Healthcare update

The consequences of a donor kidney market

Health spending, preventive care drop with high-deductible plans

High-deductible health plans are significantly decreasing healthcare spending, but they are also linked to patients cutting back on preventive healthcare services--such as childhood immunizations, cancer screenings and routine tests for diabetes, according one of the largest assessments of these plans conducted by the RAND Corporation. 

In its study of more than 800,000 families nationwide, RAND researchers found that when individuals shifted into health plans with deductibles of at least $1,000 per person, their health spending dropped by an average of 14 percent in comparison to those families with lower-deductible plans.

Food dye makers push back as U.S. panel weighs safety

A primer on health-care ‘exchanges’

HHS official: Employers may gradually move to exchanges

Blue Cross anti-trust probe expands: Do some hospitals get sweetheart deals?

The U.S. Justice Department is widening an investigation into alleged collusion and price-fixing between Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans and hospitals in several states, the Wall Street Journal reports.  

The investigation is focusing on whether certain Blues plans have struck "most-favored nations" deals with hospitals that would allow the increase of premiums while potentially locking out competition. Blues plans in six states and the District of Columbia have received civil subpoenas.

Pay of hospital CEOs comes under fire

Hospitals are continuing to pay their top executives hefty salaries as the recession lingers and state legislatures continue deep cuts to Medicaid, sparking much criticism. In California, the latest salvo came from the Los Angeles Times, which reports that hospital district CEOs are among the highest-paid public officials in the state, with at least three earning more than $1 million a year. Californians have been irate over public sector salaries for a while now, fed in part by a new salary survey and database released last week by the state controller. 

On the East Coast, public complaints have been just as loud. Just two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that top hospital execs at Bronx-Lebanon and New York Presbyterian each earned about $3 million per year in 2008. Efforts to cap or cut those salaries have been underway over the past months, but gained little traction, notes the Times.  

F.D.A. Panel to Consider Warnings for Artificial Food Colorings

Bellaire Man Found Stuck in Chair Dies at 43

Environment update

Japanese Town Mulls Future Without Whaling Industry

A siege against the EPA and environmental progress

Today the agency President Richard Nixon created in response to the public outcry over visible air pollution and flammable rivers is under siege. The Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would, for the first time, “disapprove” of a scientifically based finding, in this case that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. This finding was extensively reviewed by officials in the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It was finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.

As former administrators of the EPA, both under Republican presidents, we have observed firsthand rapid changes in scientific knowledge concerning the dangers posed by particular pollutants, including lead additives in gasoline, benzene and the impact of contaminants on our drinking-water supply. In each of these cases, the authority of our major environmental statutes was essential to protect public health and the most vulnerable members of our society, even in the face of remaining scientific debate. 

Earlier this year, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would cut the EPA’s budget by nearly a third and in certain areas impede its ability to protect our air and water.

Here's How The Clean Air Act Saved Americans $12 Trillion Over The Last Two Decades

Shrimp Trawlers Have Started Dredging Up BP Oil In The Gulf Of Mexico

This Picture Shows The Amount Of Plastic Ingested By One Sea Turtle

Climate change and energy update

Five myths about gas prices

The 'Holy Grail' of science: The artificial leaf researchers claim will turn every home into its own power station

Placed in a single gallon of water in a bright sunlight, the device could produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country with electricity for a day, Nocera said.  

It does so by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. 

The hydrogen and oxygen gases would be stored in a fuel cell, which uses those two materials to produce electricity, located either on top of the house or beside it.

US Households More Efficient, But More Plugged In

It's certainly a positive sign that energy use remains at roughly the same despite a large growth in the number of households: since 1978 the United States added millions of homes, up to 111.1 in 2005 from 76.6 million occupied housing units in 1978, while the EIA reports that improvements in efficiency have led to a 31 percent reduction in energy use per household. Even with 45 percent more homes in 2005, Americans reduced the total amount of energy used on heating--down to 4.30 quads from 1978's 6.96--due to improvements in home design and as well as the increased efficiency of heating devices.

Two-thirds of oil and gas leases in Gulf inactive 

Opec set for $1,000bn in export revenues

Opec, the oil producers’ cartel, will reap $1,000bn in export revenues this year for the first time if crude prices remain above $100 a barrel, according to the International Energy Agency. 

The cartel has been one of the main beneficiaries of high oil prices, which have soared in recent weeks amid the civil uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa.

How will we dispose of spent nuclear fuel rods for centuries to come?

California Assembly OKs increased renewable energy requirement: The mandate, now headed for governor's desk, would require utilities to increase renewable energy sources to 33% by 2020.

The largest economic activity on earth

Energy is the largest economic activity on earth (much larger than agriculture) and the industry with the highest capitalization (much higher than car manufacturing). Energy units are confusing (megawatts, kilowatt-hours, tons of carbon, CO2 equivalents, BTUs and Gigajoules), but the scale of the system makes these units even more remote (terawatt-hours, exajoules, gigatons, quadrillion BTUs). This makes it hard to bring the discussion home — the discussion starts in a rarified, almost other-worldly place. 

Let’s talk gigatons — one billion tons. Every year, human activity emits about 35 gigatons of CO2 (the most important greenhouse gas). Of that, 85% comes from fossil fuel burning. To a lot of people, that doesn’t mean much — who goes to the store and buys a gigaton of carrots? For a sense of perspective, a gigaton is about twice the mass of all people on earth, so 35 gigatons is about 70 times the weight of humanity. Every year, humans put that in the atmosphere, and 85% of that is power. Large actions, across whole nations and whole economies, are required to move the needle.

The elderly are ruining America's future

The Geezers’ Crusade

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children. 

Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control. 

Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending. 

...

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

It may seem unrealistic — to expect a generation to organize around the cause of nonselfishness. But in the private sphere, you see it every day. Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize.

America's grim budget outlook

The federal government's expenditures on children have shrunk as a share of the budget over the past 30 years. In 1960, about 20 percent of the federal budget went to programs dedicated to the health, development and education of Americans under the age of 18. Today it's 10 percent and falling.

 By contrast, spending on the elderly has skyrocketed, doubling as a percentage of the budget during that time. Spending on Social Security and Medicare alone makes up close to 40 percent of the budget. In a decade, that share will rise considerably, perhaps to as much as half the federal budget. Whatever the exact percentages are - what you define as programs for children and the elderly can vary - the conclusion is clear: The federal government spends between $4 and $5 on elderly people for every dollar it spends on children.

