http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/blog_rss/bullwinkle Enough of what we oppose! What are we for? For deliberate silliness, the behavior of the wing nuts around President Obama’s speech to school kids has no parallel since Gilbert and Sullivan wrote the immortal lines of Dick Deadeye in HMS Pinafore –The crew has been threatening him and objecting to his sensible and realistic observations about the reality of life in the British navy, and he says “From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments ring forth like the mad utterances of a depraved imagination. It’s human nature; I’m resigned.” Once again, nature imitates art. The whole reaction of the right wing strikes me as such childish and irrational tantrums, like you would see from a toddler in a grocery store, I think back to what I might once have said before child abuse became nothing to joke about – “Where you dropped on your head as a baby?” It now turns out that this may actually have some merit. In his book Dare to Discipline, James Dobson advocated the spanking of children of up to eight years old when they misbehave and that the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely."[35] In contrast, Dr. Spock influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals, and that it would not spoil babies by picking them up when they cried. Dobson pushed the “strict father” model, in contrast to Spock’s “nurturing family” model. Researchers have linked authoritarian “strict father” childrearing with children who withdraw, lack spontaneity, and have lesser evidence of conscience (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Corporal punishment has been found to be consistently related to poor mental health; including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness in children and youth. Corporal punishment is a risk factor for relationship problems, including impairment of parent-child relationships, increased levels of aggression and anti-social behaviour in children, raised thresholds for defining an act as violent, and perpetration of violence as an adult, including abuse of one's family members. (Hart, Stuart N. et al, Eliminating Corporal Punishment. UNESCO Publishing).[3] It’s probably true that many of the kids raised by Dobson’s principles probably had their brains rattled a few times, and it sure looks like some fell out. Certainly his views gave an “expert’s” permission for increased levels of physical violence against children. I don’t know whether any of this would hold empirical water, but it sure explains a lot to me. Pathological deference to authority, refusal to negotiate, equation of tolerance with deviance, condemnation of alternative religious practices or lifestyles, willingness to kill to enforce “morality”, strict party discipline, unthinking acceptance of myths and lies emanating from authority figures, obdurate resistance to reasoned argument…these all seem to fit the model of children raised by the Dobson method. The criticism of Spock’s approach (which began with Norman Vincent Peal and was taken up by such illuminati as Spiro Agnew), is that it led to generations of children who grew up with self-indulgence, moral relativism, and a lack of respect for the norms and institutions of patriotism, religion and even protection of life. The contrast was captured by George Lakoff, in his book Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't," published by the University of Chicago Press., 1996. Remember "Question Authority?" After Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, child molestation by priests, the Iraq invasion, murders of doctors, that sure seems like good advice to me. Thank you Dr, Spock. So the next time you see a tea-bagger going into his “Whaaa!” tantrum, give him a hug; that’s what he really wants. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZNn http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZNn/commentary#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:03:08 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZNn Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZNn/ Proponents of the status quo in the health care system, i.e. those entities that are capturing the billions of excess dollars that Americans are paying for ever-diminishing availability and declining quality, are portraying the proposed fixes as a typical tax and spend approach by liberals. The claim is that health care delivery will suffer and Americans will be worse off. This argument is a gigantic red herring. America does not have a health care delivery problem – it has a health care insurance problem. The insurance industry, which is not regulated at the Federal level and is lightly regulated by most states, (especially Arizona, Connecticut, and Nebraska, where many of them are headquartered) is a succubus that has its fangs sunk into every food chain in the American economy. A good portion of the current economic crisis is traceable to the unregulated insurance industry – AIG being the poster child. But that is another discussion. There are two core principles of insurance: 1. Spread the risk of losses. 2. Prevent adverse selection. Spreading the risk means that coverage should be as broad as possible. Claims are statistically predictable; if one person will get cancer each year (but we don’t know which one), and it costs $100,000 to treat her, then an annual premium of $1000 from one thousand people will suffice. It is true that if the cost were lower, the premium would be lower, and this leads to a discussion of the efficiency of the health care system and the costs of treatment. But if we could spread the risk of one cancer across one million people, the annual premium would be only ten cents a year. Of course, the number of cancers would also go up, but at least for this disease, the overall incidence of cancer per 100,000 people has been falling since about 1992. (Source: http://progressreport.cancer.gov) “Spreading the risk” inherently requires cross-subsidy. Those who do not get sick pay premiums that then pay for the treatment of those who do get sick; the premiums of those whose houses do not catch fire pay for the losses of those which do. Like all cross-subsidy arrangements, an incentive exists for those who think they can beat the odds to drop out of the insurance pool. Men don’t want to pay for pregnancy coverage; the young don’t want to pay for Alzheimer’s treatment, New Yorkers don’t want to pay for earthquake damage in California. It also creates an incentive for profit-maximizing insurance companies to cover those who are less likely than average to place claims. The result is that those who remain in the insurance pool face higher and higher proportions of claims and higher and higher insurance premiums. This cycle creates an incentive for further “opting out” and the vicious cycle proceeds. This is the essence of “adverse selection” where the pool of insured individuals becomes increasingly riskier. The policy implications are obvious: 1. To spread the risk as widely as possible, get the entire population into a single pool. That means “single payer.” 