Public Broadcasting Should Not Compete with Private

A great article:

The problem I see with Robert's thinking is it puts NPR and PBS into the "marketplace of ideas," a mythological space where news competes successfully with sex, violence, drama and comedy —  the four horsemen of entertainment that have come to pass for "the right stuff" of commercial success. I use them successfully as a screenwriter, but they don't belong as a part of news.

It is a mistake to use market economics as the sole arbiter of value in public broadcasting. There is no "marketplace of ideas" — it's a marketplace of emotions, and the confusion of the two is hurting democracy as the fourth estate is forced to compete with entertainment and, quite naturally, resorts to the emotional strategies of a) comedy and b) outrage as packaging vehicles.

The purpose of news is not to tell us what we want to hear or what stimulates us or what reaffirms our views, as Hollywood already does quite successfully, but to tell us what we don't necessarily want to hear but ought to know about anyway. This is not something that is as broadly commercial, but in a democracy it is vitally important.

U sexuality prof. wins fight: Apple pulls app | StarTribune.com

StarTribune.com: Glad to see that Apple's guidelines can be used by the forces of good, too. No more app suggesting that being gay is a perversion!

Nuclear Chain Reaction Demonstrated With Mouse Traps and Ping Pong Balls (Video)

Nuclear Chain Reaction Demonstrated With Mouse Traps and Ping Pong Balls (Video): "
Image via YouTube video screengrab

With all eyes on the news from Japan, it's easy to get frightened or confused about what exactly is happening. Luckily, TreeHugger Mike has been keeping us updated on a daily basis on everything we need to know. But sometimes it's interesting to get right down to the basics, to the things we can't remember from high school physics classes. And that includes how a nuclear chain reaction actually works. Read the full story on TreeHugger"

Consistency

If the state has to balance a budget like a family, does this GOP proposal in Minnesota mean I'm supposed to go raid my kid's piggy bank to pay the bills, or steal from a neighbor?

What we can learn from Japan's nuclear accident

Two good articles.  First, on the high risks.

An earthquake-and-tsunami zone crowded with 127 million people is an unwise place for 54 reactors. The 1960s design of five Fukushima-I reactors has the smallest safety margin and probably can't contain 90 percent of meltdowns. The U.S. has six identical and 17 very similar plants.

Second, on the economics.
Instead, Americans should abandon nuclear power for its prohibitive and uncompetitive costs.

The wildly escalting costs of nuclear plants under construction in the U.S. are a perfect example. A pair of proposed nuclear power plants in Florida have "overnight" costs of $3,800 per kilowatt, but since nuclear power plants actually take eight years to construct, the total estimated project costs are closer to $6,800 per kilowatt (kW) of capacity. This figure is reinforced by an estimate for Progress Energy's two new units ($6,300 per kW, $8,800 per kW), and Georgia Power's new plants ($4,000 per kW, $6,335 per kW), both still incomplete.

What We Give the Wealthy to Screw the Middle Class

Source: Center for American Progress

Minnesota's tax system becoming more regressive | Stories

Minnesota's tax system becoming more regressive:

High-income Minnesotans continue to pay lower overall tax rates than everyone else, according to a new tax incidence study released today by the Minnesota Department of Revenue.


The overall state and local tax burden averaged 11.5 percent of income in 2008. The state's highest-income taxpayers — the 10 percent of households earning more than $130,000 — paid an effective tax rate of 10.3 percent. The remaining 90 percent of low- and middle-income households paid a substantially higher effective tax rate of 12.3 percent.

Source: Minnesota Department of Revenue

A copy of the study is available here. [PDF]

Increase proposed for motor vehicle filing fees | Political Agenda

Increase proposed for motor vehicle filing fees | Political Agenda: "It's obviously not a tax increase, because GOP lawmakers are behind it. But Minnesota residents would pay more in filing fees for car license renewals and title transfers under a bill moving through the Legislature."

Politics has really jumped the shark. Republicans recognize you can't balance a budget that is negative $5 billion without revenue, but they senselessly eschew taxes.

You might as well call this "GOP lawmakers propose fee tax increase."

Legislative Irony

"That's the difference between him and me," he added. "I'm not looking for anything bigger or better. I just want to work hard, do the right thing for Minnesota as a senator, and then return home to enjoy beautiful Lake Ida with my wife and family." 

A Republican state senator in Minnesota, shepherding legislation to allow new coal plants to be constructed and to exempt ethanol plants from environmental review.

I hope a coal plant shits in your lake.

An inspiring speech by a Wisconsin farmer

Hat tip: Gawker

Web Browser Share (Chart)

Source

Note to Michele Bachmann

If you are the self-titled leader of the Tea Party, you might want to get their history right. 

People Said Stuff, Reports New York Times

A great analysis of the harm done by modern media when it's objectivity results in "he said, she said" reporting.

"At House EPA Hearing, Both Sides Claim Science."
And it's true! Both sides did claim science. For paragraph after paragraph, Broder dutifully transcribes who said what, this side's scientists and that side's scientists, this guy's zinger and that guy's zinger. At no point in the story is there a hint that there might be facts of the matter behind the dueling quotes, that one set of assertions might be supported by more evidence than the other, that one set of scientists might have more credibility than the other. At no point in the story is there a fact about the world -- the only facts are that people said stuff.

David Roberts, the author, goes on to note that a new study provides evidence to back up the claim that this kind of reporting reduces reader's understanding of the subjects being discussed. 

What's the truth?  The media doesn't often help you find out.

