Who Am I?

Weekend Update 06-02-2012

Posted: June 2nd, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Weekend Update | Comments Off on Weekend Update 06-02-2012

Big Fiscal Phonies. Says it all really.

Slides from one of Krugman’s presentations. Lots of facts and they create a pretty clear picture.

We’ve managed to do much worse than Japan when faced with similar circumstances. Japan used to be a cautionary tale. Now it’s almost a role model.

What Is Man? That is indeed a question at the heart of things.

The Austerity Agenda. Yep. Using the crisis (and in most cases deepening and prolonging it) to further their agenda is indeed what those propounding “austerity” (but never for the wealthy!) are doing. Sadly they are doing a pretty amazing job of getting people to vote even against their own self-interest and economic survival.

And Robert Reich speaks up on the austerity topic as well. I have to admit I continue to be somewhat confused. I understand the motives behind the Wall Street sorts, bankers, and the wealthiest here and in America to take advantage of the financial crisis to further enrich themselves (at least in the short term) in and through the politicians they control and more deeply entrench their power while weakening the collective power of their workforce. And I don’t have a hard time understanding the motives of the economists who spout that party line in the face of all evidence to the contrary. People have always been able to obtain lawyers, accountants, and others who have no problem shading or shaping the truth. I don’t, however, understand how those in the 99% of the people who are having their livelihoods destroyed and their futures stolen can continue to support the very forces actively working against them. Is it really that easy to beguile masses of people? I recognize there are parts of macroeconomics that are rather counter-intuitive, but the basic principles and ideas have never seemed particularly difficult for me to grasp. And even if people don’t grasp the economic principles, aren’t the effects of the decades long economic and class war that has been successfully waged against ordinary working people obvious by now? If they aren’t, then how bad does it have to get before we band together and put an end to it? Do we really have to sink all the way to a modern reinvention of the gilded age in which most people live in debt and virtual indentured servitude to their corporate “owners”, the sick and the elderly and the poor are left to die, working conditions reach third world conditions, child labor is reinstituted, and all the rest that went along with that world? It’s insane.

Tax cut history lesson, not that things like reality and facts seem to matter.

Jay Smooth is great in his video to New York state legislators on why trolling needs to remain legal.

And again in Mitt Romney scares the crap out of me.