text:
Politics, Economics, Technology, and Sarcasm
A buddy of mine works in a niche retail market. The store he runs is quite profitable. Almost all the other stores make decent money. Yet the corporation as a whole loses money because all the stores have to support this vast corporate superstructure that has built up over the years (way to many VPs, all with their own secretaries and expense accounts, etc). I worked years ago for a restaurant that lost money for the same reason.
This made me wonder how many other American companies actually make money from operations yet somehow end up as net losers. I'm not sure, for instance, how well it's known that American auto and steel companies are absolutely crippled by the cost of their employees healthcare plans (since every single one of their major competitors have government paid healthcare).
A lot of companies out there have profitable little niches without a reasonable way to scale up. Unfortunately, management often wants to scale u anyway. This is primarily because the people running a giant company barely breaking even get paid a lot more than people running a tiny very profitable company. So you get stores built in so many places they manage to compete with each other (as in Borders and Walgreens) or management buying unrelated or tangentially related new businesses. Or you get "vertical integration" for no good economic reason (when becoming your own supplier or own distributor actually costs more than outsourcing).
Just seems a shame that profitable small businesses so often become unprofitable big ones. This is especially true when the big corporation doesn't add any value other than perhaps a name brand (Starbucks, et al).
Posted by William at 22:04
Newt? Really? Well, I guess so. I mean, he isn't batshit crazy and he isn't an utter idiot. But is that really the best you can do? Newt is so transparently amoral and so thoroughly unlikeable. It seems that a party with roughly 55 millions registered voters could do better than a guy who's main appeal lies in not being so openly incompetent that he provokes public weeping.
Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"?
When did it get replaced by "I don't agree with you, so I'm fine with you getting pepper-sprayed by the police for no reason"?
I've got to assume if it was middle-aged Tea Party people getting pepper-sprayed without cause, that right-wingers would be going crazy over the Jack-Booted Thugs (remember that phrase?) of the New World Order. And they'd be right. The police are given a legal monopoly on the use of force in situations like this, but that should never translate into a green-light to use it however the hell you feel. Lethal force (and that includes things like pepper-spray and tasers) should only be used in cases of real danger. It should never be used just to force compliance.
Just as importantly, we all need to understand that people have the right to disagree with us. They may be the Occupy Wall Street people, they may be the Tea Party; they may even be White Supremacists or UT fans. They still have the right to their opinions, just as we have the right to ours. We have the absolute right to point out when someone is full of crap, but we should never celebrate they're being forcibly muzzled.
Penn St (and their enablers in the media) still don't get the point. They talk about "letting the healing begin" as if the real victims here are Penn St football fans and that the damage that needs to be healed was done in the last few weeks. They clearly still see the destruction of a topflight football program to be worse than the molestation of some kids. They still don't get that their "football matters most" mentality is exactly what led to Sandusky being allowed to run amok. If those in charge had cared about kids more than they did about football, Sandusky would have been arrested years ago.
The Penn St community seems to have no idea how dangerously close they are to becoming an utter joke. The behavior of their athletic department has diminished the value of every Penn St degree. Now they've hired Louis Freeh to do their internal investigation. Freeh is unethical political hack who was known for twisting investigations to fit his own agenda while running the FBI. It's like hiring Jack Abramoff to investigate your own recruiting violations. This makes it obvious that protecting their football program is more important than justice and more importnat than the school as a whole.
University of San Francisco voluntarily eliminated their basketball program after a scandal that was nowhere near as big as this is. SMU did the same in football. They both understood that an out of control athletic department can make the entire school look bad and hurts every single grad. No one wants their degree to be associated solely with cheating in sports, and no one should want their degree to be associated in the public mind with covering up for pedophiles. Penn St needs to send the message that their school is not defined by their athletics, and the only way to do it at this late date is to turn down any bowl game offered, forfeit all games from this year, and eliminate their football program. I'm sure the Big10 would work out a deal to allow them to sit out a few years then bring it back. If not, having no program at all would be preferable to having an out of control program bring dishonor to everything you stand for.
A Penn St alum writes on the scandal
The amount of negligence is hard to believe to begin with, and almost impossible to believe from an institution held in such high regard by so many.
If the allegations are true, every Penn State alum who has walked the campus over the past 15 years will have to come to terms with the fact that they were lied to every single day of their enrollment. Their tuition dollars helped bankroll the lie. The university, seeking to avoid scandal, addressed the matter only in whispers audible only to them. By not acting, school officials were complicit in Jerry Sandusky's alleged crimes. Their silence allowed a pattern of abuse to develop and flourish. They chose the reputation of a school legend over the children whose lives he was ruining.
In putting the football program over right and wrong, the university was badly missing the point. But so too is the current student body, many of who have taken to the streets of State College to riot (or rally or whatever you want to call it, it's the same stupid mob they form every time they're emotional about anything) even as I type. They are protesting what looks to be the imminent departure of Joe Paterno, not wanting the school's greatest icon to meet disgrace. In the process they are destroying the last vestiges of Penn State's integrity, valuing the reputation of a school legend over any and all else. It doesn't matter to them that Paterno's judgment, informing school officials and letting it go at that, put more children in harm's way.
It's got to be rough for someone who was so clearly proud of the school they attended. Nice that he has the perspective to realize that the school's reputation and its football program got in the way of protecting kids and that can't be allowed to happen.
Anyone worrying about the effect of this child molestation scandal* on the Penn St football program is like someone watching a neighbor's house burn down with the entire family inside then complaining that an ambulance parked on his lawn. How this affects the team or the rest of this season is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter in the slightest. It should not be taken into account at all.
Just saw that Joe Paterno has announced he'll retire at the end of the year and has essentially ordered the Board of Trustees not to waste any time discussing his status. That's not his call to make, nor should he be allowed to finish out the season or retire on his own terms. Paterno should be fired, his statue should be pulled down, and he should be considered an utter disgrace forever.
*Some idiot anchor on SportsCenter referred to this as a "sex scandal". It needs to get called what it actually was, a "child molestation" scandal or even a "child rape" scandal. What happened doesn't have any connection to what normal people think of as "sex". Please call it what it was.
Well, Michael Jackson's Dr just got convicted. That's a relief. I wouldn't want us to forget that the lives of famous people are far more important than the lives of non-famous people.
I have paid absolutely no attention to the trial, so have no opinion to his guilt. I do, however, seriously doubt that he'd have been charged with anything if the corpse in question was that of a nobody. I also doubt he could get a fair trial in the zoo-like atmosphere at the courthouse. My favorite was the giant "We Miss Michael" sign, which had nothing to do with the Dr's guilt but everything to do with why he was on trial.
The more I think about the Paterno/Penn St thing, the more it reminds me of Cardinal Law, Archbishop of the Boston diocese. in both cases we have men who utterly dominated the institutions they were part of, who were more concerned with protecting their reputations than protecting kids. Neither is in any danger of spending one day in jail, nor will either ever be charged with a crime.
Both Law and Paterno, however, are morally culpable for what they allowed to happen, what they covered up, and the fact that they could have protected children and chose not to.
Joe Paterno should go to jail. A graduate assistant walked in on former Paterno assistant coach Jerry Sandusky anally penetrating a 10 year old. The graduate assistant went to his Dad and they together went to Paterno. He told the athletic director who apparently did nothing. Every single adult who knew about this sexual abuse had a duty to go to the police. Reporting it to your boss is not what is required. Calling the police is. But Paterno was worried about his reputation and that of Penn State football. He was certainly more worried about them than he was about the kids getting molested. So he didn't go to the police, and Sandusky was free to keep molesting kids (using as cover a charity he'd founded and to which his association with Penn St football had given prestige).
Paterno, the graduate assistant, his dad, the athletic director, and anyone else who knew about this and did nothing should go to jail. They won't, because famous people like Paterno aren't held to the same laws as everyone else. They won't, because some cowards in the DA's office are afraid that charging JoePa would trainwreck their careers. They won't, because we excuse not making waves and passing the buck if it keeps us winning (regardless of the cost). But make no excuses, Joe Paterno should go to jail.
How Cutting Pentagon Spending Will Fix U.S. Defense Strategy
The Pentagon's boosters are right that big cuts will limit military capabilities. But that would actually be a good thing for the United States. Shrinking the U.S. military would not only save a fortune but also encourage policymakers to employ the armed services less promiscuously, keeping American troops -- and the country at large -- out of needless trouble. Especially for the last two decades, the United States' considerable wealth and fortunate geography have made global adventurism seem largely costless. The 2011 U.S. military budget of nearly $700 billion is higher in real terms than at any point during the Cold War.
People who are still hung up on the "liberal media" angle are totally missing the point. First, we need to establish what we mean by "the media". While someone on the police beat for the Sacramento Bee or writing movie reviews for the Dayton Daily News is technically just as much of "the media" as is Anderson Cooper or Shepard Smith, they're not who we're talking about. We're talking about the fairly limited number of people, almost all of them working for big media conglomerates, who actually have power to drive the narrative or frame the national debate.
These opinion makers are, at the core, financially well off people working for corporations in big cities. Guess the opinion of a well off corporate city dweller on an issue and that's likely what the media consensus will be. It's basically liberal on social issues and corporate conservative on fiscal ones, but with some twists.
The media tends to be reflexively patriotic and pro-troops; not because they've ever served in the military but because they haven't. They're afraid enough of being seen against the troops (as the media was seen during Vietnam) that they'd rather just abdicate the power to hold nuanced positions on any military issues. They're not very religious, but feel kinda guilty about it. So extremely religious people make them uncomfortable but so does openly making fun of people who are. They're pro choice, pro gay rights, and think guns are bad things (these things make them look liberal). Sexual harassment or discrimination is a big deal to them, but employees getting screwed out of overtime or getting their jobs outsourced overseas really isn't.
They work for big corporations, have generous healthcare packages, have no real financial problems, and likely have big investment portfolios. The unemployment rate could shoot to 20% and it would only affect them indirectly. They pay lip service to things that don't affect them like public education (their kids all go to private schools) and universal healthcare, but they won't lose sleep over them. So for them the health of the economy is based on how the stock market is doing and maybe the price of gas. If the market is booming while everything else stagnates, they'd see the economy as doing nicely. If the market cratered while real wages went up and unemployment went down, they'd think everything was going to hell.
So when you see the talking heads going on about something (or ignoring something else), think about where they're coming from.
Like most people, I assumed the big runup in oil prices in the middle of last decade was due to increased worldwide demand and the ongoing instability in the middle east. Only recently have I learned that those causes which can actually be attributed to cause and effect were secondary to one which was entirely not. As it turns out, a huge part of the increase in commodity prices during those years had nothing to do with supply and demand. If it did, then it's not likely that every single major traded commodity would have a big price runup during those years; but that's what happened.
