In a detailed article at Huffpo, Janet Tavakoli argues that China has an economic problem too, that it is caused by fraud and mismanagement, and that China's bubble will be popping. She also offers a way to determine when China's bubble will be bursting:
If the rate of change of public officials fleeing the country, df/dt > x, where x is yet to be defined, or the acceleration in fleers, d2f/dt2 > y, where y has yet to be defined, or the rate of change of the average amount of loot dl/dt > z, where z is yet to be defined, then conditions of the Chanos Equilibrium have been violated and destabilization will occur.
Stated differently, when you see the absolute amount of embezzled wealth fleeing the country suddenly increase, or when you see a sudden increase in the absolute number of Chinese officials leaving the country on "holiday," or when you see an acceleration in the number of officials leaving the country in a stealthier way, you'll know China is sinking.
One of the more watched ballot initiative this week was the Mississippi Personhood initiative that would have granted full human civil rights to a fertilized human egg. Almost half of the voters were for this measure. Here's the CBS report, but you can find it everywhere this week.
Basically, it would have outlawed most birth control and, of course, abortions.
The issue as I see it is the tension between the rights of a host and a guest. Should an unexpected guest be permitted to stay as long as they feel necessary, no matter how the host feels? What if the guest makes unreasonable demands, such as requiring up to half of your assets and most of your attention while living there? Note that the laws are set up to require you to support the guest for an additional 24 times as long as she stayed after she decides to move out.
At the root of this ballot initiative really was the need to make sure that Republicans get out to vote. It is a pity that the Democrats cannot figure out how to seed a ballot with an issue that will fire up their base in this manner. What about resurrecting the Equal Rights Ammendment?
Bill Moyers recently gave the keynote speech at Public Citizen's 40th anniversary Gala. In addition to the video of that speech, I have transcribed various excerpts from his excellent speech. During his speech, he made it quite clear that he fully understands the concerns of the occupy Wall Street protesters.
Except for the bracketed material each of the following is a quote by Bill Moyers at the Public Citizen 40th Anniversary Gala:
While it's important to cover the news, it's more important to uncover the news. One of my mentors at the University of Texas told our class that "news" is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity. And when a student asked the journalist and historian Richard Reeves for his definition of real news, he answered, "The news you and I need to keep our freedoms."
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[We now have what historian Lawrence Goodwin has described as] "a mass resignation of people who believe the dogma of democracy at a superficial level, but who no longer believe it privately."
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We have a decline of individual self-respect on the part of millions of people.
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We hold elections knowing that they are unlikely to produce the policies favored by a majority of Americans.
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The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly feared as an unseemly veneration of wealth are now openly enforced, and the common denominator a public office, including for our judges, is a common deference to cash.
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Barack Obama criticizes bankers as fat cats and then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 per person. And that's the norm. They get away with it.
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Let's name it for what it is: Democratic deviancy, defined downward.
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Politics today is little more than money laundering in the trafficking of power and policy.
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Why are the occupiers there? They are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied America
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Citizens United: Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many.
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[At the 12 minute mark of the video, Moyers discusses corporate personhood and the laws damaging public welfare resulting therefrom]
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The Roberts Court has picked up the mantle: Money first, the public second, if at all.
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[At the 14 minute mark: the damage done by Citizens United]
I was excited to see the new Tea Party's birth. Watching the corruption of our government become more and more brazen, it was only a matter of time before counter-movements began to spread. Both the Tea Party and the #Occupy movements were born of this impulse. The original patriots of the Tea Party movement formed in opposition to the bank bailouts. I think it became apparent rather quickly, however, that their admirable movement had been co-opted into another arm of the Republican machine. I don't say this to cast aspersions though, as I do want to keep this post exploring our common ground rather than emphasizing our differences. The #Occupy/99% movement is actively resisting attempts to co-opt its message by the Democratic party and other left-leaning organizations, so let's keep exploring our similarities.
Here then, is the 15-point "non-negotiable core beliefs" which I found on teaparty.org:
I was at our local #occupy protests on Saturday for what organizers were calling a "Global day of action". This week marks one month since #occupywallstreet began their occupation in New York City, and have proven to be an inspiration to people around the globe.
Omaha is not exactly known as a hotbed of radical activism or sentiment. Protests here regularly turn out a half-dozen or so committed activists, but rarely much more than that. My wife and I decided that the time had come for us to express our discontent with the existing socio-political environment here, and so we headed out to #OccupyOmaha on Saturday morning. Expecting low numbers, we were surprised when we could see people streaming towards the meeting site from blocks away.
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