Stephan: In 1932 Associate Supreme Justice Louis Brandeis, considered one of the great judicial minds in U.S. history, writing in New State Ice Co. v Liebmann said, a "state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Never more in my lifetime has this been truer. The social outcomes in states governed by Republican governors and legislature and those run by Democrats have made clear choices. By almost any measure one would care to take Republican policies produce notably inferior outcomes, and less wellness.
Here is an example of what I mean, Mark Dayton Democratic Governor of Minnesota, and Scott Walker Republican Governor of Wisconsin. It is something to lay next to the comparison between Brown in California and Brownback in Kansas.
Minnesota Democratic Governor Mark Dayton
Credit: Elizabeth Flores/Zuma
The day before Halloween, a band of 40 or so middle-aged Democratic activists gathered in the parking lot of a long-closed KFC in Eagan, a southern suburb of the Twin Cities, to listen to a handful of state party leaders speak. The party bigwigs, who were crisscrossing the state on a last-minute campaign tour, crowded a small, elevated stage in front of a bright blue bus bearing a logo proclaiming it was “On the Road to a Better Minnesota.” Sen. Al Franken’s daughter Thomasin told cute tales of her dad’s pride in becoming a grandfather. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman—tall, crisp-suited, with a stern jaw, he could have easily passed as an extra on House of Cards—delivered the same polished anecdotes about paddling northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters with Franken that he told at every stop.
Finally came the headliner: Gov. Mark Dayton. Engulfed in a puffy green jacket, his thinning gray hair combed over just so, Dayton stumbled through a […]
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Sunday, February 22nd, 2015
Stephan: This is an amazing story of the difference between middle aged corporate thinking is, and where teenagers born into the computer world are.
Modern automobiles are increasing run by computers, which are easily hacked.
Credit: www.dailytech.com
A 14-year-old boy may have forever changed the way the auto industry views cyber security.
He was part of a group of high-school and college students that joined professional engineers, policy-makers and white-hat security experts for a five-day camp last July that addressed car-hacking threats.
“This kid was 14, and he looked like he was 10,” said Dr. Andrew Brown Jr., vice president and chief technologist at Delphi Automotive.
With some help from the assembled experts, he was supposed to attempt a remote infiltration of a car, a process that some of the nation’s top security experts say can take weeks or months of intricate planning. The student, though, eschewed any guidance. One night, he went to Radio Shack, spent $15 on parts and stayed up late into the night building his own circuit board.
The next morning, he used his homemade device to hack into the car of a major automaker.Camp leaders […]
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Saturday, February 21st, 2015
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-ed Columnist - The New York Times.
Stephan: This is a brilliant assessment of the problem. I absolutely agree with Krugman that, "Across the board, the modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there, even if it’s not what your prejudices say should be happening. What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins." The question is: On Election Day will a sufficiency of voters recognize this, understand its importance, and vote accordingly? Given the recurring election of Theocratic Rightist politicians who serve this doctrine, in the face of the social outcomes in those states I have to admit, I'm not sure.
But I am sure about this. In 2016 we are going to make our choice again. We have between now and then, to create a national consciousness that collectively, chooses the compassionate life-affirming options on election day.
Paul Krugman
Credit: Businessweek
Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is said to be a rising contender for the Republican presidential nomination. So, on Wednesday, he did what, these days, any ambitious Republican must, and pledged allegiance to charlatans and cranks.
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, “charlatans and cranks” is associated with N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor at Harvard who served for a time as George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser. In the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Mr. Mankiw used those words to ridicule “supply-siders” who promised that tax cuts would have such magic effects on the economy that deficits would go down, not up.
But, on Wednesday, Mr. Walker, in what was clearly a rite of passage into serious candidacy, spoke at a dinner at Manhattan’s “21” Club hosted by the three most prominent supply-siders: Art Laffer (he of the curve); Larry Kudlow of CNBC; and Stephen Moore, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation. Politico pointed out that Rick Perry, the former […]
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Saturday, February 21st, 2015
Alice Ollstein, - Think Progress
Stephan: Here is another rightist Republican governor gutting higher public education in his state. This is a concerted effort by the Theocratic Right to gut universities in the way they did unions. They hate universities because they are convinced that education makes people Democrats. And they are right. This is the social philosophy designed to create an elite and a peasantry. And the people of Illinois voted this man into office.
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner
Credit: AP
Higher education is set to take a major hit in Illinois.
Following similar announcements by the Republican governors of Wisconsin and Louisiana, newly-sworn in Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner released what he called a “turnaround” budget, that would slash nearly $209 million from the University of Illinois.
“It’s time to make education our top priority again – and that’s what this budget does,” he told lawmakers Tuesday night, touting his plan to give about $25 million more to early childhood education. “With reform, we will be able to invest more in education and give our kids world class schools.”
But the “reform” in his plan would eliminate
more than a third of the state’s contribution to the university system’s budget.
Art History Professor and United Faculty union member Therese Quinn at the University of Illinois at Chicago told ThinkProgress the cuts are kicking a school system that’s already down, as state funding has already declined by more than $37 million over […]
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