My vote for biggest Scam
Keeping that unfunny ball rolling.
posted by The Cruise at 10:44 PM
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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18 Comments:
Yes...read a story about a certain voting district's commissioner (or whatever the title is) hired an international computer company to come in and evaluate the Dibold (sp?) machines for tamper resistance. They basically found that the machines' results could be altered with absolutely no record. Now the district needs to purchase a certain amount of handicap accessible machines to comply with state law and no company will sell to the district unless they agree that no evaluations will be conducted. Voting machines that have proven to be tamperable (new word?), with no paper trails in the first place and company heads with direct ties to the Republican party ...conspiracy? Are my taxes free if they fail to issue me a voter receipt?
About Katherine Harris, who was a central figure in the controversy in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election.
"Celestial Drops? In 2001, while she was still Secretary of State, Katherine Harris ordered a study by the Florida Department of Agriculture on "Celestial Drops," a supposed cure for citrus canker, a bacterial disease that decimates orange crops. The supposed cure was being pushed by a Rabbi associated with a local Kabbalah center and New York Cardiologist who claimed that it was water with ‘improved fractal design,' 'infinite levels of order,' and ‘high energy and low entropy.' The Department apparently gets hundreds of similar requests a year from opportunists, but does not get involved in such dubious ventures. Harris changed that by forcing state scientists to perform six months of studies wasting countless taxpayer dollars. The state scientists later concluded that the drops were nothing more than water. In a letter to the state government, Wayne Dixon, the head of Florida's Bureau of Entomology, Nematology and Plant Pathology, concluded the "product is a hoax and not based on any credible known science." He made no attempt to hide his anger with Harris, further writing, "I wish to maintain our standing in the scientific community and not allow [the developers of Celestial Drops] to use our hard-earned credibility" to promote their phony claims. Do you hear that noise? That is the sound of your brain cells killing themselves in effigy."
Forget Harris, look at the lack of respect given the democratic process by Ken Blackwell in Ohio.
Blatantly stolen, and no investigation. Instead innacurate polls are given the blame, and I'm not willing to pin this on Suds.
that's the first time i have ever seen the nevada gaming commission look good.
that's the first time i have ever seen the nevada gaming commission look good.
Everything I know about Nevada I learned from National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation and CSI. It seems okay when presented there. Maybe it's different in that outlaw town of Reno.
Graduates versus Oligarchs
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Monday 27 February 2006
Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.
But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education."
That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.
I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group - that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.
The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.
So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.
A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.
But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.
Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.
Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system - and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.
The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.
Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.
And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who - surprisingly, given his libertarian roots - has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."
It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.
a little off topic, but that hasn't seemed to matter much recently - and worth the watch, for sure.
He needs to do a Bush skit once a month.
an even more completely unrelated to this post note:
I went to the beach this weekend with some friends [note: none of whom play frisbee]. We played football on the beach late Saturday afternoon. Not by my suggestion, the teams were named the jets and the sharks, and I was on the jets -oddly coincidental, I know. So, what's with the sudden popularity of West Side Story anyway? Is it just every 30ish male's favorite rivalry for some odd reason?
So, what's with the sudden popularity of West Side Story anyway? Is it just every 30ish male's favorite rivalry for some odd reason?
...Once a jet, always a jet.
My favorite rivalry is Celtics/lakers. But that hasn't been anywhere near good since Reggie died.
I gotta go with Hatfields vs. McCoys.
BTY...serious statment about Jets vs. Sharks? Have to say that this CANNOT be serious.
There probably aren't many East Coasters who read this, and yes it's insanely cliched and played out, but there really is no sports rivarly these days like Yanks/Sox. Being in both ball parks (including Yankee Stadium during epic 2004 ALCS), I can vouch for the mutual loathing on both sides. Of course, it's mostly just a bunch of drunk assholes yelling at laundry... but isn't that really the best part of sports, including tournament and league finals and such? Boy, I need more to do at work.
The real rivalries:
-Mean Machine vs The Guards
-The Jets vs Whoreshaq
-Finneytown vs Roger Bacon
-Ohio State vs Michigan
-paper vs plastic
-people who leave their dishes in the sink vs people who clean up immediately
I think it's a little early to say there's a rivalry between the jets and whoreshaq. However, I did create a personal rivalry against Shiv last year and I'll probably continue it. (Although, if I'm the only one who cares about it and Shiv has no idea, I wonder if it's really a rivalry.)
Also, I've got to go with paper, no contest.
No write-up of Onionfest?
This may take some time to fill out, but it's still fun: http://bandmadness.net/
-ashish
Whoah! You heard it here first.
Ash says that whoreshaq can't even compete against the Jets.
I looked at that site. It says choose between Franz Ferdinand and The Replacements.
That's like deciding if you like (a) beer or (b) getting stabbed in the dick with straw that some guy has put his thumb over the hole in one end of to increase its tensile strength.
I refuse to fill out that shit.
actually, kyle, I was thinking the opposite. I seriously doubt we're going to win a single game. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said all of the guys on the team can't play worth shit. it's true. it'll be too long before all of our women wise up and quit. Maybe they'll all join coltrane?
I think coltrane will be on top of the pack this year. can't wait to see you guys in action. And if I'm lucky, I might be able to learn a few things by watching you.
-ashish
Why would I want your women? We have a bunch of ladies that I love more than anything, and I wouldn't trade them with any team in town.
We won't be on top. We've started the year .500, and if we lost by three to the Carleton alumni team, then how are we supposed to beat a team that actually practices?
I'm an East Coaster, a Virginian and New Hampshirian. Massholes are pretty much the same as people from New York except that Massholes don't pronounce their R's, or "ahhh's" as they would call them. With that said, the Sox are the Yankees minus the 24 other championship banners. Jeter and A-Rod can keep on banging each other, and Schilling can take that bloody sock and suffocate the Big Unit with it, then he can take his Bush loving, Bible beating self and suck it!
College sports are where the real rivalries are right now. Virginia Tech and Miami is a much underappreciated one. No Vick or Drunkenmiller jokes please.
Ash, you are giving The Cruise exactly what he wants.
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