A Great Blog

Does Buffett worry about underconsumption?

2011-08-15T14:39:00.001-04:00

Perhaps buffett is starting to worry that they'll be no one left to buy cars, microwaves, computers... and then under-consumption will be back to haunt us again.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

By WARREN E. BUFFETT

Published: August 14, 2011

"OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors." READ MORE

What Happened to Obama? New York Times, Drew Weston, EMORY

2011-08-07T20:58:00.000-04:00

Must read Drew Weston's op ed piece in today's NY Times. Weston is a psychoanalyst and psychologist at Emory University. He is spot on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html

New York Times Headline: PTSD Drug Not Working for Vets

2011-08-03T08:02:00.000-04:00

"Drugs widely prescribed to treat severe post-traumatic stress symptoms for veterans are no more effective than placebos and come with serious side effects, including weight gain and fatigue, researchers reported on Tuesday.
The surprising finding, from the largest study of its kind in veterans, challenges current treatment standards so directly that it could alter practice soon among doctors treating returning military personnel, some experts said.
Ten percent to 20 percent of those who see heavy combat develop lasting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and about a fifth of those who get treatment receive a prescription for a so-called antipsychotic medication, according to government numbers.
The new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, focused on one such medication, Risperdal. But experts said that its results most likely extend to the entire class, including drugs like Seroquel, Geodon and Abilify." NY Times, August 3, 2011, Benedict Carey

Read More: On my website, under Hot Topics, you will find the JAMA article posted.

Read More at NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/health/research/03psych.html?_r=1&ref=posttraumaticstressdisorder

NY Times Reports on Corrupt Social Workers

2011-08-02T15:50:00.001-04:00

Reaping Millions in Nonprofit Care for Disabled

By RUSS BUETTNER

New York Times, August 2, 2011

Medicaid money created quite a nice life for the Levy brothers from Flatbush, Brooklyn.
The brothers, Philip and Joel, earned close to $1 million a year each as the two top executives
running a Medicaid-financed nonprofit organization serving the developmentally disabled.
They each had luxury cars paid for with public money. And when their children went to college,
they could pass on the tuition bills to their nonprofit group.
Philip H. Levy went as far as charging the organization $50,400 for his daughter’s living
expenses one year when she attended graduate school at New York University.
That money paid not for a dorm room, but rather it helped her buy a co-op apartment in Greenwich Village.
Read Full Story, NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/nyregion/for-executives-at-group-homes-generous-pay-and-little-oversight.html

Paul Krugman, New York Times, The Centrist Cop-Out July 28, 2011

2011-07-30T12:27:00.000-04:00

In Yesterday's NY Times Paul Krugman writes that,
"The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands."

See full article at

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/opinion/krugman-the-centrist-cop-out.html?_r=1&ref=paulkrugman

Liberty University Counsel, Shawn Akers, Ranting about Gay Rights Advocates, Calls them the Real bullies

2011-07-30T10:36:00.000-04:00

Don't miss this virulent homophobe at work ranting and raving at Liberty University. Sounds like a member of Taliban. http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/individuals/shawn-akers

Right Wing Takes Anti-LGBT Global

2011-07-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

See recent posting by Political Research Associates on U.S. Conservative Globalization of Anti-LGBT agenda. http://www.publiceye.org/portal/top-lgbtq-page.html

The Oklahoma City Bombing and Recent Right Wing Activity in Norway

2011-07-30T09:13:00.000-04:00

Events in Norway in recent days once again vindicate Leonard Zeskind, author of great new book and summary of his life's work, Blood and Politics. Lenny has for years been arguing that in the absence of a political left the center would be continuously pulled to the right and produce the very events we've seen at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and more recently in Norway. Lenny's book is a must read.

Reading Iris Murdoch

2011-07-30T09:12:00.000-04:00

"If we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply that we are not free, certainly not. But it implies that the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments. The moral life, on this view, is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices. What happens in between such choices is indeed what is crucial." (p. 36)
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good. 1970, London: Routledge Press

Zizek on the End of Times

2011-07-08T09:05:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Slavoj Zizek's new book, Living in the End Times. He's a wild and crazy writer, as always, but full of insight, incredibly integrated. Denial about the environment on my mind. Seems that everywhere we're operating on the wrong scale. Everything is too big: schools, cars, roads, planes, cities, farms, hospitals, stores. We can't possibly tackle environmental problems, even the little ones, until we confront the problem of scale. And it looks like we want to deny more than anything the problem of scale. The Amish, and others like them past and present, seem to get this mostly right but often for the wrong reasons. Zizek, too, fails to address the problem of scale.

Just returned from yet another impossible trip on New Jersey, Rt. 1. Cars R us.