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

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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?