What caused a massive price runup in all the big traded commodities (including oil) was the influx into the market of truly massive amount of money from speculators. Since speculators in commodities are almost always taking the "long" position, this influx of money caused a massive spike in commodity prices as the money poured in. Since, unfortunately, we as consumers are at the mercy of those same commodity prices; we ended up paying massively more for energy and for everything else. Of course, the oil companies and various dictatorships selling the oil ended up with way way more money than they should have gotten.
When talking about the bailouts, it's often mentioned that almost everyone involved had a banking background; but it's not mentioned how that really changed things. The authors of Bailout Nation, with New Post-Crisis Update: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy mentioned that the problem was that they focused on saving the individual banks rather than saving the banking system.
To save the banking system, you need certain things:
1) Guarantees to deposits and enough depositor confidence to stop runs on the banks
2) Enough liquidity to make sure the short term loans that so many businesses rely on keep getting made
3) Some mechanism for making the long term loans like mortgages and business expansion loans
We really just needed to prevent a run on the banks and to make sure enough lending still took place to keep the economy from grinding to a halt. We didn't actually need any of the troubled banks to survive. Every single one of those banks could have gone under while the "banking system" itself kept going. The surviving banks would have expanded to fill the void in retail services.
Once the banks' assets and outstanding loans had been sold off (at their discounted actual value, not at the amounts they'd originally been booked for), there likely would have been enough to keep the FDIC from shelling out too much to guarantee deposits. The bondholders would've ended up with pennies on the dollar and the owners of stock would've gotten nothing at all, but those are the risks of the free market. If you invest money in companies with shaky business practices, you're likely to lose out. The government would have been on the hook for some cash through the FDIC, but it wouldn't have needed to guarantee hundreds of billions of dollars in crappy loans.
But to a banker, the idea of letting Bank of America, Citibank, and so many others just go under is just intolerable. They lost sight of the goal of saving the banking system and made the goal the saving of the banks themselves. Thus we end up with our current system of "capitalism" when things are going good and "socialism" the minute things go to hell. If you want the big rewards that come with risk, you need to pay the price of those risks if they blow up in your face. Otherwise, there's never an incentive not to take crazier and crazier risks.
Stumbled across a book that almost read as a parody of the melding of Islamophobia and Obamaphobia, which then lead me to some googling and searching to see what else was out there. Apparently, there are people legitimately worried about Sharia law being imposed in the US. Like, so worried that they're willing to write books on the subject or read books written by others. Of course, there are some that are written as straight up propaganda with a political bent (like How Obama Embraces Islam's Sharia Agenda (Encounter Broadsides) ); but some appear to be written by people who are really really worried about something that will so clearly never happen.
America is completely dominated by Christianity, yet it's illegal to use state funds for a Nativity Scene. Do people legitimately think a small minority religion with almost no power is somehow going to impose Sharia on the rest of us? Or do people not even think about it deeply enough to realize how ridiculous their fears are?
This should give us pause as we contemplate life on a warmer planet. Extremes in weather are almost always a bad thing, and the prospect on those extremes getting even wilder is not happy.
Climate Change and the End of Australia
What is likely to vanish – or be transformed beyond recognition – are many of the things we think of when we think of Australia: the barrier reef, the koalas, the sense of the country as a land of almost limitless natural resources. Instead, Australia is likely to become hotter, drier and poorer, fractured by increasing tensions over access to water, food and energy as its major cities are engulfed by the rising seas.
To climate scientists, it's no surprise that Australia would feel the effects of climate change so strongly, in part because it has one of the world's most variable climates. "One effect of increasing greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere is to amplify existing climate signals," says Karoly. "Regions that are dry get drier, and regions that are wet get wetter. If you have a place like Australia that is already extreme, those extremes just get more pronounced."
Matt Taibbi's Wall St Isn't Winning, It's Cheating
These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don't want handouts. It's not a class uprising and they don't want civil war -- they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It's amazing that some people think that that's asking a lot.
Been thinking about Steve Jobs and his place in the tech ecosphere. The products he's best known for (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad) were not great leaps in technology. Apple didn't invent the mouse, and the Mac wasn't even the first Apple computer to feature one. Apple didn't invent the smartphone, the portable music player, or the touchscreen tablet.
What Steve Jobs did was make these innovations into something that people really wanted to use, and he did it through perfecting the interface. He understood that most people didn't want to learn all about the machines they were using. Jobs made it so people didn't about to think about the computer while using it and people loved him for it. What people loved about the Mac was the mouse and the way it interacted with the desktop (something which no popular computer even had before the Mac came along). What people love about the iPad is the touchscreen. They don't even have to know about what's going on underneath, and most of them didn't even remember a time when it would have been expected. And that's the beauty of what Steve Jobs wrought.
Turns out that Rubio in Florida lied about his family fleeing communism in Cuba (they actually left before Castro even returned from Mexico). Easy way to score some street cred with the still-powerful exile community, I guess. It's not as romantic to say your family moved here for economic opportunity just like most immigrants (awkward too, with all the hate directed towards immigrants by todays GOP).
I don't really see this as that big a deal. It's pretty standard for politicians to stretch their own accomplishments and outright lie about their ancestors'. Of course, Gore got crucified by the media for a lot less.
Just saw some idiot on CNBC insisting that for-profit schools were focused on the "educational experience" and comparing them favorably to normal colleges because they don't have basketball teams. At first I thought he was joking.
The AIG bailout (now up to about $182 billion) is the perfect case of what should never have happened. AIG was essentially two companies under one roof: a giant boring insurance company that was quite solvent and a giant speculative hedge fund that lost hundreds of billions. The two should never have been allowed to coexist (we regulate insurance companies to make sure they don't blow all the premiums they're paid on stupid gambles) and once AIG became insolvent it was not necessary to bail out the hedge fund operation to keep the insurer going.
Being the biggest insurance company in the world, AIG collapsing would likely have caused a mass panic and set off a bad chain of events. The collapse of the hedge fund which made giant bets with other hedge funds and financial entities wouldn't have done so. It would have screwed over the fund's counterparties (a "counterparty" in this instance being who the hedge fund was making bets with), but it wouldn't have caused a massive chain reaction.
A lot of this is due to the kind of bets AIG's hedge fund was making. In many instances, it was taking relatively small amounts of money on the chance that very very large CDOs (collateralized debt obligations, the massive bundles of mortgages that set of the entire debt crisis) would stop paying off. In some cases this was billed as "insuring" the CDOs, but they were pretty much straight up bets since the people buying the "insurance" weren't the owners of those CDOs, they were just betting on them failing (kind of like taking out fire insurance on someone else's property then cheering for the arsonists). Being willing to take these giant bets with a huge downside was mostly due to the way the hedge fund people were compensated. If they made a risky bet that was calculated to make money over an extended period of time (like taking huge bets on the health of poorly understood CDOs), the hedge fund people got paid for the entire estimated profit right away. They didn't have to wait until the deal had run its course. They didn't even have to wait until the deal had made any money at all. They got paid right away. This obviously created a massive conflict of interest, giving the hedge fund guys incentive to make any deal they could "estimate" would make money regardless of the risk.
When the CDOs started going under and AIG suddenly didn't have the money to pay off their bets; the Federal government didn't need to step in and start shoveling money into the furnace. The could have forced AIG into chapter 11, fired all the management, then spun off the giant insurance company we'd decided was essential to the global economy. The insolvent hedge fund could then have been wound down. There would not have been enough money to pay off all the bets AIG had lost, but so what? It's not the taxpayers' responsibility to bail out every company that makes bad bets and goes under. And, as stated, in many cases the counterparties had only paid out relatively small amounts of money getting some truly sick odds on their bets (up to 100:1). However, between the money they did have, the bets they'd made that didn't actually lose, and any money they could've clawed back from what was paid to hedge fund guys based on phantom profits; there likely would have been enough to pay back the money the counterparties had put up to make those bets. The counterparties wouldn't have been happy, but that's what happens when you make giants bets with a company that'll never be able to pay them off if they lose.
So, in the end, no one would have been out of pocket any money and the incompetents running AIG would have been out on the streets. Instead, we spent billions bailing out not the insurance side (which was not insolvent) but the hedge fund side which never should have been bailed out.
Just finished reading Bailout Nation, with New Post-Crisis Update: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy and it made me feel ill. Sure, the author overstated a few things to make his point. But even the raw numbers are pretty brutal, and I learned a few things I hadn't known. Draws a pretty bleak picture of how deregulation, lack of oversight, distorted reward structures, and historically low interest rates combined to melt the entire financial system. His emphasis in on the Fed and how normally sedate banks and insurance companies went wild with speculative greed.
I liked Michael Lewis' The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine a lot better for an inside look at how the mess got started and how it played out. For obvious reasons, the guys who made a killing betting against the real estate market could be candid with Lewis in a way the guys who lost billions of their investors' money never will be.
Found this Glenn Greenwald article from a couple years ago about the root of the Tea Party anger and how it was misdirected towards minorities instead of the truly rich and powerful rigging the system. He ties it into the anger misdirected towards Clinton by Gingrich's Contract with America crowd.
Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while — all together now, euphemistically — "having someone else benefit." And this "someone else" are, as always, the poor minorities and other undeserving deadbeats who, in right-wing lore, somehow (despite their sorry state) exert immensely powerful influence over the U.S. Government and are thus the beneficiaries of endless, undeserved largesse: people too lazy to work, illegal immigrants, those living below the poverty line.....
.....The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.
Just ran across this. McCain sucking up to a dictator.
Watching Republicans on TV the last two days talking about Libya and Iraq has been downright embarrassing. They've gone into 24/7 election mode and refuse to say anything good about the US under Obama. Not only are they clearly hoping the economy doesn't recover until after the election, they just as clearly are upset when the US scores any foreign policy victories. Wouldn't be surprised to find out some of them secretly wish Osama bin Laden were still alive.
McCain congratulated the French and British yesterday on victory in Libya without mentioning the American contribution, then churlishly claimed that the war would have been over much sooner if Obama had done things differently. Today, Romney was talking about our orderly and planned well in advance withdrawal from Iraq as if it were the panicked evacuation of the last personnel from the embassy roof a la Saigon.
Need I point out the obvious. Libya is an example of using our power in a limited but very effective way to help people free themselves. Iraq is an example of using overwhelming force to create a total mess. The Republicans find it quite inconvenient that they were in charge of the amazingly expensive mess while someone they dislike was in charge of the inexpensive success.
This is Mitt's quote on Iraq:
President Obama's astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women. The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.
Koch bros