Sheer legislative madness

Congressional Republicans have a bill to prevent the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions, purely because they don't accept the science of climate change. The anti-truth forces are running the U.S. House:

For Congress to intervene in the scientific determinations of a public health agency is, as far as I know, unprecedented. You might think there would be urgent and compelling reasons for politicians support such a radical move. But you'd be wrong. The arguments Republicans have used in favor of it are transparently absurd, and only getting more so.

Republican class warfare

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Crisis in Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street
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Teachers make too much (average $50,000) and must take pay cuts to balance budgets (Wisconsin state budget).
Households making $250,000 a year are "near poverty" and can't afford the expiration of the Bush tax cuts (Federal budget).

Republicans: inconsistency enough to smash the middle class.

Costco Pulls Threatened Fish from Stores

Costco Pulls Threatened Fish from Stores: "The retailer says it will not sell Atlantic cod, Atlantic halibut, Chilean sea bass, grouper, monkfish, redfish, swordfish, bluefin tuna or other at-risk species until a sustainable source can be identified."

A+ for Hape Toys (and Educo)

We got my son a play kitchen for his first birthday, but one of the doors warped before it was a year old and no longer closes.  I took a chance and emailed Educo (subsidiary of HAPE International) asking if they would replace the door.

Within 48 hours I got a reply that, yes, they would!

That's good service.  And it's a great toy.

Proud to be #3 for all these years

Thanks, Rick.

Supreme Court: Corporations do not enjoy personal privacy rights | Business Agenda

Supreme Court: Corporations do not enjoy personal privacy rights | Business Agenda: "

Corporations do not enjoy a right to personal privacy that would prevent disclosure of certain embarrassing documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

Class warfare - a study in irony

• In 2001, a 10-year tax cut for millionaires costing the middle class $700 billion.
• In 2011, a 2-year extension of that tax cut in the face of a $1.5 trillion deficit.
• A financial crisis caused by rich bankers playing funny with money, none of whom go to jail, but who the middle class bails out to the tune of $700 billion.  
• In three years, Wall Street profits rise 720%, while unemployment doubles and middle class home equity falls by 35%.
• Corporations pay just 10% of federal taxes (down from 30%) while income taxpayers (the middle class) contribute 40% (up from 10%).  And the rich pay half what they used to in income taxes on their highest dollar.
• A governor takes a 20 minute phone call from a rich donor (he thinks) while ignoring phone calls from elected legislators.

But class warfare?  Only happens when teachers want to keep their union so that their hourly wage barely scrapes past the federal minimum. 

Dear rich people, Fox News, and Republicans.  I'm a middle class warrior, and my class is out to take our money back.  See you in Madison.

Rationality and guns

I heard that someone recently got shot at a gun show.  The gun libertarians will suggest that the solution to shootings is to arm more folks, so that people can defend themselves.  This idea makes sense if only we can assume that people who shoot people are rational, and therefore deterred by the idea of armed victims.  Since the death penalty doesn't deter crime, why would gun proliferation?

One other thought.  If we have a goal of reducing violence, whether committed by nutters with guns or gun accidents, then gun proliferation doesn't help us much there either.  I haven't seen the firearm yet that can return a bullet back to the gun.  Having guns available to respond to violence is only an answer if you like vengeance.  And the proliferation of weapons only makes it easier to have accidents. 

When it comes to public policy, I'm fairly agnostic about firearms legislation.  I think people should have to have a permit for a firearm (just like a car!) and that weapons of mass destruction (e.g. automatic weapons and large magazines) should be restricted or banned.  But I'm tired of fighting with people who think that guns will solve all their problems.

Maybe what we really need is mandatory gun violence insurance.  Buy all the guns you want, but you have to carry liability insurance for each one, just like a car.  There's a novelty.

I'm more worried about a coporate takeover of the internet

The recently installed Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH), has no intention of finding any compromise on network neutrality. If he can't override the new rules, he will work to defund their enforcement. And if that doesn't work, he will continue railing against a "government takeover of the Internet" in speeches until something gets done. 

Where's the outcry against the corporate takeover of the internet?  Without net neutrality, browsing will look a lot more like this:

And that blows.

A favor regarding unions

The next time you hear someone in the media criticize public employee unions (and repeat the myth that they have rich salaries and benefits), ask them this: "what multiple of the median household income is your salary?"

Moldy 2

I started using Tumblr to blog, since it plays nicer with some iPhone reading apps I use.  The stuff you see up above on the main site is the feed from that blog.  Generally, what I put over there is articles with short commentary.  I'll still use Blogger for the longer posts.

In Case You Were Wondering

How I work faster

Like most jobs, mine involves a lot of repeat work.  I'm on the web and writing almost constantly, and also using spreadsheets and presenting data in charts.  Here's a few things I use to work faster:

• Firefox v4 Beta.  It's so much faster than FF 3, it's really remarkable.  Just get it.  
• FF bookmark keywords - type "pblog" to post to my blog or "gm" to open gmail.  Awesome!
• Firefox add-ons: 
• Adblock Plus - news pages load a lot faster without ads
• Table2Clipboard - get the data, ready-formatted for Excel
• Favicon Picker 3 - it's easier to find a bookmark by an image than text.  You can get rid of text entirely and just have a toolbar of images or short text reminders and get more of your bookmarks right in front.
• Pin tabs (in FF3, FaviconizeTab) - great way to make always-open tabs smaller.  
• Tinyurl Generator - get links in short format fast, for making citations.
• Remember the Milk - no better way to keep your task list up-to-date (and synced with your mobile device).  You can add tasks by Twitter, email, SMS, or on their website Smart Bar.  My favorite is to create tasks and then put in the unique URL for the email I was reading as a reference.  One click and I have all the context for "reply to Jim"
• Quicksilver (Mac) - Hit Command-Spacebar and you can move files, find files, open programs, all from this beautiful window.  My favorite is selecting several images files and dragging them, then opening Quicksilver (while holding the files with the mouse) and dropping them on the window to open my image editor.
• Punakea (Mac) - I tag all my files with this, allowing me to sort emails, web pages, pdfs, and my own documents by category without lots of nested folders.  Best tool for organizing my research, ever.

