Akin, Religious Thuggery and Dr. Seuss

A few days in, Akin and the Republican Party in general are probably hoping this issue of "legitimate rape" and a woman's body's ability to fend off her rapist's sperm (where'd that come from?)  blows over - "oh it's all yesterday's news," I can hear them saying.  This will be what the talking heads on the news channels (at least the "Fair and Balanced" one) will be promoting as well.

But Akin's repugnant and unscientific views notwithstanding, the entire issue is a really a clear view into what a key component of the Republican Agenda is - a war on women.  Sharia-like laws enacted to take THEIR interpretation of what Christian beliefs are, and should be, and impose them on everyone else in our secular society.  The fact that Akin and Ryan co-sponsored legislation to accomplish this and that Romney supported it should give any freedom-loving individual pause when considering whether to support them or not.

To be sure, the next stage here will be that Akin's and the other religious radicals will scream that they're being persecuted because others object to THEIR attempted imposition on the rest of Americans.

I don't care if they're the majority or not (I certainly don't believe so) - that's immaterial.  This isn't a 50% + 1  rule of the mob country - this is a country ruled by principles and laws (hence we're a Constitutional Republic NOT a Democracy - something most people seem to have missed in Civics 101) - the first of which is a separation of church and state.  What you believe is your god's will really doesn't matter.  And to try and impose your religious beliefs on others is not just unconstitutional, it's reprehensible.

So take it away Dr Seuss ....  or a reasonable facsimile thereof

Time to overthrow the financial system

General question out there - when in the course of financial affairs the banks violate the basic principles of the agreement with their customers, should the customers refuse to pay the banks? Should the government uphold this action?

This is a real question as it becomes clear that the financial institutions banded together to systematically defraud Hundreds of Trillions of dollars in financial instruments through illegally manipulating the interest rates and terms upon which they are based.

Our cities are going bankrupt.
Our homes are being foreclosed.
We've paid higher than necessary interest rates on all our debt.

And yet, despite all this, banks continue to insist on enforcing the terms of our agreements- interest payments, fines and penalties and other exorbitant measures of financial penalties.

Should we continue to pay? When is enough enough?

I hold that, as of this day, our obligation to abide by the terms of agreements with banks, credit card companies and other usurious institutions is null and void - that through their systematic and PLANNED violation of the law, and common decency, they no longer can look to their debtors to follow the terms of any financial contract.

I further hold that, given the heinous nature of their offenses, that no longer shall fines alone be sufficient to ameliorate their crimes. No, from this day forward I say that We the People DEMAND that the traders, managers and executives that oversaw these and other illegal activities be tried and imprisoned. Since when is it acceptable in society that a man, found guilty of stealing a thousand dollars should be sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, yet one who has stolen Billions of dollars not be charged or tried at all.

This gets to the center of what type of society we want to live in.

I further hold that, if our government does NOT vigorously prosecute these financial criminals, that it is no longer a legitimate government and needs to be replaced IN TOTAL - the individuals, the institutions, the Laws and Regulations, indeed all facets of a government that would NOT hold criminals of this sort publicly accountable for their actions can no longer claim to legitimately govern its people.

A Working Model of American Social Innovation

There's a interesting meme making its way around the internet attributed to Aristotle that has sparked some interesting debate:

I think some ideas are, well, just bad ones.  And that you can see them at face value as such.  Others are more, well, complex or nuanced - often requiring a tweak here or there to get right, or needing to me maintained / updated to address changing times and circumstances.  And some ideas are just good ones to be picked up immediately.  Pure observation tells us that the vast majority of them are in the middle category, and that the advantage of having an open mind is that you can experience them, play with them, and then either drop them as bad ideas, change them to make them better, or adopt as good.


Which gets me to dogmatic orthodoxy - the tune of the day in this country with both the liberal and conservative camps having polarized themselves, and requiring strict adherence to a narrowly defined set of values or beliefs.  Through this there is no ability to try things on, no space for trial and error; imagine having to explain why what you thought might have been a workable idea turned out to be unworkable?  Shear heresy to have undertaken it.


So there must be more than one dimension at work here - for there are plenty of highly educated people on both sides of the aisle, and precious few of them seem to be willing to try something interesting to see what might happen.  Let's just call that something "Willingness to Try" or "Orthodoxy"  If we plot these two attributes on a simple two by two matrix let's see what we get:

Figure One

Here we can see the two by two with four resulting quadrants of social innovation.  Moving counter clockwise from the upper right we have:

• Quadrant I - Innovation - a place where new ideas are entertained and the social environment exists to try them out

• Quadrant II - Stagnation - a place where new ideas are entertained, but the polarized orthodoxies of the ruling class prevents society from testing or employing them

• Quadrant III - Stasis - a place where no new ideas are identified, and the polarized orthodoxies of the ruling class prevents society from testing even those mediocre ideas that surface

• Quadrant IV - Stagnation - no new ideas are entertained, but we'd be willing to try them out if they did (a null set of good ideas making it to the table)  - resulting in overall stagnation

A basic premise I'll employ is that of asymptotic distribution as we approach the extremes of either variable considered.  