... 

In fact, the contrast between what we spend on the old and the young is part of a broader problem that threatens America's economic future. Look at the economic debate in Washington: We continue to avoid dealing with the large entitlement programs and the largest domestic giveaways, such as the tax deduction for mortgage interest. No tax increases, such as a value-added tax or a gas tax, are even remotely possible. Instead, legislators make a show of cutting the budget by trumpeting the savings in the much smaller pie of discretionary spending, slashing education, infrastructure, science and other such programs. 

The net effect is that the United States will continue to massively subsidize consumption and starve investment. This is exactly the opposite of what history tells us produces long-term economic growth. The American economy is already far too focused on consumption and credit. And not only will this approach have limited benefits to the budget - any fiscal discipline that does not tackle entitlement spending is a charade - but we are cutting in precisely the areas where we should increase spending. From China to South Korea to Germany, countries are making large investments for future growth at the moment we are pruning such expenditures. 

Again, the reasons are clear: There is no political will to take on the subsidies and spending that are consumption-related. And yet we need to find budget cuts, so lawmakers look to the easy place to find them: on the investment side of the budget. The result, however, will be disastrous for the country's long-term health. 

President Obama sounded this call for investment in his State of the Union address. His budget tries to preserve and even expand spending in key areas that will contribute to future growth. But he faces a Republican Party that is fixated by a budget-cutting mentality but refuses to propose entitlement cuts and in which a sledgehammer is preferred to a scalpel. And America's business community is sitting on the sidelines, betting its future on the growth in foreign countries (which themselves are making huge investments for their growth). 

America's growth and prosperity over the past few decades have been consequences of major investments made in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of those are the interstate highway system; a public education system that was the envy of the world; massive funding for science and technology that produced the semi-conductor industry, large-scale computing, the Internet and the global positioning system. When we look back in 20 years, what investments will we point to that created the next generation of growth for the next generation of Americans?

Social Security, Medicare have to be pared down

Just because this is an awful time to discuss these questions does not mean they shouldn't be discussed. The longer we wait, the more acute our fairness dilemma grows. We can't deal with it unless public opinion is engaged and changed, but public opinion won't be engaged and changed unless political leaders discard their self-serving hypocrisies. The old deserve dignity, but the young deserve hope. The passive acceptance of the status quo is the path of least resistance - and a formula for national decline.

How much do we spend on children and the elderly?

Economics and finance links

15 Companies That Died In The Past Year

Private Sector Layoffs Plunge, While Government Job Cutting Hits Its Worst Level In A Year

Spain's Youth Unemployment Problem Swells, One In Five Under Thirty Still Hunting For First Job

The Exceptional Mr. Greenspan

Guess The Country With The Highest Home Ownership Rate

Amazon Still Has A Gigantic Growth Opportunity, Even In Books And Electronics

Left Hand, Meet Right Hand: The government sues bankers over offenses government regulators once ignored

Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon expects inflation

Increase In Housing Quality And Its Effect On Home Values: 1940-2010

U.S. Economy Growing Faster Than Rivals, But Creating Far Fewer Jobs

As Economy Sputters, a Timid Fed

More Profits, Fewer Jobs: Why record corporate profits aren't necessarily good for the economy.

15 Top Corporate Tax Dodgers

Romney: On jobs, where is Obama?

About That Meeting In Nanjing, Where World Leaders Are Discussing How To Abandon The Dollar

Skunked

• Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security now account for 44% of total federal spending and are steadily rising.
• Previous Congresses (and Administrations) have relied on the assumption that we can grow our way out of this onerous debt burden.
• Unless entitlements are substantially reformed, the U.S. will likely default on its debt; not in conventional ways, but via inflation, currency devaluation and low to negative real interest rates.

Economics and finance links

Like The Phoenix, U.S. Finance Profits Soar

Why TARP has been a success story

Bubble Spotting

3 Reasons Why The US Tax Code Puts American Companies At A Massive Disadvantage

How Much Of February's Spending Growth Was Just Transfer Payments From The Government?

Deutsche Bank Presents The REAL Story Behind The Decline Of American Manufacturing

Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags

Amber Waves to Ivory Bolls

In Prison for Taking a Liar Loan

What Happens If These 19 Things That 'Everyone Knows To Be True' Are Wrong?

Warren Buffett: Stay The Hell Away From Long-Term Bonds

The elderly are ruining America's future

The Geezers’ Crusade

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children. 

Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control. 

Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending. 

...

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

It may seem unrealistic — to expect a generation to organize around the cause of nonselfishness. But in the private sphere, you see it every day. Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize.

America's grim budget outlook

The federal government's expenditures on children have shrunk as a share of the budget over the past 30 years. In 1960, about 20 percent of the federal budget went to programs dedicated to the health, development and education of Americans under the age of 18. Today it's 10 percent and falling.

 By contrast, spending on the elderly has skyrocketed, doubling as a percentage of the budget during that time. Spending on Social Security and Medicare alone makes up close to 40 percent of the budget. In a decade, that share will rise considerably, perhaps to as much as half the federal budget. Whatever the exact percentages are - what you define as programs for children and the elderly can vary - the conclusion is clear: The federal government spends between $4 and $5 on elderly people for every dollar it spends on children.

... 

In fact, the contrast between what we spend on the old and the young is part of a broader problem that threatens America's economic future. Look at the economic debate in Washington: We continue to avoid dealing with the large entitlement programs and the largest domestic giveaways, such as the tax deduction for mortgage interest. No tax increases, such as a value-added tax or a gas tax, are even remotely possible. Instead, legislators make a show of cutting the budget by trumpeting the savings in the much smaller pie of discretionary spending, slashing education, infrastructure, science and other such programs. 

The net effect is that the United States will continue to massively subsidize consumption and starve investment. This is exactly the opposite of what history tells us produces long-term economic growth. The American economy is already far too focused on consumption and credit. And not only will this approach have limited benefits to the budget - any fiscal discipline that does not tackle entitlement spending is a charade - but we are cutting in precisely the areas where we should increase spending. From China to South Korea to Germany, countries are making large investments for future growth at the moment we are pruning such expenditures. 

Again, the reasons are clear: There is no political will to take on the subsidies and spending that are consumption-related. And yet we need to find budget cuts, so lawmakers look to the easy place to find them: on the investment side of the budget. The result, however, will be disastrous for the country's long-term health. 

