"Payday" lending has been big in the news lately. Payday lending is where you go to a licensed loan shark to borrow money at interest rates in the hundreds (450% is not unusual), generally give the shark a post dated check, and 2 weeks later, end up having to renew…
This Huffpo article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. shows the extent to which ExxonMobil is not our wise old friend belatedly coming to our rescue on the issue of global warming:
Last week the release of the IPCC Report by the world’s 2500 top climatologists closed the scientific debate on global warming once and for all with a grave warning about its apocalyptical consequences to human civilization.
After years of denial the oil giant finally acknowledged the role of fossil fuel emissions in global warming, pledged to stop funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the country’s most visible global warming denier, and boasted of its own efforts to deal with the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
But behind the scenes, Exxon was engaged in the same old mischief. The American Enterprise Institute, a corporate front group financed by ExxonMobil and staffed by Bush administration dead enders, sent letters to top scientists and economists in the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere, offering them $10,000 each plus expenses for articles explaining shortcomings in the report.
To read the horrifying conclusions of the IPCC, here is the summary written for policy makers: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis” You would think that President Bush would take this report seriously, but he’s not. Here’s the garbage being generated by the White House as of February 8, 2007
And why should we care about this material rarely mentioned outside of science-fiction? Well, it involves recycling, our energy future, and a chance to de-proliferate nuclear weaponry and reduce the threat of "dirty" bombs. First, a brief bit of history: Back in the 1930's, it was discovered that isotopes of…
A few weeks ago I ate dinner with friends. One of the friends mentioned that, a few weeks earlier, he had attended a party in an upscale neighborhood. At that party, one of the guests announced that she had brought her own bottle of wine because the host’s expensive wine wasn’t good enough. From my end of the table, I blurted out that it is not necessary to have expensive wine to have a meaningful gathering with friends or family. In fact, I added, “wine is not necessary at all.” I was about to elaborate when I noticed that the other adults at the table were staring at me like I had three eyes. “That’s not correct,” they told me, almost in unison. I know that “look” well. I have received that same “look” from various people on other occasions. On one occasion I got “the look” from someone who was trying to justify that an ordinary car wasn’t sufficient, so he needed to buy a BMW. Another person who gave me “the look” was trying to convince me that her $75,000 kitchen remodeling was “necessary,” even though all of the appliances in her existing kitchen functioned perfectly. The problem with her current kitchen was that it was “old.” I have also received that same look from fundamentalists when I explain that the earth is billions of years old. The “look” is a “we-will-pretend-you-didn’t-say-that” look. It shouldn’t surprise me to draw the same “look” from both consumers and Believers, given that wasteful and pretentious spending is the de facto national religion of the United States. We’ve moralized extravagant spending to such an extent that “living the good life” means buying lots of things we don’t really need.
How often have you heard this phrase: “powerful members of Congress.” It gets under my skin. It sometimes makes me seethe. I saw it on the front page of yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch dealing with the President’s State of the Union address:
The prospects: Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the requirement to 60 billion gallons of 2030. Some experts say big reductions in gas usage won’t happen unless Bush orders much higher fuel economy standards, which powerful members of Congress would resist.
[By the way, I’m not trying to single out the Post-Dispatch. This is just an illustrtion. Almost every media publisher across America also uses this phrase]
So there it is. Some members of Congress are more “powerful” than others. What does that mean? Does it mean that they go to the gym more often so that they have big muscles? Or does it mean something more sinister? And if it’s a sinister thing, why is it so nonchalantly placed on the front page of the newspaper as though it’s not a scandalous thing?
There’s nothing in the Constitution that would give any clue to the mania of “powerful member of Congress.” To the extent that belonging to a particular political party makes one “powerful,” the Constitution is totally silent about political parties. The “power” of Congress should not be determined by reference to who belongs to what club. When it comes down to voting on issues, each member of Congress has the same number of …