With this defining principle in mind, to the basic framework outlined in Figure One above we can now add the identifiable frontiers of innovation

Figure Two

In Figure Two we can see the limits of innovation:

• In Quadrant I we can identify the efficient frontier  - beyond which we're trying out too many new ideas with no guiding principles yielding total Chaos
• In Quadrant II we can see that too high a degree of Political Orthodoxy coupled with a Highly Educated mind leads to Gridlock beyond the workable frontier, as no party can agree on what should be done or when
• In Quadrant III we see the reactionary frontier, to me the scariest of them all, which sees us slipping quickly into the Dark Ages
• And finally, Quadrant IV as we approach a total lack of orthodoxy coupled with an unwillingness to entertain new ideas leads to a Chaotic Dark Age.

Building upon Figure Two we can identify a point where we've attained minimum social efficiency in societal innovation.  In Figure Three I plot a hypothetical minimum social efficiency frontier - to the right of which we're entertaining sufficient new ideas to deliver the social innovation required to adapt to our changing environment, to the left of which we're not. 

Figure Three

Thus, any combination of ideas and political orthodoxy which yields a societal innovation profile between the minimum social efficiency line and the efficient frontier arc is at least a productive situation.  Anything beyond the efficient frontier, or to the left of the minimum social efficiency frontier is not.

All that is left is to plot where various parties on the political spectrum are to see what we have from a leadership standpoint.  This enables us to develop a prognosis for America's ability to adapt to our changing times and emerge from the financial and economic issues we face today successfully.

I've plotted a few of the major actors (and a couple of minor ones) Figure Four below - let's see what we get:

Figure Four

Crap.  We're hosed.  Not a single one of them looks like they're going to work for us.

I guess it's time to move to New Zealand.  Either that or find some middle ground in a new set of players that will actually help this country rather than hinder it.

Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court - a response to George Will of the Washington Post

This is a verbatim copy of my response to a Washington Post editorial in today's online issue:

Liberals put the squeeze to Justice Roberts


Will's clearly partisan opinion piece misses two central points that somehow elude those enamored in the so-called "libertarian" or conservative sound-bites of this issue.

First - Congress has not "created commerce" - it already exists.  Under current law emergency rooms MUST take all those who present for care, and if they can't pay, the government does.  This makes good sense from a public health stand point (unless you want people dying because they can't pay, or not presenting when they have contagious diseases.), as well as from a civil and social standpoint.

Second - the market for healthcare is a natural one.  No matter how healthy you are, at some point you'll need a doctor.  So to not be financially covered for this impending need, and to ultimately depend on the government for your coverage means you, by refusing insurance, are getting a free ride on the rest of the taxpayers and those who pay for their insurance.

Thus, this isn't a matter of freedom of choice as so called Conservatives would have you think.  This is a matter of you as an individual taking accountability for your life, and your expenses, rather than living on the dole.

I find it fascinating that the Conservatives don't want to understand this - I mean isn't that what they supposedly stand for?  Personal accountability?  But I digress.

If the matter here is whether the Congress has the authority to regulate this industry and require individuals to participate financially, I think it's relatively clear that
1) it is an existing commercial marketplace, and
2) all residents and visitors in the United States participate in it

So therefore the Congress has the Constitutional authority to regulate it.  That much is crystal clear.  And thus the Supreme Court really has no choice to affirm the law on that basis - unless it's truly voting a political agenda rather than ruling on the matter of Law, or attempting to overturn all Commerce Legislation since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

A more fundamental question should be asked - is requiring everyone to buy private health insurance an adequate or even desirable way to achieve the required market participation?

I would submit no.  A far better solution would be to eliminate private insurance and institute a Single Payor system.  To be sure we could encourage additional riders or coverage from the private marketplace, but base can be provided far more efficiently, with lower cost, and higher quality for more people with a government run Single Payor system.  Current estimates are that as much as 25% of healthcare expense (thats 25% of nearly 3 Trillion dollars a year) is due to multiple billing relationships from multiple payors.  Eliminating this would save up to $750 BN a year.  Which pays for a lot of coverage.  And reduces the debt to boot.

So George Will is either naively misunderstanding the case in front of us, or pursuing some other partisan agenda - which do you think is going on here?

CIA Unravelled Bomb Plot From Within

Who out there really believes this stuff? By my count the past, oh, dozen "foiled terrorist plots" have consisted of security alphabet soup apparatus brilliantly infiltrating, outwitting, and then neutralizing what in the US are arguably impressionable angry young men by 


first - suggesting they should attack the US, 
second -  showing and giving them the means to attack the US, and 
finally neatly rolling them up with what ever fake bomb, IED, WOMD they've engineered for the occasion. 


If true, then they're batting 1000, and are up against the dumbest and ineffectual enemy we've seen in ages.  Reminds me of Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy...

Now comes along the latest coup - "Saudi Intelligence" infiltrate a terrorist cell in Yemen, take control of their super-dooper underwear bomb program and then get outed by the media. All under another alphabet soup guided effort.

Really.

It stretches credulity just a bridge too far.