President Obama sounded this call for investment in his State of the Union address. His budget tries to preserve and even expand spending in key areas that will contribute to future growth. But he faces a Republican Party that is fixated by a budget-cutting mentality but refuses to propose entitlement cuts and in which a sledgehammer is preferred to a scalpel. And America's business community is sitting on the sidelines, betting its future on the growth in foreign countries (which themselves are making huge investments for their growth). 

America's growth and prosperity over the past few decades have been consequences of major investments made in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of those are the interstate highway system; a public education system that was the envy of the world; massive funding for science and technology that produced the semi-conductor industry, large-scale computing, the Internet and the global positioning system. When we look back in 20 years, what investments will we point to that created the next generation of growth for the next generation of Americans?

Social Security, Medicare have to be pared down

Just because this is an awful time to discuss these questions does not mean they shouldn't be discussed. The longer we wait, the more acute our fairness dilemma grows. We can't deal with it unless public opinion is engaged and changed, but public opinion won't be engaged and changed unless political leaders discard their self-serving hypocrisies. The old deserve dignity, but the young deserve hope. The passive acceptance of the status quo is the path of least resistance - and a formula for national decline.

How much do we spend on children and the elderly?

Excellent op-ed

I preached against homosexuality, but I was wrong

These experiences shook my worldview. It became clear to me that none of these men had chosen to be gay, just as I had never chosen to be heterosexual. How could I condemn someone for something that was really not their fault? Meanwhile, I was experiencing the slow disintegration of my own marriage. Needless to say, it was hard for me to condemn anyone else for their relationships when mine was in such bad shape. I began moving closer to the center. If homosexuality was a "sin," I wanted to add an asterisk to it. 

Toward the end of my parish ministry, I was approached by five individuals who demanded that I do a sermon to come out strong against any acceptance of gays and lesbians in the church. They wanted to hear what the Bible said on the issue. The funny thing was, all five of them were divorced and remarried. Had I done a sermon on what the Bible said about divorce, every one of them would have left the church in a huff. 

I did that sermon, however, and it was not my best hour as a Minister of Word and Sacrament. In my research, I found that the Bible was more nuanced about the issue than I previously believed, and I tried to convey that, but ultimately I still came out against acceptance of homosexuality. Now, I wish I'd been more upfront about how my own views were transforming, but I took a back-door approach to the subject. I talked about all the sins according to the Bible, and said if we were going to start throwing out sinners from our church, I wanted to start with the gossips. 

... 

So why had we singled out homosexuality as a litmus test for True Christianity in the first place? Why had it become such a lightning rod for self-righteousness? 

One reason, I think, is that it's easy to condemn homosexuality if you are not gay. It is much harder than condemning pride, or lust or greed, things that most practicing Christians have struggled with. It is all too easy to make homosexuality about "those people," and not me. If I were to judge someone for their inflated sense of pride, or their tendency to worship various cultural idols, I would feel some personal stake, some cringe of self-judgment. Not so with homosexuality. 



Amid crippling woes, perspective is lost

Excellent op-ed on perspective

Perspective gives us the ability to accurately contrast the large with the small, and the important with the less important. Without it we are lost in a world where all ideas, news, and information look the same. We cannot differentiate, we cannot prioritize, and we cannot make good choices. 

With their access to historical records, experts, and a network of information gatherers at the source, news and media outlets should be in an ideal position to help provide us with perspective. The experience with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami demonstrates this is not the case. In a crisis situation where perspective is of greatest value, the public has been poorly served by media that appear unable or unwilling to provide it. 

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility triggered by the March 11 earthquake constitute the second-worst civilian nuclear plant incident ever — far more significant in scope than Three Mile Island. But it pales in comparison to the devastation, loss, and human suffering caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Few would draw this conclusion from the coverage in the nation’s newspapers and cable news, which for the past two weeks seemed obsessed with the words “radiation,’’ “evacuation,’’ and “meltdown.’’ 

... 

When individuals lose perspective, they make poor choices about their personal lives, safety, or finances. When the mass media lose perspective, it’s another matter altogether. We are left with public policy driven by emotion and misperception, which costs us all in terms of time, effort, money, and lives.

Climate change and energy update

On Global Warming, No Clear Skies For Most 2012 GOP Contenders

But Huntsman is far from the only 2012 GOP contender who will have to explain past support for confronting climate change on the campaign trail. In point of fact, carbon regulation was not so verboten in the GOP just a few years ago. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich all have supported efforts to combat climate change. "I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions," Mike Huckabee declared in 2007, while campaigning in New Hampshire. In the same year, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin set up a "Climate Change Sub-Cabinet" to deal with the problem in her state. Of the major candidates now inching towards a run, only Haley Barbour can boast of a clean record of opposing carbon regulation, dating from Barbour's work as a lobbyist for heavily polluting energy companies. 

So as a service to GOP voters preparing their early 2012 crib sheets, here is a quick-and-dirty look--in six parts, with video and links--of how this year's potential candidates have approached the carbon issue.

Unsafe at any reactor: U.S. nuclear plants are storing increasing amounts of highly radioactive spent fuel in pools that are vulnerable to accident or attack. New safety policies are needed.

Ice Sheet Melt could Dominate Future Sea Level Rise

Northern Hemisphere Absorbing more Solar Energy

February Sea Ice Extent Tied for Lowest

Climate Change taking Toll on the Lodgepole Pine

Ice Surveys

Politics and government links

Politicians are children: Republicans scrap 'compostable' utensils in House cafeterias

Barack Obama consistently takes an offstage approach to presidential leadership. Is it serving him well?

The Austerity Delusion

Portugal’s government has just fallen in a dispute over austerity proposals. Irish bond yields have topped 10 percent for the first time. And the British government has just marked its economic forecast down and its deficit forecast up. 

What do these events have in common? They’re all evidence that slashing spending in the face of high unemployment is a mistake. Austerity advocates predicted that spending cuts would bring quick dividends in the form of rising confidence, and that there would be few, if any, adverse effects on growth and jobs; but they were wrong. 

It’s too bad, then, that these days you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe.

Pentagon spends billions to fight roadside bombs, with little success

IRS Drastically Increases Its Audits Of America's Richest Taxpayers

Why Koch Industries Is Speaking Out

The Price of Taxing the Rich: The top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom—and leave them starved for revenue in a bust.

