JayB
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Posts
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Everything posted by JayB
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I wonder if the same could be said about our Christian Problem. I'll be a happy man if the total death toll from religious fanaticism in Muslim countries is 1-2 people per 300 million every 4-5 years, and they manage to institute an set of institutional safeguards for individual liberties that equals our own despite our "Christian Problem." The major unstated premise behind your comment is that all religions, and by extension, all sets of religious convictions are fundamentally the same, and thereby equally likely to arouse violent fanaticism in their adherents, and present equal obstacles to the advancement of liberal values. The logical correlate of this is that what people believe - their most fundamental and deeply held convictions - have absolutely no influence over how they understand the world and behave in response to what they experience in it. If you believe that, then I suppose you can believe that that a religion that has an extreme commitment to non-violence at it's core (let's take Harris's example of Jainism as an example), and a religion that has adopted the concept of holy-war in defense of the faith as a central duty of all believers are equally likely to produce suicide bombers. Crazy.
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Hopefully Intrade will start taking bets on whether Egypt looks more like Iran after '79 or Eastern Europe after '89 in a couple of years - it'd be interesting to what emerged when people had to commit a reasonable chunk of money towards one prediction or another. Hoping for '89 but developments in the Arab/Muslim world seem to trending in the other direction. Not sure that polling data from Europe and elsewhere supports the notion that the absence of severe state repression, the opportunity to build a life in a liberal democracy, etc is sufficient to significantly alter the core political, religious, and ethical convictions of all Muslims who practice their faith under those conditions. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/221.php
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[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLiku08FlRg
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Agree with the above (or rather, above the above) - but I'm not sure that the long-term impact on the state's finances and it's ability to function properly are what necessarily what determine how our state and local politicians cast their votes.
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Yes. I support paying what's necessary to deliver services that only the public government can deliver, and think it's reasonable to expect that the government uses the funds it has available to do so as cost effectively as possible. I also support putting all services that *can* be performed just as well by the private sector out for bid. Doing so would make more money available for public health, public defenders, public education, public lands, etc - not less. There's no necessary conflict between the two, but the prevailing opinion in progressive quarters seems be that public-sector cost-efficiency is the enemy of the public good, and that anyone who would, say, replace $23 an hour ticket-booth staff with electronic dispensers, eliminate self-nominated overtime, etc, etc, etc, hates poor people, etc. I understand the psychological motives behind the caricature, but I don't think that they translate into either politics or policy that help the folks that could, say, use a helping hand from a public health agency much.
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Fine. You have better access to my ideals and motives than I do, you've seen through the elaborate facade that I've constructed to conceal my true motives from myself, etc, etc, etc, etc. Great. How do you account for the stance of the Progressive's progressive on this one? I don't think he's a one man outlier.
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JayB is concerned about staffing at "public health" now. LOL Because you can't be against paying people $23 an hour plus quite a bit more in health and retirement benefits to sit in a booth and dispense ferry tickets, or oppose subsidizing a commercial Port that should be self-funding $70 million a year, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...and for using tax revenues to help people who are either permanently or temporarily capable of taking care of themselves. That's how you explain me, your typical corporocratapologizingneoconhatemongering goon, but how do you account for good ole Jim's stance on this one? The man takes the socially correct position on 94% of all policy positions near and dear to progressives so....his desire to see things like public health funded is also a rhetorical false front to advance the eternal dominion of corporate hegemony, etc?
