You be the judge. Is this Australia's 'dumbest criminal'? The police in the state of Queensland think so, and have posted a video with the appropriate theme music to make their case ...
- Mark
- Mark
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
JON STEWART RIPS FOX NEWS FOR POVERTY-SHAMING
Another classic. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart shows, once again, how clueless and narrow-minded Fox News is when it comes to understanding what they do ... and how much they despise the poor.
- Mark
- Mark
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
COMMUNICATING WITH NATURE ... THE WHALE SONG
This is awesome. The Whale Song ...
Click here for the background story to the Whale Song.
- Mark
Kudos to Tom for the link.
Click here for the background story to the Whale Song.
- Mark
Kudos to Tom for the link.
MID-WEEK READING (May 13, 2015)
Obama's plans for trade deals with Asia and Europe in tatters after Senate vote (The Guardian).
The 10 biggest lies you've been told about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Salon).
Senator Warren hits back at Obama in Pacific Rim fight (Yahoo News).
CHARTER SCHOOLS ... SERIOUSLY?
Education reform's big lie: The real reason the right has declared war on our public schools ... they see public school budgets as pots of gold to be mined for private gain (Salon).
Fraud, waste, and lies: Charter schools cheating communities out of millions of dollars (Common Dreams).
Charter school dissolves amid charges of nepotism, fiscal mismanagement, enrollment fraud (Recordnet).
D.C. Charter school founder to pay $3 million to settle suit (Philanthropy).
THE CRIMINALIZATION OF YOUTH IN AMERICA ...
11-year-old has criminal and felony charges against him for kicking trash can in school (Daily Kos).
The school to prison pipeline (Daily Kos).
Stop the school-to-prison pipeline (Rethinking Schools).
THINGS WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT
How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about (Washington Post).
Entitlements are bankrupting America, but the rich keep taking them (Nation of Change).
This is why I only have one broker (who I don't really need; call it 'welfare') ... Cities and states paying massive fees to Wall Street (Nation of Change).
The Feds spend $3.3 billion fueling charter schools but no one knows what it's really bought (Truth Out).
AN EYE ON THE 1%
How a 1% sales tax on Wall Street helps all of us (UFAA).
Charting American oligarchy: How the .01% contributes 42% of all campaign funds (Zero Hedge).
The rich are not entitled to bankrupt the United States (Buzz Flash).
Why the rich don't care about jobs for the rest of us (Buzz Flash).
YEAH, THERE'S NO FREE MARKET
Why does money flow freely across borders but refugees die trying (Buzz Flash)?
How BofA's depositors funded the bank's "Fugazi P&L" (Zero Hedge).
The Baltimore riots: The stunning [but common sense] comments made by Orioles owner's son (Zero Hedge).
THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS
Kansas GOP Senator Mary Pilcher-Cook wants to criminalize "harmful" books (Forward Progressives).
Rand Paul petition: Universities are 'left-wing indoctrination centers' that 'oppress' conservatives (Right Wing Watch).
Is Ted Cruz the Stupidest 'Smartest' Man on Earth? Claims that 'liberal fascism' is going after American Christians (Daily Kos).
MISCELLANEOUS
Holy Trinity of whistle blowers: Statues of Assange, Snowden, and Manning go up in Berlin (RT).
For-profit college closures: The next billion dollar taxpayer bailout (Zero Hedge).
For profit college operator accused of fraud (USA Today).
- Mark
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
THE POLLUTION OF THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT ... ONE OF THE MANY STORIES THAT EXPLAIN HOW IT HAPPENED
- Mark
Hat tip to Tom for the link.
Monday, May 11, 2015
CALIFORNIA ... THE NATION'S MOST UNEQUAL STATE
Is California the nation's most unequal state? According to a recent study put out by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), it sure is ...
In the SSRC's report "Measure of America" we learn about the living conditions and opportunities that exist for Americans in each of our nation's 435 congressional districts.
While things look positively great in the Silicon Valley (where I grew up), they're not so good if you drive just 4 hours southeast, into the heart of California's Central Valley, also known as the San Joaquin Valley (where I currently live).
 |
| The San Joaquin Valley stretches from the city of Stockton - a few hours west of San Francisco - to the mountain ranges just south of Bakersfield. |
What you see in the report helps to explain why we launched the Center for Social Justice several weeks ago here at California State University, Bakersfield.
