tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59497641039155988052024-03-05T20:00:56.173-03:00Thank Me for Sharing
"After what we have done to it, it is almost disrespectful to have an Earth Day. It's like lice declaring a Head Day." –Jimmy Kimmel Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.comBlogger556125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-78619952859714958992014-07-28T10:45:00.000-03:002014-07-28T10:45:16.369-03:00Corporate Tax AvoidanceEnough U.S. corporations have essentially switched their citizenship to avoid paying taxes that the process even has its own name now, inversion. Essentially it means that U.S. corporations invert reality and declare that they are owned by one of their foreign subsidiaries. If Walmart, for instance, continues along the path it has declared itself committed to, it will soon become a Swiss company. Nothing in Walgreen's operations will change, except for the amount of taxes it pays in the U.S.<br />
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Since the Supremes have been going out of their way lately to stress that corporations are persons, I like the proposal I read recently that corporations who engage in this slight of hand be prohibited from spending money in U.S. political campaigns. A Swiss citizen may not contribute to, or attempt to influence, the U.S. electoral process. If Walmart wishes to become a Swiss citizen, it should be subject to the same restrictions. No more donations to PACs or to political campaigns.<br />
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Apologists for this practice on the right like to point to imperfections and loopholes in the U.S. tax structure and say what is needed is all-encompassing tax reform. As if that is going to happen in the current political climate. And in the meantime, these corporate tax dodges would continue indefinitely in their world.<br />
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I love the way conservatives throw up smoke screens to divert attention from real problems. I'm reminded of a panel discussion I watched recently in which the subject of the immigrant children on the border came up. One of the conservatives bemoaned the fact that this situation was draining money that we could be spending on solving the problems faced by poor American children. And he did it with a straight face. They're good, you've got to admit.Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-84475348503535725382014-07-11T15:59:00.001-03:002014-07-11T15:59:51.226-03:00Republicans and Irony (and Chutzpah)I read two news stories this morning back to back. With regard to immigration, Boehner bemoans the fact that Obama has been president for five and a half years and hasn't done anything. Let's set to one side the fact that Boehner is factually wrong and just remember the fact that Republican obstructionism is the main reason nothing gets done anymore. <br />
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Ironically, the next news story of the morning had to do with Boehner's justification for the lawsuit against Obama, namely that he is abusing his executive powers by doing too much to circumvent the above-cited obstructionism.<br />
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The Republicans have long had this problem of not being able to make up their mnds about Obama. The very same same people at times castigate Obama as a revolutionary socialist with a master plan for destroying the country and at other times as a pathetic weakling who couldn't lead John Boehner to a tanning salon with free booze.<br />
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It can't be said often enough. Oh, for the days of a sensible Republican party.<br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-48123944204165115202014-07-02T17:41:00.002-03:002014-07-02T17:41:48.826-03:00Breaking News: Right Wingers Caught LyingPeople on the right have been spreading the story that liberals have been over-reacting, nay lying even, about the significance of the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby ruling. Their story is that the ruling only applies to a select few birth control methods, the abortion-y ones. They say all the other government-approved contraceptive measures are still covered for Hobby Lobby employees and everyone else. The implication, if not outright allegation, is that liberals are playing politics with the issue, and of course there is no right-wing war on women.<br />
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The truth is that some lower courts have ruled in favor of similar closely-held corporations that object to coverage for <i>all</i> contraception methods. The Supremes not only left all of those lower court rulings in place, but they also ordered those lower courts which had ruled the opposite way, in favor of the Obama administration, to reconsider their decisions in light of Monday´s 5-4 Hobby Lobby ruling. There are supposedly something like fifty lawsuits in the pipelines challanging all contraception coverage, and the Supremes have just settled all of them.<br />