I hope some of this is useful to you!

Defending public employees

10 Things You Should Know About Gov. Walker's Class Warfare in WI

http://joshhealey.org/2011/02/17/class-warfare-in-wisconsin/

Wisconsin Power Play

As usual, Paul Krugman nails it - Gov. Walker is out to kill the middle class:

Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

more...

When the Economy Sucks, People Get Mean

I've been reading about the stunning attack on unions by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker this week, essentially stripping teachers and other public employees of their collective bargaining rights in the name of cost cutting.

What really disappoints me, however, is not that a Republican would attack their political enemies, but that more non-union folks seem to be just fine with it.  The standard line goes something like this: "I'm hurting in this down economy, so those public employees (who I believe have great wages and benefits) should pay up, too."

Instead of lashing out in anger and frustration, why aren't people focusing on the fact that unions have provided working people a way to protect their wages and benefits against economic cycles?  Isn't anyone watching this and saying, "shit, if they can take away the good wages and benefits of unions, then none of us stand a chance at maintaining a middle class life." 

I'm just blown away by the shortsightedness, and I hope the union members in Wisconsin realize that it's time to fight or die.

Great graphic of Obama's federal budget proposal

https://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2011/0119-budget/index.html?hp

Taxes, Medicine and Public Ownership

Several thoughts on spending tax dollars wisely:

• Why do we waste money on taxpayer-funded stadiums with no factual claim to improving the economy of the city or state?
• Why do we have an entire political party with a mantra of "no new taxes" (or "Eat the Future") when it's exactly the opposite of what most Americans want of government (more services and a willingness to pay more)?  Here's how.
• And here's where taxes meet the people - property taxes.
• Speaking of government budgets, here's your chance to balance the Minnesota state budget.  I simply raised taxes: done.  Now I don't have to cut poor people off from health coverage, kids from education, or programs for protecting the environment for future generations.

It makes a lot more sense to talk honestly about how government services work, how much they cost, and how we pay for them.  

Speaking of a lack of honesty, how about modern medicine?

• Many peer-reviewed studies are simply ghost-written by drug or medical device companies with a financial interest in the conclusion.
• Even worse, many clinical trials - the gold standard for evaluating medical treatments - are performed by companies who are willing to – against science – bury unfavorable results and puff up marginal results to make money.

Okay, big tangent.  The Packers – the only publicly owned major sports team – just won the Super Bowl.  Even when they stunk, no one could threaten to move the team, they're sold out for a generation, and they have a huge fan base.  So why can no other pro sports team be publicly owned?  After all, the NFL is already socialist.  Could it work for the Mets?

And ownership matters.  Here's a great insight from Thomas Friedman, speaking of the newfound ownership Egyptians feel for their country as they try to tear it from the hands of dictators:

I spent part of the morning in the square watching and photographing a group of young Egyptian students wearing plastic gloves taking garbage in both hands and neatly scooping it into black plastic bags to keep the area clean. This touched me in particular because more than once in this column I have quoted the aphorism that “in the history of the world no one has ever washed a rented car.” I used it to make the point that no one has ever washed a rented country either — and for the last century Arabs have just been renting their countries from kings, dictators and colonial powers. So, they had no desire to wash them. 

Well, Egyptians have stopped renting, at least in Tahrir Square, where a sign hung Thursday said: “Tahrir — the only free place in Egypt.” So I went up to one of these young kids on garbage duty — Karim Turki, 23, who worked in a skin-care shop — and asked him: “Why did you volunteer for this?” He couldn’t get the words out in broken English fast enough: “This is my earth. This is my country. This is my home. I will clean all Egypt when Mubarak will go out.” Ownership is a beautiful thing.

One more uplifting story to end with: a woman fighting terrorism with microloans.

This was definitely me

Does this mean I have to buy a Passat?

I Love How Stats Bust (or Reinforce) Our Personal Myths

Like those myths we believe in sports

Most fascinating?  Baseball umpires shrink the strike zone with two strikes and enlarge it with 3 balls.  They are also less likely to let a famous player get called out, and more likely to favor the home team.

Walter F. Mondale was the last true deficit hawk

Americans like the idea of cutting spending rather than raising taxes, but we prefer not to cut any government program we like, which accounts for most of the budget.  See this recent CNN poll:

For each of the following federal spending categories, is it more important to make progress on reducing the deficit, or is it more important to prevent significant cuts to each of the following programs:

Program	Reduce it for deficit reduction	Avoid significant reductions in this one
Medicare	18%	81%
Medicaid	29	70
Social Security	21	78
Unemployment ben’s	31	68
Defense/military	50	49
Welfare spending	56	44
Veterans benefits	14	85
Education	25	75
Govt pensions	61	39
Roads/mass transit	39	61
Foreign aid	81	18

Foreign aid, by the way, represents less than one half of one percent of federal spending. Depending on how you group programs, the other ten categories that CNN tested are the ten costliest categories.

The pie chart to the right validates Black's assessment of budget categories.


Since we can't agree what to cut, then the honest thing to do is raise taxes to pay for what we want.  And the last politician to be straight with America about taxes was Walter F. Mondale, in a presidential debate in 1984:

Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did.

