Perception ... Reality


Under Obama 6.7 million private sector jobs have been created compared to 3.1 million under George W. Bush after six years in office. There has been a reduction of 600,000 in government employment under Obama compared to an increase of 1.2 million under Bush in the same time period. Discussion here.

Bush, the Housing Bubble and the Great Recession


Artificially pump up the housing market to make your presidency look good and what do you get? Ireland, on a massive scale. Data from Calculated Risk.

Damn I make this tiara look good


I've been everywhere, man.


Max Fisher states that, almost alone among nations, Korea and Japan escaped european colonization. While the US is clearly not part of Europe, the majority of its people are of european ethnicity and Japan and Korea have been under strong US influence and considerable control for more than half a century.

Where does morality come from?

Apparently not from religion.

When you've lost the Wall Street Journal ...


Matt Taibbi once described a major Wall Street financial firm as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” If anything this description falls short of capturing the putrid essence of the finance industry. Manufacturing and R&D are the lifeblood of great nations. Wall Street is steadily killing them off. The day approaches when we will be left with only lawyers and financiers, the parasites without the host. We will have become a larger version of Britain, an empty shell of a once great state.

There has been almost no effective push-back against these bloodsuckers. Politicians from both parties are primarily lawyers, who wouldn't know the meaning of productive work if it bit them in the ass, and, with few exceptions, are in debt to the financiers for their electoral campaign spending. Surprisingly, a small push back has come from the Wall Street Journal, belatedly recognizing that the death of the host is not good for the business of the parasites. One article is from Michael Dell, of Dell computers, describing the baleful effect on his company of short term investor interests.

The second article is by William Galston, and is subtitled, 'Financiers fixated on the short-term are forcing CEOs into decisions that are bad for the country'. An unbiased look at the country's arc over the last thirty years is all that is required to see the truth of this statement. The maximization of shareholder value by activist investors comes at the cost of long-term prosperity for the company and ultimately for the country. At present we are on a path to irrelevancy. Once our technical edge is completely eroded we will no longer be a great nation, irrespective of how many nukes we possess. Just look at Russia.

N.B. Both articles can be accessed by pasting their titles into Google.

Police safety

The murder rate for police in 2013 was well below the national average, suggesting that they are not in any unusual danger and should restrain their trigger happy ways. It is a difficult job but not a particularly dangerous one, despite this being a major rationale for their high salaries.

A bigger problem is that they are rarely in danger of facing any consequences for their actions. There is an inherent conflict of interest when a local prosecuting attorney is responsible for an investigation into homicides by the police with whom he/she regularly works. At a minimum, there has to be greater distance between the police and those responsible for investigating their alleged or actual malfeasance. This is just simple commonsense. If the police know beforehand that there will be no consequences for their actions, a perception that recent events strongly confirm, what is their motivation to act in a prudent way when it comes to the safety of their fellow citizens? More discussion here and here.

Why the enormous disparity?


Context here and here.