Joe Nocera had a column in a recent edition of the Times where he identifies the thyroid problems that have been a plague to certain areas in Poland ever since the meltdown at Chernobyl. I applaud him for bringing this important information to light but condemn him for not showing the other side of the picture. Yes, nuclear power, the cleanest source of energy currently available, brings with it the kind of threat that was exemplified by Chernobyl and now the disaster in Japan but as I mentioned in an earlier post this is far outweighed by the death and human destruction brought on by the poisoning done by our current most popular fuels for energy manufacture; coal, oil and natural gas. The deaths caused each year, by each fuel, far outweighs the total deaths that have resulted from Chernobyl since the accident happened in 1986. That’s right, twenty-five years of accumulated death from the most deadly nuclear accident on record does not equal one year’s total death from the use of one fossil fuel, in this country alone. Think about that.
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Warren Buffet has declared that he can end the deficit in 5 minuets. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of congress are ineligible for re-election.
Sounds good to me. Can we do the same thing with our unemployment rate? That’s where we really need it.
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In his Monday July 18th column in the NY Times Paul Krugman gives a very insightful explanation of the fiscal reasons why we should not excuse the banking community for the ills of the mortgage crisis. He explains all about the possible remedies the banks could be forced into and how the administration needs to force the banks to do the right thing.
It’s all very nice and very civilized but it leaves out the most important reason and remedy. The banks and bankers did a bad thing. They did it knowing full well that the outcome would be good for them and not caring about any of the other consequences. When we do a bad thing we must be punished for it, or being human, we will come to think of it, as a good thing because it produced good results for us.
It is much the same with bank robbers who if not caught and imprisoned don’t see any reason not to rob again. Any logical thought process will conclude that if the bankers are not severely punished for their past transgressions they will repeat them in the future. The only solution to the problem, indict them all.
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Michele Bachmann is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Not only does she not know the difference between John Wayne the movie star and John Wayne Gacy the serial killer, but she wants to abolish the minimum wage because she thinks it will wipe out unemployment. Wait! She still has a topper. It turns out that this adamant opponent of any kind of taxes was once an attorney who worked for the IRS collecting taxes.
On another front she has declared that, “the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.” Really Michele? How come many of them had slaves? Her observation may come from the fact that John Quincy Adams fought against slavery. Of course old Quincy wasn’t a founding father. His dad was.
Then, of course there’s her stand on carbon dioxide. She’s for it, declaring that there are no studies that prove it’s harmful to anything. That’s right Michele. Now I want you to go to your garage, close the door and all the windows, get into your car, turn on the engine and sit back with a good comic book.
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Grover Norquist is a political terrorist. This lying subversive, who has never been elected to office, has by a unique con, convinced most conservative politicians and some others that the answer to all our fiscal problems is to sign a pledge never to raise taxes. This pledge, illegally interferes with their work as congressmen. So, is Norquist promoting an illegal act by members of the government which makes him an accessory to a felony.
But that isn’t the biggest problem. The real problem is that such a pledge if carried to its conclusion will destroy the nations economy. You can’t run a country, no matter how small, without income. Is Norquist too dumb to see this or does he have some other, more sinister agenda?
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The Stimulus, that is so busily attacked by the Right, saved one million jobs in the auto industry and an additional 150,000 in ancillary industries. The government gave the auto industry $50M and $30M has been paid back so far. The money was given in exchange for non-voting stock so the government did not take over the industries as the Republican fantasy would have us believe. The Government is already completely out of Chrysler. The rest of the Stimulus was used to extend unemployment insurance and to cover the shortfall from the Bush tax cuts. So how was this a bad deal?
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Watched Maria Bartoromo shilling for the business community. Doesn’t she see they don’t need it? They have more money than God, right now. What they need is customers and the way to make customers is to create jobs so someone has money to buy stuff. But they can’t create those jobs without someone to buy that product of those jobs, a real Catch 22 until you realize that those jobs have to be created by government stimulus programs just like they were by the New Deal. Yes we had a war economy to help but the war wasn’t the only thing the government paid for. There was the WPA & the CCC and other outfits building infrastructure that we are still using and after the war there was the GI Bill that educated a million men who would never have gotten that education without government help. Those men went on to lead this country to the greatest growth spurt ever and that growth spurt which was partially funded by extremely high taxes led to the growth of the middle class and the America that we long for today. This is just what we need now.
Why is this so difficult for the right to understand? The idea of cutting to expand the economy has never worked. The idea of spending to expand the economy has the most perfect model we could ever ask for. Doesn’t evidence mean anything to the people in Washington? And I’m not just speaking about the right. The president seems to have given up on his own programs.