If you want background on the most powerful men in American politics whom you've likely heard of, you should read this New Yorker article on the Koch brothers, billionaire right-wingers who fund an entire web on organizations, media fronts, and other assorted attempts to move American politics as far to the right as possible.
the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.
Oddly, as I was typing this; Rachel Maddow (who I would totally hit on if she were straight, as I just love smart tomboyish chicks) started talking about the Kock brothers somehow going after one of her producers by name.
Here's the video (but it's not very exciting, TBH)
Apparently, it is now illegal to take cash for used goods in Louisiana.
It's a law that was passed during this year's busy legislative session.....
.....[House bill 195] states those who buy or sell second hand goods are prohibited from using cash. State representative Rickey Hardy co-authored the bill. Hardy says, "they give a check or a cashiers money order, or electronic one of those three mechanisms is used.".....
.....Besides non-profit resellers like Goodwill, and garage sales, the language of the bill encompasses stores like the Pioneer Trading Post and flea markets.
So much for limited government. I guess you can get right wingers to go along with almost anything as long as it's in the name of "law and order" (in this case, keeping people from selling stolen goods). Obviously, this bill was so poorly written that it'll likely be repealed (can't take cash at yard sales, brilliant). But the urge to control more and more of our lives is genuine. If something can't be monitored by the government, best not to allow it to take place at all.
Just look at our famously successful War on Drugs (so successful that no one can get drugs anywhere in the US). All we've had to do is spend hundreds of billions of dollars, lock up millions of people, sacrifice our 4th & 5th Amendment rights, enrich murderous gangsters at home and despots around the world; and we've made drugs slightly harder to get hold of. Terrific. I can't wait to see what's next on the agenda.
Word out of Tripoli is that Gadhafi is dead. To me, Libya is an almost perfect example of how American military power should be used. There was a popular uprising against a brutal dictator, which was being violently suppressed. We and our allies provided support for the rebels, including airpower; but never committed ground troops. The dictator eventually gets defeated, mostly due to opposition by his own people. Post-war Libya will be rebuilt by Libyans for the benefit of Libyans. That's the way to do things. Hard to do anything but pat Obama on the back on foreign policy.
I really don't understand the hostility to alternative energy on the part of the right wing. OK, I understand hostility on the part of those in the oil or coal industries as pure short-sighted self interest. That's pretty standard. What I don't understand is the hostility emanating from right wing bloggers, talking heads, or even commenters on message boards. It's as if anything the damn hippies like absolutely must be opposed regardless of what it is.
If we really want "energy independence", is it better to hope unicorns discover a massive overlooked source of oil deep in the American heartland, or to come up with alternatives to the oil we now import from dictatorships in the Middle East? Is it better to burn through our limited fossil fuels as fast as we possibly can, or to adopt methods to stretch how long they last.
The easiest is solar energy. By far our biggest demand for electricity is during the day. It's when we run A/C the most. It's when our factories are running. It's when our offices, schools, and stores are open. We have to build an overcapacity of electrical plants just to deal with the big spikes in demand we experience in the day. Luckily enough, that's also when the sun is shining. We have tens of millions of single family homes with empty roofs, just waiting for electrical panels. We have entire office and industrial parks with rooftops just as empty. Filling these rooftops with generating capacity would drastically reduce the demand for electricity and suffer almost no transmission loss. Fossil fuels combine for 2/3 of our electrical generation, and as demand increases they account for almost all the new generating capacity that comes online.
The Freakonomics site has a post that manages to completely miss the point. It disparages rooftop solar in places like San Francisco because there are sunnier parts of the state; treating it as an either/or proposition as if putting rooftop solar in San Francisco meant it couldn't go in Bakersfield or Fresno. It also completely ignores the energy lost in transmission which is saved by generating it where it's consumed and indulges in some hippie-punching by speculating that San Franciscans only want solar panels to make themselves look good.
The article goes on to praise San Diego for having just over 2000 residential solar installations. In a city of over 1.3 million people which gets only 42 rainy days a year, 2000 roofs with solar is a friggin joke. San Diego is absolutely perfect for solar and should have it on almost every roof. We should be putting rooftop solar pretty much everywhere practical, especially in places that never have snow and to which power transmission is lossy and can't be easily expanded.
Charles Pierce on David Brooks
It's Tuesday, and David Brooks is happy — nay, ecstatic — that all of you out there are using your encroaching poverty to rediscover your moral compass. He calls it — and I am not kidding here — The Great Restoration, and he's awfully proud of each and every one of you peasants.....
.....to Brooks, "Quietly but decisively, Americans are trying to restore the moral norms that undergird our economic system."
Jesus H. Christ in a fking Volvo, no, it doesn't. It means people are broke. People are broke because the end product of 30 years of economic theorizing and political action that you supported has resulted in a shattered middle-class. People are broke because the Wall Street casino that your politics created and celebrated and enabled finally broke the entire country and took the rest of us down with it.
Bloomberg's Editorial Board
writes on the same basic idea as my "tax to cause the least pain" concept, but is also worried about people getting pissed off and just wanting to "punish" Wall Street.
We support Obama's stance that people who earn more than $200,000 (or $250,000 for a couple) ought to contribute more to the public weal. Critics call this "class warfare," but it needn't be. The intention isn't to punish the rich, nor to suggest that people with high incomes are bad. The intention is to raise the money necessary to finance the amount of government we want, and to do so as fairly as possible. Those who have been luckiest in the lottery of life -- whether by talent or trust fund -- have also, in recent years, been luckiest in rates of taxation
Goldman Sachs must really, really be sweating its public image, as I just ran across a full page they ran in "Popular Science" touting their role in building a big arena in Louisville. I can't imagine that the readership has a big crossover with investment banking customers, so I'm guessing they're just trying to tell the world: "See, we sometimes actually help get funding for stuff you like. We're not just blood-sucking vampires."
I Liked Ike
Where has the Republican Party of Eisenhower, of Ford, even of Nixon gone?
There is space for a political party that is in favor of a small yet efficient government that intrudes into the market and personal lives only when necessary, strong cost-effective defense, low taxes that cause the least pain and market distortion, and balanced budgets except in emergencies. We just don't have one of those parties.
Small, efficient governments don't spend hundreds of billions in corporate welfare. Cost-effective defense doesn't waste billions on unneeded big-ticket items nor does it get involved in military adventurism overseas. A sound government would raise enough money to pay for its operations, not borrow hundreds of billions to avoid raising taxes while shifting as much of the tax burden as possible onto the backs of those who can least afford it.
I really think that a lean government that only operates where it is really needed could be an electoral winner, mainly through keeping tax rates really low without borrowing our kids into the grave. So it depresses me to see the party that pays lip service to low taxes and small government make corporate welfare its biggest priority.
Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union.
- Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832.
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
Causing the Least Pain
I've noticed that opponents of the so-called "Buffett Rule" (that millionaires shouldn't pay lower tax rates than the less well off) throw out phrases like "class warfare" and "jealousy" as if the point were just to punish rich people for the hell of it.
The fact is, government operations need to be paid for. Doing this requires taxes and taxes on anyone cause at least some pain. So we should try to find the source of taxes that cause the least pain and the least distortion of the market. Charging millionaires like Warren Buffett the same tax rates that others pay as a way to narrow the budget deficit seems about as painless as we can get.
The same holds true for Inheritance Taxes. Sure, it would be nice to inherit millions without paying any taxes, but it would be nice for a janitor to pay less tax on his paycheck too. Which do you think causes more pain, inheritance taxes on estates over $1 million or income taxes + state taxes + payroll taxes on the average pay stub?
I've read articles that explain away the lower taxes Buffett pays based on the fact that payroll taxes have a cap and capital gains are taxed at a lower rate as if this were just the way things are and there's nothing we can do about it. Those tax rates weren't set by edict from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They were set by political decisions and can be changed by political decisions. Payroll taxes skyrocketed under Reagan as a way to disguise the size of the deficits he was running and no President since has done a thing to lower them; even as upper income tax rates, inheritance taxes, and capital gains taxes have been slashed or entirely eliminated.
The tax burden has been trending in the direction of most pain, as taxes on those who can least afford it (mainly payroll and sales taxes) have gone up while taxes on those who aren't struggling have gone down. If we need to do something about the deficits (and we do), then I'm simply asking that we go in the other direction and look at taxes that cause the least pain.
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat,
plausible, and wrong."
"9-9-9"
Politics is not a game. It effects real people in very real ways. It decides what taxes we pay, if we go to war, and how your kids are educated. So I can't hope for someone batshit crazy like Bachmann to win the Republican nomination just because she'd be easier to beat. Whoever gets the nomination could easily end up the next President, and I'd prefer that not be someone batshit crazy. So definitely pulling for a moderate, preferably someone with enough spine to stand up to the wingnuts in his own party. Unfortunately, that's not the moderate we're stuck with. Romney is the only non-wingnut to gain any traction, so I guess he's the man. Not that he'd be a terrible President if he was working with a Democratic Congress (he wouldn't be); just that he's not the man to stand up to a Republican Congress and tell them to slow down.
This definitely appears to be the race Romney wants. He's the only moderate the press acknowledges (sorry, Huntsman) and there are 3 conservatives to split the far more numerous rightwing vote. He's just got to hope they don't coalesce around one candidate because if they do Romney is toast. His only path in a year dominated by wingnut anger is to win with a moderate plurality. He'll be helped by the press and Republican establishment, who are scared of a loose cannon and really don't give a damn about social issues.
Not going to dive into a complex explanation of where I've been. Just figure it's enough to say I saw a lot, did a lot, and had a hell of a lot of fun. Definitely should have kept writing, but I didn't. Always missed it, so now I'm back.
So, umm, how ya been?
An American's Statement to the World
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Daily Kos :: News Community Action
A buddy of mine works in a niche retail market. Th...
Newt? Really? Well, I guess so. I mean, he isn't b...
Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say...
Penn St (and their enablers in the media) still do...
A Penn St alum writes on the scandal The amount ...
Anyone worrying about the effect of this child mol...
Well, Michael Jackson's Dr just got convicted. Tha...
Joe Paterno should go to jail. A graduate assistan...
How Cutting Pentagon Spending Will Fix U.S. Defens...
People who are still hung up on the "liberal media...
Like most people, I assumed the big runup in oil p...
When talking about the bailouts, it's often mentio...
Stumbled across a book that almost read as a parod...
This should give us pause as we contemplate life o...
Matt Taibbi's Wall St Isn't Winning, It's Cheatin...
Been thinking about Steve Jobs and his place in th...
Turns out that Rubio in Florida lied about his fam...
Just saw some idiot on CNBC insisting that for-pro...
The AIG bailout (now up to about $182 billion) is ...
Just finished reading Bailout Nation, with New Pos...
Found this Glenn Greenwald article from a couple y...
Just ran across this. McCain sucking up to a dict...
Watching Republicans on TV the last two days talki...
Apparently, it is now illegal to take cash for use...
Word out of Tripoli is that Gadhafi is dead. To me...
I really don't understand the hostility to alterna...
Charles Pierce on David Brooks It's Tuesday, and ...
Bloomberg's Editorial Board writes on the same bas...
Goldman Sachs must really, really be sweating its ...
Many of our rich men have not been content with eq...
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operativ...
"There is always an easy solution to every human p...
Politics is not a game. It effects real people in ...
Not going to dive into a complex explanation of wh...
This Movie is Going to Rock
This Movie os Going to Suck
William Burton. Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.


