"My teabagger parents are gloating today about the Brown victory. To them, this whole politics game is like football: they simply cheer for the red team to beat the blue team. Period. They don’t know or care how Brown or any of their other preferred candidates are going to solve the real crises my generation will face.
And for all their slogans and smugness and phony outrage, the teabaggers are on the wrong side of the future in every way I can imagine: Entitlements will have to be cut. The eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security will be raised, benefits will be means-tested, and Medicare will eventually be rationed. Everyone in my generation knows this. We accept it. But we want those programs to stick around in at least a minimal, bare-bones form. The teabaggers just mindlessly shout “Don’t cut my Medicare!” But they don’t mind bankrupting it for my generation.
Thursday
F is for Filibuster! or The Matter with Parliamentary Procedure
Ok, all it takes to stop a bill (like healthcare reform) from passing in our illustrious US Senate are:
Great system. I'm going to go let some blood and burn some witches now . . . because those systems still seem fine to me too.
Furious.
DO NOT BUY IT!! I'm mad as hell.
Keith does it again. Amazing. Please watch in it's entirety and SHARE!!
"You have just agreed to purchase a product. If you do not, you will be breaking the law and subject to a fine. You have no control over how much you will pay for the product. The government will have virtually no control over how much the company will charge for the product. "
Friday
Druid makes more sense than Ivy Leaguers
A pretty insightful article from Energy Bulletin about what might be a much more effective and logical way to measure productivity.
"Consider the fuss made in economic circles about productivity. When productivity goes up, politicians and executives preen themselves; when it goes down, or even when it doesn't increase as fast as current theory says it ought, the cry goes up for more government largesse to get it rising again. Everyone wants the economy to be more productive, right? The devil, though, has his usual residence among the details, because the statistic used to measure productivity doesn't actually measure how productive the economy is."
"As important as the misinformation generated by such arbitrary statistical constructs is the void that results because other, arguably more important figures are not being collected at all. In an age that will increasingly be constrained by energy limits, for example, a more useful measure of productivity might be energy productivity – that is, output per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) of energy consumed. An economy that produces more value with less energy input is arguably an economy better suited to the downslope of Hubbert's peak, and the relative position of different nations, to say nothing of the trendline of their energy productivity over time, would provide useful information to governments, investors, and the general public alike."
The full article is a little denser than most of the stuff I'm posting, but the basic idea is solid and points to yet another instance of "that's how we've always done it" blindness. Oh yeah, and he really is a Druid. See?"As important as the misinformation generated by such arbitrary statistical constructs is the void that results because other, arguably more important figures are not being collected at all. In an age that will increasingly be constrained by energy limits, for example, a more useful measure of productivity might be energy productivity – that is, output per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) of energy consumed. An economy that produces more value with less energy input is arguably an economy better suited to the downslope of Hubbert's peak, and the relative position of different nations, to say nothing of the trendline of their energy productivity over time, would provide useful information to governments, investors, and the general public alike."
Wednesday
Cate Blanchett lends her voice to billions of others for Mother Earth
... and nine rings were given to the race of men, who above all else desire power.
Friday
This day in history. . .
More HERE on H.M.
"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."
1978. . . SEVENTY-EIGHT!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
