September 2009
64 posts
Abstinence-only education programs don't work
THROWING MONEY AT PROGRAMS THAT DON’T WORK…. President Obama proposed eliminating federal funding for abstinence-only education, apparently because of the overwhelming evidence that the programs have failed spectacularly everywhere they’ve been tried. The White House wanted to redirect those funds to broader teen pregnancy-reduction programs. If there are two things...
NIKE LATEST TO REJECT USCOC ON CLIMATE CHANGE....
Steve Benen Following up on an item from yesterday, it appears that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s conservative line on global warming isn’t done alienating its one-time supporters. Nike will relinquish its spot on the board of directors at the Chamber of Commerce to protest the business lobby’s opposition to climate-change legislation. “We believe that on the issue of...
@JimN2010 Ideologues are the problem not the...
A great example of why Republican Ideologues have done damage to the quality of life for citizens was in the Henry Citizen Newsletter #123 on July 31 where the husband of a teacher wrote in about the impact of furlough’s on their family. He ended up having to take the day off of work to assist in getting the class ready, and pointed out that they have spent money out of pocket to buy white...
@JimN2010 Republican ideologues have created a...
It appears that the former Chairman of the Henry County Republican Party, Charles Mobley, has decided to tag me the tax increase king. This kind makes my case for me: Republican ideologues do a lot of damage when they are in government and can’t be trusted to promote fiscally responsible solutions. Its not that they are bad people—they just don’t get it! Its pretty straight...
Newsmax article talks of overthrowing Obama in...
From Josh Marshall over at TPM: A new Newsmax column advocates a military coup to unseat Obama or usher in a period of “shared responsibility” between military government and a ceremonial Obama presidency. “A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.” The author, John L. Perry, claims not to be ‘advocating’,...
Why Everyone Younger Than You is Spoiled: the...
Jeff Lundy: Sociologist Katherine Newman is working on a fascinating study of a new phenomenon called “delayed adulthood.” According to Newman, parents are bemoaning the extended amount of time their kids are taking to “grow up” in First World countries (e.g. U.S., Japan, Norway, Spain, etc.). Along with this phenomenon of “delayed adulthood,” Newman similarly finds media articles dotting the...
Should Obama be killed Poll... sigh...
Blogger Gets Credit For Blowing Whistle On Vile Poll A blog called The Political Carnival is getting credit this afternoon for calling out the ridiculous “Should Obama be killed?” poll that showed up on Facebook over the weekend (and is now being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service). GottaLaff, one of the blog’s authors, pointed out the offensive post last evening. Today,...
My Interview with Matt Weyandt
Matt Wyendt Interview by Jim Nichols Download now or listen on posterous 002_B_007_Jim Nichols_Matt Wyendt interview_2009_09_16.mp3 (21508 KB) I sat down recently with Executive Director of the Democratic Party of GA Matt Weyandt—hope you enjoy. If you’ve missed it, after the shout-down fest of August I decided to start sitting down to...
The Trucks won't load themselves... the Douglas...
I’m headed to work. Here are your quotes for the day… He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. —-Douglas Adams In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. —Douglas Adams ...
Four Arguments for the Free Market
Dan Hirschman Somewhere in his exposition of liberal theory from Hobbes to Marshall (my copy is elsewhere at the moment [EDIT: Page 104, about Malthus’ idea that competition served as a social regulation mechanism, Parsons doesn’t actually use the phrase free market]), Parsons notes that the importance of the free market for liberal* theory has a lot to do with the way it prevents...
Pigou, Glenn Beck, and the false case against...
false — claims about the cost of Waxman-Markey have been circulated by many supposed experts. Basic economics says that if we want to discourage a negative externality, like pollution, we need to put a price on that externality. One way is through an emissions tax; an alternative, with very similar economic results, is a system of tradable permits. All this goes back to Pigou; Greg Mankiw has...
Health Care Reform will pass-- Therefore the...
Ezra Klein - CBO: A Strong Public Plan Saves Lots of Money: According to Congress Daily, the CBO says attaching the public plan to Medicare rates will save even more money than originally thought: In a bid to wrangle concessions from the Blue Dog Coalition on healthcare reform, House leaders Thursday released CBO estimates for liberals’ preferred version of the public option that show $85...
The Shameful Obama Administration
Brad Delong: I did not work to elect Barack Hussein Obama so that his Justice Department could do things like this: Lizardbreath: US District Judge Colleen Kottar-Kelly just ordered the release (don’t get excited, it’s not going to happen unless the Justice Department decides not to appeal) of Fouad al-Rubiah, one of the prisoners at Guantanamo. Read the opinion — there are a...
Do the right thing Obama; though I doubt you...
NYT [S]ooner than he may prefer, Mr. Obama will have to face up to what he has so far avoided: the need to raise taxes broadly to rein in deficits. The deficits are not of his making. Some two-thirds of the $9 trillion shortfall resulted from policies that predate his administration; most of the rest is the cost of policies that both parties consider necessary, like continued relief from the...
