I have never understood why some companies treat talking to other employees about salaries as a firing offense. Seriously? Do they really have that little faith in their employees?
I’ve run a number of companies, and we always treated everyone’s salary as public information (at least internally), so everyone understood everyone’s compensation. It always worked out best that way.
Jon Stewart is on a roll brilliantly showing how sexist American media is against female politicians:
A good article in Newsweek summing up the whole affair.
UPDATE: It turns out that Cliven Bundy’s claimed “ancestral rights” to graze cattle “from the time the very first pioneers come here [sic]” are a lie. A local TV station discovered that his parents bought their ranch in 1948, and didn’t start grazing cattle there until 1954.
Protestors are claiming that Bundy is being forced off his land, just like the Indians were:
They are literally treating western United States citizens, ranchers, rural folks like this- are the modern day Indians. We’re being driven off of our lands. We’re being forced into reservations known as cities.
Ironically, the Paiute Indians were forced onto reservations in 1875, but two years before that they were promised the very land where Bundy’s ranch is located.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Cliven Bundy, the rancher from Nevada who refuses to pay grazing fees because he doesn’t believe the US government exists. Some people (like Fox News’ Sean Hannity) think Bundy is a hero. Jon Stewart trivially destroys that idea and shows the hypocrisy of Hannity:
UPDATE: Sean Hannity responds on Fox News in the only way he knows how — using cheap character assassination and other ad hominem arguments.
“A Colorado company has introduced the first marijuana vending machine. As a result, the vending machines around it are doing much better.” – Conan O’Brien
“This year’s Easter Sunday happens to fall on the same day as the marijuana holiday, 4/20. Which means no matter what your religion, this Sunday you’re probably going to see a giant bunny.” – Conan O’Brien
“Speaking of religion, the Pope let two 11-year-old boys ride in the Pope-mobile with him. Afterwards the Vatican told the Pope, ‘That’s not the kind of publicity we’re looking for.'” – Conan O’Brien
“Every year, the IRS collects over $950 billion in taxes. There’s more money coming at them than a stripper at Charlie Sheen’s house.” – Craig Ferguson
“Let’s play ‘How busy do accountants get on tax day’? They’re busier than drug dealers at Coachella. Busier than someone doing sign language for Regis Philbin. Busier than Justin Bieber’s lawyer. Busier than gossip blogs when a late-night show’s host retires.” – Craig Ferguson
“A new study says that an average person’s chances of getting audited by the IRS is the lowest they’ve been since the 1980s. Don’t get any ideas, Willie Nelson.” – Craig Ferguson
“Yesterday, North Korea held its annual marathon. Congratulations to first, second and third place winner, Kim Jong Un.” – Conan O’Brien
Charles Cooper was a former top official in the Reagan Justice Department and was named “Republican lawyer of the year”, but he is more recently famous for defending California’s ban on gay marriage (Prop 8) in front of the Supreme Court. He lost.
Ironically, Cooper now finds himself planning his daughter’s gay marriage. Cooper learned of his daughter’s engagement before he argued the case, but the news was only made public recently in a new book about the movement to legalize gay marriage.
In the book, Cooper is quoted as saying that he came to admire the lesbian couple who challenged and eventually overturned Prop 8. Interestingly, that couple returned the favor. In a statement about Cooper’s defense of Prop 8 at the same time his daughter was planning on marrying a woman, they said
Some may find this contrast between public and private jarring, but in our opinion, loving an LGBT child unequivocally is the single most important thing any parent can do.
Cooper’s daughter lives in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage.
Other prominent Republicans whose children are publicly gay include Dick Cheney and Rob Portman.
