Playlist – Page 73 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – March 2, 2015

The lands surrounding the Mansion of Wrong remain deeply snow-covered, and we picked up another 6” of snow last night. Where is Spring? In other weather-related news, February 2015 was officially the coldest February on record here in the Nutmeg State. So, let’s turn to Pete Seeger for a lovely Wake Up song about snow, with a gentle political message buried inside. Here is “Snow, Snow”:

Sample Lyrics:
Snow, snow, falling down;
Covering up my dirty old town.

Covers the garbage dump, covers the holes,
Covers the rich homes, and the poor souls,
Covers the station, covers the tracks,
Covers the footsteps of those who’ll not be back.

In news of the stupid, a branch of the Republican Party in Idaho voted to take up a measure to declare the state is Christian. The Idea was to bolster what supporters called the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of the US. The proposal was that Idaho be “formally and specifically declared a Christian state,” guided by a Judeo-Christian faith as reflected in the US Declaration of Independence. Jeff Tyler, a member of the committee and backer of the draft resolution, said:

We’re a Christian community in a Christian state and the Republican Party is a Christian Party.

It’s possible that the county Republicans had never heard of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution, which says…”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”…Oh, and that applies to the states as well.

Well, when the news got out of Kootenai County, the county’s Republican Central Committee decided to shelve the measure, Now, Republicans will tell you it was just a small splinter group, and the resolution was going nowhere, so the US Constitution was never in danger from Republican religious extremists. Perhaps the more realistic way to look at it is that the Constitution is safe for the moment, until another, larger Republican extremist group comes along.

Here are your Monday hot links:

A study of frozen ice cores from the Tibetan Himalayas shows that international agreements on phasing out the use of toxic organic pollutants are working. It’s cheaper to take an ice core sample than it is to place air quality sensors everywhere and monitor them.

In the US, just three out of ten workers produce and deliver all of the goods we consume. Everything we extract, grow, design, build, make, engineer, and transport – down to brewing a cup of coffee in a restaurant kitchen – is done by roughly 30% of the country’s workforce. Another 30% of us spend our time planning what to make, deciding where to install the things we have made, performing personal services, talking to each other, and keeping track of what is being done, so that we can figure out what needs to be done next. The rest are kids, elderly and out of work. Which 30% are you in?

Last week, the Muslim World League, a Saudi-backed alliance of Islamic NGOs, held a three-day conference in Mecca on “Islam and Counterterrorism.” The conference’s organizers cast their mission as developing a coordinated campaign to promote a moderate, peaceful vision of Islam that disavows the violence and apostasy that ISIS thrives on. They also think only Muslims can solve the ISIS problem.

You Tube makes no money. The Wall Street Journal reports that while YouTube accounted for about 6% of Google’s overall sales last year ($4 billion), it didn’t contribute to earnings. After paying for content, and the equipment to deliver speedy videos, YouTube’s bottom line is “roughly break-even”. You Tube has 1 billion users per month. By comparison, Facebook generated more than $12 billion in revenue, and nearly $3 billion in profit, from its 1.3 billion users per year.

An abandoned Walmart is America’s largest 1-floor library. This is an old story, but worth checking out if you missed it. The architect firm of Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, into a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States:

Friday Music Break – February 27, 2015

With all the talk about Scott Walker’s Republican presidential bid, maybe there should be some equal time for the governor of Minnesota, Wisconsin’s neighbor to the west, Mark Dayton, who is a Democrat. HuffPo reports:

When he took office in January, 2011…Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 % unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota’s first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history.

During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85% on individuals earning over $150,000, and on couples earning over $250,000, raising $2.1 billion/year. He’s also agreed to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2018, and passed a state law guaranteeing equal pay for women.

According to trickle-down economic theory, Minnesota must be losing businesses and jobs, right? Wrong. In the real world, the opposite happened. Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota’s economy, or 165,800 more jobs in Dayton’s first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms.

• Minnesota’s top income tax rate is the 4th-highest in the country, but it has the 5th-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6%.
• By late 2013, Minnesota’s private sector job growth exceeded pre-recession levels, and the state’s economy was the 5th fastest-growing in the United States.

Despite Republican complaints about Dayton’s supposedly anti-business agenda, Forbes ranks Minnesota the 9th-best state for business, while Scott Walker’s Wisconsin comes in at #32 on the same list.

