The Retirement Gamble - yet another reason to reject Chained CPI scam

Two-thirds of your 401k goes to Wall Street.

ZeroHedge has more

And that is why we do not live in Texas.

DailyKos:

More here:

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/texas-fertilizer-plant-failed-to-disclose-massive-ammount

Boston, 4/18

Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker: 

....But all of our experience suggests that it is not “fundamentalism” alone but an aching tension between modernity and a false picture of a purer fundamentalist past that makes terrorists.

And it was an American story, too, in what could only be called a hysterical and insular overreaction that allowed it to become the sole national narrative. I happened to be in London on 7/7—a far more deadly and frightening terrorist attack—and by 7 P.M. on that horrible day, with the terrorists still at large (they were dead already, but no one knew that) the red double-decker buses were rolling and the traffic was turning and life, though hardly normal, was determinedly going on. The decision to shut down Boston, though doubtless made in good faith and from honest anxiety, seemed like an undue surrender to the power of the terrorist act—as did, indeed, the readiness to turn over the entire attention of the nation to a violent, scary, tragic, lurid but, in the larger scheme of things, ultimately small threat to the public peace.

The toxic combination of round-the-clock cable television—does anyone now recall the killer of Gianni Versace, who claimed exactly the same kind of attention then as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did today?—and an already exaggerated sense of the risk of terrorism turned a horrible story of maiming and death and cruelty into a national epic of fear. What terrorists want is to terrify people; Americans always oblige.   

Experts tell us the meaning of what they haven’t seen; poets and novelists tell us the meaning of what they haven’t seen, either, but have somehow managed to fully imagine. Maybe the literature of terrorism, from Conrad to Updike (and let us not forget Tolstoy, fascinated by the Chechens) can now throw a little light on how apparently likable kids become cold-hearted killers. Acts of imagination are different from acts of projection: one kind terrifies; the other clarifies. 

There's an argument to be made for deciding to shut down the city at the time they did, I think.  But Gopnik is one of the first to remind us of the dual nature of today's necessary task.  Namely, to "separate thinking about terrorism from thinking about the way that we represent it."

Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets

Today the Guardian put a story on its front page about the biggest gamble in human history. 

Governments, corporations and pension funds have $6 trillion worth of unburnable carbon assets on the books -- that means that either their investments pay off and the planet tanks, or we avert climate catastrophe and those investments are worthless.  -350.org 

Needless to say, if Obama allows KeystoneXL, then he is directly complicit in this economic idiocy/global suicide.

A summary and link to the full report is here:  http://www.carbontracker.org/wastedcapital 

The full truth about the politically invisible American "disability" epidemic

TAL records an indispensable piece of investigative journalism that pretty much explodes the plutocrat party discourse on welfare, entitlements and macroeconomics generally.

How sorry a state we're in that we can tell ourselves these peripheral disaster narratives for so many years and nobody has yet followed up with any of them in any meaningful, investigative way.  

Spoiler alert:  Bill Clinton will still be judged by history an epic scam artist.  Also, conservatives do have a point (though they don't think it through and blame the wrong people, as usual).

This story ought to be a political game-changer  (but it won't be talked about).

Only 7% of Americans are actually concerned about the deficit

And for good reason.  The new class of ultra-rich parasites, on the other hand, being largely inoculated from the general US economy and neither investing nor paying taxes domestically, may as well not be called Americans.  So why do we still let them frame the national debate?

Really, because the federal deficit is just like a household budget?  Does your family print its own currency too?  And live without retiring its debt since 1837??  

Not worried about income inequality? You haven't been paying attention.

Robert Reich: 

The prevailing view in Washington sees as the basic economic problem of our time that Americans have been living beyond their means, and must now live within them. The real problem is the means of most Americans haven't grown in thirty years, even though the economy is twice as large, and all the gains from growth have gone to the very top. The Great Recession occurred because most Americans ran out of ways to maintain their standard of living other than by borrowing against the rising values of their homes; so when the housing bubble burst, they were stranded without enough money to keep the economy going. That's still the case. The real median wage continues to drop. All supposed signs of a more vigorous recovery are smoke and mirrors, emanating from the Fed's artificially-induced near-zero interest rates -- which are helping investors but few average Americans. Anyone who thinks we can restore this economy without tackling the fundamental problem of increasingly concentrated income and wealth at the top hasn't been paying attention.

David K Johnston has much more.

Paul Ryan, "brains and future of the party" lol

Good riddance, Paul Ryan.

Regarding Pat McCrory, corporate lobbyist hack (also our current governor)

Update: It gets even better for Republican corporate cronyism in North Carolina. As he signs in private a refusal to let poor, elderly North Carolinians enjoy the same health care benefits as the rest of the nation.....To quote from here:

In most cases, these the Medicaid expansion would mean a significant reduction in the number of uninsured, at a modest cost to the states. They might even savemoney.

"Expanding Medicaid health benefits to everyone eligible under President Barack Obama’s health care reform law would increase state spending on the program by just 3 percent while extending health coverage to more than 20 million people, according to a study released Monday by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute.

The health care law seeks to enroll into the Medicaid program anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year. But when the Supreme Court upheld the law in June, its decision allowed states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion. So far, Republican governors in eight states have declared they won’t participate, denying health care coverage to millions of their poorest residents.

… The total cost of the Medicaid expansion would be $1.03 trillion between 2013 and 2022, according to the study. States would pay $76 billion of that, which amounts to a 2.9 percent increase compared to what states would have spent on Medicaid if the health care reform law hadn’t been enacted. Under the health care reform law, the federal government will pay the full cost of covering newly eligible people on Medicaid from 2014 to 2016, then will scale back funding to 90 percent in 2022 and later years.

