Climate Change and the Burden of Proof

David Mitchell's amusing take on the burden of proof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI5ulKiZAoE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Creepiness of Dominionism

Palin, Bachmann and Perry, the three biggest nutjobs in politics today, are dominionists...fundamentalist Christians who believe it's their god-given right to take over the world:

http://godsownparty.com/blog/2011/08/from-one-change-agent-to-another-um-yeah-you-are-a-dominionist/

If Obama disillusions enough people, we could have one of these whackos leading our country. Ack.

Disbelief is not a Choice

I've been saying this for years, only as "belief is not a choice":

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643068-disbelief-is-not-a-choice

Robert Reich on the Economy and the Middle Class

The Limping Middle Class

By ROBERT B. REICH

Published: September 3, 2011

Robert B. Reich is the former secretary of labor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.” 

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed. Even if by some miracle President Obama gets support for a second big stimulus while Ben S. Bernanke’s Fed keeps interest rates near zero, neither will do the trick without a middle class capable of spending. Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

Starting in the late 1970s, the middle class began to weaken. Although productivity continued to grow and the economy continued to expand, wages began flattening in the 1970s because new technologies — container ships, satellite communications, eventually computers and the Internet — started to undermine any American job that could be automated or done more cheaply abroad. The same technologies bestowed ever larger rewards on people who could use them to innovate and solve problems. Some were product entrepreneurs; a growing number were financial entrepreneurs. The pay of graduates of prestigious colleges and M.B.A. programs — the “talent” who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street — soared.

The middle class nonetheless continued to spend, at first enabled by the flow of women into the work force. (In the 1960s only 12 percent of married women with young children were working for pay; by the late 1990s, 55 percent were.) When that way of life stopped generating enough income, Americans went deeper into debt. From the late 1990s to 2007, the typical household debt grew by a third. As long as housing values continued to rise it seemed a painless way to get additional money.

Eventually, of course, the bubble burst. That ended the middle class’s remarkable ability to keep spending in the face of near stagnant wages. The puzzle is why so little has been done in the last 40 years to help deal with the subversion of the economic power of the middle class. With the continued gains from economic growth, the nation could have enabled more people to become problem solvers and innovators — through early childhood education, better public schools, expanded access to higher education and more efficient public transportation.

We might have enlarged safety nets — by having unemployment insurance cover part-time work, by giving transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, by creating insurance for communities that lost a major employer. And we could have made Medicare available to anyone.

Big companies could have been required to pay severance to American workers they let go and train them for new jobs. The minimum wage could have been pegged at half the median wage, and we could have insisted that the foreign nations we trade with do the same, so that all citizens could share in gains from trade.

We could have raised taxes on the rich and cut them for poorer Americans.

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) And it allowed companies to bust unions and threaten employees who tried to organize. Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.

More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite. Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation’s richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and payroll taxes — both taking a bigger chunk out of modest paychecks — were increased.

Most telling of all, Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses. In so doing, it allowed finance — which until then had been the servant of American industry — to become its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation’s profits. By 2007, financial companies accounted for over 40 percent of American corporate profits and almost as great a percentage of pay, up from 10 percent during the Great Prosperity.

Some say the regressive lurch occurred because Americans lost confidence in government. But this argument has cause and effect backward. The tax revolts that thundered across America starting in the late 1970s were not so much ideological revolts against government — Americans still wanted all the government services they had before, and then some — as against paying more taxes on incomes that had stagnated. Inevitably, government services deteriorated and government deficits exploded, confirming the public’s growing cynicism about government’s doing anything right.

Some say we couldn’t have reversed the consequences of globalization and technological change. Yet the experiences of other nations, like Germany, suggest otherwise. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread. While Americans’ average hourly pay has risen only 6 percent since 1985, adjusted for inflation, German workers’ pay has risen almost 30 percent. At the same time, the top 1 percent of German households now take home about 11 percent of all income — about the same as in 1970. And although in the last months Germany has been hit by the debt crisis of its neighbors, its unemployment is still below where it was when the financial crisis started in 2007.