You can read the SSRC report here. You can check out individual district profiles by playing with the interactive map here.
- Mark
DESALINATION ... CALIFORNIA'S FUTURE?
Israel's desalination technology ... could it help out in California?
In the FYI category, some admittedly pro-industry "Desalination Myths and Misconceptions" ...
- Mark
In the FYI category, some admittedly pro-industry "Desalination Myths and Misconceptions" ...
- Mark
Sunday, May 10, 2015
NAT GEO'S FASCINATNG HISTORY OF MOTHER'S DAY
 |
| Anna Jarvis, the force behind first Mother's Day. |
Via National Geographic, we get this interesting history of Mother's Day, which was written in 2014 ...
As Mother's Day turns 100 this year [2014], it's known mostly as a time for brunches, gifts, cards, and general outpourings of love and appreciation.
But the holiday has more somber roots: It was founded for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace. And when the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion, Anna Jarvis, gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium.
It all started in the 1850s, when West Virginia women's organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis—Anna's mother—held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College. The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865.
In the postwar years Jarvis and other women organized Mother's Friendship Day picnics and other events as pacifist strategies to unite former foes. Julia Ward Howe, for one — best known as the composer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" — issued a widely read "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870, calling for women to take an active political role in promoting peace.
Around the same time, Jarvis had initiated a Mother's Friendship Day for Union and Confederate loyalists across her state. But it was her daughter Anna who was most responsible for what we call Mother's Day — and who would spend most of her later life fighting what it had become ...
You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.
- Mark
Saturday, May 9, 2015
MARKETS SURGING, AGAIN ... WHY YOU SHOULDN'T CARE, AND PERHAPS EVEN BE A LITTLE WORRIED
Over the past 5 years the New York Stock Exchange has surged upwards by 61 percent. Yesterday - May 8, 2015 - the NYSE closed near 12,000, with the DJIA closing at over 18,000.
Should we be jumping for joy? No. The graphs below - which I discussed 2 years ago - will help you understand why.
THE BAILOUT IN PERPETUITY PAYS OFF
Check out what pumping trillions of dollars into the economy - with TARP, the stimulus, and regular (FOMC) money dumps - did for the S&P 500 from 2009 through 2013 ...
What we learn here is that after more than 1,230 days of market interventions through 2013 by Congress and the Federal Reserve (what market players like to call "quantitative easing") the S&P 500 soared to record highs, again.
Now that's the magic of the market at work for you [wink, wink] ...
Anyways, staying with our narrative, we know that pumping up Wall Street began long before the 2008 market collapse. In fact, ever since Alan Greenspan became chair of the Federal Reserve in 1987 - and came to the rescue of LTCM - the Federal Reserve has propped up the market players on Wall Street on a regular basis. We even have a name for using the resources of the Federal Reserve to backstop and support Wall Street every time it gets a headache: The Greenspan Put.
And it's done wonders over the past 30 years to bloat profits and help insulate Wall Street from their own recklessness and stupidity. Check out what's been happening with the Dow Jones Industrial Average since Alan Greenspan hit the scene ...
Again, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is well over 18,000 today, which is 4,000 points above where it was just two years ago.
So, yeah, in just 25-plus years since the arrival of Alan Greenspan the DJIA has gone from hovering around 2,000 in the late 1980s to over 18,000 today. With government bailouts and the Greenspan Put pumping guaranteed money into the economy a monkey picking stocks with darts could have made cash in our market over the past 25 years.
Again, that's the magic of the market at work for you ...
AGAIN, IT'S THE MONEY DUMPS
But this isn't the end of the story. After making so much (cheap) money available to corporate America and the financial sector the Federal Reserve has watched over a system that has seen the size of our money (dollar) supply grow like the Octomom after fertility treatments. Check it out ...
In real simple terms M-1 (blue line) represents the amount of money Main Street (you and me) has in its collective pockets and checking accounts. By 2010 this was about $1.8 trillion.
M-3 (green line) represents the amount of money Wall Street and corporate America's biggest financial players have to spend, or have a claim on. By 2006 this amounted to roughly $10.29 trillion (over the past 9 years M-3 has hovered between $13 trillion to $15 trillion).
