vobios.tumblelog
i hate the internet, but these are the pieces i like
Posts tagged government
Mar 22 '12
Mar 20 '12
Mar 13 '12
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“A new survey of southern Republicans from Public Policy Polling finds that about half - 45% in Alabama, 52% in Mississippi - still believe Obama is a Muslim. A majority do not believe in evolution. And about a quarter - 21% in Alabama, 29% in Mississippi - think interracial marriage should be illegal.”
Mar 7 '12
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“The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments. As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, “very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is,” Dunning told Life’s Little Mysteries.”
Jan 4 '12
Nov 28 '11
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“While most people know about Congress’ $700 billion TARP program, the Fed’s secret emergency loans to banks during the financial crisis remains shrouded in mystery.. A new Bloomberg Markets report shines more light on this lending. After adding up all the guarantees and loans, the Fed committed $7.77 trillion to rescuing the financial system as of March 2009, the report said. Notably, while the banks were taking these huge loans, they maintained that they were fine”
Oct 7 '11
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“Jobless dwarfs should have the option of being flung around a barroom for cash rather than standing in the unemployment line, according to one Florida state lawmaker. Representative Ritch Workman, a Melbourne Republican, has introduced a bill to undo a ban on “dwarf-tossing” as part of what he says is his mission to repeal overreaching and outdated laws from Florida’s books. Though the dwarf-tossing measure is not a “jobs bill,” he said, it may put a few people to work in a state where unemployment is 1.6 percentage points above the national average.”
Aug 22 '11
Jul 26 '11
Jun 8 '11
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“America’s defence spending, at nearly $700 billion a year, is bigger than that of the next 17 countries combined.”
(via theeconomist)
May 18 '11
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“Florida’s legislature recently debated a bill to remove licensing requirements from 20 occupations, including hair-braiding, interior design and teaching ballroom-dancing. For a while it looked as if the bill would sail through: Florida has been a centre of tea-party agitation and both chambers have Republican majorities. But the people who care most about this issue—the cartels of incumbents—lobbied the loudest. One predicted that unlicensed designers would use fabrics that might spread disease and cause 88,000 deaths a year. Another suggested, even more alarmingly, that clashing colour schemes might adversely affect “salivation”. In the early hours of May 7th the bill was defeated. If Republican majorities cannot pluck up the courage to challenge a cartel of interior designers when Florida’s unemployment rate is more than 10%, what hope has America?”
May 4 '11
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“Fourteen million Americans are out of work, nearly a third of them for more than a year. The Depression-like jobs crises in black neighborhoods around the country have become so acceptable as to be literally unremarkable in national news media. When overall joblessness inched downward in March, the fact that black unemployment increased, again, was greeted with callous shrugs from the White House to CNN. But America is exceptional because we can kill. Our economy is defined by greed. The top 1 percent of earners take home a quarter of income in this country. Wall Street banks are logging record profits while the Treasury Department professes helplessness at the fact that tens of millions of people are still losing their homes to those banks. Because of that foreclosure crisis, the stunning racial wealth gap—the typical black family has a dime for a dollar of wealth held by its white counterpart—will surely grow worse. The White House is paralyzed with inaction in the face of all of these challenges. But it can kill, so we are great. We have the world’s most expensive health care system, and yet in 2009 infant mortality in the U.S. was higher than in 29 other countries and the worst among rich nations. Why? In large part because the infant mortality rate is so high among black and Latina women. We cannot find justice for them, but we can kill and call it justice. We have a $14 trillion deficit. A massive giveaway to defense contractors lurks inside that number—a transfer of public funds that has been justified, in ways both explicit and implicit, by the evil visage of Osama Bin Laden. And now, Washington is as likely as not to make up the loss by taking apart the safety net that once created something like economic justice in America. But the president would like us to agree that we are great because we can kill. “May God bless the United States of America,” Obama declared last night, a sentiment echoed by so many today. Indeed. But the familiar refrain feels to me more like an urgent plea for forgiveness than the triumphant war cry that it is.”
Apr 15 '11
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“One might think that we need all of these big plans, these grand bargains, because of the enormity of the fiscal challenge the country faces. The United States is swimming in a sea of red ink, with trillion-dollar annual deficits and an unfathomably gigantic cumulative debt. But the truth is we don’t need any of these plans. Every one of them is entirely unnecessary for balancing the budget and eventually reducing the debt. They may even be counterproductive. Thus, Slate proposes the Do-Nothing Plan for Deficit Reduction, a meek, cowardly effort to wrest the country back into the black. The overarching principle of the Do-Nothing Plan is this: Leave everything as is. Current law stands, and spending and revenue levels continue according to the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline projections. Everyone walks away. Paul Ryan goes fishing. Sen. Harry Reid kicks back with a ginger ale. The rest of Congress gets back to bickering about mammograms. Miraculously, the budget just balances itself, in about a decade.”
Apr 14 '11
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“The FBI has released files on the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, revealing that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) was suspected of “extorting money from various rap music stars via death threats, including Tupac and another performer, Eazy-E.”
Feb 18 '11
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“As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking.”
