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"If You Think D.C. Is Awful Now, Wait Until Wednesday," Jonathan Alter

November 4, 2014, 7:39 pm
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If You Think D.C. Is Awful Now, Wait Until Wednesday

Think this election doesn’t matter? Then just wait to see what damage a GOP Senate will do, especially when it comes to climate change.
Well before the midterms, a weary conventional wisdom set in: This is a “Seinfeld election”—an election, like the hit comedy, “about nothing.” If, as expected, Republicans take control of the Senate, they will try to repeal Obamacare and pass a string of other outlandish bills, all of which President Obama will veto. Or they might block some judgeships but work with the president in a few areas in order to build an agenda to run on in 2016. In other words, we’re told, this election is No Biggie.
This analysis, which you will hear again tonight on all the networks, ignores the ferocious radicalism of today’s Republican Party. As majority leader, Mitch McConnell might want to cut deals, but he will be dealing with a GOP caucus in the Senate that increasingly resembles the one John Boehner must contend with in the House, not to mention a base that has derailed several attempts to present a more moderate agenda on issues ranging from taxes to immigration.
The biggest impact of a GOP takeover will be on appointments. Many Obama administration sub-Cabinet positions (e.g. Surgeon General) have gone unfilled because of GOP opposition. Now many will likely remain vacant for another two years. Republicans don’t care. They hate government (except when it gives them a paycheck) and making it run worse just helps them convince the public that Democrats are incompetent.
The federal bench will be harmed by dozens of vacancies going unfilled, causing a case backlog. Meanwhile, none other than Sen. Ted Cruz is slated to become chairman of the subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee responsible for constitutional rights. Imagine the hearings he will hold. With any luck, the press won’t cover them, but don’t hold your breath. 
Should Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (a cancer survivor) or one of the other justices have to step down, all hell would break loose. Republicans would likely block any Obama nominee to the high court, especially for one of the conservative seats, leaving a 4-4 partisan split until early 2017, meaning that important cases would go undecided. Talk about gridlock.
The worst effect of a Republican takeover would be on the environment. The climate-change denial caucus would likely grow larger and more radical. Take Joni Ernst, a GOP darling now favored to be the next senator from Iowa. Ernst, best known for castrating pigs, doesn’t just want to ease environmental regulation; she favors abolishing the EPA altogether. That’s right—get rid of the agency created under Richard Nixon that has cleaned up the nation’s water and air. And if you think moderate Republicans are shunning her, consider that former President George H.W. Bush has been called in to help her campaign.
Moderates and independent voters in states like Iowa, Colorado, and North Carolina who cast their ballots for Republican candidates for the Senate should know that they are contributing greatly to the ascendancy of climate-change denial—a generation of politicians dedicated to burying their heads in the sand.
The ostrich-in-chief—and proud of it—is a former mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who once compared the director of the EPA to Tokyo Rose and the agency to the Gestapo. If Republicans win the Senate on Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, now in his fourth term, is set to become the next chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, a position he held from 2003 to 2007, when the Republicans last held control. He will make it his business to carry water for the fossil-fuel industry, smear climate scientists, and do everything else in his considerable power to prevent the country and the world from confronting the slow motion crisis of climate change.
Inhofe is not just a climate-change denier; he is a warrior for corporate-funded half-truths and outright lies. While McConnell and other Republican candidates this year have adopted the mantra, “I’m not a scientist” to dodge pesky climate-change questions, Inhofe charges ahead with an Orwellian argument.
In his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Inhofe explains how he is a prophet without honor in his time. “First I stood alone in saying that anthropogenic [manmade] catastrophic global warming is a hoax,” he writes, launching into an attack on Al Gore. “Now Gore stands alone in his dismissal of reform, openness, transparency and peer-review to ensure good science.”
That’s a pretty good encapsulation of how Inhofe will run his committee if the GOP takes control and he succeeds Sen. Barbara Boxer as chairman. Notice how he says it is Gore who rejects “openness” and “peer review.” It’s the old I’m-rubber-you’re-glue approach. A reader commenting on Amazon put it this way: “Where are the publications in Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nobel Prizes in chemistry or physics? None. Zero. Nada. Absolutely nothing. Oldest trick in the bully book: Call the others a hoax so that the bully’s hoax goes unnoticed. This ‘book’ is a hoax.”
Of course pointing this out won’t stop Inhofe, who will use the gavel to pound away at environmentalists as if they—not the climate-change deniers—are the ones abusing science.
In the time since Inhofe was last chairman, the deniers received a gift from the gods in the form of what they predictably call “Climategate.” This was a scandal involving the disclosure of emails and documents at the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s East Anglia University that suggest a couple of bad apples among the tens of thousands of scientists who believe climate change is real—scientists who ignored or twisted some data.
Even in an era when the public detests Washington, the U.S. Senate remains a powerful platform to advance ideas, including historically bad ones.
Inhofe will use his large megaphone to try to convince the world these this 2009 incident is proof of “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American public.” The world’s most eminent climate scientists, who all believe climate change is real, are, according to Inhofe, “in it for the money” and apparently part of the vast conspiracy that he says he will devote the rest of his days to exposing.
Actually, Inhofe does a few other things in the Senate, too, like pushing for federal disaster relief funds for the residents of Moore, Oklahoma, which was devastated by a 2013 tornado, while voting to deny such funds for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Inhofe said the two disasters were different because the hurricane drew so many moochers.
When Inhofe last chaired Environment and Public Works, George W. Bush was in the White House and Inhofe reserved most of his barbs for Democrats and the press. In January, if the GOP wins Senate control, he will go after Obama and the EPA with a vengeance.
The first goal will be to reverse Obama’s recently announced regulation of carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. With the help of McConnell, who is expected to be re-elected in large part on the coal issue despite his continued unpopularity in Kentucky, Republicans could attach a repeal of the rule to the so-called Continuing Resolution.
That’s the bill—up for consideration either in December or sometime next year—required to keep the government open. If Inhofe and the climate-change deniers have their way, they will force Obama to veto that bill, then blame him for forcing a government shutdown. The resulting negotiation, they hope, would gut the EPA regulation.
Inhofe has a record of recklessness that shouldn’t be underestimated. After he landed a private plane at a closed Texas airfield in 2010 and almost killed a group of construction workers, the airport manager was quoted as saying, “I’ve got over 50 years flying, three tours of Vietnam, and I can assure you I have never seen such a reckless disregard for human life in my life. Something needs to be done. This guy is famous for these violations.”


One advantage of Inhofe taking the gavel is that he might have to start playing defense. We got an indication of that last July when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse schooled him in a floor debate after Inhofe and other Republicans blocked a resolution declaring that climate change is real. Whitehouse noted that Inhofe charged that government agencies had been “colluding” to peddle climate-change threats.
Did this include NASA, the U.S. Navy and the National Weather Service? Was Inhofe suggesting we shouldn’t trust those agencies with the lives of astronauts and sailors, or that we should disbelieve weather forecasts? Was he suggesting that Wal-Mart, Pepsi, Mars, Google, Apple and the entire property and casualty insurance business were in on a big lie? Whitehouse concluded by citing surveys showing that even young Republicans believed that only people who were ignorant, out of touch, or crazy rejected climate science.
Historians looking back 100 years from now to the early 21th century are likely to conclude the same thing as they chronicle the biggest story of our time: How the United States and other great nations fiddled while the world burned.
On Sunday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—reflecting a consensus of global scientists—issued another dire report, this one warning that temperatures in many regions could grow so hot that it will become difficult for large percentages of the world’s population to work or play outdoors during the hot months of the year. The report repeated warnings of catastrophic food shortages, refugee crises, major cities and even entire countries left underwater by flooding, and mass extinction of plants and animals.
Even in an era when the public detests Washington, the U.S. Senate remains a powerful platform to advance ideas, including historically bad ones. So voters might want to consider who else—and what else—they are elevating when they go to the polls on Tuesday and vote for ostriches.

