- Peter Baker, The Limits of Rahmism

When Obama ran for the presidency, liberals saw him as the crusading head of a movement to sweep in a new era of progressive policies on health care, climate change and national security, while independents and some Republicans saw him as a sort of postpartisan figure who would reach across party lines and end the ideological polarization of Washington. Inevitably, of course, he could not be both. Instead he has managed to disappoint both sets of believers. Emanuel’s operation grapples with that disconnect every day — how far to push on stimulus spending, on health care, on Wall Street regulation? One day, Obama is saying he will sign no health care bill without a government-run “public option”; the next, he all but drops it. One day, he is bashing the “shameful” bonuses for “fat-cat bankers” at bailed-out firms, the next he is serving dinner to corporate titans at the White House and saying he does not “begrudge” the big payouts.

Note that both examples are when the supposed liberal goes republican, and fails his liberal followers.

A solid case against free trade and globalism.

-Alan Tonelson and Kevin L. Kearns, Trading Away Productivity

[…] if offshoring has been driving much of our supposed productivity gains, then the case for complete free trade begins to erode. If often such policies simply increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers, with no gains in true productivity, then they don’t necessarily strengthen the national economy.

In this regard, the case for free trade as a stimulus for innovation weakens, too. Because productivity gains in part reflect job offshoring, not just the benefits of technology or better business practices, then the American economy has been much less innovative than widely assumed.

How can we actually increase innovation and real productivity? Manufacturing, long slighted by free-market extremists, needs to be promoted, not pushed offshore, since it has historically accounted for the bulk of research and development spending and employs the bulk of American science and technology workers — who in turn spur further innovation and real productivity.

Promoting manufacturing will require major changes in tax and trade policies that currently foster offshoring, including implementing provisions to punish currency manipulation by countries like China and help American producers harmed by discriminatory foreign value-added tax systems. It also means revitalizing government and corporate research and development, which has languished since its heyday in the 1960s.

Much of government policy and business strategy rides on false assumptions about innovation, and although the Obama administration acknowledges the problem, it has done nothing to correct it. With the economy still in need of government life support and the future of American manufacturing in doubt, relying on faulty productivity data is a formula for disaster.

Very sexy

via www.worldchanging.com

Let’s take back the streets

sarahcooley:

mdfsmash:

This is awesome

At a glance mine is mostly puppies, elephants, NNN, running, Saints, and family. Seems about right.

(via blakeley:homeofthevain: ninastotler and letthemeatkhake)

This is really awesome!

- Steven Greenhouse, People 55 and Older Start Own Businesses in Growing Numbers

More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages 55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to 2007.

[…]

A study by Babson College and Baruch College found that Americans age 55 and above started 18.9 percent of all businesses created in 2008, compared with 10 percent in 2001. The 55-and-overs are playing a larger role in entrepreneurship partly because the number of Americans in that age category is rising rapidly. (The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found only a small increase in the percentage of those older than 55 who are self-employed since 2001, although it found a spurt upward since mid-2008.)

There is a strong subtext in this piece: Don’t panic.

But this should be a cause for panic.

- Cornelia Dean, Study Says Undersea Release of Methane Is Under Way

Climate scientists have long warned that global warming could unlock vast stores of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen into the Arctic permafrost, setting off potentially significant increases in global warming.

Now researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and elsewhere say this change is under way in a little-studied area under the sea, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, west of the Bering Strait.

Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the university and a leader of the study, said it was too soon to say whether the findings suggest that a dangerous release of methane looms. In a telephone news conference, she said researchers were only beginning to track the movement of this methane into the atmosphere as the undersea permafrost that traps it degrades.

But climate experts familiar with the new research reported in Friday’s issue of the journal Science that even though it does not suggest imminent climate catastrophe, it is important because of methane’s role as a greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide is far more abundant and persistent in the atmosphere, ton for ton atmospheric methane traps at least 25 times as much heat.

Until recently, undersea permafrost has been little studied, but work so far shows it is already sending surprising amounts of methane into the atmosphere, Dr. Shakhova and other researchers are finding.

