Motley Moose – Archive

It ain’t gonna happen.  But it would represent a huge opportunity.  Can you imagine if any Democratic candidate called into question the level of information and knowledge possessed by his or her opponent, and the same lack in the punditocracy?  Newt has been scoring points by sneering that the media mis-reports the economy and that no one who disagrees with him knows history.  Basically, he’s surging in the polls since Cain was revealed as a cad and he has wrapped himself in what Jon Stewart has called “dickishness.”  In doing so, Newt puts facts on the table.  

Can you imagine Obama unleashed to confront his sneers about facts with arguments?  It’s a vertiable invitation to be professorial and the context would defuse accusations of arrogance and condescension.  Newt wants to repeat the canard that regulation is impeding our economic recovery?  Obama can refute it with actual analysis.  Newt wants to spin his…well…spin about how Reaganism is responsible for all late 20th-century economic growth?  Obama can lay out a significantly more convincing counter-narrative.  In the process, Republican sacred cow ideological talking points will be laid on the altar.  We can actually argue them.  Newt opens the questions, Obama leads us in the refutations.  My money is on Obama winning those debates.  Maybe this is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to cut through GOP obfuscations.

It won’t happen.  But if it did, Newt would be exposed as the big fat ideologically over-determined pus…oh well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:

A brief but potentially vital heads up…..

It’s been several weeks since I predicted the dynastic succession was over at Newscorp, mainly because of the independent shareholder rebellion last month, and although James did a worthy stonewalling job at the DCMS select committee this Thursday, that does nothing to stop the three ongoing police investigations here (plus suggestions of a secret ‘Operation Millipede’ in SOCA – our equivalent of the FBI).

But this morning, a very reliable reporter on the Daily Mail suggested that James’ testimony could be blown out of the water thanks to find among the millions of supposed deleted News International emails found on a server in India:

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Much interest – and muted apprehension – has been focused on the rapid growth of China’s economy. The Great Recession barely put a dent on the country’s continuing expansion, in stark contrast to the troubled economies of the First World.

Yet now an interesting thing is occurring; one hears murmurs about weakness in the Chinese economy, murmers which were not heard last year.

More below.

Today in Parliament

As expected, the appearance of James Murdoch, the Chief Executive of News International (and related to some other famous people) before the DCMS Committee today failed to produce any huge bombshells. Let’s remind ourselves that the Parliamentary Committee has no real powers of subpoena, witnesses are not obliged to testify on oath, is not run by trained lawyers, and is not allowed to investigate anything that could prejudice the three ongoing police investigations.  

C-Span has the whole proceedings here

James is smart, lawyered up, and left no hostages to fortune in terms of his evidence. Tom Watson had some stellar moments, challenging James over various contradictory testimonies, naming three or four other private investigators working for News International (adding some cryptic reference to Operation Millipede), and at least landing a rhetorical blow by calling James

‘the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise.’.

Hello fellow Moosers. I must apologize for my absence as of late. It has been a while since I have written or even read much this past year, but in the past few days I have felt a small current of desire to rejoin human kind. So my first baby step is to post an election open thread.

Feel free to hijack, ignore, or tell us what you think about the various races that took place today. San Francisco may elect a new mayor, Iowa may lose the single Democratic vote holding back the pug horde voting on gay marriage (along with a whole host of other liberal issues), and of course there is Ohio. Ohio, Ohio, Ohio;~J

Oh and since I just can’t help myself…

Oy. Now I have to e-mail him. Shit. Oh well, I have been using his stuff for a couple of years now. He probably will give me permission to post his rants here.

Oh and about what he said…f*cking word.

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Former president George W. Bush’s book “Decision Points” has been published. While not exactly an exciting page-turner, the book does provide some insight into the White House for much of the last decade. There are several interesting things that “Decision Points” says.