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"The governor's proposed budget, released before Christmas, would slash funding for programs the middle class would notice, such as state parks, museums, the arts and higher education. It also would hit the poor, dumping the Basic Health Plan, which offers subsidized insurance to thousands of the working poor, and Disability Lifeline, which provides cash and health care for unemployable disabled people." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013884824_budgetprimer09m.html
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"Public Health lays off 123 people Public Health - Seattle & King County on Thursday sent layoff notices to 123 nurses, social workers and other staffers, mostly the result of a 50 percent budget cut to a program that helps low-income pregnant woman and babies. "These cuts, as proposed, are devastating," King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a statement. "We recognize the challenge that state leaders face in closing the budget gap, but these cuts will have enormous implications for our community, and may lead to the additional loss of federal funds." Public Health said more layoffs may happen – and thousands more people may lose access to health care - if the Legislature fails to reverse a proposed cut in Medicaid reimbursements to certain clinics. Those clinics include health-care centers that serve primarily Medicaid patients and people without insurance. The proposed reduction would reduce funding for King County Public Health by more than $23 million, leading to the closure of some clinics. Other state cuts include the elimination of tobacco prevention funds and the reduction of Medicaid programs, including adult dental care and family planning." Much better than restructuring pay, benefits, etc.
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quit lying: reneging on contracts with public workers will not prevent "tossing disabled people off of medicaid, etc, en masse". Most of the above could be accomplished with someone at least pretending to advocate on behalf of taxpayers at the next round of contract negotiations. Not going to happen with Washington democrats giving away the store in exchange for public sector union support and calling the process a "negotiation." "Run for your lives, its Dow Constantine..." "For instance, Constantine said today that he doesn't want employees constantly fearing for their jobs as they have over the last two years. But the biggest expense in the cash-strapped general fund isn't paying for immunizations for kids or handcuffs for Sheriff's deputies, it's the staff--85 percent of the general fund goes to salaries and benefits. So Constantine will either need to get pay or benefit concessions from unions or start handing out pink slips. Constantine says that he'll hire a new director of labor relations and convene a meeting of department heads to try to figure out a way to resolve the shortfall without axing employees this fall. He hopes giving everyone more input will make them more open to concessions. But so far, the labor unions have given no indication that they'll make the concessions necessary to make the budget pencil out. Last week Constantine spokesperson Frank Abe told seattlepi.com that the Executive would "outline a significant restructuring of the way this county conducts its labor negotiations." But hiring someone to be a more direct conduit between the Executive and labor doesn't seem like an especially major change. Ron Sims had a famously good relationship with the unions and still couldn't convince them to take any pay or benefit concessions." http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/03/dow_constantine_downgrades_fro.php
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http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/
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See above.
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It IS a concern now - you don't seem to get the basic fact that the pension systems are paying out more than thy accure - it's basic math. WA is genreally better than most states and ours is around 75% funded - where do you think the money is coming from - fairy land? Reneging on pensions for public workers now will help almost none toward making states more solvent in the mid-term, little less in the short term, which is what we should be working on instead of playing disaster capitalism along with neoliberals to better bash on public employees who worked for these pensions (or most of them anyway). Shame on you for not distancing yourself from the partisans for the race to the bottom. Agreed. That'd require a complete reassessment of budget priorities towards functions that only the government can perform in society, wholesale outsourcing of tasks that aren't functions that only the government can perform, outlawing public sector unions, and eliminating binding arbitration for public sector workers, elimination of pensions for new workers, and the immediate conversion of accrued pension contributions + earnings into defined contribution plans. My sense is that the political dynamics in this state will continue to favor tossing disabled people off of medicaid, etc, en masse before making even modest reforms to pensions, etc so there's no need to worry too much about any of the above happening. Looks like the regressive neocon hatemongers in Utah just converted to 401(K) plans instead of pensions for all new public sector workers, though... r
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It IS a concern now - you don't seem to get the basic fact that the pension systems are paying out more than thy accure - it's basic math. WA is genreally better than most states and ours is around 75% funded - where do you think the money is coming from - fairy land? Reneging on pensions for public workers now will help almost none toward making states more solvent in the mid-term, little less in the short term, which is what we should be working on instead of playing disaster capitalism along with neoliberals to better bash on public employees who worked for these pensions (or most of them anyway). Shame on you for not distancing yourself from the partisans for the race to the bottom. Partisans? That's hatemongeringrightwingneocongoon to you, sir.
