December 2008
39 posts
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Car Talk Calls for a Higher Gas Tax →
Similar, but with different effect, to the idea of setting a minimum price for oil in the US and keeping any “gap” tax to fund alternative energy and transportation.
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Office of Thrift Supervision: Asshat Central →
Barry Ritholtz provides an overview of the incompetence and corruption of the Office of Thrift Supervision.
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Don't like speed cameras? Use them to punk your... →
Students at Montgomery High School in Maryland have discovered that they can duplicate the license plates of their archenemies by printing a Maryland plate template on a sheet of glossy photo paper and digging up a handy license plate character font […] The students then tape the faux plate over their own and purposefully speed in order to be caught by the speed camera, causing the real...
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Alleged Vote-Rigger Michael Connell Was Warned... →
45-year-old Republican operative Michael Connell was killed when his single-passenger plane crashed Friday into a home in a suburb of Akron, Ohio.
The Republican consultant accused of involvement in alleged vote-rigging in Ohio in 2004 was warned that his plane might be sabotaged before his death in a crash Friday night, according to a Cleveland CBS affiliate.
Connell also apparently played a part...
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Avoid the risk, threaten the experience →
New York’s post office has shut down Operation Santa Claus.
With this closure, the system says: protecting against a single one-in-a-bazillion incident is more important than offering an outstanding service, for 100 years, to thousands or millions of people.
Does this remind anyone else of “The Global War On Terror”?
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More Corn = [...] More Aphids, Fewer Ladybugs →
Increased mono-culture corn production results in fewer aphid-eating ladybugs, hurting the (mono-culture) soy harvest.
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Food Democracy Now Petition →
Sign a petition to encourage Obama to appoint Secretary of Agriculture with an interest in real food, rather than large agricultural business.
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Racial Extremists Are Infiltrating the Military... →
Two years ago, the Intelligence Report revealed that alarming numbers of neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacist extremists were taking advantage of lowered armed services recruiting standards and lax enforcement of anti-extremist military regulations by infiltrating the U.S. armed forces in order to receive combat training and gain access to weapons and explosives.
But neither Rumsfeld nor...
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Rice: No ‘American Money’ In Iraq Was Lost To... →
Condoleezza Rice is a big liar.
RICE: Not American money. I don’t think that you will find that anybody is arguing that there was corruption in the American programs.
The facts are, among other things,
The Coalition Provisional Authority delivered 363 tons of cash on an airplane, totaling $12 billion, to Iraq “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for.”
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“I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market...”
– AFP
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“Heath and Deborah Campbell of Greenwich, Pennsylvania are angry that the...”
– BoingBoing: Store won’t put kid’s controversial name on cake
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Financial Illiteracy, Still Keeping Americans Poor →
A short but intriguing article at MojoBlog.
An observation of some women living at a homeless shelter:
One thing that shocked me was how many women had 401(k) plans. You can withdraw some of these funds if you experience severe financial hardship or take out loans, but nearly all of the women did not want to touch their accounts. All the women have substantial credit card debt and are living in a...
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AMA Weighs in on 50-500cc [european] Motorcycle... →
US motorcycle buyers will have to pay 100% tariffs on motorcycles of European manufacture if the US beef industry gets its way. How does that make sense? Why not apply retribution tariffs to some kind of food?
Because the agricultural lobbyists can trounce the motorcycle industry without repercussion, but can’t “upset the ag business apple-cart.” It looks like government for the...
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Kopbusters -- reality show that busts cops for... →
A former policeman set up some grow lights on a couple small pine trees in a Texas house. With no legal evidence, police obtained a warrant and searched the house. Is it a surveillance state yet?
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The Checklist →
givemesomethingtoread:
If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it.
If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do?
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Why Are We Bothering To Save This Mess? →
The Sietch blog follows up on the series of videos about growth and math wondering why our economy, based on rabid consumption, must be “saved.”
[Paul Krugman] is an economist who sees only one good in the world: growth at any cost.
But no one in the establishment will ask that question, because there is no answer; no rational answer that a sane person would consider worthy of our time...
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A Very Important Video →
Series of YouTube videos by my physics professor at CU where he discusses the mathematics of growth.
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Michigan Will Not Vote Republican For a Generation →
Republicans treat the rich differently than the working class. They bailed out the financial industry with hundreds of billions of dollars and almost no oversight, and some easily loop-holed restrictions on executive bonuses. But when it comes to auto workers, the Republicans demanded that they take a pay cut within the next year, while the UAW was willing to take the pay cut over a longer time...
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Capitalist Fools →
Joseph Stiglitz analyzes several of the key reasons for the economic collapse.
There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history — a debate over the causes of our...
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“[regarding bailouts] Here is the question I cannot figure out: Why are the...”
– Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture - Why Are Banks So Different From Autos?
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Video from the Presidential Campaign, Republican... →
Clay Shirky has an interesting post about viral video’s new role in politics over at BoingBoing.
[…] For the base, a muscular but polite attack on the very issue that brought Obama into the spotlight. For the undecided, the emotional charge is much likelier to sway them than argumentation. And for the Dems — nothing.
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America's Other Auto Industry →
givemesomethingtoread:
There is such a thing as a profitable car maker in this country.
Comparison of US auto industry to “foreign” autos built in the US.
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Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic... →
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response — a nearly sevenfold increase in five years — “would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable,” Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that...
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Peak Population and Generation X →
An interesting perspective on population and the future.
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AIG Gives Execs 'Retention' Pay After Scrapping... →
AIG executives use a loop-hole in their bailout terms to give bonuses to themselves.
American International Group Inc., the insurer that said yesterday it scrapped bonuses for top executives after a U.S. bailout, will still pay 130 managers “cash awards” to stay with the firm, including $3 million to retirement services chief Jay Wintrob.
“The expectation from the public and Congress was that they...
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Paulson and Bernanke Spread the Wealth Around →
Dean Baker describes the hypocrisy of the right-wing outcry over Obama’s campaign mention of “spreading the wealth around.”
Given all the concern over Obama’s ideas about spreading the wealth, it is remarkable how little attention is being given to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s much more ambitious effort to spread...
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