Choosing Profits Over Planets

From the Mouths of Boobs

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 ~ "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"

So said CEO Rex Tillerson at Exxon's annual meeting yesterday. What really concerns him, of course, is less the suffering of humanity than the suffering of diminished profits. The right choice between the planet and profits? Yes! More money! Never mind that there is no business to be done on a dead planet. Or that you can't take it with you. Or that dispensing with the Earth, our only home, is somehow a reasonable option in service of unbounded cupidity. But then T. Rexx has some puzzling beliefs.

Two Countries

Hotspots of Hate

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 ~ We're two countries alright, just not divided the way you might think:

The map shows the use of hateful epithets used in tweets, aggregated by county.

Um, so just exactly where is "middle America"?

A lot of related maps to look at and more detail here. Especially interesting (or sobering) to zoom in on where you live, or other places of interest, both to see the localized hotspots, and which hate words predominate. (Here in Washington State, the hate in Aberdeen is visible from space. What's up with that?)

Translation...

...Into a Foreign Language

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 ~ "A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

Leave alone those that bandy 'bout a megaphone...

Thirsty? You're Going to Pay

Greed Ascendant

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 ~ If water is not a human right, then what is?



(h/t Keithpp's blog)

Carbon Intoxication

Scientists are Not Immune

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 ~ I've been formally trained as a computer scientist, and at one time made a very good living from it at a top institution. However, just because I am a "scientist" it does not mean that I am qualified to discourse on scientific subjects at large.

This does not, however, much deter some scientists from fulminating well outside their areas of expertise or qualification. Or spouting their personal beliefs from ideologically aligned platforms. Today we have been treated to another tired retread of an article in the Wall Street Journal by climate change simpleton William Happer. Along with astronaut Harrison Schmidt, he claims, again, that more atmospheric carbon is good for us because we need plants, and plants need carbon dioxide.

Much of the article can be dismissed on factual grounds with reference to what actual climate science and climate scientists can tell us. (I'm no expert—being a computer scientist does not make me a general scientific expert—and I happily defer to those who are.) Happer and Schmidt focus on the tired and discredited trope that carbon concentrations have been higher in geological time (true) but ignore the recent, and utterly unprecedented rate of change in those concentrations. Sure, life flourished, but not human life, and species that cannot adapt to a changing environment not infrequently suffer or become extinct. Evolution does not work well in short time periods of rapid environmental shift.

Tax and Spend

Or is it "Borrow and Spend"?

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 ~ Tell me again who's spending is out of control? Recall that in 2000 we were running a budget surplus, with the prospect of those continuing for years...

More Regulatory Evils

Gun Control Stands Alone

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 ~ Where else do we choose to have our civilization out of control?

Even though we regulate all of these things, we neither ban them, nor confiscate them from those owning and using them responsibly.

Control is not confiscation. Regulation is not a ban.

Everyday Gun Appreciation

Out of Control

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 ~ Appreciate this:

As thousands of pro-gun activists held rallies across the United States on Saturday, accidental shootings at three different guns shows illustrated the obvious: Being around lots of people carrying firearms can be a tad dangerous...

In Raleigh, a shotgun went off when the owner was taking it out of its case at a security checkpoint, injuring three people. In Indianapolis, a 54-year-old man appears to have accidentally shot himself in the hand as he was leaving a gun show. And in Ohio, a dealer was checking out a purchase when he pulled the trigger by accident and injured his friend. Although he had removed the magazine from the weapon, a round remained in the chamber.

Where else in our civilization do so many strenuously argue that things should be out of control?

Climate Change Flooding

Jakarta is Under Water

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 ~ "Analysts worry the flooding could affect economic investment."

Ya think?

Guns and Arms

Unanswered Questions

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 ~ Could we as a nation, at long last, really be taking a hard look at our gun laws? It's long overdue.

Perhaps at some later point I'll write at greater length on the subject, but for now I have just three questions.

First, here is the text of the Second Amendment, as ratified by the states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Questions, only partly rhetorical:

1. Why do gun advocates frequently only mention the part after the comma, and ignore the first part of the sentence?
2. The amendment itself states that regulating well is necessary, so why is there such an hysterical response to the common-sense notion of regulating guns?
3. Anti-aircraft missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons are all "arms" yet no one squawks about restrictions on their ownership. Why then the apoplexy about regulating assault weapons or such things as high-capacity magazines?