In addition to receiving a large federal subsidy to enroll these uninsured residents, states that expand Medicaid would be able to reduce spending on taxpayer-funded programs to help hospitals and other health care providers cover the cost of so-called uncompensated care, or unpaid medical bills. If Medicaid expanded across the country, states would save $18 billion between 2013 to 2022 , according to the study." 

Republican governors’ refusals to expand Medicaid will cost lives. It’s been shown that expanding Medicaid saves lives.

"A new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) finds thatexpanding Medicaid to low-income adults leads to widespread gains in coverage, access to care, and—most importantly—improved health and reduced mortality. It is the first published study to look specifically at the effect of recent state Medicaid expansions on mortality among low-income adults, and the findings suggest that expanding coverage to the uninsured may save lives.

…The results showed that Medicaid expansions in three states were associated with a significant reduction in mortality of 6.1% compared with neighboring states that did not expand Medicaid, which corresponds to 2,840 deaths prevented per year for each 500,000 adults gaining Medicaid coverage. Mortality reductions were greatest among older adults, non-whites, and residents of poorer counties.Expansions also were associated with increased Medicaid coverage, decreased uninsurance, decreased rates of deferring care due to costs, and increased rates of “excellent” or “very good” self-reported health.

The groups that benefitted from Medicaid expansion in this study—older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, and those living in poor areas—are groups that have traditionally had higher mortality rates and faced greater barriers to care. The study results provide valuable evidence for state policymakers deciding whether or not to expand Medicaid, say the authors.

“Sometimes the political rhetoric is at odds with the evidence, such as claims that Medicaid is a ‘broken program’ or worse than no insurance at all; our findings suggest precisely the opposite,” said Epstein."

Read the whole damn thing. 

n+1 on the Oscars

This is good.

Fracking: worse than you realize

A reckless experiment in unpatriotic and unnecessary greed and national disaster without study, in which the EPA is complicit.

By any reasonable and informed conjecture, the damage is happening faster and is far worse than commonly (mis)understood.  "First do no harm" is a nice aspiration; currently a joke.

(more)

Aaron Swartz, RIP

Aaron Swartz was truly brilliant. JSTOR backed off the case, but Stephen Heymann's ego-driven, careerist prosecutorial overreach continued and by all accounts was largely responsible for Swartz's recent depression and suicide.  Shame on Carmen Ortiz and all the prosecutors involved, and on MIT for its cowardice in not standing up for a more democratic internet. 

Please sign:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck

via Scott McLemee (see here and here).

And more here.

I'm a hunter who supports US gun control

It is long past time to join the rest of the industrialized world (cf. Australia).

Climate Change is Hell on Earth

http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/  (via).

-Australian sand storm, January 2013 (story here)

"Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.

Other changes are even more dramatic. Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation. ...

These and other observed climatic changes are having wide-ranging impacts in every region of our country and most sectors of our economy. Some of these changes can be beneficial, such as longer growing seasons in many regions and a longer shipping season on the Great Lakes. But many more have already proven to be detrimental, largely because society and its infrastructure were designed for the climate of the past, not for the rapidly changing climate of the present or the future."

-Beijing, January 2013.  Source and story in The Atlantic:

"The readings in the past few days have been in the previously unimaginable 700s-and-above range, reported as "beyond index" by @BeijingAir. The worst I have personally seen in Beijing was in the high 400s, and that day I did not understand how life could proceed any further in such circumstances. The conditions this weekend have been much worse..."

Update: Also, no more oysters, and no more coffee. And these things are just the canaries in the gold mine...

Harry Reid was right: Mitt Romney Paid No Taxes for 15 Years

Duh:

http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981730200

538 - The only source that matters

Obama's going to win the electoral, thank God, but North Carolina could sure use some help.

There was an actual debate that happened, by the way, in case you missed it.  Full of actual substance and proper pathos of indignation, as opposed to that other, vile thing.

Apple's profits double, tax rate falls to Romney level: 9.8%

(Please disregard the possible degree mill that produced this infographic as a strange form of advertising. Diploma mills are some of the most exploitive, predatory and shameful enterprises out there.)


Apple's profit margins are simply criminal.  $319 for each new iPhone, net profit.  Foxconn gets $8/phone assembled.  The situation in China is unsustainable, to say the least, politically, environmentally, and socially.  A few casino capitalists are getting very, very rich for at most another decade before shit hits the fan.

At what cost?

 

This is brilliant

n+1:

According to Adorno, in psychoanalysis only the exaggerations are true. If you wished to characterize the Democrats and the Republicans in terms of true exaggerations, you might say that the Republicans have become the Party of Psychosis while the Democrats have become the Party of Neurosis. The Republicans are psychotic because they have lost contact with reality, and orient their behavior not toward realities but toward fantasies. The Democrats are neurotic because they are aim-inhibited, as an old-fashioned shrink might say: their anxieties, hang-ups, and insecurities mean that they can’t attain satisfaction, since in a basic way they won’t even allow themselves to know what they want.

This is not a pizza peel

GreenRiverWoods on Etsy

GreenRiverWoods on CustomMade

Asheville Art in the Park

Last weekend was a great show.   Please come see all the incredibly hardworking and phenomenal artists at AshevilleArtinthePark the next two Saturdays in June, downtown Asheville in Pack Square, and then again three Saturdays in October!