Image Title: Best 25 Kitchen Cabinet Molding Ideas On Pinterest Update Within Moulding Remodel 4. Post Title: Kitchen Cabinet Moulding. Filename: best-25-kitchen-cabinet-molding-ideas-on-pinterest-update-within-moulding-remodel-4.jpg. Image Dimension: 630 x 963 pixels. Images Format: jpg/jpeg. Publisher/Author: Ian Zemlak. Uploaded Date: Sunday - March 11th. 2018 19:28:37 PM. Category: Architecture. Image Source: archdaily.com. Cabinet Molding For Crown Throughout Your With Plan Kitchen Oak 9. Top Within Cabinets Best To Cornice Ideas Pinterest Designs How Plans 18. Extraordinary Bar 65 Moulding On 11. Cut Image 25 Decor Pertaining Ceiling Remodel Cabinetry 13. Wall Types The 9 12. 8. In Wonderful Update Raise Design 77 Regard Trim Unfinished Install Medium 16. 14. Decorations 19. 5.


text:
Klinë kan syfta på:

Geografi

Kosovo

 Komuna e Klines, kommun,
 Klina (kommunhuvudort),

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
<?php
namespace Chamilo\Core\Repository\Implementation\Wikipedia\Package;

class Activator extends \Chamilo\Configuration\Package\Action\Activator
{
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Eye-opening as well was Winning's performance in the Bulldog's season-opener against Cahokia Friday.
His singular goal for the game was the same as any ball carrier's — the end zone. He got there five times as part of a 231-yard rushing night which helped lead Highland to a 45-8 win.
He was an easy choice for the Belleville News-Democrat's week one Athlete of the Week.
Winning blitzed an athletic and experienced Cahokia defense with scoring runs of 10, 2, 15, 24 and 8 yards and averaged 10 yards per carry. He tacked on four catches for an additional 26 yards.
Winning has rushed for 2,068 yards and 24 touchdowns in his two previous seasons on the varsity, which he says is a reflection of the tremendous line play that has become the Bulldogs' trademark.
But whatever credit he or Warnecke heap on the line is reciprocated. Winning's success, says second-year lineman Austin Bush, is the line's success.
Winning is thick and well-conditioned, but at 5-9 and 180 pounds isn't the prototypical power runner. He brings a good burst and lateral movement to his position, Warnecke says, but can also run bigger than his actual physical stature.
Winning has proved plenty on both the football and baseball fields. Last fall, it was his two-out, sixth-inning home run in the super-sectional that propelled the Bulldogs to the Class 3A state tournament, which they eventually won.
Though he's already had a memorable high school career, he sees his senior season as the last and best chance to earn an athletic scholarship, in either baseball or football, to a Division I college.


Using custom screen printed Elasti-Soft® professional grade plastisol heat transfers for all of your decorated garment orders is one of the most versatile and cost effective ways to fulfill most if not all of your customers needs. Elasti-Soft® transfers can be applied on just about any garment that will fit on your heat transfer press.
Elasti-Soft® transfer inks are formulated to adhere to high-tech polyester, polyester mesh jerseys with ventilation holes, poly/cotton blends, 100% cotton and non-woven fabrics. Elasti-Soft® transfers provide superior elasticity, durability and opacity – they won't crack, peel or fade.
Think outside the box! It's important to find your niche, otherwise you'll be trying to sell to anyone or everyone, but more often that not you'll find yourself spinning your wheels and selling to no one. Do your homework and develop a game plan, then you can create your own niche!
If you have questions about heat transfers we've got your answers! Please contact our Sales Department at: (727) 862-1960 or Email Us.


text:
24h Le Mans 1927 – 5. edycja długodystansowego wyścigu 24h Le Mans. Wyścig odbył się w dniach 18-19 czerwca 1927, udział w nim wzięło 44 kierowców z 2 państw.

