Yesterday I think I pretty much demolished the ideas that less government is always better and that the private sector can always do things better than government can. Today, I want to tackle the companion idea that lower taxes are always better. We currently have historically lower taxes and historically higher debt than at any […]
The two constants that unify the Republican party and the right-wing since the ascension of Reaganism in the late 70’s are the calls for lower taxes and less government. These are the two pillars of the right that unify the wing-nuts, the Christian right, the libertarians and the dwindling number of what used to be called […]
This week has brought more proof that the news media, taken either as a large group of individual media or a much smaller group of large media conglomerates, are actively facilitating those who want to question global warming. Stanford Research Institute’s Political Psychology Group, under the direction of the estimable Professor Jon Krosnick, released a […]
Time to do some blog housekeeping again. First, I want to make sure everyone sees the response to my June 7 blog on Nestlé’s new product–an elaborate system that produces a ton of waste just so people don’t have to boil water for tea. As you’ll see, John Sargent thought I implied that Nestlé was […]
Read More… from Random notes on various subjects to thrill and bore you at the same time.
For some years now, several companies have sold coffee-making systems that produce coffee and other warm beverages while creating a mountain of waste. The coffee is in a sealed aluminum pod that the user inserts into the machine and voila, one cup of the coffee you selected is sent through a common dispenser into your […]
A common element in some recent man-made or man-assisted disasters has been the failure of risk models to predict the disaster. The subject of risk models is a bit complicated, so let’s start with a simple definition. Many events are caused by not one thing, but by a bunch of things. For example, position of […]
Over the past week, the news media has given some publicity to two Tea Party stands that seem wildly inconsistent with its basic principles. Let’s start with those principles, as I understand them. I’m listing the core beliefs of its leaders and members, the few statements that come to mind as soon as you think […]
Reading William Greider’s article titled “Whacking the Old Folks” in the most recent Nation reminded me that I wanted to list on this blog the contact information for every member of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the independent bipartisan commission that President Obama set up to address the budget deficit. As William Greider […]
John Yoo is torturing the public with a campaign to deny Elena Kagan confirmation to the Supreme Court. First he came out with a piece that appeared on Op/Ed pages all over the country last weekend castigating Kagan for actions regarding military recruiters while dean of the Harvard Law School. I saw the article in […]
Perhaps my favorite weekly feature in the news media is “Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet,” which I read on page two of the Saturday Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Earthweek is a compendium of five or six small stories about weather or geology related events that occurred in the prior week, for example, monsoons, tornadoes, plagues, discoveries […]