The "Pink Elephant" Of US Government Spending No One Wants To Deal With

Random Links

Japan fixed this quake-damaged road in just six days

The Beauty of Surfing at 1000fps

New Research: Do Cities Foster Positive Social Behavior?

Holi: Festival of Colors

Arrowheads Found in Texas Dial Back Arrival of Humans in America

NASA Plans 2025 Manned Mission to Asteroid

These Are the Three Countries Who Don’t Use the Metric System

Alien Life, Coming Slowly Into View

A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives

It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know

Here’s reason for us to fear fear itself

How Those Awesome Time Traveling NBA Commercials Are Made

Economics and finance links

A Nation of Dropouts Shakes Europe

Android May Be the Greatest Legal Destruction of Wealth in History

Corporate Profits At All-Time High As Recovery Stumbles

Silicon Valley Hiring Perks: Meals, iPads and a Cubicle for Spot

Is It a New Tech Bubble? Let’s See if It Pops

How Unemployment Is Dragging Down The Housing Market

The collapse of Detroit

The 10 Economic Risks Stoking Fear Around The World Right Now

15 Facts About Starbucks That Will Blow Your Mind

North Korea Sends 12 Officials To America To Learn About Capitalism

In Prison for Taking a Liar Loan

BP Increases Pay For Claims Czar Ken Feinberg's Law Firm To $1.25 Million Per Month

Borders May Be Bankrupt But It Wants To Pay Executives $8.3 Million In Bonuses

Baby Boomers Are About To Inherit $8.4 Trillion

Niall Ferguson's Complete And Definitive Guide To The Sovereign Debt Crisis

Buffett and Gates Prod India’s Wealthy to Be More Philanthropic

Charitable donations in India make up about 0.6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, well below the 2.2 percent in the United States, according to a study by Bain management consultants. And government and foreign contributors make up the majority of donations in India, with individuals and charities donating just 10 percent of the total, according to Bain.

Still, the Bain report showed that India gave more as a percentage of its G.D.P. than Brazil (0.3 percent) or China (0.1 percent).

Here is the outrageous story of the month

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. 

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. 

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. 

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

 ... 

Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

 ... 

“In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.” 

The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists. 

The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman. 

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee. 

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools. 

G.E. officials say the donation was granted solely on the merit of the project. “The foundation goes to great lengths to ensure grant decisions are not influenced by company government relations or lobbying priorities,” Ms. Eisele said. 

Mr. Rangel, who was censured by Congress last year for soliciting donations from corporations and executives with business before his committee, said this month that the donation was unrelated to his official actions.

...  

 As it has evolved, the company has used, and in some cases pioneered, aggressive strategies to lower its tax bill. In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan overhauled the tax system after learning that G.E. — a company for which he had once worked as a commercial pitchman — was among dozens of corporations that had used accounting gamesmanship to avoid paying any taxes. 

“I didn’t realize things had gotten that far out of line,” Mr. Reagan told the Treasury secretary, Donald T. Regan, according to Mr. Regan’s 1988 memoir. The president supported a change that closed loopholes and required G.E. to pay a far higher effective rate, up to 32.5 percent. 

That pendulum began to swing back in the late 1990s. G.E. and other financial services firms won a change in tax law that would allow multinationals to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income. The change meant that if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore. 

Known as active financing, the tax break proved to be beneficial for investment banks, brokerage firms, auto and farm equipment companies, and lenders like GE Capital. This tax break allowed G.E. to avoid taxes on lending income from abroad, and permitted the company to amass tax credits, write-offs and depreciation. Those benefits are then used to offset taxes on its American manufacturing profits.

General Electric's Harlem Horse Trade

How General Electric Avoids Paying Taxes

16 More Profitable Companies That Pay Almost Nothing In Taxes

Hey, Look At That -- We Pay More Taxes Than GE

You Can't Understand The Tsunami Until You See This Video

Middle East Update

The Speech Obama Hasn't Given, What are we doing in Libya? Americans deserve an explanation.

The Ego Advantage

Cruise Missiles: The Million-Dollar Weapon

In fiscal terms, at a time when Congress is fighting over every dollar, the cruise missile show of military might was an expenditure of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Each missile cost $1.41 million, close to three times the cost listed on the Navy's website.

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links

Hashing Out Diplomatic Details as NATO Takes Control

U.S. Will Still Lead Air Strikes After NATO Takes Over

Freedom’s Painful Price

Hoping for Arab Mandelas

California update

In major cuts, Gov. Jerry Brown slashes services for poor, sick and elderly

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law billions of dollars in budget cuts Thursday that will mean fewer government services, particularly for the old, the poor and the sick. 

The governor signed the new laws to tackle $11.2 billion of the state's estimated $26-billion deficit, even as he scrambled to find Republican support for the other half of his budget plan: a ballot measure asking voters' blessing to renew expiring taxes. Time is running out to place such a measure on the June ballot, he said. 

State officials will now begin notifying many Californians that their government benefits are to be cut within 90 days — at just about the start of the new budget year. Come July, welfare grants will be reduced by 8%, and parents will be kicked off the rolls after four years instead of the current five.

California budget: GOP leader presents Brown with demands as stalemate continues

Budget talks in Sacramento appeared no closer to completion Friday, but the dynamics were quickly shifting and nerves were fraying as the stalemate has now dragged on two weeks past Gov. Jerry Brown's initial deadline. 

Brown needs a handful of Republicans to place a tax measure on the June ballot in order to close roughly half the state's budget deficit. The governor signed budget-cutting legislation Thursday to close $11.2 billion of the estimated $26-billion shortfall. 

But the top Democrat in the state Senate threatened Friday to "pull the plug" on negotiations on a tax measure. Hours later, Republicans delivered a refined set to demands to the governor.

California budget: Republicans release list of demands

Capitol Journal: California must enforce 'use' law — now

Two ways to a tax vote

Gov. Jerry Brown seems determined to let voters, not legislators, decide whether to extend a set of temporary tax increases in lieu of making deeper cuts in state services. So if he can't persuade a handful of Republican lawmakers to schedule a ballot measure on the tax extensions in June, he may mount a petition drive to put the issue before voters in November. The delay might reduce the chances of the measure passing, but it's still a better option than the all-cuts budget that Brown previously described as the only alternative.

