One reason for the automakers to be encouraged is that more senior citizens are driving. Some 70 percent of ages 70 and older had their driver’s license in 2008, up from 55 percent in 1983.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
This Is Probably Not A Good Thing
Discuss.
Not Sure Yet
I'm still not so sure that the practical impact of Citizens United on our politics is going to be as dire as people imagine. Sure it all looks pretty gross, and I don't blame people for being concerned, but even without donor transparency there's a degree to which election-related activities are essentially public, unlike many of the other channels through which money flows in our weird political system.
Anthropology
The New York Times ventures into the jungle.
There is a problem, though. Here in Gaffney, where deeply held Christian beliefs often matter more than jobs, few remember the Holson Burnes photo album plant, let alone the devastation its closing is alleged to have caused back in 1992.
...
“Nobody here really cares about that. It wasn’t a big deal,” Mr. Sossamon said. “We’re looking for a new school superintendent. That and the economy are what people really care about right now.”
Friday, January 13, 2012
Priorities
I used to have some sympathy for CNN. Thought they were flawed, but that they showed signs of trying. Then they started trying something else.
At least one regular CNN political contributor took issue with the comments and with CNN's handling of Loesch and other right-wing contributors:
"What's interesting is how the kid gloves are applied to outlandish comments made by the likes of Erick Erickson or Dana Loesch and how it has a negative impact on the CNN brand," said the contributor, who also requested anonymity. "There really is no pushback or no real conversation that says, 'Look, you make these kinds of comments or you write these kinds of wild, crazy stuff, that's just not what we're about.' It simply doesn't happen. I think there is fear of saying anything to them because they are Tea Party folks, and there has been a clear effort on the part of our political team to court that whole Tea Party thought process, if you will."
"The danger is always the negative impact on your whole political coverage," the contributor added. "Because clearly you want there to be a point of view, but there is a difference between a point of view and being so far off the rails it defies logic."
Reflect This
I don't know why Greece just doesn't say... "first X billion in line gets a 40% cut, next Y billion gets 60%, the rest of you, suck on it."
Crucial negotiations between the Greek government and its private creditors on a bond swap deal needed to avoid default appeared close to collapse Friday, with representatives of private bondholders saying they had been "paused for reflection."
Lies Nobody Cares About
Lying about the operation of government is sooooo boring. More gossip, please!
Random Thought
This isn't especially new and original, but I hadn't quite thought of it this way before. It was quite the triumph of conservative propaganda to convince people that the housing bubble was, once again, about poor minorities getting more than they deserved.
And on and on.
And on and on.
Looters
That's way the game is played these days.
And it's probably completely legal!
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. diverted more than $100 million in gas safety and operations money collected from customers over a 15-year period and spent it for other purposes, including profit for stockholders and bonuses for executives, according to a pair of state-ordered reports released Thursday.
And it's probably completely legal!
QOTD
Dean Baker:
[A]s noted in the article, many of the people at these Fed meetings are still in top policy making positions. This shows that the U.S. economy still produces good-paying jobs for people without skills.
I Knew Something
I never claimed to know exactly how the housing bubble would play out, and I certainly was, for a time, unaware of the financial stuff behind it, but unlike the geniuses who rule us, I knew one simple thing. Not enough people in this country had anything close to enough money for house prices to make any sense. I knew that not enough people could possible afford those inflated mortgages.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Politico on Colbert
How it is possible to watch a Politico douche on Colbert and not want to shoot someone in the face, escapes me.
"You don't want a Mottfrontation!"
Kill me.
"You don't want a Mottfrontation!"
Kill me.
Stoop'd
I think open container laws are kinda dumb, and have no idea what the laws are in my urban hellhole regarding stoop consumption (have stoop, don't think I've ever had a drink on it), but this is certainly dumb.
A Whiter Shade of CLANG
Awesome.
As he traveled across South Carolina on Thursday, Mr. Santorum urged voters to dismiss the conventional wisdom that Mitt Romney has an upper hand in the nominating contest. He said the party can win back the White House only by offering a “clear contrast” with President Obama.
“We need contrasts,” Mr. Santorum said, “not just a paler shade of what we have.”
Also, Too
It isn't as if random crazy people on the street are granted "they said it so that's good enough to print" privileges by our elite newspapers. Powerful connected people are.
The "liberal media" used to be called the "establishment media" back before conservatives started to seriously work the refs.
The "liberal media" used to be called the "establishment media" back before conservatives started to seriously work the refs.
Information Laundering
This point has been made a million times, but when the New York Times prints something, most readers assume that they have, in fact, made a modest effort to determine the truth or falsehood of it.
The Guiding Principle
I get it, finally. It's the Cokie/Colbert principle: The truthiness is out there.
Not The Onion
NYT Public Editor:
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
Must Have Been A Bit Confusing Near The End
Funny how the side of goodness and light can switch so suddenly.
Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation into secret MI6 rendition operations that resulted in leading Libyan dissidents being abducted and flown to Tripoli, where they were subsequently tortured in Muammar Gaddafi's prisons.