Informacje

Wyniki wyścigu

Bibliografia

Linki zewnętrzne

 Oficjalna strona wyścigu 24h Le Mans

1927 w sportach motorowych
1927 we Francji
Wyścigi 24h Le Mans


text:
Why Argentina is reaching out to Iran
Argentina announced it would work with Iran to resolve a deadly 1994 anti-Semitic attack in Buenos Aires. Trade considerations underlie the deal.
Don Rypka/AP/File
In this March 1992 file photo, firemen and rescue workers walk through the debris of Israel's embassy after a terrorist attack in Buenos Aires. Israel summoned the Argentine ambassador on Tuesday in protest over an agreement between Iran and Argentina to jointly investigate the terror bombing 19 years ago of a Jewish center that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires and that was widely blamed on Tehran.
By Emily Schmall Contributor
After years of impasse, Argentina and Iran this week announced an agreement to work together on solving one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks anywhere since World War II. The deal emerged in the midst of deepening trade ties and has generated skepticism from the United States and Israel.
In 1994, a suicide bomber drove a van full of explosives into the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building, killing 85, wounding about 300, and tearing at the heart of the Buenos Aires Jewish population, the largest in Latin America. An Argentine special prosecutor in 2006 accused Hezbollah, the Lebanese group with strong ties to Iran and Syria, of executing the attacks with financing from Iranian government officials.
Argentina and Iran announced this week an agreement to create a joint commission of international legal experts to investigate the 1994 attack. As part of the agreement, prosecutors will be allowed for the first time to interrogate suspects – in Tehran.
The announcement, signed by Foreign Minister Minister Héctor Timerman and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Albar Salehi, on the sidelines of an African Union meeting in Ethiopia, symbolizes Argentina's warming ties with Iran as both countries seek nontraditional trading partners to shore up their flagging economies.
Banned from international credit markets because of outstanding debts with the Paris Club and World Bank, Argentina has brokered bilateral agreements with autocratic regimes like Iran. Pinioned by international sanctions, Iran has also had to look for new partners, finding in South America a sympathetic group of populist governments, according to Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist and professor at Virginia Tech university.
"It has to establish friendly relations with countries so that it can trust that its assets won't be seized," says Professor Salehi-Isfahani.
Additionally, Iran is attempting to keep its food prices down amid a currency devaluation aggravated by sanctions on its oil, says Salehi-Isfahani.
"Argentina has quickly become one of Iran's principal food importers, so this is becoming a relationship Iran needs to nurture," he says.
Argentina has cut Iranian crude imports to comply with existing sanctions, but continues to export large volumes of agricultural goods, helping Iran avoid food shortages that would likely trigger social unrest, Salehi-Isfahani says.
Trade between Iran and Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela rose to $3.6 billion in 2011, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. With the exception of Brazil, Iran's anti-Americanism is a sympathetic cause among these South American nations. The trade has undermined Washington's and Tel Aviv's efforts at isolating Iran by helping the country maneuver around economic sanctions and lending an air of credibility to its regime.
"We see Argentina's rapprochement with Iran as dangerous for the entire region because Iran is a sponsor of international terrorism with a regime that doesn't respect human rights. Argentina has nothing in common with Iran and should have nothing to do with it," says Sergio Widder, the representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization, in Buenos Aires.
The US State Department says it is monitoring Iran's engagement with the Western Hemisphere closely.
Iran is among several oil-rich countries with a consumer class, including Angola and Azerbaijan, that Argentina has sought as trading partners to help plug its widening energy deficit and to buy its agricultural and domestic products.
Though still accounting for a small portion of Argentina's overall trade, the partnerships could become more valuable thanks to recent joint chambers of commerce that opened last year in Buenos Aires.
Skepticism over 'truth commission'
Israel and the US have expressed wariness about Argentina's increasingly normalized relations with Iran.
Israel, which for years has attempted to isolate Iran through international sanctions in a bid for the country to drop its nuclear program, condemned the joint "truth commission" announced earlier this week to investigate the AMIA case. Israel's foreign ministry said in a press release that it received news of the agreement "with astonishment ... and deep disappointment."
Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that holding a joint investigation with Iran was "like inviting the murderer to participate in the murder investigation."
The US Embassy in Buenos Aires also expressed doubt about the Argentine-Iranian accord. "We are skeptical that a just solution can be found in the arrangement announced," says a press officer.
Fears are periodically raised in the Argentine press about the possibility of Iran gaining access to Argentina's atomic energy program, though the US State Department dismissed the possibility in a press conference late last year, calling Argentina a firm ally in the international campaign to keep Iran from developing nuclear technology.
South American trade with strongmen
Argentina is leading Latin America in forging new trade partnerships with fast-growing, oil-rich, autocratic regimes in Africa and the Middle East. In 2012, huge delegations of diplomats and businesspeople traveled to Angola, ruled by strongman José Eduardo dos Santos and Azerbaijan, whose president, Ilham Aliyev, has been criticized for a rise in religious persecution of non-Muslims.
Such leaders make strange bedfellows for Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who, along with her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, has been a vocal champion of human rights.
The agreement with Iran represents a turnabout for Argentina. Ms. Kirchner had previously appealed to the United Nations to pressure the Iranians to comply with its earlier investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing. However, at last year's General Assembly meeting, Kirchner announced Argentina would be seeking to resolve the case jointly with Iran, initiating several rounds of secret negotiations that riled Argentina's Jewish community.
To date Iran has ignored international arrest warrants for nine people Argentina suspects in the attacks, including a former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran's current defense minister, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi.
Whether Argentina can win Iran's cooperation through trade when international sanctions have failed remains to be seen.
Test your knowledge Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz.
Test your knowledge How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz to find out.
Are falling oil prices pushing Iran to make risky economic choices?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Instant downloads are delivered upon confirmation of payment and due to the nature of the product and its delivery, no refunds are offered.
We provide an extensive portfolio for you to view before hiring us for your project so you can see the quality level of our work and be completely comfortable working with us. If you have any questions or reservations, please contact us prior to making a payment for our services.
Payments for website design projects are made to us in whole or in increments (as a courtesy to the client) are non-refundable. All deposits are also non-refundable. If a project is canceled or postponed, all funds paid are retained by XC Media Design and if applicable, a fee for all work completed beyond what was already paid for shall be paid by the client.
Payments for website maintenance projects are made to us in whole or in increments (as a courtesy to the client) are non-refundable. All deposits are also non-refundable. If a project is canceled or postponed, all funds paid are retained by XC Media Design and if applicable, a fee for all work completed beyond what was already paid for shall be paid by the client. An administrative fee of $35 will be charged to the clients account for any late payments or declined credit card charges. To cancel a Website Maintenance Contract, you may do so by submitting a written cancellation request. XC Media Design may terminate this agreement at anytime with written notice to the client.
IN NO EVENT SHALL XC MEDIA DESIGN BE LIABLE TO CUSTOMER FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANT-ABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR COURSE OF PERFORMANCE, LOST PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT FORESEEABLE OR ALLEGED TO BE BASED ON BREACH OF WARRANTY, CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR STRICT LIABILITY, ARISING UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, LOSS OF DATA, OR ANY PERFORMANCE UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, EVEN IF SUCH PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND NOTWITHSTANDING THE FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY LIMITED REMEDY PROVIDED HEREIN. THERE SHALL BE NO REFUNDS. RED PEACH DESIGNS MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH REGARD TO ANY THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT OR ANY SOFTWARE, EQUIPMENT, OR HARDWARE OBTAINED FROM THIRD PARTIES.


text:
Q: Exporting full UTM coordinates I want to export my point layer as CSV with the point coordinates as "xy", QGIS does the job quite well. One problem arises though, and that is that the Easting UTM coordinate is lacking the first two numbers (defining the UTM zone)
So for example, I m working in UTM zone 32(N), the output coordinates look like:
x         | y
538790.26 | 5289086.88

I need the leading "32" here ("x"), e.g. 32538790.26, which is unfortunately missing. Is there a way to export the full UTM coordinates to the .csv column?

A: Following Erik's answer solved the problem, simply adding 32 million did the job.
Thank you!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Hello! I am so glad you came by!
My name is Brit and I live in Dayton, Ohio. I have a passion for beautiful imagery and storytelling. A degree in creative writing influences my photography and I love telling a story through photographs. Currently booking weddings in the Dayton/Cincinnati/Columbus, Ohio area.
I collect classic children's books and Peter Pan is my all time favorite. I am inspired by love stories, fairy tales and redwood forests. Most of my spare time is spent exploring outdoors.