And regarding Reagan, he was right.  Reagan signed several tax increases in his first term.  It was the right thing to do.

If you have an iPhone and like turn-based strategy games, buy Battle for Wesnoth now

It was worth it at $4.99 and it's currently on sale for $0.99 (curse my impatient self!).

This Sums it Up

Why the health care law is good, why Republicans are lying about it, and how the media helps them. Oh, and it's funny.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tonal Recall
www.thedailyshow.com
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One space or two?

Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.

Attacking the Minnesota Winter Death Star

How every football game should be broadcast

Why Not Regulate Guns as Seriously as Toys?

Jared Loughner was considered too mentally unstable to attend community college. He was rejected by the Army. Yet buy a Glock handgun and a 33-round magazine? No problem.

To protect the public, we regulate cars and toys, medicines and mutual funds. So, simply as a public health matter, shouldn’t we take steps to reduce the toll from our domestic arms industry? 

Read more...

The Oatmeal: How to Make Your (Online) Shopping Cart Suck Less

Click through to read the whole comic:

How many foreclosures were illegal? FL Attorney General says A LOT

Florida Attorney General Fraudclosure Report | Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases

Honoring the Constitution - the origin of big government

An incredibly insightful piece from political writer Eric Black this week, noting the irony in the House Republican reading of the Constitution last week:

Those who framed the Constitution and favored its ratification believed that the United States needed a strong federal government. That’s why they are referred to the “federalists.”

Oh history, thou art funny.

Unemployment: How to use charts to provide context

Curb Your Enthusiasm - NYTimes.com

Gov. Pawlenty's budget legacy

A nice overview of the end to the one-time budget fixes for Minnesota, now that former Gov. Pawlenty has spent them all. 

The last Congress did a lot

• Health care reform
• Financial reform
• Food safety
• Nuclear arms treaty
• Multiple economic stimulus packages
• and more...

It wasn't perfect, but that's one heck of a list

Placebo effect may make sugar pills beat "real" drugs

Science writer Steve Silberman has written a terrific background article on the “little bombshell of a study” on placebos that was published right before Christmas in the open-access medical journal PLoS One.

The study, writes Silberman, “threatens to make humble sugar pills something they’ve rarely had a chance to be in the history of medicine: a respectable, ethically sound treatment for disease that has been vetted in controlled trials.”

Read more at Minnpost.com

A little British phone humor

Hat tip to muninetworks.org.

8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Bee Study | Wired Science | Wired.com

8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Bee Study | Wired Science | Wired.com: "A group of British schoolchildren may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a new paper in Biology Letters, 25 8- to 10-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns."

No one is too young for science and science is fun. To quote the kid: "We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before." This is absolutely brilliant and should be part of every school curriculum.

Ban on Cribs with Drop-sides Seems Like Overreach

In the last decade, 32 infants have died in cribs with sides that can lower down, called drop-side cribs.  Because of this, and a bounty of recalls (over 7 million cribs), the U.S. government is going to essentially ban the sale of drop-side cribs. 

I agree that we have a problem when manufacturers have to recall so many cribs.  But there are approximately 8 million children who are age 0-2 and in the last decade there have been over 40 million kids in the last decade who have been ages 0-2.  That means 1 in every 1.25 million infants has died in a drop-side crib in the last 10 years.  For comparison, 2,500 infants die of SIDS each year (1 in every 1,600 infants).  And 40,000 Americans die every year in car accidents (1 in every 7,500 people).


It's a tragedy when a child dies, but enough of a tragedy to ban every drop-side crib?  I'd be more confident if we knew that cribs with fixed sides will be manufactured with more care for safety than drop-side cribs, but I doubt it (it would be interesting to know how many infants died in non-drop-side cribs in the last decade).

There are many hazards for infants, but I can think of a few (persistent endocrine-disrupting chemicals like BPA) that probably deserve more attention than drop-side cribs.

TSA's misdirected anti-terror efforts: a "nude awakening"

There's probably no better summary of my feelings about the latest techno-mythical anti-terror device at airports.  From a college junior, no less:

The odds of dying on an airplane as a result of a terrorist hijacking are less than 1 in 25 million — which, for all intents and purposes, is effectively zero — according to Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. By comparison, the odds of dying in a normal airplane crash, according to the OAG Aviation Database, are 1 in 9.2 million. This means that, on average, pilots are responsible for more deaths than terrorists.

In the same vein, the average American is 87 times more likely to drown than die by a terrorist attack; 50 times more likely to die by lightening; and 8 times more likely to die by a police officer, according to the National Safety Council’s 2004 estimates. I can go on, the point is this: the risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn’t make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly.

To cut all taxes or not?

Paul Krugman says of extending all the Bush tax cuts (including those for the wealthy) "Let's Not Make a Deal."

But Nick Silver suggests that Democrats don't necessarily have any bargaining chips, unless they're seriously prepared to let the entire $4 trillion tax cut program expire.

My vote?  Let the cuts expire and see if Republicans are willing to start fresh with tax cuts in January when they have to argue about the deficit impact.  Or just pass an entirely new program of Obama middle-class tax cuts.  Let the Republicans oppose that.

Hard to understand opposition to food safety

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This Election Celebrated Multiculturalism

From my Uncle's brilliant Christmas letter:

And – this may surprise some of you – I'm pretty darn grateful for the elections just past, not for policy reasons (considering, if you will, how well the GOP did the last time it controlled the House) but because it's pretty darn cool that, having elected a black man President, we now have a Speaker who is, well, kind of an orange color, which I think speaks well for the inclusive impulses of the American electorate.

