1/ Paul Krugman with an excellent column on how the Republicans in Congress are sticking it to the unemployed because they believe a little pain for people out of work, or the poor, or the sick is good for their souls......amazing how cruel they are........
The Punishment Cure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 8, 2013 1022 Comments
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Six years have passed since the United States economy entered the Great Recession, four and a half since it officially began to recover, but long-term unemployment remains disastrously high. And Republicans have a theory about why this is happening. Their theory is, as it happens, completely wrong. But they’re sticking to it — and as a result, 1.3 million American workers, many of them in desperate financial straits, are set to lose unemployment benefits at the end of December.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
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Merry Christmas.
Now, the G.O.P.’s desire to punish the unemployed doesn’t arise solely from bad economics; it’s part of a general pattern of afflicting the afflicted while comforting the comfortable (no to food stamps, yes to farm subsidies). But ideas do matter — as John Maynard Keynes famously wrote, they are “dangerous for good or evil.” And the case of unemployment benefits is an especially clear example of superficially plausible but wrong economic ideas being dangerous for evil.
Here’s the world as many Republicans see it: Unemployment insurance, which generally pays eligible workers between 40 and 50 percent of their previous pay, reduces the incentive to search for a new job. As a result, the story goes, workers stay unemployed longer. In particular, it’s claimed that the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which lets workers collect benefits beyond the usual limit of 26 weeks, explains why there arefour million long-term unemployed workers in America today, up from just one million in 2007.
Correspondingly, the G.O.P. answer to the problem of long-term unemployment is to increase the pain of the long-term unemployed: Cut off their benefits, and they’ll go out and find jobs. How, exactly, will they find jobs when there are three times as many job-seekers as job vacancies? Details, details.
Proponents of this story like to cite academic research — some of it from Democratic-leaning economists — that seemingly confirms the idea that unemployment insurance causes unemployment. They’re not equally fond of pointing out that this research is two or more decades old, has not stood the test of time, and is irrelevant in any case given our current economic situation.
The view of most labor economists now is that unemployment benefits have only a modest negative effect on job search — and in today’s economy have no negative effect at all on overall employment. On the contrary, unemployment benefits help create jobs, and cutting those benefits would depress the economy as a whole.
Ask yourself how, exactly, ending unemployment benefits would create more jobs. It’s true that some of the currently unemployed, finding themselves even more desperate than before, might manage to snatch jobs away from those who currently have them. But what would give businesses a reason to employ more workers as opposed to replacing existing workers?
2/ Jon Stewart was cooking with gas last week - this is from Thursday's show and he tears into the Fox Business Channel's talking heads in their frantic attempts to paint the fast food workers protesting their low pay as "takers" and other vilifications of the working poor....
Two excellent segments, both four minutes.....
Jon Stewart tackled the McDonald’s worker strikes on Thursday night, mocking the financial analysts against raising the minimum wage, and called out Fox Business’ Stuart Varney in particular for taking on the Pope, of all people, over capitalism and how to help the poor and needy.
Stewart mocked the slippery slope argument that if you raise the minimum wage a few dollars, nothing would stop us from raising it a few hundred thousand dollars, and other anti-minimum wage arguments “deep-fried in contempt, seasoned with disdain.”
He then targeted Varney going against the Pope’s words about “unfettered capitalism,” and asked, “You’re going up against the Pope on how to help the poor?!” Stewart continued, “The Pope doesn’t come around to where you work and slap Jamie Dimon‘s dick outta your mouth!”
Because, as Stewart put it, it’s not like anyone ever had a problem with serving both God and money at the same time or anything
3/ There was actually a criminal case brought against some Wall Street bankers, and a long trial that ended in convictions and jail time for the three involved.....but a judge set them free on a technicality, so a complex prosecution fell to pieces again. Matt Taibbi explains what happened, and why these bastards are unlikely ever to be brought to justice......
General Electric's corporate headquarters.
STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images
I love covering trials, which is one reason I've been a little sad since switching over to the Wall Street beat: Few of the bad guys in this world ever even get interviewed by the authorities, much less indicted, so trials are comically rare.
But we did have one last year, a big one, and though it was boring and jargon-laden enough on the surface that at least one juror fought sleep in its opening days, I thought it was fascinating. In a story about the Justice Department's Spring 2012 prosecution of a wide-raging municipal bond bid-rigging case, I called it the "first trial of the modern American mafia":
"Of course, you won't hear about the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that . . . But this just completed trial in downtown New York . . . allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street."
Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm were mid-level players who worked for GE Capital. They were involved in a wide-ranging scheme (one that also involved most of America's biggest banks, from Chase to BOA to Wachovia) to skim billions of dollars from America's cities and towns by rigging the auctions banks set up to help towns earn the highest returns on the management of municipal bond issues.
4/ Holy moley! A clip of some crazy Brits on a tour bus in wild Pakistan, on one of the scariest roads I have ever seen......three minutes of testoserone.....or madness.....you decide......
5/ ALEC, which is a right wing group that writes legislation for Republican state legislators that help business and other conservative causes, is targeting clean energy including residential solar panels......this kind of pressure is what any action on climate change is up against. If there is a no-brainer for getting our energy sources cleaner it's solar panels, but it might cut into the Utility companies profits.....this is just a minor example of why the planet is screwed......
Solar panels on a home in Los Angeles. Alec will promote legislation planning to penalise individual homeowners who install solar panels. Photograph: Cultura/Rex
An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.
Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action.
Details of Alec's strategy to block clean energy development at every stage – from the individual rooftop to the White House – are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week.
About 800 state legislators and business leaders are due to attend the three-day event, which begins on Wednesday with appearances by the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson and the Republican budget guru and fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan.
Other Alec speakers will be a leading figure behind the recent government shutdown, US senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and the governors of Indiana and Wyoming, Mike Pence and Matt Mead.
For 2014, Alec plans to promote a suite of model bills and resolutions aimed at blocking Barack Obama from cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and state governments from promoting the expansion of wind and solar power through regulations known as Renewable Portfolio Standards.
6/ Bryan McFadden with his excellent cartoon from the Times - this is about the Amazon drones......
7/ A most interesting story about San Francisco, which has run out of affordable housing for the workers that make the city run. The median home sale in the city is $900,000, so all of the lower paid have to commute in for their jobs on crowded, inefficient public transport. The gentrification is fueled by hi tech industries which pay very well, but for a city to run properly takes more than just rich people.
This is the future.....the wealthy 1% in their enclaves, and the peasants come in through the gates......
SAN FRANCISCO — Not long after Twitter, a company that didn’t exist eight years ago, spit out 1,600 instant millionaires in its first day on the stock market, I joined a queue for an evening train from Silicon Valley to San Francisco.
The fare, one way for $9, was a bit of a shock. But then, this is the same region now charging $4 for a single piece of heated bread, prompting a blog post with the headline “$4 Toast Why the Tech Industry Is Ruining San Francisco” to go viral.
Because I’d just missed an earlier train, I now had to kill 45 minutes before the next ride. Midway through the wait came an announcement: All trains were shut down, indefinitely, because of a power glitch. Have a nice evening!
San Francisco still has its Hitchcock moments — the Mediterranean light, the Golden Gate Bridge poking out of the fog, the allure of possibility, all there in a film like “Vertigo.” But of late, the city named for a 13th century pauper from Assisi serves more as an allegory of how the rich have changed America for the worse.
A spate of recent news stories carried the same lament: San Francisco is becoming a one-dimensional town for the 1 percent. Its housing prices — median home sale, $900,000, median rent, $3,250 a month — are the highest in the nation. Only 14 percent of homes are affordable to the middle class. Evictions of those who don’t fit are up 38 percent in the last three years.