“A woman in Las Vegas was arrested after she threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton while Hillary was giving a speech. The woman was tackled, cuffed, and thrown into a police car. Then the cops said, ‘Normally, WE do that, Hillary, but thank you for the help.'” – Jimmy Fallon
“A super-PAC urging Hillary Clinton to run for president says it raised $1.7 million in the first three months of the year. Said President Obama, ‘I’ll kick in another million if she’s willing to start early.'” – Seth Meyers
“Congratulations to our pal Stephen Colbert, who will be taking over for David Letterman next year. People in the media are already talking about there being a new late-night war — and I just want to say there’s not going to be any war. It’ll be a late-night dance-off. Get ready, Stephen.” – Jimmy Fallon
“I have a big announcement: Starting in 2015, I will be the new host of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central.” – Jimmy Fallon
“CNN announced that Anthony Bourdain’s show is taking over Piers Morgan’s time slot. Anthony is a culinary expert who loves good food. His show is the highest-rated series on CNN. But let’s be honest. The highest-rated series on CNN is like being the least drunk Australian.” – Craig Ferguson
“After handling the bumpy rollout of the Obamacare site, Kathleen Sebelius announced today that she is resigning. Which explains why being thrown under a bus is now covered by Obamacare.” – Jimmy Fallon
“The White House just released President Obama’s tax returns, which show that he and Michelle paid 98 thousand dollars in taxes last year. When he saw that, even Obama said, ‘Thanks, Obama’.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Big news out of the White House. According to a new rule, Secret Service agents can no longer drink alcohol 12 hours before reporting to duty. The rule came at the request of President Barack O-Buzzkill.” – Conan O’Brien
“Yesterday Hillary Clinton admitted she is thinking about running for president. Though it would be more shocking if she admitted to ever thinking about anything else.” – Seth Meyers
“‘Captain America’ is currently the No. 1 movie in China. The Chinese say their favorite part is when Captain America asks Captain China for a $17 trillion loan.” – Conan O’Brien
“The North Korean dictator is in the news again. He was re-elected with 100 percent of the vote. He said, ‘I haven’t been this happy since I scored 700,000 on the SAT exam.'” – Conan O’Brien
“France has passed new legislation that makes it illegal to work after 6 p.m. They’re hoping to encourage workers to spend more time with their mistresses.” – Seth Meyers
“Last week I announced that I’m retiring. Now I’m hoping I can hang on long enough so my son can take over the show. I never thought I would retire. I always assumed I would be impeached.” – David Letterman
“I’ll tell you exactly the moment I made the decision to retire. A couple of months ago my cue card boy came to me and said, ‘Mr. Letterman, I’m sorry. I just can’t print the jokes any bigger.'” – David Letterman
There has been quite a bit of attention focused on high frequency trading recently, partially brought on by the book “Flash Boys”. But in a must-read editorial in the NY Times, Paul Krugman points out that the stunning amounts of money being spent on high frequency trading systems is really just one symptom of an even greater problem.
The real problem is that our society is wasting greater and greater amounts of its resources on “financial wheeling and dealing”, which give nothing back in return. One expert puts the waste at several hundred billions of dollars a year. Indeed, since we started dismantling financial regulations around 1980, the percentage of GDP that is skimmed off by the financial services industry has doubled.
In addition, an increasing amount of financial time and energy now goes into speculation, which provides few if any benefits to society. Krugman concludes:
In short, we’re giving huge sums to the financial industry while receiving little or nothing — maybe less than nothing — in return. Mr. Philippon puts the waste at 2 percent of G.D.P. Yet even that figure, I’d argue, understates the true cost of our bloated financial industry. For there is a clear correlation between the rise of modern finance and America’s return to Gilded Age levels of inequality.
Meanwhile, we aren’t spending even close to that amount of money on things that are important. In particular, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a detailed report that shows that the cost of reversing climate change is actually amazingly low. They estimate that reducing the emission of greenhouse gases will reduce the median growth of consumption by a mere 0.06%. This is especially stunning when you realize that the cost of climate change, destruction due to increasingly unpredictable weather, sea level rise, crop failures, etc. will be far greater than that. In other words, doing nothing will cost us far more than cutting back our addiction to fossil fuels. An that doesn’t even include how much we will save by not repeatedly starting wars for oil.
And as Paul Krugman points out in a separate article, the costs of moving to sustainable energy are plummeting.
Consider just one form of sustainable energy, solar:
This graph shows that the cost of solar panels has plummeted, and as of 2012 is becoming competitive with coal and natural gas.
Another study shows that wind and solar energy are now 20% cheaper than nuclear power.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If we would stop subsidizing fossil fuels and give sustainable energy the investment it needs, we could solve our energy problems rapidly. When are we going to stop making excuses?
UPDATE: Oklahoma is passing a law that that makes renewable energy more expensive. Sigh.
The Congressional Budget Office has issued an updated accounting report on the Affordable Care Act, and there is good news. We already know some of the good news — more people will be covered by Obamacare than expected. But I just want to remind people how significant that is — the whole point of health care reform was to get more people access to proper health care.