Buy organic strawberries

California sacrifices farm workers in favor of strawberries | Grist: "Strawberry pickerAfter a long battle, the state of California has overruled its own scientists and approved the use of the powerful neurotoxic pesticide methyl iodide on strawberries as a replacement for the ozone-depleting pesticide methyl bromide. Grist has covered the issue extensively, but it was Sam Fromartz, author of Organic, Inc, who brought up the crucial point:"

Pollution Makes Gays - Support the Environmental Protection!

Pollution Making 'Male Birds Mate With Each Other': Scientists : TreeHugger

P.S. subject is very, very tongue in cheek

Close the Washington Monument

Schneier on Security: "The grand reopening of the Washington Monument will not occur when we've won the war on terror, because that will never happen. It won't even occur when we've defeated al Qaeda. Militant Islamic terrorism has fractured into small, elusive groups. We can reopen the Washington Monument when we've defeated our fears, when we've come to accept that placing safety above all other virtues cedes too much power to government and that liberty is worth the risks, and that the price of freedom is accepting the possibility of crime."

How Germany got it right on the economy

Harold Meyerson: "But then, Germans have something to honk about. Germany's economy is the strongest in the world. Its trade balance - the value of its exports over its imports - is second only to China's, which is all the more remarkable since Germany is home to just 82 million people. Its 7.5 percent unemployment rate - two percentage points below ours - is lower than at any time since right after reunification. Growth is robust, and real wages are rising."

It's quite a turnabout for an economy that American and British bankers and economists derided for years as the sick man of Europe. German banks, they insisted, were too cautious and locally focused, while the German economy needed to slim down its manufacturing sector and beef up finance.

Wisely, the Germans declined the advice. Manufacturing still accounts for nearly a quarter of the German economy; it is just 11 percent of the British and U.S. economies (one reason the United States and Britain are struggling to boost their exports). Nor have German firms been slashing wages and off-shoring - the American way of keeping competitive - to maintain profits.

Public Disinterest (in Making Media Work)

Guernica / Public Disinterest: "In 1930, the FRC made clear the meaning of public interest by denying a license renewal to a Los Angeles station used primarily to broadcast sermons that attacked Jews, Roman Catholic church officials, and law enforcement agencies. In 1949, the FCC again defined what it meant by the public interest when it introduced what later became known as the fairness doctrine. Broadcasters had to devote “a reasonable percentage of time to coverage of public issues; and [the] coverage of these issues must be fair in the sense that it provides an opportunity for the presentation of contrasting points of view.”

...

Seventy-five years after the Federal Radio Commission declared there was no room on the public airwaves for “propaganda stations” and denied a license renewal to a station that attacked Jews and law enforcement agencies, the airwaves are filled with both propaganda and venom. Today the airwaves, stripped of commons rules, feed hatred."

My Nerdy Half Has Died and Gone to Heaven

Antibacterial soap keeps you TOO clean

Medical Daily: Study suggests that being too clean can make people sick: "Researchers also found that people age 18 and under with higher levels of triclosan were more likely to report diagnosis of allergies and hay fever."

Triclosan is the common anti-bacterial agent in soap and other household products. While purporting to protect people from infection, these products a) don't actually work and b) often simply strengthen germs. And now we know that they actually harm health in the long run. Brilliant.

The article also notes that the chemical BPA can have similar negative effects on the immune system.

Fighting Bullying With Babies

NYTimes.com: "The typical institutional response to bullying is to get tough. In the Tyler Clementi case, prosecutors are considering bringing hate-crime charges. But programs like the one I want to discuss today show the potential of augmenting our innate impulses to care for one another instead of just falling back on punishment as a deterrent. And what’s the secret formula? A baby."

Do Body Scanners Make Us Safer? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Room for Debate - NYTimes.com: "There are now about 385 full-body scanners at 70 airports in the United States, with 1,000 scanners planned by the end of next year. Many passengers are disturbed about the nearly-naked images created by the scanners and even more distressed with the thorough pat-downs for those who refuse to go through the machines. One citizens group is encouraging travelers to opt-out of the scans on Wednesday, one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Are Americans being unreasonable in resisting these measures? Are other nations handling airport security in more effective, less intrusive ways? What options should the T.S.A. consider?"

Great discussion at the NYT. I highly recommend the essays by Bruce Schneier and Rafi Sela.

Welcome America, newest banana republic

Earlier this month, I offended a number of readers with a column suggesting that if you want to see rapacious income inequality, you no longer need to visit a banana republic. You can just look around.

My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point.

That’s right: I may have wronged the banana republics. 

Democracy requires a reasonable level of income equality or it ceases to be democracy.

Warren Buffett: Bailout was "pretty good for government work"

A lot of conservative talking heads have slammed the stimulus bill and the bailout, but at least one beneficiary of a stable American economy, Warren Buffett, thinks Uncle Sam did a pretty good job.

Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic — and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective.

Judicial elections in Minnesota

Ever flip over your ballot and wonder who the heck all those judges are?  I work the polls on Election Day, and I can almost never find time to learn about the judges.  So why do we elect them?

Minnpost writer Eric Black examines that question:

Should Minnesota stick with the current system of choosing judges by competitive elections and maybe even make judicial elections more similar to elections for other offices by allowing judicial candidates to run as partisans?

Or should the state switch to a system in which judges are recommended by a panel of experts, appointed by governors to vacancies on the bench, and face the voters only in retention elections in which the incumbents do not have opponents? Under this plan, which has been proposed by a commission but could be adopted only by a state constitutional amendment, the voters would decide whether to retain the judge for another term or remove him or her from the bench.