...
Saadi was detained in Hong Kong in 2004 and then forced on to a plane to Tripoli with his wife and four children in an operation that MI6 mounted in co-operation with Gaddafi's intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa.
Nobody Could Have Predicted
And the madness will continue.
Jan 11 (Reuters) - Greece's budget deficit widened last year as an austerity-fuelled recession cancelled out much of the extra revenues the government was hoping to raise through emergency taxes, data showed on Thursday. The central government budget gap widened 0.8 percent year-on-year to 21.64 billion euros ($27.45 billion) last year, according to figures from the finance ministry.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
It's Also So Confusing
And of course you have to fill out a 17 page claim form in order for us to consider thinking about maybe possibly if you're lucky considering trying to find out if the money in your customer account is still there.
I've been a bit curious how this would play out, whether DEMOCRAT SCANDAL (golden!) or WALL STREET SCANDAL (shhhhhh) would win. Mostly it's been the latter.
Maybe if Dana Milbank had a couple bucks in an MF Global account he'd write a mildly perturbed article about it before getting back to the usual business.
So far, the trustee liquidating MF Global's brokerage has arranged for customers to be reunited with about 72% of their funds. Now customers are in a new stage of recovery for the rest, slogging through what some describe as an unduly arduous claims process. The trustee has estimated that $1.2 billion in customer funds remains missing.
The customers' main complaints: a 17-page claims form that some say is vague and doesn't fully reflect the nuances of futures and derivatives markets. Some also are frustrated that a process they hoped would swiftly return their money hasn't.
I've been a bit curious how this would play out, whether DEMOCRAT SCANDAL (golden!) or WALL STREET SCANDAL (shhhhhh) would win. Mostly it's been the latter.
Maybe if Dana Milbank had a couple bucks in an MF Global account he'd write a mildly perturbed article about it before getting back to the usual business.
Or Maybe You Could Spend Some Of The Toll Money?
I get less enraged than some by the fact that our local bridge authority, which is supposed to spend the toll money on jersey-pennsylania linkage related program activities, spends a lot of it on random patronage projects (of varying merit), but when a rather obvious core function project appears...do it?
and as for this:
Um, basically every day I'm out in Philly? They ride the bus, too!
and as for this:
How many times have you seen a person riding down the sidewalk in a wheelchair? I can't recall ever. I'm 54.
Um, basically every day I'm out in Philly? They ride the bus, too!
9 Out Of 10 People In The Green Room Disagree
I think it's true that a lot of people erroneously think the deficit is somehow a cause of the bad economy, so you can't entirely rule out the idea that being a deficit peacock has no political gain, but what they really care about, unsurprisingly, are jobs. Even if there's value in deficit peacocking, there's presumably greater value in jobs peacocking. Also, too, actually providing more jobs.
Also, Too, If You Weren't White This Story Wouldn't Be In The New York Times
Not blaming the subject of this story, it's just another case of reporters only sometimes noticing wee flaws in our criminal justice system.
That's A Thing
I have no idea who is killing Iranian nuclear scientists, but might I suggest that it isn't a very nice thing to do.
Is Water Wet?
Wow, it's as if this never occurred to anybody before...
We are ruled by fools who think mass poverty is the solution to a bad economy.
ATHENS — Deeply indebted and nearly bankrupt, this Mediterranean nation was forced to adopt tough austerity measures to slash its deficit and secure an international bailout. But as Greece’s economy slides into free fall, critics are scanning the devastated landscape here and asking a probing question: Does austerity really work?
We are ruled by fools who think mass poverty is the solution to a bad economy.
Here's A Cunning Plan
Do everything you can to make sure your trading partners don't have any money to buy your stuff.
WIESBADEN, Germany--Germany's economy probably contracted by around 0.25% in the fourth quarter of last year, the government's statistics office said Wednesday, increasing the risk the 17-nation euro zone could be heading for a contraction only two years after the last recession.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Ummm... We've Already Seen This Movie
Just make sure to sell minutes before the real crops report comes out.
Suck on it, Randolph and Mortimer.
Suck on it, Randolph and Mortimer.
Don't Know Anything About Anything
More generally, the belief that because someone is good at X they're likely to be good at Y is a strange one. Yes displaying some core competence in anything does provide a signal of something, but it still doesn't mean a skilled brain surgeon knows anything about which countries we should be invading (hint: ALL OF THEM!!!).
Such Confusion
The latest on MF Global doesn't shed much light, but makes sure we know how confusing things are, how the record keeping was sloppy, and how nobody is being accused of any wrongdoing.
Huzzah! The Asset Test!
Make sure you're completely broke before you can get any help.
Specifically, the Department of Public Welfare said that as of May 1, people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings and other assets would no longer be eligible for food stamps. For people over 60, the limit would be $3,250.
Monday, January 09, 2012
Malaise
Miliband is truly inspiring.
Labour: maybe sucking slightly less than the other guys for the past 8 months or so.
