Unemployment Benefits and the Money-As-Ends Mentality

I'm wondering and can't seem to find a definite answer to the question: do people who are counted as "discouraged workers," that is, out of the workforce and excluded from the official measure of unemployment, get to collect unemployment benefits? Logically, it seems very likely that only people officially considered unemployed would receive unemployment benefit payments from the government. A bit of reflection on the implications of causes the "unemployment benefits reward people for not working" argument fall flat on its face, and exposes it as rather cruel.

Saturday Protests

I went to the protests this Saturday with the intention of capturing an eyewitness experience for those unable to attend. Parts one and two available at http://www.youtube.com/user/keithblse. 

Obama on drug legalization

You'll shrink demand by legalizing it, Obama. You're not going to change the attitudes about drugs. They've been around for millennia, it is not a new fad, so stop beating around the bush and pushing the debate onto a later date. By the way, well put Mr. Mackenzie.

Obama talks drugs

Revolutionary Philosophy

From Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation":

‎"It is always the goal of the ideological analysis to restore the objective process, it is always a false problem to wish to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum. This is why in the end power is so much in tune with ideological discourses and discourses on ideology, that is, they are discourses of truth -- always good for countering the mortal blows of simulation, even and especially if they are revolutionary."

Gun control

Silly liberals, you think Giffords' assassination attempt should warrant stricter gun laws? Not even Lennon's actual assassination prompted anything of the sort.

Reagan's response to Lennon's death

Guess I was right

in calling Erick Erickson an idiot.

Jon Stewart on Tucson

As usual, Jon Stewart is a voice of unmatched sincerity, insight, and sensibility where there is otherwise distressingly little. If you didn't catch Monday's Daily Show, here is Jon's comment on the incident in Tucson:

"So here we are again, stunned by a tragedy. We have been visited by this demon before. Our hearts go out to those that have been injured or killed, and their loved ones.

How do you make sense of these types of senseless situations? is really the question that seems to be on everybody's mind, and I don't know that there is a way to make sense of this sort of thing. As i watched the political pundit world, many are reflecting, and grieving, and trying to figure things out. But it's definitely true that others are working feverishly to find the tidbit or two that will exonerate their side from blame or implicate the other. And watching that is predictable, I think, as it is dispiriting.

Did the toxic political environment cause this? A graphic image here, an ill-timed comment, violent rhetoric, those types of things?

I have no fucking idea.

Erick Erickson is an Idiot

"Notable" right-wing blogger Erick Erickson posted the following mind-numbingly absurd statement: "Ironically, by perpetuating the lie...that the right and the tea party incited this evil act, the left and media may very well incite violence against the right." You know, until you said that, I didn't want to...nevermind.

Nothing is less true

‎"Nothing is less true, as far as intellectual initiative is concerned, than the idea that those who are good in obeying will also be good in commanding." -Karl Popper, Open Society and its Enemies

Assassination by Proxy

I did not have much of an opinion on the recent attempted murder of Arizona democrat Gabrielle Giffords until I read an "analysis" article, by apparent Palin-apologist Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast's Washington bureau chief and CNN program host.

To contextualize, the shooting of the congresswoman is remarkable not for the surprising ease with which a US congressperson was nearly murdered, but because Giffords' name appeared on a map of the representatives from districts carrying McCain/Palin in '08, who voted for the Obama health care package. The districts were not represented by dots or colored boxes or any other normal indicator, but by gunsight crosshairs, in keeping with Palin's rallying cry, "Don't retreat--RELOAD!"

Pitfalls of Economics

As I develop my fluency in the discipline of economic study, disappointing shortcomings have become apparent to me. The level of empirical rigor, i.e. proof, for economic relationships such that it would warrant political action is set extremely high. On the one hand this is certainly a plus, disallowing for rash policies based on flimsy evidence. On the other hand, there seems to be many beneficial changes that could be made but will not because they cannot effectively be parsed out.

For example, the stark contrast between the massive public transportation system I have been exposed to this year in London, and the embarrassing transit situation in my home city of Los Angeles got me to thinking about this very thing.

Blame lies

If the creation of rules always entails the risk of their perversion, does blame lie with the creator or the perverter?

Economic arsonists

"Indeed, today the global economy’s arsonists have become prosecutors, and accuse the fire fighters of having provoked flooding." Fallen Heroes of the Financial Crisis

Well, we knew that.

Watching Fox makes you stupid.

iPhone to start WWIII

Deficit inflation

Solitary confinement: torture?

A long, not exactly uplifting but very good piece on the absurdities of the American prison system. 

Invisible hand/invisible man

 When the free market fucks over you and your country, turn to God. He'll solve your socioeconomic woes for sure. Yemen's qat crops

Kill yourself.

Please.

A stranger to human nature...

"A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible to persons of higher rank, than to those of meaner stations."   

-Adam Smith, 1759

Communist (trash) collection

It would be great if anyone with vocal political opinions knew what the hell the definition of socialism actually is. Is that so much to ask when it's thrown around as an epithet every day?