Department of Why Can't We Do That?

A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future by David H. Pink (Riverhead Books, NY, copyright: 2005, 2006)

Excerpts from Introduction and Chapter 1 - “Right Brain Rising”:

The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind -- computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands.

Read below the fold...

Paraphrasing Jill Stein from a workshop in NYC 3-23-13:

There are 40 people on one side of a road. There is one person on the other side of the road.

A bread truck pulls up and the driver gives the one person -- standing there alone (perhaps impatiently tapping a Gucci-loafered foot and checking his Rolex) -- 40 LOAVES OF BREAD. Then the driver gives the group of 40 people, in varying states of dress and hunger, ONE LOAF OF BREAD to share among themselves. He drives off.

Read below the fold...

[I'm leaving this sticky because I wish more people would write up their experiences like this! --lambert]

A majority of medical schools recite the Modern Hippocratic Oath either at entrance to, or graduation from medical school. Although this oath is in no way binding, those of us who use physician’s services trust them to adhere to the principals that they once professed to embrace.

I could analyze each part of the Oath, but I would like to focus on this paragraph:

“I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.”

This paragraph has no basis in the real world of the “For Profit” medical system in the U.S. Here is a quick story to illustrate. Read below the fold...

I'd sure rather put my money in the Post Office bank as opposed to a den of thieves and CEO snakepit like Bank of America:

On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at their national convention in Minneapolis to investigate the establishment of a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important components of any effort to save the public post office and preserve living-wage jobs; that many countries have a long and successful history of postal banking, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the United States itself; and that postal banks could serve the nine million people who don't have a bank account and the 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low-income people access to a safe banking system. "A USPS [United States Postal Service] bank would offer a 'public option' for banking," concluded the resolution, "providing basic checking and savings - and no complex financial wheeling and dealing."

Gee, you'd think the Democrats and The Greatest Orator of Our Time would be pushing this; it saves a great -- and Constitutionally established -- American institution, it helps preserve unions and good jobs, and it would give hundreds of millions of Americans a place to put their money where Lloyd and Jamie and Michael couldn't out their trotters on it. Read below the fold...

This a long examination of the "tortured history" of the Socialist movement in America from an organizational perspective. I imagine there are a number of people who will be unhappy with the post -- Obama is, after all, a "Socialist" -- but I think the writer says some sensible things:

here are some ideas for potential forms a new socialist movement could take: Read below the fold...

The Good Doctor Black kicks out the jambs of the Overton Window on the left-hand side: Read below the fold...

Mirah Riben has a provocative article on dissident voice entitled “Statistics, Politics and Solutions in the Gun Discussion.” The following is a listing of many of Riben's enlightening facts and revelations.

1. FBI statistics for homicides in 2011:

Total homicides:                                  12,664
Firearm homicides:                               8,583
Hammer and Club homicides:               496
Knife and other blade homicides:        1,694

2. "2009 findings for homicides by the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes state that 66.9% of all homicides in the U.S. were from using firearms."

3. "More than a million Americans have been killed by guns since 1968 – more than in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and various smaller conflicts, combined."

4. "More than half of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides and not included in numbrers above. Nor are accidental fatalities by guns of all kinds included." Re report from National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, January 2013.

5. “The United States suffers far more violent deaths than any other wealthy nation, due in part to the widespread possession of firearms and the practice of storing them at home in a place that is often unlocked, according to a report released Wednesday by two of the nation’s leading health research institutions.” Re report from National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, January 2013. Read below the fold...

Well, not really. But if you view the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) meme, as I do, as a short-hand for the more general idea of using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS), then yes, it can change the whole political game for progressives if President Obama dares to use it.

Literal TDC proposals would solve the debt-ceiling, but they won't solve the larger problem of defeating the austerity politics that is so close to getting the cuts to social safety net and important discretionary government programs that austerians have long sought. PCS game-changer proposals are the ones calling for, or analyzing the impact of, PCS options aimed at paying off the national debt and covering anticipated federal deficit spending for some years.

PCS options of that kind change the game of fiscal politics by removing the issue of austerity from fiscal policy considerations. With this kind of PCS the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio go away as matters of concern. The focus of fiscal policy then becomes the impact of specific policies rather than some overall deficit or debt reducing target. The issue in fiscal policy then becomes public purpose. It becomes what specific impacts, including inflation, and full employment, are anticipated from passing specific legislation, and whether or not those impacts are in line with public purpose. But, when the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ration go away as matters of concern; then the issue of the deficit viewed as something that is draining a limited supply of financial resources goes away, also, because people will understand that using PCS to cover deficits ensures that the US Treasury can never run short of its own fiat currency.

I'm sorry to say that there are few posts of this kind, relatively speaking. I'll list and link to some of those posts later. But first I want to point to what some in the MSM blogosphere are saying right now. Read below the fold...

Gar Alperovitz, Keane Bhatt on co-ops:

Social pain, anger at ecological degradation and the inability of traditional politics to address deep economic failings has fueled an extraordinary amount of practical on-the-ground institutional experimentation and innovation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders in communities around the country.

Read below the fold...

There are no operational or legislative constraints which prevent the Federal government from eliminating deficits and debt forever.

Cynical subversion triumphs in the national debate on tax policy. Ezra Klein's review of the Tax Policy Center's report further dissects Romney's Tax Plan so that the regular guy can appreciate just how much worse off he will be with Romney. But what none of these analyses of the Romney or the Obama Tax Plans question is the fundamental rationale for taxation and borrowing to generate revenue in the first place. Read below the fold...

With all the hoopla people have been subjected to ,including court cases, regarding Obama's birth certificate, why oh why aren't the klaxons sounding about Romney's likely inability to run for the Presidency?

"No one who has received amnesty for a serious crime, such as tax evasion, can be president. "

Yet, it cannot be told with any certainty that Romney did NOT receive amnesty for tax evasions.

Not until he releases all his returns going back to 2002. And his wife says that just isn't going to happen. Read below the fold...

The House's umpteenth attempt to repeal Obamacare passed today, to no one's surprise. Barney Frank, everyone's favorite errand boy for big finance, took a moment to complain about it to Esquire, and I was struck by his analysis of his enemies: Read below the fold...

The town of Volos, Greece recently introduced the local currency TEM . I wonder if a local currency like that could be introduced in a US town and whether it could fund a jobs guarantee. I think of Philip Pilkington's description of a community controlled jobs guarrantee program: Read below the fold...