Some of you may remember my links here sometime ago to a New Yorker article by Jane Meyer showing some of the links between conservative groups and the Koch Brothers. That indicated that the "grassroots" TEA PARTY was a product of 50 paid organizers working for a year or two. No need to wonder where the mindless opposition to "Obamacare" came from. The reports below still show connections between Koch money and the TEA Party. Dig into the John Birch society and Welch, and that old stuff leads to Koch money and connections.
I have been attacked in other social forums for claiming connections between South Dakota Birchers and Koch. I am not wasting my breath on the loons of the right who can be conclusively shown they are being misled or are themselves out to lunch, and be back a day or a week later with the same discredited fraudulent humbug.
All that is not to say the the same Citizen's United decision didn't open up "dark money" for liberals and Democrats. The amounts, however, are significantly less and even so, I find that kind of secret "liberal" money almost equally threatening meaningful democracy.
*** Stay tuned and take a look at previous posts here on NHP and Alzheimer's, and on the importance of childhood self-control and political implications, and on reducing costs of pneumonia innoculations.--- Doug Wiken
AMERICAN SCIENCE in the Sept-Oct 2013 issue pages 352 to 359 is an article titled "Lifelong Impact of Early Self-Control. subtitled Childhood self-discipline predicts adult qualtity of life. This is based on a set of long-term studies and the implications are great for education and educators, parents, legislators, and taxpayers. I realize that sounds almost too good to be true and an awful lot like snake oil and I urge you if you are in any of the categories that you read the whole article and not just my attempt to summarize.
The authors Terrie E. Moffitt, Ricie Poulton, and Avsalom Caspi start off with what seems to be an assertion but is followed with lots of data.
"The capacity for self-control over our thoughts and actions is a fundamental human faculty. But the inability to make use of that capacity can our greatest personal failure especially in today's fast-paced, fast-food world of endliess possiblility, distraction, and temptation...."
The studies used include a study of differences in outcomes for twins when one showed self-control early and the other did not is part of their cohort of studies. Another involves outcomes of Head Start students. A third is a longitudinal study about 1000 New Zealanders studied at intervals of one to three years for nearly forty years. This is the Dunedin Study.
I can't put all of that data and information in here, but a perhaps too simple or sweeping condensation of that information leads to several important conclusions.
To their own surprise, the 40-year study of 1000 students showed that early self-control was as signficicant or more significant in results of accomplishment and success than high or low intelligence, richness or poorness, with results correlating with levels of self-control. The data indicates that children with early lack of self-control grew up to be adults with more financial problems and difficulties. Also shown was that 80% of those convicted of criminal offenses came from the cohort's two lowest quintiles of childhood self-control. Overall, those with lower self-control also appear to be the least skilled in parenting ability. This implies that a child's low self-control can cause disadvantages for the next generation.
We can be suspicious of data which seems to show so much but these studies seem to isolate self-control from other variables. The twins study was important in this.
Without detailing more of the data, the following may be the more important aspects for teachers and lawmakers. Self-control can be influenced by classroom instruction aimed at producing it in young children and the benfits carry into adulthood Teens and adults can also improve self-control. Innovative policies putting more emphasis on self-control can have signficant impact on a whole panoply of costs in areas of crime control, social welfare, and education. This increased effort in areas of self-control might lessen the need for restrictive laws that put penalties on failure to exercise self-control such as banning smoking in public places, seatbelts and helmet laws, etc. While the authors do not make this statement, it seems that it is far more rational for society to improve early childhood education than to spend more and more money on courts, prisons, and punishment.
Demographic changes make such programs to increase self-control even more important. With a combinatin of fewer children and older populations, the self-control abilities of all ages becomes more and more important.
I hope you will take time to find this magazine and read the full article since my summary here does not do full justice to the quality of the studies, the article or to the implications.
*** Stay tuned and be glad that Marian McPartland lived until she was 95. May the "jazz pianist" rest in peace. My wife and I saw her in a free performance at Rochester, NY over 40 years ago. We did not realize her contributions at the time, but we sure enjoyed the concert and years of radio at SDPB-Radio--- Doug Wiken
The Congress critters with unpronounceable Hispanic names are full of talking points and misleading fine-sounding phrases.
"Immigration reform" tops that list. Follow that by everybody in the US supports "immigration reform". The label is BS and the idea that everybody supports blanket amnesty for illegal aliens is BS. "Immigration reform" is actually "invasion concession". "Path to Citizenship" is actually "Road to Ruin"
We don't need immigration reform, we need deportation teeth. It is not the immigration system that is "broken", it is the border protection that is broken. We have spent $Billions against yellow peril and red threat while hardly any of the Chinese Communists or hard-core communists have invaded the US. But, twelve or more million under-educated Hispanics have invaded and they and their legal apologists are demanding amnesty for the invaders with a "road to citizenship". They need to find the road back to Mexico or Central America or wherever they came from.