2. To avoid adverse selection, either make membership in the pool mandatory or require “Pay or Play” so that drop outs cannot avoid their contribution to the pool. Note that this says nothing at all about the provision of health care services. While the current system of insurance creates distortions in the provision of health services, the insurance problem is separable from them. But the health care providers that live on those distortions have teamed up with the insurance companies to drag those smelly red herrings into the discussion. Watch out when they start waving their hands and turn up the volume. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZgK http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZgK/commentary#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:25:12 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZgK Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZgK/ The DHS report that cited the dangers of right wing hate groups recruiting returning military veterans has got the slef-appointed defenders of the honor of the military in a lather. O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and the others froth that the report is a sklght to the patriotism of veterans. This is the usual BS from these guys - oppose the war and you don't support the troops; worry about recruitment of combat-trained veterans into neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups and you are questioning the patriotism of all veterans. I am not sure how these guys became defenders of the honor of the military; maybe it is guilt that none of them actually served themselves: David Brooks, NY Times columnist No military service. Pat Buchanan, MSNBC commentator No military service. Ann Coulter, writer & commentator No military service. Lou Dobbs, CNN News anchor No military service. Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal editor No military service. Sean Hannity, Hannity & Colmes host No military service. Brit Hume, Fox News anchor No military service. Rush Limbaugh, Radio talk show host No military service. Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly Factor host No military service. Michael Savage, Radio talk show host No military service. William Safire, NY Times columnist U.S. Army journalist. George Will, Washington Post columnist No military service. Glenn Beck, Fox News Commentator No military service http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZxq http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZxq/commentary#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:07:55 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZxq Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZxq/ Today I saw the embarrassing exposure of the General Motors "vehicle" offering in partnership with Segway - a cross between a golf cart and a baby carriage. My first reaction was that GM had undertaken such a fiasco with the Hummer that it was now going to the opposite extreme, and it would turn out about the same. The immediate reaction of the networks and those around me watching at the gym was laughter. But the penny dropped for me when I read that the Obama Administration was going to impose tougher emission standards on the fleets of American auto manufacturers. The GM-Segway vehicles will be flogged off to mall cops and airport security and DoD will buy a bunch for their messengers to get around in the long halls of the Pentagon. A few may get sold in retirement communities instead of golf carts. But the only strategic purpose of this "vehicle" will be to pull down the average fuel consumption of the GM fleet so that it can meet the emissions and fuel economy standards while it continues to make gas guzzlers for fun and profit. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZgY http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZgY/commentary#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:35:24 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZgY Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZgY/ A hoary old plot in many Westerns has the good, hardworking and upstanding townspeople under the tyrannical thumb of the villainous and rapacious rancher/miner/oilman along with his henchman and behind-the-scenes strategist. There is usually also a smart accountant type who never actually does anything bad, but who undertakes to make the politics work out to the economic benefit of the power elite. They have in their pocket the mayor, town council and most important to the plot, the town sheriff. Often in these plots, the first corrupt sheriff has to be replaced when he fhas an attack of conscience and finally draws a principled line because he thinks the bad guys have gone too far. There is also usually on call a stable of cruel but stupid private gunslingers and thugs who shut down dissent by extra-legal beatings, murders and threats. In various versions of this plot, the newspaper publisher is either a co-conspirator or a fearless defender of the truth who gets trashed for his honesty. The laws are made and enforced for the benefit of the power structure. The town council consists of prominent local business men who find it in their economic interest to go along in order to collect whatever crumbs are thrown their way - they go along so that they can get along. It is only when the virtuous and idealistic lawyer from back east comes along and stands up to the terror that the people rise