A Speculative Fiction

My 2009 Dec. 31 Disclosure Report

2010-01-06T11:08:00.001-05:00

Filed my campaign disclosure with the State Ethics Commission...

I raised $1410.11 from July 1 -- Dec. 31

22 contributors
Two contributions over $101 -- > one for $300 and one for $150
20 small contributors --> totaling $960 --> the average was $48

I spent $534.67

food for "meet up" events
website
online advertising
tickets to Henry County Democratic Party Christmas Event
copies
mailing labels
printer ink
stamps

To date I have raised $2295.11 and have spent $980.69. I currently have $1314.42 cash on hand.

If you'd like to contribute online to my campaign you can do so at my website right now!

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Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Outlook for next session looks dire as more budget cuts loom

2010-01-04T23:07:00.001-05:00

Macon Telegraph:

The path to Atlanta may be kind of a trudging one for state legislators this year, because the 2010 Georgia General Assembly doesn’t offer much in the way of light-hearted fun.

The budget is a mess, and another billion or so dollars probably will be cut in a climate that’s already yielded heavy cuts and furloughs for most state departments. Legislators won’t quite forget about trying to pull pet projects into their district, but protecting the ones they’ve got probably will be a higher priority.

“There are definitely recommendations from the task force that would need legislation to implement,” Brantley said this past week. “And so the governor will be looking at those.”

The governor is likely to get involved, but he won’t be rolling his legislation out until the session begins.

The clock is ticking on Atlanta’s water supply, with a federal judge threatening to cut access to the area’s biggest supply of drinking water.

Just about everyone seems to want more funding for roads, but legislators have wanted that for a couple of years now and will have to try again to find a compromise on how to raise the money.

Meanwhile, the outgoing speaker of the House has left that post because his ex-wife confirmed he had a long-rumored affair with a lobbyist, so ethics reform is likely to be near the top of the Legislature’s agenda. Traditional free evening dinners with young lobbyists are likely to drop down a few notches.

All in all, it’s not the best time to be a state legislator when the 2010 session opens at the Capitol in another week.

“I’m not looking forward to it,” said state Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon. “This will be my sixth session, and I absolutely am dreading it, to be frank.”

The budget

State leaders sliced billions from the budget over the past year and a half, and new cuts could be as high as another couple of billion dollars.

Gov. Sonny Perdue will get that ball rolling the first week of the session when he rolls out his budget proposals. The state’s revenue picture is bleak enough that Perdue is waiting on final revenue figures for December before making any final decisions, Perdue communications director Bert Brantley said.

Asked what programs will be targeted for cuts, Brantley said they will be “all across the board.”

“We have gone through program by program with these agency heads ... (but) those final decisions literally wont’ be made until we hit print on the budget,” he said.

“The only blanket statement I can make is layoffs are, obviously, a last resort,” Brantley said.

State Rep. Larry O’Neal, a Houston County Republican and chairman of the tax-code-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the budget crisis calls for better tax collections. He said hiring more auditors to focus on sales and payroll taxes and tracking down businesses that defraud the state “absolutely is my No. 1 priority” this session.

“I just think there’s a lot of money out there that could fill a lot of these budget holes if we could do a more efficient job of collecting them,” O’Neal said. Those changes, though, wouldn’t provide immediate relief. More furloughs are almost guaranteed, and some state programs may not simply take cuts, but they may be eliminated.

State Rep. David Lucas, D-Macon, said he’d like the state to increase fees on amusement gambling machines found in convenience stores across the state. Increasing them $25 could raise $250 million to $300 million, he said. The bottom line for Lucas, one of the longest serving legislators in state government, is that the state needs to raise more money.

“We can’t afford to keep cutting,” he said. “We’re talking about furloughing teachers again. That’s ludicrous.”

No new taxes, mostly

Lucas and some other Democrats would like to see a tax increase to stop the bleeding on the state budget, but leadership in the Republican majority at the Capitol has shown no appetite for an increase.

That includes Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who heads the state Senate, and incoming Speaker of the House David Ralston, who will lead the House of Representatives.

A new transportation tax might be OK’d, but that’s likely to take the form of regional sales taxes commonly called “T-SPLOSTs,” and those taxes would require voter approval before counties could bind together and charge an extra penny for roads and other transportation projects.

Several tweaks to the tax system will be discussed, though. Many legislators still want to get rid of the so-called “birthday tax,” paid on vehicle tags each year near the owner’s birthday. This was discussed last year and that plan, which would add a new sales tax to vehicle sales to make up for the revenue, likely will be resurrected.

Local property taxes in general are still a target, and state Sen. Chip Rogers, a Woodstock Republican and the Senate’s majority leader, said he’ll be calling for “maybe as many as a dozen incremental changes.”

Many of those changes would be aimed at keeping a home’s taxable value from increasing too much, he said.

Rogers also said the state’s sales tax collection system also might be overhauled, with a new association put together so local governments can partner to handle collections from retailers. The Georgia Department of Revenue handles that now.

The creation of an association is a bit different from an idea state Rep. DuBose Porter, a 2010 candidate for governor and the House’s top-ranking Democrat, has been pushing.

Porter, D-Dublin, has said he wants each local government to get more individual control over collections, thus improving the collection rate. But Rogers said that would be too much for businesses with locations in many counties to deal with, which prompted the partnership proposal.

Water

Metro Atlanta needs water. After years of using Lake Lanier as a primary drinking water supplier, the state’s population center is in danger of losing it as a federal judge threatens to stem the flow in coming years.

Negotiations with other states are ongoing, and the state is pursuing legal channels to overturn the judge’s decision.

But finding new sources of water and conserving the existing supplies suddenly are big priorities.

Concerns that water could be piped into Atlanta from, say, the massive aquifer beneath Houston County and other parts of the midstate, have been alleviated for now. A task force put together by Perdue said these “inter-basin transfers” would be too expensive.

But the task force also identified Ocmulgee River tributaries, which feed Macon’s water supply, as possible locations for reservoir expansions.

Without getting into locations, Rogers said reservoir expansions will be a major consideration, since they’re likely to cost less than other options.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Revenue problems across the state...

2010-01-04T23:02:00.001-05:00

Columbia County Times Budget concerns carry into new year

The money stream that nearly dried up last year for local governments likely will remain arid in 2010.

Sales tax revenues dwindled by more than 5 percent last year, recently leading Columbia County commissioners to announce a plan to slash the 2010-11 budget by 5 percent.

The search for savings starts this month as county department heads and division directors sift through their budgets looking for cuts. Those cuts might include eliminating programs or positions, hiring freezes, outsourcing some services and deferring capital expenditures.

During the past two years, the county's $56.5 million budget was trimmed by more than $500,000 by eliminating 10 positions.

Commissioners likely will adopt the slimmed-down budget in June.

School officials also expect to make some budget cuts, but they don't know yet by how much.

"Until (state) legislators meet in January and the economy picks up, we are at a standstill with any planning other than school as usual," Superintendent Charles Nagle wrote in an e-mail. "My immediate concern is building next year's budget. And again, we are at the mercy of the governor and legislators."

Nagle told state lawmakers last month that any more state cuts will directly affect instruction. The system has already lost $13.8 million in state funding.

Were it not for $5.7 million in federal stimulus funds, instruction already would be affected, Nagle said.

State Rep. Ben Harbin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned county officials in November that legislators are looking to trim $350 million from the budget. Those estimates rose to $700 million last month. Gov. Sonny Perdue already has slashed the budget by about $900 million to counteract dwindling tax revenues.

Though lawmakers told school officials they have not discussed more teacher furloughs, the school board recently changed the second-semester calendar to give teachers Monday off. The new school semester starts Tuesday, but teachers typically arrive a day early to prepare for pupils' return.

If Perdue requires more furloughs, Nagle said he intends to use Jan. 4 to cover at least one of those days.

Grovetown officials hope to avoid any more budget cuts this year.

Like the county, Grovetown suffered a drop in sales tax revenues, from 9 percent in 2008 to 8.25 percent last year. Though revenues were down, the demand for city services increased as the population grew, said City Manager Shirley Beasley.

To offset the loses, the city council approved a hiring freeze and raised taxes last year.

Those decisions likely will prevent any new tax increases for this year and halt any cuts in city services, Beasley said.

Harlem city officials also expect to maintain service levels despite a projected 2010 budget that is more than $500,000 less than the current $3.6 million budget.

"The city worked to keep expenses at a minimum and at the present time has been able to provide the same level of services to its citizens as in the past," City Manager Jean Dove said.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Millions in US lack bank access

2009-12-03T03:22:00.001-05:00

I caught this before work this morning in the Financial Times...

Millions in US lack bank access

Some 60m adult Americans live without a bank account or use pawn shops and other non-bank operations to handle their finances, according to to a government reportthat called for an expansion of basic services to the “underbanked”.

The report, issued on Wednesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a banking regulator, could increase political pressure on banks to do more for their communities after unprecedented government efforts to bail out the sector.

“[There is] an imperative for government and industry to expand financial access to the substantial number of households that have never been banked,” the report concluded. Sheila Bair, FDIC chairman, said financial groups should offer tailored products to the underbanked.

The study, the first of its kind, lifts the lid on the vast banking underclass in the US, a country that prides itself on the sophistication of its banking sector.

The FDIC found that some 17m US adults are in households without any bank accounts. Another 43m had accounts but were “underbanked”, relying on non-bank services such as pay-day lenders and pawn shops.

For far too many Georgians our social safety net is a day to day necessity. When our citizens fail to be able to access fundamental items like a bank account they can never reach a point in their life where they can flourish--providing for themselves and their families.

The purpose of government is to protect and empower its citizens. This is a key value that my opponent and I differ on. Steve Davis has consistently failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens--wasting lives and creating long term dependency on social safety nets waiting taxpayer dollars.

If we do not intereve in these kinds of situations like these we are failing to protect our must vulnerable citizens and provide them with the tools like need to lead healthy, productive, lives.

One of the biggest reasons I decided to run for office was that I want to empower citizens not career politicians.

Please stand with me so that we can put an end to broken government and the career politicians that create it.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

The middle class--whats that?

2009-11-28T18:51:00.001-05:00

Someone noted my Teamster sweatshirt--and I laughed, "yeah its my ticket to the middle class." He laughed and said, "yeah, whats that? I'm not sure it exisits any more."

The decline of the American worker is no laughing matter--and it reminded me why one of the things I was most thankful for this past thanksgiving was my union. I had a conversation on Thursday that reminded me how working families are struggling--and have been for a long time--and why I am so lucky to be a union member.

As research shows for the typical U.S. worker (in the middle of the national pay scale) unionization raises wages about 14%.

For low-wage workers, unionization raises wages even more – about 21%. For more on economic impacts or unions you can check out the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Being in a union has given my wife opportunity and quality of life--not to mention a ticket into the middle class that we wouldn't have had without it.

It was one thing I was thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Why we need Health Care Reform---the US Budget Deficit

2009-11-23T04:29:00.001-05:00

Why we need Health Care Reform---the US Budget Deficit

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One of the top priorities of the Federal government over the long term is to cut the deficit. In fact one of the single biggest reasons I opposed the Bush tax cuts was that is took a US budget surplus and turned it into budget deficits leading the US Government to bring in less revenue that was currently committed to by the Federal Government.

One of the key reasons I support health care reform is that the key source of our long term deficits are health care costs and starting the process of cutting costs we begin the serious task of taking on the long term deficit.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research's Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator is a great tool to get a better context on the health care debate...

Former Chair of the Henry County Republican Party Charles Mobley has taken to calling me "The Political Scientist" because I advocate research over political theory. My degree in political science predisposes me to empirical data--and having watched a lot of nonsense transpire in the past two years working as a legislative aide at the Captiol I can tell you point blank citizens need to do their own homework because our politicians and the media can't be trusted when it comes to giving you "all the facts".

So here's your "homework" so to speak--go check out the Calculator.

CEPR's calculator does a great job of putting health care reform into context using empirical data in an easily assessable manner. So take a moment and check out the calculator----sidenote--- I have to use firefox to view it, when I did my last Internet Explorer update the Calculator no long works for me for some reason.

Here are the long-term deficits with no change to our health care system in yellow and in blue you can see the deficit if health care costs are purely coming from aging within the population rather than the skyrocketing health care inflation we currently face.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Volunteers Needed! Join an Issue Team!

2009-11-16T13:39:00.001-05:00

Issue Teams– I am in the process of creating small work groups where volunteers meet to research, discuss, and brainstorm on many of the challenges our community and state face. If you'd like to learn more about getting involved in this effort please let me know.

I have created these teams so that individuals who have specific areas of interest can come together to research, compile, and share information. There are also opportunities for volunteers to reach out to people in the community so that we can receive feedback and guidance directly from the experts themselves--the voters.

The goal in creating these teams is to not only run a campaign that is directly engaged with citizens on the ground, but also to nurture leaders that people in the community–myself included--can turn to as a resource.

State Government is a complex with many issue and challenges. No one person has the time or capacity to stay on top of every issue. But when people join together to share time and information the challenge is less overwhelming.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Local Resources -- websites, news, blogs for Henry County, GA

2009-11-16T13:08:00.001-05:00

Local Resources

Henry County Government
Henry County Board of Elections
Register to Vote!
Georgia General Assembly
Henry County Republican Party
Henry County Democratic Party
Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (3rd Congressional District) website
Congressman David Scott (13th Congressional District) website
State Senator John Douglas (District 17) Website
State Representative Steve Davis (109) Website -- Blog -- Twitter -- Facebook Page
Jim Nichols Candidate for State House(109) my campaigns... Website -- Blog -- Twitter -- Facebook
Henry Daily Herald -- Local Henry County Newspaper
Henry County Chamber of Commerce
Young Professionals of Henry County
Atlanta Journal Constitution -- Metro Atlanta Newspaper
Political Insider -- AJC's political blog
Georgia Legislative Watch --Provides info on legislation introduced in GA General Assembly
Henry County Citizen -- local conservative email newsletter
Jason Pye -- Blog -- local poltical blogger and former Chair of the Libertarian Party of GA
Jim Nichols-- my personal blog -- with posts on current events, philosophy, economics, and more..
Charles Mobley -- Blog --local blogger, former Chair of te Henry County Republican Party

The intention of this page is to provide nonpartisan information/resources for voters to use. This is a work in progress, if there are items you feel should be added or removed from this page please contact me.

Email: JimN2010@gmail.com

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

On why we need more moderate Republicans...

2009-11-14T17:55:00.001-05:00

As I've mentioned many times, I came to party politics distrusted and frustrated with both political parties but that I found the Democrats to have a bigger tent with a less ideologically driven agenda... (it goes without saying this was during the Bush era...)

Former Chair of the Henry County Republican Party Charles Mobley recently posted a great example--legislating morality is not something government should be doing--stating:

Representative Davis should leave the teaching of moral values to the families and not subject the people of the state to what his moral beliefs are about. Davis seems to pander to the far right on issues sometimes. He believes he in what he does, however not everyone believes in him. Some things are better left alone. When the Republican far right wing is focused upon the center is ignored.

I can't agree more! We will be moving in the right direction[sic] as a nation when ideologues who hold these kinds of priorities lose power and influence within the Republican base.

Until that day, moderates will have a tough time within the Republican Party, and our nation will be the worse for it....

I do hope some moderates show up in Republican primaries to challenge Republican ideologues... though I'm not confident that it will happen as seen from Glen Becks influence on Republican activists....

--------

On a similar front, Mobley recently stated that Davis' position on homosexuals not being real families could be considered heartless. I disagree with him on this 100% interpretaton of Davis. As I've stated before Davis holds a radical position when he states that homosexuals aren't a part of real families. But Davis is a caring committed person, anyone who might consider him to be heartless is completely wrong.

Davis and his family have sacrificed a lot for this community and he has always been open, honest, and responsive to my inquires when I was up at the Gold Dome over the past two years. Though I disagree with many positions Davis holds, anyone who claims he is heartless is totally off base.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Lady Gaga's Shocking MTV VMA 2009 Fashion

2009-11-05T02:58:00.001-05:00

hahaha! I love lady gaga...

annual growth versus annual changes in the unemployment rate over the past 60 years

2009-11-02T10:51:00.001-05:00

I posted on stimulus early this morning before work...

Here is scatterplot via economist Paul Krugman to remind us why more money to do things like extend unemployment, patch holes in state budgets to fill in for declining revenues, and other efforts to keep the economy on life support is vital:

Free Exchange blog over at The Economist magazine chimed in on Krugman's chart Third quarter growth not nearly enough:

And consider this: the last time the unemployment rate hit its current level was during the recession of 1981-1982 (during which the unemployment rate actually peaked at 10.8% during the final quarter of the recession). Here are the quarterly growth rates for the six quarters immediately following the end of that recession: 5.1%, 9.3%, 8.1%, 8.5%, 8.0%, 7.1%. And at the end of that period, the unemployment rate was still above 7%. For the last recession, which ended in the fourth quarter of 2001, quarterly growth in the next six quarters looked like this: 3.5%, 2.1%, 2.0%, 0.1%, 1.6%, 3.2%.

Essentially, we are looking at a situation in which, absent some significant and surprise change in the economic outlook, American unemployment will remain near 10% through the end of 2010, at least. It is difficult to predict the political fall-out from that kind of sustained level of joblessness, but I can imagine some of the probable effects, including growing anger at Wall Street and foreign exporters, particularly China. The seeds will be sown for an unpleasant populist uprising, which might well do a lot of damage to American economic policy.

It's not a happy place to be. And I don't really understand why there isn't more visible concern in Washington (or on Wall Street, for that matter) about this state of affairs.

Until the economy is powered by the private sector again, you're stuck with two options--do nothing ad watch things remain stagnate if not dip down again, or have government keep the economy on life support.

Americans need jobs and our economy needs to get back to strong growth. The impacts of unemployment are devastating---in the real world, where real people are facing, real struggles... keeping revenues up and further reducing unemployment should be top priority.

Talking heads might take a blase approach to the unemployment numbers and lack of strong growth--from them you get the do nothing, wait it out approach. Generally speaking these were the same people who said that government spending wouldn't prop up the economy until the private sector could get back on its feet.

Americans have gotten the short end of the stick from government over the past decade--no wonder nobody trusts they can do anything right.... 8 years of Republican leadership got me to work for Democrats, Tonjia must be rolling in her grave!

Democrats need to do the right thing and take the lead in passing some kind of jobs bill or at the very least extend unemployment. The job of government is to protect and empower its citizens. We have the tools to keep the economy on life support and throw life rafts out to American families who are struggling--we need the leadership to make it happen.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Obama's stimulus is working...

2009-11-02T03:28:00.001-05:00

I wrote recently on the need for more stimulus. I wanted to follow up with more recent items on the stimulus package front...

Wall Street Journal: Stimulus Fueled Much of Expansion

Economist Mark Thoma: A Shaky Start

The recovery we are seeing is being driven, in large part, by government stimulus programs. The fact that growth is weaker than we need to fully recover losses in a reasonable amount of time, and the even slower recovery we are seeing in employment markets, indicates that the stimulus programs already in place are too small. Thus, even though it’s unlikely to happen, the economy could use more help than it’s getting, but in any case it’s imperative that we avoid cutting back too soon.

The signs are encouraging, and at some point the private sector will be able to sustain growth on its own, but it’s far too soon to declare victory.

The Economist Magazine: Here's your recovery

A FEW more pieces of data have come in this morning, which offer a pretty clear look at the kind of recovery America can expect. First, the good news: the Institute for Supply Management Chicago index—a measure of business activity—unexpectedly increased and moved into expansion territory in the month of October. There is growth out there. But other data releases showed that consumer wages and salaries declined slightly in September, as did consumer spending. And in line with the generally poor conditions for workers (those not unemployed are seeing an erosion in earnings) consumer confidence fell in the month of October.

Absent real job growth, wages will likely continue to lag, as will confidence. And if confidence and spending remain restrained, investment will also be tepid. That will make for a very slow and uncertain recovery, unless something breaks this cycle.

That something could be a major boost in exports; that is what has worked in the past for slumping economies like Japan. But the question then becomes: who will be the buyer?

Another possibility is a renewed commitment to stimulus. Scott Sumner continues to advocate for a much more aggressive monetary policy. Others have been pushing for a programme of subsidies for new hires. Given the likely protracted nature of the recovery, there is a strong case to be made for an agressive push to invest in infrastructure. And for starters, the federal government might reconsider its decision to play stingy with state and local governments:

According to the above chart, from Econbrowser, federal non-defence spending was almost entirely offset by cuts in state and local spending in the third quarter. Those cuts are extremely painful, hitting core services in education, health care, and public safety.