The Sources of the Budget Deficit
W is the winner Two key political points on the recent deficit numbers. One, per Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden, is that this is primarily about Bush legacy policies and the economic downturn rather than the results of any new post-election initiatives: We’re not just seeing here that Bush’s policies were irresponsible, but an illustration of what was so irresponsible about them. When a...
Oxendine wants to put tax burden on working...
Gubernatorial Hopefuls Talk about Income Tax Elimination Rather Than Real Solutions When someone demands that Congress abolish the federal income tax, we typically consider that a fairly extreme position. But then again, we don’t run in the same circles as Georgia gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine, who feels that his peers in the anti-tax community are too wishy-washy if they don’t...
Germany set for centre-right coalition
Financial Times: Germany was on course on Sunday night for its first centre-right government in 11 years after voters gave chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and her Free Democratic allies a majority in parliament. Victory of the conservative-liberal alliance – which had campaigned for tax cuts and a return to nuclear energy but also social justice and tougher rules for...
Leaders of Honduras Coup vow to close Brazil...
Financial Times: Honduras’ de facto government threatened on Sunday to close Brazil’s embassy for harbouring ousted President Manuel Zelaya and moved to suppress dissent, defying international pressure to give up power. The government, which took power after a June 28 coup, also denied entry to an Organisation of American States delegation that had hoped to help broker a solution to the crisis. ...
Dozens killed in Philippines floods
My Dad had waist deep water at his place in Manila. If anyone has seen US reports on the flood, send them my way. I caught this report from the Financial Times: Rescuers from the army and civilian agencies struggled for a second day on Sunday to reach flood victims in the Philippines after a tropical storm swept through the main island of Luzon, leaving at least 95 dead and temporarily...
World Consumption Plunges Planet Into 'Ecological...
Yesterday was ecological debt day. Consumption exceeds Earth’s annual ‘biocapacity’ today amid warnings of dependence on overseas food and energy Rich consumers are still voraciously gobbling up the world’s resources, despite the worst recession in a generation, with their appetite pushing the planet into “ecological debt” from today, according to a report...
@JimN2010 Why i'm not a Republican activist...
The question of why I decided to become Chairman of the Democratic Party—within a certain range of voters this is becoming a very common for me to be getting. As I’ve mentioned 1 reason is just generational. I came of age politically with the Bush Administration. But I’ll continue to give examples as I go along so that people have a better understanding of my political...
The Age of American Unreason -- @JimN2010 why I'm...
p. 10 The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby [T]here are ways of trying to strangle ideas that do not involve straightforward attempts at censorship or intimidation. The suggestion that there is something sinister, even un-American, about intense devotion to ideas, reason, logic, evidence, and precise language is one of them. Just before the 2004 presidential election, the journalist...
Health Care Reform
Charles Chamberlin nails it—as usual… Trigger This Lets face facts… 1) there will be a health insurance reform bill that will pass and be signed 2) the fiscal conservative position will be to pass the cheapest, most cost-effective, efficient bill possible TF 3)Fiscal conservatives support a strong public option so that tax dollars don’t get needlessly wasted—we...
GA Gov. race poll ---Barnes and Oxendine
new poll GA-Gov: Strategic Vision Drops In, Gets Same Results As Everyone This one doesn’t require too many words to explain: Republican pollsters Strategic Vision (who, in an unrelated note, just got spanked by the AAPOR) goes into Georgia, and basically gets the same numbers as everyone else. Roy Barnes and John Oxendine continue to lap the fields in the primaries. It has been a while,...
sigh....
I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean. Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
Here in Georgia its not politically correct to...
Economist John Quiggin states the obvious and untouchable truth about United State politics Much more than in most other countries I’m familiar with, there’s a deep gulf in the US between ‘left’ intellectuals and the more leftish of the major political parties, that is, the Democrats. In part, of course, this is because, even after Blair, Keating and others, the Democrats are a long way to the...
Dean Baker on Chile and Social Security
Leaving Things Out of the Leaving Things Out Critique The Washington Post beats up on a book on globalization by Jon Jeter, a former WAPO reporter. The book is largely critical of the recent course of globalization, the reviewer clearly less so. In the last paragraph the reviewer takes Jeter to task for praising Chile’s globalization with a human face, without mentioning, among other...
Interview with Richard Ray part deux
Richard Ray Interview by Jim Nichols Download now or listen on posterous 001_A_013_Jim Nichols_Richard Ray interview_2009_08_26_01_c_02.mp3 (21698 KB) Part two of my sit down with Richard Ray of the GA AFL-CIO Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
interview with Richard Ray part 1
Richard Ray Interview by Jim Nichols Download now or listen on posterous 001_A_013_Jim Nichols_Richard Ray interview_2009_08_26_01_c_01.mp3 (17396 KB) In my newly started saga to go talk to interesting people who have intresting things to say—I sat down a few weeks back with Richard Ray, the President of the Georgia AFL-CIO. Here’s part...
Myths of the AIG Collapse
Barry Ritholtz AIG FP remains somewhat somewhat unknown to most people. Numerous issues associated with the collapse seem to be — still — misunderstood by many professionals, analysts and pundits. Consider: • Hedge Fund: AIG FP was a derivative writing quasi-hedge fund within AIG. They were essentially a writer of highly leveraged, naked options. Indeed, their leverage was simply...
