Satanic pyramid scheme -- my deal with the Devil

I sold my soul to the Devil – my idea – but I get my soul back – and the Devil gets a pretty good deal too.

I sold my soul to the Devil for everything I want in this life – but I can get out of the bad part if I sign up five other souls for the same deal.  And they can do likewise.  Like all pyramid schemes, the thing is to get in early before the supply of (eternal) suckers runs low. 

“What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?  For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”  The answer apparently is at least five other souls.  :-[

Restore print media by restoring core issue discussion -- only two ways

To renew print media to full life two commonsense things can provide it with a high volume of news that only print (even the internet version) can deal with fully – and that only print opinion writers can deal with comprehensively.

One: if income taxes were adjusted monthly in direct step with increased or decreased expenditures, newspapers would have to add a new section for avid taxpayers to follow the latest additions and cuts.

We would not build a courthouse for 100 years.

Second: a randomly picked grand-type-jury could become our informal third branch of government. Such a directly-powerless citizens' branch could informally set the public agenda in accordance with the needs and interests of everyday people – without worrying about the tangles of expending political capital (automatically building it; see below) and avoiding controversy and all the usual stagnation inducers.

Mad Mayor Bloomberg's crazy idea of building a new $400 million Bronx courthouse in 2004 to TAKE OVER from the almost brand-new $120 million supplementary court building opened in just 1977 to pick up the criminal case overflow during the crime wage AND ALSO take over from the 1939, landmark status, main court building up on the hill (the latter still standing because it is the architectural anchor of the area -- both still standing actually -- empty) – would have been laughed to derision by a real people jury. Ditto for the new $600 million Brooklyn courthouse opened by Crazy Mikey in 2004 – also after criminal cases had declined 4X.

Obamians and Clintonians and friends want to help everybody, just nobody in particular. They pick a limited number of objectives each year and fight them to a standstill with Republicans -- perpetually leaving untouched key bread-and-butter issues like doubling the minimum wage and rewriting the entire American social landscape with legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements – issues that promise no immediate results (at least not in the eyes out of touch elitists).

Let's face it; Obamians and Clintonites are academic liberals who do not relate on any visceral level to what immediately interests everyday Joan -- so what interests Joan can always wait until next year, or decade, of forever. They never catch on that if they were pushing hard on doubling the minimum wage reform and sector-wide re-unionization (the only market setup that works historically, and world-wide) they might build more political capital then they would knew how to spend -- even if they did not immediately succeed on the specific issues.   

Harry Truman said: "The power of the presidency is the power to tell people what they damn well should have known in the first place." 

The automatic solution to progressives' political capital building inability could be a monthly adjusted income tax and an informal political grand-type-jury that would put society’s truly deepest concerns on the very front of the political burners and keep them hot until resolved. Interested, high volume content-newspapers; interested long analysis pieces-magazines?

Israel: a light to the Gentiles or a blight to the Gentiles?

Have today's Jews become the Japanese of the Occident? Millennia of isolation behind protective waters has left Japanese culture inwardly fixated. Two millenniums of imposed and self-imposed isolation plausibly may have left the Jewish people comparably self-focused.

Factor in the Ultimate Pogrom for a pathologically synergistic combination – like alcohol and drugs – precipitating blind-to-the-real-world foolishness?

Case in point: In 1949, the new Israelis picked up almost 80% of the former Palestine. Palestinians living within their borders caused no violent strife: no blown up buses or teenagers' hang-outs. It is said everyone in Israel knows someone harmed by a Palestinian terrorist. What -- purely self-interested -- sense is there in spending the last through next centuries fending off violent retributions, all the while morally bankrupting a modern Western nation (it's called "ethnic cleansing") to pick up a few percent more?

In 1968, "West Bankians" perhaps could have looked upon Israelis as liberators in some sense – having freed them from Jordan -- in any case they had no deadly beef with Israel. A nice combination of economies might have enjoyed wholesome prosperites, side by side. 
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Gatekeepers/70264711?strkid=1242111655_1_0&strackid=19ea2249a50c63f3_1_srl&trkid=222336  

Case in point: Hezbollah has stamped "Made in Israel" all over it. In 1982, the Israeli military was welcomed in Lebanon as liberators – tossing out the PLO which was terrorizing everyone. Then Israel decided, in its too typically couldn't-care-less mode, not to completely clear out: rest in peace 240 US Marines. In 2006, Israel retaliated for a skirmish with Hezbollah that killed a few of its soldiers by carpet bombing the same's entire home base for 30 days, killing 1000 adults and 400 children.  Now made to last forever.