The texture of inequality can be felt, and seen, in the rise in private transportation — the fleet of buses giving tech workers a bubbled commute between the city and the social media campuses to the south. At the high end, Google’s top executives are building an $84 million private corporate jet center at San Jose International Airport.
The backlash, in the form of voter disapproval of the latest gilded condo project and open scorn of the digital elite, has reached a stage where even techies no longer want to be called techies.
8/ You may have noticed the nation is in the middle of some extreme cold, and it actually got nippy in Southern California too.......but you would think there was a blizzard from the TV coverage....."Killer Storm!"
A two minute segment from Jimmy Kimmel.......amusing.....
9/ You look at this story about the Georgia Insurance Commissioner saying if you have a pre-existing condition "it's your fault", and you just go how can anyone be so callous. But it's a mindset of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party - they hate anyone who needs help. From food stamps, and Medicaid to unemployment benefits the message to anyone down on their luck is toughki shitski buddy......
And they call themselves Christians........
Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens (R) has a message for the estimated 57.2 million Americans suffering from diabetes, asthma, cancer, genetic disorders, and other pre-existing medical conditions: it’s your fault.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered
HUDGENS: I’ve had several companies come in and they have said just the fact — just the fact — that in the individual market pre-existing conditions have to be covered on Jan. 1, that that is going to double the cost of insurance. And if you don’t really understand what covering pre-existing conditions would be like, it would be like in Georgia we have a law that says you have to have insurance on your automobile. You have to have liability insurance. If you’re going to drive on Georgia’s roads, you have to have liability insurance. You don’t have to have collision. You don’t have to have comprehensive…. But you have to have liability.
But say you’re going along and you have a wreck. And it’s your fault. Well, a pre-existing condition would be you then calling up your insurance agent and saying, ‘I would like to get collision insurance coverage on my car.’ And your insurance agent says, ‘Well, you never had that before. Why would you want it now?’ And you say, ‘Well, I just had a wreck, it was my fault and I want the insurance company to pay to repair my car.’ And that’s the exact same thing on pre-existing insurance.
10/ David Bowie with "I'd Rather be High", an anti-war song from the thin white duke.......the footage in the video is scenes from the Second World War......most unusual and a decent song too.......
The song is from the point of view of a young soldier, who would much rather be high and carefree than at the frontlines of a war. Bowie isn't glorifying drug culture or anything like that, he's talking about the horrors of war and sending young people to their possible deaths, who instead should be relatively carefree and living out life while they are young
11/ Border collies are probably the smartest dogs of any breed, and this one is called Jumpy.....and in two minutes he will show you how he's almost human......
The Border Collie is a herding dog breed developed in the Anglo-Scottish border region for herding livestock, especially sheep. Ranked number one in Stanley Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs and typically extremely energetic, acrobatic, smart and athletic, they frequently compete with great success in dog sports, and are often cited as the most intelligent of all dogs.
12/ The Times ten best books of the year........
The 10 Best Books of 2013
The 10 Best Books of 2013: An animated look at the best books of the year, chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
Published: December 4, 2013
13/ This looks like a movie for film buffs, and although it's not for everyone it certainly looks worth watching......a good one from the Coen Brothers.....
Melancholy Odyssey Through the Folk Scene
‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’ Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
NYT Critics' Pick
Movie Review: 'Inside Llewyn Davis': The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews "Inside Llewyn Davis."
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: December 5, 2013
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“If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song,” Llewyn Davis says, brandishing his guitar during a set at the Gaslight. That’s a pretty good definition, one that certainly applies to “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” the chestnut that opens “Inside Llewyn Davis,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s intoxicating ramble through Greenwich Village in 1961, before the neighborhood was annexed by New York University and Starbucks.
