Category: Uncategorized
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You can’t borrow your way out of debt – what?
Suppose I’m in debt, have no car, and get a job offer for a good job that I can’t reach by bus or train. If I could borrow money to buy a car should I stay unemployed and hope for a miracle? Suppose my company gets an order for 100…
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Why do right wingers hate Keynes so much?
It’s not because they don’t believe “Keynsian stimulus” works – although they pretend otherwise. Listen to Republicans talk about Federal spending on the military or state spending on roads – they know that government spending can create jobs and wealth even if they usually say the opposite. What Republicans and…
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The overweening arrogance of the progressives
The Dem base–even its big donors–are in a real uproar over Keystone. As they should be–it’s a fateful decision washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-pol… — Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 10, 2013 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js So Bill McKibben claims to speak for the Democratic Base even though the AFL-CIO President supports the pipeline. The sheer arrogance and…
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Henry Farrell, Colin Crouch, and why the old line progressives are hopeless
Crouch sees the history of democracy as an arc. In the beginning, ordinary people were excluded from decision-making. During the 20th century, they became increasingly able to determine their collective fate through the electoral process, building mass parties that could represent their interests in government. Prosperity and the contentment of…
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Taxpayers help banks, Apple, stock investors, again
Apple just borrowed $17,000,000,000 (seventeen billion dollars) even though it has $145,000,000,000 (one hundred forty five billion) in cash. Why borrow when you have so much cash sitting around? Apple, Apple Stockholders, bond investors, Goldman-Sachs and Deutsche bank all benefit from this strange deal because – yes you guessed it,…
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George W. Bush kept us safe
This is what Republicans were saying last week: After 9/11, George W. Bush kept us safe. The slick con-man “after 9/11”, as if the President who ignored a national security briefing with the title “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US” was somehow not responsible for his own inaction…
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How does the world change?
In 1860, the cash value of the slaves in the cotton belt of the United States was more than the value of all the railroads and factories in the USA. The technology employed to move cotton down the Mississippi and goods up it was the leading edge of modern technology.…
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Process versus Substantive Civil Liberties and Miranda Warnings
The purpose of the Miranda warnings is to discourage police from coercing confessions or self-incriminatory statements from people in police custody. Let’s note two important facts: The warning is far from completely effective. For example, the Central Park 5 were coerced into confessing rape and assault and spent many years…
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Wall Street Journal Capitalism for the Entitled
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal today contains two insightful glimpses into the minds of the Entitled Capitalists who think big fat government subsidies are the natural right of the rich. The first is a very sympathetic news story about Sheep Farmers who have a special government program that allows them…