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I'd say I lefty socially but fiscally - well - I call it common sense. In a dinner conversation or two that went from my commitment to a single payer health system - because it makes more sense fiscally and for social fairness - when applying similar logic to a pension reform plan - it's like I spit in their food or something. funding Well, the single-payer thing should provide you a socially acceptable haven to return to if necessary. Too bad you missed out on all of the social benefits of sharing your conclusion that the US housing market was a house of cards.
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And this is not something to worry about now? Friggin' A - it's sucking up capital from benefical programs. The social safety net is hacked to pieces and we don't need to fix this? Give me a break.
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Iran wasn't?
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Yup. For guestimation purposes you can assume that every $1,000 in inflation-indexed pension income for a 65 year old retiree will require $20,000-$30,000 in assets to fund the said income stream. I'd love to see a comparison of actual balances accrued vs the total value of the pension-payout. When you compute pension payouts using the highest 2-3 years of pay as opposed to lifetime pay, the two aren't even close - and once you factor in all of the cashed in sick time, etc the gap between the two is even more profound. Guess who gets to make up the difference - irrespective of what happens to funding for other public priorities. I might add that you are sounding more and more like a heartless neocon regressive hatemonger these days. Let me know how the above goes over at the next dinner party.
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Hopefully it ends better for the students and women of Tunisia than it did for the students and women of Iran. My thoughts are with them, but if I had to bet I'm not sure which side I'd put my money on between those folks and the Islamists for the intermediate term.
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When (not if) bailout or bankruptcy terms are dictated, they'll come from the national level and be based on recommendations from "expert" wonks with one foot in Wall St. Nary a stir in those quarters based on the sensational headlines we've seen so far. Really? One of these things is not like the other, one of these things... 1)Read the summary of Chapter 9, and the comments here: https://self-evident.org/?p=878 2)Both muni-bond investors and employee unions structured their contracts with the implicit assumption that they'd be bailed out by taxpayers if the merde hit the fan and the government in question lacked the means to honor the the pledges that they made. Both unions and bondholders would make better decisions if they assumed otherwise.
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Lots of interesting studies on identical twins raised in different homes that raise interesting questions about how much parenting styles matter. Once you exclude the extremes most of the studies suggest that parenting philosophies matter less than we think.
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As opposed to those politicians installed by finance capital. In practice, that'll mean concentrating the losses on public workers as much as possible. That'll be much more consistent their political instincts and their political philosophies than restructuring their debt vis a vis bondholders. I do like how political and class struggle is taking a greater role in your narratives, Jay! Seems to me that "finance capital" is a much more salient force on the national level than at the state and local level - but the folks who loaned state and local governments will certainly use whatever political tools are at their disposal to insure that the folks dealing out the pain inflict as little hardship on them as possible. At the end of the day - obligations that can't be paid won't, and the local political dynamics will determine who gets the shaft. My reading of the state and local incentives is that in the vast majority of cases those dynamics will favor imposing the bulk of the losses on bondholders. Imposing losses on bondholders - the bulk of which are individual retirement savings aggregated through pensions and mutual funds - imposes pretty steep costs on both people who work for and depend on whatever government is defaulting, but creditors shouldn't be insulated from the consequences of making bad loans anymore than unions that negotiate pension-time bombs should be insulated from the consequences of their decisions. Should be a particularly interesting dynamic when a pension fund representing public sector employees has a significant stake in a bond issued by a government entity that's defaulting as a result of un-fundable promises made to public sector unions...
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http://www.ericandlucie.com/New%20Zealand/New%20Zealand.htm How much time will you be spending on the North Island? If you're landing in Auckland and driving to Wellington on the way South, it'd be worth spending a day in the Taupo/Tongariro NP area while you're en route. Will try to chime in with some more feedback later, but it's worth searching the archives as there are some pretty good threads in there from previous inquiries. Drinking wise - stick to NZ whites - amazing and cheap. Beer is overpriced and marginal IMO.
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Good blog post on Ch.9 and comments/discussion here. https://self-evident.org/?p=878