Hint -- Vietnam lessons: three years of attrition warfare under General Westmoreland (long stretches of bringing home 500 American body bags a week) and locally raised Viet Cong were breaking into the major cities and even into the American Embassy during the 1968 Tet offensive. Three years of counterinsurgency operations under General Abrams (as in Abraham, not Arabian) and American ambassador Bunker could drive himself anywhere in South Vietnam unescorted in 1971 – homegrown Viet Cong all gone.  (South Vietnam overrun in two months by external invasion in 1975 -- earlier attempt fended off with full US financial backing and extremely heavy air support in 1972 -- by which later juncture we had abandoned it.)
http://www.amazon.com/Better-War-Unexamined-Victories-Americas/dp/0156013096/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382401200&sr=8-1&keywords=a+better+war

Case in point: a Jewish school and social services center, in the sleepy Jewish end of Chicago's sleepy West Rogers Park neighborhood appears constructed to ward off a terrorist attack! Children's playground looks to be insulated from the adjacent streets by twin steel fence lines containing the double row auto parking. Front and back exits guarded by raised slicers with signs warning of "severe tire damage."  
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=chicago,+pratt+and+kedzie

The Cossacks are coming; the Cossacks are coming -- to Rogers Park?!  Or is ever guiltier conscience further toxifying (in-toxifying?) the synergistic fixation -- further decreasing the ability to live rationally among one's neighbors?  Even in West Rogers Park?!  

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Israel -- as with much of the world across the millennia, of course -- is that if it had begun life on a more even psychic keel it might have been a civilizing influence amid the pervasive sectarian violence of the Middle East -- instead of a major instigator of said tribulations: a light to the Gentiles instead of a blight to the Gentiles.

I only hope I may have been "of assistance", Hebrew-sans.  (Hands at sides -- slight bow)   :-) 

Constitutional privacy down the DRANO?

Goodbye Fourth Amendment? Goodbye Constitution?

When I was growing up, the beef with the Supreme Court — beginning with the Warren Court — was that it kept finding individual rights that supposedly  weren’t there. Now, the worm seems to have turned 180 degrees. Now, individual rights seem to be disappearing one by one.

Latest, personal, example: checking out at Target the other day the clerk requested my picture government ID — my driver’s license — which she used her laser reader to record the bar code on the back with — because I was buying a bottle of Drano, which she explained to me could be used to make illegal drugs.
http://qctimes.com/news/local/illinois-to-require-id-for-some-cleaner-purchases/article_239ea346-3361-11e1-9a15-0019bb2963f4.html

Ipso facto, the government may not constitutionally record IDs of people because they — remotely — might commit a crime.

My answer to the late executive trampling on Fourth Amendment privacy is federal legislation making it a crime to instigate massive intrusions -- at least the most massive examples: broadband NSA snooping, 20 square blocks of homes searched in a Boston suburb searched, NYPD’s random stop-and-frisk practices.

But, what national policy can stop legislatures from hatching heavy privacy invading schemes? Maybe only people waking up while there is something left to fight back with.

Almost Half of U.S. Births Covered by Medicaid

What’s going on here? ???

Almost Half of U.S. Births Covered by Medicaid

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/08/Almost-Half-of-U-S-Births-Covered-by-Medicaid

In New York City in 2009, 76% of Hispanic births were covered by Medicaid, 70% of births in the black community were covered, and 31% of whites.

If you ask me what’s going on, of course, I will it ties in with why only 43% pay income tax — the liberal progressive version — it’s our wildly warped out of shape labor market, big brains!

Last year (2112) NYC homicides dipped 20% -- last year NYPD stops dropped 22%. Listening Chicago?

515 NYC homicides in 2011 -- 414 NYC homicides in 2012
http://gothamist.com/2012/12/28/nyc_hits_record_low_murder_rate_in.php
685,724 NYPD stops in 2011 -- 533,042 NYPD stops in 2012
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/major_decline_in_nypd_stop_frisks_UH6jmAZBUhv8Hk1wZ2TycM

 Another interesting factoid: "Further, stop-and-frisk has not reduced the number of people who fall victim to shootings. In 2002, there were 1,892 victims of gunfire and 97,296 stops. In 2011, there were still 1,821 victims of gunfire but a record 685,724 stops." http://www.nyclu.org/node/1598

Half of the American workforce no longer needed?!