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So no, it´s not about abortion. It´s about contraception. And yes, this is the 21st century. <br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-34582010529370054982014-07-02T10:57:00.000-03:002014-07-02T10:57:59.232-03:00Ahh, the Good 'Ol DaysThere is an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/world/europe/anatoly-kornukov-who-led-russian-air-force-dies-at-72.html?ref=obituaries">obituary in the NY Times</a> today for the Russian (Soviet) Air Force General who, in 1983, relayed the order to shoot down the Korean Air Lines plane which had strayed into Soviet territory, killing all 269 people on board.<br />
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It would be good if today's neo-con blatherers and right wing sabre rattlers would keep in mind, as they go on and on about how Obama is making America weak, what their boyfriend, Ronald Reagan, did at the time, i.e. nothing. Which, face it, was about all he could do.<br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-73460547125256549382014-06-26T10:43:00.001-03:002014-06-26T10:43:44.739-03:00When the Law Becomes Personal
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There was a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/us/judges-with-daughters-more-often-rule-in-favor-of-womens-rights.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C[%22RI%3A5%22%2C%22RI%3A16%22]">story in the NY Times</a> 10 days ago that looked at a study showing that Supreme Court justices
with daughters are more likely to vote in favor of
women's rights than are those without daughters. Even William Rehnquist, in 2003 after his daughter
divorced and became a single mother with a demanding job, became
enough of a feminist to write in one of his rulings against
“stereotypes about women's domestic roles.”</div>
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Now the Supremes have ruled 9-0 in
favor of cell phone privacy, despite the eagerness that the
conservative core have shown in other cases to expand the rights of
police and limit the definition of unreasonable searches and seizures. In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/opinion/linda-greenhouse-the-supreme-court-justices-have-cellphones-too.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region">her column today</a>,
Linda Greenhouse looks at this ruling and wonders why the change in
this particular case. Her suggested answer: because all of the
justices are cell phone users themselves, the issue became personal.</div>
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This correlates with a similar 9-0
ruling a couple of years ago that the police could not place a GPS
device on a suspected drug dealer's car. During oral arguments in
that case, in response to a question from the bench, the government
conceded that the justices themselves could be subjected to such an
invasion of privacy. It became personal.
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Fourteen years ago, Greenhouse says,
Rehnquist was part of a 7-2 majority ruling that limited the ability
of the police to inspect checked luggage. Again, because the justices
were all travelers themselves, the issue was personal.</div>
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The best justices have always kept in
mind that their rulings have concrete effects in the lives of real people, and are more
than just interpretations of the law or applications of abstract ideology.
Apparently even the most ideological of justices recognize this when
they see themselves as part of that mass of real people.</div>
Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-72527299569751989012014-06-24T19:00:00.003-03:002014-06-24T19:00:42.720-03:00In a Just World<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-1063883339125850142014-06-05T14:25:00.002-03:002014-06-05T14:25:30.719-03:00Open Carry Texas and Their Apparent Heroes, Open Carry Somalia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Six undesirables, no matter how you slice it.Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-82424590034671869612014-05-31T11:48:00.000-03:002014-05-31T11:48:24.010-03:00It Would Be Funnier If It Were Not So Sad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-71233702229228876522014-05-31T10:55:00.000-03:002014-05-31T10:55:20.976-03:00Pursuit of HappinessIn Sandy Springs Georgia, you can carry a gun almost everywhere, but need a prescription for a vibrator.<br />
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My favorite<a href="http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/georgia-you-can-carry-gun-you-need-prescription-vibrator?akid=11864.1081956.fWGxsF&rd=1&src=newsletter997905&t=9"> part of the story </a>is this paragraph:<br />
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Arial, Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 25px;">Of course there are plenty of other reasons besides medical afflictions – real or imagined – that a woman might need a sex toy. Maybe she's bored. Maybe her partner likes them. (Maybe they're more fun than her partner.) Maybe it's Tuesday.</span></blockquote>