Misguided deficit concerns have probably made aggressive fiscal moves politically difficult, and the Federal Reserve seems to be happy with its current policy path. That means that as American discontent grows, Congress will have to channel that anger in otehr directions, and we can imagine what those directions will be—popular but inefficient subsidies for homes and cars, protections from foreign competition, and a populist squeeze on high earners. That's a dangerous direction to travel.

Former Bush Treasury Department Economist Bruce Bartlett on conservative opposition to government spending : The Great Depression And The Great Recession

Many conservatives still believe the government should have done nothing [to end Great Depression], or at least different things than it did, because it just made things worse. In particular, conservatives are highly critical of deficit spending during the Roosevelt administration.

Most economists do not accept the do-nothing theory. They believe that government must play an active role in stimulating growth when the economy is suffering from a large, sustained deflation. Government spending must compensate for the fall in private spending that results from a deflation--people and businesses will put off buying when they think prices will be lower in the future. Only when spending is again rising will monetary policy become effective; until then it is like pushing on a string to get money circulating and prices rising again.

In the 1930s, there were a number of economists who argued strenuously for a do-nothing policy. But as the Great Depression dragged on and collapsed in 1937--when conservatives were successful in having the federal government slash the budget deficit (it fell from 5.5% of GDP in 1936 to 0% in 1938)--they lost credibility. Economists today generally believe that it was the unprecedented deficits resulting from World War II that actually ended the Great Depression.

Economist Dean Baker on stimulus job "creation"-- Dumb and Dumber on Stimulus Jobs

There is a cottage industry developing among political reporters trying to investigate whether the Obama administration’s claims on jobs created or “saved” by the stimulus are true. For example, ABC’s intrepid White House reporter Jack Tapper said on his blog:

“DeSeve and Bernstein [Obama administration spokespeople] were not able to say how many of the 640,329 jobs were saved and how many were created. How do they know that government officials asking for stimulus funds to help prevent layoffs were legitimate?”

The Washington Post also got into the act with its own piece commenting on the administration's jobs figures that: "Republicans and government watchdogs questioned the reliability of the figures."

This is an exercise in extreme silliness. It will be almost impossible to identify the vast majority of jobs that are created or saved by the stimulus because this would require a full knowledge of the flow of spending from tens of thousands of governmental units and the consumption decisions of 150 million households. However, there are fairly well-recognized economic relationships (outside of the University of Chicago) that allow the administration to produce reasonably good estimates of the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus.

The administration is not using any hocus pocus in producing these job numbers. It is simply applying rules of thumbs that have been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations as well as impartial bodies like the Congressional Budget Office. If these reporters want to investigate the Obama administration's actions, their time would be much better spent looking at its ties to the financial industry where they could well be some substantive issues.

btw, any reporter who puts the word "saved" in quotes should be fired immediately. It reflects either ungodly stupidity or pathetic partisanship. Every month, 2 million workers are dismissed by their employer. If this number can be reduced by just one-tenth, then net job creation will be increased by 200,000 a month or 2.4 million a year. Anyone who implies that there is something peculiar about efforts to reduce the numbers of jobs lost by "saving" jobs is badly misleading readers.

Economist Menzie Chinn The 2009 Q3 Advance GDP Release and Stimulus Measures

The 3.5% growth rate was, in my view, in large part attributable to direct measures to stimulate the economy, including direct spending on goods and services by the government (Federal, state and local), as well as tax measures.

...Government spending on goods and services (not overall government expenditures) accounted for 0.48 percentage points (ppts). Federal nondefense expenditures accounted for 0.17 ppts, while defense accounted for 0.45 ppts. State and local spending accounted for negative 0.14 ppts. At this juncture, one could leap to the conclusion that the stimulus package, and other measures, had no effect on output. And I'm sure many will. But I think it pays to be a bit circumspect in this regard.

First, it's always helpful to recall that the advance estimate incorporates lots of estimates, and is subject to revisions (see this post).

Second, some individuals have argued that since a portion of the government component comes in the defense category, that should not be construed as being attributable to the stimulus package. But in point of fact, according to CRS ARRA does have some defense expenditures (mostly energy efficiency upgrading). One can see what contracts have been let by going to the http://www.Recovery.gov website (noncompetitive contracts here). As an open question, I'm not sure where Army Corps of Engineers expenditures fall in the categories (I think it's under defense as well, in which case the defense category would incorporate even more of the stimulus spending).

Third, the decline in state and local government spending's contribution is notable. Given the big budget shortfalls in state budgets [1], what this outcome tells me is in the absence of the transfers from the Federal government, the negative contribution would have been even larger.

Economist Robert Reich Health Care Reform is Critically Important, But Getting Americans Back to Work is More So

The current rate of unemployment would have been even higher were it not for the federal stimulus package, but the stimulus should have been much larger. Especially with the states still cutting back on spending and raising taxes, the federal stimulus will be barely enough to keep unemployment from hitting 11 percent by the middle of 2010. Yet as the rate of unemployment continued to rise faster and higher than the White House anticipated, Obama could not return to Congress to seek a larger stimulus. He was spending political capital on health care.
The Wall Street bailout, meanwhile, has saved Wall Street but left most regional banks in deep distress. Almost nothing has trickled down. Small businesses still can't get loans. Foreclosures continue to mount largely because jobs continue to vanish and homeowners can't pay their mortgages. Yet at this point, on the eve of a health care bill, it would be difficult for Obama to return to Congress seeking billions more to aid distressed homeowners and small businesses.

Economist Brad Delong on doing the stimulus math:

-$92,000 Direct federal cost

+$27,000 Extra federal and state revenue

$0 Extra costs of debt financing

$110,000 Value of goods and services produced

-$18,000 Discount because we are buying different goods and services than we would ideally, or buying them at a different time

$50,000 Value of having a job to the person who gets one--these aren't people who are indifferent between going to work and getting their head together, after all

+$77,000 Net Benefit to Economy

It's OK to talk about the federal budgetary impact of the stimulus program per job as a "cost" when you are talking to economists who understand the issues.

It is not OK when you are talking to Jake Tapper, who is playing a game of "gotcha."

The right way to do it is, as the table above suggests:

The federal government spends $92,000 and increases its deficit by that much--that's a cost.

Federal, state, and local governments collect an extra $27,000 in taxes--that's a benefit.

There are--given that we are in a liquidity trap--no additional costs of financing the rest of the government's debt imposed by this increase. Investors are not skittish and do not need to be bribed to hold extra government debt in their portfolios by the government offering to pay them higher interest rates. Instead, investors are desperate right now for more Treasury bonds to hold in their portfolios.

The extra people put to work produce $110,000 of useful stuff--that's a benefit.

However, because we are pulling forward spending from the future into the present--spending the $92,000 now rather than in the future--we are buying stuff too soon, and because the government is all thumbs we are to some degree buying less valuable stuff than we woul ordinarily by buying. Figure a 20% discount--that's an $18,000 cost.

The people who get the jobs are really happy--it's not as though they are indifferent between working this year and taking time off to get their head together, after all. Not having a job this year greatly harms their quality of life.

Net impact: +$77,000 for each employment-year rescued.

We should be doing more of this right now.

Why shouldn't we be doing more deficit spending all the time? Usually because of (6): when the economy is in its normal state, the marginal worker is somebody who doesn't value having a job all that much--the (6) number is usually on the order of $10,000 rather than $50,000, and so isn't worth the -$18,000 cost of having the government actually do the buying. Plus there is (3): (3)--the crowding-out term--can be quite substantial.

But it isn't now.

The former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund, Simon Johnson Why the Stimulus Worked:

The fiscal stimulus played a decisive role in reducing the depth and pain of the recession and is now helping to get a recovery under way.

The stimulus plan enabled Obama to push for a global response to the crisis.

Much of the debate about the stimulus misses the critical global context — remember that our fiscal stimulus enabled President Obama to play a decisive leadership role at the G20 summit in April, bringing along both appropriate stimulus in other countries and timely support for the International Monetary Fund.

Most other industrialized countries have substantially stronger “automatic stabilizers” than does the United States so that, when they slip into recession, tax revenues fall and government spending rises (e.g., on unemployment benefits) without any need for special legislation.

In the U.S., the standard automatic response to severe recession exists but is weaker and an act of Congress is needed if we want to support total spending and maintain confidence.

Critics of the stimulus are right to point out that much of the stimulus was not spent quickly — and only now coming on line. This is part of the reason why discretionary fiscal stimulus generally has little effect and is not encouraged for most situations by the I.M.F., among others: it doesn’t act quickly, and it’s hard to calibrate the effects exactly.

But the Great Recession of 2008-09 was not like “most situations.” It was a generalized collapse in production and employment brought on by a financial panic. Maintaining confidence in the future is essential in such situations, otherwise businesses refuse to invest and consumers stop spending.

The I.M.F. saw at least part of this coming — and this is why it started to call for pre-emptive and precautionary fiscal action in January 2008. The initial push back from both the Bush administration and almost all European governments was intense, and, in retrospect, completely inappropriate. Fortunately, the top leadership of the fund persevered and increased the urgency of its call for fiscal stimulus into late 2008.

Global crises need global responses. The Obama administration and current Congress recognized the challenge and stepped up in a sensible and responsible manner. Now they, and the rest of the G20, need to tackle the still urgent problem in our financial system, including the “too big to fail” banks. If this is not addressed — and progress so far is very limited and the prospects do not look good — we remain vulnerable to another debilitating crisis. And next time, we may lack the political will or credibility or luck to pull off another appropriate set of fiscal countermeasures.

Economist Paul Krugman Too little of a good thing

The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that’s also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we’re looking at many years of high unemployment.

And the really bad news is that “centrists” in Congress aren’t able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.

About that good news: not that long ago the U.S. economy was in free fall. ... The stimulus ... was enough to break the vicious circle of economic decline. ... And the free fall has ended. Last week’s G.D.P. report showed the economy growing again, at a better-than-expected annual rate of 3.5 percent. ... But it’s not ... enough.

Suppose that the economy were to keep growing at 3.5 percent. The experience of the Clinton era, when the economy grew at an average rate of 3.7 percent for eight years ... suggests ... we’d be lucky to see the unemployment rate fall by half a percentage point per year, meaning that it would take a decade to return to something like full employment.

Worse yet, it’s far from clear that growth will continue at this rate. The effects of the stimulus will build over time..., but its peak impact ... is already behind us. Solid growth will continue only if private spending takes up the baton as the effect of the stimulus fades. And so far there’s no sign that this is happening.

So the government needs to do much more. Unfortunately, the political prospects for further action aren’t good.

What I keep hearing from Washington is ... either (1) the stimulus has failed, unemployment is still rising, so we shouldn’t do any more, or (2) the stimulus has succeeded, G.D.P. is growing, so we don’t need to do any more. The truth, which is that the stimulus ... helped, but it wasn’t big enough — seems to be too complicated for an era of sound-bite politics.

But can we afford to do more? We can’t afford not to.

High unemployment doesn’t just punish the economy today; it punishes the future, too. In the face of a depressed economy, businesses have slashed investment spending... This will hurt the economy’s potential for years to come.

Deficit hawks like to complain that today’s young people will end up having to pay higher taxes to service the debt we’re running up... But anyone who really cared about the prospects of young Americans would be pushing for much more job creation, since the burden of high unemployment falls disproportionately on young workers...

Even the claim that we’ll have to pay for stimulus ... with higher taxes later is mostly wrong. Spending more on recovery will lead to a stronger economy,... and a stronger economy means more government revenue. Stimulus spending probably doesn’t pay for itself, but its true cost ... is only a fraction of the headline number.

MarketWatch: Washington cooking up third stimulus

Many economists have come to think that a third stimulus makes good sense. "I think the economy needs more help and they should provide it," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

This by itself would never be enough to get a package through Congress. But analysts say that Democrats are likely to need a new initiative to show voters they are trying to create more jobs.

The first stimulus package of $152 billion came in early 2008, mostly in the form of tax-rebate checks. The second stimulus of $787 billion was passed in February 2009, and included reduced tax withholding for most working Americans, aid to states, and spending on infrastructure projects.

Washington had been hostile environment for another stimulus proposal all summer. Even the word "stimulus" has become political dynamite.

The public has come to equate the word with the deeply unpopular $700 billion bank rescue package rushed through Congress in the fall of 2008, said Ethan Siegel, an analyst with The Washington Exchange, a firm that monitors Congress for institutional investors.

Independent voters "look at the [bank bailout] with horror," agreed political analyst Charles Cook, at a conference earlier this week. The measure is viewed as a grab for more control over the economy by big government, Cook said.

Republicans have been quick to capitalize on the anti-government mood, successfully tying the programs to Democrats, even though it was initially proposed by two Republican appointees: Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke.

"Republicans have successfully raised the deficit in the public consciousness. Any stimulus will be judged not just on whether it stimulates the economy but what it would do to the deficit," said Stan Collender, a budget analyst.

Given the political reality, the Obama administration pulled back, hoping the economic recovery would be strong enough to avoid the need for more government assistance.

"The dominant view of policy people was 'we're going to ride this out,'" said Dean Baker, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

More good news on the stimulus front for Georgia...

2009-10-22T11:43:00.001-04:00

The U.S. Department of energy, using stimulus money is bringing new jobs to a UGA research facility

Not only is the stimulus package working. Its investing in our future...

The grant for seven new and five continuing research projects will create 12 new full-time jobs and allow approximately 16 University of Georgia research professionals and technicians to retain their full-time positions at a facility that repeatedly has downsized in recent years because of funding cuts.

For more than 50 years, the lab has pursued basic and applied research at multiple levels of ecological organization, from atoms to ecosystems at Savannah River Site. SREL also provides graduate and undergraduate research training and service to the community through environmental outreach. SREL has played an essential role in the government's stewardship and management of Savannah River Site, researching all ecological aspects of site operations.

During the past four to five years, as the research priorities of the DOE changed and funding to UGA decreased, the number of employees at the lab decreased from a peak of 200 in 2004-2005 to 50 this year -- a 70 percent decline. The funding will allow SREL to begin to rebuild research programs.

"Importantly, the federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act means SREL can hire new research professionals who will expand our capability to bring in new sources of external funding, replacing the stimulus funding once it ends," said Carl Bergmann, an SREL co-director and the grant's principal investigator. "We're also pleased that SREL's former employees will be eligible for the new jobs that this grant will provide."

SREL co-director Ken McLeod said, "SREL's new research projects will further enable DOE to understand and address site impacts on all levels, while also contributing to the greater scientific community."

Most of the projects will provide important knowledge about the behavior of environmental contaminants from human activity, especially in aquatic environments such as the rivers, streams and ponds of the Savannah River Site, he explained. "This research increases our knowledge of the basic aspects of these systems, which in turn helps the development of solutions to important environmental problems."

Not only are we getting the economy back to growth faster than without a stimulus package, we are investing in our future as well. Don't believe the deficit fixation from people oppossed to the stimulus.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

wow...

2009-10-16T14:28:00.003-04:00

As i've mentioned. I'm revamping my blogging approach.

My personal journaling, photography, and everything under the A Speculative Fiction pseduonym will be posted here.

My political, philosophical, current events will be at Under the Name of Reason--which I will b working to bring more substance less random Jim.

Anyways I've got to revamp this particular blog to fit more within A Speculative Fiction--as I'm hoping to starting playing locally as I have the time and write a few more songs...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Orwell at GSU

2009-10-16T14:25:00.001-04:00

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to ... Read Morewear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

Žižek on Žižek! (2/7)

2009-10-11T02:22:00.001-04:00

Žižek on Žižek! (1/7)

2009-10-11T02:20:00.001-04:00

Ideologues are the problem not the solution....

2009-09-30T10:44:00.001-04:00

A great example of why Republican Ideologues have done damage to the quality of life for citizens was in the Henry Citizen Newsletter #123 on July 31 where the husband of a teacher wrote in about the impact of furlough's on their family. He ended up having to take the day off of work to assist in getting the class ready, and pointed out that they have spent money out of pocket to buy white boards, supplies, and decorations for the classroom. Private citizens footing the bill for our obligations as a state is unacceptable.

This isn't the first time I've heard about situations like this. In fact there are many examples of budget cuts directly impacting citizens. This is unacceptable, government has an obligation to meet is commitments to the citizens of this state. Don't get me wrong, nobody will be happy with every program; and certainly procedures, processes, and bureaucratic nightmares can and should be fixed.

These kinds of headaches are faced in the corporate world as well--government isn't unique in these headaches. That is one of the reasons why I'm campaigning on the need to start looking at modern findings in behavioral economics and cognitive science. As I asked around to some of the Legislators, lobbyist, and activists who spend a lot of time up at the Gold Dome about which Legislators were looking into this kind of approach--everyone scratched their head and said they weren't aware of anyone approaching government this way.

That is unacceptable--its time for policy to join the 21st century! It is also a great example of why a new generation of leaders who are bringing new ideas and new approaches to the Gold Dome are needed. We create programs and process that are more efficient and effective--not by working at cross purposes with our natural biology but by harnessing our natural predispositions and human nature. We can create more efficient and effective government--but underfunding our state is not going to make that happen.

Republicans like Ronald Regan and George H. W. Bush raised taxes to deal with structural deficits--so this isn't a democrat or republican issue. Its a prime example of how ideologues have taken over the Republican Party. The number of "Independents" running around these days is another one.

If we want to cut programs--fine, make it happen. The fact they a Republican Majority has failed to make that happen is proof that the people don't want their services and programs cut. That's why I support instant runoff voting so that more Libertarians can get elected if that is the will of citizens in those districts. This would hold the Republican majority accountable for their claimed "small government" approach. But if you can't get the programs cut, then you have to pay the bill in a sustainable, responsible manner. Its like gravity, you can't get away from it.

Therefore Legislators have an obligation to pass responsible solutions that are sustainable--and protect our long term prosperity. Last minute cuts and plugging holes in the budget with a stimulus program that we can't expect every year is not sound economic policy and has a huge impact on the quality of life of citizens in this state. Rep. Davis has done the best he could, but his commitment to ideology before pragmatic solutions and compromises is part of the problem.

I'm running because this state needs solutions not two more years of gridlock and broken government.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Republican ideologues have created a mess of State Government

2009-09-30T10:25:00.001-04:00

It appears that the former Chairman of the Henry County Republican Party, Charles Mobley, has decided to tag me the tax increase king. This kind makes my case for me: Republican ideologues do a lot of damage when they are in government and can't be trusted to promote fiscally responsible solutions. Its not that they are bad people--they just don't get it!

Its pretty straight forward--Republicans are in the majority and have proved politically incapable of scaling back spending. This proves the irresponsibility of Republican leaders who continue to promote tax and spending cuts that further deteriorate the quality of life for citizens in this state putting their safety and prosperity at risk.

Steve Davis and the Republican majority have created a structural deficit in this state and I'm headed to the State House to help clean it up Its not rocket science--you have to pay for the spending the citizens have demanded of their state government. Its unfortunate that the Republican leadership has declined so far--we deserve responsible leadership from both sides of the aisle. Doing the right thing won't be popular with Republican ideologues. They've created the problem, its time to clean up their mess.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

9.28.09

2009-09-28T03:14:00.003-04:00

I made a list last night. Because discipline I lack. Sigh. I wonder what I was thinking back years ago when I was reading Henry Miller and I thought it'd be so great to be a writer. Does a kid at 14 actually understand Henry Miller. Should a kid at 14 understand Henry Miller. Why are my questions ending in a period. Did it again--sigh...

I keep thinking about my place within a lineage of people. I sometimes think about the fact that I'm here because all of my ancestors survived long enough to reproduce. That's strange. And its a very very long time. That kind of historical span is like reflecting on space--as Douglas Adams said, its big, unimaginably big.

Here I am. Speck O dust. Well a compound of proteins, water, errr other things too--atoms and void and Epicurus would say.

One of these days all of this--the world, as in Wittgensteins "my world"--will make sense. Or maybe it won't. But maybe just maybe right before I die, I'll chuckle and go, "oh, I get it now."

I'm going to work now... [actually i'm going to go put on my boots...]

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Jim Nichols
Under the Name of Reason
www.JimNichols4.com

Good Government/Open Government-- My obligation to voters...

2009-09-25T03:38:00.001-04:00

The question of why I decided to become Chairman of the Democratic Party--within a certain range of voters this is becoming a very common for me to be getting--so i'm going to spend some time on that issue. As I've mentioned 1 reason is just generational. I came of age politically with the Bush Administration. But I'll continue to give examples as I go along so that people have a better understanding of my political leanings and determining factors regarding my policy preferences.

I believe in open government and therefore I'm intrigued by this concept of being a legislator that "thinks outloud," using blogging and twitter to crowd source, open up my own thinking, random questions I still have unanswered, and the things that i'm reading/are influencing me. Voters are then able to help persuade me/influence my policy priorities and agenda via email/comments/tweets with their own research/findings. That is at its core what this is about--not political power, not putting my reelection above true representation, but a dialogue and debate over good, pragmatic, policy rather than ideology.