Republicans want under-educated supestitious products of a backward and bankrupt political, economic, and religous system as cheap labor to destroy unions and increase obscene profits. Democratic politicians want cheap ignorant votes.
Both are willing to sell American down the drain for short-term partisan advantage and long-term wasteful, costly needless diversity.
Mexico should solve its own problems. They have about 12 million potential citizens with expertise on what makes a system work...even as they attempt to destroy it for their own cultural crap.
Democratic politicians apparently do not understand that for every Hispanic vote capitulation to this invasion of illegal aliens brings them, the cowards in Congress are going to lose the support of a dozen traditional supporters who will too soon understand the fraud implicit in "immigration reform" with non-existent deportation "teeth".
Reading labels on packaging in already too small type in order to pander to Hispanics unwilling to learn English should be reason enouth to resist capitulation to the illegal invasion.
*** Stay tuned especially if you mow your own lawn, cut your own weeds, plant your own garden, and harvest your own grain and fruit--- Doug Wiken
This interesting little story turned up in a Moyers and Company discussion with Lawrence Lessig while discussing the problems with Congress and big money, Citizens United, etc.
BILL MOYERS:
The former John Edwards.
LAWRENCE LESSIG:
--yeah. There's all the difference in the world between a lawyer making
an argument to a jury and a lawyer handing out $100 bills to the
jurors. And our lobbying system doesn't understand that difference.
The transcript starts off with Big Brother's Big Ears and the Snowdon Affair. It finally gets to the discussion of what to do to end up the dirty money, dirty deats in Congress that deal you and I out of the actual Democratic process.. Scroll Down for the Money Bomb.
Our US Senators and Congressmen, Democrats, Republicans, Whatever, all support big money first and you and me last. Laws are written with loopholes for the rich and influential. The current circus about the IRS searching for TEA Party groups looking for tax exemptions is a nearly perfect example. Congress needs to examine itself for writing crappy law and then not correcting it or making follow ups on the regulations that result. The current prodding of the IRS is all a circus to keep your eyes off what Congress is doing in order to do nothing significant. A local auditor was following up with the IRS and was told that the agency was 15 weeks behind because of sequestration, etc.
Congress is generating problems for all of us and pretending blame rests elsewhere. Public financing of cam;paigns is probably the only thing that will get Congress back to representing all of us instead of just the lucky few or obscenely rich corporations ripping us off.
*** Stay tuned especially if you too are mad as hell--- Doug Wiken
SD Focus on SDPB-TV a few nights ago was on "infrastructure". You know---highways, water systems, streets, power, communications, etc. Someplace here SDFOCUS, you may find a transcript or video.
In the discussion of highways and streets, the talk turned to the need to increase taxes on gasoline and fuels for small cars because they areen't using as much fuel as they did years ago and "road" taxes are dropping.
The Republican solution from GOP state Sen Mike Vehle chairman of the SD Senate Transportation Committee is to increase licensing fees on small cars and increase gas taxes. It is as usual another way to tax those least responsible for highway problems. It is upside down, backwards and inside-out thinking.
Years ago a South Dakota highway engineer in Pierre estimated that heavy trucks do 15,000 times as much damage per mile of travel as do cars.
South Dakota and federal fuel taxes amount to 42.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 48.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel. A car getting 30 mpg pays about 1.5 cents per mile of travel. A diesel tractor-trailer combination may get 8 miles per gallon and thus pays about 6 cents per mile of fuel taxes. So, we might say that trucks pay about 4 times as much per mile as reasonably fuel efficient cars.
The problem with this is obvious in relation to the comparative damages done to highways. Four times as much is a long, long way from 15,000 times as much. To match the damage, fuel taxes on over the road diesel for trucks would need to be around $225 per gallon of diesel fuel. A driver putting 12,000 miles on his car with 1.5 cents taxes per mile pays about $180 per year in taxes. 15,000 times that is about $2,700,000.
Now, as Sen. Vehle said when I called into SDFocus, we can't have truckers paying millions of dollars per year in fuel taxes. Our groceries would get even more expensive, etc. etc. Well yes, but perhaps it is time to start moving heavy stuff on rails instead of highways if we are to be cognizant of real costs of unconscionable subsidies to particular influential industries. And, we might better look at increasing heavy truck taxes than drooling over increasing taxes on the small cars sensible people drive.
