Visual source: Newseum
Frank Bruni thinks celebrities want to turn Occupy Wall Street into a publicity opportunity.
The movement’s “we are the 99 percent” motto expresses ire over not only the unaccountability of huge financial institutions but also income inequality in America and the concentration of so much wealth and privilege in so few hands. Every time a wealthy messenger gloms on, that aspect of the message gets muddled and possibly compromise.
And the glomming has begun. With a slowly growing number of actors and musicians paying well-chronicled visits to Zuccotti Park, the movement is in danger of becoming a sticky fly strip for entertainers who like to flaunt their self-styled populism: a gadfly strip.
Some celebrities have been involved in activism for years, or even decades, and have used their notoriety to draw attention to issues that weren't getting attention. It would be wrong to slam the door on these people now. And if some of these people are new to the game, well... so are many of the other people camped at the park.
The New York Times says banks speaking against Dodd-Frank risk the stability of the already fragile system.
Regulators must resist bankers’ pleas. If anything the rules must be tightened, including setting a common risk standard, and the phase-in period is too long. Bankers will keep claiming that the rules will put a drag on growth. These are scare tactics. The real danger is that without more regulation — and larger cash cushions — risky behavior from the banks will set off another meltdown.
Why shouldn't they take risks? If the last three years have taught them anything, it's that the 99% will always be there to catch them when they fall. Then they can go back to sneering down from the balcony, sipping champagne, and thinking of the next way to put their personal gains above the risk to everyone else.
Alexander Stille says America is an accepting system that's made a practice of including outsiders, but at the same time it's become a system that's shutting out more and more.
Other nations seem to face the same challenge: either inclusive, or economically just. Europe has maintained much more economic equality but is struggling greatly with inclusiveness and discrimination, and is far less open to minorities than is the United States.
European countries have done a better job of protecting workers’ salaries and rights but have been reluctant to extend the benefits of their generous welfare state to new immigrants who look and act differently from them. Could America’s lost enthusiasm for income redistribution and progressive taxation be in part a reaction to sharing resources with traditionally excluded groups?
Working for racial justice does not give a free pass on fighting economic disparity. In America, "meritocracy" has gone from being a term of derision into an excuse to give more to those who have more, and lip service to noble ideals has taken the place of fighting inequality.
Seamus McGraw looks at the pressures farmers face to allow fracking on their land.
Standing there, in what used to be my family’s pasture, I was surprised by my own feelings as I watched a small army of workers rev up the machines that would crack open the Marcellus Shale deep below my land, the same rich cache of gas that New York now seems poised to exploit.
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It takes as many as 400 truck trips to complete a single well, and that’s not even counting the fuel-guzzling equipment needed to alter the ancient land to carve out the three- to five-acre drill pad itself. Once that’s done, the diesel drill rigs arrive, towering diamond-tipped syringes that work round the clock, often for two weeks at a stretch, to bore down 7,500 feet or so into the Marcellus before making a 90-degree turn to bore another mile and a half laterally. It’s a dirty, noisy, energy-intensive process, and despite the industry’s boast that natural gas burns 30 percent cleaner than oil, in the Marcellus the hunt for it is still fueled almost entirely by diesel.
And that’s not the only resource that’s consumed. It takes millions of gallons of water to break up the shale, and at least 30 percent remains underground forever. The rest of it, along with the slightly radioactive, highly saline and heavy-metal-laden water that has existed alongside the shale for 400 million years, flows up to the surface over the lifetime of the well.
More long term destruction for short term gain. It's hard to blame the money-short farmers who allow the drilling, but hard not to blame the drillers who know what's going to happen.
The New York Times says that a ruling by a federal judge in Virginia is worse than the Supreme Court's Citizens United case.
In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court said corporations and other organizations could make unlimited independent expenditures in political campaigns. But the court said it was not overturning the ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates’ campaigns.