How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions.

THE real reason for America’s Great Regression was political. As income and wealth became more concentrated in fewer hands, American politics reverted to what Marriner S. Eccles, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, described in the 1920s, when people “with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game.” With hefty campaign contributions and platoons of lobbyists and public relations spinners, America’s executive class has gained lower tax rates while resisting reforms that would spread the gains from growth.

Yet the rich are now being bitten by their own success. Those at the top would be better off with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than a large share of one that’s almost dead in the water.

The economy cannot possibly get out of its current doldrums without a strategy to revive the purchasing power of America’s vast middle class. The spending of the richest 5 percent alone will not lead to a virtuous cycle of more jobs and higher living standards. Nor can we rely on exports to fill the gap. It is impossible for every large economy, including the United States, to become a net exporter.

Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation’s decades-long trend toward widening inequality. This is possible notwithstanding the political power of the executive class. So many people are now being hit by job losses, sagging incomes and declining home values that Americans could be mobilized.

Moreover, an economy is not a zero-sum game. Even the executive class has an enlightened self-interest in reversing the trend; just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the ebbing tide is now threatening to beach many of the yachts. The question is whether, and when, we will summon the political will. We have summoned it before in even bleaker times.

As the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression, what we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.”

That dream is still within our grasp.

Why I left the Republican Party

Long but terrific article by ex-Republican Congressional staffer of 30 years Mike Lofgren on why he left the Republican party in disgust:

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

He summarizes my position on the evil bastards they've become perfectly....

The Day America's Decline Began...

Rupert Cornwell: THE DAY AMERICA'S DECLINE BEGAN

Wednesday, 7 September 2011

Ten years. An eyeblink in the eternal march of history - yet sufficient
distance to gauge the impact of America's most dreadful day, one that no one
old enough to remember will ever forget. After 10 years, winners and losers
can be declared. And in the case of 9/11, it becomes more evident by the
day, both sides are losers.

The most obvious one of course is Osama bin Laden. The organisation that he
founded has been not only decapitated, but decimated. Hardly a week passes
now without the death or capture of top al-Qa'ida commanders, their security
presumably compromised by the documents seized during the raid in Pakistan
in which Bin Laden was killed. Touch wood, there seems scant chance of the
spectacular 10th anniversary attack for which, those documents show, he was
desperately trying to organise. 

As for his notion that violent Islamic jihad might create a new caliphate
stretching from Indonesia to Spain - that seems even more far-fetched than
it did 10 years ago. Even the "Arab Spring" of uprisings against the secular
Middle Eastern dictators that Bin Laden hated is no vindication of his
warped ideology. 

The protest reflects far more a popular yearning to enjoy the simple rights
of political freedom and economic opportunity that we take for granted, than
any answer of 9/11's call to strike down a decadent yet overbearing West.
And yet my guess is that Bin Laden would be fairly pleased right now, even
though by any standard measure, he's lost the fight he started. 

But what about the ledger on the other side. Yes, America's leaders can
claim that, contrary to every prediction at the time, there has been no
terrorist attack on the US mainland since. And yes, the particular group
that carried out the attacks on New York and Washington DC has been largely
destroyed. But it took the mightiest military on earth almost 10 years to
track down and eliminate its most wanted single target, while the terrorist
movement for which he was the inspiration has become a Hydra. Chop off one
head in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Yemen and others start to grow elsewhere.
And in almost every other sense, these past 10 years have been a tale of
mistakes made, opportunities missed and lessons not learned. 

Consider first the opportunities missed. In the aftermath of 9/11, the US
enjoyed an outpouring of global support and sympathy unmatched since the
Second World War: "We Are All Americans Now," proclaimed that headline in Le
Monde, speaking on behalf of the European country that has more hang-ups
about America than most. 

