Bobby Jindal is an idiot, and why volcano monitoring is important

Everyone has already piled on Bobby Jindal for his poor response to President Obama’s address of Congress. From his sing-song delivery and awkward smile, to the irony of a republican offering lessons learned from the disastrous, Republican-led response to hurricane Katrina, only Rush Limbaugh is in Bobby Jindal’s corner. We didn’t plan on joining the chorus denouncing Jindal until he characterized volcano monitoring as waste in his speech. For that, he is now on Rebel’s radar.

What is it about government funded science that Republicans hate so much? John McCain made a fool of himself during the election by railing against grizzly bear DNA research (a program that any scientist will tell you has been a great success), and now Bobby Jindal has joined the anti-science brigade by denouncing volcano monitoring.

As Governor of a state that suffered one of the worst natural disasters in history, Bobby Jindal should know the importance of early warning systems. Apparently he does not, but if he wants to know how “wasteful” volcano monitoring really is then he should just ask this guy:

Victim of Mount Vesuvius eruption.

 

We are not in the business of advising Republicans, but they would be well served to remember that money used for scientific research is not automatically a waste of tax dollars.

The Great (helicopter) Escape

From CNN. Two prisoners escaped from Korydallos Prison in Athens on Sunday after catching a helicopter from the roof of the facility.

“It began at about 3:30 p.m. when two men hijacked a helicopter from Athens International Airport, ordering the pilot to fly to Korydallos Prison, located in a suburb of Athens, Greek state media reported. The helicopter hovered over the roof of a prison compound where inmates Nikos Paleokostas, 42, and Alket Riza, 34, were located, and rope ladders were unfurled. The prisoners climbed into the helicopter and escaped, Greece’s Justice Ministry said.”

Pretty impressive… did we mention this is the second time that Paleokostas has escaped prison this way?

Japanese finance minister resigns

Japanese finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa resigned in embarassment today after video from a press conference at the G7 meeting in Rome showed him obviously drunk.

Say what you will about Timothy Geithner and the rest of the economic team we have in the U.S., at least they take their jobs seriously enough to do their drinking out of the public eye.

Did FDR’s New Deal policies really prolong the Great Depression? Will Obama’s policies have a similar effect?

By Chief Contributor Frederic J. Rohner

A regular conservative talking point regarding Obama’s stimulus plan has been the argument that his policies are nothing more than recycled solutions from Roosevelt’s New Deal, and furthermore New Deal policies actually prolonged the Great Depression by up to 7 years. As evidence of this, right-wing pundits invariably point to a famed UCLA study which argued exactly that point.

But what does this study actually argue? And why do conservatives always bring it up? Well, to answer the last question first, they use it in their arguments because it’s pretty much all they have. The UCLA study is famous precisely because it is in a select few that have asserted FDR’s role in the Great Depression as that of villain rather than hero.

The 2004 study, authored by Harold L.Cole and Lee E. Ohanian, argues that the Great Depression would have ended in 1936 had the free market been able to correct itself, but because of government meddling in the form of New Deal policies the Great Depression dragged on until 1943. Conservatives argue that this should sway anyone from interfering with the free market, and they contend that the actions currently being undertaken by the Obama administration will have a similar effect in prolonging this economic downturn. An excellent argument against this position can be found here, written by Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe. Click here for a good summary of the paper and here for a 50 page pdf document laying out its findings.

The problem with the conservative argument and their use of the UCLA study to prove their point is that Cole and Ohanian point to a single policy as the cause for much of the stifled economic recovery, one that was only in existence for two years, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA).

Harold L. Cole summarizes:

“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services. So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”

Ohanian continues:

“High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns… salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market’s self-correcting forces.”

So basically, what the 2004 UCLA study concluded was that inflated prices and wages were the cause of the slowed recovery, and the NIRA which FDR signed into law was the cause of that inflation, resulting in a 60% weaker recovery. However, because NIRA was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court two years after it was enacted, a repeat of this particular economic policy mistake by the Obama administration would be impossible. While NIRA may have been somewhat of a blunder in terms of New Deal solutions, it was but one of many policies instituted by FDR, and although Cole and Ohanian present a good case, the general consensus remains that New Deal policies by and large were successful.

