Republicans idea-less on energy issues

Think Progress has summarized current thinking by the GOP on energy issues:

Throughout the discussion on America's energy future, Republicans have been notably absent. In March, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced the creation of the House GOP American Energy Solutions Group, an effort to "work on crafting Republican solutions to lower energy prices for American families and small businesses." The man chosen to head the committee -- which includes notorious climate change deniers Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and John Shimkus (R-IL) -- is none other than House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN), who, just last night, refused to even admit that climate change is real. "Well, let me tell you," he told MSNBC's Chris Matthews, "I think the science is very mixed on the subject of global warming." "Then why should your party believe you're going to get serious about it, if you say the science is mixed?" Matthews asked. Pence replied, "Yeah, it's a fair question."
And what about the Chamber of Commerce? It MUST be walking in lockstep with the GOP, right? Wrong:
An analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) found that just four of the 122 board members at the Chamber share the group's questioning of science and stark opposition to federal regulations to reduce global warming pollution.

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Connection between certain religious beliefs and the willingness to torture

There appears to be a correlation between some types of religious beliefs and the willingness to torture, according to a recent PEW study. Skeptico looks at these results and asks some well-considered questions. He concludes:

Even so, significant or not, these results hardly support the view that religion (specifically Christianity) provides a moral compass, or that reading the Bible or going to church is necessary for one to be moral or good.

Skeptico also recommends a visit to the page where the Skeptics Annotated Bible collects Bible passages concerning torture. And no, not all of these passages promoting torture are from the Old Testament.

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Just run the Monty Hall experiment and get it over with

Monty Hall was the host of a TV game show called "Let's Make a Deal." I watched it when I was a boy and it was quite entertaining. One of the specific games on the show involved offering to allow a contestant to pick one out of three wrapped prizes. Some of the prizes were valuable, but one was often a worthless gag. After the contestant chose one gift, Monty invariably removed one of the two wrapped gifts that the contestant did not take. He then asked the contestant if he/she wanted to trade the box he/she originally chose in return for choosing the other remaining gift. Should the contestant stay put or should he/she switch? My gut feeling says that there is nothing to gain by switching, but there are many experts who disagree with me. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about the Monty Hall problem. Many mathematically-inclined experts insist that you should ALWAYS switch after Monte takes away one of the three hidden prizes. There’s all kinds of high end mathematics involved in many of these analysis (see here for instance). The dispute gets really high-pitched sometimes, which is usually a clue that experts are claiming to be certain when they really don’t have any right to be. What I’m wondering is this: why don’t some social scientists simply gather empirical data in a lab? Assign someone to be Monty and let college students play the roles of contestants. Set the experimental parameters precisely (this needs to be done carefully because there is some question as to what, exactly Monty knows and does) and run the test over and over, until you’ve got LOTS of data. Have some students always make the switch. Have others never make the switch. Then tally the results and tell the mathematicians that you have the real answer. So that’s my thought: allow real-world trials tell the theoreticians the answer. Then let’s move on, please. Or has someone actually run the Monty Hall skit over and over in a lab yet and added up the results? I haven’t seen it yet, if this has been done.

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The myth of the American Elite

I came across a wonderful post at firedoglake today, a few days after it posted. Dean Baker, writing about the Fiat-Chrysler merger, highlights the growing disparity between so called 'knowledge workers' and the blue-collar manufacturers who have so often been at the sharp end of outsourcing. As he states

The media coverage of the auto bailouts has focused on the need for union autoworkers to take big pay cuts, causing them to once again miss the real story. The Fiat-Chrysler deal shows that the pay problem is at the top, not the bottom. At the end of the day, the new Chrysler is still likely to be producing most of its cars in the United States. What the new company will be getting from abroad is technology and top management. [...] While this story of the US becoming a high skills center in the world economy may have been comforting to the elites, and was widely promoted by economists and the news media, there was never much truth to it. Highly skilled professionals did well in recent decades not because they succeeded in international competition, but rather because they were largely sheltered from it.
Over the past ten years those elites have gained in accelerating salaries and in a lower tax burden (see also my earlier post on the rich/poor tax divide) while the blue collar workers wages have largely stagnated, and fallen behind in real terms. As Baker says
If we compare wages for assembly-line workers in Europe and the United States, there would not be much difference between the pay of UAW members and their counterparts in Europe. However, there would be a very large difference between the multi-million dollar pay packages of the top executives at the US companies and their European counterparts. The pay gaps persist among the more highly paid engineers and management personnel.
The remaining differences are that European workers do not need to reserve a significant portion of their weekly wage to cover healthcare costs, that they receive many more vacation days (between four and eight weeks for most Europeans), and that their supervisors, engineers and management are not a world apart in terms of salaries, benefits, and lifestyles.

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Growing opposition to Obama’s Tax Haven clampdown

Opposition to President Obama's plans to close the fiscal loophole of Tax Haven's is under increasing pressure from business, lobbyists, and the media. You can be sure many Senators and Congressmen, worried about their campaign contributions in the run up to 2010, will be conveying this sense of alarm to the President. Bloomberg ran with a story this morning, quoting some very influential Democrats including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Barbara Boxer. This latest attack follows a lot of negative, primarily republican generated, commentary since last Monday, including the expected outrage from the Republican caucus and their media friends (particularly Fox). One of the most telling, however, was a seemingly innocent comment from CNBC's Erin Burnett, during an interview on Morning Joe last week. She basically said that 'avoiding taxes' is a perfectly acceptable and legal practice and is basically the fault of our 35% corporate tax rate. To Ms Burnett, and all of the other people who think that tax avoidance is perfectly acceptable, I'll share another quote that I discovered while following this story - posted on a discussion thread

"My Lords, of recent years much ingenuity has been expended in certain quarters in attempting to devise methods of disposition of income by which those who were prepared to adopt them might enjoy the benefits of residence within this country while receiving the equivalent of such income without sharing in the appropriate burden of British taxation. Judicial dicta may be cited which may point out that, however elaborate and artificial such methods may be, those who adopt them are "entitled" to do so. There is, of course, no doubt they are within their legal rights, but that is no reason why their effort, or those of the professional gentlemen who assist them in the matter, should be regarded as a commendable exercise of ingenuity or as a discharge of the duties of good citizenship."

Lord Simon, L.C., Latilla v Inland Revenue Commissioners (1943)
Video and more details after the fold

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