IMHO, domestic "wins" are increasingly looking like a combination of self serving entrapment schemes, targeted at convincing the American people to 


a) continue the exorbitant funding levels we've grown to for "Homeland Security", and 


b) further the path we're on on eroding our essential liberties in the false search for security from an enemy that increasingly we're having to fabricate ourselves to keep real.

The Saudi / Yemeni underwear bombing incident looks suspiciously to me of misinformation spread after the media knowingly sat on the story for days at intelligence's request, giving them time to create a narrative that not only will sell to the American people (look - once agin our infallible security forces have saved the day) as well as sew the seeds of internal doubt at what ever ineffectual terrorist cells still remain out there (oh my Allah! who amongst us are really double agents???!!!!) If successful the alphabet soup folks will both reinforce their core campaign against the American people, as well as spin the terrorist cells int internally destructive activities for months.

Brilliant.

All I can say is:

Got Rights?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-unraveled-bomb-plot-from-within/2012/05/08/gIQA5tKOBU_story.html

North Carolina passes Defense of Marriage Act

North Carolina is well on the path to establishment of a Christian Theocratic state. It is natural, of course, that as a discriminated upon majority they should do so, to protect their views and rights and ensure their safety from fringe elements.

As the Bible is the Christian majority's playbook, and as the New Testament offers no words of wisdom on just how damned the gays are (other than "love your neighbor as yourself ,"which I guess means that gays are the antichrist in some code I haven't the grace to discern - but I'll believe! as we have been told it is so), we must turn to the Old Testament to understand the rationale behind this event, and the logical course of action the State of North Carolina must now follow.

North Carolina should immediately pass laws requiring:

1) Prohibition of looking upon a woman while she is menstruating. (Leviticus 18)

2) don't used mixed seeds, do not wear two types of fabric at once (Leviticus 19)

3) all who do not respect their parents will be put to death, both of those who adulterer shall be put to death, (Leviticus 20)  (Go Newt Gingrich, bastion of Conservative Morality! - don't be visiting NC anything soon ...

4) All blasphemers shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24)

5) daughters will be burnt alive if they are "whores," (Leviticus 22)

(http://www.conservapedia.com/Leviticus)

And god looked upon his works and was pleased.

Update: The Real Unemployment Statistics, or what the government doesn’t want you to know about the economy

In my blogpost from February -  The Real Unemployment Statistics, or what the government doesn’t want you to know about the economy, I examined how the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has consistently under reported unemployment in the United States for the past 4 - 5 years.  This is an update on the situation based on the latest rates available for April.


The mainstream media continue to report the numbers directly from BLS with little critical thought given to what sits behind the numbers.  They've become complicit with the Big Lie that government is broadcasting to the citizens of the United States - that the economy is on a rebound, and that the unemployment situation is improving.


From the New York Times - U.S. Added Only 115,000 Jobs in April; Rate Is 8.1% - they've begun to look at the mass exodus from the labor pool we've been experiencing, but haven't connected the dots to the underlying figures the government is reporting:


"The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey of American households, ticked down to 8.1 percent in April, from 8.2 percent. But the decline was not due to the hiring of more unemployed workers; it was entirely because 342,000 workers dropped out of the labor force.

The share of working-age Americans who are in the labor force, meaning they are either working or actively looking for a job, is now at its lowest level since 1981 — when far fewer women were doing paid work. The share of men taking part in the labor force fell in April to 70 percent, the lowest figure since the Labor Department began collecting these data in 1948."

(emphasis in red mine)

340,000 Americans left the workforce entirely in April - they've given up looking for work because jobs just aren't there.

Keeping the same approach I laid out in my previous blog post, and using BLS data, the seasonal adjusted workforce was calculated to be  154,365,000 in April, down from 154,395,000 in January.  In other words the total workforce SHRUNK by 30,000 people in the past 3 months.  Sort of defies demographics doesn't it?  We've a net growth rate (0.899% according to the CIA) which means with a top line population of about 314 Million (US Census), we're adding about 2,825,000 net new people per year, or 235,000 new workers per month.  And this is using current growth rates - the growth rate 18 years ago was higher.  

This means that, in the 3 month period of February through April since I last commented on unemployment, the US should have added a MINIMUM of 700,000 net new labor participants just to cover basic demographics, with a corresponding number of net new jobs to stay at January's 8.3% level.  This much would have kept us treading water at the same levels,much less recoup the tens of millions of jobs lost since Wall Street's little fiasco in 2008.  And the government reports we LOST 30,000 in workforce participation in the same time period.

So for the numbers

Labor participation dropped from 63.7% to 63.6% from January to April, down from 66.4% in January 2002 (what I used as my baseline in my last blog:

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate (2002 - 2012)

Calculating the real unemployment rate (once again - baselining workforce participation at 2002 levels and then adding back in the now 6,982,000 people that have given up looking for work), we get a real unemployment rate of 12.1% - fully 4 percentage points higher than what BLS is reporting.

You can see the difference in the graph below:

Until next time – If you’re not pissed off, then you haven’t been paying attention.