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Jim Inhofe
Wikipedia

Excerpt: 

Israel

In a Senate speech on March 4, 2002, Inhofe presented his position on the "seven reasons that Israel has the right to their land."[62]
These are summarized as follows:
  1. Archeological evidence. Excerpt: "Every time there is a dig in Israel, it does nothing but support the fact that Israelis have had a presence there for 3,000 years."
  2. Historic right. Inhofe's case includes the historic presence of Israel prior to the Roman Empire, and the promise given to the Jews by Britain in 1917 to provide a Jewish homeland.
  3. Agricultural development. Inhofe argues that Israel has been "able to bring more food out of a desert environment than any other country in the world."
  4. Humanitarian concerns. Inhofe argues that due to the extent of their persecution - he cites Russia - and their slaughter - during World War II by the Nazis - the Jews are entitled to a homeland, and that this is not an unreasonable demand.
  5. Strategic ally of the United States. "They vote with us in the United Nations more than England, more than Canada, more than France, more than Germany — more than any other country in the world."
  6. Israel acts as an effective roadblock to terrorism. In this part of his speech, Inhofe refers to four wars which Israel has fought and won (as of the date of his speech, dated 2002): "The 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Sinai campaign, the 1967 Six Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War." And he states that "In all four cases, Israel was attacked. They were not the aggressor ... In regard to their effectiveness, they are great warriors. They consider a level playing field being outnumbered 2-to-1." He also states at this point that, "One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States is that the policy of our government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."[62]
  7. Biblical references. Inhofe states, "I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel, and that it has a right to the land, because God said so."
In a Senate speech, Inhofe said that America should base its Israel policy on the text of the Bible:[63]
In March 2002, Inhofe also made a speech before the U.S. Senate that included the explicit suggestion that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a form of divine retribution against the U.S. for failing to defend Israel. In his words: "One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our Government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."[64]
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Eliason: Senator, we’re going to talk about your book for a minute, you state in your book which by the way is called The Greatest Hoax, you state in your book that one of your favorite Bible verses, Genesis 8:22, ‘while the earth remaineth seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease,’ what is the significance of these verses to this issue? 

Inhofe: Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous. 

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"The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes Of Political Madness," Lyle Rossiter M.D.

November 5, 2014, 4:14 am
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The forensic psychiatrist and author of  Lyle Rossiter
Monday, May 6, 2013 - The Conscience of a Realist by Joseph Cotto
Joseph Cotto

Lyle Rossiter on why people vote against their own interests


FLORIDA, May 6, 2013 — As humans, we are inclined to pursue our own interests. Nonetheless, when politics enter the equation, people often oppose what is most beneficial for them. How can this paradox be explained?
Do most voters care about objective facts, or our voting habits more defined by emotionalism? Can most political motivations can be explained on a rational basis? What about cognitive factors? Do they typically lead people to select a candidate who shares their social values as opposed to their economic interests? 
Over the last several years, the American left-wing has become considerably more hardline. Might there be a specific reason for this?
In this first part of our discussion, veteran forensic psychiatrist Lyle Rossiter, author of The Liberal Mind, an eminently controversial book that strives to analyze the mindset behind left-leaning politics, explains. 
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Joseph F. Cotto: As humans, we are inclined to pursue our own interests. Nonetheless, when politics enter the equation, people often oppose what is most beneficial for them. How do you explain this paradox?
Dr. Lyle Rossiter: Out of ignorance or immaturity, people misconstrue their own interests. They typically don’t understand what is beneficial for them in a political sense. People often seek (and vote for) short term satisfaction rather than long-term satisfaction. 
For example, people will vote for benefits such as “free” education and healthcare, whose costs are not apparent or are deliberately hidden. Moreover, most citizens are ignorant of basic principles of economics. They do not understand the dynamics of supply, demand, price and scarcity, and they do not understand the long-term negative consequences of government deficits and debt, excessive taxation and regulation, or undue expansion of the money supply. 
Many citizens do not understand the economic, social, political, ethical, moral, or legal basis of a free society, nor do they understand the critical role of individual responsibility in sustaining such a society. They do not understand that all government welfare programs undermine the voluntary social cooperation critical to the pursuit of happiness. They mistakenly believe they can trade freedom for welfare security without destroying both.  
Many citizens fail to understand that personal responsibility and charitable concern are among the prices that must be paid for freedom. Dependency on government welfare programs corrupts the character of the people and eventually destroys the foundations of a rational society. 
Cotto: In your experience, do most voters care about objective facts, or our voting habits more defined by emotionalism?
Dr. Rossiter: Some voters care about objective facts, but many voters are heavily influenced by neurotic needs and emotions, such as the “need” for a politician to care about them, or the appeal of a “cool” politician. Voters neglect the historical evidence in favor of limited government, free markets, the rule of law, and a stable currency, among other things, for the pursuit of happiness.
Cotto: Do you believe that most political motivations can be explained on a rational basis?
Dr. Rossiter: Some political motivations, especially those based on the principles just listed, can be explained and justified rationally; that is, by appeal to facts and logic. But many political motivations are based on irrational pursuits of power, wealth, status and superiority by politicians and others compensating for their own personality defects.
Cotto: Judging from your research, do cognitive factors typically lead people to select a candidate who shares their social values as opposed to their economic interests?
Dr. Rossiter: People select candidates for many reasons, including those listed so far in this interview, many of which are “social” and indifferent to rational economic interests.
Cotto: Over the last several years, the American left-wing has become considerably more hardline. Do you suppose there may be a specific reason for this?
Dr. Rossiter: The radical liberal aggressively pursues a collectivist utopia to sooth his paranoid fears of individual liberty. The conditions of liberty arouse primitive fears in the radical liberal mind, to which he responds by seeking control over others and over basic social institutions. 
Control through power seeking is reassuring to him, but his exercise of it destroys both freedom and authentic security for the larger society. The radical liberal doesn’t care about that. He says he does, but he doesn’t. His ultimate goal is control because that is the only thing that makes him feel safe.


Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/conscience-realist/2013/may/6/lyle-rossiter-why-people-vote-against-their-own-in/#ixzz3IC9x6I10 


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Divine Desperation: Feelings Of Hopelessness Make People Stop Doing What They Can

November 5, 2014, 4:33 am
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A young boy suspected of having Ebola lies in a back alley of the West Point slum in Liberia. Research suggests that the story of one needy individual motivates charitable donors more than statistics about millions of sufferers.
A young boy suspected of having Ebola lies in a back alley of the West Point slum in Liberia. Research suggests that the story of one needy individual motivates charitable donors more than statistics about millions of sufferers.

Alan: Does the following article explain conservatives' preference for individual anecdote over statistical proof.