Within a couple of years, however, that sympathy had been utterly
squandered. George W Bush and Dick Cheney were Ugly Americans reborn,
loathed across the Arab world and beyond. Barack Obama has repaired much of
the damage among traditional US allies. But in Islamic countries America's
reputation remains in tatters, despite its deliberately low profile in the
campaign to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. ("Leading from behind," one White
House aide injudiciously described the approach, provoking scorn and anger
from the president's Republican foes, insulted that the US was not visibly
heading this latest Western military foray against an Arab land.) But at
least Obama had tried to take the mistakes to heart. 

And even setting aside Libya, America remains bogged down in two wars in
Islamic countries, as a result of 9/11. The October 2001 invasion of
Afghanistan to remove the Taliban government that not only sheltered
al-Qa'ida but was literally of a piece with it, was absolutely justifiable -
though Bin Laden and his cohorts should have been eliminated within months
at Tora Bora. But why did everything take so much longer than it should
have? The answer of course lies in that other mistake of the Bush
administration, arguably the biggest single foreign policy blunder in all US
history: the war of choice against Iraq that has succeeded only in
strengthening the position of America's arch enemy Iran across the entire
region. 

According to one estimate, Iraq and Afghanistan may end up costing $4
trillion between them, an outlay covered thus far not by raising taxes as
most wars are covered, but by borrowing. To that extent, 9/11 has
contributed to the current economic crisis, helping create the mountain of
debt that now ties Obama's hands. 

And that borrowing continues. America is still in Iraq and may retain a
presence there for decades. The same goes for Afghanistan, even though the
killing of Bin Laden and the dispersal of al-Qa'ida to other countries mean
there is no sane reason why tens of thousands of US troops should remain
there, on a nation-building mission impossible. Afghanistan has already
provided its own grim 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks: August 2011 was
the deadliest month ever for US forces deployed there. 

Contributing to the two longest wars in the country's history were two more
pervasive errors. The first was the "Global War on Terror" itself. At the
time, the Bush administration's decision to treat 9/11 as an act of war
seemed to make sense; the country after all had suffered something that
neither Hitler nor the Soviet Union could manage, a devastating foreign
attack on its own soil. 

But declaration of the war on terror was the slippery slope that led to so
much that proved disastrous to America's reputation: torture, Abu Ghraib,
rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the denial of basic defendants' rights to
captured "enemy combatants" (many of whom, it belatedly transpired, were
innocent.) How much better to have treated the attacks as a criminal matter,
monstrous to be sure, but which could have been handled by civilian courts. 

But the US strategy post-9/11 contained an even greater mistake: a refusal
to face up to the basic dilemma at the core of its policy - that some of its
main allies in the "War on Terror" were in fact accomplices or even
instigators of that terrorism. One of them, Pakistan, sheltered Bin Laden.
Another, Saudi Arabia, provided 15 of the 19 hijackers. 

September 11, 2001 was a chance for Bush to take a real hack at the Gordian
knot of oil and security that distorts US policy in the Middle East, by
increasing the gasoline tax, reducing its addiction to imported oil, and
boosting alternative sources of energy. But next to nothing was done. The
world was told, you are either with us or against. For the 99 per cent of
the population not involved with the armed forces, Bush's rallying cry was:
"Keep on driving, keep on spending." 

The real world, however, moved on. Amid Washington's obsession with terror,
China has stepped up its economic challenge. The present moment has odd
echoes of the past - a whiff of the frivolity of those carefree days before
the real September 11, when the fuss was about shark attacks in Florida, and
whether a California Congressman was having an affair with a missing
Washington intern. 

And here we are 10 years on, amid a gathering economic crisis far more
obvious than the clues back then to an impending terrorist attack, wondering
if the magnificently absurd Sarah Palin will run for the White House,
watching in disbelief as the two parties squabble over the timing of a
presidential speech. 9/11 is not the cause of American decline. But it's as
good a marker as any of when that decline began. 

Natural Disasters From God