And while Walker was busy blocking people from voting, Dayton actually created an online voter registration system, making it easier than ever for people to register to vote.

Oh, and Dayton is a billionaire. He’s an heir to the Target fortune, and a member of 1% who isn’t a prisoner of the billionaire dialectic.

There you have it, proof that trickle-down economics is bunk. Minnesota proves it.

On to your Music Break:
Whitehorse is a Canadian folk rock duo. Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland were married in 2006, but both were established and successful singer-songwriters prior to marriage and subsequently. They started to perform together in 2011. She also works with Sarah McLachlan, providing backing vocals at McLachlan’s live shows. Here are two songs from their just released “No Bridge Unburned” album. First up, “Downtown”:

Sample Lyric:
I’m electrified by the city light
I get off where I need to
And with who I like
I’m a diplomat
I’m a subway rat
I like the unfamiliar
I’m not scared by that

Next, “Sweet Disaster”:

Sample Lyric:
Galileo was bluffing
It’s just a mess out here
There’s no compass to guide us
Through the flashes of violence and fear

See you on Sunday.

Monday Wake Up Call – February 23, 2015

Welcome to Monday. The Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right are heading back to the Northeast.

Today, the world needs to wake up to the threat posed by outsourcing military operations to private armies whose allegiance is only to the highest bidder. The American Conservative warns in an article by Kelley Vlahos, called “A Blackwater World Order”, that the Pentagon’s dependence on contractors has created a new era of warfare in which several newly founded private military companies are meeting the demand of an exploding global market for armed conflict.

The article describes the book, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order, by Sean McFate, a former Army paratrooper who later worked for outsourcer and defense contractor DynCorp, in Africa. In the book, McFate says that warfare is shifting from global dominance by nation-states to a “polycentric” military environment in which states now compete with transnational corporations, regional and ethnic interests, and terror organizations in the chess game of international power. McFate argues that new access to professional private arms has ended the traditional monopoly on force by the large states, and has brought about the dawn of a new era of armed conflict.

Are we sure these groups won’t go rogue? Who can control the mercenaries? What if a truly wealthy oligarch fields his own mercenary army to seize control of a country? It wouldn’t be for the first time.

Lots of questions, but very few answers.

Here is your Wake Up tune of the day. The National’s “Fake Empire”, from their 2008 album “Boxer”.

A fun fact about “Fake Empire” is that it was used in a 2012 Romney political video made by the group, Ohio University Students for Romney. Apparently, nobody told them that the same song was used by Obama in a 2008 ad. The National asked the Romney people to take it down, saying:

Our music was used without our permission in this ad. The song you’re using was written about the same backward, con game policies Romney is proposing.

Judge for yourself. Here is “Fake Empire”:

Sample Lyrics:
Turn the light out say goodnight, no thinking for a little while
Let’s not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We’re half-awake in a fake empire
We’re half-awake in a fake empire

Monday’s hot links:

Chinese city says air pollution is due to bacon: Dazhou, a city located in the northeastern corner of Sichuan province, has suffered from especially “severe air pollution” since earlier this month, and officials say the main cause is the smoking of bacon by local residents. China consumes half of the world’s pork every year. Insert your own joke here.

MIT has a list of breakthrough technologies for 2015. Invest at your own risk.

New data for 2013 reveals that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation. Here is a handy table from the report:

You can see where your state ranks here.

Now, get up, get dressed, and get going.

Monday Wake-Up Call – February 16, 2015

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” − Alvin Toffler

Today’s wake-up call is for Americans who can’t unlearn that trickle-down doesn’t work, and that voting in politicians who espouse it will prolong the nation’s agony. Do people know that the new GOP House began passing a series of deficit-hiking tax cuts that will primarily help the rich at the expense of everybody else?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (which writes tax legislation), wants to make some previous tax breaks permanent. From HuffPo:

The House voted 272 to 142 to make permanent a number of temporary provisions that are aimed at helping businesses earning up to $2 million. The main cut, which would add $77 billion to deficits over 10 years, allows businesses to immediately write off new equipment purchases up to $500,000. Temporary versions of the measure have been passed about a dozen times before, generally as economic stimulus measures.

