And just how do passenger trains get through when the freight trains are blocked? This level of ignorance is just as worrisome to me as global warming.

Yes, we are committing global suicide. Yes, maybe, just maybe, this might get noticed and people might just understand what it’s about. But I doubt it.

David, this post is not up to your standards or those of FDL. And, yes, I realize that some of what I list below appears in the article you quote rather than in what you wrote yourself, but you quoted it and left it unchallenged.

1) As someone already said the municipal bond “tax dodge” is on net a good thing, not bad.

2) And the complaint that people will still be able to avoid taxes by giving to charitable organizations makes absolutely no sense. This is a again a good thing, not a bad one. Are you trying to kill all the arts, medical foundations, ACLU, etc. etc.? And just on a purely ethical level, why on earth should people have to pay taxes on income they give away to good causes.

3) Lastly, the comment on being able to avoid capital gains taxes by timing them to coincide with capital losses? That’s only fair. If you lose as much money in a year as you make, your income from the sales is zero. Why should you pay taxes on zero income?

The Buffett rule is a good thing, even though it’s not a total solution to anything. Let’s not distract people with misinformation and irrelevancies.

Please, as a long-term supporter of FDL, I urge you to rewrite and republish this post. — Phil

Ah yes, the right to bear arms but not breasts.

Obama doesn’t always lie. Last year he said something like “some of what was done by the mortgage industry was legal”. Wish I still had the original quote. It was priceless and not widely reported.

To elaborate on Condi’s ability, I read what I could find on her stint as Stanford Provost and it doesn’t seem that she did a bad job at all. She was hired to deal with an ongoing budget deficit, which she solved quickly. Did she make all the best choices? No way I can tell from here. But it seems one of her choices was to redo the way IT was done at Stanford, which strikes me as a good place to look for substantial savings, especially in 1993, when she did it.

So, again, I’d argue that this woman hardly lacks ability. Which just makes it all the more disgusting what she did when she got into government.

Any folks out there who were privy to the workings of the Stanford system back then? I’d love to hear “war” stories of her Stanford days.

Back to the original posting, sorry Scarecrow, but Condi is not a “people who had no ability to appreciate or correctly forecast the likely consequences of their flawed policies”. She perfectly well did have and does have the ability to read and think. She just doesn’t do either. And, no, I don’t think this is just an issue of semantics. There’s a lesson here that is worth learning and remembering.

David’s mention of Rogoff, my favorite myopic economist, caught my eye. Turns out there’s little of interest in his article. Yes, he is(finally?) asking questions about how our political institutions can solve any of the problems brought to us by turn-of-the-century capitalism (complete with globalization, shifts in the age structure of our population, and environmental disasters inlcuding, but not limited to, global climate change). But he has zero answers and I don’t get the impression Rogoff has even a clue as to the full magnitude of the problems.

Rakoff deserves the Cong. Medal of Honor – oh wait, you only get that in wars – oh wait — anyway….

Just re-read The Big Short (and even understood it). It puts all of this crap in technicolor context, so if you never read it, or even if you haven’t read it since it came out…….hihly recommended – The Prof

My instinct says that, at this point, pushing on this will be futile. So, just me, but I’d need some better reasons for confidence in a useful outcome than what’s been said so far, and the choices narrowed down to about 3.

Pulitzer

Thank you. Tbogg. i really didn’t think any of this shit could make me laugh anymore, but this did.

Any MIT students reading this?

Gruber is your Prof, teaching Microecon and “Public Finance and Public Policy” the latter being something he is likely to teach from his own viewpoint, not giving fair play to opposing views. (We’ll just leave out the issue of reality here.)

http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/gruberj/course

So do some reading and confront the guy and protest publically if you find he’s in fact indoctrinating students in right-wing craziness. You can have a huge effect acting locally.

It scares me that so many of you are dismissing Knute out of hand. You’re basing this on unassailable logic, but don’t we already know that logic is irrelevant to the Repub crazies? I’m feeling a disruption in the force.

And there were reports today that OWS support nationw-wide is dropping, though that could involve many issues unrelated to noise or disruption of businesses.

I’m very concerned about the noise issue. There have been reports of all-night drum circles, boom boxes at full tilt day and night, concerts (amplified sound?). Residents of the neighborhoods unable to sleep for days on end. Is there any truth to this? If so, is there any solution in sight? There’s also the effect on local merchants, some of whom are definitely part of the 99%. Any real data on this? I can see the OWS increasing sales for some as well as being highly disruptive for others. Real info would be very very much apprecisted.

All that said, I do agree that the political system is broken and the only solution is to be found in the streets.

Someone out there remind me, again, why I’m supposed to vote for Obama in 2012? Oh yeah, the Supreme Court. Sorry, the streets are the only answer at this point.

While we’re at it,there’s “Two years ago has stopped a settlement”, which I’d guess resulted from not reading the post after he got done editing.

But I digress: My favorite all time (actually my only) Obama quote went something like “And some of what the banks did was legal….”. I kid you not. I wish I could find where he said that. Anyone?