Random Acts of Chaos

It seems like common sense that the principles of sound financial management should be the same for people and governments, and for centuries moralists (and to a lesser extent economists) have frowned on excessive levels of individual debt. But the economy is not a single entity in any meaningful sense. Rather it’s a vast, complex system of hundreds of millions of workers and consumers, hundreds of thousands of firms, thousands of government and regulatory agencies, hundreds of public figures whose words and actions can move markets, and so on — all interacting in an incredibly complex, dynamic, and co-evolutionary way.

One result of this complexity is that short-term government spending can either increase long-term debt or reduce it, largely as a result of how much economic growth it stimulates. As many economists have pointed out (here and here, for example), by negatively impacting future tax revenues, slow economic growth can increase long-term government debt far more than even profligate short term spending. And by exacerbating long-term unemployment, not to mention impairing social services and public infrastructure, short-term austerity can have a debilitating impact on societal wellbeing, as we are already witnessing in the U.K.

Public debt isn’t the only hot-button policy issue for which commonsense reasoning can be misleading. It seems like common sense, for example, that taxes should reduce the incentive to work (when applied to workers) or to create jobs (when applied to employers); hence increasing taxes should be bad for overall economic growth. The evidence, however, is that there’s no reliable correlation between marginal tax rates and economic growth: sometimes we see impressive economic growth following tax increases (e.g. during the Clinton presidency) while at other time we see the opposite, as happened under the most recent President Bush.

In spite of such evidence, the claim that debt and taxes are both inherently bad, and that fiscal austerity is therefore the only legitimate means for reducing long-term debt, remains compelling to many politicians and voters — largely because it comports with their commonsense intuition.

Despite all of the warmongering hysteria, the overwhelming majority of all Israelis oppose a unilateral strike on Iran.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Only 19 percent of Israelis support an attack against Iran without the backing of the United States, a new poll released on Wednesday found.

In the poll conducted by Shibley Telhami, Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, 42% of respondents said they support a strike against Iran only if there is US support for the move. Nearly a third (32%) of those polled oppose an attack regardless of US support.

***

The poll’s conductor Telhami concluded that “the Israeli public is neither enthusiastic about the prospect of war with Iran nor swayed by the seeming embrace of Israel by our presidential candidates.” He added: “They have to live with the consequences of war, and they appear to take the American assessment of these consequences seriously.”

When officers arrived, Gibson said she was hiding in a closet naked. She said the officers ordered her to leave the closet.

“I told them what had just happened to me and I asked for a female officer and the officer said I didn’t have that option because it wasn’t my house,” Gibson said. ”I told them I was naked. I told them I had just been raped and that I did not feel comfortable coming out of the closet with there only being two male officers there.”

Gibson said she continued to refuse orders to leave the closet. Eventually, the officers had to use force to remove her.

“The police officer came into the closet punched me in the face so hard that he fractured the right orbital in my face,” Gibson said.

Gibson was placed in handcuffs and transported to University Hospital where a rape exam was performed and Gibson’s facial injuries were treated.

According to documents provided by Gibson to KSAT 12 News, an emergency room nurse wrote in a report the officer was bragging about hitting Gibson in the face. 

The report stated, “the officer was talking about it in a proud manner that he hit her.”

1. Up to 12 Pakistani active-duty and retired officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence agency knew that Usama Bin Laden was in Abbottabad and were in regular contact with him. The Pakistani chief of staff is denying the report.

2. Dow Chemicals hired Stratfor to spy on activists in Agra who continue to protest over the Bhopal environmental disaster that blinded many workers and destroyed their health. I.e., Stratfor was not just doing analysis but was involved in private intelligence operations against civil society groups that had a right to protest.

3. Stratfor Vice President Fred Burton, a former State Department official involved in counter-terrorism, lamented that in the old days the US would simply have assassinated Venezuelan leftist leader Hugo Chavez and Bolivian leftist leader Evo Morales. The internal emails also suggest that Stratfor had placed a female asset in Venezuela, who was having sex with an officer and pumping him for information. The officer was said also to be “working with Israel.” Chavez is known for his criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