The gun nuts rely on the currently-popular misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Well, what about that "pursuit of happiness" thing?Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-73011438264443655212014-05-30T09:56:00.002-03:002014-05-30T09:56:35.079-03:00The Alfred E. Neuman PartyStill aren't convinced that the once-respectable Republican Party is dominated by lunatics? Check out<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/22/3440827/mckinley-climate-pentagon-climate-change/"> this story.</a><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f4cccc;">With a mostly party-line vote
on Thursday, the House of Representatives passed an amendment sponsored
by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) that seeks to prevent the Department of
Defense from using funding to address the national security impacts of
climate change.</span> </blockquote>
Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-66307373129912049012014-05-14T20:38:00.000-03:002014-05-14T20:38:09.291-03:00Posted Just Because His Name/Image Drive Right Wingers Apoplectic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Bill De Blasio has supplanted Nancy Pelosi as the chief bugaboo for the right wing boobs. Just say his name and quiver.</div>
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<a href="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/14/nyregion/DEBLASIOweb3/DEBLASIOweb3-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="On cable news and conservative talk radio, the de Blasio name has quickly become a byword for the excesses of liberalism." data-mediaviewer-credit="Jason Decrow/Associated Press" data-mediaviewer-src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/14/nyregion/DEBLASIOweb3/DEBLASIOweb3-superJumbo.jpg" height="426" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/14/nyregion/DEBLASIOweb3/DEBLASIOweb3-articleLarge.jpg" itemprop="url" src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/14/nyregion/DEBLASIOweb3/DEBLASIOweb3-articleLarge.jpg" width="640" /></a> </div>
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Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-43489939750925882092014-05-12T20:55:00.001-03:002014-05-12T20:55:30.129-03:00William Black: How to rob a bank (from the inside, that is)<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1399919135827_30118" style="width: 100%px;"><tbody id="yui_3_16_0_1_1399919135827_30117">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">I think this is poorly titled, but that's a minor point. This is just one more refutation of those few diehards who still would have it that the banks were the victims in the housing debacle that took down the U.S. economy.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Yes, there are still people who believe the crisis was driven primarily by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and by poor people deliberately lying to the banks in order to obtain fraudulent loans.</span></h3>
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<a href="http://ted.us1.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=07487d1456302a286cf9c4ccc&id=bcf875e760&e=670a1206c8" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1399919135827_30130" rel="nofollow" style="color: #ff2b06; display: block; font-weight: normal; margin: 10px 0; text-align: center; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img id="yui_3_16_0_1_1399919135827_30129" src="http://images.ted.com/images/ted/84912a944ae9b8448e5a7b2ffa5013d69ee27a34_800x600.jpg" style="border: 0; outline: none;" width="520" /> </a>
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18:48 minutes · Filmed Sep 2013 · Posted May 2014 · TEDxUMKC</div>
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William
Black is a former bank regulator who’s seen firsthand how banking
systems can be used to commit fraud — and how “liar's loans” and other
tricky tactics led to the 2008 US banking crisis that threatened the
international economy. In this engaging talk, Black, now an academic,
reveals the best way to rob a bank — from the inside.</div>
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William Black is a professor of economics and law at University of Missouri, Kansas City.</div>
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<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/william_black_how_to_rob_a_bank_from_the_inside_that_is?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-05-12#t-3097">WATCH NOW </a></div>
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http://www.ted.com/talks/william_black_how_to_rob_a_bank_from_the_inside_that_is?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-05-12#t-3097</div>
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Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-8093639474917717062014-05-12T11:35:00.004-03:002014-05-12T11:35:53.065-03:00Teensy Weensy Glimmers of Republican SanityRepublican Senator Rand Paul is right about two things in today's news. Like a stopped clock?<br />