I have an inherent distrust of government so open government is one of my priorities--thinking outloud, and in public; might be a little messy or seem strange to some voters; but I think open government is at its core one of the most important goals and priorities we as citizens should have.

Here's another recent example... Republicans over the past decade have prioritized political power over good policy (see reason 1 above)

THE GOP REVERSAL ON INDIVIDUAL MANDATES....

In many cases, Republican lawmakers asked Democratic leaders to make specific concessions on health care reform. When Dems like Max Baucus agreed, the GOP balked anyway.

But there are other areas in which Democrats simply embrace policy ideas endorsed, or even created by, the right. For quite a while, conservatives liked the idea of giving an Independent Medicare Advisory Council more power to determine what the program should pay for. It's a straightforward, money-saving measure. When the Obama administration agreed, Republicans decided they didn't like their own idea anymore.

The same thing is happening with an individual mandate, which Republicans trashed during the first day of Senate Finance Committee debate yesterday.

Advocates of a coverage mandate say it is needed to ensure that young, healthy people get insurance and contribute to the system. They say this will ease costs associated with an influx of less-healthy people who are expected to get coverage under the Baucus legislation.

Republicans, who are trying to slow Democratic efforts to pass a health overhaul by the end of the year, rushed to criticize the proposal.

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the Finance Committee's senior Republican, said the mandate is among the reasons that he couldn't support the bill despite months of negotiations with Mr. Baucus. "Individuals should maintain their freedom to chose health-care coverage, or not," he said.

"This bill is a stunning assault on liberty," said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate's second-ranking Republican.

That's pretty strong rhetoric under any circumstances, but it's especially striking since the GOP used to think individual mandates were fine. Indeed, Sam Stein noted yesterday that the idea was "once considered so non-controversial that it was endorsed by several major Republican officials."

As recently as a month ago, Chuck Grassley, the same senator bashing the idea of a mandate yesterday, announced that the way to get universal coverage is "through an individual mandate." He told Nightly Business report, "That's individual responsibility, and even Republicans believe in individual responsibility." Earlier this year, Grassley told Fox News that there wasn't "anything wrong" with mandates even if some may view them "as an infringement upon individual freedom."

Now, apparently, he disagrees with himself. There's a lot of that going around.

Congressional Republicans could probably save themselves a lot of trouble by simply saying, "Whatever Democrats are for, we're against," in response to every question.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols for GA State House

Just so you know A Speculative Fiction is back in action...

2009-09-16T00:36:00.002-04:00

The writer/musician in me has been itching to get out--a few have been telling me its time to get back in the game.

I've decided the Politically Correct police will love using some of my art to say i'm not competent for a part time (in reality full time) job that pays McDonalds wages because than can take x y and z that is coming often quite raw from the human all too human side of me. Ahh thats life--I for one and sick of the manufactured manipulative--poll driven politics. I truly believe others are as well. Those with Statist/Authoritarian leanings love to attack artists--as artists are the first line of defence for free expression and a flourishing open society.

Sigh... I'll suck it up and take it like a man.

So this blog is going live again with some of my music, poems, and writings.

I will work to separate the three worlds I circle in--art, philosophy, and politics. As each sets different norms, standards, and practices. But we're all adults. Some aspects of the human experience--that is often expressed through art--aren't necessarily fit for the young ones.

If you want to stick to politics feel free to sign up for RSS feed or sign up for the emails at http://jimn2010.blogspot.com/

For those who just want my philosophy, as well as more indepth political and social commentary you can stick to http://underthenameofreason.blogspot.com/

For those who want a little bit of everything including my music, photography, spoken word, poetry, journaling, and random oddities... you can stay here. oi.
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Assorted Jelly Beans - "No Time" Kung Fu Records

2009-09-13T14:44:00.001-04:00

I think I may stop contending conservatives...

2008-08-29T19:32:00.008-04:00

UPDATE: I'm still getting a ton of hits so I just wanted to let people know that my "blog" is now Under the name of Reason come on over for philosophy, politics, and random oddities from Jim. Also most of my partisan political blogging can be found at henrydems.com

“Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.” --John Wesley

Last night was one of those amazing nights in your life. A week before getting married, speaking at an event of excited voters and volunteers who want to work hard getting better economic policy, fix the health care crisis. I got to be in a huge room full of people to watch probably the best political speech of my era.

In his intro video his wife said something like... "he is always trying to push people forward..."

Politics is difficult--power struggles, coalition building, compromise that will infuriate policy from the ivory tower, and basic biology (10% of our thought is conscious while 90% is unconscious--this makes things very complex when trying to navigate the above mentioned difficulties)

Its time to move on from the A Speculative Fiction Blog... I will be moving www.JimNichols4.com to a new blog I will be starting: Jim Nichols which will contain my writings and other efforts to bring policy to the forefront of the debate... Context on working within the two party system; of which politicians, which policies, should be stopped; and which should be promoted and supported.

I didn't get home till 11:30 last night... I was then on the phone with a reporter--after having been up since 1:30am that morning I sometimes worry how well I can articulate ideas without getting intellectually sloppy. I was in bed by midnight and back up at 1:30am. Despite how tired I was, I couldn't have felt better when I got up this morning.

My life has so much meaning and so much happiness and love in it. For so long in my life I could never get to a place that would end the anguish and rage. My mind can perpetuate bad and make it worse... grow hobgoblins from minor mistakes or slip ups from those around me.

When I got off of work about 8:30am this morning I had a phone call from a man in Henry that wanted to get involved in helping increase the education and awareness of democrats on policy. It was a wonderful conversation I had with him. One of my passionate beliefs in my efforts to reform the Democratic Party is that we are terribly inarticulate when it comes to policy.

The impacts of the inability to respond to attack ads, smear campaigns, inaccurate and manipulative data... means that the intimidation works to keep people silent. I learned that no matter how much I tried to argue policy in the run up to the war. The attacks on me personally were very effective in undermining my ability to communicate with those who were honestly trying to make a careful informed decision.

I learned from that that I'm going to fight within the Democratic party to make sure that we are a well organized and are running quality candidates. I also learned that I will no longer let conservatives attack anyone who is trying to fight to improve the lives of neighbors down the street, on the other side of the country, or on the other side of the world.

MLK Jr. said, "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." And that is something I have finally understood. I'm trying to push and prod those who should be rolling up their sleeves to keep political power out of the hands of those who "do not know"

"Now, I don't believe John McCain doesn't care whats going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he does not know." --Barack Obama

That floored me. In a single phrase, Obama was able to articulate in the manner of MLK or Gandhi that the opposition is wrong and we will never stop until we have made such ideas null and void.

Its a way of saying things that stays true to Ghandi's nonviolence of the mind that we all must nurture.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

That single phrase has inspired me to stop holding back and as Henry Rollins said once in a spoken word--you got to cut the shit.

I'm in... I'm all in. I don't know where it goes and what the path will lead. But I know that to accomplish my goal of helping organize and lead a strong community of people who want to improve our lives--all of our lives. Therefore I have to let go of some of that which is me, some of the decoration and novelty that helped cut me out of the stone. But its a time and place that is no longer called for, and is no longer me, or who I want to be.

Like my other blogs... I will just let it die rather than delete it... I will leave it up but stop promoting it or linking to it. I have said things here that I will look back and smile on for the rest of my life. I've also made mistakes, said unfortunate things, and have shown the struggles and scars of rising up above the world you somehow find yourself in.

I am working with a cohort within the reality based community to create a blog on the upcoming general assembly session as well as continue to pull from the best blogs and articles that can be found online... and throw my two cents in. More attention needs to be brought to the state level... and blogger are just the ones to do it since the local press needs some market competition to keep them honest!

But its now to say goodbye to A Speculative Fiction. In a week I'll be starting the next step in my journey and will be marrying the love of my life--who believed in me long before I did.

I want to say thank you to my readers, the emails, and comments. Its been fun and hopefully fruitful for others, because it has been a huge part of me. But now its time to move on from the "personal blog" form into something more professional. There is nothing wrong with blog as an outlet to describe life, share ideas, and just good old fashion ramble.

But I have a goal of bring a writer, giving good political analysis on the economy, foreign policy, and other important issues. To increase my ability to become more and more productive and more and more skilled in my commentary, I have to remove some of the fluff which may entertain me on good days, and drag me down to the gutter of the blogosphere on worse days.

There is only so much time and my time writing should go predominately to writing at a level that respect the intelligence of my readers and myself.

I will certainly update this last post with any activities or directions that these new steps in my life are taking. But I just wanted to say so long to A Speculative Fiction... the problems that need to be address are neither fiction nor speculation. I didn't know where I was heading with this blog. But it got me to where I needed to be and it was a fun ride.

Please drop me a line at Jim.Nichols@gmail.com

For now I'll leave you with the single greatest statement on why conservative policy makers just don't get it...

In Washington, they call this the "Ownership Society," but what it really means is that you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck, you're on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You're on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don't have boots. You are on your own.

Those of us who have been given gifts have an obligation to give back. We must stand up and fight for those who can't fight for themselves, protect what makes us great, and empower our communities to thrive rather than perpetuate self-destructive decline...

And now... for posterity's state. One more angry sigh...

We don't care if we're destroyed. We'll never capitulate. We'll take the whole fucking world down, down with us in flames. Just a speculative fiction. No cause for alarm. We got a good 15 years left till the United We Stand murals on West Broadway finally fade and we wave good-bye to such sad, childish refrains. Replaced with other stupid lullabies like "you can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead hands". Just a speculative fiction. No cause for alarm. --Propagandhi "A Speculative Fiction"

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

The bridge to nowhere...

2008-08-29T16:21:00.003-04:00

Two Three Reasons Sarah Palin Should Not Be Vice President
By Brad DeLong

No reasons so far why Sarah Palin would be qualified to be president--aside from a claim that she shares a hairdresser with Amy Winehouse. And a bunch of big negatives are flooding in. The biggest surround the fact that John McCain stands at least one chance in five of dying over the next four years and that she would then become president. Here are three:

Sarah Palin's Abuse-of-Power Scandal ("Will No One Rid Me of This Meddlesome State Trooper?" Department)

One of them is her firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monega for no reason anybody can explain--except for the likelihood that Monega had not obeyed her staff's demand to fire State Trouper Mike Wooten, Palin's ex-brother-in-law.

Now Palin's story is that she had absolutely nothing to do with her aide Frank Bailey's demands that Monega fire Wooten.

That story didn't fly when Henry II Plantagenet tried it after the murder of Archbishop Thomas:

Palin's the One: So now we've learned that Sarah Palin is McCain's choice for nominee. I have to say. It's a daring pick but I think a very weak pick. I'm perfectly happy with it. Palin is in the midst of a reasonably serious scandal in her home state. Her brother-in-law is a state trooper who is in the midst of an ugly custody battle with her sister. And she's accused of getting the state police to fire him. Recently she was forced to admit that one of her aides had done this, though she insists she didn't know.... John McCain... a cancer survivor who turns 72 years old today, is picking a vice presidential nominee who has been governor of a small state for less than two years and prior to that was mayor of a town with roughly one-twenty-seventh of the citizens that Barack Obama represented when he was a state senator in Illinois...

Sarah Palin Lies in Her First Speech:

The second is the fact that she could not get through her first speech without telling a lie:

Anchorage Daily News, 10/5/06: Palin Said She Supported The So-Called "Bridge To Nowhere," But Was Concerned Money "Flow" Was "Going to Slow":

As for the infamous 'bridges to nowhere,' MacDonald asked if the candidates would forge ahead with the proposed Knik Arm crossing between Anchorage and Point MacKenzie and Ketchikan's Gravina Island bridge. Each has received more than $90 million in federal funding and drew nationwide attacks as being unnecessary and expensive. He also asked if they support building an access road from Juneau toward -- but not completely connecting to -- Skagway and Haines. 'I do support the infrastructure projects that are on tap here in the state of Alaska that our congressional delegations worked hard for,' Palin said. She said the projects link communities and create jobs. Still, Palin warned that the flow of federal money into the state for such projects is going to slow...
MSNBC, 8/29/08 Palin: "I Told Congress 'Thanks But No Thanks' On That Bridge To Nowhere":

During her speech in Dayton, Ohio, after being introduced as McCain's running mate, Palin said, "I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, 'we'd build it ourselves.'...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Well its going to be hard for Obama...

2008-08-29T16:17:00.003-04:00

But at least McCain is working as hard as he can to make it easier....

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

good blog post...

2008-08-29T09:16:00.002-04:00

From Brian Leiter on the Democratic convention...

I guess this is a case study in the decadence of empires in decline. For the first time, I'm living somewhere that has basic cable TV, so have been watching, for amusement, bits and pieces of the Prudent Wing of the Republocrat Party's annual convention in Denver on C-SPAN. It really is an amazingly substance-free zone, in which people are packaged by advertising pros like new automobiles, and talentless speaker follows talentless speaker. Last night featured former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who has the dubious distinction of sounding even more like a total fake than Senator Clinton. Meanwhile, Senator Clinton was celebrated as a great feminist trailblazer without any mention of the most relevant fact about why she's a Senator, let alone a national candidate, namely, her husband. (There are some actual feminist trailblazers in the Prudent Wing of the Republocrat Party, one can only imagine what they were thinking watching this spin job.) I am told that the speech of the Iowa Republican Jim Leach, who is pro-Obama, is already being marketed by sleep disorder specialists for those suffering chronic insomnia. The one bright spot was the funny, and unpolished, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who delivered a few good populist punches that were otherwise sorely missing. But overall, the whole thing was so bland and dreary that one almost wishes they'd retain George Galloway to deliver a thirty-minute address to say something substantive about the war criminals in Washington, D.C., and their annointed successor, Senator McCain.

go read the whole thing... very nice, very nice.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

candidate McCain vs. Senator McCain

2008-08-28T03:08:00.002-04:00

The best speech Kerry has ever given.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Obama ranks number one in urban legends online...

2008-08-27T10:43:00.003-04:00

So i've asked people (and I'm asking you as well) to forward me any emails or articles attacking him or Democrats at large so that I can keep up and help local democrats respond to the policy not the trash.

Just got one in my email box and one point was on the estate tax... found two things I wanted to post up... here is that assertion...

INHERITANCE TAX

McCCAIN - 0% (No change, this tax has been repealed.)

OBAMA - keep the inheritance tax.

How does this affect you? Many families have lost
businesses, farms and ranches, and homes that have been in
their families for generations because they could
not afford the inheritance tax.

The number of farms is next to nhil from what everyone is saying... But lets check with one of the most successful businessmen in the world...

November 15, 2007
Buffett Says No Estate Tax Would Be a Gift to the Rich
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

Warren E. Buffett urged Congress yesterday to maintain the estate tax, saying that plans to repeal the tax would benefit a handful of the richest American families and widen income disparity in the United States.

Mr. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, told the Senate Finance Committee that advocates of repeal were “dead wrong” to call the tax a “death tax.”

It would be more appropriate to call it a “death present,” Mr. Buffett, 77, said. “A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy.”

Congressional Democrats are likely to seize on Mr. Buffett’s comments to bolster their argument that repeal of the estate tax amounts to a windfall for a few wealthy families. Republicans have pushed to eliminate the tax permanently or reduce the rate and exempt more estates by raising the value at which the tax takes effect.

Mr. Buffett said that in the last 20 years, tax laws have allowed the “superrich” to become richer.

“Tax law changes have benefited this group, including me, in a huge way,” he said. “During that time the average American went exactly nowhere on the economic scale: he’s been on a treadmill while the superrich have been on a spaceship.”

Lawmakers are under pressure to reach some agreement on the future of the tax because a law enacted by Congress in 2001 gradually phases it out through 2010, when it will be fully repealed for one year. The tax is scheduled to return in 2011 with a top rate of 55 percent on estates worth more than $1 million. For this year, individual estates valued at more than $2 million are taxed at a top rate of 45 percent.

The chairman of the finance committee, Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said yesterday that fewer than 1 percent of United States households currently pay the tax. He said repeal lacked support in the Senate and the purpose of the hearing was to solicit ideas for replacing the shifting rules and uncertainty of the current system.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the panel, said the estate tax should be repealed because “death should not be a taxable event.”

“As long as a person has accumulated an estate in accordance with the law, the government should not be able to profit from that person’s death,” he said.

He said, however, that he might be willing to accept a compromise short of repeal, as long as lawmakers “are looking out for small-business owners and family farmers.”

nonpartisan Tax Policy Center:

The Estate Tax (pg. 19)

Senator McCain’s proposal to reduce the estate tax rate to 15 percent and increase the exemption to $5 million would reduce estate and income tax revenues by approximately $580 billion over 10 years. It would cut estate tax revenues by 90 percent and reduce the extent to which the estate tax backstops the income tax (that is, taxing assets that might have escaped income tax as they accumulated because of careful tax planning or loopholes, including the exemption of capital gains on assets transferred at death). Under the proposal, only about 4,000 estates would be subject to the tax in 2011 (less than 0.2 percent of the 2.5 million adult decedents).

The estate tax has ambiguous effects on working and saving. The tax may discourage some wealthy people who care about their heirs from saving or working by reducing the size of after-tax bequests. Others, however, may have a target amount of wealth they want to transfer, in which case they would need to save more to offset the expected tax liability. Further, the tax may encourage some potential heirs to work and save more because they are less able to live well off the proceeds of inherited wealth (for discussion, see Burman, Gale, and Rohaly 2005). On balance, the proposal is likely to have very small effects on work effort, saving, or overall economic performance. It would, however, reduce the progressivity of the tax system because only the richest estates now pay estate tax. Compared with leaving the 2009 rates and exemptions in place, near repeal of the tax as Senator McCain has proposed would disproportionately benefit a very small group of extremely wealthy individuals.

rich kids need to work just like the rest of us. No free rides, no free rides...
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Last post then off to school...

2008-08-27T10:33:00.003-04:00

People keep asking me where I've learned what I've learned. I don't tend to think I'm that knowledgeable yet... at least I'm nowhere near what I'm capable of and where I should be. Lack of discipline, family, and political obligations keep me too busy to do the intellectual leg work I'd like to do.

But if you like what I have to say I can give you a few recommendations
1. Read often and broadly

2. Read quality blogs (where I've gotten all of my economics for the most part)

3. Read different newspapers from different political perspectives. Most importantly the New York Times since it sets the national media agenda and is the newspaper for movers and shakers in the world. You want to know what they are reading and thinking. Secondly the wall-street journal. I'm sorry to see the decline since Murdock... and they've had some loses because of it. But the WSJ is a great news source. The opinion page is a joke... but the news is par excellance--the reason being if you are going to make good financial decisions you need to know whats actually going on with as little spin as possible. Also Financial Times is a good read as well... NPR in the mornings... when I do watch the news on tv its Jim Leher on PBS. And online news I get at Democracy Now probably THE BEST news source out there. But its so reality based that it sounds as if a news report from mars...

4. COntact people you come across authors, teachers, and other nonprofessional intellectuals you might come across. Stay networked.. ask questions

5. The back of the book... where are the sources and citations go... thats where you learn to leap from...

thats about it. A little tip from me to you. Please feel free to throw out your own in the comments page.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

trade deficit

2008-08-27T10:32:00.001-04:00

Econobrowser asks:

Why is the trade deficit, even taking out oil, so large when the dollar is so weak? Maybe some insights can be gleaned from productivity measures.

I like this train of thought he gives...

One possibility is that exactly because productivity growth in the US is very rapid, future prospects for America's wealth (in the form of the present value of future net output) are very bright, and hence we should dis-save now, in order to smooth consumption

contending conservatives for a very good reason indeed--the economy.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Krugman on new census numbers...

2008-08-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

About that Bush Boom …

The 2007 income, poverty and health insurance numbers are out. As far as I can tell on a first read, there’s nothing deeply surprising. Still, they represent a landmark — and not in a good way.

The key point is that 2007 was the end of an economic expansion — whether or not the NBER declares a recession, the employment situation, which is what matters to most people, has deteriorated sharply this year. So 2007 was as good as it got in this cycle. Yet median household income was lower than in 2000, while both the poverty rate and the percentage of Americans without health insurance were higher.

In short, the economic policies we’ve been following just aren’t working.
Is the bad economic news all Bush’s fault? No, of course not — but remember, the key argument of the right has always been that tax cuts and deregulation would produce good news, a rising tide that raised all boats. Boy, has that not happened.
But remember, we’re just a nation of whiners.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

compatancy???compentancy??? ahhh competancy!!!!

2008-08-27T10:17:00.003-04:00

"The swelling tide of toxic home loans is proving to be even more worrisome than initially feared"

It would be nice if some of the people who get paid big dollars because they supposedly have high skills could acknowledge that they messed up. It would also be nice if the national media did not consider it part of their job to cover up for powerful people who messed up on their job.