Releasing even a small part of the clathrates (as this permafrost trapped methane is known) could lead to catastrophic impacts on climate:

from Wikipedia: Methane clathrates and Climate change

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Despite its short atmospheric half life of 7 years, methane has a global warming potential of 62 over 20 years and 21 over 100 years (IPCC, 1996; Berner and Berner, 1996; vanLoon and Duffy, 2000). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Climate scientists such as James E. Hansen expect that methane clathrates in the permafrost regions will be released as a result of global warming, unleashing powerful feedback forces which may cause runaway climate change that cannot be controlled (presuming that climate change could be controlled in any case).

Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tons of methane being released^{[27][28][29][30][31]} with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal.^[32][33]

Shifting Soil Is Threat to a House’s Foundation

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association indicates that since the 1990s there has been an accelerating trend nationwide toward more extended dry periods followed by downpours. Whether due to random climate patterns or global warming, the swings between hot and dry weather and severe rain or snow have profoundly affected soil underneath buildings.

Clay soils, like those beneath the houses of Mr. Derse and Ms. Wilson, shrink during droughts and swell during floods, causing structures to bob. And because sandier soil loses its adhesive properties in dry conditions, it pulls away from foundations. Heavy rains cause it to shift or just collapse beneath structures. With both kinds of soil, such sinking, called subsidence, usually happens gradually, said Randall Orndorff, a geologist with the United States Geologic Survey. But, he said, “swinging from very wet to extremely dry weather like we’ve been seeing lately in many parts of the country may be accelerating the effect.”

Experts estimate the cost to homeowners to stabilize or shore up foundations is around $4 billion annually, up from $3 billion 10 years ago, although more houses have also been built in that time period. Subsidence is not covered by most homeowners’ insurance policies in the United States, unlike in Britain, where the increasing number of homeowners’ claims due to foundation failure prompted the Charter Insurance Institute, an industry trade group, to issue a dire warning about the financial drain in its 2009 report, “Coping with Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities for Insurers.”

“The question we need to ask is, are we building to cope with the enhanced weather events related to climate change,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group advocating science-based solutions to environmental and health issues. “It’s obvious that we need to look at changing building codes worldwide to deal with this.”

Telling ‘The Secret’

We howl at the moon when a woman in Saudi Arabia is caned for being alone with a man not her relative, but we put petty offenders behind bars for decades or life because of the Three Strikes rule. And this in a state on the verge of insolvency?

Cheese Thief Jailed for 7 Years in California

On Monday, more than a year after a man was arrested outside a market in California with a $3.99 bag of Tillamook shredded cheese in his pants he had not paid for, a judge decided to go relatively easy on him, sentencing him to seven years and eight months in jail.

Prosecutors in Yolo County, Calif., outside Sacramento, had originally asked for a life sentence under the state’s “three strikes” law, arguing that the man, Robert Preston Ferguson, was a menace to society because of prior burglary convictions. As The Sacramento Bee reported last month, the district attorney’s office asked for 11 years instead, after “a new psychological evaluation convinced prosecutors that Robert Preston Ferguson’s most recent convictions for petty theft did not warrant a life sentence.”

At Monday’s sentencing hearing, the Sacramento newspaper noted, a deputy district attorney “said Ferguson was a career criminal who wouldn’t change.” The prosecutor added that Mr. Ferguson, who is in his 50s, had 13 previous convictions and had been in jail for 22 of the past 27 years but still took the cheese. Ten days before the cheese theft, Mr. Ferguson had also stolen a woman’s wallet from a 7-Eleven as she tended to her sick child, who had just thrown up on the floor.

Because of Mr. Ferguson’s prior convictions, he had been charged with felonies for both of those petty thefts.

According to the Sacramento newspaper, Mr. Ferguson’s defense lawyer, Monica Brushia, argued that his six other burglary convictions had taken place three decades ago and noted that his conviction for misdemeanor assault came when he was a teenager and had thrown a can of soda at one of his siblings. She also noted that the psychologist’s report had concluded that Mr. Ferguson was mentally ill. He has biploar syndrome and struggles to control his impulses to steal during manic phases, she said.

She concluded that his most recent thefts were petty. “We’re talking about a pack of cheese,” she said.

Leaving aside concerns about whether the long sentence was just, some observers in California asked if the cash-strapped state should really be spending between $50,000 and $100,000 a year to lock up a cheese thief.

And the answer is, hell no.

Of course, it all makes sense in a police state.

Provencal puff pastry