Why do people sometimes give generously to a cause — and other times give nothing at all?
That's a timely question, because humanitarian groups fighting the Ebola outbreak need donations from people in rich countries. But some groups say they're getting less money than they'd expect from donors despite all the news.
Psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon has some answers that may surprise you.
In one study, Slovic told volunteers about a young girl suffering from starvation and then measured how much the volunteers were willing to donate to help her. He presented another group of volunteers with the same story of the starving little girl — but this time, also told them about the millions of others suffering from starvation.
On a rational level, the volunteers in this second group should be just as likely to help the little girl, or even more likely because the statistics clearly established the seriousness of the problem.
"What we found was just the opposite," Slovic says. "People who were shown the statistics along with the information about the little girl gave about half as much money as those who just saw the little girl."
Slovic initially thought it was just the difference between heart and head. A story about an individual victim affects us emotionally. But a million people in need speaks to our head, not our heart. "As the numbers grow," he explains, "we sort of lose the emotional connection to the people who are in need."
But if the dry statistics aren't as powerful as the emotional message about the little girl, why do the numbers reduce people's emotional response to the child in need?
Slovic has done further research that suggests it might not be a case of heart vs. head after all, but of one set of feelings competing against another.
The volunteers in his study wanted to help the little girl because it would make them feel good and give them a warm glow. But when you mix in the statistics, volunteers might think that there are so many millions starving, "nothing I can do will make a big difference."
Now if the human brain were a computer, the two conflicting feels wouldn't cancel each other out. We would still help the little girl even if we couldn't help everyone. But the brain is a master at unconsciously integrating different feelings. So the bad feeling diminishes the warm glow — and reduces the impulse to give generously to help the child.
In other words, people decline to do what they can do because they feel bad about what they can't do.

"Faith, Hope, Charity And Divine Desperation"
That theory might explain why there hasn't been an outpouring of donations from Americans to the Ebola epidemic. The current outbreak triggers feelings of hopelessness: there's no cure, lots of people are sick, and lots of people will die.
Direct Relief has been shipping medical supplies to West Africa.

Goats and Soda

This May Be The Largest Private Donation To Fight Ebola

"It's really about the sense of efficacy," Slovic says. "If our brain ... creates an illusion of non-efficacy, people could be demotivated by thinking, 'Well, this is such a big problem. Is my donation going to be effective in any way?'"
Slovic's research suggests that the way to combat this hopelessness is to give people a sense that their intervention can, in fact, make a difference.
That's a challenge for charitable groups — and for journalists. A reporter's job is to tell the truth and paint a picture of everything that's happening. But when you paint the bigger picture, it could undermine people's ability to do what they can to help.


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Another Dose Of "Vaccine Madness" From Right-Wing Ebola Pimps

November 5, 2014, 7:15 am
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Alan: The belief system of American conservatives is determined by "exceptions to The Rule," 
not by statistically-predicated, peer-reviewed scientific finding.

These divergent epistemologies are at the heart of America's culture war:
Uninformed Belief versus The Scientific Method.

"The Death Of Epistemology: Anti-Vaccine Expert (And Playboy Model) Jenny McCarthy"

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"Ebola Represents A Trivial Threat To Americans' Health"

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"Shocking" Report On Flu Vaccine Is Neither Shocking Nor Correct

Flu season is coming, and once again it’s time to get your flu shot (or snort, if you prefer FluMist). It’s not perfect, but the vaccine is your best protection against the influenza virus.

So I was surprised to stumble upon an article titled “Johns Hopkins Scientist Reveals Shocking Report on Flu Vaccines,” which popped up on an anti-vaccine website two weeks ago. Johns Hopkins University is my own institution, and I hadn’t heard any shocking new findings. I soon discovered that this article contained only a tiny seed of truth, surrounded by a mountain of anti-vaccine misinformation. Most of it focused on a report published in early 2013 by Peter Doshi, a former postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins.
First, as Snopes.com has already pointed out, Doshi is not a virologist or an epidemiologist, but rather an anthropologist who studies comparative effectiveness research. He never conducted influenza research at Hopkins. (He’s now an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Pharmacy.) Second, Doshi’s 2013 article was an opinion piece (a “feature”), not an original research article, and it did not report any new findings. Third, it is highly misleading to suggest (as the anti-vax article’s title does) that Doshi somehow represents Johns Hopkins University. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, the flu vaccine is required of all personnel who have contact with patients, as a good-practices effort to minimize the risk that a patient will catch the flu from a caregiver.
But what did Doshi’s article say? Even though it isn’t new, why are the anti-vaccine sites recycling it? His central argument is this:
“The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated.”
Let’s look at this statement. It’s almost obviously true: one only has to find a few overstated claims about the risks of flu, which isn’t hard to do. But it’s also completely consistent with the view that the vaccine is enormously beneficial and that the threat of influenza is very serious. See how that works?
ITO154-2014
Doshi uses this slight-of-hand to suggest that the vaccine may not be beneficial at all. He never says this outright—instead, he just questions, again and again, whether the precise percentages reported in published studies are accurate. For example, he makes a big deal of a CDC announcement in 2013 that the vaccine’s effectiveness was only 62%. He casts doubt with phrases like
“the 62% reduction statistic almost certainly does not hold true for all subpopulations”
That is almost certainly true, but is meaningless from the point of view of public health. Of course the vaccine doesn’t have the same effectiveness in everyone. The point is that it works most of the time.
Doshi cites another study that showed a clear benefit for the flu vaccine, only to cast doubt on it with this argument:
“No evidence exists, however, to show that this reduction in risk of symptomatic influenza for a specific population—here, among healthy adults—extrapolates into any reduced risk of serious complications from influenza such as hospitalizations or death in another population.”
Again, Doshi’s argument doesn’t prove that the original study was wrong, only that it doesn’t apply to everyone. But Doshi’s motivation, as evidenced by the relentlessly negative slant of his entire article, seems to be to convince people that the flu vaccine is bad.
Not surprisingly, the anti-vaccine movement has embraced Doshi (for example, here and here). And unfortunately, he seems to have accepted their acclaim: in 2009, he spoke at an anti-vaccine conference hosted by NVIC, a notorious (and misleadingly named) anti-vaccination group.
Perhaps even more disturbing is that Doshi signed a petition arguing that the HIV virus is not the cause of AIDS, joining the ranks of HIV denialists. He signed this statement while still a graduate student, so I contacted him to ask if he still doubted the link between HIV and AIDS. I also asked him if he supports flu vaccination, if he agrees with the anti-vaccine movement’s use of his statements, and if he believes the flu is a serious public health threat. 
On the question of signing the HIV/AIDS petition, Doshi responded that “Seeing how my name was published and people have misconstrued this as some kind of endorsement, I have written the list owner and asked for my name to be removed.” He declined to state directly that he agrees that the HIV virus causes AIDS—though I gave him ample opportunity.
As for the flu itself, Doshi says “I don’t agree with CDC’s portrayal of influenza as a major public health threat.” So he and I have a serious disagreement there. I asked if he agrees with the anti-vaccinationists who are using his writings to claim that the flu vaccine is ineffective, and he replied that while “ineffective” is “too sweeping,” he has found ”no compelling evidence of hospitalization and mortality reduction in [the] elderly.”
Doshi’s argument against the flu vaccine boils down to this: the vaccine is much less than 100% effective, and it doesn’t work for everyone. This is undeniably true, and the research community makes no secret of it. In fact, many of us have repeatedly called for more research into better vaccines, in the effort to create a vaccine that is not only more effective, but that (like most other vaccines) only needs to be taken once for lifetime immunity. We’re just not there yet. Meanwhile, though, the annual flu vaccine is usually effective: a recent study showed, for example, that it reduced children’s risk of ending up in a pediatric intensive care unit by 74%.
So get your flu shot (or snort) now, before flu season hits, because it takes a couple of weeks for your body to develop immunity. By getting immunized, you’ll not only increase your chances of getting through the winter flu-free, but (because you won’t spread the flu to others) you might also save someone whose immune system would be overwhelmed by influenza.
"Self-Terrorization Is The National Pastime"
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Republican Victory Born Of Despair Over Conservatism's Larger Loss

November 5, 2014, 7:33 am
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In the wake of Mitch McConnell's mid-term victory, my high school sweetheart (a psychiatric nurse practitioner) sent this lament: "Just got back from the polls to hear Mitch say how he would represent all the people of Kentucky including "the mother whose family lost their health insurance"WHAT??? All these people voting against their own best interest and the best interest of others! I can't stand it."

