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.

Many Americans don't even know tax rates

For all the whining about taxes, it seems that many Americans don't even know how federal income taxes work. Tax brackets are marginal, they only apply to the income that falls in that bracket, not all your income. The idiots who are trying to reduce their income to drop down a tax bracket are only going to accomplish the former: reduce their income.

Dumb

Capitalism's quote of the day

A financial writer was trying to track down the source of the financial crisis, from greedy loan marketers to failures at rating agencies overseeing complex "collateralized debt obligations" (CDOs), and heard this from a hedge fund manager that had seen the problems early:

[Eisman, hedge fund manager]: ‘Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.’ He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S.& P. couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number. ‘They were just assuming home prices would keep going up,’ Eisman says.” [emphasis mine]

These are the guardians of our markets.  

Defeat is Victory - health care measure pulled

In Ohio, petitioners just gave in to pressure and withdrew their ballot measure mandating paid sick leave for all Ohio workers. The Ohio House speaker (a Republican) responded with this:

“This is a victory for all Ohioans. This proposal would have hurt Ohio businesses and driven jobs out of our state. It was poorly crafted, confused voters and would have placed Ohio at a significant disadvantage to compete with other states, much less in the global economy,”

No guarantee of staying home for a day without losing pay, whether you have a cold or cancer.  Some victory.

Why David Brooks is a tool

I've never liked the guy, because he pretends to be a moderate but likes to pound on individual responsibility to the complete exclusion of cultural forces from corporations to consumerism.  This guy agrees, and he completely and thoroughly lays out the case why David Brooks is a tool.

A sample:

Brooks lies about how the [mortgage crisis and credit crisis] devastation occurred. An "unspoken code has been silently eroded, he reveals. Silently, David? Marketers of all kinds have spent billions for 40 years telling Americans they deserve a break today and that marketers from McDonald's and credit-card companies to mortgage lenders will give it to them instantly. This has been the most monumental, unrelenting campaign to destroy a culture the world has seen, barring perhaps the fascist and communist propaganda juggernauts of the 1930s. Our own governments are in on it, not just via de-regulation but with lotteries.

When only the wrong get callbacks

Krugman has an insightful piece about the state of America's ability to problem solve. For many of the major crises facing the country - the Iraq War, the financial crisis - those we ask for solutions are the very same ones who got us into the mess.

• Alan Greenspan played down the subprime crisis and is being asked for advice on solving it.
• President Bush and Cheney lied repeatedly about the Iraq War and got re-elected in 2004 (and still have their jobs).
• And many major pundits keep getting airtime despite being wrong, wrong, wrong.

Heck, there's even a book on the subject.

The mortgage crisis: illustrated version

Trying to understand how a bunch of "subprime" loans caused a mortgage crisis? This animated mortgage crisis illustration might explain. Basically, banks sold mortgages as "securities" (think mutual funds) to other investors but dramatically underestimated the risk of widespread defaults (foreclosures).

In other words, when those crazy adjustable-rate mortgages started bankrupting people all over the country at once, the flow of cash dried up. And that meant that those securities (stocks) dropped precipitously in value. Oops.

10 Ways to Counter Global Warming Idiots

Courtesy of the BBC

When moralists forget economics

Energy Roundup's been doing a lot on companies "going green," and today they quoted a guy from the Ayn Rand Institute who took issue with companies becoming more environmentally sustainable:

In a debate on CNBC today, however, Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute suggested Corporate America was only hurting itself, saying it was bending to the demands of environmentalists. “Businesses should be ashamed of themselves for doing it,” he said. “They shouldn’t appease enviromentalists any more than we should appease Islamists by making women wear veils.” (emphasis original)

I criticized Yahoo yesterday for its green plan, but that's because it was planning to spend money on carbon offsets. As noted in the Energy Roundup, Coca-Cola plans to reduce carbon emissions by becoming more energy efficient. For the amateur economists out there, that means they will save money. As I recall from my read of Atlas Shrugged, making money was pretty much the only thing a person should concern themselves with.

If Coca-Cola should be ashamed of improving energy efficiency, call me a socialist.

Ideology leads to inanity

There are plenty of problems with ethanol, from its relatively low energy balance to the use of corn - a high-intensity crop - to produce it. But whether or not ethanol is the dream fuel, no amount of wishing will make oil shale a better option. There are so many ways to dismantle this argument, but I'll just do one.

In the first section, Mr. Feulner of the Heritage Foundation notes that ethanol is a poor choice because of it's refining challenges:

For one thing, it's expensive to refine ethanol (emphasis mine)

But after he gushes about the availability of oil shale and its potential to supply all of US oil needs by 2020, Feulner admits:

...there's a reason the U.S. economy doesn't already run on oil shale: It's difficult to collect and refine. (emphasis mine)

So let's check the scorecard on oil shale, which the RAND Foundation says can't be developed unless oil prices top $70-95/barrel:

• Gallons of fuel produced last year: (Ethanol - 4 billion; Oil from shale - 0)
• Carbon reductions over gasoline: (Ethanol 5-10%; Oil from shale - 0)
• Renewable: (Ethanol - yes; oil shale - no)

Sounds like a real winner...

Stick with mom, not pop

Can Americans really find yet another way to be less healthy?

A new report shows that more and more Americans are flaunting Mom's advice and having pop with breakfast. Here's the numbers on pop drinkers:

• 1 in 7 people who eat breakfast outside the home
• 1 in 42 people who eat breakfast at home
  

This rising interest in breakfast pop comes at the expense of coffee, which probably means folks are turning to sugared pop as their preferred caffeine delivery vehicle. The article notes that most of these pop drinkers are not going with diet pop, so it's not even a compromise on caffeine v. sugar.

The sad part is that breakfast pop drinkers are probably part of the population drinking multiple cans Big Gulps each day, increasing their risk of broken bones, osteoporosis and other bone diseases. Speaking of Big Gulps, here's a nice illustration of why pop consumption has doubled since 1973:

Suffragists are suffering

If people are dumb enough to sign away their right to vote, should we let them?

We must protect the sheep - and the cute little chicks

If there's one thing sticking in Osama bin Laden's craw, it must be the "Great Satan's" ability to defend it's most valuable resources. That's right, Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo is featured in the federal antiterrorism database, listed as a national asset alongside the Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Building, and US Capitol.

Even better is the listing of Amish Country Popcorn. When the proprietor of this fine establishment was interviewed about his listing in the National Asset Database, he had this to say:

“I am out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.”

But on second thought, he came up with an explanation: “Maybe because popcorn explodes?”