Yes, that headline is a a direct quote. It also is the sort of statement that has no place in a serious news article. The swelling tide of toxic loans is not proving to be more worrisome than feared. The problem is that the people who were supposed to be regulating the financial system did not know what they were doling.

The people who did understand the economy knew that an unprecedented run-up in house prices, with no remotely plausible explanation based on fundamentals, with no corresponding increase in rents, was a bubble. We also knew that bubbles burst. And, we knew that when bubbles in a highly leveraged asset like housing burst, that lots of debts go bad and that banks then take really big hits.

The NYT should be exposing the incompetence of people who were paid big dollars to know the housing and financial markets (this includes both bankers at place like Citigroup, Merill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the top regulators) and completely failed in their responsibilities.

It should not try to tell readers that the housing crash was somehow an unforeseeable event that came out of the blue. It was an entirely predictable event and it was only incompetence that prevented these people from seeing it. Unfortunately, unlike dishwashers and custodians, bank executives and regulators are not held accountable for their performance. Instead, the media covers it up for them.

This goes under contending conservatives because they like to say people who earn a lot deserve it for "obvious" reasons... not so much in the real world.

Move away from sound good feel good theoretical world and conservatives have to run for the hills.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Fair Tax tactic...

2008-08-27T03:16:00.003-04:00

There are some classic tactic that Fair Tax folks use...

not even making claims about the plan itself it just makes you start off questioning the legitimacy...

A Comment from my last fair tax post

The problem with your question is that basically all the serious economists with any credibility are paid think tankers in one way or another. Almost unanimously, those who have put the most study into the proposal agree that it would be a very good thing in the long run. Those who conclude against the FairTax usually do so because they deem the transitional problems to be too tough to weather.

Show me an unpaid economist who comes down against the FairTax and I will show you where he has missed something or changed something in his model.

I made an empirical statement and asked for an example... its bad form to try to flip the question around on me as if its now my obligation to prove the opposite. To try and make it seem... "wow thats obvious..." but never cite anyone isn't an answer. its an aversion.

I'll check out the post he mention when I get home...

fair tax people don't help their case...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

More pink floyd

2008-08-27T03:09:00.002-04:00

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

a theme for the day.... no?

2008-08-27T03:02:00.001-04:00

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

And you may ask yourself....

2008-08-27T02:50:00.004-04:00

My mind... can't my mind.... "can't think... where am... what time... who? errr...." He looks over at the small box with music coming out. All he see is 2:32.... 2:32... 2:32... seems to mean something but he is not quite sure.

"What time does that mean? When do I have to go to work? What do I do? Why can't I concentrate on what this little black box is trying to tell me?" 2:32. Still bemused... still staring... his fiances whispers over to him. Its 2:30.... you got to go.

"Yup... knew that... most definitely... I'm JUST NOT SURE WHAT THE CONTEXT FOR THAT NUMBER IS... ahh... wait. Yes 2:30... I have to leave by 3:00. I work at UPS. This is my beautiful house.... that is my beautiful wife... My name is Jim and my mind doesn't work cause it went to bed about 2 and half hours ago. Noting more nothing less."

Its strange when your mind just doesn't work for just a brief moment that seems like eternity. It was very funny... very surreal... very scary/weird.

For fun....

okay this is more like it....

I love my life... even when its weird....

"get some, get some, get some---go again"

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Obama and new census report

2008-08-26T16:48:00.001-04:00

Statement From Senator Obama on the Census Income, Health Insurance and Poverty Numbers

Today’s news confirms what America’s struggling families already know – that over the past seven years our economy has moved backwards. We have now lived through first so-called economic ‘expansion’ on record where typical families saw their incomes fall, and working-age households lost more than $2,000 from their paychecks. Another 816,000 Americans fell into poverty in 2007 – including nearly 500,000 children – bringing the total increase in Americans in poverty under President Bush to 5.7 million. And on Bush’s watch, an additional 7.2 million Americans have fallen into the ranks of the uninsured. This is the failed record of George Bush’s economic policies that Senator McCain has called ‘great progress.’ While Senator McCain is promising four more years of the failed Bush economic policies, my economic plan will restore bottom up economic growth that benefits all Americans by cutting taxes for working Americans, providing affordable, accessible health care for all, and investing in new energy, education and infrastructure so we can create millions of good jobs here in America,” said Senator Barack Obama.

Highlights from the Census report:

Between 2000 and 2007, median income for working age households fell by $2,176. When elderly households are included, median income declined by $324 over the same period. This is the first economic expansion on record where typical households have seen their incomes decline. Under the Clinton Administration, median household income increased by $6,200.

African American household income fell by $1,804 between 2000 and 2007; Hispanic household income fell by $1,256 over the same period

Based on declining wages over the first 7 months of this year, median household income is likely to fall by at least $700 in 2008, bringing total income lost for the typical household under the Bush Administration to over $1000.

An additional 816,000 Americans fell into poverty in 2007, bringing the total increase in Americans in poverty under President Bush to 5.7 million.

500,000 children fell into poverty in 2007. There are 1.7 million more children living in poverty than in 2000.

Between 2000 and 2007, an additional 7.2 million Americans have fallen into the ranks of the uninsured. This is the largest increase in the number of people without health insurance of any Presidential Administration on record.

The share of Americans with private health coverage fell from 67.9% in 2006 to 67.5% in 2007. This share has fallen every year that President Bush has been in office, declining a total of 5 percentage points since 2000.

940,000 African Americans have lost health insurance since 2000, along with 3 million Hispanics

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

I don't live in my mothers basement!!!

2008-08-26T16:44:00.001-04:00

anymore.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:
The problem with "traditional media"

I'm with Matt. I just don't have much sympathy of people working at big newspapers whining about the netroots attacking them. Reporters--if they're doing their job--spend their lives bringing scrutiny to other people. There's something weak about complaining when someone does the same to you. Matt points to this particularly egregious quote by Richard Cohen:

"I used to get a lot more on the right," said columnist Richard Cohen, who broke with liberals when he supported the Iraq war. More recently, the left has picked apart columns that are perceived as being favorable to John McCain.

"If you're a little bit critical of Barack Obama, you get really a pie of vilification right in the face," Cohen said, adding that his liberal critics "were born too late, because they would have been great communists."

Dude, you get paid to state your opinion. Why do you care what some D&D-playing, popcorn eating, living in his mother's basement blogger is saying? I mean really. These guys want the megaphone, and then not the criticism. All power. No responsibility.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

What i'm reading this very second...

2008-08-26T16:27:00.001-04:00

Aug. 27 Locke, Second Treatise, sections 132-168, 199, 201-204, 221-229 and 240-243

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke2/2nd-contents.html

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

response on taxes and economy...

2008-08-26T15:57:00.003-04:00

Anonymous said...
Jim

You say look at what made our economy the greatest in the world. If you don't believe in the FairTax fine. Now look at what is ruining our economy in relation to the tax laws of other nations. We are becoming more and more uncompetitive.

Exactly! This is the consequence of our move away from Keynesian economics towards the back of a napkin supply side economics. The Laffer curve is laughable! But the impacts of cutting taxes at the expense of our infrastructure and making the middle class.. and future generations pay for it has hurt us dramatically.

I'll quote myself...

The impacts of the Bush tax cuts have been huge. And it has hurt our business competitiveness around the globe. That is reason--as the book, "the politics of Bad Ideas" points out--that the World Economic Forum the deterioration of the US public finances has begun to damage US competitiveness. This is a business research institute in Switzerland. The US experienced the most dramatic drop in rankings of ALL nations.

Also there is a myth that American businesses are being strangled by taxation at the expense of competitiveness. I'll outsource to Economist Mark Thoma at U. Oregon "The Greek Menace" who brings together some stuff around the web... I'll quote the larger point--aside from conservatives once again manipulating with hyperbole rather than data...

Economist Dean Baker:

Washington Post Misleads Readers to Push for Lower Corporate Tax Rates
Today, the preferred policy is further reductions in corporate income taxes. To advance this agenda the Post tells readers that, "U.S. companies operating abroad already labor under a bigger tax burden than most foreign competitors."

That's not what the OECD says. Data from the OECD show that in the average member country corporate taxes are equal to about 3.5 percent of GDP. In the United States, corporate taxes have generally been between and 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP over the last two decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office (Table F-4).

But more broadly this decline comes from the conservative revolution. The Regan myth--keep in mind he raised taxes twice to try to correct the harm done from his tax cut at the beginning of his term--of taxes cuts creating economic growth was considered flawed by many economist in theory... and now we have the data to back it up. But the propaganda has remained useful. Our society has become less equitable with the reductions in the top economic bracket. Disparities of wealth over the long term have a huge impact in undermining the market system. We haven't seen such disparities of wealth since the 20's. And we have Regan and the pathology of tax cuts.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

still not doing homework!! I swear I'm leaving now!

2008-08-26T11:46:00.000-04:00

Scale in the Housing Market

The NYT discusses efforts by local governments to use public money to purchase and renovate foreclosed properties to help revitalize hard-hit areas. At one point the article presents a comment from an economist at the CATO Institute complaining the program that supports this effort will distort the housing market and that it would be best to leave this process to the private sector.

It would have been helpful to put the size of the program in context. The program involves $4 billion in federal money. This is equal to approximately 0.02 percent of the value of the $20 trillion housing stock. It is equal to approximately 0.3 percent of annual housing sales. Spending of this magnitude is not likely to lead to large distortions in the housing market.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Henry Dems blog post...

2008-08-26T11:11:00.001-04:00

I work my ass off debating conservatives... some times I think its pointless... I hope people learn something from it... (see main post for links)

This liberal lacks a retort? McCain, Obama, and the economy

I'm glad to see we are getting a more active blog. The more we debate... the more we discuss... the more we have dialouge. The less the right wing swift boat attacks and urban ledgends that Republicans have used time and time again will work.

The discussion is on McCain and his 8 houses... or however many.

Henry Libertarian commented:

That shows how "out of touch" and "privileged" Obama is, which Liberals like to ignore. Sure it is fun to point across the isle and snicker, but when you are guilt of the same thing suddenly you get defensive and don't see the humor anymore. If you want to call McCain rich then show me a politician at the federal levels that isn't. You obviously don't have a retort or you would have said something better. Obama wants to tax businesses that make goods and provide services which will make goods and services more expensive. With Obama's Trillion-Dollar Spending Plan, who do you think is going to pay for it?

First... "when you are guilty of the same thing? How so? The Rezko smear has been shown to be a complete fabrication for more see Factcheck.org which is a nonpartisan group that I highly recommend to those like myself who want to deal in policy and not whitewash the issues. Read the Rezko Reality to see that Henry Libertarian like many Republicans is misinformed on the issue.

If you want to call McCain rich then show me a politician at the federal levels that isn't.

That is known as a straw man in logic. I'm not arguing that Obama has note earned an impressive income. Or that middle class and working class americans are seldom representative of elected officials.

But here is the deal. Obama understand that Americans deserve to be empowered... he wants to help middle class Americans get a higher quality of life. John McCain wants to cut taxes on the rich... which has harmed our economic health over the past 30 years of supply side reganomics.

I mean there are reasons why European nations--and Canada too!--have more economic mobility than we do in America. These are all repurcussion of conservative economics--a less equitable outcome for hard working americans.

So saying I want to have it both ways because "Obama is rich too" is either a misunderstanding or clever rhetorical trick which won't work. I'll assume its a misunderstanding.

Obama wants to tax businesses that make goods and provide services which will make goods and services more expensive. With Obama's Trillion-Dollar Spending Plan, who do you think is going to pay for it?

First... lets go back to the core questions. Obama wants to bring back the strong economic growth that was seen before the conservative revolution of tax cuts at the cost of quality of life.

The impacts of the Bush tax cuts have been huge. And it has hurt our business competativeness around the globe. That is reason--as the book, "the politics of Bad Ideas" points out--that the World Economic Forum the deterioration of the US public finances has begun to damage US competitiveness. This is a business research institute in Switzerland. The US expereienced the most dramatic drop in rankings of ALL nations.

Also there is a myth that American businesses are being strangled by taxation at the expense of competativeness. I'll outsource to Economist Mark Thoma at U. Oregon "The Greek Menace" who brings together some stuff around the web... I'll quote the larger point--aside from conservatives once again manipluating with hyperbole rather than data...

Economist Dean Baker:

Washington Post Misleads Readers to Push for Lower Corporate Tax Rates

Today, the preferred policy is further reductions in corporate income taxes. To advance this agenda the Post tells readers that, "U.S. companies operating abroad already labor under a bigger tax burden than most foreign competitors."

That's not what the OECD says. Data from the OECD show that in the average member country corporate taxes are equal to about 3.5 percent of GDP. In the United States, corporate taxes have generally been between and 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP over the last two decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office (Table F-4).

Also here is the tax policy center on Obama's "business tax increases" that you claim will destroy our economy (pg 22)

Obama’s proposal to make permanent the Research and Development (R&D) credit and the renewable energy production credit would make it easier for firms to make investment decisions because they would no longer have to worry each time the credits approached their expiration. Both credits encourage particular behavior that Congress has deemed worthwhile and the change would likely increase both the amount of business investment in R&D and the development of more renewable energy sources. Most economists believe, however, that credits for selected investments in renewable energy are a less cost-effective way of reducing global warming and dependence on imported oil than approaches that raise the price of fossil fuels (including the cap-and-trade proposals advanced by both Obama and McCain) and allow private markets to select the least costly ways of reducing fossil fuel use.

The two sets of revenue-raisers that Obama has proposed would raise taxes on corporations and individuals engaging in particular activities and thus might cause them to change their behavior. To the extent that the provisions close loopholes in the current tax system, they could lead to more efficient use of resources, in terms of both how firms invest their funds and the use of financial strategies to exploit loopholes. The Obama campaign is probably overstating how much revenue additional loophole-closing proposals can raise, however, particularly with regard to proposals to reduce revenue lost from taxpayers who conceal offshore income and exploit international differences in tax rates to shift income to low-tax jurisdictions. There is little hard knowledge about how much revenue is lost to these transactions and administrative efforts to control them are ongoing.

These are equitable and smart chagnes in the tax code. Not perfect for my market theory wonkish Jim Nichols world... but politics is about compromise and consensus and this is a great step towards creating a more equitable economy that not only empowers middle class america but increases all our prosperity through economic revival and a move away from supply side economic nonsense.

Your concern about goods and services is moot since the incomes and savings of middle class and working class americans will rise... which will happen since ending the Bush economic fiasco will improve our longterm economic forcast. WHy do you think the Bush tax cuts created a recession recovery that faired so poorly compared to other post war recorvies?

With Obama's Trillion-Dollar Spending Plan, who do you think is going to pay for it?

Trillion dollar spending worries you? Obama would boost the debt by $3.5 trillion but at the same time increase spending and tax cuts that help middle class Americans. McCain would increase the debt by $5 trillion and all we get is more of the Bush economy stagnation and tax cuts for people who will just by bigger houses and nice boats.

Remeber a tax cut is government spending... like it or not.. So McCain is definately not your guy--why defend the worse of two evils by your own parameters.

I'll conclude with the Tax Policy Center again...(Intro)

The two candidates’ tax plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those tax cuts would be small as a share of after-tax income. In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income

This Liberal lacks a retort? Mama said wonk you out...

We understand economics... and we will bring policies that protect and empower Americans. The every man for themselves mentality Republicans promote not only hurts our citizens, our economic competativeness... but its just plain old bad economics and ways of treating our fellow man...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

China communist?

2008-08-26T03:00:00.002-04:00

Neal Boortz seems to think that infrastructure investment is communist?

At a campaign stop in Chester, Virginia Obama said, "everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now and the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly superior to us now, which means if you're a corporation deciding where to do business, you're starting to think, Beijing looks like a pretty good option."

So not only is Obama praising the Chinese government, but he honestly believes that it takes government in order to make a country great. He honestly thinks that spending your tax dollars will be what makes our country more appealing to corporations ... no mention of the brutally high corporate interest rates in the United States. Maybe that's a reason, Obama, why businesses wouldn't look to the United States as a great place to invest? I guess that's the not the way the "progressive" mind sees it though.

The idea that Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Joseph Stiglitz are communist is laughable and speaks to Neal's knowledge about economics... but heres the question: does anyone still think China is communist? State-Capitalist yes, but yeah Communist? not so much. Someone smarter than I might be able to explain why Neal Boortz is right on this one....

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Fair tax become law?

2008-08-26T02:57:00.000-04:00

CAN IT PASS -- ARE YOU KIDDING?

Someone wrote to this blog saying Fairtax can still pass.

Are you kidding?

THe leaders have abandoned ship. No one is even trying to get a Congressional hearing. The 1.5 million man Fairtax rally in Washington was a total flop - NO ONE showed up.

There is nothing going on anywhere that we can see about Fairtax.

Very very strange -- especially since Fairtax was supposed to be so well "researched" with 70 sponsors in Congress, and hundreds of thousands - over a million -- active supporters.

In fact, Fairtax leaders are making sure there are NO hearings. Apparently Fairtax leaders seem more interested avoiding questions - particularly questions under oath -- about their plan.

So how on earth can it pass?? No one is pushing it. Its not only off the national radar -- its off its OWN radar. Even Fairtax supporters have nothing going on.

Thats probably because the leaders found out, what many of us said from the start. Fairtax is a farce. Literally, a farce. Not sort of a farce, not kind of a farce, its a total farce.

For one thing- its the highest sales tax on the planet earth. And it on your RENT. ITs on your UTILITIES. ITs on your car insurance.

And medical costs. These lunatics were going to put the highest sales tax on EARTH on your cancer surgery, chemo, on your child's dental work, on your ER visit.

So the parents of a child with leukemia could have to pay 100K in SALES taxes because they had the audacity to spend money to try to keep their child alive?

When you start to realize things like this -- you start to see the Fairtax would be wildly, absurdly unpopular. People won't like 100K is sales tax on their hospital bill, especially when they don't make half that.

Will renters just go ahead and pay thousands of dollars a year in sales tax on their rent? And food. And utilities. And virtually everything they buy?

Hell no they won't. And Fairtax leaders started to figure this basic fact out. So they wisely just walked away from this well meaning, but luney idea.

Now sit down a minute, and think. Think about this real real hard. Cause its real real easy. Do you really think people will WANT to pay the highest sales tax on earth, on their rent? Their car insurance? AND their medical cost, utilities, ect ect?

You see, few of Fairtax fans even KNOW what the plan is. Oh, they know the hype. THey know the BS. But they have no clue what the real plan is.

What do you think the impact would be if suddenly people were paying the highest sales tax on earth --- on their rent? No one else even charges a sales tax on -- and rent, but Fairtax idiotically pretends all renters will pay these insanely high taxes on their rent.

So Fairtax is a rent tax. Its also a medical tax.

A car insurance tax. A food tax. A utility tax. A cancer surgery tax. A prescription drug tax. Not just a "modest" tax -- but the HIGHEST sales tax ON EARTH tax.

SO people wouldn't go for this tax -- not when they find out what it really is.

Fairtax couldn't possibly pass. Not when people find out.

If the leaders would have Congressional hearings -- people would know better. Thats why you won't ever see Congressional hearings. The leaders are too smart to have any.

But wait will people would find out -- its not 23% _- its more like 60-70%. Because the 23% figure was based on the lie that they could collect 800 billion in revenue FROM the government. Idiots. Take that farce away, refigure the whole plan. And in Congressional hearings, the Fairtax leaders won't get away with the BS tricks the use on their fans at some rally (which they never have anymore anyway)

Plus -- Fairtax bases their BS on cutting the wages of 100 million American workers -- so prices will fall. Riiiiight. Sure - Im sure everyone will want to rush out, take 30% cut in pay, then pay the world's highest sales tax. Wait till "details" like this come out -- as they would in any congressional hearing.

There are no leaders pushing it. IN fact they are hiding from it. Its a farce. People would hate it.

So you tell me -- can it pass?

Fairtax leaders would never actually show up at a Congressional hearing -- or even allow a Congressional hearing -- and answer questions about it.

So no -- it can't pass.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

X-Phi book review

2008-08-26T02:13:00.000-04:00

Review - Experimental Philosophy
by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (Editors)
Oxford University Press, 2008
Review by Neil Levy, Ph.D.
Aug 12th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 33)

This anthology mixes together previously published and new work in experimental philosophy, by many of its leading figures (among whom the editors feature prominently). Experimental philosophy is a burgeoning movement that urges philosophers to leave their armchairs and test their philosophical claims empirically. It builds upon but goes further than the movement that Jesse Prinz, in his contribution, calls empirical philosophy; philosophy that turns to existing scientific literature to find evidence for philosophical claim. Experimental philosophy involves philosophers actually getting their hands dirty by conducting experiments.

