Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

August 31, 2010

Our Leadership Have Been Idiots about the Economy

The long standing macro-economic model that has been the mainstay of training in the 20th century, the Keynesian model, predicts current events in our economy. Yet everyone tries to hold onto the long repudiated "supply-side" model that took hold of politics in the 80s. The result is that we are headed for deflation, and if the Republicans get there way a new Great Depression, with a "D".
Brother, Can You Paradigm? - NYTimes.com: "Brother, Can You Paradigm?
A few months back one of my original mentors in economics — someone who got his graduate training in the pre-fresh-water era — asked me whether there was anything about the current crisis that required fundamentally new analysis. We agreed that there wasn’t."
Poor mother and children during the Great Depr...Image via WikipediaThis is one of the untold tales of the mess we’re in. Contrary to what you may have heard, there’s very little that’s baffling about our problems — at least not if you knew basic, old-fashioned macroeconomics. In fact, someone who learned economics from the original 1948 edition of Samuelson’s textbook would feel pretty much at home in today’s world. If economists seem totally at sea, it’s because they have carefully unlearned the old wisdom. If policy has failed, it’s because policy makers chose not to believe their own models.
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August 30, 2010

Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero

Number of terrorist incidents for 2009 (Januar...Image via Wikipedia
Terrorism raises it's ugly head in the US. Obviously, protests about the Mosque placed in Lower Manhattan has inspired American terrorism.
Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
"Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb....
The arsonists undoubtedly will be happy to tell you how much they hate Terrorism. And how there's a War on Christianity underway in the U.S. The harm from these actions are not merely the physical damage they cause, but also the well-grounded fear it imposes on a minority of the American population. If you launch a nationwide, anti-Islamic campaign in Lower Manhattan based on the toxic premise that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11 -- and spend a decade expanding American wars on one Muslim country after the next -- this is the inevitable, and obviously dangerous, outcome."
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Prosecutors say Croatia ethnically cleansed Serbs: Just War is an Oxymoron

Caricature of the croatian general Ante Gotovi...Image via WikipediaMy point made again. Croatia is said to have intended ethnic cleansing even when they told the troops not to. Here is a subtle acknowledgement of my thesis that good warriors are induced by depraved conditions to commit atrocities.
Prosecutors say Croatia ethnically cleansed Serbs - World News | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news:
"Croatian forces shelled civilians and torched their homes in a deliberate effort to expel tens of thousands of Serbs during a lightning 1995 campaign to seize back land occupied early in the Balkan wars, U.N. war crimes prosecutors said Monday.
The ethnic cleansing allegations came as prosecution lawyers at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal summed up their case against Gen. Ante Gotovina, who commanded the blitz known as Operation Storm, and two other Croatian generals.
The case is unusual because prosecutors insist the generals are guilty despite having issued orders to troops not to commit crimes. They say the generals never intended the orders to be followed."
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August 29, 2010

The Empathic Civilisation

Ignore the incredible leaps of logic about heaven being without empathy. Otherwise, this guy has it right. This is where humanity will go if we survive this next 100 years.


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August 28, 2010

Just War is an Oxymoron

Map of eastern Democratic Republic of CongoImage via Wikipedia
War asks human beings to act without regard to their values. By definition, they act in a depraved manner. The rules of war require a soldier to behave within a limited set of depraved behaviors. This paradox creates a completely impossible situation for human beings who are not accustom to containing depravity once unleashed. So it's not surprising war crimes occur. Nor is it at all surprising that the Tutsis sought revenge on the Hutus who committed genocide on Tutsies.

BBC News - UN DR Congo 'genocide' draft report - key excerpts: "Experts say it is the first rigorous investigation - the researchers required two independent sources for each of the 600 incidents documented in their 545-page report - into alleged atrocities committed in eastern DR Congo between 1993 and 2003. Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government has dismissed the claims as 'rubbish'."
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August 01, 2010

How we subsidize fossil fuels

Image via Wikipedia

Here is a story that has finally leaked out of obscurity. Oil and coal and other fossil fuels are subsidized MUCH more than renewable energy. That is clearly not in the tax payers long range interest, yet that is who pays the bill.  In the short range, it may make gas cheaper, but it also makes for MASSIVE profits for oil companies.
This is a little old, but I ran across it on Jon Taplin's blog recently and I think it does a good job of making an important point—fossil fuel, as an industry, isn't self supporting. No matter where we get our energy from, we're propping up production with tax dollars.
Couple things to keep in mind with this graph:
Not all fossil fuel subsidies are evil. (Frankly, I think we can drop the fossil fuels part and say "not all subsidies are evil", but I digress.) The Environmental Law Institute—who compiled the research and created this graphic—points out a great example: The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That's calculated under subsidies to fossil fuels. It's by no means a big part of fossil fuel subsidies, but it's there.
Worldwide Renewable energy, existing capacitie...This accounting doesn't include all spending. For instance, there are programs that, arguably, spend money as a direct result of the fossil fuel industry, but that aren't technically subsidies. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, say, or, more controversially, money spent on military campaigns at least partially influenced by a desire to stabilize/defend/friendly-fy oil-producing countries.
Read the full paper this graph is based on. See the full graph with footnotes.

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