There was a time when I too marveled at America's passion for self-destruction.

In the last decade however I have come to understand that most people -- particularly "conservatives" -- prefer "purity of principle" to "self-preservation."


"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

More Merton Quotes

The following articles were unusually helpful to "getting a handle" on America's devotion to counter-productivity and self destruction.


"Republicans For Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/republicans-for-revolution-study-in.html

"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"

Increasingly, American "conservatives" realize that the unstoppable drift of socio-politics is toward liberalism. 

Rather than submit to the pending demise of rugged individualism and "exceptional values," Ted Cruz took the stage last night to express conservatism's determination to return to the 19th century: “Give me a horse, a gun and an open plain and we can conquer the world,” Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/wayne-slater/20141105-at-texas-gops-celebration-next-campaign-already-underway.ece 

Despite the allure of "a home where the buffalo roam and the skies are not cloudy all day," a horse, a gun and "conservative principles" are incapable of guiding a techno-scientific society.

Paralleling the growth of scientifically predicated socio-economics (the life blood of Capitalism) America's view of religion is ever less dependent on "miraculous intervention" and ever more dependent on predictable principles that can be consciously guided to achievable ends.

To most American Christians this view smacks of self-apotheosis. 

To most Americans this view represents an end to superstition and abject prostration before a Thunder Sky God.

"Pope Francis Links"

The only alternative to America's liberal future is Anarchic Apocalypticism - which, reinforced by an oddly secularized theocracy - aspires to destroy the American political process, a system of governance that has trended toward scientific liberalism ever since The Founders set sight on The Enlightenment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

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"Bank On It: The South Is Always Wrong"

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A Victory For Rugged Individualism: It's Every Republican For Himself

November 5, 2014, 7:48 am
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., casts his ballot 
in the midterm election at the voting precinct at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014.

For Republicans, the hard part is about to begin

By Dana Milbank Opinion writer November 4, 2014

During political campaigns, candidates usually tell voters what they would do if elected. But Sen. Mitch McConnell had a different idea.
“This is not the time to lay out an agenda,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters four days before Election Day.
Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000.
A week or so before that, the man who would be the next Senate majority leader provided more details of his theory. “It’s never a good idea to tell the other side what the first play is going to be.”
No, but it might be a good idea to tell the voters what you’re up to.
Republicans won control of the Senate late Tuesday night and padded their majority in the House, giving the party unified control of Congress for the first time in eight years. And McConnell, who won reelection with ease, is positioned to become leader of a new Senate majority.
It was enough, electorally, for Republicans to say they were against whatever President Obama was for. Preliminary exit polls found that 32 percent of voters were registering displeasure with Obama, versus 20 percent who were expressing support.
But now comes the hard part. Because Republicans didn’t run on an agenda other than antipathy toward all things Obama, they created a policy vacuum — and it’s about to be filled by a swirl of competing, and contradictory, proposals.
Republicans find themselves with neither a consensus program nor a clear hierarchy among congressional leaders, the half-dozen aspiring presidential candidates in Congress and the various governors and former officeholders who also think they should be the party’s 2016 standard-bearer. Republicans have set themselves up for chaos, if not outright fratricide.
Congressional leaders will be pulled in opposite directions by would-be presidential contender Ted Cruz (Tex.) and his expanded band of Senate ideologues (who would like to abolish the IRS, the EPA and the Education Department, chip away at banking regulations and hold umpteen more votes on eliminating Obamacare) and by the large number of vulnerable Republicans who will be on the ballot in 2016 (and would like to see the next Congress achieve tangible progress).
Republicans in 2014 decided to forgo a 1994-style Contract with America or 2010 Pledge to America. The closest they came to a unified agenda was a list of bromides proffered by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Among the bold stands: “our veterans have earned our respect” and “the best anti-poverty program is a strong family and a good job.”
With this plethora of platitudes posing as an agenda, it’s no surprise exit polls found no mandate for Republicans. Only 41 percent of voters had a positive view of Obama, but only 38 percent had a positive view of Republican leaders in Congress. The economy was by far the dominant issue in voters’ minds (70 percent thought it in bad shape), and Obamacare didn’t seem to be a major factor: Forty-seven percent thought the law went too far, but 48 percent thought it either didn’t go far enough or was about right.
This gives no advantage to either side in the Republicans’ internecine struggle. On one side will be Cruz, who told The Post’s Sebastian Payne this week that the first order of business for a GOP Senate should be launching more hearings into President Obama’s “abuse of power.” He’s also pushing an effort to use parliamentary maneuvers to repeal Obamacare with a simple majority — the sort of provocation that would quickly return Washington to government-shutdown crises. Cruz, in a USA Today op-ed, also said he wants to pursue a flat tax, kill the Export-Import Bank, audit the Fed and block comprehensive immigration reform.
The GOP gained control of the Senate Tuesday night, taking hold of the legislative agenda in that chamber. Here are three of the policies Republicans are likely to tackle as they take the reins in January 2015. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)
On the opposite side is Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a George W. Bush administration veteran who wants to “come to the table” with Obama on wide-ranging energy legislation, free-trade deals, bipartisan tax reform and a return to responsible budgeting rather than stopgap spending bills. For this to happen, Portman notes in National Review, “all we are missing is leadership.”
Without leadership, it’s every Republican for himself. Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rand Paul (Ky.), prospective presidential candidates both, have dueling tax plans. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, reports Politico’s Jake Sherman, “seems willing to pass small-bore bills on issues ranging from energy to health care to taxes.” By contrast, Heritage Action, which influences congressional conservatives, wants the opposite: Republicans should “focus on the big things” such as repealing Obamacare, rather than finding common ground on spending bills.
That’s the consequence of an agenda-free campaign: a majority without a mission.
Twitter: @Milbank
Read more about this topic:

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Mandatory Voting Would Focus Candidates On All Citizens, Not Just Their Rabid Base

November 5, 2014, 8:42 am
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A voter looks over a ballot before stepping into a voting booth at a polling site 
inside P.S. 33 Chelsea Prep school, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014, in New York.

Compulsory Voting
A worldwide political reality
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

Alan: In light of multiple civic obligations that carry a penalty if not discharged -- notably taxation -- the only argument contrary to compulsory voting (that makes sense to me) is that "freedom of speech" should allow citizens to remain silent. My countervailing argument is twofold. On one hand we would determine The National Will more accurately than the current system corroded by non-representative optional turnout. On the other hand, the "right to remain silent" is easily guaranteed by self-identifying absentee ballots that can be returned to The Board of Elections without notation. The penalty for failing to vote - or, alternatively, failing to return an empty ballot - would be a nominal monetary fine or a few hours of time donated to civic improvement.

