Recent Articles
Christianity and communism
What do Christian scripture and Communism have in common? At Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee explains:
The Bible goes so far as to say that the first community of Christians weren’t just socialists, but communists:
“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”
—Acts 2:44-45
By some accounts, this verse is what inspired Karl Marx’s dictum, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Irony of ironies: Communism began in the pages of the Bible!
The above is an excerpt from a post titled “Why We Should Tax the Churches,” and Lee develops this theme in detail, dovetailing with the modern-day struggle between the 1% and the 99%. He isn’t shy about bluntly stating why:
Even when it begins among the poor and disenfranchised, religion almost always ends up being co-opted by the wealthy and powerful and used as a convenient excuse to justify inequality.
3 Idiots: “Aal Izz Well”
This may not be the perfect forum for a review, but the film “3 Idiots” is about education versus training, science versus engineering, fear versus hubris (and the happy medium), life and death, love and despair, laughter and tears. And it has colorful Bollywood dance numbers, too!
I rented it on a whim, as it was billed as a movie about too-smart engineering students versus the educational system. I was puzzled when it began with English subtitles during the (Indian accented) English dialog. I remembered a 1990′s PBS/BBC series on the English language, when some of the impenetrable-to-me accents of the U.K. had no subtitles, but the perfectly intelligible-to-me Cajun and Ebonic dialects did. But as the blend of Hindi and English became apparent, I saw the need.
I loved this movie. Once one gets into the esthetic swing of Bollywood productions, it makes perfect sense when serious issues become silly dance numbers, and all characters are played as borderline caricatures. One can observe the essential cultural differences between our familiar American dilute-Christian one-life-to-live and anyone-can-become-president attitude and the Indian institutionalized attitude that reincarnation is the only way to improve your lot except through extraordinary means.
Why I think this is appropriate to this forum is the take on education. The protagonist has a scientific mindset that is often at odds with engineering philosophy and even more with institutionalized education. The system of teaching to the test is questioned, as is the principle of square pegs hammered into round holes. Vocation versus avocation is central to this, and expounded toward the end.
The 3 Idiots – Official Trailer has embedding disabled, but preview is fun even without subtitles. You get the idea of how English and Hindi have merged in their culture.
I defy you to watch it and not have the songs “All izz well” and/or “Zoobi Doobi” stuck in your heads.
The breadth of the corporate state
Chris Hedges explains that the corporate state has not merely confiscated our political system. I stretches much further into our lives. See the following video starting at minute 5:30, where Hedges explains that affected systems include communication, education and culture. In fact, there is an assault upon liberal institutions that once made meaningful political reform possible, such as labor unions and our great universities, the latter of which are oftentimes run as corporate entities uninterested in teaching the humanities and extolling an artificially narrow analytic view of what it means to be “intelligent.” What modern education excels at is training up systems managers who strive to be hyper-deferential to authority. Modern education no longer strives to teach students how to think, but rather what to think. Hedges has a “dark” view of what’s going on, essentially that the corporate state is “harvesting” what is left to be had of America “on the way out the door.” (min. 28:00). At this critical time, there is no mechanism for changing the system by way of voting–Hedges argues that there is no way, in light of the corporate loyalties of Barack Obama, to vote against Goldman Sachs in the upcoming presidential election, which is using tax money to re-inflate the bubble before the next crash. Lawrence Lessig prefers to use all of our resources for reforming the system, “even if there is zero chance of success.” Both men are big supporters of the Occupy movement.
Media Warning
Free Press handed out these decals about five years ago. The warning is as relevant as ever.
How long would it take Mitt to earn YOUR salary?
How long would it take Mitt to earn your salary? Visit this article to Slate and find out.
President Obama earns $400,000 per year. It would take Mitt less than a week to earn that much money.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.
There is only one thing the President should talk about in his State of the Union and that is Jobs. If we look at what President Obama inherited, the GW Bush administration had eight years of private sector job losses and only had a net job increase due to government hiring
The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that private sector employment decreased by 673,000 over the eight years of GW Bush, while public sector employment increased. Total jobs created under the eight years of the GW Bush administration totaled 1.08 million. Ironically, increased public sector employment allowed for the Bush administration to not be the first to have net negative employment over its term since Herbert Hoover.
Total private sector jobs created since 2010 by the Obama administration number over 2 million (more than the total for the eight years of George W. Bush). President Obama has cut public sector employment by over 357,000 since taking office.