But there is more good news. The cost of Obamacare was also revised down, saving the government a projected $104 billion. The reason for this savings is because insurance premiums are lower than expected. Hah! When was the last time you heard that health insurance cost less than expected? That means that the deficit will be lower. And even if you aren’t getting one of those government subsidies for your health insurance, you will also save money because your (unsubsidized) premiums will be lower.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been monitoring the results of the implementation of Obamacare:
It is good news that premiums have come in lower than expected, meaning lower costs for the federal government and for families as well. It’s a sign that the ACA may be working to hold premiums down by forcing insurers to compete over price rather than by cherry-picking healthy people.
I think this is very significant. Because of the ACA (the oft maligned government regulation) health insurance is starting to act like a free market, causing insurance companies to compete.
Politicians! Accused of pesky ethics violations? No problem!
In South Carolina, the Republican Speaker of the State House Alan Wilson is being investigated by the Republican Attorney General for ethics violations. How to solve this problem? Just introduce a bill that allows the Speaker to pick the special prosecutor to investigate ethics violations by legislators. The bill says the special prosecutor would be “deemed to stand in the place of the attorney general when appointed.” That way, you get to pick the person who investigates you!
Meanwhile in New Jersey, where governor Chris Christie is accused of illegal political shenanigans, it turns out that four years ago Christie pushed out the executive director of the ethics commission while she was investigating a member of Christie’s staff, and replaced her with with one of Christie’s own lawyers (and later gave the lawyer a judgeship).
Problems Solved!
The Republican majority on the Supreme Court seems hell bent to solidify oligarchy in the US by ruling that money is free speech.
Indeed, a recent study done at Princeton and Northwestern Universities looked at 1,800 laws enacted between 1981 and 2002 and compared them to the interests of average Americans (in the 50th percentile) and the interests of the rich (90th percentile) and special interest groups. To little surprise, they found that the interests of average Americans are almost completely ignored. In the words of the study:
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.
The few times that average Americans do get laws passed to their benefit, it is only because the rich also win.
“A man got a tattoo saying that Kentucky won the NCAA tournament this year even though they lost. The tattoo is right above his tattoo congratulating President Mitt Romney.” – Conan O’Brien
“George W. Bush and Bill Clinton sat next to each other at the big game. Clinton congratulated UConn on its big win, while Bush gave Kentucky a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner.” – Jimmy Fallon
“At the NCAA men’s basketball championship, President Clinton sat with President George W. Bush. In the second half, Bush tried to catch a foul ball.” – David Letterman
“Congratulations to the Huskies, who are the NCAA champs. There were a lot of celebrities at the game last night. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush sat together. Apparently they’re becoming good friends. I smell a sitcom.” – Craig Ferguson
“Last week I mentioned to folks I was retiring and the reaction has been overwhelming, but the most impressive reaction since I made that announcement is now I’m seeing kind of a wistful tone to my hate mail.” – David Letterman
“Last month, over 200,000 jobs were created in the United States. And that doesn’t count this one.” – David Letterman
“About a year from now, I’ll be doing commercials for reverse mortgages.” – David Letterman
“In a recent survey, 84 percent of Americans were unable to locate Ukraine on a map. When he heard this, Vladimir Putin said, ‘That’s easy, it’s in Russia now.'” – Conan O’Brien
Funny or Die imagines what would happen if religious right-wingers had their way with the Cosmos TV series:
I could never understand why marijuana was classified as a dangerous drug — so dangerous that it was illegal to even do any studies on it, or to prescribe it as a pain killer (even though much more powerful drugs like morphine were routinely used for pain relief). Why? Because opponents claimed that using marijuana would increase crime.
Now that around a dozen states have legalized marijuana for medical use, multiple studies have been done to find out what effects, if any, legal marijuana use has had.
To hardly anyone’s surprise, the studies show that legal access to medical marijuana does not result in any increase in crime. In fact, there is evidence that it is related to a decrease in violent crime. The theory is that substituting marijuana for alcohol reduces the crime rate for murder and assault. Also, the legalization of medical marijuana led to a 13% decrease in alcohol related traffic fatalities.
Two studies looked at the neighborhoods were medical marijuana dispensaries are located, and found that there was no evidence of any increases in violent crimes or property crimes.
And finally, while we only have data for the one state that has legalized the recreational use of marijuana, so far in the three months it has been legal there has been a slight dip in both violent and property crimes.
While it may be too early to reach a firm conclusion, the big point is that repeated studies have shown absolutely no evidence that legalizing marijuana leads to increased crime.
In a country where even presidents have admitted that they have used marijuana, isn’t it time to completely eliminate marijuana prohibition?
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