Pure free market; no crying towel needed: the bottom 50% of America’s workforce now takes 12% of overall income. It is hard to believe that the products and services produced by this half of America's workforce (70 million people!) would no longer be in demand over a few percent shift in overall income from the top 50% brought about by a $15/hr minimum wage (today's median wage).

Half the workforce, 70 million employees would receive an average $8,000/yr = $560 billion added to the cost of $15.8 trillion economic output = only 3.6% direct inflation.  Probably wouldn't lead to much additional inflation.  Economies with high minimum wages have median wages not much higher.  LBJ's 1968 median was only 25% higher than his approaching $11/hr minimum wage (at half today's per capita output!).
 * * * * * * 

My minimum wage worksheet -- my easily-could-have-been minimum wage double-indexed for inflation and per capita income growth:

yr  per capita    real     nominal  dbl-index   %-of

68    15,473    10.74      (1.60)                    100%
69-70-71-72-73              [real, low point -- 8.41]
74    18,284      9.47      (2.00)     12.61          
75    18,313      9.11      (2.10)     12.61
76    18,945      9.44      (2.30)     13.04        72%
77                                                               [8.86]
78     20,422     9.49      (2.65)      14.11
79     20,696     9.33      (2.90)      14.32
80     20,236     8.78      (3.10)      14.00     
81     20,112     8.61      (3.35)      13.89        62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89                          [6.31]
90     24,000     6.79      (3.80)      16.56  
91     23,540     7.29      (4.25)      16.24        44%
92-93-94-95                                                [6.51]
96     25,887     7.07      (4.75)      17.85
97     26,884     7.49      (5.15)      19.02        39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06                      [5.97]
07     29,075     6.59      (5.85)       20.09
08     28,166     7.10      (6.55)       19.45
09     27,819     7.89      (7.25)       19.42        40%
10-11-12                                                      [7.37]  
13    29,209?    7.25      (7.25)      20.20?     36%? 

How to actually stop stop-and-frisk -- snail mailed to 22 NYC Legal Aid Society offices

Set-Up – just to catch attention:
The odds must be 1,000 to 1 against any one person having a suspicious bulge in their clothing resembling a weapon – justifying a police frisk.  Maybe a lot more: never happened to me and I’m ready to turn 70 (and Irish).  That makes it at least 1,000,000 to 1 against any two persons thrown up against a wall together being legitimately searched (1,000 X 1,000), 1,000,000,000 to 1 for three, etc.

Offended neighborhoods and groups can draw attention to this mathematical implausibility by getting school kids especially (the most unlikely targets) as well as other multiple-molest victims educated how to sound off “a thousand”, “a million”, “a billion” any time they are tossed.  They can stage street theater near schools instructing kids -- and everybody else – how to sound off.  Make especially good TV in front of New York City Hall.

The Sting – the end of stop-and-frisk:
This stop-and-frisk eighth-grade math should then be combined with the exclusionary rule: the US Supreme Court decision that illegally obtained evidence must be thrown out.  If cops know in advance that anything they happen across in their unconstitutional meanderings will not be admissible -- that when they get to court the defense will simply scream that the odds are at least a billion to one against the stop-and-frisk having been legitimate – then cops will no longer be in such a hurry to roust multiple parties at once.

The eighth-grade math works just as nicely for a single person who gets stopped multiple times.  Police keep a searchable record of all stops.  If victim of repeated stops keeps a record of all his dates, times, places and police names and numbers, then, he can use police records to provide the same dismissal of evidence formula.

Don’t forget to scream out in court that 7X as many stops-and-frisks (by 2011) were instigated after crime dropped 4X (before Bloomberg) = 28X as many stops-and-frisks per reported crime: case dismissed!

Will the real Obama (or Hillary) please stand up?

If Obama (or Hillary) truly cares about the troubles of minority youth, where is his $15/hr minimum wage? 

Recent L.A. mayoral candidate (46%) Wendy Greuel pushed a $15/hr living wage for hotel workers.  Washington D.C. just passed a $12.50/hr living wage for major retailers.  Massachusetts freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren has suggested the federal minimum wage could be nearly $22/hr if it had kept up with productivity gains since LBJ’s $10.74/hr minimum in 1968. 

