Warming Wednesdays: Acceptance of Climate reality rebounds in US

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Wednesday February 23, 2011 · 5:35 PM PST

2011/02/23 · 17:35

Welcome to Warming Wednesdays, for background on the idea, please see here!

As if on cue as I was looking for a good climate story for Warming Wednesdays, via the CBC I learned of this fascinating poll (PDF) that had identical polls run in Canada and the US within a couple months to provide a very interesting comparative result for attitudes toward climate change.

The poll questions seem to have originated on the US side, because the same poll has been run four times going back to 2008, which provides for some trending too, which brings us to the title:

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Philmisanthropists

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Tuesday February 22, 2011 · 8:25 PM PST

2011/02/22 · 20:25

Atrios got me thinking about something I've been meaning to do. That is to assemble a half decent list of the known billionaires who fund US politics. All us dirty hippies have long known that far far more and bigger sacks of cash exist on the right, mostly courtesy of an arm length list of ultra-wealthy donors who have decided to misuse their great luck in life on an ideological mission to remake the world into a safer place for Pharohs and Princes. According to Forbes, there were 403 American billionaires in 2010. That isn't the whole set to worry about, I'd say Rev Moon and Rupert Murdoch belong on my list despite not being Americans.

Here's a start:

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Rules blocking States from deficits and debt are dumb

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Friday February 18, 2011 · 5:18 PM PST

2011/02/18 · 17:18

From the little I understand and some moderate research, it appears that only Vermont is allowed to govern itself like a real soverign government, with every other state having some level of "balanced budget" requirement baked in. Some of these are only a requirement that the Budget proposed by the Governor be balanced, some require the Budget plan passed to be balanced, but most others go furthest and require the actual budget as spent to balance every cycle (sometimes two years). That last covers 37 states so it's not like some small group of ultra-red states.

This is all deeply stupid and the cause of a great deal of misery happening today. In Wisconsin, the misery is a deliberate strategy by conservatives and who are happy to have the excuse, but in other States from Califnornia to New York I am not convinced this is the case. Even if it is, again, why give the politicians such a convenient excuse to hide behind? There are already enough people out there who are eager to afflict the afflicted, why provide the get-out-of-blame free-card?

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Warming Wednesdays: Build the consensus to solve the climate crisis

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Wednesday February 16, 2011 · 4:50 PM PST

2011/02/16 · 16:50

Over the past few years I have had a sense of ongoing low level dread over the state of the world's climate. I'm not a scientist nor a climate blogger and my interests in writing usually go to other areas, as do many of yours I'm sure. Contrary to the common right wing view point that we liberals wish for environmental catastrophe in order to impose communism or Sharia, I really would rather this whole issue wasn't a problem, that somehow physics allowed us to send unlimited amounts of carbon and methane into the atmosphere and have no particular effect on the planet.

But I can't ignore it, and I can't leave this fight only to the climate bloggers and other specialists. This is the fight of our century and what we do here as a species will define human history for centuries or millenia hence in a way that almost nothing else happening today in the political debate can be said to. In the most comprehensive review of the costs and consequences yet attempted, the 2005 UK Stern Report initially figured it would cost 1% of world GDP to solve the climate crisis, but could cost up to 20% of GDP in between 50 and 100 years. I think inherently when you, through whatever methodology, however rigorous and conservative arrive at a catastrophe as big as that, you cannot have any assurance the costs would stop there. A one-fifth reduction in world GDP could quite easily itself cause any number of spin off effects that Stern could not include in his report. It could collapse civilization as we know it. As his best case scenario for "business as usual", he predicts a permanent 5% GDP loss. Compare this to the Great Recession, which caused a decline of 0.8% of world GDP in 2009 from 2008 for a sense of what this would mean. It's difficult to describe without abusing superlatives.

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Ending Common Filibuster Myths

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Wednesday September 01, 2010 · 4:23 AM PDT

2010/09/01 · 04:23

Chris Bowers' frontpage campaign to reform the filibuster draws a fair amount of opposition, and a lot of it is based on beliefs that are in error. This diary will correct some common myths.

They are:
"The filibuster saved us from Bush's worst ideas"
"The filibuster would be fine if Harry Reid would just make the Republicans talk!"
"We're going to need the filibuster soon, better keep it."