Part of the motivation for going experimental is that scientists have different concerns to most philosophers, and therefore do not always test the hypotheses in which philosophers are interested. In particular, experimental philosophers are concerned with testing the intuitions of ordinary people. An intuition is, roughly, a disposition to take a claim to be true. Experimental philosophers are interested in intuitions for several different reasons. One is because traditional philosophers have sometimes advanced burden of proof arguments: claiming that some view has the burden of proof because ordinary people find the opposing view intuitive. For instance, some philosophers who hold that incompatibilism is true -- that is, that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism -- argue that the burden of proof is on compatibilists, because ordinary people are incompatibilists. There is now a growing literature testing ordinary people's intuitions on these topics, some of which is reprinted here. The evidence suggests a more complicated pattern than was thought: ordinary people do tend toward incompatibilism, but only under certain conditions. When cases are presented abstractly, so the question is essentially 'can an agent be responsible in a determined world?', subjects lean towards a negative answer, but when the case is presented more concretely, with the details of moral wrongdoing described, subjects tend toward compatibilism. This pattern at least complicates burden of proof arguments.

Other experimental philosophers aim to probe intuitions for a different reason: because it may be that unexpected features of the intuitions of ordinary subjects play a role in the intuitions of professional philosophers as well. The most famous example of experimental philosophy in this mould -- perhaps the most famous example of experimental philosophy at all -- is Joshua Knobe's work on causation, a sample of which is republished here. Knobe found that subjects were more likely to judge a harmful than a helpful action to be intentional, even with all the other details of the situation unchanged. This is surprising, because whether an act is harmful or not seems irrelevant to whether it is intentional. Another famous experiment along these lines, also reprinted here, tested the intuitions of subjects regarding Gettier cases; cases in which a person has a true justified belief, but in which the belief is true only accidentally. The existence of such cases has been taken to be a serious challenge to accounts of knowledge, but Weinberg, Nichols and Stich suggest that they should never have been taken seriously. Their evidence consists in the fact that East Asian subjects are more likely to agree that the agents featured in Gettier cases have knowledge than are Western subjects, as well as more likely than not to attribute knowledge. This suggests, they claim, that when philosophers engage in epistemology, they are not probing the nature of knowledge per se; instead, they are probing the psychologies of a particular group of human beings (Western, white, highly educated and male). Intuition mongering is simply a way of exploring a culturally and geographically specific psychology, and cannot be expected to give us insight into the nature of reality.

Since so much of traditional philosophy turns on the appeal to intuitions, the claim that they are likely to be unreliable as guides to the traditional concerns of philosophers has been very controversial. In their experimental philosophy 'manifesto' which opens this collection, Knobe and Nichols attempt to hose down the fire, by claiming that experimental philosophy does not aim to be imperialistic. Instead, they argue for methodological pluralism. To my mind, this greatly underestimates the threat from experimental philosophy. If the claim that in investigating our intuitions we are doing a kind of ethno-psychology is true, then much of traditional philosophy is in trouble: after reading Weinberg, Nichols and Stich one can't simply go back to doing traditional epistemology.

The choices facing philosophy, in the wake of the experimental philosophy movement, are these: give up reliance on intuition to the extent to which this is possible (either generally or with regard to those areas in which the experiments suggest that intuition-mongering is ethno-psychology, or otherwise suspect) or rebut the experimentalist attack on intuitions. In closing, let me sketch a possible avenue of exploration for those who wish to take this latter tack. In his contribution to this volume, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong notes that many of the experimental results reveal a pattern of conflicting intuitions, depending upon whether the case is described abstractly or concretely (we have seen this pattern in the responses of ordinary people with regard to the compatibility of determinism and moral responsibility). Sinnott-Armstrong suggests that this pattern might explain why philosophical puzzles endure. He suggests that the conflicting intuitions might be the product of different reasoning systems, one of which is keyed to abstract presentations and the other concrete. Since we all have both systems, we each feel the pull of both sides of the issue, making it intractable. But because one system is likely to be stronger than the other in each of us, we take sides.

As Sinnott-Armstrong notes, we could break the stalemate if we could adduce non-question-begging grounds for siding with one system or the other. But he sees little hope of that. If his speculation about the nature of the competing systems is correct, he is probably right (Sinnott-Armstrong models the systems on memory systems, one of which seems better at recalling concrete episodes while another seems better at recalling abstract semantic information). But another possibility, one that seems at least as likely to me, is that the competing systems are the systems familiar from dual process theories of the mind. On these theories, one system is fast, automatic, and unconscious, while the other is slow, effortful and conscious. More importantly, the systems have features that often make it rational to discount the output of one and not the other: system 1 is modular, which is to say that is insensitive to a broad range of considerations, inflexible and stereotyped, whereas system 2 is domain-general, flexible and responsive to personal-level beliefs and values. If, as I think is possible, intuitions on one side of some (though perhaps not all) of the debates upon which Sinnott-Armstrong focuses are produced by system 1, while conflicting intuitions are the product of system 2, then we do have good reason to side with one set and disregard the other. Of course, this is simply a hypothesis: assessing it requires both empirical work, to test whether we can assign intuitions in the suggested manner (cognitive load manipulations would be one way to see whether a set of intuitions are produced by system 1), and conceptual work, aimed at testing the claim that we ought rationally to prefer system 2 intuitions to system 1.

Regardless of how that issue turns out, the experimental philosophy movement is certainly one of the most exciting developments in contemporary philosophy, and this volume is the perfect introduction to its methods, concerns and key thinkers.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

John McCain's Health Care plan

2008-08-26T02:03:00.001-04:00

Economist Brad Delong on John McCain's health care plan

The biggest economic bad news is that health care costs keep rising. The total bill charged by insurers for employer and employee averages $12,100 for a family of four--twice the level of seven years ago, and comfortably more than the full-time earnings of a minimum-wage worker. On top of this come the taxes for government health care programs. The American health care bill is over $7,600 per person per year.

This matters for American businesses. Businesses pay for health insurance coverage for 165 million non-elderly Americans, for the high-wage jobs that make use of the educations, skills, and high potential productivity of American workers come with benefits. This creates a direct link between rising health care costs and slower economic growth. When health costs rise, the costs of employing workers in high-wage high-benefit jobs rise as well. Businesses find that they cannot afford to expand employment as rapidly as they would otherwise: higher health care costs make maintaining their old workforce and expanding it via new hires very expensive. They economize. They hire fewer workers. They offer lower wages. Workers resist. The result is slow employment growth and higher unemployment until workers recognize that the scarcity of good jobs and the higher risk of unemployment teaches them they have little bargaining power--a process that takes years. Meanwhile workers who ought to be in high-skill high-wage high-productivity jobs with benefits find themselves in low-skill low-wage low-productivity jobs without benefits instead. This is a waste. Workers who could hold down high-productivity jobs don't, and so don't get the wages that they deserve. Firms who could employ high-skill workers don't, and so don't get the profits that they deserve.

Successful economic growth requires a more efficient, lower cost health care sector. John McCain and Barack Obama propose diametrically-opposed plans for trying to get the health care system to where we all want it to be.

John McCain proposes a root-canal surgery approach. The problem, he and his health-care advisors believe, is that good jobs are linked to health-care benefits. Break that link--remove the expectation that good high-productivity jobs come with benefits--and the health care sector will no longer be a major drag on the American economy as it goes its own way, whatever that way might be. Hence John McCain proposes, relative to the current system, to penalize employers that offer high-value employer-sponsored coverage and subsidize individuals who get health insurance outside the employment relationship.

We see two problems with McCain's approach: the journey and the destination. The journey: The McCain plan works in the long-run by making employer-sponsored coverage more expensive in the short- and the medium-run. It thus attempts a cure by giving American business a worse case of the rapidly-rising health-cost disease from which it currently suffers. Rapidly rising health costs are a drag on high-wage high-profit high-productivity employment now, and they will be a much worse drag on high-wage high-profit high-productivity employment under the McCain plan--at least until we come out the other side and enter a world in which it is no longer expected that high-productivity jobs come with benefits.

The destination: The biggest problem in health care today is that insurers are rewarded not for keeping their customers healthy but for figuring out which customers are likely to get sick first--and then dumping them onto other insurers or onto the government. At present, this problem is restrained by the institution of employer-sponsored insurance: bid for an employer's contract and ERISA requires that you take any of their workers who want to purchase your plan. The destination of McCain's plan is a place where insurers have much more freedom to spend money, administrators' time, and computer power separating the healthy sheep from the costly and sick goats--but the profits to doing this for one insurer are not savings for the system because the sick and uncovered do show up at the emergency room eventually and are more expensive to treat when they get there. We believe that when the McCain plan does move us to a world in which the expectational link between high-productivity jobs and benefits is broken we will then have a system that works even less well than our current one.

Barack Obama, by contrast, offers a much more conservative approach to the problem of health care reform. Instead of using tax penalties and incentives to break the existing system and create a whole new set of untried health care financing institutions, Barack Obama proposes to build on those components of our current system that do work--and to make them work better.

But I've talked for More than Long Enough

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

off to school... via 285 to marta... to five pionts station...

2008-08-25T12:02:00.001-04:00

To school I go... school to school me. Its 12:03... i'm hungry... I'm not done with my readings...

get some, get some, get some, get some--go again..

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security redux

2008-08-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

Social Security zombies

No matter how many times you try to kill the mythical Social Security crisis, it just keeps coming back.

David Ignatius:
Pelosi describes with relish her strategy for trouncing Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security — which was to blast it mercilessly, without offering an alternative. The implicit message is that negotiation and compromise are for losers. The reality that Social Security is facing bankruptcy seems not to interest either Pelosi or Reid.
The Congressional Budget Office:
CBO’s projections indicate that future Social Security beneficiaries will receive larger benefits in retirement—and will have paid higher payroll taxes—than current beneficiaries do, even after adjustments have been made for inflation and even if the scheduled payments are reduced because the trust funds are exhausted.
Oh, and CBO projects that the trust funds will last until 2049.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Brad Delong... reading list for Jim

2008-08-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

History of Political Economy: A New Course I Am Not Going to Teach This Year--or the Year After
By Brad DeLong

Sigh:

Classics:

Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests
David Hume, "On the Balance of Trade"
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Paul Krugman, Ricardo's Difficult Idea http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm
David Ricardo, On Foreign Trade (chapter 7 of Principles of Political Economy and Taxation)
David Ricardo, An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (selections)
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital
Karl Marx, Capital (selections)
Late Classics:

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Political Economy (selections)
Max Weber, The National State and Economic Policy
Norman Angell, The Great Illusion
Neoclassics:

Polanyi, The Great Transformation (selections)
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace
John Maynard Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform
John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Friedman
James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent
Moderns (Africa):

Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa
James Scott, Seeing Like a State
Rene Dumont, False Start in Africa
Margaret Macmillan et al., When Economic Reform Goes Wrong: Cashews in Mozambique
Daron Acemoglu et al., An African Success Story: Botswana

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security

2008-08-25T11:54:00.003-04:00

Part of the reason the public is misinformed about social security... "its not going to be around when we need it..." is the media does not do its job.

Outsource to Dean Baker:
The Washington Post War On Social Security Continues

The Post yet again is complaining that politicians who are unwilling to deal with a Social Security shortfall that is first projected to hit in 2049, when John McCain will be 113 years old. To try to makes it case sound more compelling it refers to the date 2018 when the Social Security trustees project that tax revenues will first be inadequate to meet benefit payments.

Of course 2018 is completely irrelevant to the finances of the program. At that point the program is projected to have accumulated more than $5 trillion in government bonds. But the Post wants to scare readers to advance their Social Security agenda so they trot out 2018 as though it is a date that anyone needs to worry about.

The positive side of this story is that Social Security's finances look much better than the Post's. If it keeps making up scare stories about Social Security, perhaps the date of its demise will be hastened.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

economics blogging...

2008-08-25T11:33:00.003-04:00

If you haven't already read The Conservative Nanny State by Dean Baker you probably should.

In his new book, economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of “nanny state” policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It’s time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes – decent wages, good jobs and affordable health care.

Its creative commons so you can download the whole book for free...

I might try to do a chap. by chap analysis one of these days... I have a long list of one of these days... I doubt I shall get to all of them before i'm dead... sigh...

If Dean asks.. tell him Jim Nichols sent you.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security...

2008-08-24T21:33:00.001-04:00

Here is the Congressional Budget Offices report on Social Security.

Its not going to run out of money...
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

wine blogging...

2008-08-24T20:20:00.002-04:00

I'm on glass number two of Clos Du Bois 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon

It has a deep flavor to it. The bitterness doesn't hit till after you've swallowed it.

Talking wine is strange... its like post modern philosophy. You just make shit up... and all these intellectuals nod their head as if you've said something.

Good wine though...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security

2008-08-24T20:12:00.002-04:00

Citizen Jay comments:

Citizen Jay said...
"I believe that when we Americans look deep into ourselves and ask us what we want our government--because it is our government: it is our agent to do what we want with our money..."

Why not eliminate a percentage of social security taxation, if not altogether? Why should the money go to government? Why can the money not be placed in a retirement account untouched by government? Why could the money not be placed into Roth IRA accounts, or a percentage of the amount currently taxed as social security?

That is a very sad statement. Social Security keeps millions of elderly people above the poverty line. If anyone made this country great... if anything about what we currently have is good. We can thank those who came before. To say that government should not protect those who have given so much to us... is just a view of government I find appalling.

If you stated it just for philosophical quandry... I once again see the pathology of philosophers who like to debate ideas for the sake of debate... yet ignore the fact that others are pertutating those ideas in an attempt to undermine government and our economy.

The idea that government shouldn't touch these peoples money speaks to two flaws. One the idea that its "peoples" money is wrong. The people would have no economy, no jobs, no money without that which the government provides. So the concept itself is incoherent.

Two: the idea that government is not in the business of protecting people is a very sad position. The conservative revolution has had a huge impact in promoting this view. Government is there to protect and empower people... without government we would have nothing. A Hobbesian all against all.

He goes on to state:

You and I will not see a dime of social security come retirement age. I want the people to have direct control over their money (and it's use towards the long-term future).

Factually not true. Its right wing propagandha... you've been watching too much fox news.

The Crisis that isn't

Barack Obama has been running for president full-time for nearly a year. While he has impressed millions of people across the country and managed to garner substantial support for his candidacy, he is still mired in second place in the polls. Second place does not win nominations, so with time running out, Obama is getting a bit desperate.

This is the only way to understand his attack on Hillary Clinton for not having a plan to close Social Security’s projected shortfall. As Senator Clinton rightly pointed out, the projected problems with Social Security are distant and relatively minor. There is no reason that she needs to develop a plan for plugging a hole that is not projected to arise until 2046, almost thirty years after the latest date that she can leave the White House.

Obama’s own plan called for raising the income cap on the payroll tax, which would be a modest tax increase on upper middle income workers, and a very substantial tax increase on the highest paid workers. Proposing tax increases is not generally a smart way to win elections, but Obama clearly hoped to be rewarded with positive news stories and editorials, and praise for his courage from the print and broadcast pundits. His plan did earn him some praise from these quarters, but not enough to raise him from his distant second place standing in the polls.

While Obama’s attack can be dismissed as simply bad political judgment, the deeper issue is that attacking Social Security has so much resonance with the media elite. This group has been blatantly ignoring and/or misrepresenting the facts in its attacks on Social Security for almost two decades. They have used their power over the news to force politicians to respond to their agenda, praising those who advance their Social Security crisis story and damning those who try to keep the projections in perspective.

Politicians who refuse to say what we should do with Social Security are not dodging a tough issue, they are simply being realistic. We don’t know what the world will look like in 2040, 2050, and 2060. Under very plausible assumptions, Social Security will remain fully solvent right through these decades with no changes whatsoever. However, even if the program needs to be changed to maintain solvency, none of us has great insight as to how those who have not yet entered the workforce will opt to divide their lives between work and retirement.

If it is necessary to make up a Social Security shortfall, will people in 2050 prefer to retire later, get lower benefits, or pay higher taxes? We don’t have any real basis for answering this question. Furthermore, the people alive in 2050 will not care how we did answer the question. The country will almost certainly reshape the Social Security program at least once before 2050 regardless of what we might choose to write into law in the next few years.

Social Security is an issue where good policy is also good politics. The best thing that progressive politicians can do for the program is to use their megaphone to counter the scare stories. After hearing a steady drum beat of stories about Social Security’s pending bankruptcy, tens of millions of people question whether they will ever see the benefits they have earned. These people must be assured that the program faces no major financial threats, only political threats from those who want to cut and/or privatize Social Security.

It is unfortunate that much of the elite media must be included on the list of Social Security’s opponents. This makes the necessary public education effort far harder than would otherwise be the case. On the other hand, the influence of the elite media is dwindling rapidly. Newspaper readership is plummeting, as is the audience of the network newscasts. People are increasingly turning to the Internet for their information and finding a much broader range of sources.

The Internet was crucial in defeating President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005 and it will undoubtedly play an extremely important role in combating any future efforts at privatization. As the importance of the Internet grows and the traditional media shrinks, time is clearly on the side of those who want to protect Social Security.

It is unfortunate that Senator Obama fell in with the bad guys on this one. If he wants to gain ground on Clinton he will have to find a more legitimate issue.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

moral realism

2008-08-24T19:20:00.000-04:00

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Moral Foundations Theory

2008-08-24T18:59:00.001-04:00

Moral Foundations Theory

Moral Foundations Theory was created to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that five innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The foundations are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundaiton underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

Much of our present research involves applying the theory to political "cultures" such as those of liberals and conservatives. The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. You can find out your own moral foundations profile at www.YourMorals.org.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

liberal/conservative

2008-08-24T18:36:00.000-04:00

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

2008-08-24T18:33:00.001-04:00

Brad Delong: Draft: To Spend Is to Tax

We economists have a scenario that we call "current policy plus Bush tax cuts." It is made up of (i) the laws currently in force in the United States of America, plus (ii) the assumption that the defense, veterans, and other spending currently appropriated year-by-year by the congress remains the same as a share of GDP, plus (iii) the assumption that the tax breaks like the R&D credit and the regular pruning-back of the Alternative Minimum Tax that are voted for year by year by overwhelming congressional majorities continue to be enacted year-by-year, plus (iv) the assumption that the tax cuts George W. Bush proposed in 2001 and 2003 but made time-limited and set to expire early next decade are renewed. This "current policy plus Bush tax cuts" scenario has the federal government taxing about 20% of GDP over the next seventy-five years. It has the federal government forecast to spend 28% of GDP on average over the next seventy-five years. This is the fiscal gap.

A number of policies could be enacted to eliminate this fiscal gap. Simply doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts expire as current law requires them to do would reduce the fiscal gap from 8 percent to 6 percent of GDP. Raising Social Security taxes or cutting back future Social Security benefits by the about 1/7 needed to get the Social Security system back into projected 75-year balance would further reduce the fiscal gap from 6 percent of GDP to 5 percent of GDP. Returning military spending to its late-1990s share of GDP--not fighting wars in Iraq, et cetera--would reduce the fiscal gap from 5% to 3.5% of GDP. And eliminating "excess" cost growth in the government health care programs Medicare and Medicaid--allowing Medicare and Medicaid spending per eligible beneficiary to grow only as fast as the rate of growth of income in the economy as a whole--would bring the federal government into projected balance.

I believe that when we Americans look deep into ourselves and ask us what we want our government--because it is our government: it is our agent to do what we want with our money just as the guy in Florida we hire to keep grandma's one bedroom condo in repair is our agent--to do, we conclude the following:

We want to let the Bush tax cuts expire.
We want to close the 75-year Social Security gap, half by raising the limit on earnings taxed by Social Security so that the upper middle class and the rich pay more for Social Security and half by reducing the rate of growth of benefits at retirement.
We want to stop sending our soldiers--the best-trained and best-equipped high tech armed forces in the world--abroad to be military police in countries riven by sectarian conflict where they do not speak the language--and so return defense spending to its late-1990s share of GDP.
We want to reduce but not eliminate the "excess" cost growth in Medicare and Medicaid: we believe our doctors, nurses, and druggists will learn how to do wonderful things over the next two generations, and we do not want those wonderful things in the way of medicine applied only to the rich but to the poor and old as well.
Whether or not we decide to do (1) through (4) above, we want to raise taxes to cover whatever of the long-run fiscal gap remains, and so bring the federal budget back into balance over the long run.
Note that (5) is not optional. As the late Milton Friedman liked to put it: to spend is to tax. If the government buys things, it must get the money to buy them from somewhere. It can get the money from three places. It can tax. It can borrow--but then the borrowing has to be repaid with interest, and the more is borrowed the higher the interest and the worse the value the taxpayers ultimately get for their money when they are taxed to repay the borrowing. Or it can print the money and so inflate the currency--but that too is a tax, and an especially unfair, painful, and destructive one, as lots and lots of people victimized by inflation find their wealth doesn't buy what it used to and what they expected.