I feel like we should go the second route, that letting judicial candidates run as partisan candidates will be bad for our justice system.  Anyone else?

Find a Minnesota Food Shelf

A weekend attempt to find a place to donate food to a food shelf led to me discover how hard it is to find a food shelf on the internet. 

Anyway, I like solving problems, so here's a map of every food shelf in Minnesota.  Click the marker for the name and phone number of the food shelf.

Air Security has Jumped the Shark

There's talk about the health risks of the machines, but I can't believe you won't get more radiation on the flight. Here's some data:

A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth. More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.

Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.

Read more on Schneier's blog.

Red tape for a good reason

Minn. tells the stork: Take your time | StarTribune.com: "Minnesota might become the first state in the nation to create a policy against a common practice in obstetrics: inducing childbirth early just for the convenience of doctors or mothers.

Mindful of research showing health problems with babies delivered early, the state Department of Human Services has proposed that hospitals create plans by 2012 for reducing elective inductions prior to 39 weeks gestation. The penalty for those without plans? Fill out onerous paperwork for every state-funded delivery."

Can someone explain why Obama has to give in on tax cuts for millionaires?

I just read that the White House has hinted it is willing to allow the Bush tax cuts to extend (temporarily, ha ha) for all Americans.  In other words, Obama's going to let millionaires have a tax cut while the budget is deep in the red. 

Why is this dumb?

1. President Obama is supposedly the Democrat.  Democrats are supposed to favor the middle class, not the wealthy.
2. The President and Democrats still control Congress until January.  Why not extend the middle class tax cuts and let the wealthy ones expire?  When the Republicans come back in January and try to re-up for millionaires, they'll have to find offsetting spending cuts.  Good luck!
3. The middle-class only extension is the most popular strategy, according to polls. 
4. Obama's swallowed the Republican line about the deficit, hook, line and sinker.  So why not tell them we can't afford big tax cuts when the budget is in the red?  Helloooo!

Conservatives should like rail

Conservatives should like rail - JSOnline: "A passenger rail system well known to many people in Wisconsin, Chicago's Metra, provides some examples. In DuPage County, one survey showed that more than 15% of commuters with incomes over $75,000 took the train instead of driving. In Lake County, the figure was 13%. In the same counties, less than one-tenth of people with incomes over $75,000 took the bus. In fact, in Lake County, the mean earnings of rail passengers were more than $76,000; the figures for bus riders were less than $14,000. Most strikingly, the mean earnings of the people on the trains were more than double those of people driving to work alone.

These demographics suggest Metra carries lots of passengers who think of themselves as conservatives and usually vote Republican. When conservative governors or other officeholders say 'kill the trains,' they are killing the type of public transport that other conservatives want and use. If they promote buses as a replacement, they are offering something conservatives won't consider."

Thumbs Down to the "Attention Deficit Commission"

To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn't maintain approximately that ratio shouldn't be considered serious. The Simpson-Bowles plan, conversely, goes into loving detail about cuts to the discretionary budget and Social Security but turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare. That's not serious.

The Appropriate Response to Recount Demagoguery

Eric Black's post about MN GOP Chairman Tony Sutton's ridiculous rants about the best election system in the country.

Tracking Your Federal Tax Dollars

A short, concise "receipt" for your federal tax bill.  I read through it and I always want to know where Republicans will start cutting.  The big stuff is at the top, so will they cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security?  Military?  If you drop much further, there's not much to cut.

Maybe we should let some tax cuts expire so we don't have such a big line item for "Interest on the national debt." 

OMGWTFBBQ!  We can't do that, it makes sense!

Obama's India Trip

Does not...
...cost $200 million a day
...require 1/10th of the Navy
...require 500 hotel rooms

The stories about the India trip are as true as unicorn meat



Can we still be one country if we don't even have one set of facts?

WTF Has Obama Done So Far

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

Trick-or-Treating at a Republican's House

Sloppy political reporting

Minnpost.com: Almost every single indicator in Minnesota’s 7^th District points to a razor-tight race, or perhaps a GOP upset victory.

Every indicator except the poll numbers, which according to election analysis specialist Nate Silver of the New York Times, give the Democrat Peterson a 98% chance of victory.

Dear Derek Wallbank of Minnpost. Your story has great quotes, fun figures, and almost no fact. Just the kind of useless horse race reporting Minnesotans really need.

Lemons, Mileage, Stadiums, and Snacks

Lemon Socialism
Although it appears that the TARP bank bailout program will cost much, much less than forecast ($50 billion instead of $350 billion), the financial reform bill left a big opening for the government to do more bailouts.

Tax Miles, Not Fuel
New fuel economy rules mean less money for road upkeep even as Americans can drive further on a tank of gas.  It's time to tax miles driven rather than fuel.

New Twins Stadium Providing Some Returns for Taxpayers
Although far less than the amount taxpayers are putting in to pay off their $350 million contribution to the stadium, the sales tax instituted to help pay for the stadium is also going to help libraries and youth sports.  Apparently, Hennepin County was more clever than most stadium hosts.  Too bad they didn't spend the entire stadium budget on those programs...

"Snacklash"
How do you know Americans are petty?  When they complain about a compostable chip bag because it is too loud.  "Haven't they ever had chips while watching TV?"  Sun Chips maker Frito Lay will now only have the original flavor in the compostable bag, with the rest going back to the non-biodegradable variety. 

Dear whiny snackers, haven't you ever heard of a bowl?

Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck

Liberal v. conservative - illustrated by fire

I was hoping Fox News would have a nice piece about the triumph of conservative ideology. "Firefighters uphold policy against freeloaders!"