A case for compulsory voting

By Ruth Marcus Columnist November 4, 2014

A thought experiment in the election’s aftermath: What if, instead of focusing on making it harder for people to vote, we made voting mandatory?
Indulge me in a rant against the phantom menace of voter fraud. The efforts to suppress it are barely disguised Republican moves to hold down minority votes that would, presumably, go to Democrats.
Ruth Marcus is a columnist and editorial writer for The Post, specializing in American politics and domestic policy. 
This year, the Supreme Court allowed a new Texas voter-ID law to proceed despite a lower court judge’s finding that it amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax that could disenfranchise 600,000 registered voters, about 4.5 percent of the total. This in low-turnout Texas, with voting participation rates near the bottom of a country with overall anemic turnout.
Pivot to Australia, one of 11 countries that have, and enforce, mandatory voting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and the nation most culturally similar to the United States.
Australia adopted compulsory voting in 1924 after turnout plunged from more than 70 percent in 1919 to less than 60 percent in 1922. By contrast, recent turnout by eligible voters in U.S. presidential election years has barely cracked 60 percent; in midterm elections, it has been hovering in the low 40s.
Australians who fail to vote can be fined (or, in theory, jailed for repeated no-shows). Interestingly, the mandate to vote is overwhelmingly popular, with about three-fourths of those polled supporting the requirement.
Let me acknowledge, upfront, that the United States is not about to go the way of Australia. The same partisan forces that agitate for voter ID laws or less opportunity for early voting hours would block any change on the assumption that it would work to their electoral disadvantage.
Perhaps so, although the Australian experience does not support this belief. A 2006 analysis by the Australian Electoral Commission concluded that, “on balance, there is no empirical evidence that a move to voluntary voting would advantage one major party over another.” In practice, control has ping-ponged regularly between conservatives and liberals.
Indeed, the conventional wisdom that compulsory voting here would favor Democrats may be wrong. A study in 2003 by political scientists Jack Citrin, Eric Schickler and John Sides modeling the effects of full turnout in three cycles’ worth of Senate races found that, while “under full turnout, Democrats typically do better,” in the few cases in which the result would have changed, “the Democratic candidate was not always the beneficiary.”
So why bother?
Compulsory voting would reduce the cost of elections. Candidates, parties and outside groups would no longer have to devote resources to turning out voters — the requirement would do it for them. You might think that this would simply have the perverse effect of freeing up money to spend on ever more television advertising. Maybe, but there is only so much airtime, and only so much marginal return on advertising investment.
Some critics of compulsory voting argue that it would result in dumbed-down campaigns to appeal to an even more uninformed electorate. To which the only possible response is: Have you been watching politics recently? Indeed, since suppressing the vote by turning off voters in disgust won’t work, there is a countervailing argument that negative advertising would be reduced.
Even more important, compulsory voting would have the salutary effect of forcing parties to appeal to all voters, not just the committed base they can motivate to get to the polls. Especially combined with other reforms, such as switching to “jungle,” or top-two-vote-getter, primaries, it would drive politicians and parties toward the center and toward compromise. Special interests would hold less sway.
Compelling anything feels vaguely un-American, but turning voting into a shared national enterprise would be healthy for our democracy. This is especially true because of the gap between the voters and the population as a whole — nonvoters are more often poor, young and members of minority groups. This disconnect has policy implications. A 2005 paper for the Inter-American Development Bank that examined 91 countries from 1960 to 2000 found that strictly enforced compulsory voting improved income distribution.
A national change to compulsory voting is unthinkable, especially in a system that largely leaves voting procedures up to states. So why not, as theBrookings Institution’s William Galston has suggested, have a half-dozen or so states conduct an experiment with compulsory voting? The country has far more to fear from too few voters than from too many.
Read more about this topic:

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"What's The Matter With Kansas?"

November 5, 2014, 9:05 am
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"What's The Matter With Kansas?"

No one was quite prepared for just how convincingly Republican candidates' would trounce their opponents in Tuesday's midterm. In races across the country, Republicans won where the polls showed them ahead, and even in a few places where the polls didn't.

None of these surprises are more significant than Gov. Sam Brownback's reelection in Kansas. Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium confidently predicted he would lose. At Five Thirty Eight, Harry Enten had given Brownback an 18 percent chance of victory.

In the end, it wasn't even that close: Brownback won even 50 percent of the vote to Democrat Paul Davis's 46.1 percent.

Predictions are sometimes wrong, of course -- that, in itself, shouldn't be too surprising. What makes Kansas an interesting case is that Brownback implemented and campaigned on an aggressively conservative economic policy, a series of supply-side reductions in taxes that have created an expanding budget deficit. These tax cuts lead Kansans to close classrooms, fire teachers, increase class sizes and raise local property levies. Hundreds of Republicans, worried about the state's financial stability, turned against him, but he won without their support.

You could argue that in other races, voters were generally unhappy with the direction of the country and blamed President Obama and his party even though Republicans, who control the House, are equally responsible. The vote in Kansas wasn't just a vote against Obama, however. It was a vote in favor of a Republican agenda, and not just the talking points, but also the practical consequences.

There may be some other explanation for Davis's defeat that we'll discover in the coming days, but Republicans in Congress who hold supply-side views are likely to take it as evidence that voters are on their side.


"Pope Francis Links"

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"




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Compassionate Conservatism

November 5, 2014, 9:07 am
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The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism

The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. 

The sooner the better. 

Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." 

To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice,  hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html 

Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see  that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.

Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment. 

Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold. 

Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this. 



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Roman Emperors Were More Likely To Be Assasinated/Executed Than To Die Naturally

November 5, 2014, 9:15 am
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Of America's 44 presidents, 14 have survived assassination attempts and 4 have succumbed.

***

The midterms were exhausting, but keep in mind that the only real alternative to holding elections is a political system that relies on assassinations, coups and civil wars. Roman emperors were more likely to be assassinated or executed than to die of natural causes, a sharp contrast with U.S. presidents. Orderly, nonviolent transitions of power are better for everyone, politicians especially. Zack Beauchamp at Vox



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Four Deep Red States Raise Minimum Wage. Two States And D.C. Approve Pot

November 5, 2014, 9:46 am
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The United States Is A Singularly Cruel, Vengeful Nation

***

Voters increase the minimum wage in four states. Ballot initiatives passed by overwhelming margins in Alaska, Nebraska, and Arkansas. The margin in South Dakota was narrower, with 53 percent of voters in favor. Katy Steinmetz in Time.

Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia legalize marijuana. So did voters in Guam. But a proposed amendment to Florida's state constitution to allow for medical marijuana didn't achieve the 60 percent of votes it needed to pass. David Knowles for Bloomberg. 

Personhood measures fail in Colorado and North Dakota. The practical consequences of the measures were never clear, but voters rejected both by wide margins. Laura Bassett at The Huffington Post.

Berkeley, Calif. will be the first city in the country to tax soda. The penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages passed overwhelmingly in a defeat for the industry, which outspent proponents 10 to 1 in the campaign. Tom Lochner in The Contra-Costa Times.



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Two Crucial Pages Left Out Of The Latest U.N. Climate Report

November 5, 2014, 9:50 am
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The pages contained the most explicit warning in the report about how much carbon the world can afford to burn in the near future, and clearly stated that developing countries are at the greatest risk in a warmer climate. A group of scientists worked on the section for three years, but the world's governments couldn't agree on the wording for such a controversial issue. Chris Mooney in The Washington Post.



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Obama Should Approve The Keystone Pipeline

November 5, 2014, 10:21 am
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Alan: The Canadian tar sands will be exploited.

Fully.

No matter what, all that goo will burn.