California employers could be hit with big tax bill for jobless benefits, auditor warns. California's debt to the U.S. for covering its unemployment checks the last two years could reach $13.4 billion by the end of the year. If the loans aren't repaid by November, a payroll tax will kick in. It starts at $325 million next year and could rise to $6 billion.

Pension, healthcare deal reached with L.A.'s largest city union

A death sentence in California rarely leads to an execution. Let's stop the charade.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have given Alcala and the others the alternative sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Had I done that, Robin's mother, Marianne, would have been spared the pain of 30 appeals and writs and retrial. She could have dealt then and there with the fact that her daughter's killer would be shut away, never again to see a day of freedom, and gone on to put her life together. And the people of California would have not have had to pay many millions of tax dollars in this meaningless and ultimately fruitless pursuit of death. 

It makes me angry to have been made a player in a system so inefficient, so ineffective, so expensive and so emotionally costly. 

I watch today as Gov. Brown wrestles with the massive debt that is suffocating our state and hear him say he doesn't want to "play games." But I cringe when I learn that not playing games amounts to cuts to kindergarten, cuts to universities, cuts to people with special needs — and I hear no mention of the simple cut that would save hundreds of millions of dollars, countless man-hours, unimaginable court time and years of emotional torture for victim's family members waiting for that magical sense of "closure" they've been falsely promised with death sentences that will never be carried out.

Allowing phones in the cells might be a sound call

California adds nearly 100,000 jobs in February as hiring accelerates

A hiring surge led by California's hallmark industries — high tech, movies and tourism — generated nearly 100,000 net new jobs in February and offered the strongest sign yet that the state economy is on the mend. 

The 96,500-job jump was the biggest monthly increase since the current record system began in 1990, state officials said. California had added a paltry 700 jobs in January.

Mayor's deal with big union could spur agreements with other city workers

California employers could be hit with big tax bill for jobless benefits, auditor warns

Billion-dollar Wilshire Grand project could light up downtown Los Angeles with ads

Record Sierra Nevada Snow and Agricultural Impacts

New L.A. schools chief to take lower pay

While screaming about taxes, consider a few other issues. Many readers blame illegal immigrants for California's fiscal mess. But an analyst says the state's woes have more to do with high medical costs for the elderly and an outdated property tax system.

'AARP For Under-30 Set' Aims To Get Fair Share For Millennial Generation

Link

One in six are unemployed, more than any other adult age group. They carry an average of $24,000 in student debt. And one in 10 have been forced to move back in with their parents after school. 

No doubt about it, these are hard times for young adults. But it takes a leap of faith to start a membership and advocacy group called Our Time as the Millennial generation’s answer to AARP. 

Launched this week in a Pennsylvania Avenue office down the street from the White House, Our Time seeks to use online organizing to “change corporate practices, create exclusive deals and spark a national conversation.” It wants to “stand up for Americans under 30” while using its bargaining might to get discounts on health insurance and credit card programs. 

And with a homepage that Friday showed a scruffy dude screaming, “F#%K, I need a job! One in six of us is out of work,” and no annual dues for a generation used to getting everything free online, Our Time is unlikely to be mistaken for the group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons. 

“Our generation has more of an economic reason to engage than anyone,” said Matthew Segal, the group’s 25-year-old president. “We can’t just complain about these things or sit on the sidelines. We need to use our generation’s unique strengths to fix them … This is the civil rights issue for our generation. If you can’t have economic freedom and mobility to become financially independent at an early age, than you are entering society on the wrong foot.” 

Our Time’s target audience can be summed up by the headline in a recent New York Times op-ed written by a 24-year-old: “Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated.” 

It is being formed at a time when a growing chorus of commentators -- from David Brooks to Fareed Zakaria to Robert Samuelson -- are connecting the yawning budget deficit to the nearly 40 percent of the federal budget that goes to Social Security and Medicare. Where, they ask, is the political will to take on those entitlements when, according to a 2009 Brookings Institution report, an elderly person receives $7 in federal aid for every $ 1 that goes to a child.

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

A very interesting article on the future

Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing. 

True? True. 

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties. 

If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.

An amazing robot.

Politics and government links

Wisconsin’s Radical Break

Wisconsin was at the forefront of the progressive reform movement in the early 20th century, when the policies of Gov. Robert M. La Follette prompted a fellow Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, to call the state a “laboratory of democracy.” The state pioneered many social reforms: It was the first to introduce workers’ compensation, in 1911; unemployment insurance, in 1932; and public employee bargaining, in 1959. 

University of Wisconsin professors helped design Social Security and were responsible for founding the union that eventually became the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Wisconsin reformers were equally active in promoting workplace safety, and often led the nation in natural resource conservation and environmental protection. 

But while Americans are aware of this progressive tradition, they probably don’t know that many of the innovations on behalf of working people were at least as much the work of Republicans as of Democrats.

Fed Turns Record $81.7 Billion Profit

Disability Fund Is Running Out of Money—Fast

One Indisputable Fact About The US Deficit

But here's one indisputable fact. The deficit is purely the domain of yakkers and writers and people who go on TV, and people who like cocktail chatter. 

Whe it matters -- the market -- there is no concern whatsoever. Despite plenty of information about impending doom, and math that everyone can see, nobody has any qualms about holding 30-year bonds. The same goes with Japan, where the yakkers have been predicting doom forever, as well. 

The only place where there are fiscal crises are in countries like Ireland and Greece, which were lauded for their reforms just a fiscal and business reforms just a few years ago.

Do We Still Need Unions? No.

Do We Still Need Unions? Yes

From the Austerity Files

Ag Committee Supports Cuts to Food Assistance, Not Farm Subsidies

The House Agriculture Committee endorsed a letter this week to Budget Chairman Paul Ryan arguing that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps low-income Americans purchase food, would make a better target for cuts than automatic subsidies to farms. 

The move comes as food prices are rising -- the Department of Agriculture expects overall food prices to rise 3 percent to 4 percent this year -- making it harder for the beneficiaries of SNAP to stretch their existing benefits, even as farmers profit from the tightening market. Critics across the political spectrum have called agricultural subsidies wasteful and unnecessary, and they question the logic of maintaining them as lawmakers hunt for budget cuts. 