Flouting that precedent, Judge Cacheris ruled that the “logic” of “Citizens United requires that corporations and individuals be afforded equal rights to political speech, unqualified.” He also flouted a 2003 Supreme Court case upholding the ban on direct corporate donations. Judge Cacheris has no basis for rejecting those two decisions, which bind the lower courts until the Supreme Court overturns them.
This is just one observer's opinion, but it looks to me as if the first fruit of the Occupy Movement may be a more general willingness to place limits on corporate involvement in elections. Conservatives like to pretend that unions and other "special interests" have just as much say with candidates. Let's take that bet and ban everything but small contributions from individual citizens. What do you say? Campaign finance reform might not seem like the most critical issue in this economy... but it probably is.
Dana Milbank says Marco Rubio is on the menu for the birthers.
The people who brought you the Barack Obama birth-certificate hullabaloo now have a new target: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a man often speculated to be the next Republican vice presidential nominee. While they’re at it, they also have Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana and perhaps a future presidential candidate, in their sights.
Each man, the birthers say, is ineligible to be president because he runs afoul of the constitutional requirement that a president must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States. Rubio’s parents were Cuban nationals at the time of his birth, and Jindal’s parents were citizens of India.
Live by the crazy, die by the crazy.
Patrick Pexton, the Washington Post ombudsman, seems to be budding, or omming, or... whatever it is, he's doing all the time these days. This week, he dodges the slings and arrows of angry conservatives over a less than 100% flattering portrait of the Koch brothers. The conclusion is that, sure the Koch brothers did business with Iran and broke the law, but other people did to. So singling these guys out, just because they have $50 billion between them and bankroll the conservative agenda, was harsh. Your bud has been ommed, man.
Fred Grimm is befuddled at how little attention is being paid to global warming in the state most likely to be damaged by sea level rise.
The rising sea will wash across great swaths of South Florida. Salt water will contaminate the well fields. Roads and farmland and low-lying neighborhoods will be inundated. The soil will no longer absorb the kind of heavy rainfalls that drenched South Florida last weekend. Septic tanks will fail. Drainage canals won’t drain. Sewers will back up. Intense storms will pummel the beachfront. Mighty rainfalls, in between droughts, will bring more floods.
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The study from FAU’s Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions, adding to an overwhelming scientific consensus about the disastrous effects of global warming, and along with growing hard evidence that temperature changes are already altering the environment, ought to have sent tremors through the halls of government.
Except it didn’t. Perhaps the most peculiar phenomenon associated with global warming has been a burgeoning disdain for climate science even as scientific consensus grows more urgent. Forget the stickier question of whether global warming has been fueled by human activity (as an overwhelming percentage of climate scientists believe), a poll by the Pew last year found that only 59 percent of Americans will even acknowledge the earth is warming, compared to 79 percent just five years ago.
Congrats, deniers. I'm particularly impressed by the hectoring in the comments that scoffs "you probably believe in evolution, too."
From the Department of No-Shite Sherlock, a study of emergency rooms across the US indicates that having a loaded gun at home is dangerous to children.
Figures gathered from emergency rooms across the US show that around 20,000 children are injured by firearms each year - higher than earlier estimates. A further 900 incidents are fatal, says Saranya Srinivasan, a paediatrician at the Children's Hospital in Boston and co-author of the study.
With crime actually going sharply down over the last few years, why are the number of household accidents with guns going up?
Are you ready for yo-yo power?
Let's imagine that we want to get power from a swaying building. The basic device consists of a weight hanging from a cable that is wrapped around a spindle. The spindle itself is attached to a coiled spring. The whole spindle and spring assembly is attached to the building and a generator for power generation. As a building sways, the spindle moves relative to the mass, allowing the spindle to wind and unwind. The unwinding motion winds the coil of the spring, while the winding motion turns the generator.
Sports section: If Albert Pujols played for New York or Boston, the debate this morning would be whether to carve the first baseman's likeness into Mt. Rushmore, or whether he should get a mountain all his own. That is all.