Nixing the Keystone pipeline will have no impact on the eventual amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

On the other hand, by "getting ahead of the political curve" and expressing his willingness to give the GOP the "job-creating" project they most want, Obama would not only steal Republican thunder, he will also lay groundwork demonstrating that permanent jobs generated by the pipeline will be few in number, not the employment "gusher" Republicans promise.

By yielding on the pipeline, Obama will be credited with bipartisan leadership whereas sustained resistance to Keystone will do nothing to limit carbon emissions.

Instead, resistance will only tar Obama as an obstructionist on a project most Americans want and which The Republican Party will eventually get.


***

Obama's approval of the Keystone pipeline can be linked quid pro quo with the acceleration of green projects that are already taking place and will continue to take place. 

Chief of these initiatives is facilitated financeability of solar energy. 

For starters, create a national initiative propelled by interactive private and public interests to provide "no money down" installation of rooftop solar energy whose point of departure takes into account The Obvious: i.e., the first seven years of rooftop solar production is enough equity to pay back 100% of loaned money.

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Immigration Reform: Common Cause Between Republican And Democratic Parties

November 5, 2014, 12:54 pm
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Or, will Republicans argue "No, you didn't build that!"

Alan: The nation has nothing to lose -- and much to gain -- by legislation which provides legal framework for 11,000,000 undocumented immigrants already resident in the United States, most of whom are not "going home." 

These Wops -- these immigrants "without papers" -- require "residential normalization" just as America saw fit to normalize an earlier generation of undocumented Italians. 

If Republicans refuse to cooperate in this necessary legislative process, Obama is well advised to circumvent partisan obtructionism by issuance of executive orders that accomplish what needs doing. 

This train is leaving the station.

Republicans can get on board.

Scott Clement
Politicians love to claim the American public is on their side, and President Obama is perhaps as fond as anyone of this tack.
On Monday, he did it again, complaining that House Republicans are thwarting the public's will in pulling the plug on immigration legislation this year:
That's what the Senate bill would fix if the House allowed it to go to a vote. Our country and our economy would be stronger today if House Republicans had allowed a simple yes-or-no vote on this bill or, for that matter, any bill. They'd be following the will of the majority of the American people, who support reform.
Obama's claim has merit: Public polls conducted since 2013 have found support for providing illegal immigrants a pathway to legal status ranging from 46 to 81 percent for, cresting above a majority in 13 of 15 polls. But the 35-point range between the most favorable poll and the least favorable one raises some serious questions about how stable or real that support actually is.
So what's going on?
Question wording varies widely across surveys and explains much of the difference. It also reveals a key element of public opinion on immigration: Americans are increasingly supportive of a path to legal status if undocumented immigrants face more requirements. The spreadsheet below shows results for 15 public polls along with their question wording and links to the full surveys.
We counted the number of requirements mentioned in each question to test whether it is related to support. In the three polls showing the highest support for a path to citizenship (CNN/ORC, Fox News and CBS), the survey question mentions between three and five requirements, including criminal background checks, paying back taxes, a waiting period and fines. Polls showing the lowest support do not mention any requirements for immigrants seeking legal status. The statistical correlation (a.k.a.. connection) between a poll's number of immigrant requirements and support for a path to legal status is 0.74 on a scale of 0 to 1 -- with 1 representing a perfect positive relationship.
The Senate law includes all of these requirements for citizenship – and more. The law passed last year lays out a 13-year process, featuring fines, payment of back taxes, regular employment as well as learning English and civics. Given support tends to increase with requirements, the Senate’s proposed route for undocumented immigrants figures to be overwhelmingly popular.
Other elements of the law also gain wide public support. A Gallup poll last June found over seven in 10 saying they’d “vote for” increased border security, allowing foreign science and engineering students to remain in the U.S. to work and requiring business owners to check the immigration status of employees they hire. Smaller majorities supported allowing employers to hire immigrants for jobs Americans don’t want and varying the number of immigrants depending on economic conditions.
Gallupimmigration
So if public support is so clear, why have House Republicans dragged their feet on endorsing the Senate’s bill?
For one, the pockets of opposition to immigration legislation are concentrated within the Republican Party, including some if its most conservative adherents. Surveys find most Republicans support a path to citizenship if undocumented immigrants meet several requirements, but voting for any such law risks accusations of giving amnesty to those who immigrated illegally.
Secondly, voters are not nearly as upset as Obama about failed immigration legislation, and they don’t appear willing to reward pro-immigration reform candidates. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last year following the Senate bill's passage found only 13 percent of Americans said they’d be “angry” if the House didn’t approve a path to citizenship.
Asked how it would impact their vote, a March Post-ABC poll showed 38 percent said they’d be “less likely” to support a candidate for Congress who supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Slightly fewer, 30 percent, said they’d be “more likely” to support such a candidate. Among Republicans, 60 percent said they’d be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported a path to citizenship.
Whatever risks exist for national Republicans in alienating Hispanic voters in future elections, the math is clear for an individual member worried about his or her reelection -- and that's only bolstered by the fact Obama is also taking plenty of blame for the lack of progress on immigration.
Obama seemed to acknowledge the problem Monday: "Much of this only happens if Americans continue to push Congress to get this done."
The problem for Obama is that they're not really pushing Congress to get this done even as we speak.
Peyton M. Craighill contributed to this report.
A group of anti-immigration protesters blocked buses carrying undocumented immigrants on Tuesday as they headed to a border patrol station in southern California. (Reuters)
Scott Clement is a survey research analyst for The Washington Post. Scott specializes in public opinion about politics, election campaigns and public policy.


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The Borowitz Report: Fox News Ends Ebola Coverage: “Our Work Is Done”

November 5, 2014, 3:36 pm
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"Ebola Represents A Trivial Threat To Americans' Health"
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)–Fox News announced on Wednesday that it is terminating its coverage of the Ebola virus effective immediately, because, in the words of the host Sean Hannity, “Our work is done.”
Hannity commended the work of the Fox Ebola team, which provided non-stop coverage of the virus during the month of October, but added, “This story is officially over.”

Fox’s decision to bring its Ebola coverage to such an abrupt close raised eyebrows in media circles, but Hannity offered an explanation for the move after his broadcast concluded.
“There’s like, what, one case of Ebola in the United States?” the host said. “At most, two or three. The point is, the chances of any of our viewers catching Ebola are next to zero. We’re not in the business of scaring people for no reason. Let’s all move on.”
Hannity added that if there is an Ebola outbreak in the U.S., Fox would offer in-depth coverage of the crisis, probably in the fall of 2016.

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"

Jindal Criticizes The Stupid Party: "Simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys"


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"Obama Has Vetoed Fewer Bills Than Any President Since Garfield"

November 5, 2014, 3:39 pm
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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2014. 
In his six years as president, Barack Obama has had to break out the veto stamp fewer times than any president since James Garfield (who died in 1881 after just a few months in office), according to data maintained by the Senate. By contrast, George W. Bush vetoed 12 bills (overridden 4 times) and Clinton vetoed 37 (overridden twice).
FDR holds the record for the most vetoes, however: in his 12 years in office he vetoed 635 bills, and was overridden only 9 times.
Obama's two vetoes took place during his first term, and dealt with a bill about foreclosures and a continuing resolution that had been rendered moot by other legislation. There was relatively little drama attached to either measure, but could this change starting in 2015? Probably, although not by much. The Republicans still don't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and it's likely that Harry Reid will wield the filibuster just as enthusiastically as Mitch McConnell has before him. This means that it will be hard to get any bill past Congress without at least some measure of Democratic support.
Republican leaders have already signaled their intent to send several measures with bipartisan support to Obama's desk, including the Keystone Oil pipeline, a repeal of the medical device tax, and a handful of international trade agreements. Obama will have to choose whether to veto these bills over the support of members of his own party, or save the stamp for another fight.
Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.