4. Russia sold weapons to Iran but turned around and gave their security codes to Israel.

5. The fifth revelation is that often Stratfor analysts did not know what they were talking about and had an extreme rightwing bias. For instance, this memo on the revolution in Egypt attempts to argue that the officer corps was behind the revolution against Hosni Mubarak and that the masses were insufficiently mobilized to account for it. It is alleged that only 750,000 people came out in Tahrir Square, a small number for a country of 82 million. But in fact that was only in Tahrir. People demonstrated elsewhere in Cairo. And they were in the streets in Alexandria, Suez, Asyut and other cities. Even small towns saw burnings of police stations and HQs of the National Democratic Party. This memo makes a grassroots revolution that shook Egypt from Alexandria to Aswan into an officers’ putsch. While the officers tacked with the wind and did end up siding with the demonstrators against Mubarak, they were clearly playing political catch-up. It was revolutionary groups like April 6 that made the revolution in the cities, and the Muslim Brotherhood in the rural areas. The memo is frankly obtuse and if this is what Booz Allen was paying $20,000 a year for, they should demand their money back.

stfuconservatives:

Another fun citation for people claiming gas prices are Obama’s fault.

13 Year Old Jada Williams Persecuted by the Rochester City School District Over her essay on Frederick Douglass.

ai-yo:

jumpstart-therevolution:

theafrosistuh:

beautifulbrwn:

“On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York presented the first Spirit of Freedom award to Jada Williams, a 13-year old city of Rochester student.  Miss Williams wrote an essay on her impressions of Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography the Narrative of the Life.  This was part of an essay contest, but her essay was never entered.  It offended her teachers so much that, after harassment from teachers and school administrators at School #3, Miss Williams was forced to leave the school. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation honored her because her essay actually demonstrates that she understood the autobiography, even though it might seem a bit esoteric to most 13-year olds.  In her essay, she quotes part of the scene where Douglass’ slave master catches his wife teaching then slave Frederick to read.  During a speech about how he would be useless as a slave if he were able to read, Mr. Auld, the slave master, castigated his wife. Miss Williams quoted Douglass quoting Mr. Auld:  “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” Miss Williams personalized this to her own situation.  She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester.  While she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence, she sees the fact that so many of the other “so-called ‘unteachable’” students aren’t learning to read as a form of modern-day slavery.  Their illiteracy holds them back in society. Her call to action was then in her summary: “A grand price was paid in order for us to be where we are today; but in my mind we should be a lot further, so again I encourage the white teachers to instruct and I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.” This offended her English teacher so much…”

Wow.

Read and reblog!!

“this offended her English teacher so much that the teacher copied the essay for other teachers and for the Principal. After that, Miss Williams’ mother and father started receiving phone calls from numerous teachers, all claiming that their daughter is “angry.”  Miss Williams, mostly a straight-A student, started receiving very low grades, and she was kicked out of class for laughing and threatened with in-school suspension.

There were several meetings with teachers and administrators, but all failed to answer Miss Williams’ mother’s questions. The teachers refused to show her the tests and work that she had supposedly performed so poorly on.  Instead, the teachers and administrators branded her a problem. Unable to take anymore of the persecution, they pulled her from School #3.  Wanting to try another school, they were quickly informed that that school was filled and told to try “this school.”  During her first day at this new school, she witnessed four fights, and other students asked her if she was put here because she fights too much. Long story short, they took an exceptional student, with the radical idea that kids should learn to read, and put her in a school of throwaway students who are even more unmanageable than the average student in her previous school.  To protect their daughter, her parents have had to remove her from school, and her mother has had to quit her job so she can take care of Miss Williams. To date, the administrators of School #3 have refused to release her records, even though she no longer attends the school, and they have repeatedly given her mother the run around.  We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation have contacted school administrators in regards to this situation and have also been told to hit the pavement.

That’s what we intend to do.  If this school will sacrifice the welfare of an above-average student whose essay, that they asked her to write, they find offensive, we intend to make everyone aware of this monstrous injustice.  The school has a job, and it is not doing it.  We would like as many folks as possible to call the Principal of School #3 and complain about this injustice.  Her name is Miss Connie Wehner, and she can be reached at (585) 454-3525.  This treatment of Jada Williams cannot stand.

See Video of Jada reading her Essay Here
Read Related Blog posts Here, Here and Here”

apihtawikosisan:

This is the big news of today and I haven’t seen it all over the place yet! The Navajo Nation (who has trademarked their name) is suing UrbanOutfitters.  The suit is based on trademark infringement and violation of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.  This is going to be an awesome case!

motherjones:

26-year-old Sarah Barnes’s alleged response to allegedly burning down the fifth oldest tree in the world—a 3,500-year-old, 118-foot-tall bald cypress—while (allegedly) on meth. Barnes is allegedly from Florida.

stfusexists:

timekiller-s:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s first public hearings, held in Alabama Thursday, were on the subject of predatory payday lenders.