We can argue over whether (1) through (4) is what we want to do--that is what politics is about. But whatever we decide to do with (1) through (4), (5) is not optional--not, that is, if we want to continue to have a rich country in the long run. And the politicians who have told you that (5) is optional from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush to Robert Dole to George W. Bush and now John McCain are not your friends, or America's friends.

--------------
Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

don't make McCain bitch slap you Obama...

2008-08-24T16:10:00.005-04:00

So far McCain has accused Obama of treason... attacked him for inspiring people to participate in the process... and played the race card time and time again (how many more ad's will we see Obama next to a white women? How many more... "Obama is playing the race card" statements?)

So NOW he's going to throw down? Sigh... John McCain is a Gigolo according to Rush Limbaugh... and he spends more on servants than the value of the average Americans house...

Its a subtle "John McCain is tough as shit" which Republicans want to believe. But how tough is a man that doesn't want to protect those who need help... who need an economy that can empower them to rise up the economic ladder. How tough is it to scoff at the idea of getting kids health care? How tough are the Republicans that they will pass on the other side of the road when they see a man beaten and bloodied?

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

getting people truly innvolved in politics and policy...

2008-08-24T14:50:00.002-04:00

Citizen Jay comments:

People tend to place greater priority upon entertainment than serious matters. If you wish to bestow a message upon the masses, you must teach in a way in which they will be receptive to your message. People will be not only listen to your message if presented in an accessible manner, they will seek additional information.

Thats very true.

I am not the greatest in making sure I frame things in a way where people will be receptive. I'm not always accessible--I lean on hyperbole and cynicism too much.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

The McCain is rich as fuck and doesn't know a thing about your life angle...

2008-08-23T21:22:00.001-04:00

via Paul Krugman A very good jeer

So the Obama campaign is going all out on the issue of McCain’s multiple houses. Isn’t that kind of stupid? Yes, it is — and it was also necessary.
Two key points.

First, Republicans always — always — campaign by portraying the Democratic candidate as an out-of-touch elitist, while their guy is a man of the people. Al Gore grew up in a penthouse apartment! (In a shabby residence hotel, but never mind.) John Kerry windsurfs! Meanwhile, George Bush vacations at his ranch (bought as a prop for the 2000 campaign — and he doesn’t ride horses — but somehow that never got brought up.)
Protesting that the candidate is really a wonderful guy doesn’t work. Stupid as it may seem, counterattack is the only option. If the Gore campaign had gone after the fakeness of the Bush ranch, or the cronyism that made Bush rich, the world would be a different place today.

Second, the Obama campaign needed to turn things around fast. Yes, the polls still show a tight race with maybe a slight edge. But a narrative was starting to emerge, of McCain as the comeback kid and Obama as the man who couldn’t live up to his own hype. And those narratives can be deadly.

So, McCain said something that the Obama campaign may be able to use to turn things around. It’s not the way things should be; we really should be talking about health care plans (and I wish Obama would.) But right now, this week, making fun of McCain’s houses (but they’re not his, they’re his wife’s!) was the only option.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Politics...

2008-08-23T20:47:00.003-04:00

Everybody wants to participate in t-shirt politics and half-time trivia talking points.

Politics isn't supposed to be entertaining, politics isn't supposed to be entertainment.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Its 6:52...

2008-08-23T18:52:00.002-04:00

and I'm finally about to get working on my homework which was in theory going to get started on Thursday... sigh...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

contending conservatives... one email at a time....

2008-08-23T18:45:00.004-04:00

Brad Delong is on the team...
The Only Way to Win Is Not to Play

An email I just sent:

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't seem worth it to participate in your poll. These are not questions on which I have any particular value or insight to add. And they are not questions the answers to which would inform America's voters about their choices. I think you should rethink this project. Ask yourself: "What can I report to do the most to help America's voters learn about and weigh their choice this fall?"

Apologies,

Brad DeLong

And here is the backstory:

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 9:35 PM, Madigan, Tom wrote:

Hi Brad,

Just wanted to touch base with a reminder about the NationalJournal.com blogger poll. Please take a moment and send me your responses to our first round of questions. Thanks for taking part.

Pick the demographic group that Obama most needs to sway during the convention: Women; Whites over 45; Blue-collar workers. Comment:

Do you think Michelle Obama will help or hurt her husband’s candidacy in the general election? Help; Hurt. Comment:

What portion — if any — of the Democratic convention program should be devoted to tearing down John McCain and the Republican brand? More than half; About half; About a third; About a quarter; Hardly any. Comment:

What do you expect Hillary Clinton will focus more on in her convention speech? Attacking John McCain; Burnishing the Clintons’ image; Praising Barack Obama.Comment:

If you want to join the team who work every day to make politics about policy, ideas, and data rather than swiftboat attacks and meaningless distractions email me (your blog or email if you like) and I'll post you on the list.

I of coarse will be adding bloggers who are on the team whether they know it or not.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

McCain...

2008-08-23T18:35:00.001-04:00

"John McCain and his wife spend more money--$270,000--on servants in a year than the average American's house is worth. There may be 4,000 households in America today richer than John and Cindy McCain. There may not.

To say "'John McCain' means a lot of different things, but rich isn't one of them" shows an extraordinary degree of ignorance about America, and about John McCain." --Economist Brad Delong *

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

in another life I would have been a scientist... sigh....

2008-08-23T18:32:00.001-04:00

Check out human migration...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

blog post from the Henry Dems site...

2008-08-23T18:08:00.003-04:00

I must be crazy... trying to run two blogs... that have political slants.. durning an election year. While you are chairman of one county, campaign manager in a state senate race, are in school, and work part-time...

Here is my most recent post on the Henry Dem's website. Please go sign up on the site to have new blog posts emailed directly to you.

from the comments page...

TO catch people up there has been a health debate going on in the comments page. I want to pull it to the front and hopefully entice others to comment as well. The more people dig into the numbers, and talk about their own opinions and feelings on these important issues... the more people will feel inspired to once again participate in the process.

Think about that for a second. By taking some time out of your day to think about and participate in dialogue you are helping empower someone else to want to join to political process. For too long people have been turned away from politics by attack ads and corruption. Well the only way to fight back and stop those things is through MORE participation not less.

Here was the thread so far... and then I’ll responded at bottom. Remember I represent Jim Nichols ideas... you should participate so that you can advocate for your ideas and views...

Henry Libertarian commented:
What we need is REAL change not tax and over spend Liberals. You only want to redistribute waelth not create any new income or jobs. Obama isn't the answer to ANYTHING except "Who is the worse choice for President in '08?"

On 08/21/08 04:37 PM

On 08/21/08 04:51 PM

On 08/22/08 08:26 AM

Henry Libertarian commented:
Clinton didn't "create" all of those jobs, he benefited from the .com boom and no one credits him with the .com bust either. Obama's plans will cost $200 billon a year. Ranking Democrats vowed in December to put a moratorium on earmarks; instead, a record number infect legislation pending in Congress, with 32,000 requests this year, compared with about 13,000 in 2006 . In 2007 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slipped in a $25 million provision for San Francisco's waterfront on a $15 billion federal water bill at the last minute. Cutting individual taxes increases spending wich creates more tax money. Fixing health care does not mean going the Hillary Clinton way of demanding that everyone buy health care or an employer does not have to hire you. Fixing health care starts with tort reform in keeping health provider costs down. I am not sure what school your child goes to but my child has books and supplies. The school is responsible for teaching your child not for buying them paper, pencils, pens, glue, etc. The Federal Government should not have ANYTHIG to do with local school systems. You say that you are not for too much government but you want them to control everything and provide it for you. Be responsible for yourself and stop looking for handouts.

Jim Nichols commented:
Also what do you mean by overspend? Our classroom sizes are far too big and lack basic things like supplies and books. Our health care crisis--we rank 37th in the world, and pay 2 to 3 times as much as other industrialized nations--is harming our global competitiveness and litterally killing americans... or at least making them file bankruptcy. Our transportation infrastructure is massively underfunded. Our mental health systems... underfunded. I'm not for too much government... but we aren't investing in our long-term economic sustainability.. and it shows. People pay the price of the Regan economic revolution of cut taxes worry not about the consequences...

Jim Nichols commented:

Well actually the Republican record on the economy and economic growth speak for themselves. George Bush is about to end his 8 years in office having created fewer jobs than Clinton averaged each year of his term. Ever since Regan we've run deficits except during the Clinton years... data speaks louder than words!

My response:

"Clinton didn't "create" all of those jobs, he benefitted from the .com boom and no one credits him with the .com bust either. "

My claim wasn’t to imply Clinton "created" those jobs as if by magic. That not how an economy works. But my claim was intended to point out that every time they open their mouths Bush/McCain/and Company like to say that their economic policies will create jobs... or that they are pro-growth. The question should at least be asked of them... why do you think so?

The paternalistic: "Father says so" [or Bush... or McCain...] is not an economic argument.

And just a question because it seems to be begged...So the Republicans think you have to wait for a dot-com, or real-estate bubble... to create economic growth? Keynes would smile at that one.

Obama's plans will cost $200 billion a year.

true... for those of you who don’t know $200 billion is–if memory serves me–how much Obama’s health care plan costs. For context 200 billion is $645.58 per-capita. 645.58 in my tax dollars going to get millions of people who lack health insurance–such as myself–the ability to get needed medical care and not harm our economy since early treatment rather than last minute care is by far cheaper–more efficient to use an economists term.

And just to give you an idea of how much conservatives end up sounding like they are on mars when talking policy. I spend between 800-1400 dollars a month on health care treatment since I lack health insurance. Its condescending to hardworking Americans who get up each day and try to pay the rules to be told "tough cookies"

Its time for democrats to tell Republicans to cut the crap when it comes to pubic policy.

He then moves onto ear marks...

Ranking Democrats vowed in December to put a moratorium on earmarks; instead, a record number infect legislation pending in Congress, with 32,000 requests this year, compared with about 13,000 in 2006 . In 2007 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slipped in a $25 million provision for San Francisco's waterfront on a $15 billion federal water bill at the last minute

First a question why do "earmarks" always come up when talking to a conservative? The Economist magazine pointed out that all earmarks add up to less than $20 billion a year. That for fiscal year 2008 is $64.56. Since that is a very small chunk of my tax dollars and its part of the push and pull of a federal system. I have faith in our processes of checks and balances... and faith that corruption can be founded and dealt with... the sky isn’t falling.

$25 million for the San Fran waterfront.

For those that don’t know... for fiscal year 2008 that would be 8 cents of my tax dollars. 8 cents? 8 cents? Do we really need to deal with 8 cents? Millions without health care, Bin Ladin still on the loose, terrorist recrutiments UP after the Iraq war... and conservatives want to talk about 8 cents????

Since you brought it up I’ll answer it. San Francisco is a major tourist hub. It brings in tourists from all over the world–myself included. Ask an economist... Adam Smith... Joseph Stiglitz... anyone outside of the Heritage institute really and they will point out the importance of investment in vital infrastructure. Tourism brings a lot of money to the state of California and the United States as a whole. Next time I go to San Fran and enjoy a stroll through one of the tourist district I will feel pleased to know my 8 cents helped me have an enjoyable visit.

Cutting individual taxes increases spending which creates more tax money. ...

Yeah point blank not true... was never thought to be true in theory by a large chunk of economist... and since the Regan revolution has still not proven true in the real world.

You often hear this argument... "the tax cuts pay for themselves." Its either someone misinformed or trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Don’t let them do it. For more on this read "The Politics of Bad Ideas–the Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America" by Bryan D. Jones and Walter Williams both of whom are at the Center for American Politics and Public Policy at University of Washington.

Then we move back to health care...

Fixing health care does not mean going the Hillary Clinton way of demanding that everyone buy health care or an employer does not have to hire you. Fixing health care starts with tort reform in keeping health provider costs down.

We rank 37th in the world for quality of health care. We rank 37th!!!

WE SPEND 2 to 3 times as much as other industrialized nations who already have universal coverage. We are creating huge profits for a small group of people, causing hard working Americans to go bankrupt from illnesses they have no control over, and we are killing people every day because they lack needed treatment. Our businesses put at a competitive disadvantage because they are paying the price....

The idea that tort reform and health care provider costs is going to fix the market failure we are currently dealing with is a bit of a stretch. Private insurance companies and the bureaucracy they bring into the health care system IS PART OF THE PROBLEM. Insurance companies pay people a lot of money to go through peoples files to try to keep people from getting insurance or certain treatments.

I am not sure what school your child goes to but my child has books and supplies. The school is responsible for teaching your child not for buying them paper, pencils, pens, glue, etc

Our schools are underfunded.... class sizes too large... teacher pay too low.

As someone who dropped out of high school... I can tell you how passionate I am on making sure that our kids stay competitive in a global economy.

If we don’t invest in our kids... and create and educated work force we will continue to fall far behind Japan, Europe and the other industrialized nations in the world As someone who wants to know my economy is going to be strong and stronger... over the long run I can tell you how passionate I am at making sure the needed investment in our infrastructure is spent NOW.

Instead of seeing a hand-out... see it as a hand-up which helps empower other people to rise up and helps protect your own economic security at the same time

You say that you are not for too much government but you want them to control everything and provide it for you. Be responsible for yourself and stop looking for handouts.

When did I say that??? I don’t know how to respond to that one since I never said I want them to control everything and provide it for you. Republicans always try this trick. If it isn't a trick then its a manipulation. I never said any such thing so I can't respond to the attack.

Be responsible for yourself and stop looking for handouts

That about as condescending as it gets... and you see it from conservatives all the time.

You don’t know me... but it doesn’t matter... you shouldn’t need to. The presumption should always be that people are trying to play by the rules and work hard. Plus I'm demanding better schools, better health care system, better foriegn policy. What do those things have to do with not being responsible for myself... what about that is look for a handout. I'm demanding Government actually do its job. It is there to protect and empower people. Plus personally I believe that which we do to the least of these is very telling about ourselves.

Every time someone tells me to stop whining and work hard I think of my grandfather who got up everyday before the sun to go work on his farm, would then go work at the factory for 8 to 10 hours, to come home and raise a family. He died with less than $200 to his name and never lived very far above the poverty line. You can call me every name in the book... but you I won’t let you call my grandfather lazy.

Imagine if Democrats finally told Republicans.. .cut the crap. The attacks, the personal a fronts, the swift boat ads... and urban legends speak to how little Republicans how when it comes to policy. But they win if Democrats don’t fight back. Knock on doors, make phone calls.... help bring our country back to the entrepreneurial machine it once was. Government is in the business of empowering its citizens. Its time to say no to another Republican who won’t do the job.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

What am I missing here?

2008-08-22T13:57:00.003-04:00

Boortz...
THE U.S.EXAMPLE

Barack Obama finally came around on Russia, scolding the nation for invading a sovereign nation (Georgia). However, now he has thrown a new caveat into the mix: the United States should set a better example on that front, too. He says, "We've got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies ... They can't charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point."

So finally, Barack Obama comes out and directly compares Russia's military invasion of Georgia to our own efforts in Iraq. Way to go Big O.

Does anyone remember Georgia being a threat to Russia? Did Georgia have a weapons program? Was Georgia in violation of multiple UN Resolutions ... violations that authorized any UN member to go in and remove their leader? Just wondering.

What am I missing?

Does anyone remember Iraq being a threat to the their neighbors let alone the United States? Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction?--and weren't the U.N. weapons inspectors, as well as many allies, and anti-war activists here at home pointing to the holes in that idea? Wasn't the US in violation of UN Resolutions when it preemptively attacked with no authorization from the Security Council?--the answer is yes if you weren't aware.

The lack of awareness about the facts during the war... and the rewriting of history afterwards has been an amazing and shockingly successful feat by conservatives.

And if you were wondering how laughable the idea that Iraq was a threat... think back to Iraq I. Where Arab countries were calling for us to beat back the preemptive attack by Iraq which lacked authorization from the security council. Thats why we fought with a HUGE coalition, and the war was paid for--mostly by Saudi Arabia if my memory serves me.

Agree or disagree with how it went down... we--Republican and Democrat alike--knew how to win wars, effectively, and at as little cost to our soldiers and our citizens wallets. Republicans were taken over by the conservative wing and all of a sudden the ability to win a war becomes this great quandary. As if military strategy was back to the rock, bigger rock, spear, club... of our ancestors days in the caves.

sigh... what a waste of lives, money, and our national security...

Obama 2008. The lesser of two evils...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Neal Boortz...

2008-08-22T13:40:00.004-04:00

From his daily email...

The taxpayers of Prior Lake-Savage in Minnesota should be outraged. Their tax dollars funded the construction of a brand new $16.8 million elementary school. The people of the school district were so excited because their schools are "overcrowded." Do you know why they are overcrowded? Bluntly speaking ... too many parents having children that they (a) can't afford to raise; and, (b) won't take responsibility for. But don't get me started on that...

Question... since the Regan revolution of tax cuts... the economy that people once knew and still desire went away. Government after the Regan revolution no longer protected people and no longer empowered the economy to grow and reap rewards at all income levels. It turned our economy into an every man for themselves affair.

Unfortunately for those impacted by the Regan revolution (i.e. most everyone) economists since Adam Smith have been pointing out that an economy is a collective effort. You feel it every day and in many ways you don't even realize.

Why turn to the negative? Imagine if these people assumed the economy of the New Deal era... with all the post war growth and the newly created middle class--which the government program known as the G.I. Bill almost single candidly did... could it be possible that they were expecting the conservative revolution to pay off the way conservatives claim... and so made economic decisions that obviously seem unwise--is that a nicer way of putting it?--to Boortz.

Plus isn't behavioral economics and cognitive science addressing the question of people acting through emotion and biology rather than a reasoned and economically rational way. And if this holds true. Why would Boortz's bash people for doing that which isn't logical but is still natural.

You could simply flip it around and create incentives to do rational, efficient, and economically productive things rather than feel the need to punish and condemn. My job isn't to punish and condemn. My job is to forgive, protect those who are weaker, and empower those who need a hand up.

Boortz always seem to see a hand-out... when quite often it is really a hand-up.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

quandry...

2008-08-22T13:14:00.004-04:00

This post is weird... I've linked to www.brillantstatesente.com and when you check the link (hover over it with your mouse) it reads both my blog and jerry's site's addresses. Which send you nowhere... WTF?

-----------------

As some might know, I have taken on campaign manager for a state senate race here in GA. Jerry Brillant is an amazing candidate. He is a natural. I've met a number of candidates and elected officials... and Jerry Brillant State Senate is the campaign to be on this year.

One problem. You google Jerry Brillant... the home site for Jerry Brillant does not come up. You google Jerry Brillant State Sentate the home site still does not come up. You get some hits and randomness from some of the webpages... but I want them to come direct to the intro page for Jerry Brillant.

Any thoughts or ideas on how to fix this. Voters should be able to find his site. We're going to be buying google ads soon.
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Doctors opinions... from the comments page

2008-08-22T09:29:00.003-04:00

Interesting comment--thanks for posting by the way!--on Doctors opinion about "National Health Care"

Jaxon said...

Did you see the Bunk study stating 2/3 of doctors in America want National Health Care. The doctors who did this study also conducted one in 2002 and found that the majority of doctors did not want national health care, the problem with this is that the 2 question surveys drastically differ in their 2nd question. I found this article, 60% of Doctors Surveyed Oppose Switching to a National Health Care Plan, It's worth a read.

Unfortunately I honestly don't have the time to read up on this, though I think it would be interesting to look into. I always like debunking good data. But I'll assume Jaxon is correct.

1) We rank 37th in the world for health care according to the world health organization. We spend 2 to 3 times more than other industrialized nations on that care. Meaning we spend MORE to get LESS. So somebody is making huge profits. Doctors probably aren't doing too shabby since protectionism keep them from facing market competition.

I can't help but think of the Upton Sinclair quote:

“If is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”

So I could see how this is a plausible thing to find and explain--that speaks nothing to using the approaches that have succeeded for the other industrialized nations

2. "National Health care" Jaxon, if you could just clarify your meaning because there are so many words and labels being thrown around on this issue and unfortunately that causes a lot of confusion.

The approach I am for... is socialized health insurance. It does not nationalize the system meaning it doesn't make the Doctors or medical field government employees but creates basic requirements that would fix our current dysfunctional health care market. Right now we have a major market failure on our hands... it comes from major waste and inefficiencies from the insurance companies who are trying to squeeze out profits for shareholders over insuring people. Second reasons is there is a lot of protectionism--on medicine, and doctors, specifically.