text:
AOC is Wrong: We're Not Working 80-Hour Weeks Now
It has become nearly commonplace for pundits and politicians to claim that Americans are working more than ever before; that they're working more jobs, and working longer hours — all for a lower income.
During the Democratic debates this summer, for instance, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio claimed "the economic system now force[s] us to have two or three jobs just to get by." Kamala Harris made similar comments.
These claims echo statements from Elizabeth Warren in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a July 2018 interview, Ocasio-Cortez insisted "Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family." That same month, Warren stated "people" are "working two, three, or four jobs to try to pay the rent and keep food on the table."
Ocasio-Cortez was the only one in this group unwise enough to claim "everyone" is working incredibly long hours, but the general sentiment is clear enough: a lot of people are working harder and longer just to attain even a basic standard of living.1
Fortunately, this doesn't appear to be the case at all. While it is no doubt true that some people work multiple jobs, and many work long hours, it is not clear that this situation is new, or that it has become worse in the past decade.
In fact, in response to Harris's comments, The Washington Post reported that the number of working Americans with more than one job is lower now than the mid-90s:
In all, there are 7.8 million people who hold more than one job — just 5 percent of Americans with jobs . The percentage has been roughly steady since the Great Recession, and in fact is lower than in the mid-1990s, when it hovered around 6 percent.
Nor can we guess from the data as to why people were working more hours or working more than one job.
It cannot be just assumed that people work more only because they risk hunger and eviction from their homes, without those extra hours. After all, there is a growing body of research showing that it is high-income workers who are most prone to working longer hours. For example, according to one study, the authors found
Between 1979 and 2002, the frequency of long work hours increased by 14.4 percentage points among the top quintile of wage earners, but fell by 6.7 percentage points in the lowest quintile.
When we see evidence of rising work hours, it's often a safe guess that among those working more are many higher-wage workers. These people are not working "60, 70, 80 hours a week" to "keep food on the table."
This reverses the status quo of the past (i.e., the 1970s and before) when lower-income workers tended to work more. But, in a 2006 study, economists Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst studied work and leisure trends over the last 40 years.
They noticed that, in the 1960s, most men—regardless of their education, which serves as a proxy for income—worked the same amount of hours, about 50 per week, and spent about 105 hours dedicated to leisure activities. By 2003, a divergence emerged that mirrored growing income inequality: Men with less than 12 years of education worked, on average, 37.5 hours a week, while more educated (higher earning) men worked 43.4 hours. Both groups gained more leisure time (socializing, watching TV, playing sports), though the less educated group spent about 6 to 7 more hours a week engaged in leisure activities than their more educated (and presumably higher earning) peers.
This, incidentally, has increased measures of income inequality overall. Higher income workers are electing to work more, while middle-and lower income workers opt for leisure. Since government measures of money income can't take into account the benefits of leisure, we then see an increased difference between the two groups.
Another complicating factor is the fact many workers choose to work more when the economy is doing well. Thus, during periods of significant income gains, we might also see increases in working hours.
Using numbers from the University of Groningen, we can see these trends at work in recent decades:
Overall, annual working hours have declined in recent decades, although we do find that working hours increased — with some ups and downs — from the early 80s to the end of the Dot-Com boom in 2000. This was also a period during which median incomes increased sizably for most groups. The direction of causality probably goes both ways. As job opportunities grew during this time, many people took advantage of the situation and worked longer hours when they could, so as to increase purchasing power and their standards of living. As a result, both personal and household incomes went up. We can see how working hours tend to track with the business cycle using a the Bureau of Labor Statistics' numbers for average weekly hours:
It should not be assumed that most people were working longer hours simply because they were headed toward the poverty line. Nor can it be assumed workers prefer leisure to additional consumption. One example which suggests the American preference for consumption over leisure is the fact the size of American houses have increased in recent decades even as household sizes have decreased. Presumably a declining household size implies square-footage needs also decline. Yet, many Americans continue to opt for more spacious living quarters, which drives a greater need for more money income, and often longer hours.
Yet, even as working hours have remained largely flat over the past generation, example, real incomes have increased. From 1980 to 2017, the median income increased 14 percent for men, and 24 percent for women. But using weekly average hours numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, weekly average hours increased only 0.5 percent over the same period from 38.5 hours to 38.7 hours.
Since the end of the Dot-Com boom in 2000, of course, median incomes have largely flattened. There was no change at all for men from 2000 to 2017, while the increase for women was 12 percent. But during that time, average weekly hours fell 0.5 percent for women, and fell 3.7 percent for men. Government income statistics, however, measure only money income, so the increased leisure is measured as zero income.
The Larger Trend
Overall, working hours haven't moved much in the past forty years — although incomes have increased significantly over that period. But, working hours are still well down from where they were during the first half of the twentieth century — at least for full-time workers. Weekly work hours plummeted from 60 per week in 1890 to 40.25 in 2000, according to calculations by Michael Huberman and Chris Minns.2 Civilian working hours collapsed between 1929 and 1950 due to the great depression and the Second World War, but averages have rarely exceeded 40 hours ever since.
Researchers Valerie A. Ramey and Neville Francis, on the other hand, contend this drop-off is overstated, and they opt for a different method that shows a decrease of only 16 percent between 1900 and 2005, dropping from 27.7 hours to 23 hours worked per person. (The real median income likely quadrupled during this period.)
But even the more modest gains showed by Ramey and Francis point to broad declines in work time. For example, since 1900, weekly work hours for children in the 10 to 13-year-old range decreased from 5.2 hours per week to zero hours per week in every year since 1940. Weekly work by teenagers (ages 14-17) has also collapsed, dropping from 20 hours per week in 1900 to 2.9 hours in 2005. Meanwhile, Americans are clearly retiring earlier since weekly work in the over-65 population fell from 19.3 weekly hours in 1900 down to 4.2 weekly hours in 2005.3
This gains appear to have been made possibly by the continued labor of workers in the 25-54 subset. Accoridng to Ramey and Francis, these workers have not seen any decline in total hours since 1900, although their standard of living has certainly increased. From 1900 to 2005, weekly hours for the 25-54 year olds increased from 29.6 to 31.3.
This increase, however, has been largely fueled by women joining the workforce. Weekly hours worked by males — even in the 24-54 group — declined by 25 percent during the twentieth century, and remains down from the alleged "good ol' days" of the 1950s and 1960s. Declines in working hours for males were even larger in all other age groups.
For women, however, weekly hours worked increased substantially, but mostly for women in the 25-64 range. For women aged 25-54, weekly hours increased from 7.9 in 1900 to 26.1 in 2005.
Seeing this, some bearish observers of American standards of living often claim that everyone is really working much more because prior to the 1970s, women didn't "have to" work. These critics claim that as manufacturing and other presumably high-wage jobs went into decline, women were forced to get wage work to make up the difference.
The problem with this claim, however, is that as women began to join the workforce in larger numbers during the 1950s and 1960s, this did not represent a shift from leisure to work. It only represented a shift from "home production," to production through wage work.4 Thanks to a variety of labor-saving devices, expanded schooling for children, and the introduction of part-time work, women were able to seek money income for themselves and their families without reducing overall leisure time.
For example, for all women over age 14, the reduction in home production was larger than the increase in "hours worked," leaving more time that could be devoted either to leisure or schooling: From 1900 to 2005, home production for women fell from 42.5 hours to 27.6 hours. That's a drop of 14.9 hours. Meanwhile, "hours worked" increased by only 9.3 hours.
Meanwhile, weekly time spent on home production overall — including both men and women — declined for all age groups except the over-65 group.
As home production and working hours declined, this left more time for leisure and schooling. Thus, Ramey and Francis conclude that even with sizable increases in schooling in recent decades, leisure time increased across all age groups from 1900 to 2005, for men and women combined. The largest gains, not surprisingly, are found with the over-65 age group.
Moreover, with growing leisure in the over-65 cohort, combined with growing life expectancies, lifetime leisure howas now reached the highest level it's ever been. Ramey and Francis calculate "cumulative lifetime hours of leisure" increased by 11 percent from 1970 to 2000.
Given that working hours as of 2017 were still lower than they were in 2000, it is likely that time devoted to leisure and schooling has increased since then, especially as the population ages and more Americans retire.
1.The minimum necessary standard of living necessary to qualify as "decent" or "basic" is never defined.
2.Michael Huberman and Chris Minns, "The times they are not changin': Days and hoursof work in Old and New Worlds, 1870–2000." Explorations in Economic History, 44 (2007) 538–567. July 2007.
3.Valerie A. Ramey and Neville Francis, "A Century of Work and Leisure, " American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2009, 1:2, 189–224.
4.Home production includes food preparation, child care, shopping for goods and services, home maintenance, and laundry. This work was overwhelmingly done by women prior to the 1960s.
The Notorious AOC…
#EatTheChildren Goes Viral On Twitter As Fake AOC Constituent Loses Her Mind Over Non-Existent Climate Change – AOC Remained Silent
You Have to See This! Anti-AOC Video That Ran in Houston and DC During Thursday Night's Dem Debates
Latina Congressional Republican Candidate TORCHES AOC, Makes Her REGRET EVER Being in Office
AOC calls the Electoral College a 'scam' and says the system is 'racist'
Feds investigating AOC's chief of staff who suddenly resigned Friday
Courtesy of Mises.org
Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for Mises Wire and The Austrian, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.
Contact Ryan McMakenTwitter
Previous articleCBS Just Fired Employee Who Blew Whistle on Epstein Cover-Up While Working at ABC News
Next article"Papers, Please": Government Creates Internal Passports – Effective No Later Than October 2020


The advertising software company is getting bought out at a generous premium.
Shares of ad software company TubeMogul (NASDAQ:TUBE) rocketed higher on Thursday following news that Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE) had agreed to acquire the company at a hefty premium. At 11:20 a.m. EST, TubeMogul stock was up 81%, while shares of Adobe had slumped about 5%.
Adobe will pay $14 per share in cash for TubeMogul, a premium of about 82.5% based on the closing price on Nov. 9. The total value of the transaction, net of cash and debt, is roughly $540 million. Adobe expects the acquisition to close during the first quarter of the company's 2017 fiscal year. TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson is set to continue to lead the company as part of Adobe's digital marketing business.
"Whether it's episodic TV, indie films or Hollywood blockbusters, video consumption is exploding across every device and brands are following those eyeballs," said Brad Rencher, executive vice president and general manager, digital marketing, Adobe. "With the acquisition of TubeMogul, Adobe will give customers a 'one-stop shop' for video advertising, providing even more strategic value for our Adobe Marketing Cloud customers."
TubeMogul has been growing revenue quickly, with year-over-year growth of 21% during the company's third quarter. TubeMogul is still not profitable, however, and the bottom line deteriorated further during the third quarter. Adobe believes that the acquisition will be neutral to its non-GAAP earnings in fiscal 2017, but it was unable to provide an estimated impact on future GAAP earnings, according to the press release issued by the company.
The acquisition price is still well below TubeMogul's peak of around $21 per share in late 2014. But the deal does undo the slump suffered by the stock so far this year. Shares of TubeMogul are now up just about 2.5% year to date.
The acquisition is part of Adobe's efforts to further build out its digital marketing business. The company dominates the market for creative software, but digital marketing is a more competitive industry. With Adobe already a leader in video content creation and delivery, this deal extends that leadership to video advertising.