Global warming is also a factor in all of this, but that adds even more complexity to this.
And, complexity is just not handled well by Republican legislators and Republican administrators. When I mentioned on SDFocus that limiting wheel taxes to the first four wheels is also nonsensical, Sen. Vehle said it is just too hard to count past four.
Actually, I think even they can figure out a way to get the true number of wheels for all vehicles and trailers. The current inability to count past four is peculiarly regressive even for South Dakota.
Take time to think about what may appear to make some sense when you hear it from officials and politicians. You may find it actually is nonsense and irrelevancy in relation to the real problems. Resist increasing road taxes on light vehicles. There absolutely, positively has to be a better way to fund road building and repair.
Of course, Sioux Falls, is concerned about walkers, runners, and bicycle riders not paying any road taxes at all, so the city has tacked on a 1 cent sales tax on groceries. That is also not the way to go.
[[[ Please note, I made some corrections to above after I saw the SD Focus show again. Statements I noted were made by Mark Vehle rather than Sec. Darin Bergquist of SD Dept. of Transportation. Sorry about my confusion. I do wish SD Focus would spend an additional 50 cents or so on each participant and put a paper name tag in front of them that stays there all the way through the program. --- Doug Wiken, June 3, 2013 ]]]]
*** Stay tuned even if you think tree huggers should pay taxes just for hanging around-- Doug Wiken
I listened to a GOP Congress Critter and a
Democrat too on ABC this morning both talking about the IRS abusing
"taxpayers". That BS is irrelevant. What we are actually talking about
are those asking for a special dispensation to be non-taxpayers. If any
taxpayers are abused, it is the rest of us who have no escape from taxes
and end up paying a larger share because the same congress critters now
wringing their hands are the ones who made sure the confusing,
contradictory loopholes for the very rich exist or have not been
changed.
The hypocrisy of both Republicans and Democrats on the
IRS great non-issue is disgusting. The fact that few if any of the media
talking heads have bothered to notice this great big glaring red thumb
is even more disturbing. Of course most of them are also very rich and
most of them work for incredibly rich media conglomerates. The questions should be about what does the US Congress intend to do to clean up their own legislation and not about who should be arrested for protecting the interests of those of us who aren't obscenely rich and influential.
*** Stay tuned. Congress generates enough hypocrisy for whole books-- Doug Wiken
South Dakota newspapers have been making a mediocre case for an internet sales tax apparently as a way of pandering to their advertisers as they poke a stick in their reader's eyes. A tax increase is a tax increase just as a skunk by another names stinks the same.
My argument against the endrun around the US Constitution commerce clause is that it is a huge intrusion into privacy with all kinds of data bases being required to make the baling wire mess work. If it passes be prepared to pay taxes you don't owe and let every state in the country know what you buy.
Newspapers whine that the poor brick and mortar stores are disadvantaged by having to collect sales taxes from their customers while distant catalog or internet sales don't require such collection. Judges twist their corrupt minds into knots by justifiying a "use" tax which only applies to purchases from an out-of-state seller.
Justification for distant transaction taxes by states and local governments is a perversion of good sense, good taxaction, and an insult to the US Constitution the wingnut right regularly claim to worship as if it it the 10 commandments on the lips of God...well at least as far as it concerns guns and ammunition.
I don't care if I have to pay taxes on internet purchases or distant transactions because the few percent taxes is not why I or anybody else buys from a distant seller. We buy because the product is not available locally or even in state. We buy because local or instate marketers rip us off with prices two or three times the national price. A sales tax is not the reason for not buying from your friendly local smiling ripoff artist.
Very frankly, the arguments for further extension of state and local sales taxes to internet or other distant taxes are pure, unadulterated, stagnant bullshit.
If there is to be a tax on distant transactions, it should apply to all such trnasactions and it should be a federal tax 90% refunded to states on the basis of population rather than sales. It should apply to stocks and bonds as well as chastity belts, Viagra, tampons, or whatever else the states are eager to get into a data base relating you to sales.
A federal tax will not require data be kept on sellers location, buyers location, or even what is purchased. If this is to be a national tax, it should be administered by the federal government which can just add a line to the 1040.
There is no need for tremendous growth of state Revenue department staffs or databases and so-called "tax fairness" is a smokescreen for simple tax increase.
Let your legislators know you are not impressed with the state's incredibly stupid, privacy intruding sales tax consortia mechanisms too similar to Rube Goldberg contraptions.. and let your newspapers and Governor Daugaard know you are not impressed with their BS.
