The last couple of days have revealed the feckless shell-game nature of society today. On the one hand along the left-hand coast of the Atlantic you have Barack (Hussein!) Obama having to acquiesce to the birthers and their patron saint Donald Trump in making a big show of his public presentation of a long-form birth certificate. And everywhere else you have the drooling nature of people’s incomprehensibly embarrassing infatuation with Kate and William’s wedding.
There are moments when you realize that for the most part we get what we pay for with respect to politics, fiscal/monetary policy, energy, agriculture, etc.
President Obama actually having to acknowledge the birthers and the silly nature of our obsession over the marriage of two excessively privileged and subsidized young people is one of those moments.
It is true that we need comedic distractions from all the bad news and for that I thank the Republicans for their many comical presidential candidates. But this short-term obsession with the unimportant is preventing us from debating and solving the long-term structural issues that will face our kids and our kid’s kids.
The US Fed’s chairman Ben Bernanke presided over the first press conference in Fed history answering some very probative questions. These are the types of questions our politicians should be asking of Dr. Bernanke. But they don’t because they know we are consumed with birth certificates and celebrity weddings.
As I noted in a post on The Times website:
“When the most “left” of senators Bernie Sanders and “right” of congressmen agree you know the only solution is to “End The Fed”. It is an opaque cabal that will not receive more sunlight by simply holding regular press conferences. Politicians do the same all the time and they are as crooked as the day is long. These 2 men are the most honest members of congress and take as little money as is possible from Wall Street and this country’s socially irresponsible corporations. They don’t trust The Fed and with men like Alan Greenspan running the show I don’t either. Ben Bernanke is a decent man and an extremely smart man but he took on the wrong job for such a man. End The Fed!”
We are officially celebrated an infamous anniversary. In case you stepped out from beneath a large boulder or were trapped in a cave recently you will recall that it was on this day last year that the BP Macondo exploded polluting countless miles of Gulf shoreline, the entirety of the deep and surfical waters, killing countless saltwater organisms from charismatic megafauna to the smallest of critters. However, what is the governor of Louisiana and neighboring Gulf states pushing for? You guessed it more frequent and intense drilling in the same unforgiving waters.
Anyway that is to be expected but what isn’t being discussed is the growing volatility of global oil markets. I am going to go about explaining the decoupling of global and US oil prices using a couple of graphs as is my traditional angle of choice. Read the rest of this entry »
These are the two numbers Wisconsin man-child Republican Congressman Paul Ryan is touting for his “A Roadmap for America’s Future: Version 2.0”. The first has to do with what he and the Heritage Foundation project will be the rate of US unemployment and the latter is what his manifesto says will be average US economic growth per capita by 2083 or put more magically a nearly four-fold increase over current US GDP per capita (See Page 30).
These are nonsense numbers and the kinds of voodoo economics that convinces “middle America” that Republicans like Ryan are on their side when as point of fact he and his fellow Wisconsin governor Scott Walker have no problem putting out this kind of BS with one hand while simultaneously taking in the largess of the Koch Brothers with their other hand. Read the rest of this entry »
I totally agree Tea Party I totally agree! Government shutdown now!
HOWEVER that means we shut down the TSA, the military, coast guard, national guard, social security, medicaid, medicare, homeland security, agricultural subsidies, pork spending, etc.
SO if your all for that than indeed lets SHUT ER DOWN!!
HOWEVER don’t start carving stuff out and proclaiming your disgust with government!
HOW ABOUT We pullback the security state being built by the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and private security firms along with the Military Industrial Complex? That would save a boat load of money! How about we step back from being The World’s RoboCop? NO? Why?
Well I am all for scaling back the depth and breadth of government spending in the areas of bloat and hubris, but to say “Cut it or shut it” remember what that comes with? NO MORE SPINACH………BUT NO MORE CAKE AS WELL!