This is horrifying stuff, but for a lot of the working poor, these companies that rob them blind are their only option.

Now think about all that and remember how Congressional Republicans — in both chambers of Congress — fought tooth and nail to keep CFPB leaderless and toothless. Hell, they didn’t want such an agency AT ALL.

Looks like Richard Cordray is getting to work.

stfuconservatives:

leeleeleelee submitted: “This is the reality of Texas’ ultrasound for abortion bill.  A 30 year old Texas woman’s fetus’ heart stopped beating after 12 weeks.  The options given were to wait until miscarriage, give birth to it, or to abort it (the preferred, safest option).  She has to look at an ultrasound of her already dead fetus and if she looks away, she will have to listen to the Doctor describe it.”

—-

I don’t have anything snarky to say about this. This is heartbreaking. These ultrasound laws are cruel, invasive, and do nothing to lower abortion rates.

-Jess

racetothestoneage:

somepolitics:

Andrew Cohen chronicles the many uncertainties in Alabama’s case against Thomas Arthur, who was convicted of murder three decades ago and is scheduled to be executed next month. They include a key witness who recanted and then unrecanted her testimony, another man who admitted to committing the murder, and a wig containing DNA evidence that likely belongs to the real killer.

Alabama, however, refuses to allow this evidence to be tested even though it would cost the state nothing to do so:

Late last month, I profiled the wobbly capital conviction against Troy Noling in Ohio and there are remarkable similarities between it and the Arthur case. Both involve white defendants. Both include contentions of innocence and allegations of bad lawyering at trial. Both include a lack of physical evidence linking the defendants to the crime. Both include crucial witness testimony that borders the farcical. And both include state officials reluctant to permit sophisticated DNA testing that might definitively answer questions about whether the defendants committed the murders they will die for.

Arthur’s attorneys are even willing to pay for that testing, the few thousand bucks it would be, and the testing could be completed by the execution date. It is here where prosecutors and judges lose me when they prioritize “finality” in capital punishment cases at the expense of “accuracy.” It would cost Alabama nothing to let Arthur’s lawyers do the testing. And it might solve a case that already has cost the state millions of dollars. Instead, Alabama wants to finally solve its Arthur problem by executing him. No matter how the new DNA test could come out, the state is more interested in defending its dubious conviction.

Alabama can thank the five conservatives on the Supreme Court for its ability to deny Arthur an opportunity to prove his innocence. In 2009, a 5-4 Supreme Court denied a similar DNA test to a potentially innocent man in Alaska.

I don’t understand how you can support the death penalty given how often cases like this happen. 

+6 (tentatively, see the Troy Davis question below) to Alabama for impending questionable execution. Also +6 (tentatively) to Ohio for the Troy Noling case.

paxamericana:

Some highlights:

Clancy

Somebody who has read a lot of Tom Clancy
novels and thinks he knows the Craft. Total moron.
Really dangerous if he is the Customer. Never let a
Briefer be a Clancy.

DIA

Defense Intelligence Agency. Also called “down river”
Owns military intelligence, sort of. Its basic job is to
justify increased defense budgets. These guys actually
try to run agents. Oy vey.

 
Going Native

Dread of all Intelligence Officers. A Case Officer is
managing sources in a guerrilla movement. The CO falls
in love with a beautiful guerrilla and decides to join in the
just struggle of the oppressed masses. Going Native
sucks. One part of the Portfolio Audit is taking the
temperature of the Case Officer. Occupational disease
with very bad prognosis. Best known argument for
euthanasia

Green-carder

A source working for you because he believes that you will
take him to America where he will own a Seven-Eleven.
Try not to disabuse him until after you’ve squeezed his
sorry ass.

stfuconservatives:

somuchdependsupon submitted: 

South Dakota’s state House of Reps recently passed a bill on the definition of domestic violence, complete with amendments that modify an “intimate partnership” or “relationships” with the clause “with a member of the opposite sex.” So, gay man in an abusive relationship? You’re not victim of domestic violence! College roommate beating you up? Nope, not a domestic dispute.

#facepalm

stfuconservatives:

Amazing news from California: state legislators have suggested a law that would allow health professionals outside of just OBGYNs to provide abortions. Increased access? Hurray!

-Jess