Public Transportation is "too expensive"?

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday July 10, 2006 · 11:11 PM PDT

2006/07/10 · 23:11

I'm tired of hearing anti-public-transportation people complain about how "expensive" public transportation is, and how they don't want "my tax dollars" subsidizing it.

Does anyone really consider how expensive it is to maintain roads? Or how quickly roads deteriorate if they're not maintained? I have pictoral evidence below the fold.

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday June 13, 2006 · 9:23 PM PDT

2006/06/13 · 21:23

Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. I think it was Frank Zappa that said, nah, it's not religion, but sports that is the opiate of the masses.

I look at stuff like the Net Neutrality Tally and I wonder, why don't the media cover this like sports scores? Like the NFL draft? Why aren't people checking this stuff like box scores? Why couldn't some blogger reformat this data into such a look-and-feel?

Can someone come up with a glitzy web interface like ESPN's to make this easy to follow, or even entertaining? Read More

This is what's wrong with the Democrats in D.C.

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday June 09, 2006 · 1:33 PM PDT

2006/06/09 · 13:33

They are spineless peices of corprorate-owned shit:

Yeas Nays PRES NV Republican 215 8 8 Democratic 106 92 3 Independent 1 TOTALS 321 101 11

http://clerk.house.gov/...
Read More

It's all about the lawn signs

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday June 06, 2006 · 9:25 AM PDT

2006/06/06 · 09:25

I'm an idiot. It took me until today to figure out the purpose of lawn signs, and buttons, and bumper stickers, and how indispensible they are.

They're vital for small, off-year races or primary races where 99% of the voters have no idea who these people on the ballot actually are, or what they stand for, or if they're any good.

I didn't put any up this time around, and I'm kicking myself for it. Read More

Shattering "market theory"

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday June 04, 2006 · 7:26 PM PDT

2006/06/04 · 19:26

A fellow member of a private mailing list posted there an outstanding layman's explanation of the Cambridge Capital Controversy. Through his analysis, the concept of "cost of capital" and indeed the whole "market theory" of value falls apart. I found this fascinating. With his permission, I've posted it here. Those who are very wonky on topics economic-- or who enjoy the kind of surprising analysis that completely shatters conventional wisdom-- will really enjoy this.

What jolted me most was this graf:

But we've just shown that the market theory of value is just
as intellectually bankrupt in our case---it can't tell us the
relative price of iron and tin, so we don't know the prevailing
wage or interest rate---and the profit pixie is also rumored to
look out for her own class interest, so we can't "just let it
all work itself out" without reifying some historical power
structure, wrapping it in a market fiction that may be
self-consistent but in no way determined (nor even maintained)
by the economics. It's all politics.

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday May 08, 2006 · 1:07 AM PDT

2006/05/08 · 01:07

How far from the urban center do you need to go, before you find productive farmland?

Try Roma, Italia.

Now try San Francisco, California.

This is a fun little comparative study in land-use. Scroll around Italy, and look at the pattern of small towns surrounded by actively-farmed, productive land.

Now scroll around the Bay Area. Uh-oh. Read More

A Liberal Outdoor Advertising Company?

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 15, 2005 · 10:42 AM PST

2005/12/15 · 10:42

I'm getting really irritated by outdoor advertising behemouths like Lamar, Clear Channel, and their ilk refusing Democratic and Progressive adversiting:

http://www.democrats.org/...

The businessman in me sees the hundreds of thousands of dollars-- perhaps even millions-- in advertising revenue that these right-wing corporations have refused to accept, and I smell opportunity.

I think I could make a business case for a Liberal (or at least non-censoring) Outdoor corporation. Read More

Spin

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 24, 2005 · 8:54 AM PST

2005/11/24 · 08:54

Found this outstanding little documentary, called Spin.

The BitTorrent link (recommended) is here.

A straight web-download (lower quality?) is here. Read More

Environmental Investigative Reporting

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday November 21, 2005 · 8:26 PM PST

2005/11/21 · 20:26

Just discovered a great site with extensive, exhaustively-researched but very punchy, readable, and hard-hitting reporting on environmental corruption:

The Environmental Working Group Read More

Why they lied to us

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday November 08, 2005 · 8:00 AM PST

2005/11/08 · 08:00

I think Kunstler nails it:

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/...

So, as a card-carrying Democrat and as a Progressive who would like to see his country successfully adapt to the changing realities of the world, I propose we stop making ourselves ridiculous by whining about being lied to, because we've only been lying to ourselves. We walked into the War to Save Suburbia with, as the old saying goes, our eyes wide shut.

I'd like to quote the whole thing, but go read it if you want more.
Read More

Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Sci-Fi

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday November 05, 2005 · 7:33 PM PST

2005/11/05 · 19:33

I stumbled upon the most amazing peice of what is very likely some brilliant sci-fi performance art.

http://www.johntitor.com/...
http://www.johntitor.com/...
http://www.johntitor.com/...
http://www.johntitor.com/...

It is written by a man claiming to have been born in 1998 and time-travelling from the year 2036. I don't really much care for sci-fi, but he writes an amazing, provocative, thought-provoking, and in many ways plausible story about life in the USA after the Second American Civil War and World War III. Read More

The Liberal Media

goatchowder

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday October 01, 2005 · 2:42 AM PDT

2005/10/01 · 02:42

It's taken me a long time, but I finally figured out why such a large percentage of people in this country consider the media to be "liberal", no matter how much the media has become almost a complete right-wing mouthpeice.

It's because they're confusing "liberal" with "permissive", and they're thinking of things like the relentless increase in the amount of sex, violence, foul language, idiocy, and general depravity in the media over the last 40 years. By that standard, sure, the media sure as hell ain't "conservative", by any stretch.

We'll never be able to win against that frame. We're speaking two different languages. Read More

Newer
Older

RSS

Public Transportation is "too expensive"?

ESPN for politics

This is what's wrong with the Democrats in D.C.

It's all about the lawn signs

Shattering "market theory"

A Tale of Two Cities

A Liberal Outdoor Advertising Company?

Spin

Environmental Investigative Reporting

Why they lied to us

Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Sci-Fi

The Liberal Media