Its unfortunate that John McCain is running around saying he supports a free market approach to the health care crisis. Either that shows he is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of voters--since he is not for removing the protectionism I just spoke of. Or else he doesn't know much about how market systems work. Neither give a very positive impression of McCain--nor a very good reason to think he merits the job of President.

Universal Health Care in 2008... our economy is hurt by the current crisis making us less competitive globally, hard working Americans are going bankrupt over things they can't control much of the time, and it speaks to the values I believe in--that which we do to the least of these.

Oh yeah.. and I pay 800-1400 a month in health care costs since I lack health insurance...

Obama in 2008. McCain is 4 more years of the same.

Thanks again Jaxon I appreciate people bringing more items of interest to the table. Maybe one of my readers can dig around on that issue so that we can do some debunking if possible. Thats what we bloggers do!
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

smile... Critique of Obama... response to that critique...

2008-08-21T16:40:00.005-04:00

Found this critique of Obama which made me smile... lesser of two evils and all... you deal with the world you have in front of you. Not the one you want!

From a blog called A Speculative Fiction: I've gone cold to Obama

This Krugman op-ed reminds me how Clinton has somehow slid into the number two seat behind Edwards on my ranking of the Democratic candidates...
Finally, Mr. Obama is storing up trouble for health reformers by suggesting that there is something nasty about plans that “force every American to buy health care.”

Look, the point of a mandate isn’t to dictate how people should live their lives — it’s to prevent some people from gaming the system. Under the Obama plan, healthy people could choose not to buy insurance, then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. This would lead to higher premiums for everyone else. It would reward the irresponsible, while punishing those who did the right thing and bought insurance while they were healthy.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose someone proposed making the Medicare payroll tax optional: you could choose not to pay the tax during your working years if you didn’t think you’d actually need Medicare when you got older — except that you could change your mind and opt back in if you started to develop health problems.

Can we all agree that this would fatally undermine Medicare’s finances? Yet Mr. Obama is proposing basically the same rules for his allegedly universal health care plan.

Obama's way of playing health care shows he cares more about independents than actual policy. Which is a death knell if you think for two seconds you can take on the insurance companies and private profits coming from the status quo and come out with some form of policy that will be effective and successful.

Great points, and luckily it is the responsibility of congress to write the legislation. Making sure we elect Democrats to congress will help on this issue. Luckly Obama is very inspirational, a great speaker, and has brought in new people to the political process who finally believe government can help protect and empower people. His short comings on health care policy--yes. But even his plan is an improvement and can be adjusted to fix some problems. The choice will be between Obama and McCain. McCain's health care policy is dead wrong. Or should I say, deadly wrong.

Since our health care crisis kills people everyday. We rank 37th in the world for health care and pay two to three times as much for worse care. What have the other industrialized nations learned that we haven't? Fire conservatives like Bush and McCain and we can start to head in the right direction!
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Before Stiglitz... before Keynes, before Adam Smith...

2008-08-21T16:12:00.005-04:00

You can find an acknowledgement of how an economy works... and how destructive Conservative's economic policy of "every man for themselves" is...

“If the Kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand.” Mark 3:24

This speaks to how important it is to address disparities of wealth within the economy. Economists have a pretty strong grasp now of how disparities of wealth harm an economy over the long run... but this shows that it has been understood for ages.

Conservatives don't even blush when one points out disparities of wealth. They don't see it as a problem--since they hold the incoherent view that an economy is not a collective effort but individuals out on their own with boot-straps pulled up to their knees...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Why I'll never get elected to office...

2008-08-21T09:59:00.004-04:00

If my writings weren't bad enough... if my artistic need to shock and inspire through dramatic black and white distinctions... if my unfortunate turns towards invective... if my tattoos which will certainly continue to expand... if if if...

to add fuel to the fire... or amunition for conservatives I... the blogger that I am... post things like this....

Which side are you on?

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Everyone stop what you are doing...

2008-08-21T09:56:00.002-04:00

Stop... and go to Citizen Jay

I'm going to be updating my blogroll... might as well give a hat-tip before I do so...

Bloggers can change the world if they take there words, and effort, and turn into action--door to door, on the streets when necessary.. a struggle that will never end and therefore cannot be hopeless...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Henry County Democrats in the Press...

2008-08-21T03:01:00.004-04:00

Richard comes out with the better quotes on this one... I wish the whole interview I gave was posted online or something... I had some better one-liners... sigh.

Published: Thursday, August 21, 2008
Henry Dems say 2008 is year of change

By Johnny Jackson

jjackson@henryherald.com

Local Democrats are optimistic about the upcoming November elections, saying increased interest in national politics will mean increased local political interest.

"I think that this is the year of the Democratic Party," said Richard Ray, a long-time member of the Henry County Democratic Committee, which underwent a sort of revival and reorganization in March.

Ray is also a super delegate for the Democratic Party. On Saturday, he will head to Denver, Colo., to represent the state of Georgia in the Democratic National Committee Convention, which will decide the party's next candidate for the presidency.

Ray said he believes a push for change in the national government will spur similar sentiments locally. "We don't have a lot of local candidates running in November under the Democratic banner," he said. "But those we have, we are hoping that they are going to do well in Henry County."

Energy policy and the economy are big concerns for Americans on the national level, he said. "The American people are seeing the middle class shrink, jobs go overseas ... people want better. People want change."

Issues are not much different, he said, on the local front. He said he believes that transportation, health care and education are the leading issues among Henry County residents.

"Certainly, the cost of gasoline is the No. 1 issue," he said. "Everybody is hurting with the cost of gasoline in terms of getting to and from work and getting their kids to and from school functions. And they want it fixed."

The Democratic Party presence is growing in Henry County as well. More than 5,600 ballots were cast in the July 15 Democratic Primary Election for U.S. Senate.

"Demographics are improving in favor of the Democratic Party," Ray said. "This election cycle, you are going to see more and more people qualifying for local elections as Democrats."

More local Democratic influence, he said, should encourage more debate on transportation issues, like the controversial Atlanta-to-Macon commuter rail idea. "The rail extension for Atlanta to Macon - I think the people are ready for that and the business community in Henry County is pushing for that," he added. "There's going to have to be something done, because the traffic is going to continue to increase."

Such controversial issues have fueled debate in Henry County for years. As gas prices have increased by more than a dollar per gallon over the past year, the debate is more heated now than ever.

"Democrats are really excited this year," said Jim Nichols, chairman of the Henry County Democratic Committee. "People have really been inspired to get back into politics. I think after eight years of Bush, people are starting to step up to the plate and say, 'enough is enough.'"

Several have joined the restructured Henry County Democratic Committee already, throwing their support behind Democratic candidate for Henry County Sheriff, Joe Mack Eckler. In November, Eckler will face Republican candidate, Maj. Keith McBrayer, of the Henry County Sheriff's Office.

"I think he's really going to run a fantastic campaign," Nichols said. "His goal is to bring change to the local level with gang issues and education."

He said he believes November will tell the story of what he believes is a political revival for Henry County's Democrats. "People are asking, 'How can I help bring back a government I can believe in?" he said. "People are ready for change, and the focus is on the issues, especially the transportation issue."

The Henry County Democratic Committee currently has about 25 core members and about 150 active volunteers. "We're growing, and we really have a core group that's active and energized," he added. "We have a revived party, locally in Henry."

The committee meets at the Henry County Government Annex on the fourth Tuesday of every month. The next meeting will be held Aug. 26, at 7:30 p.m.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

a pattern this year...

2008-08-21T02:56:00.002-04:00

This year you are probably going to see a lot of votes going to Obama for National Security reasons... Bush/McCain Foreign Policy is undermining our global security and empowering the terrorists...

You are going to see a lot of Obama votes because of the Commander and Chief factor...

The accidental endorsement

I appear to have endorsed Barack Obama by accident. Brad DeLong - well-known blogger and economist - has a note on his weblog headlined - “Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times endorses Barack Obama”. And WCM asked yesterday - “Gideon’s endorsement of Obama for (global) Commander-in-Chief. Premature? Politically motivated? Deserved? ”

Oddly, despite the headline on my column - “Obama for commander-in-chief” - I wasn’t consciously sitting down to write an endorsement column. What I was aiming to do was to respond to the polls that show that McCain is much more trusted as future commander-in-chief. But c-in-c is not the only role performed by the president.

There are a few subjects on which I prefer McCain. Trade is the most obvious. I also think he has taken sound positions on immigration and on campaign-finance reform. And I accept that McCain was courageous to take an unpopular position on the surge - and that he has been largely vindicated. (Although he was wrong to back the war in the first place.)

But I think that Iran is shaping up as the biggest foreign-policy dilemma facing the next president. And there - as far as I’m concerned - Obama is clearly the better choice. In fact, the McCain position is downright dangerous.

Does that amount to an endorsement of Obama? Just about, I suppose. Although, come November, it’s possible that some other issue will have displaced Iran as the number one concern - or that Obama will have revealed himself as a raving lunatic. For now, however, yes - I’m backing Obama.

Two further notes on this: First, I should admit to a conflict of interest. I put £10 on Obama to win the presidency at 5-1, back in December - ie before the Iowa caucus. So my prescience has given me a small financial stake in his victory. I believe, however, that I can overcome this and maintain my habitual objectivity.

Second this is not an invitation to re-open the “bomb Iran” discussion.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Boortz newsupdate Wed. Aug 20th...

2008-08-20T17:20:00.006-04:00

I don't know why I waste my time but... eh..

Boortz has a history of terrible policy positions. He makes up for this through invective and verbal intimidation...

Just how does The Chosen One feel about the 2nd Amendment? After the Supreme Court ruled on the DC gun ban Obama was somewhat trapped. His previous position in favor of the ban was inoperative, so he had to come up with a new position.

Could is possibly be that he respects the courts decisions? Could it possibly be that he realizes coalition building (i.e. leadership.. gasp) is about accepting some things you disagree with for a greater good. Is Boortz all knowing--or just trying to take a cheap shot?

I know, I know, I know... He's an entertainer so he is supposed to be a little crass, a little rough around the edges... but I see people every day who take him as gospel so a little hyperbole is fair? No? You tell me...

Ahhhhh .... But he's so suave, so debonair, and he speaks so well! It doesn't really matter what he says, but he sure says it good!

Once again attacking Obama for his ability to speak, communicate, and inspire people to believe in a government that will protect and empower them. This is also known as leadership.

When anyone who is not a Democrat or a liberal succeeds at anything .. a liberal will tell you it is because they cheated.

I don't.. your argument goes down the drain.

Here is another good one on Joe Biden

The real reasons that you don't want people like Joe Biden in the White House is because he has three priorities as a politician: Ending the war in Iraq, universal healthcare, and building up government schools. Not to mention that he also believes in this global warming scam.

These seem like good priorities, and an educated position on global warming.

Our schools are failing, the war is weakening our national security and we have failed to protect our troops once they come home. Universal Health Care? We rank 37th in the world for Health Care and spend 3 to 4 times as much as others.

Wow is all one should say. A vote for McCain empowers people who hold views like Neil Boortz... Obama in 2008. The lesser of two evils... but far less evil than the policies of guys like Boortz.

I'm still occupied quite enough, than you, thinking about The Chosen One's affinity for Marxism.

Can anyone explain the link between Obama and Marxism? Socialism? WTF? Where do these people come up with this? Well its manufactured propaganda but people repeat it. No one has ever explained the link between Obama and Marxism, Socialism, or anything of the lot

In a court appearance Wenning tried to use the "choice of evils" defense, saying that blocking the entrance to the site was less "evil" than the taxpayers subsidizing a day labor center that helps illegal aliens get jobs. (Uh oh ... should I have said "undocumented immigrants?")

Question. Can you grandstand on free-markets... and claim you support free markets when you obviously do not?

For those who don't know. Free market theory include... free movement of trade, finance, and LABOR. Free-Market... free flows...

Who could lecture others on how noble the free market is... and how evil and or incopetant those who don't support it are? Boortz's doesn't support the free market if he's worried about illegal immigration--maybe he doesn't care and is just pointing out this story...

If he does oppose migration of labor he is making a caviat... then he is moving from economics to the realm of politics where one must focus on the greater good in the society vs. economic theory debate. One man's passionate caviat to markets is another mans evil. Thats why and when elections come into play. When you lose public opinion which conservative always do. You cry conspiracy... you cry elitism... you cry socialism I guess...

Oh, and I thought Neal was a libertarian?

You heard this one, didn't you? About 100 college and university presidents have gathered together to promote the idea of lowering the drinking age to 18. Reason? To put it bluntly, these college presidents can't – or don't want to control underage drinking in their student bodies. Their solution is to lower the age. Appoint me to be the chairman of the board of regents and we'll get this problem solved. You drink one underage drink .. you're out. Gone. Tuition and all other fees forfeited. Campus security will escort you to your dorm room and stand by while you put your stuff in some black plastic bags, take your student ID card, and escort you off the campus. You'll be issued a warning never to return, and arrested for criminal trespass if you do.

We think they are responsible enough to fight and die... but not drink. Thats an infringement on Liberty. The hobgoblin of libertarians all over the world. Why would he pontificate on Liberty but not actually apply it?

Such is the sad state of affairs within "Libertarian" thought. This Libertarian can only feel sad for this sorry state...
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

This is how conservatives win elections for the Republican party...

2008-08-20T17:12:00.002-04:00

Obamamania...
Written
by Dr. Jack Wheeler

The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.

He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya. Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.

What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave s hips. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.

Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves; he is the descendant of slave owners. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.

It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.

Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it, no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it. The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed In Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum , I believe it because it is absurd.

Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior. His candidacy is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.

A vote for McCain empowers people like this. Vote Obama 2008. Any questions?

Lesser of two evils yes... but far less than the views of people like this...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

New Housing Market Monitor from CEPR

2008-08-20T16:52:00.003-04:00

my highlights in bold...

Housing Starts Continue to Trend Down

August 20, 2008

By Dean Baker

"Extraordinary incompetence by top financial executives played a major role in the bubble."

Housing starts fell 11.0 percent in July, wiping out any hope that the market had begun to turn. The June data, driven by a jump in apartment construction in New York, showed an 8.6 percent increase (revised up to 10.4 percent in the July release), leading some analysts to see signs of a bottom.

Starts in July fell to their lowest level in this cycle, with starts of single-family units continuing their long downward trend. Single-family starts were 39.2 percent below year ago levels and down 62.6 percent from the 2005 average. While the West saw a modest gain in single-family starts in July, the region has been hardest hit in the downturn, with starts of single-family homes down by 67.4 percent from 2005 levels.

It is unlikely that there will be a turnaround in starts before inventories start to fall and prices stabilize. Starts will be a lagging indicator of a turnaround, not a leading indicator.

The mortgage applications index continues to trend downward, suggesting that demand is still weakening. This is likely reflecting both the weakening of the labor market and higher interest rates, in addition to the downward dynamics of the housing market itself.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the average interest rate on 30-year mortgages edged down slightly from 6.57 percent the previous week to 6.47 percent last week. By historic standards, this is a low rate (especially with an inflation rate close to 5.0 percent), but it is an unusually large spread measured against a 3.9 percent 10-year Treasury rate. This reflects the ongoing turmoil in the mortgage market.

New York Times columnist Floyd Norris reported on a remarkable memo in his blog yesterday. The memo was prepared by outside consultants at Wachovia, one of the country’s largest banks, who were trying to determine how the bank managed to plunge to the edge of insolvency.

The memo indicated that the bank’s chief financial officer and chief risk officer did not realize that offering interest option ARM mortgages (you pay want you want each month, but face a higher interest rate), would attract less creditworthy borrowers. They also didn’t realize that allowing homeowners to refinance down to new zero-equity levels made them high default risks.

In the same vein, the Washington Post yesterday discussed the difficulties of Fannie Mae. It reported that it was still buying up subprime mortgage backed securities at the beginning of 2007, after the market had already begun to collapse. The article reported that Fannie had performed stress tests in which they saw no serious problems with these securities even if house prices fell by 5 percent for two consecutive years. Of course, house prices have fallen by close to 20 percent over the last two years and by more than 30 percent in many of the markets with high concentrations of subprime mortgages.

It is incredible that Fannie could invest hundreds of billions of dollars based on such an inadequate assessment of risk. There were economists who had noted the unprecedented 70 percent real increase in house prices over the prior decade. Competent management would at least have considered the possibility that much or all of this run-up would be reversed.

It was only due to extremely bad policy and regulatory decisions at all levels of government, first and foremost at the Fed, that the housing bubble was allowed to grow to the enormous proportions. However, it was the private sector that actually drove the bubble. The top executives in major financial institutions took extraordinary risks. These risks may have increased short-term profit, but they eventually led to enormous losses, which is endangering the survival of many of the country’s largest financial institutions.

These recent accounts about behavior at Wachovia and Fannie Mae suggest that the top executives at these institutions had no idea what they were doing. This is astonishing because these are huge institutions. It would be expected that the top management, who are very highly paid, would have some level of competence in their work.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Baker is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net). CEPR's Housing Market Monitor is published weekly and provides an incisive breakdown of the latest indicators and developments in the housing sector.

Just cause you get paid a lot... or have made it to the top... doesn't mean you know whats going on.

It reminds me of a scene in weeds where one of the kids is in a debate at school. He steps up to the podium and the topic is: For/Against using the popular vote to elect the U.S. President. He stands up. Walks to podium and says.."George W. Bush." Without saying a word he walks back to his seat.

Argument for reasons why we are in the economic mess we are in:

Jim walks to the mic:

"Highly paid professionals not knowing how to read and respond to economic data. And the lack of accountability in terms of credibility and legitimacy as a voice of "educated opinion" from the rest of us...."

Jim walks away...

Lesson(and it seems blatantly obvious but amazingly enough is not... )

Requirement for a market economy: knowledge about economics...

Will we learn from the lesson? Not likely...
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

good interview via Economit's View

2008-08-19T15:58:00.000-04:00

Robert Pindyck is interviewed on the candidate's energy proposals:

A Q&A with MIT Professor Robert Pindyck, by Stephanie Schorow, News Office: This is the first in an occasional series in which MIT experts weigh in on the presidential candidates, their policy ideas and aspects of the campaign.

As jittery consumers contemplate the price at the pump, energy issues have become a major factor in the U.S. presidential race. Have the two major-party candidates forthrightly addressed the hard issues about the country's energy needs? ...

Q: Would either candidate's energy proposals make much impact on energy costs in the short term?

A: Neither of the candidate's plans would have any impact. The one exception would be McCain's proposal to eliminate tariffs on the importation of Brazilian ethanol. It would immediately reduce the cost of ethanol.

Q: How so?

A: We have a tariff on imported ethanol from Brazil, which is made from sugar cane. Ethanol here is usually made from corn. Sugar cane ethanol is about eight times more efficient than that made from corn. By removing the tariff, Brazilian ethanol becomes cheaper and will make ethanol-gasoline blends cheaper. It will reduce the use of corn ethanol, which would reduce the demand for corn, which would make corn prices drop slightly. There are many places where gasoline is blended with 10 percent ethanol. It would have a small impact, maybe a few cents, on the cost of blended gasoline.

Q: Is there anything in either candidate's proposal that would be particularly bad for holding down energy costs?

A: Most of the proposals are political and they involve subsidies to alternative energy sources. A lot of those subsidies are just ways of providing pork for different groups.

Q: It sounds like you are not impressed, to put it bluntly.

A: Look, what are going to be needed ultimately is a tax on carbon and a tax on gasoline -- a large one. Another way to have a tax on carbon is to have a cap-and-trade system so you only allow a certain amount of carbon dioxide to be emitted. That will raise the cost of carbon. A gasoline tax would greatly reduce gasoline use. It would create the incentives we need for other energy sources, including conservation.

No candidate is willing to get up and say, "We need a to have a high tax on gasoline." In fact, McCain wants to suspend the federal tax on gasoline for the summer and Obama didn't. Nobody is going to say, "We want to make sure we have a tax in place so gasoline prices are always going to be high." That encourages people to drive smaller cars and to conserve and that brings about investments in new technology. When people know that gas prices and fuel prices will stay high because of taxes, it means they have incentive to develop alternative energy supplies.

The question is will the candidates, nonetheless, do something when elected. Who knows?

Q: What do you think about Bush's recent decision to lift the longstanding executive ban on offshore drilling, which McCain and Obama support in some manner?