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His <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/opinion/show-us-the-drone-memos.html?hp&rref=opinion">op-ed piece in the NY Times</a> demanding release of the "Drone Memos" is exactly right. Obama has nominated the author of at least two memos which authorize the killing of US citizens abroad to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the Supremes, and everyone deserves to see how he has justified target killings of citizens who have never been tried or convicted.<br />
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And Paul gets it right again when he calls for the Republicans to stop all of their craziness around the country on the voter id non-issue. Crazy is his word...and mine.<br />
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And Mitt Romney thinks the minimum wage should be raised. OMGGerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-71801309882650263212014-05-10T21:19:00.002-03:002014-05-10T21:19:46.408-03:00Sports Racism<br />
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It is <i>remotely</i> possible that I could somehow be talked into having the<i> teeniest</i> bit of sympathy for Donald Sterling, the racist owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. His troubles have, after all, been caused by the release of taped private conversations. (I don't know that this matters, but I seem to recall hearing at some point that the conversations were taped at his request.) For that to happen, however, someone will have to make a far stronger 4th-amendment argument than anything I have yet heard. As far as I'm concerned, he deserves all of the penalties that have been handed down by the NBA as well as all of the social opprobrium generally.<br />
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There has been much written about the fact that Sterling's history of racism was never a secret. His fellow owners, who now feel forced to take action against him, have been quite comfortable with him for the last 35 years. I think that is probably true and speaks to the matter of institutional racism in the United States.<br />
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But rather than try to generalize about past actions, or the lack of actions, and speculate about what that all means, it is far more interesting to me to look at the world of professional sports right now, already thinking of Donald Sterling as a relic of the past. The same sports commentators who are congratulating the new NBA commissioner for his prompt action against Sterling's overt racism, apparently see no racism in the names and logos of the Washington Redskins or the Cleveland Indians.<br />
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People need to stay away from Cleveland baseball games and Washington football games, wherever they are played. At home in recent years, Cleveland has always ranked at or near the bottom of Major League Baseball attendance. At this early point in the current season, they are at the bottom. If baseball fans around the country would simply refuse to show up to Cleveland's road games, so that they drew as poorly on the road as they do at home, I have no doubt the other owners would unite to take action.<br />
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I don't know anything about the NFL, but I think I know enough about capitalist owners to think a similar boycott of Washington football games around the country would produce results.<br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-86662546484339685192014-05-10T20:34:00.000-03:002014-05-10T20:34:06.848-03:00Yeah, I'm Still HereBecause I feel better writing what is on my mind, than not doing so, I've decided to start this nonsense again after a break of several weeks. But, let me repeat, I'm doing it for myself, not for you.<br />
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The obesity / diabetes epidemic documented in this film can hardly be considered an example of progress, in the event there is still anyone left who thinks the march of time is synonymous with social/political/economic advance.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/71j8TPwkTQE" width="640"></iframe><br />
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The irritating aspect of this story is that there are people who genuinely prefer to believe this problem just, somehow, happened, and that for the government to try to do anything about it is overreach or another obnoxious example of the nanny state at work. These are the people who label as "bad science" all studies that don't support their economic interests. And they are people who clamor for individual responsibility but have no sense of, or understanding even, of the need for corporate responsibility.<br />
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Here is a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food">shameful, but typical, story</a> from 2003 about the pressure the sugar industry brought to bear on the US State Department to extort the World Health Organization into changing the conclusions about sugar in one of its reports. At the time this story ran, the issue was still up in the air. I believe the ultimate result was that the WHO bowed to US threats to pull its funding support and changed its report.<br />
<br />