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to...
Israel Committed War Crimes in White Phosphorus...
So says the UN A UN fact-finding mission has accused Israel of committing war crimes by using white phosphorus in built-up areas in the Gaza War, and called for the weapon to be banned in urban warfare. The investigation, set up by the controversial UN Human Rights Council, concluded that Israeli forces were “systematically reckless” in the use of white phosphorus in the conflict. ...
‘Hamid Karzai Has Stolen the Election’
Jimmy Carter: ”Now the question is whether he gets away with it.” Posted via web from Jim Nichols | Comment »
Democracy in Action... Sunday sales...
Yikes… Douglas County voters said “no” to the sale of alcoholic drinks on Sundays. The referendum was defeated by a margin of 1,670 “no” votes to 921 “yes” votes. There are 69,026 registered voters in Douglas County, according to Georgia Secretary of State’s office, but only about 4 percent voted Tuesday. Tuesday’s special election would...
2 + 2 = 4
Santorum Ties Himself Into Knots Justifying Congress’ Use Of Reconciliation During The Bush Years On an RNC conference call today, Politico’s Ben Smith asked former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum why he believes it would be an “abomination” for Congress to use the budget reconciliation process — which requires 51 instead of 60 votes — to pass health care reform, considering that the...
Just a reminder...
As I’ve mentioned a number of times. November 2008 wasn’t a mandate for Obama—-it was a repudiation of conservatives… Via Brad Delong: George W. Bush on Sarah Palin and John McCain Matt Latimer http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_10957&pageNum=7: On Sarah Palin: [T]he president [George W. Bush], ever the skilled politician, had concerns about the...
Feel free to share your own thoughts with me...
Homeowners association headaches… Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
How is the best way to record a phone call?
Thats not a zen koan… I have a few phone interviews coming up but I’ve got to figure out the best way to record the conversations so that I can post them up for you guys to hear. I was going to just try my cell phone on speaker and record that way… but does anyone have any other ways that might work better? Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
A Crowd of 37.8 Million
Talking Points Memo A Crowd of 37.8 MillionBy Josh Marshall Crowd size controversies are as American as apple pie when it comes to major political events and protests. Let’s start by stipulating to that fact. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of quite these dimensions — where the reasonable and disinterested estimates (mid-to-high 5-figures) are so...
Why has behavioral economics been so much more...
Random Thought of the Day: Econ Soc vs. Behavioral Econ Perhaps this question is too easy, and admits too many good answers, but I wonder if there is something to be learned by asking it. Both subfields/perspectives have come to the fore in the last 30 years (with 1981-1985 being the genesis of the new economic sociology, roughly, and behavioral econ starting perhaps in the late 70s with Kahneman...
The language and logic of Leninism
Conservative David Frum wrote a great piece on entertainer Glen Beck recently— GOP Surrenders to Beck’s Mob Rule Go figure… David Horowitz goes to the defence of Beck. Frum in response to Horowitz justifiably bemoans the essence of the tactics of many modern conservatives My original piece observed: When Glenn Beck made his Fox debut, some shrewd conservatives responded with a...
the economic crisis and theory
David Laidler: Lucas, Keynes, and the Crisis Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
Factcheck.org and helath care reform
Factcheck.org’s battle against health care reform misinformation Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
The 9/12 Protest
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-14-2009/mad-men Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
File under: suckers...
Doug Henwood made this point on his radio show the other day but… Have you noticed how many “Liberal” organizations are sending out emails to their activists saying… “help stand up to the health insurance companies!” Hate to break it to you but you’re standing up for them…. No public option…..require everyone to buy from insurance...
posting will (hopefully) be light...
As I have an economics test on Tuesday that I have to study for. I’m assuming there will be an inverse relation between blog posts and grade? Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
Interview with Dean Baker
090815 001 by Jim Nichols Download now or listen on posterous Dean Baker interview.mp3 (23774 KB) As I watched the August shout-down-a-thon that we called a debate on health care I struggled with the question of how I could add more substance to a political culture that has turned to irrational fear, empty slogans, and anger. When I attended one of...
New technology to curb voter fraud...
Via Financial Times: Pret-A-Voter targets fraud Scientists in Britain and Luxembourg are developing an electronic voting system that could plug security loopholes and curb the potential for electoral fraud. The encrypted Pret-A-Voter (PaV) prototype will be easy to use, cheap to run and “more secure than anything available at the moment”, said James Heather of the University of Surrey,...
Markets crave predictability
Via Financial Times: We need a world financial court with specialist judges High-level financial crime is showing increasing disrespect for national boundaries too and can be just as overwhelming for a local judge. We need to ensure that: (i) courts stay up-to-date with global financial market developments, (ii) judges have the requisite competence to unravel facts and apply laws that often...
The Bush Tax Cuts Cost 2 and a Half Times as Much...
Citizens for Tax Justice: Newly revised estimates from Citizens for Tax Justice show that the Bush tax cuts cost almost $2.5 trillion over the decade after they were first enacted (2001-2010). Preliminary estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show that the House Democrats’ health care reform legislation is projected to cost $1 trillion over the decade after it would...