What a crappy policy to have fire protection as an optional fee. This family got screwed by ideology, not just a fire.

The Tea (Kettle) Movement

Tom Friedman says the Tea Party is all steam and no plan.  I'm still waiting to see if there's a non-Democratic Party with a plan to govern the country and not just bankrupt it with tax cuts.

The Tea Kettle movement can’t have a positive impact on the country because it has both misdiagnosed America’s main problem and hasn’t even offered a credible solution for the problem it has identified. How can you take a movement seriously that says it wants to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won’t identify the specific defense programs, Social Security, Medicare or other services it’s ready to cut — let alone explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy?

And how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won’t take it anymore from President Obama? Say what? Where were you folks for eight years?

Study: Real Men Do Apologize

Miller-McCune.: "men are, indeed, less likely to say “I’m sorry.” But they’re also less likely to take offense and expect an apology from someone else.

Their conclusion is that “men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior.” Whether on the giving or receiving end, males are less likely to feel an unpleasant incident is serious enough to warrant a statement of remorse."

Interesting. They go on to talk about how mixed gender relationships can suffer when the female takes offense at something the man doesn't think is an offense, and the lack of acknowledgment (or apology) can rankle.

FactChecking ‘The Pledge’ | FactCheck.org

FactChecking ‘The Pledge’ | FactCheck.org:

Summary

The Republican “Pledge to America,” released Sept. 23, contains some dubious factual claims:

* It declares that “the only parts of the economy expanding are government and our national debt.” Not true. So far this year government employment has declined slightly, while private sector employment has increased by 763,000 jobs.
* It says that “jobless claims continue to soar,” when in fact they are down eight percent from their worst levels.
* It repeats a bogus assertion that the Internal Revenue Service may need to expand by 16,500 positions, an inflated estimate based on false assumptions and guesswork.
* It claims the stimulus bill is costing $1 trillion, considerably more than the $814 billion, 10-year price tag currently estimated by nonpartisan congressional budget experts.
* It says Obama’s tax proposals would raise taxes on “roughly half the small business income in America,” an exaggeration. Much of the income the GOP is counting actually comes from big businesses making over $50 million a year.

For details on these and other examples please read on to the Analysis section.

Republican promise to repeal would toss kids off health care

Who is affected?

Andrew (13) and Emily Thompson (11).  She has autism, he has attention deficit disorder.  And until we got health care reform, insurance companies refused to cover them.

Ryan, age 6.  He survived leukemia.  Insurance companies refused to cover him.

Tucker Morefield.  He's 15 and lives with cerebral palsy and hit the $1 million lifetime maximum coverage on his parent's insurance, so the insurance company stopped paying the bills. 

Health care reform means that these kids will get health insurance and proper health care.

And Republicans want to take it away.

Voting, Learning, Happiness, America, Nutrition, iPhone photos, Cats, Flight Search Engine

• Are you registered to vote?  If you live in Minnesota, check online!
• Need focus as you learn, mix it up!  Changing locations and varying your topics helps you learn better than cramming a single subject in the library.
• More money makes you happy to a point, but freedom means more.
• What it means to be America, a thoughtful 9/11 editorial.
• The false security of nutrition-based eating, and the value of focusing on food.
• a) the percentage calories from fat in a food is meaningless,
  b) the percentage of saturated fat in a food is meaningless,
  c) the human body does not need to eat grains, be they whole or refined,
  d) you can forget about reading the Nutrition Facts altogether.
  
• Finding the date/time for your iPhone photos: a free app
• Cats should wear collars outside
• Awesome, visual flight search website

It's about effing time

U.S. Zeroes In on Use of Antibiotics by Pork Producers - NYTimes.com: "Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians."

Slowing antibiotic resistance

Key To Slowing Rise Of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections Is Pharmaceutical Conservation: "'This is a war we cannot win unless we adopt a two-pronged strategy: one that would boost the supply of new drugs and at the same time preserve the ones we have left,' says Aaron Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., one of the paper's co-authors."

I write about antibiotic resistance a lot, because I think its one of the most pressing issues of our time. We take for granted that when we get seriously ill, there will be a cure. But the truth is that we give so many antibiotics to animals and to sick people that don't need them, that we are in danger of losing all our cures.

And this article points out that the market cannot keep pace with antibiotic resistance because the incentive is to overuse drugs once they are newly developed, leading to accelerated resistance.

The article proposes changing the incentives and rewarding pharmaceutical companies for promoting judicious use of new drugs. It's something that needs to happen.

A decent analysis of the federal deficit

Contributing Columnist - One Nation, Two Deficits - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com: "Let’s look at the facts. The projected deficit for 2015 is 4 percent to 5 percent of G.D.P., depending on whose assumptions you use. A sustainable level is more like 3 percent or lower. So we need deficit reduction of 1 percent to 2 percent of G.D.P., or about $200 billion to $400 billion a year by 2015. These figures are uncertain, but they’re the best we have (and they may well turn out to be too optimistic)."

I think it's a dumb idea to be so deficit-crazy when our economy is in shambles, but this is a pretty objective analysis of the situation. You'll note that he's not suggesting we can balance the budget and keep the Bush tax cuts permanent. He's also not suggesting that we can't raise taxes (although there's obviously no political courage for that, either).

We don't just eat poorly, we make food poorly

NYTimes.com: "the larger truth is: industrial agriculture is itself unhealthy.

Repeated studies have found that cramming hens into small cages results in more eggs with salmonella than in cage-free operations. As a trade journal, World Poultry, acknowledged in May: “salmonella thrives in cage housing.”