up and dethrone the bad guys; the peace-loving and idealistic lawyer wins over the girl who was initially a passive participant in the system. It shouldn't take long to populate this plot with the actors in our current political drama. George W. Bush is the rancher/miner/oilman, Dick Cheney is his henchman, the Club for Growth, the oil industry, the financial/insurance sector and the American Chamber of Commerce are the local business men who get the economic benefits of going along. The smart accountant is played by Phil Gramm who arranges for the laws to be written to allow the exploitation to happen. The first sheriff is played by John Ashcroft and his replacement is played by Alberto Gonzalez. The thugs and gunslingers are played by Coulter, Limbaugh, and Hannity, and the evil manipulator of public opinion is Rupert Murdock. Along comes the virtuous and idealistic lawyer from back East - Barack Obama, the consummate outsider, who ultimately defeats the forces of evil by using the power of his ideals and example to galvanize the average people, reinstate the rule of law, and run the bad guys out of town, and in the end, he even wins over Hillary Clinton. The people then chip in their resources and hard work to rebuild the destruction that the bad guys have caused to the town. The big question is whether our national spaghetti western is over, or whether there remain further acts, in which there is a shootout in the main street/town square with the remnants of the old regime. Will the crooked holdover judges let the bad guys off and undermine the rule of law? Will the prominent local businessmen try to flex their economic muscles to establish a new corrupt elite? Will the rancher/miner/oilman hold his workers hostage and seek a buyout as a condition of leaving town? Will the hostile newspaperman rally the losers from reform to overturn them and reinstate the old corrupt ways? Tune in next week. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQsX http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQsX/commentary#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:36:31 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQsX Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CQsX/ The head of the Congressional Oversight Panel that is overseeing the TARP program managed by the Treasury is just the latest to point out that the root of the financial problem lies in the residential mortgage market. Companies that service those loans by collecting loan payments from borrowers are not empowered to re-negotiate those loans that are at risk of default because they are not usually the underlying owners of the loan. In fact, a lawsuit has been filed by owners of securitized loans to prevent loan servicing companies from renegotiating those loans because that would require them to write down the value of their loan assets to market value. When the loan owner is a bank or insurance company, a write-down would require them to increase their capital. There are two potential approached to solving this - one is the carrot: provide loan servicing companies legal protection and some financial incentive to renegotiate mortgages with homeowners so that the loans can be refinanced at realistic market values. The other is the stick: Congress could revert to the legal protections afforded by adopting a bankruptcy law that restores the protections that were stripped away under the Bush Administration revisions done at the behest of the credit card industry. Either way, the loan would have to be written down, but TARP would provide access to the needed capital to preserve the investors from defaults on their obligations. But the reduced value of the assets would remain far greater than value that would appear after foreclosure and distressed sales, and homeowners would be able to remain in their homes. And the death spiral of declining home values that result from foreclosures could be slowed or stopped. It was the failure of the Japanese to undertake the required write-downs after the Japanese property bubble burst that dragged the Japanese economy into the gutter for a decade. The US must avoid imitating that error. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Both should be undertaken as rapidly as possible. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQDQ http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQDQ/commentary#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:33:13 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQDQ Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CQDQ/ As we hear the comparisons of the current economic crisis to the beginnings of the Great Depression, an accompanying warning is that all the economic actions of the New Deal were ineffective, and it was the entry of the US into World War II in 1941 that ended the Depression. For example here is George Will in today's (Nov 15) New York Times: "…The Depression, which FDR failed to end but which Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor did end…" There is a scary message for us today in that idea, but it ain't so. Here is some data: In 1930, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States was $91.2 billion dollars. By 1933, when FDR became President, GDP had fallen to its lowest annual value of $56.4 billion. Under FDR, the United States GDP rose steadily through 1940, the year before the US entered the war, to $101.4 billion. In fact, GDP had recovered to the level of 1930 by 1937; it did decline from that level in 1938 but by 1939 was back again to the 1930 level. It is true that the level of GDP did not EXCEED the 1929 level until 1941, but let's also remember that Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war did not come about until the end of that year. (http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2008/08%20August/0808_gdp_nipas.pdf) So it is not necessary to have a war in order to get out of a depression. Armageddon is not a policy tool for economic recovery. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQzn http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQzn/commentary#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:16:34 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQzn Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CQzn/ The attacks by the McCain campaign, accusing Obama of being a Socialist, sound like a reversion back to something from the 1950s. That is the way the media portrays it, as an amusing and ridiculous jab being made by a desperate campaign that is on the ropes with nothing better to offer. Even Obama's dismissive response about sharing his toys as a child seems to regard it that way. But the attack is much more insidious and subtle than that. The fact that it is being rolled out in the last week of the campaign suggests to me that the Republicans think that this is the most powerful shot left in their arsenal, and could be the game-changer they rely on to win the election at the last minute. As McPalin describe it, the socialist accusation is a claim that Obama will take "your" hard earned money and give it to "them." Given the demographics of the group that is being targeted with this pitch - blue collar and middle class whites - it is not hard to see who "they" are. Just as George H.W Bush's Willie Horton ads were not about crime, and Ronald Reagan's railing on about welfare Cadillacs was not about welfare reform, this socialist line is not about economics or even ideology. Nor is it about painting Obama as outside the main stream. It is all about stoking the residual and ill- concealed racism that remains a powerful factor in America. It is designed to evoke stereotypes of lazy, shiftless, unemployed blacks in the south and Midwest, drunk Indians in the southwest, and illegal immigrants in big sombreros sleeping in the sun, all supported by the welfare funds taken from "your" hard earned dollars. The campaign is brilliantly indirect, but it is the nastiest attack yet on Obama. It is the McCain campaign playing the race card. Maybe it is right for us to treat the attack as a throwback to McCarthyism that merely reflects on the age of McCain. Maybe the attack is too subtle and the American people too dumb to respond as the Republicans intend. Maybe America is not as racist as they think. Maybe the fall of communism makes the whole thing irrelevant. But the Republicans would not be rolling it out as their dying gasp of the campaign if they believed that. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQ8r http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQ8r/commentary#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:29:37 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CQ8r Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CQ8r/ In a wonderful article, Peter W. Galbraith reviews the recent history and current status of the war in Iraq. He starts by looking at the definitions of victory used by President Bush - a unified, democratic and stable Iraq. McCain's definition is similar - an Iraq that is a "democratic ally." So the issue on the table is the path that makes democrats out of theocrats, sidelines Iran and "reconcile Kurds and Sunnis in Iraq's new order. According to Galbraith, the surge has not been the main reason for the decline in violence. Rather, it is the rise of the Sunni "Awakening" that, supported by the Americans, have driven out al-Qaeda from the Sunni areas and diminished the awful attacks on the Shiites. This enabled the Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr to order his Mahdi Army to stand down, thinking that the US presence was temporary, and keep his powder dry for a subsequent renewed civil war with the Sunni. But once the Shiite party most closely aligned with Iran assumed power in the central government under Maliki, the Shiite national army with American help was used to oust the Mahdi Army from most of Basra and reduced their power in Sadr City, Baghdad's Shiite slum. So in 2007 and 2008, according to Galbraith, Sunnis and Shiites fought civil wars, the Awakening (not the Americans) emerged to defeat al-Qaeda, the ruling Shiites undercut the Mahdi Army. So it was not the Shiite Iraqi army defeating insurgents but the Sunnis. Maliki wants the US to withdraw so that he can turn his forces against the Sunni and the Kurds because he leads a Shiite party that wants to turn Iraq into a Shiite Islamic state, allied with Iran. Until 2007, the Americans fought alongside the Shiite-led Iraqi army, but under General Petraeus backed the Sunni Awakening that is deeply hostile to the Shiite government. So Maliki want the US to get out. With Americans gone, the Iraqi army and police could attack the Awakening. And Iran would back them up. Meanwhile the Kurds in the north, who are secular, pro-western and democratic according to Galbraith, have been attacked by the central government forces at Khanaqin. Although the forces withdrew later, it was a danger sign to the Kurds, who have opposed us slaes of F-16s to Iraq because they fear they will be used against them. Meanwhile, the political reconciliation that was supposed to happen once the surge bought some time has not occurred. For Maliki, the Kurds and Sunni are obstacles to achieving a Shiite Islamic state. Iran, not the US, is his primary ally, and he is a hard lineShiite militant from the Dawa Party, having spent twenty years in Iran and Syria. John McCain says often that due to the surge, we are winning the Iraq war and that he wants to continue supporting a government and Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. "He praises the Awakening and but [sic] seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it." His denunciations of Obama and Biden offer no protection to Iraq's Kurds. "George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success - or a path to victory." http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZBJ http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZBJ/commentary#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:58:52 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZBJ Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZBJ/ • Whatever one thinks of lawyers, at least most of them are trained to have respect for the law. My experience with business types like the current gang running the executive branch is that the law is something to be ignored whenever possible, manipulated when necessary, and selectively interpreted when forced. The consequences have been awful- Iran/Contra under Reagan and Bush 1, and wholesale assault on the Constitution, the disrespect for international law, and the contempt for the legal process under Bush 2 and his henchmen, especially Dick Cheney. So the lawyers get my vote. • Texas has a well-deserved reputation as having a frontier ethos, characterized by god, guns, and football as well as an anti-intellectualism that solves complex issues with simple, easy - to-understand answers that are wrong. Arizona and the O.K. corral is not far behind, but the only place that is more rabid along these lines is Alaska. I've had enough of "common sense" and ideology driving the definitions of problems and their solutions. So no votes for the shoot-from-the- hip types. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZGj http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZGj/commentary#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:25:51 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZGj Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZGj/ After watching her on CBS with Couric, I am no longer concerned that she would be a heart beat away from the presidency if McCain died in office. By any standard, she showed herself to be brain dead, so the presidency would go to the Speaker of the House. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZMK http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZMK/commentary#comments Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:45:09 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZMK Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZMK/ The combination of added national debt in the trillions, the huge increase in money supply to fund the bailouts and the reduction in private lending as government borrowing crowds out the private sector will lead to inflation, high unemployment as private investment is suppressed, and high interest rates as the government borrows more to pay bond holders and bad debt holders that it has bailed out. Oh, and higher taxes probably. Goverment investment in everything will suffer. The next President will have no flexibility to do anything much. We can maybe save some money by ending the war in Iraq, but that's going to look like a drop in the bucket. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZMM http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZMM/commentary#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:59:09 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CZMM Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CZMM/ Brace yourself for the "October Surprise." Will it help McCain? Who cares! It will put all our lives at risk. Here's the scenario… Sometime before January 20, 2009, Israel will probably attack Iran, targeting the nuclear facilities that they fear will give Iran the nuclear capability to attack Israel. Ironically, the more likely that Obama is to be elected President, the more likely is this scenario, as the Israelis will want to do it while they have the continued unquestioning support of Bush and Cheney. It is Bush and Cheney who have been the primary source of threats to attack Iran, but given their lame duck status, the stretched state of the US military and the adamant opposition of the Pentagon, it is unlikely that the US will do it directly. But evidence is mounting that Israel will. Thomas Powers argues convincingly in "Iran: The Threat" (NY Review of Books, July 17, 2008, 9-11) that the US lacks the military and economic capacity to take on Iran, being stretched to the max in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the alarmist rhetoric of war continues unabated. John Bolton likens Iran's danger to a new September 11 with nuclear weapons (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11849446/). But Iran, like Iraq, has never been a threat to the United States - it is a threat to Israel. The link to the United States is the "joined at the hip" policies that result in US foreign policy being formulated in Jerusalem. The reasons for that extend beyond international relations to religious beliefs in the "Last Days" and inception of Armageddon, typified by the preaching of John Hagee, who is supporting John McCain. (http://www.jedreport.com/2008/03/john-mccains-em.html) Which brings us around to the price of oil. The consensus of the economics profession is that the soaring price of oil is not due to speculators. "buying a futures contract doesn't directly reduce the supply of oil to consumers ." (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1&oref=login) But futures contracts reflect beliefs about the future trends of supply and demand. And while it is undoubtedly true that growth in China, India and the developing world increase demand and drive up prices, and while it is also true that unrest in Nigeria raises worries about supply disruptions, that does not seem to be enough to cause $4 and $5 dollar jumps in prices in a single day. Instead it appears that the oil markets are expecting severe supply disruption that could only result from an impending major war in the Middle East. All signs indicate that such a war would be triggered by an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. "Israel has conducted ostentatious long-range air exercises over the Mediterranean, and one former chief of staff has called an attack inevitable if Iran continues its nuclear work." And John Bolton thinks it could happen after the American election but before the inauguration. ("It's Later than You Think" The Economist, June 28th, 2008, 16). Iran appears to expect such an attack and has issued a warning that is guaranteed to drive oil prices up again …According to the Financial Times ("Tehran Issues Warning to Israel, June 30, 2008) Iran would close the Straits of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf and strike Israel with long range missals. Play that one out in your mind. Israel strikes Iran, Iran strikes back and shuts off oil exports from the Middle East. Hamas and Hezbollah come out shooting on Israel's northern and southern borders and bring in Syria, which in any case has a mutual defense treaty with Iran. The US comes to Israel's defense from bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do the Russians stand by during a major shooting war on their southern border? Seems unlikely. There is a mutual defense treaty that exists through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that addresses mutual defense issues among China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and which has included summit meetings with Iran (Iran Seeks Membership http://www.wmdinsights.com/I19/I19_EA2_BishkekSummit.htm). Meanwhile, the US Senate stages a hearing aimed to address the surge in oil prices by blaming speculators and closing obscure loopholes in regulation that allow parallel oil trading in London. The hearings are chaired by the Senator from Israel, Joe Lieberman (I, CN). ("Lieberman Seeks Limits to Reduce Speculation" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/washington/12trade.html) It will be a lovely little war. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cqyx http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cqyx/commentary#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:47:57 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cqyx Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/Cqyx/ The outburst of Harriet Christian that demeans Barak Obama's run for the Democratic nomination for President and that has played over and over again on YouTube, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5unWHvq9ysI) spawns some interesting thoughts. One, (and I am far from the first to think of this), it creates a mirror image on Hillary Clinton's side comparable to the Reverend Wright image on Obama's side - the Angry White Woman (" God damn the Democratic Party!") vis-à-vis the Angry Black Man ("God damn the United States!"). Clearly, both are passionate in their feelings, both use intemperate language, and both have become caricatures to be used by opponents of the supporters of the other. Second, the emotions that she vented were clearly based on a frustration that is rooted in the sense of betrayal of the entitlement on the part of Hillary Clinton; that the nomination was being stolen from the better candidate by Obama "an inadequate black man" in the words of Ms. Christian, who would not even have been running were it not for the desire to stop Hillary. The overt racism is astonishing, especially from someone who described herself as a worker for civil rights. While the frustration is understandable, the view that sexism somehow trumps racism in America is stunning. (A separate debate on that subject is worth having.) The recoil from these images also has a more subtle psychological message. Both Reverend Wright and Harriet Christian represent what skeptics and critics fear and believe is the face of the two candidates in the privacy of their own hearts. The critics of Barak Obama's links to Reverend Wright, and their condemnation for his slowness in distancing himself from the preacher, reflect a belief that, stripped of his political language and smooth talk, as a black man in America, Obama must hold the same beliefs. The rant of Harriet Christian has a similar impact: that this must be what Hillary Clinton feels once all the stage management is removed and the raw feelings are allowed to emerge. That suspicion is fed further by the carryings on of her husband, who damaged Hillary's campaign immeasurably with his ranting that, though a bit more subdued, carried the same message of betrayed entitlement. Nobody likes losing. But I doubt that Obama ever felt any sense of entitlement, any more than John Edwards or Chris Dodd. But Hillary and Bill Clinton feel like they have been rejected by those whom they believed to be their friends. Even the limited public visibility of the Clintons' reaction back when Governor Bill Richardson announced that he would back Obama (which I think was the turning point in the Obama campaign)revealed that sense of betrayal. And the image of Harriet Christian's outburst may well reveal the true feelings of the Clintons to their defeat. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqmJ http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqmJ/commentary#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:01:12 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqmJ Doc Martin Doc Martin 2 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CqmJ/ Spitzer has just given American men another "Fatal Attraction" moment. That movie scared the crap out of men all over the country and probably reduced the rate of marital infidelity for a generation. I expect that Spitzer never saw it. Getting caught on a wiretap using hookers is going to turn a lot of congressMEN against FISA, wanting more oversight over the NSA, and high standards for court ordered taps. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqTZ http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqTZ/commentary#comments Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:18:29 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqTZ Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CqTZ/ I am a consultant in development economics, so I travel internationally a lot. Currently I am in West Africa. This exposure gives me a special perspective on our elections. To the world, America is not just another country - it is an Idea. That Idea embodies all the words that we throw around in our political discourse - opportunity, justice, democracy, inclusion, tolerance. So this election is about the Idea of America. (Don't get me wrong. I have met no one so naïve as to think the reality always measures up to the ideal. People understand all about bigotry, abuse of power, kleptocracy, corruption and injustice. But these facts on the ground do not overcome the Idea.) One of the many tragedies of the Bush-Cheney years is that this Idea of America is on the verge of being extinguished in the eyes of the world. America is increasingly seen as guided by self-righteous self-interest. Big, dangerous, disrespectful, selfish, threatening and bullying. Bush and Cheney have turned America into just another country. So the issue here is not Hillary Clinton's question of which candidate crosses the threshold to be Commander-in-Chief. The issue is which candidate crosses the threshold to shift America from the pursuit of self-righteous self-interest back to the Idea of America. Which candidate most recognizes that our national self-interest is best furthered by embracing the Idea that America represents, that leadership means having a willing following, not one cajoled into obedient ranks by threats and bribery; one that recognizes our mutual global interdependence, not beggar-my-neigbor and go it alone. The world is following our election very closely. People may not understand our political process very well, with primaries and caucuses and all that. But they understand that democracy is in action. We are in a process that is being watched by cab drivers, waitresses, street vendors and panhandlers from Abuja to Yerevan and from Nassau to Addis Ababa. If we show the world that Americans can use democracy to restore the Idea of America, all God's children will be dancing in the streets. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqTS http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqTS/commentary#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:28:52 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqTS Doc Martin Doc Martin 791 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CqTS/ Went to the Dem caucus in Evergreen on Tuesday - what a great turnout. In 2004, my heavily Republican neighborhood turned out only 5 Dems - this time, 44!and we split 2 to 1 for Obama. My question: how did Clinton and Obama do in states that are caucus - based versus those that are primary ballot - based? Strikes me that Clinton won in states that have big Democratic party machines (except Illinois, which is of course Obama's home state.) http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqzB http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqzB/commentary#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:39:48 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqzB Doc Martin Doc Martin 0 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CqzB/ Given the overwhelming importance of water allocations in the West, I am astonished that so little has been reported about the recent revisions to the Interstate Colorado River Water Compact that were just approved. In the little I read ( and the least coverage, short of none at all, was in the Denver Post - shame on them) it appears that the lower basin states are going to get more water in times of shortage (wouldn't that be now?. But it was not clear at whose expense. One article hinted that it would come out of water that goes to Mexico. I have to admit that I am suspicious - who gains and who loses from this? What does it mean for Colorado? How will it affect housing development and construction? Agriculture? Fishing and wildlife? The Front Range versus the Western Slope? Will the price of water become more related to its opportunity cost? Is this a grab by lower basin states that will hurt Colorado? Is this another "Chinatown"? I have seen nothing on these issues in the press. Anybody know? http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cq24 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cq24/commentary#comments Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:22:06 EST http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cq24 Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/Cq24/ Since the Republicans largely boycotted a scheduled event at Morehouse College, there has been some discussion floating around about how the "Party of Lincoln" has "turned its back" on black voters. Schwarzenegger gave a speech to that effect to Republicans in California a week or so ago. I am here to tell you - it ain't so. The Republicans have leaned heavily on blacks and other minorities because they have based their agenda on the votes of the white backlash ever since the days of the civil rights movement to create the party that they are today. It was the evil genius of George Wallace that took the southern racist reaction to civil rights campaigns and draped it in the white sheets of states' rights, "drown-it-in-the-bathtub" small government, anti-gun control, white evangelical christianism, using racism as the subtext. Wallace's approach was adopted by Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican convention. Black delegates were systematically harassed and expelled. Jackie Robinson, a lifelong Republican, said that at that convention, he could understand what it must have been like in Nazi Germany. You can connect the underlying racist dots from there to Nixon's southern strategy in 1968, Reagan "democrats", the war on drugs (crack gets more punishment than coke), welfare reform ("welfare Cadillac"), and the Willie Horton ad, and the transformation of the word "liberal" into an epithet (Wallace did that.) With changes in generations and demographics, the approach is now being extended to cover the new "others of color" - (Arab) Muslims and (Latino) immigrants. Republicans have put racists into high judicial position to reinforce these views, including Chief Justice Rehnquist, who was a Goldwater protégé and supporter of his 1964 campaign, and wrote numerous opinions arguing against racial justice, school integration, voting rights, and later worked for Attorney General John Mitchell of Watergate fame. Chief Justice Roberts was Rehnquist's law clerk. While less overtly racist than his predecessor, Roberts has continued to interpret laws that buttress the white sheet that covers so many Republican policies, generally limiting the reach of Federal power, except when that reach undermines civil liberties that can protect the rights of individuals. It is easy to forget that before the Civil Rights Act and Voting Act, state law was flagrantly used to attack and suppress the civil rights movement. In today's environment, Martin Luther King would probably be in Guantanamo instead of Parchman, and the Constitutional rights that eventually led to Federal intervention to integrate the nation would have been waved aside under charges of terrorism and insurrection. Bull Connor and the southern sheriffs would have supported KKK policies even more freely in Selma, Birmingham, and Oxford, protected by a Supreme Court and Justice Department that defends state's rights against human rights. So let's not pretend that the Republicans are the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt; those days have been gone since 1964. But they do embrace the objects of their enmity, because they need them to scare the white folks. Without black and brown folks, most of their agenda is empty. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqZh http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqZh/commentary#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:41:47 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/CqZh Doc Martin Doc Martin 1 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/CqZh/ I've been involved lately in a debate about global warming that has forced me to think through the issue. I was taken aback by the views of an educated neighbor who denies that it is happening - I was as shocked as though I was hearing holocaust denial. He provided me some reading material, so I had to react. Here are my thoughts, and I would love to hear yours. Most of these thoughts would have applied before I read the material, by the way. I'm not a climate scientist or even an earth scientist, so you can read my thoughts as coming from a reasonably informed layman, and certainly not a specialist. • I totally agree that climate models are highly unreliable and primitive. I understand the GIGO principle, and I have a lot of faith in the ability of combinations of technical innovations and economic incentives to alter predicted outcomes, as evidenced all the way from Malthus to the Club of Rome. • The evidence against climate change is equally weak however, and the advocates like Richard Lindzen (MIT) of that position strike me as more than somewhat panglossian. I see two general approaches from the denyers: One is to measure actual climate change, and finding no relationship or an inverse relationship based on a simple regression between average temperature and time, conclude that there is nothing to global warming. This "modeling" approach is even weaker than the climate models that are being criticized. I put them in the same category as arguments that there is no scientific proof that smoking is linked to cancer. The second approach is to conclude that since global average temperatures are within historical extremes, that any warming trend that may exist is normal and we should just get over it. My big problem with all this is that I do not believe that diagnostics that simply rely on looking at average temperatures is revealing. The earth's climate is the result of highly complex interactions of multiple forces ranging from sunlight reflected from ice on the poles, to the actions of ocean currents, forest coverage, passing events like volcanic ash, and yes, human action including the atmospheric impacts of industrialization. The climate models have probably not captured the first order effects of all these factors, much less the second or third order ones. But I have studied system dynamics enough to understand that any dynamic inter-related system that is subject to hysteresis and variable time lags is vulnerable to wild gyrations when the system is disturbed, although those gyrations may come slowly and build from apparently small causes. As an economist, I generally look for changes in systems at their margins, not at their average, just as a pool of water dries up from the surface and retreats from its banks, not from its depths. I also am a fan of catastrophe theory (see Rene Thom), which suggests that systems can exhibit smooth predictable change until a threshold is passed, and then exhibit a sudden and non-linear change of structure. I also am enough of a statistician to understand the difference between Type I and Type II errors and enough of an economist to attribute costs to each, especially when the costs of reversing an error are very high. So put all that together, and I see evidence at the margins that something is happening to the climate - at the margins, some cities and coastlines are being drowned, storms of surprising strength seem to be showing an increase, ice is certainly melting at the poles and glaciers are shrinking, polar bears are drowning and weather patterns are appearing outside the norms. Add to that Chinese pollution, the loss of Amazon rain forests, and disturbances in the cycle of rainy and dry seasons in Africa, and the causes for concern start to rise. Is all that evidence of global warming? Not conclusively, but then I start thinking about Type I and Type II error - if there is no global warming but we act to prevent it, there may be some detriment to economic growth, although I suspect that the net effect of that impact would actually be positive as carbon trading will probably create innovation, jobs and growth in response to the price incentives that are the justification for such trading systems. (And just because Enron wanted to make a business of emissions trading doesn't make it a bad thing. Their problems were not due to that. There is an active market in emissions trading in Los Angeles and also in the EU.) But if there is global warming and we do nothing, the result will be quite unpredictable, although those impacts will fall more on our children and grand children. I certainly do not want my descendants cursing their forebears for doing nothing when they still had the chance. And to argue that global warming is unambiguously beneficial because it will increase farming yields strikes me as the worst sort of chicanery. To look at simple averages does not reveal the full potential for local dislocations that are impossible to model, but are likely to be very significant - storms, flooding, droughts, forest fires, desertification, population movements and associated wars for resources - these things have happened in the past, and they were often a result of local climate changes. It is the apparently anomalous local changes at the margin that eventually reveal themselves in changes of averages. It took decades for the computer revolution to start showing up in US productivity numbers. But that doesn't mean that the computer revolution wasn't happening. http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cqqm http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cqqm/commentary#comments Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:05:01 EDT http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/post/bullwinkle/Cqqm Doc Martin Doc Martin 6 http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/page/community/comment_rss/Cqqm/