No doubt there are some examples of corporations who have made socially-responsible decisions that went against their bottom line. And it might even be true that those stories are under-reported, although that would seem to indicate a very atypically non-media-savvy corporation. But, if those examples exist, gawd gave us the internet to find them. Personally, I'm not going to waste my time, but I'll gladly give equal time to anyone who can find a story about corporate good citizenship that can offset the corporate role in obesity, or the recent story about General Motors and the faulty ignition switch.Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-19322239690903660952014-03-10T19:21:00.002-03:002014-03-10T19:21:59.917-03:00The Earth As Seen From the Surface of Mars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-76857354332443056052014-03-10T17:35:00.003-03:002014-03-10T17:35:49.329-03:00CPAC 2014 Panel on Minority OutreachThis picture was <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2014/03/06-cpac-2014-minority-outreach-panel-hudak">posted a few days ago</a> by John Hudak of the Brookings Institute, who covered the CPAC convention. Hudak claims to have taken this photo about 10 minutes into the Panel on Minority Outreach.<br />
<br />
Of course Republicans / Conservatives think they have an imaging problem and/or a message problem when it comes to minorities. What they really have is a core belief problem.<br />
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<img alt="Image taken by John Hudak at the Conservative Political Action conference on March 6, 2014 shows a largely vacant room at a panel on minority outreach." class="blog-post-image" height="358" id="content_0_ctl00_primary_1_imgRelatedImage" src="http://www.brookings.edu/%7E/media/research/images/c/cp%20ct/cpac2014_empty_001/cpac2014_empty_001_16x9.jpg?w=230" width="640" /><br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-73221785924665218222014-03-03T20:01:00.000-03:002014-03-03T20:01:19.162-03:00It's Time for New RulesThere is definitely a humor gap. The right is too far behind to ever catch up.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pcKMd49wDRk?feature=player_embedded" width="640"></iframe><br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-13528147903634567622014-02-25T19:45:00.001-03:002014-02-25T19:46:06.442-03:00Would You Like a Side of Irony with Your Hypocrisy?<div id="yui_3_13_0_ym1_1_1393333761261_6961">
Has everyone already seen this story? The CEO of ExxonMobile, Rex Tillerson, has joined with his neighbors to file a lawsuit in Texas to stop a fracking project near his horse ranch, arguing that a planned water tower, and the large number of heavy trucks hauling on the nearby roads would "devalue their properties and adversely impact the rural lifestyle they sought to enjoy."<br />
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And the lawsuit is right. But ExxonMobile is the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. and the company has never shown any concern about the rights and interests of other property owners around the country.<b id="yui_3_13_0_ym1_1_1393333761261_6960"></b><br />
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Watch the documentaries Gasland I and Gasland II to see how much respect fracking companies have for property owners around the country.<b id="yui_3_13_0_ym1_1_1393333761261_6960"><br /></b></div>
Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-19452603247397677692014-02-22T20:10:00.001-03:002014-02-22T20:10:15.889-03:00A New One Percent DoctrineTo those people who continue to deny the evidence for climate change, or who admit climate change but deny there is enough proof that it is caused by man, I have always thought the best argument is that the world simply doesn´t have time to wait for perfect, 100% conclusive evidence. The risk is that, by he time we have such evidence, we will all be toast, water-logged toast if we live by a coast. I marvel at the risk these people are willing to take with other people's lives.<br />
<br />
Ted Kaufman, <a href="http://tedkaufman.com/ted_kaufman_on/News-Journal-Climate-change-is-too-important-to-ignore">in a recent blog post</a>, makes the point much more deftly. He reminds us of the so-called Cheney doctrine shortly after 9-11 which declared the U.S. had to act in situations where there was even a 1% chance of a terrorist attack. Kaufman asks:<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #d9ead3;">Can a rational human being who doesn’t believe in climate change at
least agree there is a remote possibility that 95 percent of climate
scientists are right? Maybe a 1 percent chance?</span></blockquote>
Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-42484764868156301482014-02-19T18:26:00.001-03:002014-02-19T18:26:31.223-03:00The More Things Change, The More They Remain the Same<div id="yiv5119127843yui_3_13_0_ym1_9_1392661535893_44" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal;">
<span id="yiv5119127843yui_3_13_0_ym1_9_1392661535893_18">Today I finally finished the Kearns-Goodwin book<span id="yiv5119127843yui_3_13_0_ym1_9_1392661535893_57" style="font-style: italic;">, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism</span>.