Industrial operations — essentially factories of meat and eggs — excel at manufacturing cheap food for the supermarket. But there is evidence that this model is economically viable only because it passes on health costs to the public — in the form of occasional salmonella, antibiotic-resistant diseases, polluted waters, food poisoning and possibly certain cancers. That’s why the president’s cancer panel this year recommended that consumers turn to organic food if possible — a stunning condemnation of our food system."

It's pretty sad when your government tells you to avoid buying conventional food because of the dangers in the food itself (pathogens) but also because of the extreme environmental and human impact of making food industrially. And as I just wrote about, we can grow our food organically and get better food and a healthier environment, without significantly sacrificing yields.

As to the profits of the agribusiness sector, that's another story. When it comes to the unhealthy food we eat, follow the money.

Study confirms organic food is healthier, tastier, better for soil

Grist: "Does growing food organically really matter?"

The study design was both careful and comprehensive in scope. The strawberries were grown on 13 conventional and 13 organic fields, with organic/conventional field pairs located adjacently in order to control for soil type and weather patterns. The data was drawn from repeated harvests over a two-year period, and the strawberries were picked, transported, and stored under identical conditions to replicate retail practices. And just as farming is a complex business, scientists contributing to the study range from soil and food scientists to genetics experts and statistics specialists, who analyzed 31 soil properties, soil DNA, and the relative taste and nutritional quality of three strawberry varieties in California.

The results are pretty convincing: organic strawberries are healthier, tastier, and better for the soil than conventional strawberries.

What I find fascinating and heartening, however, is the results regarding soil quality.

Despite the conventional practice of spraying soils with synthetic fertilizers, the study found that organic fields contained significantly higher amounts of nutrients. Organic and conventional soils contained similar levels of most extractable nutrients, but organic soil had higher levels of zinc, boron, sodium, and iron. Organic soils also performed better through a number of biological properties, such as enzyme activities, micronutrient levels, and carbon sequestration.

In other words, all that effort being expended denuding soil of microorganisms with pesticides and fumigants and then replenishing a few key nutrients (e.g. nitrogen) is a colossal waste. And it means that even as fossil fuels run down, we can still grow high quality produce. And according to a UCS study cited in the same article, we can also keep high crop yields to feed the world.

QED

Be still my beating heart

The Minnesota DFL put together a video about the GOP candidate for governor. It's clever, pointed, and well put together. I didn't know they had it in them...

We don't have WWII to save us from this economy

Op-Ed Columnist - 1938 in 2010 - NYTimes.com: "Here’s the situation: The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.

The president in question is Franklin Delano Roosevelt"

Frankly, I find this comparison frightening. The Democrats held on to Congress in 1938, and World War II came just before the 1942 elections might have ended their time at the helm. Will there be a similar savior for the Democrats and our economy, or will the party of Hoover get a second chance at a Great Depression?

Just one more reason to breast feed if you can

Breast Milk Sugars Give Infants a Protective Coat - NYTimes.com: "Such findings have made the three researchers keenly aware that every component of milk probably has a special role. “It’s all there for a purpose, though we’re still figuring out what that purpose is,” Dr. Mills said. “So for God’s sake, please breast-feed.”"

Who agrees on the mosque in NYC?

NYTimes.com: "In short, the proposed community center is not just an issue on which Sarah Palin and Osama bin Laden agree. It is also one in which opponents of the center are playing into the hands of Al Qaeda."

What, really, is the harm of a religious center devoted to tolerance? It could be a powerful symbol of healing, built so close to a place where religious extremists caused so much harm.

Voting for 'None of the Above'

In Nevada, No One Is Someone to Watch - NYTimes.com: "Since 1975, Nevadans have had the choice of voting for “None of These Candidates,” which appears as a ballot line along with the named candidates. The option has waxed and waned in popularity. But in 1976, None of These Candidates actually won the plurality of votes in the Republican primary for a United States House seat. (The nomination was awarded to the second-place finisher, Walden Earhart.) And in other cases, the ballot option has played a spoiler role: the 1.2 percent of voters who selected None of These Candidates in the 1996 presidential race was larger than the margin separating Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. And in the 1998 Senate race, the 8,125 votes for None of These Candidates easily outdistanced the 395-vote margin between Harry Reid and John Ensign, allowing Mr. Reid to be re-elected."

Fascinating look at the impact of a "none of the above" option on the ballot. In short, there's somewhat of an incentive to go negative, because it can draw away your opponent's leaners.

Where Did Our Water Go? Trading Public Water Fountains for Private Bottled Water

Peter H. Gleick: Where Did Our Water Go? Trading Public Water Fountains for Private Bottled Water: "It is time to stand up and demand that our public places and spaces have clean, working, water fountains. It used to be that no city in ancient Greece and Rome could call itself civilized unless public fountains were available for everyone. Even today, when our tap water is remarkably safe and inexpensive, we need water in our public areas."

An interesting piece highlighting a few particular public places (stadiums) where public water fountains are being removed for expensive, wasteful bottled water. Stupid.

Duke Nukem Forever is back: coming to both consoles and PC

Duke Nukem Forever is back: coming to both consoles and PC: "According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing “Duke Nukem Forever” in late 2009. “Clearly the game hadn’t been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created,” he says. “The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It’s the game it was meant to be.”"

Pigs can fly!

Moralizing trumps governing for MN GOP

He's decided to turn [a free federal comprehensive sex education] program away in favor of failed abstinence-only policy, for which the state of Minnesota will shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars...Research has repeatedly found that teens who report that they received comprehensive sex education are 50 percent less likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy.

But why base your decision on facts when it feels so good to be righteous.  Oh yeah.  So good.  Mmmmm....