ARE YOU STRUGGLING OR HAVING SUCCESS WITH A SPECIFIC ASPECT OF PBA?
Have you found a treatment that works for you?
*This form shall serve as a release for using my name, image, recordings, video likeness and/or photography in connection with educational, promotional, or advocacy purposes, and I, hereby grant the PBA Voices, its designated representatives and/or officers, directors, and employees (hereinafter called the "Releasees") permission to use in perpetuity and royalty-free, my name, image, recordings, video likeness, written testimonial, and/ or photograph in connection with the educational, promotional, and advocacy materials of PBA Voices, in any manner and in any medium, as PBA Voices, in its sole discretion, shall deem appropriate or desirable. I hereby waive any right I may otherwise have to approve such use of my name, image, recordings, written testimonial, video likeness and/or photograph, and I release the Releasees from any claim or liability arising out of the reproduction of my name, image, recordings, written testimonial, video likeness and/or photograph, and/or likeness. The territory as to which the Release shall apply is worldwide and I acknowledge the receipt of good and valuable consideration for the rights granted herein. Nothing herein will constitute any obligation on PBA Voices to make any use of any of the rights set forth herein.


The sun is finally out! And, we took full advantage of that!
Sean and I designed and built 6 regular sized nesting boxes and 1 deluxe "brooding" nesting box this afternoon. We have been planning this addition for a while. I can't express how much I LOVE the new boxes. The ladies seem to like their new digs, too. I am hopeful that this move will increase our egg production. We'll see!
Step One: We measured and cut five braces from some "reclaimed" 2x4's. These braces were attached to a 1x8 piece of OSB on the bottom and screwed the back to the chicken coop studs. Metal brackets add extra support to the OSB from underneath.
Step Two: We cut and screwed OSB dividers to the 2x4 braces. This created 6 regular sized nest box spaces and 1 larger box. (The large box is where we are planning on letting our current "broody hen" sit on some eggs in the hopes that she will hatch these.) Each nesting box measures 1x1x1.5 feet, just enough room for one hen to turn around and settle in to lay her egg. Not enough room for her to foul her nest with waste product.
Step Three: Sean screwed a 1x8' OSB board to the front of the nest boxes, completing the 3rd side.
Step Four: Sean cut through the wall of the coop with his saw. He made an entry hole for each nest box. I stuffed each box with an ample supply of fresh hay so the hens would enjoy soft, comfortable nests. Then, we cut and attached the 1x2 foot OSB top at an angle (to help any rain or snow to run off) with 3 heavy hinges. Sean screwed a perch to studs on the inside of the chicken coop to give the hens an easy way to access their new nests.
It took us a couple hours to build the boxes, but it was soooo worth it! To finish the coop, we will staple tar paper and nail asphault shingles to the roof, making it completely waterproof and warm. The exterior of the coop needs to be cedar shingled and painted.
Tomorrow, the good weather is supposed to continue. After work, Sean is planning on working on the lawn mower, so I can begin tackling the lawn, while he focuses on screwing OSB sheathing to finish the stalls in the barn. It is all coming along, slowly, but surely! For now, it is time for bed. It has been another long day and I would say, we'll sleep the better for the fresh air and hard work.
Cool beans! Glad she is enjoying her new spot!


Did you know that traditional periodontal surgery involves deflecting the gum tissue away from the teeth, debriding the area, and re-contouring the bone to help eliminate gum pockets? At DFW Implant Team, board-certified periodontist, Dr. Donald Steinberg, prefers to use newer, more sophisticated techniques that help regenerate gum tissue and bone destroyed by gum disease.
Bone regeneration rebuilds the bone lost due to periodontal disease. With this technique, a bone graft material is placed in a bone deficient area around the tooth. A protective barrier is then placed over the graft, but under the gum. This barrier keeps the graft in place, and promotes regeneration. By rebuilding what has been lost due to periodontal disease, we can often improve the prognosis for teeth that previously might have been lost. To learn more about this process, please contact our Bedford, TX, office to schedule a consultation.
Most bone grafting can be done with the patient under local anesthesia, but in cases where larger amounts of bone are being grafted, the doctor may prefer conscious anesthesia. Once the bone graft is prepared, the doctor will make a small incision in the gum to attach the graft to the needed area. Once the graft is in place, the doctor will suture the incision in the gums and then cover the treatment area with protective bandages.
After the bone graft procedure is complete, patients will be given antibiotics, pain medications, and an antibacterial mouthwash to improve the healing process. Patients are usually asked to avoid hard foods and putting pressure on the grafted area or wearing a prosthesis that could compress the graft; a liquid or soft foods diet is best for the first few days after the procedure. The bone graft will be given 6 – 9 months to heal and bond to the jawbone before the dental implant procedure is scheduled.
If you have undergone a bone regeneration procedure as an intervention for periodontal disease, it is critical to maintain a good oral hygiene routine afterward. Regular flossing and brushing will help to keep the bacteria at bay, decreasing the likelihood of a recurrence of periodontal disease.
For patients who have a weakened jawbone from gum disease, infection, trauma, or other reasons, bone regeneration and grafting can restore the strength of the bone to improve the patient's overall oral health and provide needed support for a dental implant. Phone in today and we can discuss options with you at a scheduled appointment.


Front Row (L-R): Donna Flinchbaugh, Denise Kingsley-Joy. Second Row (L-R): Linda Jordan, Henry Ward, Carolyn Stowe, Bill Prieto, Deborah Moore, Rebecca Ruiz, Jean McGowan, Catherine Iannello. Third Row (L-R): Cathleen Abers-Kimball, Judy Langworthy, Amy Cuhel-Schuckers, Elizabeth Cipolla, Jody Cheney, Larry Ludemann, Steve Morvary. Fourth Row (L-R): Jerry Pardue, Ben Kirst, Barry Swanson, Gary Mickle.


Hopefully by now our registered members have noticed our email notifications when new stories or blog posts are made. Since free members only have access to a story for the first 30 days, these notifications will allow them to jump on right away and read the story. We also encourage you to leave feedback on those stories on the story page. If you don't want to receive notifications, you can make the change by logging in and going to your user profile.
In other news, we have added another author. David Sable joins us this month. His new story, Reverend Bob's Sermon, can be read for free (unlimited time span). He is a recent winner of a Christian writing contest and a prolific writer. He will be an asset to our reading/writing community.
I should also mention that this month Bard and Book will have its 5,000th download! Indeed, even as I write this it may have already happened. This figure includes all purchases made on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and this website. This bodes well for Bard and Book's future and we're hopeful you'll be a part of that future.
Anthony Horvath, author and founder of Bard and Book.


This a short post about things that I learn from my life on earth till now. As the time passes we begin to learn things we sometime master them sometime just learn for the sake of learning them.
The purpose of the post is so that you can learn from what I discovered in my life and apply to yours to make your life better.
The first thing that you want in your life is some goals. It does not matter if they are financial or not you need something to work on. You need something that if done great you will proud about it.
If you do not have any goals in your life then what are you doing here. It is very important for you to have some goals so that when you achieve them you have something to celebrate.
In long run nothing matters. What it means is that no matter what you do or achieve you will feel that you could have done better it will be never going to go away. You will always going to feel that way.
If you think about it whatever you done in past with some exceptions do not matter very much. You have a clean slate every day so what you do with it on you.
It is important that you get out of your comfort zone once in a will so that you can find out what you are made of and what you can do. So that you can set better goals and achieve your full potentials.
There is nothing worth achieving in your comfort zone. If you want your life to mean anything and want your future self to thank you then get out of your comfort zone and do something.
It feel safe and comfortable living in the comfort zone but you regret this kind of life in the future and what we always regret are the things that we do not do out of fear and self-doughty. So stop fearing things and get out and do things.
You need to work for 8 hrs.
You need to work long hours so that you feel like that you have used your time wisely and feel good about yourself.
It is very important that you feel good about yourself because if you feel good about yourself you will be able to respect more of others.
I hope you have learned something from this so that you can apply to your life and make it better. Share what you have learned in your life and we better each other.


text:
Q: Ajax not getting proper URL from server path in jsp using struts 2 Am storing some JSON files dynamically in server path and retrieve the JSON data using struts 2 framework. When requesting for AJAX call to retrieve the JSON I am getting URL path as www.mydomain.com:8080/mydomain.com/myserver/myjsonpath/jsonfile.json instead of getting http://www.mydomain.com/myserver/myjsonpath/jsonfile.json. I also want to mention that due this i cannot enter into success field of AJAX.It always enters into error field. I came to know this URL append with the help of Firebug.
//My AJAX request

String img_path="www.mydomain.com/myserver/";
String json_url=img_path+"/myjsonpath";

$(document).ready(function(){
   alert("<%=json_url%>/jsonfile.json"); // here am getting correct URL path from server
   $.ajax({
           type: "get",
           url:"<%=json_url%>/jsonfile.json",
           dataType: "json",
           success:function(data){
                   alert(data);    // not entering here
           error:function (xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError){
                   alert(xhr.status); // enters here
 }});

A: First of all using scriplets is not at all a good idea.
To your avail there's s:url tag & here's how to use it.
$(document).ready(function(){
   alert("<s:url value="myserver/myjsonpath"/>/jsonfile.json");
//...
});