A: Offshore drilling is a tradeoff between pollution and producing oil. We've had the federal ban in place because we worry about oil spills. You could say: Why don't states make their own decisions? The reason is that if one state allows offshore drilling and there's a spill, the oil moves to the neighboring state. So whether we do that is how we trade off the environment with greater ability to produce oil domestically. And there's no right and wrong about that. What is clear is that even if we opened up offshore land for leasing and drilling, it's not going to result in any more oil production for five, six years.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

How far the Republicans have strayed

2008-08-19T11:38:00.003-04:00

One of my topics of interest/talking points is how far the Republican Party has strayed from what made it respectable. I might not have always agreed but I could concede some legitimacy. With the conservative take-over of the Republican Party... that respect is gone and quite frankly no longer deserving.

Bob Herbert today with another example of why McCain--and in far too many cases Obama as well--is talking the talk... but not the walk...

August 19, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
A World of Difference
By BOB HERBERT

Presidential elections always have their share of foolishness, hypocrisy and, let's say, elasticity when it comes to facts.

This is what comes to mind whenever I hear John McCain and other Republicans reverentially invoking the name of Theodore Roosevelt. Senator McCain will tell you outright: "I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican."

That's about as elastic as the facts can get. In June, Mr. McCain ("We're gonna drill here! We're gonna drill now!") got a big boost in donations from oil industry executives after he reversed course and came out strongly in favor of offshore drilling. A Washington Post headline pointedly said: "Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling."

To put it mildly, that was not very Rooseveltian. Around the same time that the McCain campaign was pocketing its oil industry windfall, the historian Douglas Brinkley was poring over letters in which Roosevelt, running for his first full term as president in 1904, was indignantly ordering his campaign to return a $100,000 contribution from the Standard Oil Company.

In a letter to his campaign manager, dated Oct. 26, 1904, Roosevelt said: "I must ask you to direct that the money be returned to them forthwith." As Roosevelt saw it: "We cannot under any circumstances afford to take a contribution which can be even improperly construed as putting us under an improper obligation."

That kind of thinking is long gone, from both parties. Barack Obama, as well as Senator McCain, has taken contributions from oil industry executives. But what is telling about this particular difference between Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain is that it is so illustrative of what Roosevelt was really about, and how fundamentally different that was from what Senator McCain and the latter-day Republican Party is about.

"The truth of the matter is that Roosevelt today would be on the left," said Mr. Brinkley, who is writing a biography of the former president titled "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt's and the Crusade for America."
Roosevelt believed passionately in regulating industry and curbing the excesses of the great corporations. He favored the imposition of an inheritance tax and fought his party's increasing tendency to cater to the very wealthy. And, of course, he was a ferocious protector of the environment.

Roosevelt was known as the "trust-buster," but it was in the area of environmental conservation that he really made his mark. Mr. Brinkley, in a draft preface to the biography, tells how a number of bird species in the U.S. were headed for extinction as the 20th century approached, in large part because of the popularity of feathered hats for women.

By 1886, when the Audubon Society was founded, more than five million birds a year were being slaughtered to satisfy the millinery trade. The feather boom was especially big in Florida. Egrets, herons — just piles and piles of birds were being destroyed, many of them by men with semiautomatic weapons.

Roosevelt was outraged that what he termed "the despoilers" were threatening to ruin the bird populations along the Florida coasts. Having already championed the preservation of what became Yellowstone National Park, Roosevelt designated Pelican Island, which had a once-thriving bird population off the east central coast of Florida, as the nation's first federal bird reservation.

The move was a tremendous success. Pelican Island became the first unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "By 2003," Mr. Brinkley wrote, "when Pelican Island celebrated its centennial, the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System comprised over 540 wildlife refuges on more than 95 million acres."

We're now in a ridiculous period in which politicians are concerned about appearing too well-spoken and too intellectual — elitist — as if mangling the language while downing a shot and slurping from a mug of beer were sure signs of fitness for high office. So it might come as a surprise to some that Senator McCain's macho hero happened to have been among the first naturalists at Harvard, an inveterate bird-watcher, and a prolific and sensitive writer.

According to Mr. Brinkley: "When writing or lecturing about American birds, Roosevelt often turned downright lyrical, sometimes achieving the level of song."
The kicker to the story about the contribution from Standard Oil is that despite Roosevelt's repeated orders, it may not have been returned. Roosevelt went to his grave believing that it had been, but Mr. Brinkley said a later investigation of the campaign's finances left open the possibility that Roosevelt's orders may not have been followed.

Roosevelt was a complicated fellow. Progressive in much of his politics and intensely concerned about the long-term welfare of the country and its people, he was also a social Darwinian and a conflict-loving imperialist.
What is not in question is that he was a far, far cry from John McCain and today's G.O.P.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Fall of the Roman Republic

2008-08-19T11:24:00.002-04:00

I've been pulling together some thoughts for my political theory class...that is an expansion of my question/contention that the Republic as it currently stands is gone... with the Bush era we are purely under the facade of Democracy... might the Republic return? Might it be gone for good? I lean towards the first but that might be idealistic nievity... and might not idealistic nievity be a requirement of all republicans?

Anyhow I had to look into the history of the fall of the Roman Republic and came across something I wanted to share/keep...

Fall of the Roman Republic

In this chapter, the lives and impact of Caesar, Octavian, Antonius (Antony) and even Cleopatra, along with the continuing stories of men like Pompey, Crassus and Cicero will be examined. The Fall of the Republic was more than a single man or event. It was a culmination of several individual actions or achievements, coupled with social conditions that weighed heavily on Roman society. Additionally, massive and rapid expansion from Rome's foundation as a fledgling city 700 years earlier until the mid 1st century BC, created monumental holes in the political and governing ability of the Senate. Periods of stability were mixed in with those of near collapse while powerful generals or inciters of the Roman mob jockeyed for position.

Beginning with the Punic Wars and Roman conquest outside of Italy, followed by massive importation of slaves, the face of Roman life was changing far more rapidly than the governing body could deal with. Political infighting was and always would be a common trait in any system, but even the greatest of Romans like Scipio Africanus, fell victim to the whims of politicians. The social instability that resulted from inequities in the class system gave way to rise of demagogues like the brothers Gracchi. The use of the citizen assemblies for popular agendas tore at the very fabric of Senatorial power.

Men like Marius and Sulla, with their own personal agendas and rivalries wreaked havoc in an already weakened structure. Partisan politics of the conservative Optimate Senators trying to keep power with the elite class, while the tactics of the Populares, who looked to the lower classes for support, divided the people and classes into what seemed like warring factions. For nearly 100 years, the climate was unpredictable at best, and brutally bloody at worst.

By the time of the rise of Gaius Julius Caesar, the stage was set for a single man to assume power and stabilize the Empire. Caesar was neither the only man responsible for the fall, nor the one man who could stop it, but his role in the final demise is undeniable. He neither started the fall nor finished it, but continued a cycle of events that made its collapse irreversible. Contemporaries of the brilliant general and politician hold as much blame as the great man himself, however. How different events may have been without the plays for power and a bit of humility among the Senate.

Regardless, despite Caesar's short reign and policies of reform and stability, the strength of his character and personality held the Republic together only as long as he lived. His assassination and the continuing Civil Wars that resulted, would be required to bring necessary power to a single ruler of a single great nation: The Roman Empire. The eventual rise and adoption of Caesar's heir, Octavian, to the exalted post of Augustus spelled the real end of the Republic. He, unlike his predecessors, rose at a time when the will for the Republican system had nearly died.

While tradition and some semblance of power would remain, the foundation of government under a single figure was a requirement to continue the advancement of the Empire. It was Augustus who proved to be the one man great and powerful enough to control the Senate, the mob and the Legions. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus rose above all the great Romans before him to outlast political opponents, reform a corrupt government and stabilize a system in disarray. The Fall of the Republic was inevitable, but fortunately for Rome, the right man at the right time was there to step in as the first Roman Emperor.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Go out and organize... register voters... vote... our Republic is at stake: Obama 2008

2008-08-19T10:11:00.001-04:00

A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy

by Sheldon S. Wolin

Sept. 11, 2001, hastened a significant shift in our nation's self-understanding. It became commonplace to refer to an "American empire" and to the United States as "the world's only superpower."

Instead of those formulations, try to conceive of ones like "superpower democracy" or "imperial democracy," and they seem not only contradictory but opposed to basic assumptions that Americans hold about their political system and their place within it. Supposedly ours is a government of constitutionally limited powers in which equal citizens can take part in power. But one can no more assume that a superpower welcomes legal limits than believe that an empire finds democratic participation congenial.

No administration before George W. Bush's ever claimed such sweeping powers for an enterprise as vaguely defined as the "war against terrorism" and the "axis of evil." Nor has one begun to consume such an enormous amount of the nation's resources for a mission whose end would be difficult to recognize even if achieved.

Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel.

The drive toward total power can take different forms, as Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union suggest.

The American system is evolving its own form: "inverted totalitarianism." This has no official doctrine of racism or extermination camps but, as described above, it displays similar contempt for restraints.

It also has an upside-down character. For instance, the Nazis focused upon mobilizing and unifying the society, maintaining a continuous state of war preparations and demanding enthusiastic participation from the populace. In contrast, inverted totalitarianism exploits political apathy and encourages divisiveness. The turnout for a Nazi plebiscite was typically 90 percent or higher; in a good election year in the United States, participation is about 50 percent.

Another example: The Nazis abolished the parliamentary system, instituted single-party rule and controlled all forms of public communication. It is possible, however, to reach a similar result without seeming to suppress. An elected legislature is retained but a system of corruption (lobbyists, campaign contributions, payoffs to powerful interests) short-circuits the connection between voters and their representatives. The system responds primarily to corporate interests; voters become cynical, resigned; and opposition seems futile.

While Nazi control of the media meant that only the "official story" was communicated, that result is approximated by encouraging concentrated ownership of the media and thereby narrowing the range of permissible opinions.

This can be augmented by having "homeland security" envelop the entire nation with a maze of restrictions and by instilling fear among the general population by periodic alerts raised against a background of economic uncertainty, unemployment, downsizing and cutbacks in basic services.

Further, instead of outlawing all but one party, transform the two-party system. Have one, the Republican, radically change its identity:

From a moderately conservative party to a radically conservative one.

From a party of isolationism, skeptical of foreign adventures and viscerally opposed to deficit spending, to a party zealous for foreign wars.

From a party skeptical of ideologies and eggheads into an ideologically driven party nurturing its own intellectuals and supporting a network that transforms the national ideology from mildly liberal to predominantly conservative, while forcing the Democrats to the right and and enfeebling opposition.

From one that maintains space between business and government to one that merges governmental and corporate power and exploits the power-potential of scientific advances and technological innovation. (This would differ from the Nazi warfare organization, which subordinated "big business" to party leadership.)

The resulting dynamic unfolded spectacularly in the technology unleashed against Iraq and predictably in the corporate feeding frenzy over postwar contracts for Iraq's reconstruction.

In institutionalizing the "war on terrorism" the Bush administration acquired a rationale for expanding its powers and furthering its domestic agenda. While the nation's resources are directed toward endless war, the White House promoted tax cuts in the midst of recession, leaving scant resources available for domestic programs. The effect is to render the citizenry more dependent on government, and to empty the cash-box in case a reformist administration comes to power.

Americans are now facing a grim situation with no easy solution. Perhaps the just-passed anniversary of the Declaration of Independence might remind us that "whenever any form of Government becomes destructive ..." it must be challenged.

Sheldon S. Wolin is emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University and the author of "Politics and Vision: The Presence of the Past" and "Alexis de Tocqueville: Between Two Worlds."

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Dr. Orrick's Philosophy Rap

2008-08-19T10:10:00.002-04:00

no comment needed... philosohers are a strange lot..

Marilyn Manson In Bowling For Columbine

2008-08-19T10:04:00.002-04:00

Marilyn Manson on Henry Rollins Show part 2

2008-08-19T09:53:00.007-04:00

Marilyn Manson interviewed by Henry Rollins (part 1)

2008-08-19T09:53:00.006-04:00

Henry Rollins: A Love Letter To Ann Coulter

2008-08-19T09:42:00.005-04:00

The Henry Rollins Show - America Is Under Attack

2008-08-19T09:42:00.004-04:00

Henry Rollins: On President Bush

2008-08-19T09:32:00.002-04:00

off to work...

2008-08-19T03:06:00.001-04:00

"get some, get some, get some, get some... go again" --Henry Rollins

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

For my Dad...

2008-08-19T03:03:00.003-04:00

My dad took off from the safe world of corporate America and moved to the Philippines and start a buinsess in a third world country that needs his knowledge and skills.

I am inspired every day by his determination and it will work out for him as long as he keeps plugging away and following the buinsses leads that come across his way.

Sometimes I think he wonders what the fuck he's doing. Sometimes the struggle is what makes your life have meaning...

Cheers Dad... I love you!

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

This week... each one of you has a homework assignment...

2008-08-19T02:48:00.002-04:00

I jokingly tell people I've quit as Chairman and as someone trying to be active in the Democratic Party about 20 times this year...

I'm sacrificing a lot... and in many ways and for many reasons I see it as futile. So many Democrats don't walk the walk and put their money and time where their mouth is.

Everybody has a job, everybody it tight on money, everybody wants to watch American Idol (okay... no I don't... I've never seen the thing.)

The National Party and State Party are in my opinion in a wreck and aren't doing the things they need to do to fix their sturctural problems.

Am I just sustaining something that will never do anything but people me into a life where I don't get to do what I do best which is thinking, reading, and writing...

I'd love to go back to throwing house parties on human rights issues that nobody goes to...

I'm tired of always watching my message... (yes people we need to raise taxes to the levels of other industrialized nations if not more...)

I came across something this morning..

John 21:18

I tell you the solemn truth, when you were young, you tied your clothes around you and went wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will tie you up and bring you where you do not want to go.”

I feel pretty tied up...

I don't get to spend the time with my fiance and friends that I want... I watch my GPA get get... I long to sit and just read... hell I crashed out about 7 pm and was just out... Deana had to clean up dinner and dragged me up to bed--I as always when woken up out of deep sleep just babble incomprehensably and stumble around...

I need to learn to laugh at the sacrfice...

"you don't know where I've been lou... you don't know where I've been" Tyler

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Its nice to wake up with this in your in-box...

2008-08-19T02:40:00.003-04:00

I got an email from a human rights activist in Henry County who wants to get together to say hello.

Its nice to know my web efforts pay off in this way. Its why I do it really...

Luke 11:33-36
33 "No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel, but on a stand, that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. 36 If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light."

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

response to Bellum omnium contra omnes

2008-08-18T10:59:00.003-04:00

to the question of changing ones mind, political expediency, and other question we like to talk about politically...

In response to the statement "I vote for the best person," my understanding of such a comment is it refers to the individual (political)actions of the candidate in question. This is (possibly/hopefully) not based on quotes and political spin alone. My interpretation of "the best person for the job" refers to a belief justified by quantifiable data from established agencies recognized as being unbiased and nonpartisan. Such sources vary in methodology as far as the gathering of sources. Such examples of reputable sources of information are www.factcheck.org, www.vote-smart.org, www.ontheissues.com, www.politifact.com, www.thehill.com, etc.

Politics is coalitions... a vote for John McCain empowers a guy like Lynn Westmoreland to promote a destructive economic agenda...

Assumption is the candidates are both at least competent for the job... one may be more qualified... but coalitions is the name of the game with politics...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

response to Bellum omnium contra omnes comment...

2008-08-18T10:32:00.005-04:00

On my political and rhetorical approach...

Stating people possess the scenario between conservative or liberal cognition seems like an "either-or" fallacy. I will need to read the study further to be certain. I too believe in checks and balances in the form of policy. There is no evidence one form of political rhetoric is more harmful to our republic than another, at the least there is no harm when there is balance between the ideologies. The combination of conservative and liberal values (independence versus social welfare) can work together in the government system. Evidence for my claim can be found here.

"The combination of conservative and liberal values (independence versus social welfare) can work together in the government system."

To protect and empower... you can't do any of that with conservative policy goals... so I would disagree. Every man for themselves pull yourself up by your boot-straps... individualist ethics is destructive economically and socially. See Adam Smith... Stiglitz... modern economics as a whole on the importance of infrastructure investment which the private sector never does...

So i'd totally disagree on that one. Oh and I'd love to see the impacts on people from the welfare reform now that the growth of the Clinton era are now gone.

Science can't create either/or fallacies. The world is either flat or its not...

if the empirical data doesn't hold then that would be the legitimate challenge. Not likely though... we're getting better and better at cognitive science and neuroscience... and free will as we conceive of it... and all of that nonsense entailed in it will soon fade (okay not likely... but a boy can dream.)

the age of reason is quite dead...

Thats the biggest problems with philosophy in general... it sticks to theory and all these "ideas" that are reasoned out...

My philosophy professor at UC Davis... a guy name Cummins had a great cartoon it had an armchair with a red cross over it... like no smoking. It was "no arm-chair philosophy".

To see logical knock-out blows to metaphysics as an accurate description of the world and all that is there-entailed see Logic, Truth, and language by A.J. Ayer.

Metaphysics is useful for subjective truth and the way individual brains understanding the paradoxes and complexities of the world, as well as human interaction. But science is the method for accurate descriptions of the world that can be verifiable and therefore the only rational public discourse that one can use in areas such as politics.

Its fine for interpersonal relations and religion and such... but those are subjective at their core... (think of the bond between two friends... or the subjectivity of what one person means by god... as compared to another... see the quote by Dennett at the top of the page)

Bellum omnium contra omnes... kudos to you for using a blog the way its supposed to be used... to debate and create a dialogue... I'm learning a lot from you and improving my ability to explain and understand my own positions. Thanks!

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

first day of class...

2008-08-18T09:15:00.003-04:00

Taking two classes this semester...

One called: Theories on Democracy. --which lacks a description but seem self explanatory...

And one on the philosopher: Epicurus

I still have to put up my notes... and three youtubes from last semester. And will work to put up notes from this semester as well.

Now i'm off to class

"get some, get some, get some, get some--go again..." -Henry Rollins
--------------
Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

-$92,000	Direct federal cost
+$27,000	Extra federal and state revenue
$0	Extra costs of debt financing
$110,000	Value of goods and services produced
-$18,000	Discount because we are buying different goods and services than we would ideally, or buying them at a different time
$50,000	Value of having a job to the person who gets one--these aren't people who are indifferent between going to work and getting their head together, after all

+$77,000	Net Benefit to Economy

A Speculative Fiction

My 2009 Dec. 31 Disclosure Report

Outlook for next session looks dire as more budget cuts loom

Revenue problems across the state...

Millions in US lack bank access

The middle class--whats that?

Why we need Health Care Reform---the US Budget Deficit

Why we need Health Care Reform---the US Budget Deficit

Volunteers Needed! Join an Issue Team!

Local Resources -- websites, news, blogs for Henry County, GA

On why we need more moderate Republicans...

Lady Gaga's Shocking MTV VMA 2009 Fashion

annual growth versus annual changes in the unemployment rate over the past 60 years

Obama's stimulus is working...

More good news on the stimulus front for Georgia...

wow...

Orwell at GSU

Žižek on Žižek! (2/7)

Žižek on Žižek! (1/7)

Ideologues are the problem not the solution....

Republican ideologues have created a mess of State Government

9.28.09

Good Government/Open Government-- My obligation to voters...

Just so you know A Speculative Fiction is back in action...

Assorted Jelly Beans - "No Time" Kung Fu Records

I think I may stop contending conservatives...

The bridge to nowhere...

Well its going to be hard for Obama...

good blog post...

candidate McCain vs. Senator McCain

Obama ranks number one in urban legends online...

Last post then off to school...

trade deficit

Krugman on new census numbers...

compatancy???compentancy??? ahhh competancy!!!!

Fair Tax tactic...

More pink floyd

a theme for the day.... no?

And you may ask yourself....

Obama and new census report

I don't live in my mothers basement!!!

What i'm reading this very second...

response on taxes and economy...

still not doing homework!! I swear I'm leaving now!

more henry dems blog posting... I have to go to homework now!!!

Henry Dems blog post...

China communist?

Fair tax become law?

X-Phi book review

John McCain's Health Care plan

off to school... via 285 to marta... to five pionts station...

Social Security redux

Brad Delong... reading list for Jim

Social Security

economics blogging...

Social Security...

wine blogging...

Social Security

moral realism

Moral Foundations Theory

liberal/conservative

don't make McCain bitch slap you Obama...

getting people truly innvolved in politics and policy...

The McCain is rich as fuck and doesn't know a thing about your life angle...

Politics...

Its 6:52...

contending conservatives... one email at a time....

McCain...

in another life I would have been a scientist... sigh....

blog post from the Henry Dems site...

What am I missing here?

Neal Boortz...

quandry...

Doctors opinions... from the comments page

smile... Critique of Obama... response to that critique...

Before Stiglitz... before Keynes, before Adam Smith...

Why I'll never get elected to office...

Everyone stop what you are doing...

Henry County Democrats in the Press...

a pattern this year...