President Obama’s initial 2012 budget, despite yowling from the right that he never submitted any for a vote in 2011, was rejected in the US Senate at the same time as the Senate rejected the US House Budget plan drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-WI).
But, the US House Budget plan passed through the House on an almost party-line vote and supported by all the GOP Senators was projected to cost as many as 800,000 jobs and a 2% decrease in GDP in 2012.
The next jobs effort of the Republicans was to foment a false debt ceiling “crisis” which if the US had defaulted on its debt would have been catastrophic in causing a 5% GDP drop in 2012 and a loss of some one third of the value of US equities.
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More options = more difficult choosing
Psycho-economist Sheena Lyengar tells us that the average grocery store today offers 45,000 types of products. The average Walmart offers 100,000. The ninth biggest retailer in the world, however, is Aldi, which offers only 1,400 products. Aldi’s successful business model circumvents “choice overload.”
Less is more when it comes to choosing because more choices result in choice overload. In employee financial investment plans, more offerings means less participation.
She recommends that we take a bit of time to think about the consequences of our choices in a vivid way to stay on target. Another technique is to order the complexity of our choices so that we start with simpler easier choices to ease into complex projects. These strategies are worth considering, since the average person makes 70 choices every day. Most people could use help “managing their choices.”
There is quite a bit of overlap in this topic with the work of Barry Schwartz, who presented on the “paradox of choice.”
Financial Advisors under the microscope
I recently finished reading Dan Solin’s The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own (2011), half of which is a damning indictment of most financial advisers. Solin makes a convincing case that those brokers who claim that they can pick stocks or time the market are selling unadulterated snake oil. In fact, avoid all of the following:
Buying individual stocks or bonds.
Actively managed mutual funds
Alternative investments
Variable annuities
Equity indexed annuities
Private equity deals
Principal-protected notes
Currency trading, and
Commodities trading.
Instead, Solin recommends the slow and steady historically documented growth associated with passively managed broad market index funds including many of the low-fee passively managed funds offered by Vanguard. Solin has ample shocking facts and figures to back up his claims and indictments, and he continues the attack on false claims and hidden fees here.
The rules of the game in the age of the “war on terror”
Glenn Greenwald notes several recent legal decisions, all of which accord with the following rules for deciding cases in the age of the war against “terrorism.”
The Rules of American Justice are quite clear, and remain in full force and effect:
(1) If you are a high-ranking government official who commits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immunity, both civil and criminal, and will have the American President demand that all citizens Look Forward, Not Backward.
(2) If you are a low-ranking member of the military, you will receive relatively trivial punishments in order to protect higher-ranking officials and cast the appearance of accountability.
(3) If you are a victim of American war crimes, you are a non-person with no legal rights or even any entitlement to see the inside of a courtroom.
(4) If you talk publicly about any of these war crimes, you have committed the Gravest Crime — you are guilty of espionage – and will have the full weight of the American criminal justice system come crashing down upon you.
Multiple wives for Newt
Funmentionables comes to the rescue of Newt, who reportedly wanted his second ex-wife to approve of an open marriage. Here is the Bible authority for the concept:
If he take himself another wife… —Exodus 21:10
If a man have two wives… —Deuteronomy 21:15
And here are the Bible characters who paved the way for Newt:
Abijah, Abraham, Ahab, Ahasuerus, Ashur, Belshazzar, Benhadad, Caleb, David, Eliphaz, Elkanah, Esau, Ezra, Gideon, Jacob, Jehoiachin, Jehoram, Jerahmeel, Joash, Lamech, Machir, Manasseh, Mered, Moses, Nahor, Rehoboam, Saul, Shaharaim, Simeon, Solomon, and Zedekiah.
David Stockman comments on Mitt Romney’s version of capitalism
Appearing on Dylan Ratigan’s show today, David Stockman, an ardent traditional capitalist, criticized the leveraged buyouts engaged in by Mitt Romney at Bain, labeling this behavior speculation, crony capitalism and “an inside job.” Stockman served as Director of the OMB. during Ronald Reagan’s Administrations.
Stockman hammered Obama as well, based on Obama’s acquiescence toward out-of-control Wall Street banks. He points out that the elephant in the room is the Federal Reserve, which is churning out endless money, thus bloating the financial sector. Stockman urges that we need to bring back Glass-Steagall as the starting point for a solution to this mess. Stockman also sharply criticized Newt Gingrich’s claim that he served as an “historian” for Freddie Mac.
Maher: There are different kinds of rich people
As Bill Maher points out at 2:25 at the following video, Mitt Romney got rich without offering a product.