Scientician

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Sunday March 07, 2010 · 8:53 AM PST

2010/03/07 · 08:53

I need your help. Which states can be governed by a simple majority? If the current US Senate rules are so great, you'd expect them to be replicated in lots of States right? And if any state does dare entrust its governance to the tyranny of the bi-cameral legislature, with their penchant for spending less on redistribution, well we should expect those states to be doing very poorly right, what with all the crazy laws and socialism they will have.

It turns out this is surprisingly hard to answer. The National Conference of State Legislatures produces items like this and this which highlight the complexity of this topic. I started out reading various State senate rules but states like California, with its two-thirds budget requirement mean that majority rule isn't as simple as the absence of a filibuster.

Inside I will try and lay out an approach to answer this.

Scientician

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Wednesday July 16, 2008 · 6:56 AM PDT

2008/07/16 · 06:56

There is some debate about that 4th Circuit court ruling yesterday as to whether it means the Executive branch can designate US citizens arrested within US soil as "enemy combatents" or merely "civilians" (legally present non-citizens).

The ruling is 216 pages because almost every judge wrote his or her own opinion, but I'm pretty sure this ruling is not limited in any meaningful way to civilians and would easily encompass citizens too.

I rebutted in a comment to the diary about this on the rec list, but let me do so again here:

Scientician

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Wednesday February 20, 2008 · 7:52 AM PST

2008/02/20 · 07:52

Last night in his otherwise excellent (apparently extemperaneous) victory address, Barack Obama said something like "When I'm your Commander-In-Chief, I will..." and went on to say some (sensible) things he'd do in defence of the United States.

It's the beginning of the sentence I will take exception with. The President of the United States is not the Commander-in-Chief of the United States; (S)he is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. There is a crucial distinction here and one I am alarmed to see such an accomplished public speaker as Obama fudging.

Scientician

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Thursday January 31, 2008 · 10:16 AM PST

2008/01/31 · 10:16

The broad sweep of economic history for the past century has been a tug of war between unrestrained capitalists and constrained capitalists. It may surprise some that liberals used to be the former and are now the latter, and conservatives were the latter but are now the former.

More importantly, the constrained capitalists are losing and the consequences of that are severe.

Scientician

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Wednesday January 02, 2008 · 10:18 AM PST

2008/01/02 · 10:18

Cross posted at OpenLeft

Something has been nagging me about the primary campaign of 2008 among the Democrats: The lack of direct critiques of conservatism. Both the brand, and the ideology.

Today, Glenn Greenwald crystalized one salient aspect of that, in the bi-partisan consensus on Defense spending:

Scientician

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Thursday November 15, 2007 · 6:12 PM PST

2007/11/15 · 18:12

Some good news, the immunity-free House version has passed 223-189.

Small Edit: Roll call on passage. Only 5 Dems voted against, only 5 Republicans voted for.

Scientician

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Tuesday November 06, 2007 · 5:43 AM PST

2007/11/06 · 05:43

Yesterday, I posted an article by Jim Landers comparing the US and Canadian Health Care systems at a fairly substantive macro level. As a Canadian fiercely in love with our UHC system, I think the article was fair, particularly in its treatment of the inevitable waiting list bogeyman (which I will not deny is an issue, just one usually overblown by opponents of UHC).

Well, when I wrote to him to compliment him on that article, he sent me one he had previously written on the Swiss system. I know very little about the Swiss system, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy beyond seeing how fair Landers' take on Canada was, which inclines me to trust this.

Again, with Landers' permission, here's his take on the Swiss health system.

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Warming Wednesdays: Acceptance of Climate reality rebounds in US

Philmisanthropists

Rules blocking States from deficits and debt are dumb

Warming Wednesdays: Build the consensus to solve the climate crisis

Ending Common Filibuster Myths

Crowdsourcing Request: State Senate filibuster rules

That 4th Circuit Ruling Includes Citizens, not just "Civilians"

"When I'm your Commander-In-Chief"

Towards an Economic Revolution

A Call for More Critiques of Conservatism

Breaking: House passes no-immunity FISA Bill

Comparative Article on Health Care: Switzerland