*** Stay tuned. You will not be taxed for reading this YET, but give the bastards some time and they might find taxable value in the information here.--- Doug Wiken
Today Bob Mercer apparently suggested that any kind of crony capitalism bribery system for big business projects warranted some sunshine. Of course, crony capitalists like working under the covers and under the cover of darkness and the SD Republicans are wedded to covering up their work just like a cat.
[[ Please note, I messed up the references here. The amendment was apparently actually presented by Republican Stacy Nelson, but reported by Mercer and supported by the text following the amendment by Mercer rather than by Frank Kloucek. Sorry if this led to confusion on the part of any readers.-- Doug Wiken, March 9, 2013]]
Here is apparently what Mercer Stacy Nelson suggested as amendment to SB235.
The
Board of Economic Development may not take action to award any loan,
grant, or other form of financial assistance that involves public
funds unless the action is taken at an official meeting for which
notice has been posted in accordance with the provisions of
§ 1-25-1.1 and notice has been published in at least three
newspapers of general circulation in different parts of the state.
The notice shall be published at least two weeks before the meeting,
shall contain a narrative description of the proposed actions, and
shall also state where and when the hearing will be held.".
Frank Kloucek Bob Mercer has written:,
If the Legislature and the governor
are serious about giving this immense discretionary power to the
Board of Economic Development, the process requires the highest
possible degree of openness. Voters rejected a similar type of
mechanism in November. It would be an insult to try the same thing
again, wrapped inside a different envelope. If a state board is going
to be given the power to give away millions of dollars annually at
its own discretion, in a program that favors a very small
group of taxpayers above all others, the public has a right to know
what is being attempted and should have the right to express its
opinions to that board about each and every proposal. The state Board
of Water and Natural Resources has functioned for many years under
the very type of open system for its grants and loans.
We don't need crony capitalism in Washington, DC and we don't need it in South Dakota. Despite the old analogy relating making legislating and sausage making, we all lose if we aren't allowed to know everything about both. Food poisoning is not good, and legislative and executive unseemly secret dealings with corporate interests are not healthy for a modern society.
*** Stay tuned and plan on a lot of initiative and referendum business coming to a state very near you--- Doug Wiken
The RC Journal put in a small article that should be of interest to all the TEA party rank and file in South Dakota. Dick Armey quit the TEA Party .....sliding out with the way greased by an $8 million payout provided by a GOP fundraiser. Armey will get "consulting fees" of $400,000 each year which might even reduce his tax liability...who knows.
Armey and Tom Delay are great flagwavers and wonderful advocates of "Let's your kids fight my wars". Check the GOP War Hero Wall of Fame
Now, I must confess I did everything I could to stay out of Vietnamese rice paddies and worked to make sure as few other young people died there as possible. The GOP warhawks always seemed particulary hypocritical about their gung-ho war positions often fired from behind the protective bulwarks of deferments..
But back on track of Armey money. The RC Journal article of December 5, 2012 indicates his windfall for exiting was funded by Richard J. Stephenson.
So, if you are one of those TEA Party block workers, you might want to promise to quite tomorrow and see if you can work out a windfall golden parachute deal for yourself. Before you get that all worked out however, you might want to think about why the very, very rich wanted you to be astroturf for their reactionary, obstructionist,self-interested policies...and how in the world those politicies might have ever benefited you in any way whatsoever.
*** Stay tuned for more news of the ships leaving their lab rats in the deep--- Doug Wiken
Dec 06, 2012
The Republicans were intent on denying Obama a second term and
in the process nearly destroyed the US economy and credit ratings. Now
they are intent on destroying the Obama legacy. Ironically, their
retrograde obstructionism may show up historically as a factor in
increasing the Obama legacy by comparison to the retrograde partisan hacks of the
GOP.
I am starting to suspect that many Americans were aware before the
election that what Obama Administration did to fix the economy after
Bush mis-management was working. Car sales are now shown to have been
up significantly. Employment is up, but not nearly as fast as it might have been had GOP not opposed sensible programs.
The GOP attack- Obama-whatever- it -costs plans have generated economic
uncertainty that has and will probably cost the very rich more than a
tax increase ever would have or will.
GOP is wedded to zombie economics and mythology camouflaged by
irrelevant social issues designed to generated fear and uncertainty in
the minds of those afflicted with religious superstition.
It isn't an approaching fiscal cliff that is the problem, it is the GOP quagmire that stretches back years and now extends into the future.
*** Stay tuned while I play with a new camera witha a 50x optical zoom --- Doug Wiken
Residents of South Dakota. Check your broadband speed with the SD Speedtest. Your test will both let you know how speedy is your ISP and also help get us better service in South Dakota.
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