Ed Miliband will set out a new direction for the Labour party under his leadership on Tuesday by saying that the unprecedented and unexpected landscape at the next election will require it to address the deficit and make decisions "all of us wish we did not have to take".
...
He will stress that the persistence of the deficit does not mean Labour has to abandon its distinctive agenda, but instead rethink it. He will say: "Each time New Labour won an election, we came back to power with a growing economy. Next time we come back to power, it will be different. We will be handed a deficit. Whoever is the next prime minister will not have money to spend. We will have to make difficult choices that all of us wish we did not have to make."
Labour: maybe sucking slightly less than the other guys for the past 8 months or so.
I Suppose We Could Just Kill Them
I can't find it now, but years ago I think I overreacted to Chris Matthews suggesting that was the solution to our little Gitmo problem. Later I realized he was probably making a modest proposal in response to the "we can't release them because we've probably made them mad" logic, but at that time any number of modest proposals were taken very seriously.
He Probably Had A Few Unpaid Parking Tickets
Maybe did something mean to his mother? Everybody's guilty of something, really.
They Don't Trust The Banks
This is sort of pitched as companies lending money to banks, but companies always lend money to the banks in the form of deposits. What's going on here is that the companies are demanding collateral.
"Dented The Credibility"
Just a little dent, people, no biggie.
Philipp Hildebrand resigned as head of the Swiss central bank after a currency transaction by his wife last year dented the credibility of the franc’s chief guardian.
I Suppose They Don't Really Need To Go To Manhattan
But a giant convention center in Queens sounds like pretty much the stupidest idea ever.
Sure most outsiders have a rather Manhattan-centric view of New York city, but that's kind of the point. People who pay to go to New York want to go to Manhattan, or at least have easy access to it. And while we can fantasize about how this will help make Queens extra awesome (I actually don't know this neighborhood so I'm at a disadvantage), convention centers are a lot like casinos. The people who run them want to keep you and your money inside, not wandering around the surrounding streets.
Sure most outsiders have a rather Manhattan-centric view of New York city, but that's kind of the point. People who pay to go to New York want to go to Manhattan, or at least have easy access to it. And while we can fantasize about how this will help make Queens extra awesome (I actually don't know this neighborhood so I'm at a disadvantage), convention centers are a lot like casinos. The people who run them want to keep you and your money inside, not wandering around the surrounding streets.
There Is No Class In America
It's an egalitarian paradise.
Jarvis, like thousands of other students in Chicago Public Schools, is homeless.
He is just one of more than 10,660 students who were homeless at the beginning of the school year. That’s 1,466 more than at the same point in the previous school year, according to a CPS tally.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Not So Peculiar
Not exactly sure why someone thinks 'amateur dramatics' are a 'peculiarly British institution,' but I've long been a fan of community theater. At first, presumably, because it's what I had access to (financially and geographically) when I was younger, but also because over the years I've seen some amazing 'amateur' performances. Some very talented people don't want to spend their lives running the small business known as ME, which is what you have to do to try to actually succeed, and art often flourishes under constraints (space, money, and, yes, even lack of supreme talent). Support your local community theater!
I Know Two Black People
Is there any meaningful way in which Newt "served" with Rice and Powell? I suppose with Powell you can say "Newt was in Congress when Powell was in the executive branch" but...is there any even vague connection to Rice at all?
So They're Useless Then
If this really is the Fed's view, then they're saying that monetary policy is generally going to be utterly useless in fighting recessions as they won't be willing to do anything. Time to rewrite all the textbooks. As in, instead of the usual "fiscal policy is less likely to be useful during recessions due to lags in recognition, implementation, and impact" claptrap, we should have "monetary policy is unlikely to be useful during recessions due to the fact that modern central bankers are sociopaths whose only concerns are inflation and the economic wellbeing of the creditor class."
Here's An Idea: Let's Improve Things By Making Everybody (Else) Suffer
Surely no one could object.
Default and leave the euro. Really a much better plan. The choice between Iceland and Ireland is rather simple.
On balance, debt restructuring plus “internal” or “fiscal” devaluation -- difficult as it may be -- looks preferable. Explicit wage cuts, and the recession needed to induce them, don’t have to carry the whole burden of cost adjustment. A combination of increased value-added tax and lower payroll tax (Greece could easily do both) mimics a currency devaluation by raising the price of imports relative to the price of exports, lowering real wage costs by stealth. They should be part of the mix.
Default and leave the euro. Really a much better plan. The choice between Iceland and Ireland is rather simple.
Sunday Bobbleheads
Face the Nation has Panetta, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Crank Yelling At Clouds Guy from Arizona.
Meet the Press is doing yet another Republican debate.
This Week has Axelrod and Fox news contributor Mike Huckabee.
Document the atrocities! Just kidding. Have a bloody mary and do something else.
Meet the Press is doing yet another Republican debate.
This Week has Axelrod and Fox news contributor Mike Huckabee.
Document the atrocities! Just kidding. Have a bloody mary and do something else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)