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Voters In Seatlle Just Taxed Themselves To Pay For Preschool For The Poor

November 5, 2014, 3:44 pm
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Supporters in Seattle rally at a "Yes on City of Seattle Preschool Program Prop 1B" election night event Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014, in Seattle, Washington

Alan: Taxes are the price we pay for civilization. 
Most Americans are not willing to pay enough.

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"

If you're a liberal looking for some solace after last night's Republican rout in the midterms, there is a place where progressives rule, where voters want government to increase support for the poor, where the idea of taxing the rich to do that doesn't come off like class warfare. It's Seattle.
And last night residents there voted to tax themselves to fund a $58 million pilot program providing city-subsidized high-quality childcare to low-income families. What's more, the measure won with 67 percent of the vote. And the main dispute wasn't over whether or not to invest in universal preschool — but which proposal to choose.
From the Seattle Times:
The Proposition 1B levy will cost the owner of a Seattle home valued at $400,000 about $43 a year, according to the city. The money will go to select, high-quality preschools to provide slots to families based on income. It will ramp up over time, serving 280 children in 2015, and subsidizing up to 2,000 by 2018.
It will make preschool free for families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $70,000 a year for a family of four.
And it will subsidize preschool on a sliding scale for families earning up to 760 percent of the federal poverty level, or $185,000 for a family of four. Families making more will receive a 5 percent tuition subsidy.
The property tax, as Seattle Mayor Ed Murray puts it, will cost homeowners each month less than the cost of a latté.
And the potential benefits? Research suggests that the earlier we invest in children, the greater the returns, for both kids and society. And those returns can play out in higher graduation rates, lower crime, better job outcomes and less welfare use. Spend a dollar of public money on early childhood interventions like great preschool, and society may get backanywhere from $1.80 to $17.07.
Emily Badger is a reporter for Wonkblog covering urban policy. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic Cities.
***
Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris: On Taxes

25 December, 1783

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law. All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html 


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Cop Killer Eric Frein's Hideout Contained New Testament And Religious Images

November 5, 2014, 6:41 pm
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What Eric Frein Kept in His Airport Hangar Hideout

Nov 5, 2014

By 
RHEANA MURRAY
Digital Reporter
PHOTO: Police officers search the hangar within the abandoned Birchwood Resort, where Eric Frein was caught on Thursday, in Tannersville, Pa., Oct. 31, 2014.
Mark Makela/Reuters
PHOTO: Police officers search the hangar within the abandoned Birchwood Resort, where Eric Frein was caught on Thursday, in Tannersville, Pa., Oct. 31, 2014.

The long list of supplies reveals just how prepared Frein, accused of shooting two state troopers in September, was to survive a manhunt.
Police also found cooking supplies including pots, a propane stove, silverware and even seasoning, soy sauce and salt and pepper.
Frein, who evaded capture for nearly seven weeks in the woods of Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, had stored maps, a radio, multiple piece of camouflage clothing, a raincoat, binoculars, matches, twine and more in the old Birchwood-Pocono Airpark hangar, according to the search warrant.
He also appeared prepared to keep up good hygiene while in hiding -- the haul included nail clippers, a shaving kit, dental supplies and laundry detergent.
The hangar, abandoned for 16 years, served as Frein's final hideout before he was captured near there last Thursday, ending a massive manhunt that sent fear throughout rural Pennsylvania, closed schools and hurt local businesses.
PHOTO: Maureen and Werner Kuesters of Tannersville, Pa., look over the airport hangar and airstrip at the abandoned Birchwood Resort grounds in Pocono Township, Pa., Nov. 4, 2014, where accused Pennsylvania State Trooper killer Eric Frein was arrested.
Michael J. Mullen/The Scranton Times-Tribune/AP Photo
PHOTO: Maureen and Werner Kuesters of Tannersville, Pa., look over the airport hangar and airstrip at the abandoned Birchwood Resort grounds in Pocono Township, Pa., Nov. 4, 2014, where accused Pennsylvania State Trooper killer Eric Frein was arrested.
Police recovered Frein's notebooks, a 14-page note and typed pages with random prayers, along with various ammunition, in the search. Police previously found weapons, ammunition, food and other supplies scattered throughout the woods in weeks leading up to the capture.
Frein, 31, appeared in court on Friday and was charged with first-degree murder, homicide of a law enforcement officer, attempted murder and possession of weapons of mass destruction. He did not enter a plea.
An attorney for Frein declined to comment.
PHOTO: Eric Frein, charged with the murder of Pennsylvania State Trooper Cpl. Byron Dickson and critically wounding Trooper Alex Douglass, is taken to prison after a preliminary hearing in Pike County Courthouse on Oct. 31, 2014 in Milford, Pa.
Michael J. Mullen/The Scranton Times-Tribune/AP Photo
PHOTO: Eric Frein, charged with the murder of Pennsylvania State Trooper Cpl. Byron Dickson and critically wounding Trooper Alex Douglass, is taken to prison after a preliminary hearing in Pike County Courthouse on Oct. 31, 2014 in Milford, Pa.
He is accused of opening fire on the Blooming Grove police barracks on Sept. 12, killing one trooper and injuring another, before he fled to the woods.
Police have said Frein, a survivalist who often spent time in the woods, had extensively planned his attack. They discovered he searched on his computer for "how to escape a manhunt,""can police track cell phones," and "SWAT raid tactics" before he went missing, police said.
Frein is being held at the Pike County Correctional Facility in Lords Valley, Penn., nearby his home in Canadensis.



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Sister Wendy Beckett On Gay Marriage And Condoms

November 5, 2014, 7:55 pm
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In an interview for the Huffington Post in May 2007, Verena von Pfetten asked: You've spoken out about gay marriage. How do you balance what you believe with what you have sworn to uphold? Sister Wendy replied as follows: "I believe in loyalty. We should respect our church, but never believe that the church has the last word. The church is saying 'this', but I believe that sooner or later 'this' will change. 'This' is not the mind of our Lord. God is all love. It's a delicate balancing thing. The Church has changed its position over the years, and because the spirit is with the Church, in the end the Church will always get it right. But in the end. The spirit of the Church is the meaning of love, which hasn't yet, perhaps, been fully understood."[6]

Alan: Conservative Catholics are keen on accusing liberals of choosing those components of Catholic culture that accord with their personal preferences, as if they were making selections from a "menu." 

Given the rigid nature of conservative Catholics, especially as rigidity manifests in sexual matters, it is not surprising that the teaching of Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae (as it relates to artificial contraception) is championed as a sine qua non litmus of orthodoxy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanae_Vitae 

But why do these same Catholics gloss over their own menu selectivity when ignoring multiple teachings in Pope John XXIII's encyclical Pacem in Terris? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacem_in_Terris
Here is a list of notable quotations from Good Pope John's 1963 encyclical. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/pacem-in-terris-and-world-government.html

I imagine conservatives will defend against the moral injunctions that John sets forth claiming they are not "matters of faith or morals" but rather "matters of custom and discipline." 
The Etymology of "Morality"

By my lights, quibbling over the definition of "morals" are no more credible than arguments between royalists and revolutionaries, each accusing the other of such grotesque impropriety that they are rightly upbraide as unsuitable for leadership. (I often wonder what percentage of today's flag-waving patriots would have supported England during the American Revolution. My sister tells me that when George Washington's troops were starving at Valley Forge, neighboring farmers had ample stores but would not share them with disorderly upstarts challenging The Divine Right of Kings.)
The matter of doctrinal mutability receives rigorous treatment in "Why The Church Must Change: A Necessary Conversation." http://www.amazon.com/Why-Catholic-Church-Must-Change/dp/1442220783# 

In this study, theologian Margaret Nutting Ralph cites passages from different encyclicals (and other magisterial documents) that are in frank contradiction of one another. 

