Year: 2014

CAVIAR, SIR?

The good news is that $23,000 in Singaporean dollars is only $18,400 US.

The bad news?  That’s just the one-way fare.

But look what you get.

This is someplace between “heaven” and “an obscenity” depending on your world view.  (Both, if you share mine.)  It’s certainly a lighter carbon footprint than owning your own plane.

I’m trying to figure out how many frequent flier miles it cost him.  I’d never spend that many myself.  But it’s fun to read about.

“PRIDE”

You don’t have to be straight or gay to love this movie — just human.  Amazingly, astonishingly, heart-soaringly, it’s a true story.

There is so too much “big” money in politics — especially secret money.  Most Democrats would like to fix that; Republicans block efforts at disclosure.

Another difference: Democrats want to make it easy to vote so more people will. Republicans want to make it harder, so more people won’t.  Look, for example, at how hard they’re working at this in Georgia, blocking the tens of thousands of new mainly African-American and Hispanic registrants because (the claim) they’ve found 25 out of 85,000 that were bogus.  And in loads of other states, with, it now seems, the help of George W. Bush’s appointments to the Supreme Court.  (Thanks again, Ralph Nader.)

But there’s a solution.

As I’ve written before:

Want your student loan payment slashed?  JUST VOTE!  . . .  Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way of this being done.

Want to boost the economy with a 40% raise hike for those who make minimum wage?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want the bipartisan Senate immigration bill signed into law and boost the economy?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want to boost the economy by repairing America’s crumbling infrastructure?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want to enact the universal background checks that even 74% of NRA members favor?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want ENDA passed?   JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

The Republicans currently serving in Congress pride themselves on being unwilling to compromise.  Want to break the gridlock and get America moving again?  Just take a couple of hours and vote.

It’s not rocket science.  We can do this. 

And if we don’t want Republicans controlling the Senate and, thus, confirmation of any new Supreme Court nominees to lifetime appointments — we’d better.

(Share this thought with your twitterverse?)

NPR’s “This American Life” devoted an important hour to the Fed.  Read the transcript or listen to the audio.  I wish it were better news . . .

. . .  what Carmen Segarra witnessed going on at the Fed was so alarming, she started secretly making recordings of what she experienced as a bank examiner –recordings that raise serious questions about whether the Fed has changed enough since 2008 to protect us from another financial disaster.

This is a spoiler but just to put it out there: things went very badly for Carmen Segarra in her new job. She’s currently suing the Fed over this. So what you’re going to hear today is a dispute between an employee and her bosses, though of course what we’re interested in is not the he-said-she-said of all that but in what her secret recordings show us about how the Fed works.

Throughout this hour you’re going to hear her recordings of what she saw at the Fed and you’re going to hear more from David Beim’s 2009 report, which lays out the way the Fed should be operating. He explained the changes the Fed needed to make. With Carmen’s tapes, we get to see if they actually made those changes. And it is not reassuring. From WBEZ Chicago, it’s This American Life, I’m Ira Glass. Stay with us.

CLASS WARFARE

And guess which class is winning. The New Yorker brings the story to life.   Can you imagine living on $8.50 an hour — in New York! — as Tapia does, after 14 years’ service?  Where would be the harm if she and other fast food and hotel employees (to take two good examples) made $15 an hour?

Burger prices might rise 30 cents and room rates $1 a day (there is little thought that $20 million CEOs would allow their salaries or shareholders to be nicked) . . . and on the margin a few more people might cook at home to save money and a few people who’d planned to stay in a hotel would sleep on someone’s couch.

But the overarching effect would be dramatically better pay for millions of workers at minimal expense to hundreds of millions of customers.  And isn’t this what we want?  A little leveling of today’s extreme income inequality?  Morally, sure; but also because extreme income inequality leads to terrible economic results.

The right should love a big minimum wage hike.  It’s good for the economy:  the rich can’t get richer without a middle class.  It’s good for taxpayers:  less poverty means fewer public assistance pay-outs.  It weakens the appeal of unions (which may be gaining some traction, as described in the New Yorker): the right hates unions.

Read the article and let me know what you think. 

AYN RAND WROTE COMIC BOOKS

This recently caught my eye:

A community made up of American ex-pats deep in the South American hills of Chile – far away from America’s annoying taxes, healthcare mandate, and legal abortions — was supposed to be a libertarian paradise of rugged individualism. Instead it cost many of the people who bought into it almost everything . . .

It seems pretty obvious that basing one’s society on a single work of (poorly written) fiction is folly, but for many adherents of Ayn Rand and her seminal book of Objectivist allegorical grandstanding, Atlas Shrugged isn’t just any book. It’s about as close to the Bible that many libertarians have — apart from the Bible, of course. It’s influenced an astounding number of conservative public figures — from Ron Paul to Rand Paul to Ronald Reagan. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s Rand-loving running mate and probable 2016 presidential contender, said it was his favorite book growing up . . .

In many ways, the entire Republican ethos — hard-working job creators having their vitality leeched by lazy “takers” — stems from Rand and her rigidly anti-socialism ideology. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand explores the fantasy of leaving those poor, lazy, uneducated leeches behind, creating a new society of self-sufficient ubermenschs, living free from governmental or social tyranny. That is where the mysterious John Galt comes in. A man set on freeing these enslaved freedom-lovers from the shackles of the moochers. He creates a mountain home for his followers: Galt’s Gulch.

