Tuesday, April 28th, 2015
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: This essay by Paul Krugman makes what I think is a very important point: the failure of integrity on the part of major national politicians, and the abject failure of the media to hold liars and knaves responsible for what they have said.
Paul Krugman
Credit: Businessweek
Imagine yourself as a regular commentator on public affairs — maybe a paid pundit, maybe a supposed expert in some area, maybe just an opinionated billionaire. You weigh in on a major policy initiative that’s about to happen, making strong predictions of disaster. The Obama stimulus, you declare, will cause soaring interest rates; the Fed’s bond purchases will “debase the dollar” and cause high inflation; the Affordable Care Act will collapse in a vicious circle of declining enrollment and surging costs.
But nothing you predicted actually comes to pass. What do you do?
You might admit that you were wrong, and try to figure out why. But almost nobody does that; we live in an age of unacknowledged error.
Alternatively, you might insist that sinister forces are covering up the grim reality. Quite a few well-known pundits are, or at some point were, “inflation truthers,” claiming that the government is lying about the pace of price increases. There have […]
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Tuesday, April 28th, 2015
Thomas C. Frohlich and Mark Lieberman, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: I live in the Pacific Northwest and recently had conversations with two real estate agents we know. Both were aware that not only are people from dry states moving into our area, so are the Chinese -- just as they did in Vancouver when Hong Kong was turned over to China by the British.
This is all part of the Migration Trend I have both predicted and described in SR over the last 15 years when I first saw data suggesting it.
Cracks in the dry bed of the Stevens Creek Reservoir in Cupertino, Calif.
Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
For many states, the rainy season is over, and most of the Western United States is now locked into a fourth consecutive year of drought. The imminent dry summer is particularly foreboding for California, where more than 44% of land area is engulfed in an exceptional level of drought. This was the highest such share nationwide and the kind of water shortage seen only once a century.
According to a study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), “Droughts in the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains during the last half of this century could be drier and longer than drought conditions seen in those regions in the last 1,000 years.” The likelihood of such a drought is 12%, NASA scientists estimated.
THE NINE STATES
9. Texas
> Pct. severe drought: 24.7%
> Pct. extreme drought: 14.9% (5th highest)
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Tuesday, April 28th, 2015
Joan Shipps, - The Raw Story
Stephan: At one level this story is very funny. But at another level is a a very sad commentary both on the lack of discernment exercised by many prominent media outlets and individuals, and how easy it is to start a false rumor that enters the echo chamber of American media where it ricochets back and forth.
Senator Harry Reid, (D-NV)
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Breitbart, and Laura Ingraham all reported this month on the rumor that Larry Reid got drunk on New Year’s Eve and beat up his senator brother Harry, then showed up intoxicated to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with an injured hand and relayed that he had just assaulted a family member.
According to a 50-year-old veteran of the Vegas nightclub industry, however, Larry Reid did no such thing. Rather, Larry Pfeifer, former party promoter, made the whole story up and fed it to a right-wing blogger in a scheme to discredit the blogger’s reporting. The blogger, John Hinderaker, then published Pfeifer’s version of events, launching the conspiracy that — though Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) says he hurt his face exercising with an elastic resistance band in his bathroom at home — Reid is lying to the American public to protect his brother’s reputation.
Using the pseudonym Easton Elliott, Pfeifer pitched Hinderaker his Reid assault story in response to the blogger’s assertion that […]
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Kevin Kruse, Professor of History - Princeton University - Alternet (U.S.)/Basic Books
Stephan: Here is a an excellent essay that describes how the corporatist Theocratic Right was created by corporations so that low information frightened evangelical Christians could be manipulated into becoming foot soldiers for their cynical corporate masters, and socially progressive policies could be sabotaged. What has resulted from this now more than half century old strategy, I believe, is the most ignorant toxic social force in America; the source of many of the nation's most pressing problems.
The following is an adapted excerpt from Kevin Kruse’s new book, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015).
In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.
Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin […]
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David Hemenway, PhD, Professor, Harvard School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: The gun debate, as this excellent essay makes clear, like the climate change argument is a false equivalency exchange. One side is fact free. This is the data about guns.
A modern take on the classic 45 caliber 1911 handgun. Credit: pngimg.com
After the Sandy Hook tragedy, reporters often called me to ask for information on firearms. They wanted to know whether strong gun laws reduced homicide rates (I said they did); and, conversely, whether permissive gun laws lowered crime rates overall (I said they did not). I discovered that in their news articles journalists would write that I said one thing while some other firearms researcher said the opposite. This “he said-she said” reporting annoyed me — because I knew that the scientific evidence was on my side.
“In the United States, having a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide.”
Caption “In the United States, having a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide.”
In the United States, guns are used in self-defense far more often than they are used in crime.”
Caption In the United States, guns are used in self-defense far more often than […]
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