I enjoyed it as much as anything I've read in a long while, mostly for all the parallels between the issues then
and now, e.g. the influence of big business and big money in politics,
questions about regulating and/or breaking up the big trusts. And the
biggest parallel of all, the breakup of the Republican party. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="yiv5119127843yui_3_13_0_ym1_9_1392661535893_18">Back
then it was the progressives vs. the establishment party bosses as
opposed to the tea baggers, but the similarities are marked. Committed
progressives were willing to let Democrats win before they would compromise on their principle, just as tea baggers are today. <br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />Some of the issues that the
progressives fought for, and which made a lot of sense at the time,
look somewhat different at this historical distance. I'm thinking
specifically of the primaries as a means of choosing candidates as
opposed to having those decisions made by party leaders. At least on the
Republican side, we can see what that has led to: Michelle Backmann,
Rick Perry and several other doofusses debating the theory of evolution. Well, actually they aren't having a debate because they all "think" alike, but this hardly seems like progress. </span></div>
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<span id="yiv5119127843yui_3_13_0_ym1_9_1392661535893_18">I
don't know if Kearns-Goodwin had these parallels in mind when she wrote
the book, but I can't help but believe she did. They are just too
omni-present. I promise you can't read the book without thinking of the
situation today at almost every turn. Even TR's justifications for going
to war over Cuba sound eerily like GW's rationalizations for going into
Iraq. (Fifty years after we saved the Cubans from Spanish oppression, they had to have a revolution to save themselves from us, or at least from our corrupt Cuban dictator friends. Whatever Iraq looks like in forty years, I'll wager it will be like nothing George and Dick promised us.)</span></div>
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<span id="yiv5119127843yui_3_13_0_ym1_9_1392661535893_18">One
thing that
delighted me throughout the book was the discovery of Taft. The
book really fleshes him out (no, really, that is not a weight joke), and he seems
like a remarkably erudite and also exceptionally likable fellow. It is
dangerous to form an opinion of an historical figure from only one
source, still I can't help but like the guy that Goodwin portrays. And,
according to her, all of his contemporaries felt the same. For anyone as
ignorant of Taft as I was, the book is worthwhile just to learn more
about him. </span><br />
<br />
We currently are at the beginning of what I hope will become a real debate about allowing the Post Office to perform some limited banking functions again. That was one of the things that TR, Taft and the Progressives fought for and achieved in 1911 and which existed until it was repealed in 1967. Elizabeth Warren and others are working to bring it back. It is too bad that progressives have to keep fighting the same battles over and over again.<br />
<br />
Another battle that TR and the Progressives fought and won was to keep corporate money out of elections. I'm not clear what Taft's position was, but I think he agreed. Now, as everyone knows, we have once again regressed and need to fight that same fight all over again, only now the abuses of big money in our elections are beyond anything the people of that earlier era could have imagined. <br />
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One difference between the two eras is that the voices of today's progressive journalists are being drowned out by the overabundance of nonsense and the fact that journalism as an institution is in a state of flux. Plenty of good investigative journalists are still around, but their work isn't having much of an impact.<br />
<br />
When I see that we are not only fighting the same battles that progressives were fighting a century ago, because much of the progress that was made then has been rolled back and the abuses now are greater than ever, it seems to me that public funding of elections is one sensible solution to the abuses of money in politics.</div>
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I don't think any of us should hold our breath.</div>
Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-78196307894096590562014-02-16T00:33:00.002-03:002014-02-16T00:33:54.584-03:00Stand Your Stupid Ground
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think people who believe it is
cool/necessary/smart to carry guns in public, concealed or otherwise,
are idiots, living in some kind of imaginative, wild-west,
individualistic free-for-all world. Perhaps they even have small
cocks, as has been suggested. But that is all a matter for debate;
perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the sun will come up in the west tomorrow
too.
</div>
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What should no longer be a matter of
debate and what has nothing at all to do with the 2nd amendment is the fact that the so-called Stand Your Ground Laws are a disaster,
based on the evidence of how they are working. </div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The latest ridiculous
example is a mistrial in the case of a white Jacksonville, Florida
man who shot and killed an unarmed black teen in a parking lot in a
dispute over loud music. He claimed in court that he saw the teenager
point a shotgun at him, but police confirm there was no shotgun, or
any other weapon. With SYG laws, all the man had to do is convince one member of the jury that he <i>thought</i> he saw a shotgun and felt threatened.