"Conspicuously missing from the list of mandatory spending cuts the Agriculture Committee has made or is proposing to make are commodity subsidies, and specifically the $4.9 billion in direct payments that are automatically paid out each year regardless of whether a person farms,” said Jake Caldwell, the director of agricultural policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “It is shortsighted of the Committee to suggest cuts to SNAP, particularly as food prices are on the rise, Americans are spending more than 10 percent of their household budget on food, and more people are enrolled in the food stamp program than ever before."

Death By a Single GOP Cut?

In the past year, California has experienced the worst whooping cough outbreak in more than 50 years, an epidemic that has killed 10 infants and resulted in 6,400 reported cases. But even as the state's public health officials have struggled to curb the disease, Republicans in Congress have proposed slashing millions in federal funding for immunization programs. Public health advocates warn that these cuts threaten efforts across the country to prevent and contain infectious and sometimes fatal diseases. And they add that lower vaccination rates could eventually result in more outbreaks that endanger public health at a major cost to taxpayers.

The House GOP's 2011 budget would chop $156 million from the Centers for Disease Control's funding for immunization and respiratory diseases. The GOP reductions are likely to hit the CDC's support for state and local immunization programs, the agency's ability to evaluate which vaccines are working, and its work to educate the public about recommended vaccines for children, teenagers, and other susceptible populations. The CDC especially focuses on serving lower-income families who receive vaccines at state and local health offices and community health clinics, rather than a private doctor's office.

Random Links

The Volcano Next Door

2022 World Cup: High-Tech Way To Beat The Heat In Qatar

Jimmer Fredette’s awesome Sports Illustrated cover

Watching Shoes Get Repaired Is Actually Sort of Amazing

God's Wife, Asherah, May Have Been Edited Out Of The Bible Says Theologian

Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s the Only Choice

You Can Help Map the World’s Light Pollution

Gas Is Still Way Cheaper Than Water]

2 Billion Alien Earths Could Exist In Our Galaxy

Russian Tow Truck Solution for Parked Cars

California politics and education update

A cloud over CalPERS

Brown must use a stick on allies and a carrot on Republicans

Are you an online tax cheat?

Segregated and Satisfied in the Southland?

Is quake insurance worth the cost?

CSU Announces Huge Cuts, Facing 'Worst Financial Situation Ever'

Faced with the possibility of a $500 million cut in state funding, California State University is planning to enroll 10,000 less students next year, and campuses will be asked to cut their budgets by a total of $281 million, reports the LA Times. 

The cuts will also mean fewer faculty and staff, as well as reduced spending by the chancellor's office, which itself faces a funding cut of $11 million, Chancellor Charles B. Reed told the Times.

Economics and finance links

10 Hyperinflation Horror Stories Of The 20th Century

SEC Poised to Charge Fannie, Freddie Execs

The War on Warren

Nearly 20% of Florida homes are vacant

Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated

WE all enjoy speculating about which Arab regime will be toppled next, but maybe we should  be looking closer to home. High unemployment? Check. Out-of-touch elites? Check. Frustrated young people? As a 24-year-old American, I can testify that this rich democracy has plenty of those too. 

About one-fourth of Egyptian workers under 25 are unemployed, a statistic that is often cited as a reason for the revolution there. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January an official unemployment rate of 21 percent for workers ages 16 to 24. 

My generation was taught that all we needed to succeed was an education and hard work. Tell that to my friend from high school who studied Chinese and international relations at a top-tier college. He had the misfortune to graduate in the class of 2009, and could find paid work only as a lifeguard and a personal trainer.  Unpaid internships at research institutes led to nothing.  After more than a year he moved back in with his parents.

Hopeful Message About the World’s Poorest

In a new book called “Getting Better,” Charles Kenny — a British development economist based in Washington — argues that the answer is absolutely not. Life in much of Africa and in most of the impoverished world has improved at an unprecedented clip in recent decades, even if economic growth hasn’t. 

“The biggest success of development,” he writes, “has not been making people richer but, rather, has been making the things that really matter — things like health and education — cheaper and more widely available.” 

Money matters, of course. It goes a long way toward determining the quality of people’s lives and their reported happiness. You can argue, as Mr. Kenny does, that the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa stems in part from the contrast between economic stagnation and progress in education and health. People are no longer satisfied with the bare essentials.

How much does it cost to save a life?

Why UPS Is So Efficient: "Our Trucks Never Turn Left"

GARY SHILLING: And Now House Prices Will Drop Another 20%

THE UK PROVES IT: Krugman And Keynes Were Right!

The U.S. Court System Decides It's Worse To Steal From Goldman Sachs Than To Kill Someone

Putting an end to Wall Street's 'I'll be gone, you'll be gone' bonuses

As Michigan's Cities Empty Out, a Look Back at a Decade of Bad News

Chavez says capitalism may have ended life on Mars

10 Most Bizarre Economic Bubbles in History

Education update

Separate and Unequal

Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns, housing discrimination, economic disparities and long-held custom, they most emphatically are in reality. 

“Ninety-five percent of education reform is about trying to make separate schools for rich and poor work, but there is very little evidence that you can have success when you pack all the low-income students into one particular school,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who specializes in education issues. 

The current obsession with firing teachers, attacking unions and creating ever more charter schools has done very little to improve the academic outcomes of poor black and Latino students. Nothing has brought about gains on the scale that is needed. 

If you really want to improve the education of poor children, you have to get them away from learning environments that are smothered by poverty. This is being done in some places, with impressive results. An important study conducted by the Century Foundation in Montgomery County, Md., showed that low-income students who happened to be enrolled in affluent elementary schools did much better than similarly low-income students in higher-poverty schools in the county. 

The study, released last October, found that “over a period of five to seven years, children in public housing who attended the school district’s most advantaged schools (as measured by either subsidized lunch status or the district’s own criteria) far outperformed in math and reading those children in public housing who attended the district’s least-advantaged public schools.” 

Studies have shown that it is not the race of the students that is significant, but rather the improved all-around environment of schools with better teachers, fewer classroom disruptions, pupils who are more engaged academically, parents who are more involved, and so on. The poorer students benefit from the more affluent environment. “It’s a much more effective way of closing the achievement gap,” said Mr. Kahlenberg.

Teacher layoffs - a destructive annual event 

The lives of public school teachers have never been more surreal. While they're being pilloried in film and in the press - for their unions being too strong, among other things - last week, 2,800 teachers in the Bay Area were told they might not have jobs in the fall. How's that for job security? 

