Friday, September 30, 2011

What this party needs is more graphs....

I know it cause major butt hurt any time "taxing incomes above 250k" is mentioned.

Yes I know that people who make 250k+ are not "rich", but lets not kid ourselves, they are not middle class either.



I have seen the middle and 250k is not it. This is not about class warfare, but an actual accounting of where individuals stand on the income scale.

-Cheers

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Take this job and shove it.....


A very depressing infographic about working in the United States. Andy this post is for you!

Time for a change....

It has been a while, but I decided the blog could use a face lift......

So we shall see how it goes, and other then the impenetrable prose, let me know if the contrast makes it harder to read.

-Cheers

Monday, September 26, 2011

A good place to start....


When talking about the diagnosis about what ails our economy it would be good if we could actually agree on the causes. Mike Konzcal does a good round up of the "competing" philosophies being litigated today, in Venn Diagram form! So you know I had to post it!

The Keynesian view

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The King I know....

With the recent anniversary of the "I have a Dream" speech, I find myself a bit reflective. When people talk about Dr. King there is this sort of (what is the opposite of demonization?) Santa Clausification.

I understand the need retroactively claim a hero. But let us not forget while King was alive, he was hated and unpopular to large swaths of the public.

So it is important to remember what Dr. King and his contemporaries actually did for the African American community. Not the country at large, but specifically African Americans. I personally do not have the words to describe it, nor did I live it. But my parents did, and my grand parents as well. I remember the "stories" and the "lessons", about how to act. The pervasive sense of fear that existed in this country for a segment of the population.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Word of the day!

Your word of the day is : flounce

flounce

[flouns]   Origin Like this word?

flounce

1   [flouns] verb, flounced, flounc·ing, noun
verb (used without object)
1.to go with impatient or impetuous, exaggerated movements: The star flounced out of the studio in a rage.
2. to throw the body about spasmodically; flounder.
noun
3.an act or instance of flouncing; a flouncing movement.
-Cheers

Your modern Republican Party....

I understand that my pleas to "No both sides are not the same!", often fall on deaf ears. It is the received conventional that the system is irrevocably broken due to both parties. Even if that is not the case, and demonstrably so, it fits the narrative better.

This piece over at Truth Out by, recently retired, longtime republican staffer Mike Lofgren is jarring.

The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was "bring it on!"

It is a long piece, but it very much deserves a read. Republicans the lunatics are running the asylum! I actively support a coherent Republican party. Even if I disagree with them, they form a necessary corrective. What we have today is not that. These are individuals who do not accept even the basic premise of government. They believe in some mythical past, devoid of wrongs and injustice. They ignore or vilify anyone who disagrees with them.

That is no recipe for a functional democracy.

-Cheers