I’ve been noticing an increasing frequency of little statements like this in some of the higher-end mainstream news sources over the past year or so. For example, the Buttonwood column in this week’s Economist discussed the problem of “extractive elites”.

There are two potential candidates for extractive elites in Western economies. The first is the banking sector. The wealth of [...]

Ah OK, the galaxy you’re talking about is hidden because it itself is largely dark matter. So there are at least two sorts of nearby but difficult to detect galaxies, as the other sort of normal-but-obscured galaxy exists too.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Spitzer-Finds-Hidden-Dwarf-Galaxy-Around-Milky-Way-179454.shtml

It is nice to take a break from the terrestrial mud every so often. I would like to point out one minor detail that I think is incorrect though: The hypothesized nearby dwarf galaxies are not hidden by dark matter, which is expected to interact with light weakly or not at all, but by an [...]

Indeed. And speaking of Hitler and beaten children, I read a very insightful analysis that delved into this written by someone who was there. Look for “The Mass-Psychology of Fascism” by Wilhelm Reich; the Wikipedia article has a link in the footnotes to a pdf of the text (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism). Reich did have some rather unconventional [...]

The turnout is probably not that unusual – I don’t have historical data at my fingertips. My comment was more of a general lament that there were only 20K people in a district of ~100K that turned out for a decision of (minor) national significance. As for the voter base, the Democratic Party does have [...]

Wake County, where Raleigh is located, has a nine-member school board. In the previous election two years ago, several tea-party/Koch/Art Pope (our local mini-Koch) – sponsored candidates won elections in their districts and created a new five-member right-wing majority. Fortunately, one of them (Debra Goldman) was not quite as crazy as the others, and prevented [...]

I have to admit that I’m guilty of not coming by since the rally on the 15th; life with small children does tend to consume most of your free time.

Is there anything that you need at the Occupation? Tarps? Food? Foam sleeping pads? Perhaps I can contribute that way.

Thanks for the recommendation TB04! And thanks (Mod?) for the image.

Good post. A couple of thoughts to add… This reminds me of the “Powers of Ten” movie from the seventies. I saw it when I was a kid – they used to have it continuously repeating in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I didn’t see it when I was last there, but it is [...]

As a resident of Wake County, NC, I can tell you that your analysis is spot-on. I hadn’t been aware of the Koch connection, though it doesn’t surprise me. We do have our own homegrown mini-Koch, Art Pope, who’s deeply involved in the gutting of the schools. http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/10/blessed-to-have-a-pope.html Unfortunately, a lot of the ground-level support [...]

I think we are in agreement. The Fed’s insistence on creating debt at the same time it creates money creates a bias toward existing wealth and capital rather than labor and local economic activity. I’m sure it has other effects as well, but I’m not claiming to be an expert, merely an interested amateur.

gigi3 Fiat currency is not necessarily the problem. It’s just a tool, and like any other tool it can be misused. A gold standard would be worse – then we really could run out of money instead of pretending to do so like we do now. Check out (Professor) Bill Mitchell’s blog for (much, much) [...]

“With talk of defaults, bailouts, deficits, and recessions, wouldn’t that money be better spent elsewhere?” Indeed. The DOD budget alone, minus wars, minus CIA/NSA is close to $700B yearly. If their mission was changed from aggressive imperial domination to deterring and defending against attacks on US territory, I think they could easily get by with [...]

I particularly agree with your point that research is the fuel for the manufacturing “engine”. From the time that I was in college in the late 80′s and early 90′s to now, there has been a huge change at our research universities, where the truly basic research is supposed to happen. I recently spent some [...]

Do no birds ever poop in their open reservoir? That’s why we have water-treatment plants. Morans.

Great post. Depressing though. I wanted to get clarification on one point in your post though. You mention that there is 200 ppm of recoverable carbon in the tar sands; what does that mean? Do you mean that there is enough carbon to increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 200 ppm? If so, that’s [...]

Last night my wife was all upset about Weinergate. I pointed out that it was only the latest bright shiny object to distract us from the real problems, many of which you discuss eloquently here. She knows that too, it’s not the first discussion we’ve had on the topic. This also is part of the [...]

I suspect the answer is the same as why we don’t have high-speed trains, widespread public transportation, better (soon to be any) public schools, etc. It costs a lot up front, and the benefits are deferred and diffuse. That said, after taking a preliminary look at the problem, my semi-qualified engineering opinion (I am an [...]

I agree. I was just a bit more circumspect about it. For starters, prosecution of crimes against humanity can start right here with members of our present and previous governments. Also, without significant demilitarization and realignment of the remaining military forces into a defense-only posture, R2P is, as you say, usually a hypocritical excuse used [...]