There is no more counterintuitive and counterproductive element of an upside-down system than this, that every year of the past four - and nine of the past 20 - thousands of public school teachers are told that their positions are on the chopping block. Many of these teachers are rehired in August, but by then many have left. They've left the state and they've left the profession. 

There is no child psychologist who will tell you that children thrive amid chaos and uncertainty. Children need stability, regularity, continuity. And yet every year, we shake up their lives at will. 

We fire the newest teachers, increase class sizes and play musical chairs with teachers all over the district. Schools struggle to plan, to build, and each school's knowledge base is thrown to the wind. 

Bita Nazarian, principal at James Lick Middle School in San Francisco's Noe Valley, remembers what happened last year. In the middle of the year, she felt she had a crack team of educators, both veteran and rookie, at her school. James Lick was humming with possibility and esprit de corps. But then the March 15 pink slips came around. Fourteen of her best young teachers were given notice, and morale went through the floor. For the rest of the school year and through the summer, these teachers had to keep one eye on the classroom and one eye on job possibilities elsewhere. The entire school, especially students, felt this acute instability until August, when most were hired back. But by then the damage was done. 

For a young college graduate, the teaching profession is already a tough sell. The starting salary for a teacher in California is $35,700. Their maximum possible salary, after 35 years of service, is $80,720. With the federal No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, among other initiatives, they are given increasingly less freedom to design curricula and teach creatively. Add to that 80-hour workweeks (try carefully grading 120 five-page essays - I have, and it took me 32 hours), rampant political scapegoating, and this kind of job insecurity. How can we hope to attract and keep talent in this profession when, at every step, we make it so difficult, so insecure, so unvalued? 

In the next 10 years, 1.8 million teachers will be eligible for retirement. Who will take their place? Who will accept conditions as they are? Teacher turnover is startling high, and its costs are unconscionable: Fully 46 percent of teachers leave the profession before their fifth year. 

Nationally, teacher turnover costs the United States $5 billion. And the costs to students attending urban schools, who most absorb the consequences of this chaos? Incalculable. 

We have to put an end to this. In June, a ballot measure in San Francisco will propose new and extended taxes to ensure that teachers will keep their jobs. We must vote for these measures. And after that, we must build a new system, where classroom stability is sacrosanct.

Still at Risk: A quarter century ago, Washington set out to fix American education. There's still much work to be done.

Healthcare update

California lawsuit accuses Bristol-Myers Squibb of fraud, kickbacks

California regulators are taking aim at giant drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., accusing it of bribing doctors and pharmacists to use its products by offering thousands of cash kickbacks, gifts and "happy hours" with the Los Angeles Lakers. 

The case against the drug company was developed with the help of former Lakers player Lucius Allen and his wife, Eve, who worked for Bristol-Myers and provided access to the basketball team, according to a lawsuit made public Friday. Doctors and family members were invited to Lakers Dream Camps arranged by the company, the lawsuit said. 

Doctors also were treated to tickets and luxury suites for Lakers games, and received pointers, balls and autographs from some of the team's most famous players, the suit alleges.

Is your work schedule destroying your liver?

How the Affordable Care Act is polling on its first birthday

How the AMA Has Undermined Primary Care

This is Brian Klepper, writing at The Health Care Blog: 

While, in other developed nations, 70-80 percent of all physicians are generalists and 20-30 percent are specialists, in America the ratio is reversed, the result of a payment system, the Resource-based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS), that was originally intended to account for and financially lessen the differences between specialties. Instead, RBRVS has evolved to reward expensive care and penalize proactive management, even though the data are unequivocal that higher percentages of primary care within a community results in healthier, lower cost populations…

In a June 2007 Annals of Internal Medicine article…Bodenheimer et al, provide this example:
Under the RBRVS system, the 2005 Medicare fee for a typical 25- to 30-minute office visit to a primary care physician in Chicago was $89.64 for a patient with a complex medical condition…. The 2005 Medicare fee was $226.63 for a gastroenterologist in the outpatient department of a Chicago hospital performing a colonoscopy … which is of similar duration to the office visit. Colonoscopy performed in a private office in Chicago, which differs from the hospital setting because the gastroenterologist pays for equipment and nursing time, would cost $422.90…

Under the auspices of the AMA and in alliance with CMS [RBRVS codes] appear to have played a direct role in the current primary care crisis by driving policy that financially favored specialty care at the expense of primary care.

Fat Americans Need More Space on Buses: Feds

'Superbug' spreading to Southern California hospitals

Ultrasound at $59,490 Spurs Aetna Outrage in Suit Naming Doctors

China update

China, India Overrun by ... Guys

China Issues Nationwide Restrictions on Smoking

If You Say "Protest" On A Phone In China, It Cuts Off Automatically

China is tightening up its online censorship even more, the Times reports. 

The story recounts an eye-opening anecdote: a Chinese entrepreneur was on the phone with his girlfriend, and quipped, quoting Shakespeare: "The lady doth protest too much." Upon the word "protest," the phonecall cut off. He was speaking in English, but this has also happened to people speaking in Mandarin, so it's not just a one-off. 

This and other events like Gmail being blocked in China show that, in the wake of protests in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Chinese government is tightening up its control over the internet even more. (This has Chinese internet stocks rising.)

UBS Gives 3 Reasons To Expect A "Significant" China Slowdown This Year

This Man Might Not Survive China's Impending Takeover Of America

Middle East Update

Arab World Uprisings: A Country-by-Country Look
More bombs bursting in Libya. What for?

Who's in charge? Allies split after Germans pull forces out of Libya coalition...and they can't even agree whether to assassinate Gaddafi

U.S. rescue chopper shoots six Libyan villagers as they welcome pilots of downed Air Force jet

A Very Liberal Intervention

This is an intervention straight from Bill Clinton’s 1990s playbook, in other words, and a stark departure from the Bush administration’s more unilateralist methods. There are no “coalitions of the willing” here, no dismissive references to “Old Europe,” no “you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Instead, the Obama White House has shown exquisite deference to the very international institutions and foreign governments that the Bush administration either steamrolled or ignored.

This way of war has obvious advantages. It spreads the burden of military action, sustains rather than weakens our alliances, and takes the edge off the world’s instinctive anti-Americanism. Best of all, it encourages the European powers to shoulder their share of responsibility for maintaining global order, instead of just carping at the United States from the sidelines. 