The GOP then passed a second tax cut, aimed at giving bigger tax breaks for charitable giving. Ryan wants even more tax cuts that would add another $300 billion to the deficit. Those may reach the House floor later this month.

Here’s the Republican strategy: Slice the elephant and eat it a bite at a time. Pass small pieces of tax legislation while ignoring the deficit impact, then when their corporate and wealthy individual patrons are taken care of, remind everyone that the deficit is the biggest, baddest enemy the economy has. Then propose budget cuts that hit the working poor and the middle class. Ryan’s current strategy can be seen here: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If you dare try to make these things that we all agree on that need to stay in the tax code permanent, it’s ‘You’re not paying for it; it’s a budget buster; you’re being irresponsible; you’re jeopardizing tax reform.’ Process, process, process…Here’s the problem. What we’re trying to do here, we’re trying to grow the economy. We’re trying to get people back to work.

That meme will end soon. It will be replaced with: “growth is being stifled by the deficit”.

The NYT’s Upshot notes that a number of Republican governors are proposing tax increases — and in every case, the tax hike would fall most heavily on those with lower incomes, while they propose simultaneous tax cuts for business and/or the wealthy. Krugman analyzes it thusly:

If you look for an overarching theme for overall conservative policy these past four decades…It has been about making the tax-and-transfer system harsher on the poor and easier on the rich. In short, class warfare.

Class warfare. These folks keep bottling snake oil and voters keep buying it. Lowering income taxes on the wealthy doesn’t create jobs. Why would it? The focus of the GOP on cutting income taxes is solely intended to protect the rich.

Wrongo has run businesses for 35+ years and never saw taxes as an impediment. Taxes are paid out of profits, not revenue, and paying taxes means you are running a profitable business. Cutting taxes for small business can be a disincentive: Why should the owners expand the business when their net is greater, and they didn’t have to increase sales? For large corporations, tax cuts mean that people in the C-suite get richer. Nothing. Filters. Down.

Here is your Monday tune to fight the Plutocracy. “Rich Man’s War” by Steve Earle, from his 2004 album, “The Revolution Starts Now”:

And some Monday hot links:

The Westminster Dog Show starts today. Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right are attending.

Researchers are using drones and satellites to spot lost civilizations. Remote sensing technology is revealing traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.

Lobbyists move though the revolving door back to House and Senate committees. There is a profound change taking place among Capitol Hill staff, as many GOP lawmakers are handing the keys to K Street corporate lobbyists. Public Citizen’s Paul Holman notes that Speaker John Boehner, has “encouraged new members to employ lobbyists on their personal and committee staff.”

More than 4,000 Fort Carson soldiers are heading to Kuwait, where they will become one of America’s largest ground forces in the troubled region. Did you know that the Army has kept a brigade in Kuwait since the end of the Iraq war in 2011?

Majority of public school students are now considered low-income. Another success brought to you by trickle-down economics.

Unaffordable rents here to stay say experts. They aren’t likely to ease up for at least two years, according to the latest Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 15, 2015

Big week, what with Cease Fire #2 in Ukraine, or as Moon of Alabama calls it, Minsk 2.0. Mr. Obama is bombarded by advice about how to move forward, most of it in favor of providing military aid to the government in Kiev. He is trying to balance that advice against the cornerstone of his foreign policy: “Don’t do stupid stuff.” Like some other Obama principles, this has a very high Wimp Factor, particularly if compared to GW Bush’s “bring it on”.

Then there is Mr. Obama’s strategy on Syria and dealing with ISIS. This week, he asked for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a mere six months after we began bombing them. So, a few Democrats criticized the proposal as too broad and too vague. They say it could leave the next president with enormous war-making latitude. Republicans want to go bigger.

Obama’s AUMF proposal is an invitation to Congress to offer its own expansive view of the president’s war-making authority. Can Congress do better?

Mr. Obama’s Ukraine dilemma:

Congressional chicken hawks debate the “enduring” war:

In other words, The AUMF, after Congress gets through with it, could be a disaster waiting to happen. The entire situation could devolve into another decade plus of ground war in the Middle East.