One less seat at the table

By Contributor Eli Roth

 

Many Republicans are heralding Senator Gregg’s withdrawal from Obama’s Cabinet nomination as a victory, a stern admonishment of our new President and his outlandish policies.  But I ask you, since when is quitting considered a victory? 

 

Let us be serious for a moment and leave partisanship by the door.

 

Can we agree that Senator Gregg is a seasoned Washington insider?  Can we agree that he is a skilled professional political operative with the education, intelligence, and proper background to effectively serve his constituency?  If we can agree on this, then we must also agree that he knew precisely where the new administration stood on the census and the stimulus package before accepting the nomination.  To believe that he and Obama did not discuss this at length before his acceptance is to gorge oneself on the red Kool Aide. 

 

If Gregg knew exactly what to expect from the administration, and in fact sought out the Commerce Secretary position, why did he withdraw?  He withdrew because he saw his own party, the party he has served faithfully for many years, abandon him in the blink of an eye.  He became the laughingstock and cautionary tale of the “new” Republican Party, and he caved.  He is a quitter. 

 

When did it become dishonorable to serve alongside those with whom you disagree?  When did it become unacceptable to passionately voice opposition in the face of the majority?  To do this is honorable and, yes, necessary, considering the tidal wave of approval crashing into the current administration.  President Obama needs smart people who disagree with him.  Vehemently disagree.  And he needs them in his ear.  Gregg was offered a seat at the table – an opportunity to increase what little slice of the pie Republicans have left in Washington.  He rejected it after finding that his own party cannot stand to see one of their own serve the boy king. 

 

I was a Republican for most of my life, and proud.  When people ask me why I jumped ship into the sea of primary-handicapped independents, I can point to this situation.  For the past decade, Republicans have been pushing the moderates out of their party, abandoning them come Congressional election time, allowing them fall to moderate Democrats, only calling their number when it was time for a party-line vote.  The moderates have been drowned out, and Gregg has been silenced.  I doubt if we’ll ever hear from this coward again. 

“The race is on,” American lab may be first to find evidence of “God Particle”

The U.S. physics lab, Fermilab, has mounted a challenge to its European counterpart CERN, to be the first to find evidence of the Higgs Boson, or “God Particle.” Pitting its Tevatron accelerator against CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, Fermilab claims it now has at worst a 50-50 shot to discover the now theoretical particle.

The Higgs Boson may help scientists understand why matter has mass. For more information on the Higgs Boson, or God Particle, click here.

The reason that Fermilab now has such a high probability of making this important discovery first can be explained by the fact that the LHC at CERN’s facilities in Switzerland has been out of commission since it was damaged in an accident last fall, and may not be in operation again until September 2009. That downtime has helped upstart Fermilab’s Tevatron accelerator, located in Illinois, to catch up and perhaps overtake the famed European organization to claim physics’ most important prize to date.

Click here for the original article from BBC News.

The stimulus in perspective

Versions of the stimulus plan have been passed by both houses of Congress, a few details still need to be ironed out, and nothing has yet been signed by President Obama, but here are some facts and figures to think about when complaining about this orgy of government spending, as some have characterized the bill:

• The stimulus bill which President Obama will sign totals $789.5 billion.
• The current military budget for fiscal year 2009 is $965 billion.
• The total military budget for fiscal year 2009 (taking into consideration disability payments, pensions, etc.) is $1.449 trillion.
• The War in Iraq has thus far cost the U.S. $596, 377, 770, 640*

To see the military budget figures for yourself, feel free to go to http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm. They have a bunch of pie charts and colorful graphs, as well as a list of their resources and a link to the electronic version of the U.S. budget for fiscal year 2009.

*Because the U.S. currently spends over $300 million a day in Iraq, the total cost grows by the second. To see the most up to date figure, go to http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home.

So the next time that someone tells you this stimulus bill is a waste of money, that it rewards stupidity, is filled with pork, and won’t actually stimulate the economy, tell them that this money will be spent in the U.S., this money will be used to build schools and hospitals and bridges and highways. Tell them that this money will not be used for war, this money will not be used to destroy hospitals halfway around the world, this money will not be used to rebuild those exact same hospitals at inflated costs through opportunistic contractors. This money will not be wasted for the simple fact that it will be spent in the U.S., for the betterment of U.S. citizens.