Interest in high-speed rail (HSR) is growing around the world and the number of countries running these trains is expected to nearly double over the next few years, according to new research by the Worldwatch Institute for Vital Signs Online. By 2014, high-speed trains will be operating in nearly 24 countries, including China, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United States, up from only 14 countries today. The increase in HSR is due largely to its reliability and ability to cover vast geographic distances in a short time, to investments aimed at connecting once-isolated regions, and to the diminishing appeal of air travel, which is becoming more cumbersome because of security concerns.

The rise in HSR has been very rapid-in just three years, between January 2008 and January 2011, the operational fleet grew from 1,737 high-speed trainsets worldwide to 2,517. Two-thirds of this fleet is found in just five countries: France, China, Japan, Germany, and Spain. By 2014, the global fleet is expected to total more than 3,700 units.

Not only is HSR reliable, but it also can be more friendly than cars or airplanes. A 2006 comparison of greenhouse gas emissions by travel mode, released by the Center for Neighborhood Technologies, found that HSR lines in Europe and Japan released 30-70 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-kilometer, versus 150 grams for automobiles and 170 grams for airplanes.

Although there is no universal speed definition for HSR, the threshold is typically set at 250 kilometers per hour on new tracks and 200 kilometers per hour on existing, upgraded tracks. The length of HSR tracks worldwide is undergoing explosive growth in order to meet increasing demand. Between 2009 and 2011, the total length of operational track has grown from some 10,700 kilometers to nearly 17,000 kilometers. Another 8,000 kilometers is currently under construction, and some 17,700 kilometers more is planned, for a combined total of close to 43,000 kilometers. That is equivalent to about 4 percent of all rail lines-passenger and freight-in the world today.

By track length, the current high-speed leaders are China, Japan, Spain, France, and Germany. Other countries are joining the high-speed league as well. Turkey has ambitious plans to reach 2,424 kilometers and surpass the length of Germany’s network. Italy, Portugal, and the United States all hope to reach track lengths of more than 1,000 kilometers. Another 15 countries have plans for shorter networks.

But in Europe, France continues to account for about half of all European high-speed rail travel. HSR reached an astounding 62 percent of the country’s passenger rail travel volume in 2008, up from just 23 percent in 1990, thanks to affordable ticket prices, an impressive network, and reliability. And in Japan, the Shinkansen trains are known for their exceedingly high degree of reliability. JR Central, the largest of the Japanese rail operating companies, reports that the average delay per high-speed train throughout a year is just half a minute. On all routes in Japan where both air and high-speed rail connections are available, rail has captured a 75 percent market share.

Further highlights from the research:

• A draft plan for French transportation infrastructure investments for the next two decades allocates 52 percent of a total of $236 billion to HSR.
• In 2005, the Spanish government announced an ambitious plan for some 10,000 kilometers of high-speed track by 2020, which would allow 90 percent of Spaniards to live within 50 kilometers of an HSR station.
• Currently, China is investing about $100 billion annually in railway construction. The share of the country’s railway infrastructure investment allocated to HSR has risen from less than 10 percent in 2005 to a stunning 60 percent in 2010.
• Intercity rail in Japan accounts for 18 percent of total domestic passenger-kilometers by all travel modes-compared with just 5 to 8 percent in major European countries and less than 1 percent in the United States.
• In France, rail’s market share of the Paris-Marseille route rose from 22 percent in 2001 (before the introduction of high-speed service) to 69 percent in 2006. In Spain, the Madrid-Seville rail route’s share rose from 33 to 84 percent.

When my son was three, every time he was faced with something that went against his desires, he would scrunch up his little face, clench his little fists, and veritably roar “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY FAIR!!!”  Anyone who has raised, worked with, or spent any time with pre-schoolers will be familiar with the fact that they are obsessed with fairness, which to them means getting what they want.  Ayn Rand’s acolytes would certainly advocate we encourage them to retain this preliminary definition of fairness.  Consider John Galt’s oath from Atlas Shrugged: “I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.”  This has become the guiding principle of modern conservativism, which simultaneously tries to maintain it’s claim to being the party of patriotism, the party that reveres military service, traditional marriage, and devotion to family and community.  They then demean liberals as spoiled cry-babies who want free handouts.  Even though they think a society of people who understand fairness as selfishness will function productively and ethically, they denigrate those who want our economic and political system to be more fair for all Americans as inherently immature and selfish.  Then they argue that their selfishness, the selfishness of the free market, of the ultra-rich and corporate elites will restore us to prosperity.  It’s perverse.  Knots of perversity here.  But this also suggests that we aren’t making the most effective argument.