So, here in the middle of cartoons, is the anti-war song “Highwire”, by the Rolling Stones from their 1991 album, “Flashpoint”. Remember 1991, that was Gulf War 1.0. There´s only ONE reason for more war: Mo money. That’s the bottom line. Is this song on Obama’s iPhone? It should be. Lindsay, and John, this song’s for you:

Sample Lyric:
We sell ’em missiles, We sell ’em tanks
We give ’em credit, You can call up the bank
It’s just a business, You can pay us in crude
(That’s oil you know…)
You’ll love these toys, just go play out your feuds
We got no pride, don’t know whose boots to lick
We act so greedy, makes me sick sick sick
…
We walk the highwire;
Sending the men up to the front line;
Hoping they don’t catch the hell fire;
With hot guns,
And cold, cold lies.

In other news, some guy killed 3 Muslims, but nobody thinks it’s a big deal:

State’s rights vs. Gay Rights is back on the table for those who think it never left:

Jon Stewart says he’s out:

Finally, Valentine’s day covered for a lot of feelings:

Friday Music Break – February 13, 2015

Friday, where America aims for the basement, and winds up in the 3rd sub-basement. You’ve heard about the dude in North Carolina who killed 3 Muslim students over a parking space? Oh, and he had posted anti-religious messages on Facebook. Well, God weighed in:

America: where minorities, for good reason, fear their kids getting shot, and white people, for no reason, fear their kids getting shots.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) February 12, 2015

And here are two stories by/about our Republican “friends”: First, from Montana, where a state Rep is trying to “enhance” the state’s indecent exposure law by outlawing yoga pants.

Rep. David Moore (R-Missoula) introduced a bill that makes any nipple exposure, (including men’s), and any garment that “gives the appearance or simulates” a person’s buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple, indecent exposure. The Republican said:

Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway.

If the biggest problem Rep. Moore has to worry about involves nipples or clothing that “give the appearance or simulates” one’s “buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple,” he really needs to find a less perv-like job. As a member in good standing of the Republican Party, (the folks who demand smaller, less intrusive government), how would he go about enforcing his new law?

• How do you punish a man for not wearing a shirt during the summer?
• Who gets the government job that requires them to stare at breasts and genital areas all day? Does he outsource it to the TSA?

Is this just another example of Republican “small government?” It’s another indicator that the GOP doesn’t care about small government, unless you’re talking about a government that will enforce an intrusive, narrow-minded, repressed, authoritarian agenda. Good job, Montana.

Second, apparently Kayla Mueller is the wrong kind of dead hostage. The world knows that ISIS announced that hostage Kayla Mueller was dead. Although most of us sympathized with her family, some conservatives did not, calling Ms. Mueller a terrorist sympathizer and “anti-Israel bitch” because she had worked on behalf of people in occupied Palestine. Conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote:

Mueller was a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap who worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel.

America’s right-wing must re-civilize itself. The way back is through reason and rationality, where facts are tied to reality, not to figments of a fevered imagination, or to utopian beliefs that, in the end, will never take our Nation where it needs to go. The conservative warmongers were really disappointed to learn of Mueller’s politics. No doubt, they had been salivating when they learned a pretty white girl had been killed by ISIS.

Time for music. Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and here are the Foo Fighters doing “Everlong”. This was recorded live at Wembley Stadium in London, England, in June 2008. OK, it’s not your traditional soupy love song for a manufactured holiday, but it’s poignant, true and loving. The video is divided into an acoustic version of the song, and an up-tempo, typical Foo treatment. Watch the acoustic version which ends at 4:50:

Sample Lyric:
And I wonder
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when

See you Sunday.

Monday Wake-up Call – February 9, 2015

Today’s wake-up is for people in Vermont. Most of us know that Latin is considered to be a dead language, because it is taught in few schools, and very few of those are public schools. Thus, very few people can read it, and, aside from a few Roman Catholic priests, almost one speaks it.

In an interesting cultural study of America’s rural North East, an eighth grader in Vermont thought it would be a good idea for the state to adopt a Latin motto, “Stella quarta decima fulgeat” (“May the fourteenth star shine bright”).

You may not know that Vermont entered the union as the 14th state.