It's hard to explain why he still felt threatened and had to keep
shooting even as the car was pulling away, but I suppose that is
quibbling. At least the killer faces 20-60 years of prison time for a series of lesser charges of which he was convicted, and we can hope he gets something close to the high end. And we can also hope that the prosecutor will retry the murder charge.</div>
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With SYG laws, all
the killer has to do is convince a jury that he/she reasonably felt
threatened, even if the threat was an imaginary shotgun. Sometimes all the killer has to do is convince the police
and the DA, and the case never even makes it to a jury. The homeowner in Georgia who
killed a 72 year-old alzheimer's victim who rang his doorbell at 4am
might not face any charges at all because of SYG.</div>
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Then there was the homeowner in Florida
who killed a black teenage who rang his doorbell at 2am seeking help
when her car, or the car in which she was riding, broke down. Never mind
that she was already moving away from the door and had her back to the killer when he felt so threatened he had to start
shooting.</div>
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One wonders when the sound of ringing doorbells in the night became life threatening.</div>
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Or take the case of the Florida (I think) homeowner who shot and killed a
young person who had been in his back yard. Again, never mind that
the young man had already jumped the fence and left the yard before
the homeowner felt his life was threatened and started blasting.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
These are just the cases that come to
mind on short notice. I know that the killers, in all of these cases,
claimed SYG as a defense. How the cases are progressing through the
justice system I do not know. I also have no evidence that SYG laws influenced any of these killers prior to their pulling the trigger. There
have always been trigger-happy gun nuts after all. But there is no
doubt that SYG laws have provided, at the very least, a convenient
after-the-fact justification for the killer's bad judgment. And I
think it is reasonable to believe that SYG laws have had an effect on
the prevailing culture so that people with guns feel freer to use them. That,
after all, was the stated intent of the legislators who passed the SYG
laws in the first place.</div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One caveat that these self-styled
vigilante saviors of the world should keep in mind before pulling the trigger: it is best to
feel threatened by a young black man. The retired Florida cop who
carried a gun into a movie theater presumably felt safer because of
that gun. John Dillinger, Lee Harvey Oswald and the
Aurora, Colorado mass killer all frequented movie theaters, and maybe this guy just believed in being prepared for the worst.
Still I suspect he is going to have a difficult time convincing a
jury that he felt reasonably threatened by popcorn thrown in his
face (or not). But only because the alleged popcorn thrower was a nice respectable
middle-class white family man. If it had been a black teen in a
hoodie, the killer would have nothing to worry about.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Again, this is not a 2nd amendment issue, no matter how much the NRA might want its members to believe it is. This is not about the the right to own guns or the right to carry guns in public. It is a public safety issue about how you use those guns and the responsibility that comes with gun ownership.</div>
Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-85439949522234099712014-02-11T21:22:00.000-02:002014-02-11T21:22:36.589-02:00Inequality For All<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Robert Reich documentary,
<i>Inequality for All</i>, is well worth a Netflix rental. The movie
is not just about what I hope is going to become a serious topic of
national debate, i.e. the inequality that threatens our very
existence as a democracy. It is also about Reich's fight over the
course of three decades to make it part of the national discussion.
Reich narrates the film and is on camera a lot, but that's no
problem, as he is a witty, articulate and engaging personality.</div>
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<a href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY5NjUwNjU1OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTI2NjEwMDE@._V1_SX214_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Inequality for All (2013) Poster" border="0" height="317" itemprop="image" src="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY5NjUwNjU1OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTI2NjEwMDE@._V1_SX214_.jpg" title="Inequality for All (2013) Poster" width="214" /></a></div>
People who talk about the magic of the
market will concede, although I think always with a mild reluctance,
that there is no such thing as a truly free market economy, and never
has been, for all practical purposes. Reich's film provides a subtle
reminder that any number of laws effect the way the market works,
e.g. the abolition of slavery and public safety laws have regulatory
effects on the market. No person would argue seriously that the
government has no business interfering in the market in such ways.
So, yes, people, through their governments, have the right to
regulate the way the marketplace works. They always have and always
will. And we'd better get serious about it.<br />
<br />
<br />
Because I am so sick of hearing
Republicans talk about their concern for the so-called job creators,
I was thrilled to see a couple of billionaires in the film calling
bullshit on that whole idea. And we should too whenever we hear it.
People with capital do not create jobs; <i>consumers</i> create jobs.
And we do not have enough people with sufficient disposable income to
consume things. I assume everyone has seen the stories about how the
market for mid-level durable goods is stagnant while the high-end
market is booming, or how middle class restaurants like Red Lobster
and Olive Garden are seriously struggling.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Because I am so sick of hearing
Republicans talk about their concern for the so-called job creators,
I was thrilled to see a couple of billionaires in the film calling
bullshit on that whole idea. And we should too whenever we hear it.