Instead of moralizing about fairness and equal opportunity, which I indeed see as guiding principles of any ethical society, we need to argue for our policies from a different but equally true and potentially more persuasive angle.  The levels of income inequality we are seeing aren’t just morally and ethically unacceptable, they are unsustainable.  Instead of arguing that the 1% must pay their fair share, we’ve got to hammer away at the fact that the 1% are cannibalizing the system by devouring the middle class.  To paraphrase Yeats, if the center will not hold, things will fall apart.  

We aren’t trying to fleece or soak the rich out of envy or resentment or laziness or entitlement.  We are trying to save the system.  There is no historical evidence that the market contains the mechanisms to correct and sustain itself.  Marx recognized that capitalism was vulnerable to increasingly radical cycles of boom and bust.  He was right on that point.  He was also optimistic that this would lead to a moment of unsustainability that would also represent an opportunity for the proletariat created by these cycles to rise up and create something better.  Not so sure on that one.  And as I have written before, I used to think the revolution a beautiful idea, but somehow they always end up shooting the Jewish professors and that’s not really gonna work out for me.  What’s left is Keynes.  Keynes ultimately agreed with Marx’s critique, but eschewed his teleological optimism.  So he envisioned a limited but targeted and activist role for government to intervene and guarantee the system’s sustainability when necessary.  If he recognized the progression of capitalism’s symptoms, he feared any radical cure and instead sought to manage it as a flawed but reasonably maintainable chronic condition.  And even Marx evinced great respect for the productive and creative ability of capitalism.

The market will not restore its own balance.  The moneyed elites will fiddle while we all burn if they can’t see opportunities to profit.  We could hand the contents of Fort Knox to the top 1% and the so-called “job creators” wouldn’t create a single job.  They’d look at the instability and lack of demand and sit on it just as they are doing now.  Government must tax them in order to create jobs that will demonstrate the stable growth of demand for products and services.  Even if we double taxes on the top 1%, if they recognize that demand, i.e. the opportunity to profit, they will begin to hire people.  Then government will step back and they will continue to prosper.

So let’s stop screaming “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY FAIR” and start focusing, with a fanatic republican-style devotion to simple rhetorical talking points, on trying to save the system for everybody.  Then our arguments for how that must happen will explode the simplistic assumptions about taxes and government spouted by conservatives who applaud their own selfishness and degrade others as selfish.

Preaching to the choir here.  I know.  I’ve written much of this before.  Just had to get it out.  

October is my favorite month, as it is for many other Michiganders. The usually clear sky, which is a more intense shade of blue than at any other time of year, serves as a grand backdrop for the reds and golds of the fall foliage. These are sweater days. Coats and scarves won’t come out of the closet for a few more weeks. The cool nights are perfect for sleeping and the days are perfect for being outdoors. Hunters head for the woods and the fields, fisherman to the lakes, and children romp in the fallen leaves. Homeowners are raking those same leaves and trying not to think of the snow they will soon be shoveling. The abundant wildlife is gathering the bounty of nature and storing it away for the coming months. All is right with the world.

That October weather has carried over into the first week of November this year. It was one of those perfect days today when my dog Al and I headed out for our daily walk. As we walked through the golden leaves that had fallen from the large beech tree in our backyard, I could see our neighbor, Beau, busily raking the leaves of the sugar maple that grew in his front yard. Most years, the leaves of that maple turn a beautiful orange. This year, the leaves were such a deep burnt-orange they were almost red.

As we walked by, Beau put down his rake and joined us for our walk. Beau and I might not share the same philosophy or politics, but it seems we both appreciate beauty.

His first words were, “Trees sure are beautiful this year.”