Matthew Yglesias untangles the confusing threads of Obama's economic proposals.
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The 10 most racist moments from the Republican candidates - so far.
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Bill Gates does the right thing and calls for higher taxes on the rich.
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Apparently politicians with competent looking faces - "masculine but approachable, with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and large eyes" - fair better come election time.
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Obama's State of the Union speech was written at an 8th grade level - and that's a good thing.
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After the Great Depression, there was a pronounced backlash against right-wing economic policies. In the midst of our current Great Recession, however, there seems to be a growing embrace of the very policies which have brought us here, argues Thomas Frank in his new book, Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Roundup
Very good article about why the Republican candidates won't say too much about unemployment and why America might be experiencing the worst of both worlds of cyclical and structural economic disaster.
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"There will be riots on the streets of America," says George Soros.
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What to do about the proliferation of reckless conspiracy theories on the internet? "The second—and not necessarily mutually exclusive—option is to nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like "global warming" or "vaccination." Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds."
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This is a very well-written article on the petro-state of...Canada.
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Seven billion people and growing food shortage. What to do? Eat insects, artificial meat, develop algae farms and "green super rice".
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"There will be riots on the streets of America," says George Soros.
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What to do about the proliferation of reckless conspiracy theories on the internet? "The second—and not necessarily mutually exclusive—option is to nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like "global warming" or "vaccination." Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds."
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This is a very well-written article on the petro-state of...Canada.
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Seven billion people and growing food shortage. What to do? Eat insects, artificial meat, develop algae farms and "green super rice".
Roundup
I think Chris Hedges is one of the most important voices today. His critique of American corporatism is trenchant and deeply insightful. His column from yesterday is very good.
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On the American prison-industrial complex: “[A] growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.”
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“Vancouver is the world’s second-least affordable major city to buy a house, according to an annual survey of global housing markets.”
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Monbiot advocates an absolute cap on executive pay. “The UK government imposes a minimum wage, and even the neoliberal coalition appears to accept that this is a necessary intervention in the market. So why should it not impose a maximum wage?”
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The food emergency in Niger is incredible: "At the best of times this vast landlocked country – whose estimated 14.7 million people mostly live along a narrow strip of arable land on its southern border – has trouble feeding itself. Even in "non-crisis" years, 300,000 children are treated for malnutrition – 15% of the world total. This year threatens to be particularly severe.
Humanitarian organisations estimate that 1.3 million people are suffering from acute malnutrition across the Sahel, a belt of countries from Mauritania and Senegal on the Atlantic to Chad in central Africa, taking in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. These countries suffer from chronic food insecurity – families without enough money to meet their food needs – and 300,000 children die in a normal year from malnutrition or its related causes."
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"President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is leading a relentless campaign against free speech, harassing his critics, forcing independent broadcasters off the air and hijacking the nation’s courts in his bid to bankrupt the country’s largest newspaper."
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Interesting: "Researchers have invented a kind of soap that can be magnetically corralled to help clean up toxic spills. The feat is accomplished by infusing more mundane suds with tiny iron particles that join together and react to magnets."
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On the American prison-industrial complex: “[A] growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.”
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“Vancouver is the world’s second-least affordable major city to buy a house, according to an annual survey of global housing markets.”
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Monbiot advocates an absolute cap on executive pay. “The UK government imposes a minimum wage, and even the neoliberal coalition appears to accept that this is a necessary intervention in the market. So why should it not impose a maximum wage?”
-
The food emergency in Niger is incredible: "At the best of times this vast landlocked country – whose estimated 14.7 million people mostly live along a narrow strip of arable land on its southern border – has trouble feeding itself. Even in "non-crisis" years, 300,000 children are treated for malnutrition – 15% of the world total. This year threatens to be particularly severe.
Humanitarian organisations estimate that 1.3 million people are suffering from acute malnutrition across the Sahel, a belt of countries from Mauritania and Senegal on the Atlantic to Chad in central Africa, taking in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. These countries suffer from chronic food insecurity – families without enough money to meet their food needs – and 300,000 children die in a normal year from malnutrition or its related causes."
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"President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is leading a relentless campaign against free speech, harassing his critics, forcing independent broadcasters off the air and hijacking the nation’s courts in his bid to bankrupt the country’s largest newspaper."
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Interesting: "Researchers have invented a kind of soap that can be magnetically corralled to help clean up toxic spills. The feat is accomplished by infusing more mundane suds with tiny iron particles that join together and react to magnets."
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