Felix Salmon – author of Time Magazine listed #2 Finance Blog (after Krugman) – recently called a $15/hr minimum wage a “win-win-win-win-win-win.”  Much to my surprise, listening to the Larry Kudlow show (I don’t usually, but a visiting relative does), his substitute anchor and, I take it, regular crew took exception to Wal-Mart’s stingy hold-out against D.C.’s new living wage -- one even pulling up the old "Ford paid his workers enough" saw.  I’m not saying Larry concurs but these are usually the most unfettered market, cut taxes, etc., folks on earth.
 * * * * * 

My minimum wage worksheet -- my easily-could-have-been minimum wage double-indexed for inflation and per capita income growth: 

yr  per capita    real    nominal  dbl-index  %-of 

68    15,473    10.74      (1.60)                    100%
69-70-71-72-73               [real, low point -- 8.41]
74    18,284      9.47      (2.00)     12.61          
75    18,313      9.11      (2.10)     12.61
76    18,945      9.44      (2.30)     13.04        72%
77                                                                 [8.86]
78     20,422     9.49      (2.65)      14.11
79     20,696     9.33      (2.90)      14.32 

80     20,236     8.78      (3.10)      14.00         
81     20,112     8.61      (3.35)      13.89        62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89                             [6.31]
90     24,000     6.79      (3.80)      16.56  
91     23,540     7.29      (4.25)      16.24        44%
92-93-94-95                                                  [6.51]
96     25,887     7.07      (4.75)      17.85
97     26,884     7.49      (5.15)      19.02         39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06                        [5.97]
07     29,075     6.59      (5.85)       20.09
08     28,166     7.10      (6.55)       19.45
09     27,819     7.89      (7.25)       19.42         40%
10-11-12                                                       [7.37] 

13    29,209?    7.25      (7.25)      20.20?     36%? 
 * * * * * *  

"35 years ago", what could the federal minimum wage have been Obama (and Hillary)?  Try $14+/hr had LBJ’s minimum been double-indexed for both economic growth and inflation.

 Hair cutters in Warsaw earn less than hair-cutters in Paris – not because they are less productive – but because Poland has much less to pay them with than France.  That’s why double-indexing tells the truer tale. 

I explained to my late (more articulate) brother John how gigantic a sinkhole the American labor market fell into beginning decades ago and he came back with: “Martin Luther King got his people on the up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody.”  Our labor market – and our politics which can only reform if the market does – is overdue for a top to bottom rebalancing.  Doubling the federal minimum wage in a big hurry would be the simplest, most plausible way to start that restoration rolling.

Stop Ray Kelly for Department of Homeland Security

I have been spamming this around today:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nsa_should_come_clean_ray_kelly_dfAKlqJ4keYDNiJqANhIMO


Ray Kelly, June 17, 2013:
“I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government,” Kelly said. “I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category."

US comes in 27th in median wealth

 US comes in 27th in median wealth -- all time shocker~
 
http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/

1. Australia                    $193,653
2. Luxembourg              $153,967
3. Japan                         $141,410
4. Italy                           $123,710
5. Belgium                     $119,937
6. United Kingdom        $115,245
7. Iceland                       $ 95,685
8. Singapore                   $ 95,542
9. Switzerland                $ 87,137
10. Denmark                  $ 87,121
11. Austria                     $ 81,649
12. Canada                     $ 81,610
13. France                      $ 81,274
14. Norway                    $ 79,376
15. Finland                     $ 73,487
16. New Zealand            $ 63,000
17. Netherlands              $ 61,880
18. Ireland                      $ 60,953
19. Qatar                        $ 57,027
20. Spain                        $ 53,292
21. United Arab Emir.   $ 47,998
22. Taiwan                     $ 45,451
23. Germany                  $ 42,222
24. Sweden                    $ 41,367
25. Cyprus                     $ 40,535
26. Kuwait                     $ 40,346
27. United States           $ 38,786

[Since the chart above is news I believe I can borrow it without permission -- anyway lawyers don't take food stamps.]

Re: Krugman v. Mankiw

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/greg-mankiw-and-the-gatsby-curve/

What Krugman and most (not all) progressives seem to miss (as usual?) is what a difference heavy middle class bargaining power in the labor market and muscle in the political forum would have made to the current outcome of all the gains in productivity going to the top 1% and the everything that can be looted will be looted society (e.g., Chicago parking meter deal -- not to mention how the Chicago Tribune was looted by its own management).

If this country had happened to have instituted legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreement in post WWII years, like much of Europe, Wal-Mart would not be killing the previously middle class labor contracts of American supermarket workers by moving their un-unionized labor into food marketing, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Right now the relative bargaining pressures of labor and ownership in this country resemble a toothpaste tube open at the top: squeeze the bottom, pressure equalizes in the middle (really only in the 90-97-98-99 percentile area fully) which keeps its relative share of overall income and everything else comes out the top.

