Rock on.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Mint The Coin
I've never seen a any convincing argument that minting the coin was a "bad" idea, at least relative to the alternatives of blowing up the financial markets or perpetually caving into hostage demands, but it certainly was not ridiculous unless you think fiat money is ridiculous. Which it is, really, but...
Resignation Time
Oops.
The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge in the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening, and that he had the evidence to prove it.
Blogs Still Have Magic Powers
Years later, something about the ability for anyone to write for the public and have it maybe be read still drives gatekeepers to the stupid.
Go Away
I actually don't believe in the stupid informal enforced-by-the-media tradition that presidential losers should just "go away." Of course it's only enforced for losers with a -D after their names, but the contrast is jarring. Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore were supposed to just disappear without a trace, while President McCain is on my teevee regularly.
Classy
That the Romneys truly believed they were going to win is reason enough to be glad they didn't.
The Poors And The Blahs
In America, poverty is an urban thing. That isn't true, of course, but that's the narrative and we're sticking to it. Rural/urban America isn't actually a white/black thing. There's black rural poverty, too (and white urban). But in America, the story is urban=black.
Rural poverty is largely invisible from our media, giving the rural poor a bit of reason to maybe feel like they're a ignored. It doesn't matter how much government aid they actually get, their invisibility gives them reason to believe that they're somehow missing out on the secret welfare system that the urban blahs get.
There's some tiny bit of truth in that in many cities there's a bit more of a comprehensive social service system than one finds in rural areas, but it isn't really as if anyone's getting big checks sent to them.
Rural poverty is largely invisible from our media, giving the rural poor a bit of reason to maybe feel like they're a ignored. It doesn't matter how much government aid they actually get, their invisibility gives them reason to believe that they're somehow missing out on the secret welfare system that the urban blahs get.
There's some tiny bit of truth in that in many cities there's a bit more of a comprehensive social service system than one finds in rural areas, but it isn't really as if anyone's getting big checks sent to them.
Are There No Prisons?
I talked with Peter Moskos yesterday, former Baltimore cop, now a professor of criminal justice at John Jay. We talked about drug legalization, mostly. His book, In Defense of Flogging is a pretty powerful indictment of the brutal, failed US prison system.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Not Trade
There's enough economist left in me to not be too negative about trade agreements that are actually trade agreements, as in trade agreements which lower tariffs and that's it. But the problem is that what the Washington Post lovingly calls "free trade agreements" usually don't have all that much to do with "free" or "trade" and if you include any notion of democracy they don't involve "agreement." So, yes, kill the monster.
For some reason including labor standards in such agreements is communist, but including absurd intellectual property protections is Freedom Reagan Squared. Because.
For some reason including labor standards in such agreements is communist, but including absurd intellectual property protections is Freedom Reagan Squared. Because.
If It's Sunday...
It's still white dudes.
They'd probably get half of the way there if every time they thought "hey, how about we invite John McCain on" they would call a woman instead.
They'd probably get half of the way there if every time they thought "hey, how about we invite John McCain on" they would call a woman instead.
ME
I don't think making modest improvements to our 401K system is a bad idea, I just think that the 401K system is a failure which offers some nice tax breaks to relatively wealthy people and hasn't led to sufficient retirement savings for everybody else. Modest improvements will make modest improvements to results, but only, you know, modest ones. We need to focus on increasing Social Security benefits.
Dead Hamster
There seems to be an issue with disqus on blogger sites. I'm sure once the lazy folks on the West Coast wake up they'll put a new hamster in.
Think Of The Children
We do love our children so very much.
But cafeteria workers weren’t able to see which children owed money until they had already received lunches, Olsen explained.
The workers then took those lunches from the students and threw them away, he said, because once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another.
The Right To Not Be Deported Ever
I think that is a tough trade, and I won't in any way claim to speak for the undocumented community. For me the only way it would be possibly "ok" is that if the right to live and work in the United States was absolute, that no one with that status would ever be deported for any reason ever.
It's repugnant, but so is the current system.
It's repugnant, but so is the current system.
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