Here's what the increase in the money supply looks like since the Fed really started pumping money into the system immediately after the 2008 market collapse ...
THE RESULT ...
So, just what has all of these Fed-led market interventions meant for corporate America? Pretty simple. Record profits (blue line).
The unsettling part here is that profits are both concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people, and are growing at a rate that far outpaces what we produce (GDP) every year (a development Peter Drucker discussed more than 25 years ago when he explained how the real economy was increasingly separating or decoupled from the symbolic economy).
At the end of the day, after dumping trillions of dollars into the economy, the "market success" we're seeing on Wall Street is really nothing to get excited about ... that is, unless you're one of the market players reaping the financial benefits of America's money dumps on to Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the bailout driven gravy train has to end. It always does. Which is why we should all be a bit worried.
- Mark
Should we be jumping for joy? No. The graphs below - which I discussed 2 years ago - will help you understand why.
THE BAILOUT IN PERPETUITY PAYS OFF
So everyone knows that the economy and stock market was in a death spiral at the beginning of 2009, right? Then Congress and the Federal Reserve came to the rescue and pumped trillions back into the economy with bailout cash and other "legacy asset" guarantees for market players.
Check out what pumping trillions of dollars into the economy - with TARP, the stimulus, and regular (FOMC) money dumps - did for the S&P 500 from 2009 through 2013 ...
What we learn here is that after more than 1,230 days of market interventions through 2013 by Congress and the Federal Reserve (what market players like to call "quantitative easing") the S&P 500 soared to record highs, again.
Now that's the magic of the market at work for you [wink, wink] ...
Anyways, staying with our narrative, we know that pumping up Wall Street began long before the 2008 market collapse. In fact, ever since Alan Greenspan became chair of the Federal Reserve in 1987 - and came to the rescue of LTCM - the Federal Reserve has propped up the market players on Wall Street on a regular basis. We even have a name for using the resources of the Federal Reserve to backstop and support Wall Street every time it gets a headache: The Greenspan Put.
And it's done wonders over the past 30 years to bloat profits and help insulate Wall Street from their own recklessness and stupidity. Check out what's been happening with the Dow Jones Industrial Average since Alan Greenspan hit the scene ...
Again, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is well over 18,000 today, which is 4,000 points above where it was just two years ago.
So, yeah, in just 25-plus years since the arrival of Alan Greenspan the DJIA has gone from hovering around 2,000 in the late 1980s to over 18,000 today. With government bailouts and the Greenspan Put pumping guaranteed money into the economy a monkey picking stocks with darts could have made cash in our market over the past 25 years.
Again, that's the magic of the market at work for you ...
AGAIN, IT'S THE MONEY DUMPS
But this isn't the end of the story. After making so much (cheap) money available to corporate America and the financial sector the Federal Reserve has watched over a system that has seen the size of our money (dollar) supply grow like the Octomom after fertility treatments. Check it out ...
In real simple terms M-1 (blue line) represents the amount of money Main Street (you and me) has in its collective pockets and checking accounts. By 2010 this was about $1.8 trillion.
M-3 (green line) represents the amount of money Wall Street and corporate America's biggest financial players have to spend, or have a claim on. By 2006 this amounted to roughly $10.29 trillion (over the past 9 years M-3 has hovered between $13 trillion to $15 trillion).
Here's what the increase in the money supply looks like since the Fed really started pumping money into the system immediately after the 2008 market collapse ...
THE RESULT ...
So, just what has all of these Fed-led market interventions meant for corporate America? Pretty simple. Record profits (blue line).
The unsettling part here is that profits are both concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people, and are growing at a rate that far outpaces what we produce (GDP) every year (a development Peter Drucker discussed more than 25 years ago when he explained how the real economy was increasingly separating or decoupled from the symbolic economy).
At the end of the day, after dumping trillions of dollars into the economy, the "market success" we're seeing on Wall Street is really nothing to get excited about ... that is, unless you're one of the market players reaping the financial benefits of America's money dumps on to Wall Street.
Unfortunately, the bailout driven gravy train has to end. It always does. Which is why we should all be a bit worried.
- Mark
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