Aggregate demand flows -- with large movement in upper or lower 50 percentile wages

Doubling upper 50 percentile wages would send prices up but not as much as upper 50 incomes.  Only 88 percent of overall income goes to them so it would lead to some lowering of prices relative to their incomes.

Businesses catering more to upper 50 earners likely hire more upper 50s employees – higher prices reflecting higher wages.  Shifting a small slice of overall income to upper 50s (from lower 50s – via inflation) likely shifts a small bit more demand toward more upper 50 catering/hiring firms – which could actually lead to upward pressure on wages in some firms!

Since lower 50s represent(ed) only 12% of overall income, businesses catering more to lower 50s could suffer in proportion to their customers investigating haircut, but the downturn might be moderate for most (much or most of their demand possibly coming from upper 50s).  Lower 50 consumers would suffer horrendously -- lower 50 earners would face more unemployment.  
  * * * * * *
We can usefully imagine boosting lower 50 wages by half – on the average.  Today’s minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) being half today’s median wage ($15 an hour) we can just raise the minimum to the median.  Above 50 percentile wages would then feel upward pressure but not necessarily that much – LBJ’s median was only 20% higher than his minimum.
 
Adding half again to lower 50 percentile wages would raise prices only a little compared to their hefty income increases -- because only 12 percent of overall income goes to bottom half earners.  As incomes make up only 2/3 of the cost of GDP output, figure that half again of 8 percent (2/3 of 12%) = 4% added to prices (not counting other wage push ups).

Reality check: an average $8,000 yearly raise for 70 million employees = $560 billion.  Divide that by $15.8 trillion GDP and we get 3.6% direct inflation.

Businesses catering more to lower 50s tend to hire more lower 50s – lower prices generally reflecting lower wages.  Shifting a small slice of overall income to lower 50s (from upper 50s – via inflation) means shifting extra demand to lower 50 catering/hiring firms – which could actually lead to upward pressure on wages in some cases!
  
Since upper 50s represent(ed) 88% of overall income, businesses catering more to upper 50s would suffer only in proportion to their customers very moderate shave, but even that marginal downturn might be partially filled in by newly affluent lower 50 consumers.  Upper 50 consumers would feel a small pinch (as my doctor says, needle in hand).  Upper 50 earners could face a similar pinch in unemployment.

Reality check: if LBJ's federal minimum wage of $10.69 an hour had kept pace with both inflation and per capita income growth (click on the first link: "All Races") it would have reached $14.11 an hour by 1978 – when per capita income was only 2/3 of what it is today!

Perfect criminal defense for Edward Snowden?

Daniel Ellsberg exposed classified documents to reveal past lying by government agencies -- tricky to defend.  Snowden stole documents to expose crime -- vast, dangerous violations of (hundreds of?) millions of citizens' Fourth Amendment protected privacy -- very arguably within anyone's right to carry out.

There is not (yet) a civil rights statute criminalizing Fourth Amendment infringements.  What Snowden revealed may not even fit (depending on which judge rules) Fourth Amendment infringement.  But, it it certainly represents the tip of the iceberg of such vast, ongoing infringement -- and that makes it a public necessity to get it in front of the nation.  

Security rules cannot force concealment of crime -- especially when the crime threatens the most basic freedoms of 300 million people.  At the least the evidence Snowden has argues "probable cause" of national class Fourth Amendment violations which investigation of must be forced forward by the revelations.

Probably the best book on madly expanding surveillance is TOP SECRET AMERICA by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin -- which describes a mind boggling extent of not just governmental but also extra-governmental (private contrator) machinery being put in place to gather information -- expanding at a rate that can only be described Parkinson's Law: "Work expands to fill the time available; expenses rise to meet income."
http://www.amazon.com/Top-Secret-America-American-Security/dp/B00AF3O2V0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370961611&sr=8-1&keywords=TOP+SECRET+AMERICA

Neither does the book make out the FBI to be necessarily happy about all this.  They do the real work scooping up the bad guys while "top secret America" scoops up much too much funding and too many qualified (would have stuck with their government jobs) people.

[See next post on this blog for how easily -- almost necessarily -- a civil rights bill criminalizing Fourth Amendment violations can drop almost accidentally into our laps (the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Act criminalized conspiracy to infringe First Amendment freedoms).]
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2013/06/new-york-state-felony-to-annoy-police.html