More About This Movie
Inside Llewyn Davis
Llewyn’s repertoire and some aspects of his background are borrowed from Dave Van Ronk, who loomed large on the New York folk scene in its pre-Bob Dylan hootenanny-and-autoharp phase. Oscar Isaac, who plays both Llewyn and the guitar with offhand virtuosity, is slighter of build and scowlier of mien than Van Ronk, with a fine, clear tenor singing voice. But in any case, this is not a biopic, it’s a Coen brothers movie, which is to say a brilliant magpie’s nest of surrealism, period detail and pop-culture scholarship. To put it another way, it’s a folk tale.
The story — a wobbly, circular journey to nowhere in particular and back, with stops in Chicago, Queens and the Upper West Side — is nearly as old as narrative itself. An important character is named Ulysses, whose ancient wanderings inspired “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” the Coens’ earlier venture (also in the company of the music supervisorT Bone Burnett) into American vernacular musical traditions. The loneliness and romance of the traveling life are echoed in the ballads, sea chanteys and blues reveries that Llewyn and his fellow chirpers like to sing. The lyrics palpitate with the pain of loss and leave-taking: “I’m 500 miles from my home”; “I’ve been all around this world”; “Fare thee well, my honey, fare thee well.” Llewyn, still grieving over the death of his musical partner (heard singing in the voice of Marcus Mumford), is a bit more prosaically adrift, stumbling from one friend’s couch to another, wearing out his welcome faster than his shoes
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Atmospheric, annoying, but interesting trailer.......
Todays video - three reasons to quit drinking....oldie but goodie.....
Todays legal system joke
Two guys were picked up by the cops for smoking dope and appeared in courtbefore the judge.The judge said, "You seem like nice young men, and I'd like to give you asecond chance rather than jail time. I want you to go out this weekend andtry to show others the evils of drug use and pursuade them to give up drugsforever. I'll see you back in court Monday."Monday, the two guys were in court, and the judge said to the first one,"How did you do over the weekend?""Well, your honor, I persuaded 17 people to give up drugs forever.""17 people? That's wonderful. What did you tell them?""I used a diagram, your honor. I drew two circles like this: O o and toldthem this (the big circle) is your brain before drugs and this (smallcircle) is your brain after drugs.""That's admirable," said the judge. "And you, how did you do?" (to the 2ndguy)"Well, your honor, I persuaded 156 people to give up drugs forever.""156 people! That's amazing! How did you manage to do that!""Well, I used the same two circles. I pointed to the small circle and toldthem, 'This is your asshole before prison...."
Todays blond joke
A blonde made several attempts to sell her old car. She was having a lot of problems finding a buyer because the car had 340,000 miles on it. She discussed her problem with a brunette that she worked with at a bar.
The brunette suggested, "There may be a chance to sell that car easier, but it's not going to be legal."
"That doesn't matter at all," replied the blonde. "All that matters it that I am able to sell this car."
"Alright," replied the brunette. In a quiet voice, she told the blonde: "Here is the address of a friend of mine. He owns a car repair shop around here. Tell him I sent you, and he will turn the counter back on your car to 40,000 miles. Then it shouldn't be a problem to sell your car."
The following weekend, the blonde took a trip to the mechanic on the brunette's advice.
About one month after that, the brunette saw the blonde and asked, "Did you sell your car?"
"No!" replied the blonde. "Why should I? It only has 40,000 miles on it."
The brunette suggested, "There may be a chance to sell that car easier, but it's not going to be legal."
"That doesn't matter at all," replied the blonde. "All that matters it that I am able to sell this car."
"Alright," replied the brunette. In a quiet voice, she told the blonde: "Here is the address of a friend of mine. He owns a car repair shop around here. Tell him I sent you, and he will turn the counter back on your car to 40,000 miles. Then it shouldn't be a problem to sell your car."
The following weekend, the blonde took a trip to the mechanic on the brunette's advice.
About one month after that, the brunette saw the blonde and asked, "Did you sell your car?"
"No!" replied the blonde. "Why should I? It only has 40,000 miles on it."
Todays male jokes
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