Okay, who watched the State of the Union Address/responses?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

[Poll #1672805]

I realize that CNN was the one who decided to give airtime to the Tea Party but I still think it's weird that the republicans were allowed two responses to the State of the Union Address. Perhaps not as weird as staring off-camera the entire time. I missed the entire address and the first republican response, only to be confronted with the eerie, off-my-shoulder stare of Bachmann. Also, I thought it was pretty tricksy of her to use a visual aid unemployment chart that cleverly only labeled odd-numbered years—so unless you looked closely, it seemed as if unemployment went up during a Democratic presidency, not during the tail end of the Bush era.

Anyone have thoughts on the main speech and responses from the republicans?

Please Remember Mr. President -- We Are a Nation, Not a Corporation

[paft.livejournal.com]

From President Obama’s State of the Union Speech:

We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business…

I would submit that it’s more important to make America the best place on Earth to live.

Which is not always compatible with America being the best place on Earth to do business. In fact, judging from the behavior of many businesses, the “best places” to do business are countries that don’t bother with unions, minimum wage, worker safety regulations, environmental laws, or restrictions against child labor.

There are good things in this speech. Obama’s succinct call for religious tolerance, his observation that “American Muslims are a part of our American family,” was badly needed in our current climate. Yes, we need technological innovation, yes, we need to improve our educational system. (We can start by improving the working conditions for public school teachers and reducing our stultifying reliance on standardized tests.)

But its general tenor made me uneasy. As Rachel Maddow observed, it came across as a “prayer to the free market system.” The United States seems determined to follow the same path as the late, unlamented Soviet Union. We are staking everything, with starry-eyed religious fervor, on a single, narrowly defined economic system, even though it’s not working for large segments of the American people.

For the Soviets it was Communism. For us, it’s an unfettered capitalist system where human beings without money or the ability to make money are treated as meaningless. Note the increasing drumbeat from the right in which the poor and unemployed are reviled as lazy and immoral. Dehumanizing language describing those who don’t fit into the right-wing libertarian utopia has become increasingly common. They aren’t citizens, but “tax eaters,” and “unproductive consumers” (The more concise and punchy phrase, “useless eaters,” was taken about seven decades ago.)

We are not a business, the president is not the equivalent of a CEO, and citizens are not the equivalent of employees or customers. When Americans become too sick or elderly to work, they are not “laid off” or “retired” from being Americans. When Americans are too poor to pay taxes, they are not cut off from government services, as are consumers who cannot pay a business for its product. When Americans can no longer make enough money to satisfy the bottom line, their welfare is not suddenly beside the point, as the welfare of a fired or laid off employee is beside the point to a business. The plight of the poor remains the nation’s problem – and not merely because the poor are aesthetically unpleasing to the “customers” who have to edge around them on their way to buying something big and shiny.

Blogger Bob Cesca seems to believe that the speech was a calculated, “perfectly orchestrated” trap for the Republicans, a game of chicken in which the Republicans must “vote for the spending freeze they've been demanding, or vote against the spending freeze in order to preserve their earmarks and, thus, saving their asses from being voted out of office.” I hope that’s so, but even if it is, it makes me uneasy.

Given the madness that has seized the Republicans since Obama’s election, betting on their logic, their humanity or even their sense of self-preservation may be a losing proposition.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Best of the Worst

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://pleated-jeans.com/2011/01/24/the-united-states-of-shame-chart/

Using census and health data some folks have ranked the 50 states on the thing that they are worst at. It makes for fun if slightly sad reading. Some highlights:

California: worst air pollution. (No shock there)

Maine: dumbest state (Go, the South, go! No child left behind!)

Texas: high school graduation (As someone who has worked in education in Texas this is no surprise to me)

Maryland: AIDS


It's no news that there are problems everywhere. But seeing that Michigan is #1 in unemployment is no surprise and a sad comment on the dangers of building a state's economy on one industry. My home state of Indiana is the "least green" state which is not good for a place trying to reinvent itself as a biotech hub. If nothing else it could be seen as a strong indicator of what local and state governments should be focusing on.

Empires on the Edge of Chaos

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Here's an interesting documentary, in the form of a presentation/lecture - not sure if the vid would play at your place, but anyway, here's the link:

http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos

(Text summary here)

This guy here is prof. Niall Ferguson, apparently one of the most prominent historians and theoreticians of economics today. He's also a staunch opponent to Paul Krugman's ideas on the market. In this video he gave a lecture in front of some Australian dignitaries at the ABC, the main topic being the life cycle of empires from a historical and economic perspective. If we try not to pay attention to his pretentiousness and the occasional passive-aggressive responses to some of the post-lecture questions, he expressed a rather interesting idea:

( The idea of empires crumbling down with a snap, not gradually )

Please, Mister Postman

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Word came down this week that the 500 or so post offices the United States Postal Service planned to close this year will actually be closer to 2000, with possibly 16000 more "under review":

The postal service argues that its network of some 32,000 brick-and-mortar post offices, many built in the horse-and-buggy days, is outmoded in an era when people are more mobile, often pay bills online and text or email rather than put pen to paper. It also wants post offices to be profitable to help it overcome record $8.5 billion in losses in fiscal year 2010.

Of the many things that annoy me about the government in general, the postal monopoly probably annoys me in a disproportionate manner. Running a postal service is indeed one of the few powers the government can legitimately exercise, but it's not apparent that it necessarily should in this day and age. The USPS hasn't been profitable in some time, losing $8.5 billion last year, and at least some of that can be traced to the great health, retirement, and pay packages unionized postal workers are getting while first class mail (one of the chief protected classes of mail by the monopoly) experiences precipitous declines.

The worst part is that this isn't some situation where privatization of the postal service would be a failure, because it was a roaring success when it was tried, and that was with less technology and fewer infrastructure options. Lysander Spooner, one of the great semi-forgotten folks of American history, created the American Letter Mail Company, undercutting the USPS by nearly 2/3rds. Of course, the government responded the only way it knows how:

Lawsuits against Spooner and many of his employees began to pile up and it was not long before the government hit the company with their first blow. One of Spooner’s carriers was found guilty and fined for transporting mail on a railway that was part of a postal road of the United States.
The government also took extra legal means to hurt the American Letter Mail Company. They did this by threatening railroad companies and other transport businesses with their lucrative government contracts if they dare allow mail from the American Letter Mail Company on their vehicles.

With UPS, FedEx, and DHL able to offer affordable (but more expensive due to a lack of regular routes because of the postal monopoly) alternatives, is the era of needing a postal monopoly over? Does having one even remotely make sense in this day and age? With these closures, isn't it time we said enough's enough?

Sky TV has "Thrown away the Keys "

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

It may suprise this community, and indeed most of the USA, to find that an enormous row has blown up in Britain over a soccer match.

Following a recent soccer match between Liverpool and Wolverhampton Wanderers (aka 'the Wolves'), the two top commentators for sky sports coverage were heard to make disparaging and sexist remarks. They were 'off air', but their mikes were still on - and the details of what was said emerged in the press, creaing a major storm in the media that has hit the front pages for several days.

The first person to be sacked as a result was Andy Gray, Sky's chief anchorman, but it has just emerged that his sidekick, Richard Keys, has also been forced to quit as a result of the incident.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
( Read more... )