People with capital do not create jobs; <i>consumers</i> create jobs.
And we do not have enough people with sufficient disposable income to
consume things at a rate to keep the economy flowing. I assume everyone has seen the stories about how the
market for mid-level durable goods is stagnant while the high-end
market is booming, or how middle class restaurants like Red Lobster
and Olive Garden are seriously struggling.<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I did not consciously plan it, but
Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book <i>The Bully Pulpit: Theodore
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism </i>is
a great companion piece to the Reich documentary. As the subtitle
suggests, this isn't just another book about Teddy Roosevelt. I
presume the parallels between that age of corporate excess and our
own were in Goodwin's mind as she researched and wrote this book.
Unfortunately I don't think the parallels are strong enough to make
me optimistic for the onset of a new progressive era. </div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the most enjoyable aspects of
Goodwin's book for me was the discovery of Taft as an engaging personality.
Other than his immense weight, his eventual falling out with TR, and the fact
that he went from the Presidency to the Supreme Court I didn't know
much about him. I didn't even know exactly where he fit into the Taft
family dynasty that still plays a role today (I believe) in Ohio
Republican politics. Goodwin depicts him as a principled and
admirable man, whose abilities and political destiny were widely
recognized early in his career.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another pleasurable aspect is the
amount of time Goodwin devotes to the important muckraking and
progressive journalists of that time, especially S.S. McClure, Ida
Turnbull, Lincoln Steffans, Ray Stannard Baker, and William Allen
White. These journalists had important relationships with Theodore Roosevelt and played important roles in highlighting the corporate excesses of the era and bringing about a public demand for change.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
Finally, despite the fact that I
probably wouldn't have bothered reading Goodwin's book if it were
just another book about Teddy Roosevelt, I have enjoyed the reminder
of just what a complex, puzzling and ultimately fascinating person he
was. There was so much about him that was admirable mixed in with the blustery jingoism and outsized personality. We can all be glad, probably, that he lived
and died before the age of television or we'd be sick of him.<br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-75863420192876314332014-02-05T10:41:00.001-02:002014-02-05T10:41:23.830-02:00Because It's Never Too EarlyThe best thing about this picture is that any adults in the area are, apparently, in front of the guns.<br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5949764103915598805.post-36365400867700536822014-01-30T22:42:00.000-02:002014-01-30T22:42:59.956-02:00See No EvilThere are some things we all would rather not know about, for example how that meat on our table got there.<br />
<br />
Most of us at least know that animals die so that we can feel satiated, but we would like to believe that they were treated humanely up until the moment they were...hmmm, put to sleep? We've all seen how chickens and pigs are caged in factory farms, without even enough room to turn around or roll over. We know how cattle in feedlots frequently live in shit and mud up to their calves (pun intended). But we would rather that information would just go away.<br />
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In<a href="http://lifeinsaopaulo.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/slave-labor-in-global-economy.html"> another post</a> I wrote about the U.S. clothing manufacturers who profit from slave labor in Haiti and how our very own State Department went to bat for them. Now there is a story in The Nation about one woman's protest against how U.S. firms profit from the violence against garment workers in Cambodia, workers who earn about $2.75 per day, which isn't even remotely a living wage there.<br />
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None of us, understandably, want to have to do the research to ensure that the clothes we buy are not made with what is essentially slave labor. Just as we don't want to have to do research about the conditions at the slaughter house(s) where our hamburger originated. This is one of the reasons we have governments for crissakes.<br />
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I don't know what laws might already be on the books that prohibit profiting from slave labor. You would think such laws exist. But, if they do, they are clearly ineffective.<br />
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The answer is activism, but instead I prefer to live in Brasil. In the meanwhile, I have nothing but praise and admiration for women like the one in <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/178165/artists-performance-front-hm-will-make-you-think-about-your-shopping-habits?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20-%2020140130#">this video</a>.<br />
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<br />Gerald Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02377394150728319304noreply@blogger.com0