But there are major problems with this approach to war as well. Because liberal wars depend on constant consensus-building within the (so-called) international community, they tend to be fought by committee, at a glacial pace, and with a caution that shades into tactical incompetence. And because their connection to the national interest is often tangential at best, they’re often fought with one hand behind our back and an eye on the exits, rather than with the full commitment that victory can require.

Bombing people costs money

Gingrich Was for Libyan Airstrikes Before He Was Against Them

Tribes With Flags

David Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for The Times, wrote an article from Libya on Monday that posed the key question, not only about Libya but about all the new revolutions brewing in the Arab world: “The question has hovered over the Libyan uprising from the moment the first tank commander defected to join his cousins protesting in the streets of Benghazi: Is the battle for Libya the clash of a brutal dictator against a democratic opposition, or is it fundamentally a tribal civil war?” 

Our World: America’s descent into strategic dementia

How You Get to Be One of Gadhafi's Virgin Bodyguards

Libya: Can Britain and France really run this conflict?

Here's How The US Seized $30 Billion Of Qaddafi's Funds In Just 72 Hours

Same Nations Shelling Gadhafi Peddled Him Weapons

Some of the very same European countries now leading the charge to destroy Moammar Gadhafi’s weapons were pushing each other out of the way to sell him those same weapons just months earlier, according to a survey of international arms sales. France, the UK, Russia, and Italy have all been jockeying for position as Libya’s top arms dealer for years, Miller-McCune reports, and Russia alone says it will lose $4 billion because of the UN weapons embargo. 

Though sales of conventional arms have been “very low,” since the embargo was lifted in 2003, an EU report from January indicated that France, Italy and Germany had been “steadily increasing their business ties with Libya.” Russia, the top arms dealer to Libya, will lose $4 billion thanks to the new embargo, the director of the state-run weapon exports company said Friday. The US once tried to sell arms to Libya as well, but Congress shot the deal down.

Inequality

Rising Wealth Inequality: Should We Care?

Patchwork Nation is a reporting project of the Jefferson Institute that aims to explore what is happening in the United States by examining different kinds of communities over time. The effort divides America's 3,141 counties into 12 community types based on certain demographic characteristics, such as income level, racial composition, employment and religion. You can read about the methodology of the project on the methodology page.

Benedict Canyon neighbors unite against mystery landowner's planned 'megamansion'

If the owner gets his way, the real estate will host a 42,681-square-foot main house, a double-winged "son's villa" of more than 27,000 square feet, a 4,400-square-foot guest house, a 5,300-square-foot staff quarters and a 2,700-square-foot gatehouse. Those and other proposed structures would occupy a combined area larger than Griffith Observatory.

This Aurora Timelapse Will Leave You In Awe

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Random Links

The 25 Most Important Inventions In Food And Drink

Why Do Animals Sleep?

10 Animals That Made Significant Contributions to Research

Watch 20 thousand bouncy balls dropped from a helicopter in Utah

A pretty amazing a cappella version of the “Super Mario Bros.” theme song

NASA employees make a human spaceship in the Kennedy Center parking lot

Hans Roslin makes the case that the washing machine was the greatest invention

Ferry Workers Fight to Keep 'Vomit Pay'

Man Brings Beer to DWI Hearing

Religion to Die Out in 9 Nations

As Michigan's Cities Empty Out, a Look Back at a Decade of Bad News

Watching Shoes Get Repaired Is Actually Sort of Amazing

Climate change and energy update

The Next 16 Nuclear Power Plants That Will Be Built In Your Backyard

Four fascinating documentaries about nuclear power

After all these years of hybrids hogging ouf “car pool” lanes as well as huge subsidies, we learn:

The new Chevrolet Cruze Eco can reach eye-popping fuel economy levels of more than 50 miles per gallon on the highway, which even in this era of hybrid-electric cars stands among the best. But here’s the real trick: The Cruze Eco is neither a hybrid nor electric. It runs on that “old” technology, the conventional gasoline engine. … This year, General Motors, Ford and Hyundai began selling cars with conventional engines that achieve 40 mpg or more on the highway, exceeding the fuel efficiency of some hybrids. … The new fuel-efficient gasoline cars, critics say, raise doubts about government efforts that favor any one technology over another. If subsidies are to be made, they argue, they should go to efficient cars, no matter what their power source. (more)

Solar Savior

Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. … In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today. … Historically, the cost of PV modules (what we’ve been using above) is about half the total installed cost of systems. The rest of the cost is installation. Fortunately, installation costs have also dropped at a similar pace to module costs. … 

The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America. 10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. 

Watch How a Nuclear Chain Reaction Works Using Mouse Traps and Ping Pong Balls

The Top 10 Worst Nuclear Nightmares

U.S. Nuclear Waste Increasing With No Permanent Storage Available

It Could Happen Here

From one perspective, nuclear power has been remarkably safe. The 1986 Chernobyl accident will ultimately kill about 10,000 people, mostly from cancer. Coal plants are much deadlier: the fine-particulate air pollution they produce kills about 10,000 people each year in the United States alone. 

Of course, for most people this kind of accounting is beside the point. Their horror over even the possibility of a meltdown means that the nuclear-power industry needs constant and aggressive regulation for the public to allow it to stay in business. 

Yet despite the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has often been too timid in ensuring that America’s 104 commercial reactors are operated safely. Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of “regulatory capture” — in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it. Regulatory capture can be countered only by vigorous public scrutiny and Congressional oversight, but in the 32 years since Three Mile Island, interest in nuclear regulation has declined precipitously. 

In 2002, after the commission retreated from demanding an early inspection of a reactor,Davis-Besse in Ohio, that it suspected was operating in a dangerous condition, its own inspector general concluded that it “appears to have informally established an unreasonably high burden of requiring absolute proof of a safety problem, versus lack of a reasonable assurance of maintaining public health and safety.” 

Even before Three Mile Island, a group of nuclear engineers had proposed that filtered vents be attached to buildings around reactors, which are intended to contain the gases released from overheated fuel. If the pressure inside these containment buildings increased dangerously — as has happened repeatedly at Fukushima — the vents would release these gases after the filters greatly reduced their radioactivity. 

France and Germany installed such filters in their plants, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to require them. Given the influence of America’s example, had the commission demanded the addition of filtered vents, they would likely have been required worldwide, including in Japan.