Paul Krugman has a good explanation today why the problems of Spain and Greece come from the ways Europe and the U.S. are different:
[T]here’s not much that Spain’s government can do to make things better. The nation’s core economic problem is that costs and prices have gotten out of line with those in the rest of Europe. If Spain still had its old currency, the peseta, it could remedy that problem quickly through devaluation — by, say, reducing the value of a peseta by 20 percent against other European currencies. But Spain no longer has its own money, which means that it can regain competitiveness only through a slow, grinding process of deflation.
Now, if Spain were an American state rather than a European country, things wouldn’t be so bad. For one thing, costs and prices wouldn’t have gotten so far out of line: Florida, which among other things was freely able to attract workers from other states and keep labor costs down, never experienced anything like Spain’s relative inflation. For another, Spain would be receiving a lot of automatic support in the crisis: Florida’s housing boom has gone bust, but Washington keeps sending the Social Security and Medicare checks.
Forty nine states have snow on the ground right now thanks to a rash of snowstorms caused, in part, by human-induced climate change (.pdf, 1.8 MB). First, the situation on the ground:
The extraordinary rash of snowstorms which have swept the U.S. in recent weeks, many generating record snowfall, have produced one of the country's most expansive snow packs in recent memory. National Weather Service researchers charged with monitoring the country's snow cover and its water content estimated Friday that more than 67% of the Lower 48 sat beneath a veil of snow. Hawaii, despite the presence of mountains which can and often do become snow-covered in winter, is the only state not to report at least some snow on the ground. The snow has been so widespread in recent weeks, even perennially snow-free Florida has failed to escape. De Funiak Springs, in the state's panhandle near the Georgia border, reported a 1" snow accumulation late Friday afternoon at the same time a thundery squall line in warmer air to the south was diving southward the length of the Florida peninsula unleashing driving rains and 70 mph gusts.
And the prediction the National Climatic Data Center summarized on their Climate Change FAQ page:
In some areas where overall precipitation has increased (ie. the mid-high northern latitudes), there is evidence of increases in the heavy and extreme precipitation events. Even in areas such as eastern Asia, it has been found that extreme precipitation events have increased despite total precipitation remaining constant or even decreasing somewhat. This is related to a decrease in the frequency of precipitation in this region.
Now, I'm not a physicist, but I do understand that putting the same amount of energy into a system while cutting off the avenues for the energy to dissipate means more energy remains in the system, like having a slow drain in a bathtub. All the evidence might support a different conclusion, of course, which is why scientists are looking for more evidence. Maybe climatologists are wrong. Maybe we're not experiencing an unprecedented shift in worldwide climate, and maybe we didn't cause it. At the moment, though, that's wishful thinking.
Via Andrew Sullivan, a brilliant depiction of the idiocy of marriage inequality:
From reader MB, a business venture he wishes he'd thought of:
Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?
Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.
... Todd Strandberg, who founded a biblical prophecy Web site called raptureready.com that draws 250,000 unique visitors a month, agrees that Fido and Mittens are doomed. "Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you," he says. "A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."
Forutunately for Parker, I'll still be around. But if anyone out there wants to give me $50 per year per pet, I'll happily take care of their animals should the people ascend bodily into heaven.
From Colorado Springs, a cautionary example of the logical outcome of Republican taxation policies:
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.
On the other hand, Colorado Springs has very low taxes.
The history of South Carolina explains a lot about why they seem so different from the rest of us. In the early days of European colonization, South Carolina served as port of entry for a disproportionate segment of the slave trade—not surprising, since a disproportionate segment of its first white settlers were slavers from Barbados. From that happy genesis the state has led the way in regressive thinking, from its early and enthusiastic Indian removal policies in the 1700s, to passing the first secession resolution in December 1860, through to its continuing existence on flying the Confederate battle flag.
I'm fairly certain only a small minority of the 4.5m people who live in South Carolina have attitudes reminiscent of the 19th century, but unfortunately they elected one of those cretins Lieutenant Governor. And yesterday, Andre Bauer expressed himself in the fine tradition of Strom Thurmond and Preston Brooks:
Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.
In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.
Bauer's remarks came during a speech in which he said government should take away assistance if those receiving help didn't pass drug tests or attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings if their children were receiving free and reduced-price lunches.
Ordinarily, I'd welcome a guy like this as the GOP nominee, because (as George Allen discovered) it makes my party's job a lot easier. But South Carolina isn't Virginia, and Bauer is already the Lt. Governor and the GOP front-runner. We'll see if enough South Carolinian Republicans want a different candidate on June 8th. We'll see.
James Fallows makes an excellent point about Chief Justice Roberts' anti-conservatism:
The head of the nation's judicial branch was purposefully deceptive during his "umpire" [confirmation] testimony. Or he had no idea what his words meant. Or he has had a complete change of philosophy and temperament while in his mid-50s. Those are the logical possibilities. None of them is too encouraging about the basic soundness of our governing institutions.
The majority voting in Citizens United v FEC overturned 100 years of legislative compromises by fiat. Fallows' colleague Megan McArdle thinks this is fine:
The description in the first paragraph could just as easily describe sodomy law before Lawrence v. Texas, civil rights law pre-Brown, or indeed, the state of abortion law pre-Roe. Had Roberts voted for the majority in one of these cases, would we be hearing the same anguish about his lack of deference to precedent?
Two things. First, those cases all dealt with the rights of living persons, not "persons" under the vastly-expanded definition of the term that occurred during the robber-baron era at the turn of the 20th century. Corporations didn't suffer arrest and persecution because they couldn't give millions to their favorite political causes. Second, those cases all brought some state laws into conformance with Federal law, without creating whole new law out of thin air.
Citizens United opens up a brand new era of corporatism. As Slate's Dahlia Litwick pointed out on "Marketplace" last night, "During 2008 alone Exxon Mobil generated profits of $45 billion, with the diversion of even 2 percent of those profits to the political process, this one company could have outspent both presidential candidates and fundamentally changed the dynamics of the 2008 elections." The arguments in favor of unrestricted corporate money in politics are seductive, but ultimately destructive of democracy. I worry that we're headed toward even greater income inequality in the U.S. This decision will hasten it.