Insightful reviews of "Why The Church Must Change" are available at St. Anthony's Messenger - http://www.stanthonymessenger.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=378 - and the National Catholic Reporter - http://ncronline.org/books/2013/10/catholic-exodus-spurs-call-change .

"If Only Sister Wendy Beckett Had Taken Her 

Lead From Bishop Egan When Talking About 

Condoms On The Radio

Sister Wendy Beckett, the art critic and contemplative nun who lives the life of a hermit in a caravan next to a Carmelite convent, was on Desert Island Discs just before Christmas. I enjoyed listening to her – but, like the curate’s egg, only in parts. Asked by the presenter, Kirsty Young, about her interest in art, she replied that “If you don’t know about God, art … can set you free.” She believes that we are all born with an instinct for art, “a kind of disguised God”, and she hopes that in her small way she might have helped some people “find God in beauty”.
I agree with all this, but I also recall reading the 19th-century French art critic, the Abbé Brémond, who pointed out that the humblest prayer is more significant and enduring than the greatest poetry ever written. Beauty can be seductive as a supreme cultural experience yet unaccompanied by what we call “grace”.
Towards the end of the programme Kirsty Young asked, as presenters usually do when confronted by a Catholic, what were Sister Wendy’s views on “condoms”. At this point I assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Sister Wendy might talk about another kind of “beauty”: that of marital, self-giving love. She didn’t. After a long pause and choosing her words carefully, she implied that the wheels of the Church turned very slowly and that therefore it would take a long time before it would change its stance on this subject. What was one to make of this? It was confusing to the listener as nothing was quite spelt out – but the implication was as I have indicated: that in the passage of time the Church would change her teaching on birth control. If this is what Sister Wendy intended to imply, she gave some scandal to her listeners, including Kirsty Young who appeared quite satisfied with what she said.
What she should have stated, simply and clearly, was that the Church cannot alter her fundamental moral and ethical teachings as they are not hers to change; her task is to re-present them to each new generation for the beauty, truth and goodness they contain. A friend who also listened to Sister Wendy and who is very well up on Church teaching, emailed me to say she could not make head or tail of the nun’s response. My view is that Sister Wendy should stick to art, about which she knows a great deal and about which she communicates very lucidly – and leave questions about the “c” word to those better qualified than her to explain.
One of those so qualified is the new bishop of Portsmouth, Philip Egan. On the Sunday after Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Family, he actually circulated a pastoral letter on Humanae Vitae, a subject he agreed was “challenging and controversial” (which is why Kirsty Young raised it, naturally). He pointed out that the two big debates in our society today revolve around “sex and authority. What is the truth about human sexuality? And who can tell me how to live my life?” He described Humanae Vitae as a prophetic document for emphasising that the “two aspects of sexuality – love and life – cannot be divorced”, and pointed to the “catastrophic consequences” for society, 45 years on, now that sex has been reduced merely to a “leisure activity”.
As Bishop Egan says, Pope Paul’s encyclical has become the “elephant in the room” that no one mentions and he urged everyone in this Year of Faith “to discover again the Church’s wonderful vision of love and life, as expounded in the Catechism”. I think Kirsty Young should invite Bishop Egan to be a guest on Desert Island Discs and that Sister Wendy should ponder his pastoral letter. More even than the contemplation of great works of art we need, as the Bishop writes, “an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our land [so that] the people of England find their way to salvation and happiness in Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, ever present and active in his Church”.

Feed: 
Catholic Herald
Link: 
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/01/02/if-only-sister-wendy-...



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The Stunning Ignorance Of Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski

November 6, 2014, 4:37 am
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With Republicans' dominance on Election Day, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska is on track to be chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
With Republicans' dominance on Election Day, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska is on track to be chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.


"If You Think D.C. Is Awful Now, Wait Until Wednesday," Jonathan Alter


http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/jonathan-alter-if-you-think-dc-is-awful.html

Alan: Many Republicans are not just ignorant but aggressively ignorant. Proudly ignorant. Boastfully ignorant. 

On election night in a hotel ballroom in Anchorage, Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski picked up a chair and waved it over her head.
"I am the chair-maaaaaaaaaaan!" she shouted.
The Republican takeover Tuesday night puts Murkowski in charge of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. That's great news for Alaska, which is always eager for the Feds to allow more oil drilling up here. But what does her chairmanship mean for the other side of that coin — global warming?
At that same election-night party, Murkowski said she takes climate change seriously.
"I come from a state where we see a warming. We're seeing it with increased water temperatures; we're seeing it with ice that is thinner; we're seeing it with migratory patterns that are changing," she said. "So I look at this and I say this is something that we must address."
But does she mean we should address the cause of global warming? Hard to say, since she's apparently not so sure what the cause is — or that mankind is to blame. She mentioned a volcano she had heard about in Iceland.
"The emissions that are being put in the air by that volcano are a thousand years' worth of emissions that would come from all of the vehicles, all of the manufacturing in Europe," she said.
Orca Inlet, Cordova's fishing harbor, on a blustery day this month. Commercial fishing is the small Alaskan town's primary industry.

Remembering The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

25 Years After Spill, Alaska Town Struggles Back From 'Dead Zone'

"What can I say?" wonders Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a leading expert on climate change. "It's simply untrue. I don't know where she gets that number from."
Oppenheimer says it's actually the other way around: Annual emissions from Europe are 10 times bigger than the annual emissions of all volcanoes put together. And he says the argument misses a bigger point: Humans are adding carbon dioxide to what was a balanced system.
"So not only is the number wrong, but the context is highly deceptive," he says.
But casting doubt on mankind's role kind of makes sense in Alaska — a place where the warming itself is becoming too hard to ignore.
Oil, carried here by the Trans-Alaska pipeline, is fundamental to the state's economy. But Alaskans also face the effect of climate change in their daily lives.i
Oil, carried here by the Trans-Alaska pipeline, is fundamental to the state's economy. But Alaskans also face the effect of climate change in their daily lives.
Al Grillo/AP
In the very same hotel where the Republicans had their victory party, there is a climate change conference going on. It's a conference for land managers who are dealing with global warming right now: They're talking about things like what to do when melting permafrost moves your sewer pipes and water runs the wrong way. This isn't a conference about stopping global warming — it's about living with it.
Scientist Scott Rupp of the University of Alaska Fairbanks admits Alaskans tend to avoid talking about the cause.
"You know, that's a tough thing for a place like Alaska," he says. "I mean, there's no way of getting around the pragmatic fact that we depend on fossil fuels for the majority of our state budget. We also experience the highest energy prices anywhere in the country."
Rupp says talking about the cause politicizes things.
"But if we stick to the impacts part of things, which is part of the equation of living in Alaska — and has been for 10, 20 years now — you can kind of side-step that," he adds.
On the forefront of global warming, Alaska and its politicians have settled into a kind of acceptance. Instead of arguing about causes, they've decided to concentrate on trying to adapt.

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