. . . Ryan might not admit it, but that book he loves advocates for getting rid of everything from public education, to farming subsidies, to any form of welfare.. . . .

As you’ll read, Galt’s Gulch was a bust.

Have a great weekend.

Did you catch Jon Stewart’s clip of the Republican-controlled House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology?  You have to watch.  It would be funny if — to quote former Republican Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative Monday — climate change were not “the single biggest risk to the global economy.”  (Well, in truth, it’s funny anyway.)  May I ask you to share it with any of the 83% or so of Republicans who don’t think climate change is real . . . or that, if it is, humans are contributing to it . . . or that, if we are, we should be worried about it?  And may I ask you to to share the Paulson story as well, as reported here in Forbes?

Seriously: at the very least, thinking Republicans have to not vote this time.  And Democrats need to register and vote in record numbers.  It’s long past time to break the Republican veto that has prevented us from putting people to work rebuilding our infrastructure (that economists say would boost our economy) . . . enacting the bipartisan immigration reform that passed the Senate (that economists say would boost our economy) . . . hiking the  minimum wage (that economists say would boost our economy) . . . and, yes, taking climate change seriously, because it offers tremendous business and employment opportunities even as not dealing with it poses the single greatest risk to the global economy.

Watch.  Read.  Share.  Vote.

Pass it on.

WORST DAY OF MITCH McCONNELL’S POLITICAL LIFE

Listen, I don’t hate a lot of people and I don’t even hate Mitch McConnell.  He’s just entirely and completely awful.  I once actually testified before a Senate committee he chaired — on his side of the issue — and he was still awful.  I’ve already mocked his recent ridiculous prepared statement that, “By any standard, Barack Obama has been a disaster for our country.”  But have you seen what he called “the worst day” of his political life?

Give President Clinton five minutes to tell you that story.

iPHONE 6

So here’s the first really dramatic difference: speech recognition is just so much faster and more accurate.  I can now dictate in rapid conversational English and it nearly keeps up with me, and with so many fewer needed corrections.  And the fingerprint protection seems to work fine and will spare my having to type in my Apple ID every time I buy something.  And the battery life seems longer.

I’m sure I’ll find more to like — it’s been just two days — but already I’m a happy camper.

THINGS +NOT+ TO WORRY ABOUT

Gary:  “Thank you for posting the letter about Climate Corporation and Monsanto,  with reference to the fake article about the dangers of eating kale. Have  you seen the ones about ‘dihydrogen  monoxide’? It seems like many readers  take food hazard warnings much too seriously. Consumer Reports (my favorite magazine) has published articles that I feel are alarmist, so I’ve  written  an essay criticizing them.  Basically, I want to get the message out, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ when it comes to food health warnings in the media, even from scientifically accurate organizations like Consumer Reports, never mind the flaky ones.  One of the worst is Environmental Working Group (EWG). Don’t tell my wife I said that. She believes everything they say, so she won’t let me buy vegetables on their ‘dirty dozen’ list unless they’re organic, threw out all our cleaning products on their hazard list (practically everything you can buy), uses only shampoos and sunblocks they say are OK (very few), won’t let me cook with a Teflon pan (’causes cancer’), and so on. She makes me maintain a water filtration system in the kitchen, even though our supply comes from the ultra-clean Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. . . . If readers would just follow the practical, common-sense advice in ‘Box A’ at my website, they would have no need to be concerned at all about health-related news items, which are insignificant by comparison. I originally intended to have a ‘Box B’ listing things that I think are unimportant: GMOs, pesticide residues, BPA, terrorism (in the US), commercial airline crashes, etc. But then I thought some people would be offended or ‘turned off’ if their favorite hazard was listed, so I dropped that idea.”

PILLS

If humor is the best medicine, click here.  (Thanks, Mel.)

PEACE

Imagine pairing Israeli and Palestinian ten-year-olds in ballroom dancing.  Here’s the film’s trailer.  Here’s its website: Dancng In Jaffa.  You can buy tickets to screenings through an innovative service — new to me — called Gathr.  It lets you request a screening (of this or other worthy films) on a date you choose at a theater near you.

(Here‘s how it works.)

CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE

Watch live — today through Wednesday.

For those of you in the New York area . . . the People’s Climate March starts on Central Park West tomorrow morning (Sunday) — be there or be square!  Not near New York?  Click here.  Meanwhile . . .

THREE MINUTES OF +GOOD+ NEWS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Here.  It’s real . . . and urgent . . . but addressable.  Three minutes.

24 MORE HOURS . . .

Here are 24 one-hour segments — a little taste of which you can acquire by reading the summary squibs and then clicking the 24-second tidbits for each one.  It’s all part of the Climate Reality Project.

You may have read that Republicans killed the bill that would have allowed refinancing student loans at today’s lower rates.  If I had student loans, this would make me crazy.  But there is a really simple solution.

Want your student loan payment slashed?  JUST VOTE!  . . .  Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way of this being done.

Want to boost the economy with a 40% raise hike for those who make minimum wage?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want the bipartisan Senate immigration bill signed into law and boost the economy?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want to boost the economy by repairing America’s crumbling infrastructure?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want to enact the universal background checks that even 74% of NRA members favor?  JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

Want ENDA passed?   JUST VOTE!  . . . Democrat, November 4, because the Republicans in Congress are all that stand in the way.

The Republicans currently serving in Congress pride themselves on being unwilling to compromise.  Want to break the gridlock and get America moving again?  Just take a couple of hours and vote.

It’s not rocket science.  We can do this.