May 2013 archive

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This is an Open Thread.

At Beat the Press, Dean Baker gives a lesson in logic:

• Economics 101 for WAPO: Supply and Demand in the Labor Market

At Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman, defends his role in the ’08/’09 stimulus debate:

• The Stimulus Debate, Revisited;

and dissects John Maynard Keynes’ views on the liquidity trap:

• Keynes’s Not So Big Mistake.

From Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel continues to document the war crimes:

• Brennan Cedes to Feinstein on Torture Tape Destroyer But “Defiant” on Torture Report;
• Human Rights Groups: Don’t Let John Brennan Cover Up the Torture He Condoned.

Two articles by Jon Walker at FDL Action on Medicare:

• Study Takes on the Myth of Medicare Cost-Shifting;
• Why Insurance Exchanges Won’t Work: People Don’t Like Choosing Insurance

From Yves Smith at naked capitalism, an article by Robert H. Wade, a Professor of Political Economy, London School of Economics and a winner of the Leontief Prize in Economics for 2008:

• Our Misleading Measure of Income and Wealth Inequality: The Standard Gini Coefficient

While the news media has been gushing over guns, Benghazi (again) and the three women rescued in Cleveland, OH, the House of Representatives has been really busy aiding and abetting grand theft by the banks and Wall St., as noted by DSWright at FDL News Desk:

• House Moves To Gut Derivatives Regulations Again

Finally Charles P. Pierce at the Esquire’s Daily Politics Blog:

• Good Guys Are Not Bulletproof

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Eight of the 14 Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014, three from red states, have taken a stand against Pres. Obama’s proposed Social Security cuts:

The majority of Senate Democrats running for reelection in 2014, including three running in red states, have broken with President Barack Obama and are opposing his effort to cut Social Security benefits, imperiling the austerity project known as the “grand bargain.” [..]

Democratic Sens. Kay Hagan (N.C.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Mark Pryor (Ark.), all running in states won by Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, have publicly opposed the president’s effort, going so far as to co-sponsor a Senate resolution against chained CPI last week. Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), running in bluer states, also co-sponsored the resolution. [..]

Other Senate Democrats up for reelection who didn’t sign the resolution were still unfavorably disposed toward chained CPI. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) opposes the cost-of-living cut, her office confirmed to HuffPost, and has said Social Security should be off the table in debt talks.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) has been open to the chained CPI cut, but insisted a “circle of protection” must be established for the most vulnerable Americans.

Alaskan Senator Mark Begich will introduced two bill that would protect Social Security benefits:

Begich plans to introduce the Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act and the Social Security Fairness Act of 2013 when he returns to Washington, DC next week. He says his plan has three points. The Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act would remove a cap on high income contributions. The cap is now at 113,700 dollars. Removing the cap would make high income earners pay into Social Security just like everyone else, he says. [..]

The second part of that bill would revise how SS payments are adjusted to better reflect how America’s senior spend their income. Currently, payments are based on a Consumer Price Index model that does not accurately reflect higher costs seniors pay, for medications, for example. The bill would create a CPI – E for elders.

The Social Security Fairness Act would remove penalties that are now placed on retirees who worked more than one job, paid into Social Security, but then retired under a different retirement system. Under current law, they are denied their Social Security benefits Many government workers and some teachers in Alaska fall into this category.

It’s about time the Democrats stood up to the Republican in the White House.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

May 7 is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 238 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1824, the world premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. The performance is conducted by Michael Umlauf under the deaf composer’s supervision. It was Beethoven’s first appearance on stage in 12 years. Over the years the symphony has been performed for both political and non-political from the eve of Hitler’s birthday, to the celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The Ode to Joy was used as the anthem by Kosovo when it declared it’s independence in 2008.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

This is an Open Thread.

From CounterPunch a really good article by Jeffery St. Clair, on Obama’s The Game of Drones.

From Dean Baker at his blog Beat the Press: Tyler Cowen Recognizes Public Goods Problem of Pandemics: More Money for Drug Companies

At Corrente, letgetitdone posts Make ’em Prove the Causality before They Cause Any More Suffering: Part Two, the Fall and After

George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Second Lord of the Treasury of the United Kingdom, is about to get “spanked” by the IMF for not “living it up and spending more.”, from Paul Krugman at Conscious of a Liberal: George Osborne’s Fear of Ghosts

Apparently austerity loving economist said something really, really offensive about John Maynard Keynes, get taken to the wood shed by Corey Robin at Crooked Timber: Edmund Burke to Niall Ferguson: You know nothing of my work. You mean my whole theory is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

Over at FDL Book Salon, Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute: Welcomes Robert Kuttner, Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility

And a h/t to ql at Eschaton this morning noted this link from Avedon’s Sideshow to an article by David Roberts at Grist: Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

Cross posted at The Stars Hollow Gazette

In the United States, 62% of all bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills. It is not among who you would think but most often effects middle aged, middle class, college educated homeowners. 80% of those people had health insurance, so why are they filing for bankruptcy? No other industrial country has this problem.

Our fellow blogger, lambert, writing for naked capitalism, featured this video from Real News Network:

Paul Jay of the Real News Network interviews Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Baltimore who advocates for a national single payer health system, Medicare for all, and Kevin Zeese, co-director of It’s Our Economy, an organization that advocates for democratizing the economy.

At his blog, Corrente, lambert continues to document the atrocities of the Obamacare ClusterFuck.