Like Night and Day

Not Alike

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 ~ Do you think the two parties are the same shade of gray? That they're just about the same? Can you imagine the GOP responding like this:

Actually, we don't need to imagine, because they don't. Instead, they act like this.

The Purpose of Art

To Provoke

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 ~ The manufactured and fictitious crisis of the so-called fiscal cliff has provoked a lot of people. Time to provoke a broader audience about the real crisis, and to replace the bogus framing of the problem.

We're not broke—we're being looted.

More from Artstrike, including this evocative poem:

Proverbs 22:16
by Elizabeth Conall

what do they care
if we can’t pay
the bills run up
to keep us alive?
to save our kids?
why bother with
expensive care
we don’t deserve?
plenty more
where we came from

Plenty more serfs out there. Read the whole thing.

Neoliberalism and Plutocracy

They're the Same Thing

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 ~ The always stimulating George Monbiot's recent blog post examines the need to fight plutocracy in order to address climate change.

Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that manmade climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.

Neoliberalism, also known as market fundamentalism or laissez-faire economics, purports to liberate the market from political interference. The state, it asserts, should do little but defend the realm, protect private property and remove barriers to business. In practice it looks nothing like this. What neoliberal theorists call shrinking the state looks more like shrinking democracy: reducing the means by which citizens can restrain the power of the elite. What they call “the market” looks more like the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich. Neoliberalism appears to be little more than a justification for plutocracy.

Demand More Demand

What's Wrong With the Economy?

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 ~ The short answer:

A slightly longer answer, but more informative and at least as entertaining:

Economically, the solution is both simple and obvious. Politically, the solution is absurdly complicated and the target of endless obfuscation.

Fixing the Debt

Fixing the Game

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 ~ A band of CEOs from some of America's largest corporations have united under the banner of Fix the Debt. They argue that the right path to fiscal sanity (and away from the so-called fiscal cliff) entails broadening the tax base and reducing tax rates.

Their argument is disingenuous. A broader tax base with lower rates all around means a tax hike on the middle class and lower taxes for rich CEOs and their companies who have already looted the system for the past decade. Not content with that subterfuge, they're shamelessly lobbying for brand new tax breaks that would benefit only themselves at the expense of everyone else:

The Fix the Debt campaign has raised $60 million and recruited more than 80 CEOs of America’s most powerful corporations to lobby for a debt deal that would reduce corporate taxes and shift costs onto the poor and elderly.

[snip]

The 63 Fix the Debt companies that are publicly held stand to gain as much as $134 billion in windfalls if Congress approves one of their main proposals — a “territorial tax system.” Under this system, companies would not have to pay U.S. federal income taxes on foreign earnings when they bring the profits back to the United States.

The corporate tax burden is lower than it has been in 40 years. They don't want to fix the debt, they want to fix the system.

Reckoning

Time to Move (Forward)

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 ~ The problem is only partly the candidate.

This isn't the right response:

This is.

The Election's True Colors

Mandate for Real Change

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 ~ There are several interesting variations on the standard electoral map, but best of the bunch is this one:

It is a cartogram, a map of the US distorted so that each state is sized according to the data, which in this case is the number of electoral votes each state has. The colors are done on a county-by-county basis and are shaded from red to blue based on the popular vote within a county.

There's a lot of purplish shades, but overall the map is plainly more blue-hued than red.

Four More Years

But of What, Exactly?

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 ~ "Four more years!" is a popular chant by the supporters of an incumbent president's re-election, but what changes in four more years? My prediction: very little. I expect the GOP to draw mostly the wrong lessons and double down on most of their current policies, strategies, and candidate choices. It will be after 2016 that we see real change.

Here's why:

Silence of the Lambs

(D)riven by Embarrassment

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 ~ The hover text:

There are so many well-meaning conservatives around here who just assume global warming is only presented as a moral issue for political reasons.

In the unlikely case that climate change arises in tonight's presidential debate, expect embarrassment from every quarter. It will be even more embarrassing for us as a country, however, should it not arise at all.

Income Tax

Just in Time, Again

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 ~ As usual, I got an extension on my tax return and went to the post office in the last hour it was open of the last day to file timely.

I did a lot last year, and worked very hard on a lot of companies and for a lot of clients and organizations. Still part of the 47% and I still paid plenty of other taxes.