Tolerate the Inequality

Thus saith the Lord (Griffiths, Vice-Chairman of Government Sachs International):

"If we said we're not going to have as big bonuses or the same bonuses as last year, I think then you'd find that lots of City firms could easily hive off their operations to Switzerland or the far east."

See, tolerate the inequality for your own good.

"Eight months ago it looked as if Wall Street was in store for strong financial regulation" [Robert Reich]:

-- oversight of derivative trading, pay linked to long-term performance, much higher capital requirements, an end to conflicts of interest (i.e. credit rating agencies being paid by the very companies whose securities they're rating), and even resurrection of the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial from investment banking.

But, he says, "The politicians who put off Wall Street regulation for ten months knew that the public would probably lose interest by now."

How's that inequality tolerance going in Alabama?

After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town...
[AlterNet]

For a lot of Americans, the sight of troops occupying their towns is their worst nightmare come true --

. . .

But what even the right-wing anti-government people won't report is the true reason why the Army was called out in the first place, something that goes right back to the cause of the shooting rampage: billionaire exploitation of the local Alabamans, not just by the chicken oligarch, but from higher up the predator food chain -- Wall Street banking behemoth JP Morgan Chase.

We may need more ad blitz on this Inequality Tolerance program.

GOP's Angry Whites

Indiana's Rep. Mike Pence tends to the side of the argument that media performers Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh do speak for the Republican Party. SC Sen. Lindsey Graham said they don't speak for Republicans, and that the party can't grow if it's only for "angry white guys."

Mike Pence said Beck and Limbaugh may not speak for everybody, but for a lot of people; and Beck said he's sticking with the angry people.

I agree with Pence's viewpoint. Rush Limbaugh's show took off in the 1980s, and he has had a big, angry audience ever since. They stayed angry, whether there was a Republican or a Democrat in the White House; so the fact that they are angry at the current president simply means they have a clear target for the anger they've been spewing all along.

That's the Republican Party I've seen ever since the 1980s. It's kind of amazing that the angry, poor white guys don't figure out that it's the rich white guys who keep the angry fire stoked. But it's not my party.

Solar Flower Tower

Alternative Energy News reports on a Solar Flower Tower in Israel. Solar tracking mirrors direct light to a bulb at the top of the tower, to generate electricity.

Let's get on with these designs!

Steve Buyer Then & Now

Then

October 11:
[jconline]

"It's not Congressman Buyer's foundation," press secretary Anjulen Anderson said.

Now

October 19:
[TPM]

Buyer now admits to the Indianapolis Star that a lot of those unitemized foundation expenses were for golf outings with corporate donors at, among other places, Disney World, the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, and the Phoenix-area Boulders resort.

He says all that golfing was no fun, though. It was work. Maybe this is like that W guy's "hard work" on the ranch.

Orly Taitz, Champion of the Unpatriotic

Judge Clay Land sanctioned Orly Taitz, a leader of the Birther crowd and former attorney for the unpatriotic Major Stefan Frederick Cook.

Judge Land's order quoted by the Ledger-Enquirer:

“To suggest that an Army officer, who has received a medical education at the expense of the government and then seeks to avoid deployment based upon speculation that the president is not a natural born citizen..."

The judge was going to sanction her $10,000 but she convinced him to double it.

More at TPM.

Indiana: Cut Edgecation

Journal Gazette:

Governor hints at education cuts

Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, the chief budget architect in that chamber, said the governor can withhold payments to K-12 schools and higher education, noting they are a dominant part of the state budget.

Krugman, NYT:

The Uneducated American

Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.

Irving Kristol: Big Debt & "Noble Lie"

"The godfather of neoconservatism," Irving Kristol, who was all for the idea of a U.S. Commander in Chief a.k.a. President telling lies...

was keen as well on President Reagan's moves to run up huge debt...

without means of paying it down:

The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority - so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government..."