A Vermont Republican state Senator, Joe Benning, introduced legislation recommending that Vermont adopt the eighth grader’s idea as a motto. Things got stupid in a hurry, as indignant Vermonters took to the Twitter machine and the Internets. Here are a few samples:

I thought Vermont was American not Latin? Does any Latin places have American mottos?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!! Sick and tired of that crap, they have their own countries

How do you say idiotic senator in Spanish? I’d settle for “deport illegals” in Spanish as a backup motto

Hell No! This is America, not Latin America. When in Rome do as the Romans do!

So if they think Latin is the language of Latinos, what do they think Pig Latin is? The language spoken by Latino police? While it’s safe to say that the number of Vermonters who can’t tell Latin from Latino are a minority, it’s just sad that they feel emboldened to advertise their ignorance online.

The issue isn’t “just” that there are some people who do not know Latin. More disturbing is that people don’t even know there IS a language called Latin, and because of their anger, or their sense of American Exceptionalism, they make extremist, xenophobic statements.

Oh, and have they never heard of “E Pluribus Unum”?

This leads straight to your Monday musical wake-up song, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in The Wall, Pt. 2”, from their album, “The Wall“. PF’s biggest mainstream success, it was written by PF’s lead vocalist, Roger Waters. ABITW Pt. 2 is a protest song against rigid schooling and boarding schools in the UK. It was the band’s only number-one hit in the United Kingdom, and the US. The song talks about how the student had a personal wall separating him from the rest of the world, how the teachers were just another brick in the wall. ABINTW Pt. 2 became a protest song for certain South African students in 1980 during the Apartheid regime, and the song was subsequently banned in South Africa.

Here, for Vermonters who have never heard of the Latin language, is the “We Don’t Need no Education” clip from “Another Brick in The Wall”:

Friday Music Break – February 6, 2015

Today we have music, but first, here is our latest Police State Watch: Vox reported that NY Police Commissioner Bill Bratton unveiled a new militarized police unit that will be trained and armed with heavy protective gear, long rifles, and machine guns to restrain terrorists and social justice protesters. Bratton explained the purpose of the unit, which will consist of 350 officers: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.

Our recent protests? He’s speaking of the reaction to the killing of Eric Garner, most of which was peaceful, if antagonistic to the NYPD. The nation watched in horror last August as police officers deployed tear gas, sound cannons, and armored vehicles against crowds that were peacefully marching and chanting on the streets of Ferguson Missouri. Many of these protests grew increasingly lawless, partly as a result of police responding with military-grade gear.

But there’s more. Here is what Mr. Bratton said at the time of Garner’s killing:

You must submit to arrest, you cannot resist…The place to argue your case is in the courts, not in the streets.

Now, it looks like he supports punishing people arguing a misdemeanor arrest or who are protesting a perceived injustice even more harshly for resisting arrest. Bratton told a hearing at the NY State Senate:

If you don’t want us to enforce something, don’t make it a law.

That’s just the opposite of how resisting-arrest cases work in NYC. Most cops bring in very few cases of people resisting arrest, while a few cops bring in most of them. New York’s Public Radio station, WNYC analyzed NYPD records and found 51,503 cases with resisting arrest charges since 2009. Just 5% of officers who made arrests during that period accounted for 40% of resisting arrest cases — and 15% account for 72% of such cases:

It seems that “resisting arrest” charges say more about the police than they do about the demonstrators or defendants, and making resisting arrest a felony won’t lower the number of arrests, it will just give more power to the police.

This means you take your life in your hands if you engage in public dissent in NYC. You could be facing a heavily armed small army. You are certainly facing possible prison time and a permanent criminal record for getting on the wrong side of the wrong cop.

Your freedoms, particularly your First Amendment right of assembly, is under attack by Mr. Bratton and others like him all across America. First, they say you cannot resist arrest. Second, they have a military-style army mobilized to make sure you are busted hard, and fast.

So, with all this talk about cops and arrests, here is Janis Joplin doing “Ball ‘n’ Chain” at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This was Janis’ first large-scale public performance, and it was as a member of Big Brother and The Holding Company. At Monterey, she owned the song, the stage, the crowd, and the festival. Columbia Records signed Big Brother and The Holding Company on the basis of this performance. Here is a live performance for the ages of Big Momma Thornton’s song:

See you on Sunday.

Monday Wake Up Call – February 2, 2015

Waaay too many Mexican appetizers last night, not to mention margaritas and beer. Anyway, another national football excess is in the record books, congrats to Tom Brady and the Patriots.