The September 14 New York Times print edition contains a full-page ad from the Gary Johnson-Bill Weld presidential campaign, subtitled, "An Open Letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates." It points out that polls show 62% of the public want the Libertarian ticket in the debates.
This entry was posted in Libertarian Party and tagged ad, Ballot Access News, Campaign ad, Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party, New York Times, newspaper, Richard Winger on September 14, 2016 by Krzysztof Lesiak.
September 13, 2013 – Darrell Castle discusses Vladimir Putin's op-ed that was published in the New York Times on Wednesday, September 11, 2013. Castle was the Constitution Party's 2008 vice-presidential candidate.
This entry was posted in Constitution Party and tagged Castle Report, Constitution Party, Darrell Castle, New York Times, Russia, Vladimir Putin on September 14, 2013 by Krzysztof Lesiak.
This entry was posted in Constitution Party and tagged Conservative Caucus, Constitution Party, Howard Phillips, New York Times, obituary on April 24, 2013 by Krzysztof Lesiak.
This entry was posted in Independents and tagged americans elect, Angus King, Eliot Cutler, New York Times on May 9, 2012 by Trent Hill.
Over at the New York Times blog, The Caucus, Gary Johnson has been interviewed and delivers some key messages on the future of his candidacy. He also states how he feels about his nomination chances.
Q. How confident are you that you will get the Libertarian Party nomination for president?
This entry was posted in Libertarian Party and tagged Bob Barr, Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party, New York Times, The Caucus blog on May 2, 2012 by Trent Hill.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was interviewed by the New York Times today, for their blog The Caucus. The full interview can be read here.
Q. Why are you running for president?
Michael Manning/Associated PressJill Stein, a Green Party candidate for president, during her campaign for governor of Massachusetts in 2002.
This entry was posted in Green Party and tagged interview, Jill Stein, New York Times, the caucus on February 14, 2012 by Ross Levin.
Every week the New York Times prints one letter under the heading "Invitation to a Dialogue," and then prints responses to it in the Sunday paper. This week, the letter is calling for a "centrist" third party in America. Any interested readers should write in to the Times.
A centrist third party could prosper in today's political environment and end the stalemate in Washington.
This entry was posted in Third parties, general and tagged letter, New York Times on December 28, 2011 by Ross Levin.
Dr. Panagopoulos described the protesters as "disgruntled Democrats." Sixty percent of those surveyed said they voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and about three-quarters now disapprove of Mr.
This entry was posted in Green Party and tagged disgruntled democrats, Dr. Panagopoulos, New York, New York Times, new york times blog, Occupy protestors, Occupy Wall Street, survey, the caucus on October 28, 2011 by paulie.
The Socialist Party U.S.A. does distribute red cards to members willing to "subscribe to the principles" of the party, but another leftist group, the Democratic Socialists of America, prefers online registration, with members using a virtual shopping cart to pay yearly dues of about $60 by credit card — Marx be damned.
This entry was posted in Third parties, general and tagged Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, New York, New York Times, Socialist Party USA on May 24, 2011 by Ross Levin.
I'm a Clinton White House alum who had hoped President Obama could usher in the debate we need. It's hardly all his fault that we're not there, but I'm convinced the parties' interest groups and "thought police" make real progress impossible without a new force that shakes things up.
This entry was posted in Non-left/right parties and tagged 2012, 2012 election, 2012 elections, 2012 presidential race, americans elect, americans elect corporation, Bill Clinton, Bloomberg, centrist, centrist party, centrists, corporate media, corporations, donald trump, Duopoly, economy, Election 2012, fiscal conservative, independent candidate for president, irregular times, mainstream media, Mayor Bloomberg, media, Michael Bloomberg, new third party, New York Times, Presidency, President, President 2012, President of the US, presidential candidates, Presidential Election, Presidential Race, tea party, Third Party, third party and independent daily, Thomas Friedman, unity '08, Unity '12, Unity12, Washington Post, White House on November 11, 2010 by paulie.


Brake cables We have 14 products.
Replacement Brompton front brake cable for S-type (straight) handlebar.
Replacement mountain bike brake cable from UK manufacturer Clarks long enough to fit front or rear brake. Note: Not carded as shown in picture.
Replacement Brompton front brake cable for P-type handlebar.
Replacement Brompton front brake cable for M-type handlebar. Note this is only for older Bromptons with the 10 degree brake lever.
£2.69 £2.99 -10% Back in stock really soon!
£3.59 £3.99 -10% Back in stock really soon!


text:
Alan Rosenberg: The end of an era of editorials
Alan Rosenberg Journal Executive Editor alanrosenbergpj
May 9, 2020 at 3:01 AM May 12, 2020 at 4:46 PM
Our opinion pages will instead feature more viewpoints from readers and community leaders, along with some national commentary — pieces that will shed light on the issues without casting a shadow on our journalism's independence.
We reached a milestone in Monday's Journal, without saying so.
We published what may well have been the last Providence Journal editorial.
It's a decision that we don't make lightly. But it's been coming for a long time.
Editorials were born with newspapers. As Paul Edward Parker reported in January, The Providence Journal's twice-weekly predecessor was founded in 1820 because commercial interests in Providence and Pawtucket already had their own newspapers — and factory owners wanted their voices heard, too.
Nationally, there's a reason some newspapers still have the word "Democrat" or "Republican" in their name — they were founded in these same 19th-century times, when there were multiple papers even in smaller cities, each representing some group or other.
Over the decades, most newspapers abandoned partisanship in their news pages, but kept the idea that they should speak out, in their editorials, on what they perceived as the best interests of their community and country.
But in doing so, they inadvertently undermined readers' perception of a newspaper's core mission: to report the news fairly.
Our goal in news stories is always to learn, and reflect, the facts of a situation, then report them without bias. Reporters' opinions, if they have them, have no place in our stories.
But when the newspaper itself expresses opinions on those same subjects, it causes understandable confusion. Readers wonder: Can reporters really do their work without trying to reflect the views expressed in their employers' name? Can they cast a skeptical eye on a politician their paper has endorsed, or a generous eye on one it has opposed?
The answer is a definite "yes" — but my email since I became executive editor shows that many just don't buy it.
This is compounded by today's atmosphere of hyper-partisanship. People who oppose a particular official or candidate are infuriated by any editorial praise of him or her; people who support them are outraged by any criticism. None of which has anything to do with our reporters' work.
And all of which gets in the way of what's really important: our journalism.
So for now, at least, we're done with editorials. I can't bind my successors, but for the present The Journal will not run them, or endorse candidates at election time.
We cordially invite writers of both letters and commentaries to send them to letters@providencejournal.com, where they will be available to a variety of editors who will work on the commentary pages.
As always, letters should be no longer than 250 words, and 150 or fewer is better. Commentaries should be no longer than 650 words, including a brief biography of the writer or writers at the bottom.
And of course, you're always welcome to comment on stories posted on our Facebook page.
After all, it's not our opinions that are important, but yours.
We'd love to hear them.
CORRECTION: The original version of this column mistakenly reported that USA TODAY does not have editorials.
arosenbe@providencejournal.com
On Twitter: @AlanRosenbergPJ


Simple crown simple princess crown drawing aiomp3sclub, this poolside bar and bbq is an entertainer#039;s dream, 33 mega impressive swim up pool bars built for entertaining. Led light decoration kitchen. Luxury duplex design buy luxury duplex design product on.


text:
Quentin Tarantino says he's written and wants to direct Once Upon a Time spinoff TV series
"I really started loving those half hour '50s Western scripts."
Quentin Tarantino says Thor: Ragnarok "drastically my favorite" of the MCU
The legendary filmmaker is doing his homework for Endgame.
Samuel L. Jackson's Top 10 Performances
Here's the very best from one of his generation's most prolific and unforgettable actors.
by Collin Brennan and Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
on June 11, 2019, 12:00pm
Meet Charles Manson in new Once Upon a Time in Hollywood trailer: Watch
Damon Herriman plays the infamous cult leader.
The Hateful Eight extended edition now available as four-part Netflix series
70mm version of Quentin Tarantino's 2015 hit is now streaming.
Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gets an epic first trailer: Watch
Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie take us back to 1969.
The 50 Greatest Rock and Roll Movies of All Time
Read this list with a candle burning and you will fill your entire Netflix queue.
Scorsese, Tarantino, and Spike Lee blast Oscars in scathing open letter
Filmmakers speak out against the Academy's recent decision to present four awards during commercial breaks.
New photos from Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood released
Get your first look at Al Pacino as Hollywood agent Marvin Shwarz.
on January 25, 2019, 12:05pm
10 Most Anticipated Directorial Follow-Ups of 2019
Quentin Tarantino, Greta Gerwig, Harmony Korine, and Danny Boyle are all up to something this year.
Quentin Tarantino confronts burglars breaking into his home
The director was able to get the intruders to leave the premises, but not before they took off with jewelry and other property.
The Tastiest Movie Food We'll Never Get to Eat
Our favorite mouth-watering moments to ever simmer on the silver screen.


The white player controls a chess knight, and the black player controls a checker.
The checker can initially be placed on any black square and it moves only downwards using only black squares.
Knight moves are standard as well: it moves one square in any vertical or horizontal direction and two squares in any direction orthogonal to the first direction.
If on white's turn the knight can move on the checker's square, white takes the checker and wins the game.
If on black's turn the checker can move on the knight's square, and the next square in the same diagonal direction exists, black takes the knight and wins the game.
If on black's turn the checker can move on the knight's square, but the next square in the same diagonal direction does not belong to the chessboard, the checker cannot move in the direction of the knight; if the black don't have another move to choose, white wins the game.
If the black checker moves to rank 1, black wins the game.


Company Parties - for kids, teens, adults at Dart Bowl in Austin, TX.
Dart Bowl is the perfect venue for your next company outing. Bowling enjoys widespread appeal - everyone can do it and you don't have to bowl like a pro to have fun! It is reasonably priced and everyone can play.
Bowling parties help promote: friendly competition, morale, enhance job performance, and improve employee relations.
Let Dart Bowl arrange a bowling party for your group. We provide a wide variety of services to meet your needs.
Dart Bowl Steak House serving Austin's favorite home made enchiladas and bread.