Get your day started with this hilarious meditation on football vs. baseball by the great George Carlin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&v=qmXacL0Uny0&x-yt-cl=85114404

Monday’s hot links:
There’s no such thing as Nacho cheese. On the day after the Super Bowl, when so much nacho cheese was consumed, this shows how little can be taken for granted. Inquiring minds are wondering—do people expect nacho cheese to be a particular flavor? Or color? Or texture? Or is it just any cheese that happens to be on nacho chips? Here’s the truth: There are no standards for nacho cheese, it is just whatever we believe it to be. Does this bring up deeper, non-cheese-related existential questions?

Yosemite Park reported the first confirmed sighting of a rare Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) in nearly 100 years. Park wildlife biologists documented a sighting of the fox on two separate instances (December 13, 2014 and January 4, 2015) within the park boundary. The Sierra Nevada red fox of California is one of the rarest mammals in North America. Estimates say there are fewer than 50 in the US. Check it out:

Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate for school-age children. It’s not even close. Last year, 99.7% of the state’s kindergartners were fully vaccinated. In California, epicenter of the Disney measles outbreak, almost 8% of kindergartners (41,000 children) were not immunized against mumps, measles and rubella. In Oregon, it was 6.8%. In Pennsylvania, it was nearly 15%! The secret of Mississippi’s success stems from a strict mandatory vaccination law that lacks the loopholes found in almost every state.

Leaving Afghanistan has become one of the most difficult operations the US military has ever undertaken. A Colonel in charge of packing up Afghanistan last year called it “a logistics Super Bowl.” Here is Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason, who headed Army logistics until he retired last year:

Certainly in our lifetime, it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest operation in terms of complexity, size, and cost.

The dirty little secret is that our military knows how to get people, weapons and supplies into a war zone, but has little experience getting them back out. This may cost the taxpayers more than $2 billion before it is done.

China has sent drones to Nigeria. As the Boko Haram insurgency enters its 7th year, China is busy building a better relationship by selling drones, MRAP vehicles and smart bombs to Nigeria, (most of which the US has been unwilling to provide to Nigeria due to human rights concerns). China wants to become a first tier exporter of military equipment, and is looking to lock up Nigeria as a supplier of oil. On January 25, 2015, a photo appeared online showing a Chinese CH-3 UCAV drone which crashed in Nigeria’s Borno Province. Borno is the area where much of the Boko Haram violence occurred in 2014.

Your thought for the week: We hear all the time from yahoos on the web and yahoos in Congress something like this:

Isn’t it unfair that corporate dividends are taxed twice?

The answer is no, and here’s why:

A corporation is a legal entity. If it has an “accession to wealth” (meaning, a profit in tax legalese), in our system, the corporation must pay taxes. A stockholder is also a legal entity. If a stockholder receives a dividend, he/she also has an “accession to wealth”, and thus, pays a tax.

Why is this hard to understand? No one claims that when a worker gets paid a wage, and pays a tax on that income, and later spends some of that after-tax income paying someone to mow their lawn, that it is double-taxation for the lawn guy to pay income tax.

This is really simple folks: Money moves from entity, to entity, to entity, and each time, income tax applies.

And, if someone makes the argument that the shareholder is the corporation, they don’t get what a corporation is. It’s a separate legal entity that exists to protect shareholders from the business’s liabilities. The fact that it pays taxes is a normal consequence, and the entire point of its existence.

Friday Music Break – January 30, 2015

“We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.” – Thomas Picketty

Today’s music has a populist message designed to help you fight the Plutocracy over the weekend. It is “First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin”, written and performed by Leonard Cohen. The song was originally recorded by Jennifer Warnes for her 1987 album, “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Cohen recorded it a year later for his album, “I’m Your Man”. This version was recorded in London in 2009:

It has become an occasional anthem for Syriza, the Greek Populist Party that just won power on an anti-austerity, anti-European Union platform. In Greece, it was played with the words, “First we take Athens, then we take Madrid!”

Sample Lyrics:
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

You loved me as a loser,
but now you’re worried that I just might win,
You knew the way you could have stopped me,
but you never had the discipline,
So many nights I prayed for this,
to let my work begin.

See you on Sunday

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Playlist