Keeping Mount Everest -- (dinosaur ending size asteroids) away from Earth

Keeping Mount Everest -- (dinosaur ending size asteroid) away from Earth:

Nuclear powered rocket engines – when we get around to developing them – are envisioned super heating indigenous gases (e.g., Martian atmosphere) to create thrust. Such an engine attached to an asteroid could conceivably be capable of vaporizing some of the rock to create thrust.  Then it's just a matter of attaching a guidance system and to vector the thrust. Problem solved.

We could have been working on nuclear powered rocket engines for the past 25 years while we've been wasting $1 billion a shot on our ancient technology space shuttle -- or on the $100 billion space station which as far as I can see only researches how much time astronauts can stay together without getting into fights.

I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after ...

I was ready to get all over New York cops for making 6X as many stop-and-frisks after crime went down (something like) 4X = 24X as many stop-and-frisks per reported crime.    
   
Then I read this New York Magazine article about how today's beleaguered New York cops are in turn harassed by their own administration -- the kind of pressure to produce results that might be expected by high police administrators transmitted all the way down to the guy on the beat.  "I love being a cop; I just hate being a New York cop" is a typical quote. *     
http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-2012-4/index1.html    

Then I had my epiphany. Every American is in exactly the same pickle versus every bureaucracy – they never find the ability to resist anything from above.     

When you are in Europe do you miss the TSA? Are you really afraid? Terrorists will only hit somewhere else. And we kill more people by making them drive.    
   
In Chicago, the mayor, former (Democratic) presidential chief of staff, is instituting a 7 1/2 hour school day! The kids will go crazy – they will never see the sunlight.  In Los Angeles both city and school police arrested 49,000 children over five years – for being late for school – technically for violating school hours curfew. $500 level fines, parents spend the day in court, handcuffed, first and taken away (not sure what portion the latter).   

At the bottom of all this I see the deunionization of America – meaning the complete disappearance of any middle class footprint. Nobody has any sense of the average guy having any pull – nor any embarrassment about pushing him around anymore. In unconscious emotional terms we have been transformed into what bad cops used think of minorities. A big economic thing – translates into an invisible emotional thing – translates into a big political thing.    
   
Not that we ever had unions here – not like they do in Europe.  In Europe they set minimum wages by both inflation and average income gains.  New York city cops and firefighters did not have a raise in real terms from 1974 until recently even while average income climbed two-thirds. Their so-called union didn't even know.    
   
The craziest example of "taking anything” might be right back in my old Bronx neighborhood. As crime mushroomed we built a brand new courthouse in the 70s to house the overflow – taking the family court, misdemeanor trials and hearings. The old courthouse that no one can tear down (we'll get to that) handled felony trials and civil cases.     

Crime got cut by multiples and Mad King Bloomberg decided it was a good time to build a $500 million courthouse right next to the two old ones.  ???  Nobody raised a peep.    
   
My answer for everything from cops treating neighborhoods like sentenced prison populations to mad mayors is of course my same old, same old answer for every problem – from gangs (the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald, $15/hr minimum wage would add all of 3 1/2% direct inflation*) to nonfunctioning ghetto schools (the author of “Cracks in the Pavement” who spent nine years on the ground in five New York and Los Angeles poor neighborhoods says the schools there do not work only because the students expect nothing good waiting for them in the labor market so why try hard*) – sector wide labor agreements.    
 
Will someone out there, somewhere in the progressive economic community please say the words "sector wide labor agreements" out loud?    

http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html   
http://www.amazon.com/Cracks-Pavement-Social-Resilience-Neighborhoods/dp/0520256751/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335564317&sr=8-1    
* [added late; more of the same]  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/nyregion/undercover-officers-under-strain-with-no-clear-way-off-the-beat.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=all

A -- super -- significant psychological (human social instinct) insight -- with which to get progressives on board for sector wide labor agreements?

Everyone else knows it is hard to get the most progressive economists, politicians (are there any?) and journalists to push for anything practical (e.g., sector wide labor agreements) for common folks whom they supposedly just don't identify enough with.

I personally am always asserting that elitists cannot push anything practical because males cannot conceive of affecting opinion even one layer beyond whatever they -- instinctively -- see as their "hunting pack" (fellows in the same profession). Blocked from within from trying to spread an idea any farther.

Put the two together.

Obama is useless -- wont push obvious good paths with the public -- because he mechanically sees his fellow elitists as his hunting pack and is emotionally blocked from trying to directly present any good path on its merits alone beyond the elitist "pack." If the same big brain Obama was "one of the boys" -- lately a cab driver?-- he would feel perfectly free emotionally to wage the kind of politics we all feel he should -- specifically and mechanically because the average person would then seem part of his male "hunting pack" -- not just from some sort of general empathy everybody thinks.

That presents a much more mechanical explanation which I think I can work something out of -- to finally, at last get elitist "hunting pack animals" :-) to finally consider sector wide labor agreements on merits alone.

Heavy, heavy (human pack hunter male) stupid social intinct

MY FOLLOW UP COMMENT ON ANGRY BEAR TODAY:
coberly,
It all -- from the TSA to low wages to every other crazy thing done to Americans while they never fight back (when you are in a European airport do you really wish they had the kind of rope your genital security they have here?) -- boils down to our post-apocalyptic American labor market -- as in total deunionization. Organized labor is what (should be) watching the store in Washington, our state capitols and city councils -- because we are too busy living our own lives.

There is -- theoretically -- a perfect answer (here we go again; you know what's coming): LEGALLY MANDATED, SECTOR WIDE LABOR AGREEMENTS -- which wherever they are instituted for over half a century and around the world (first, second and third) seem to perfectly balance power between ownership and labor -- and -- supply the average person with all the political muscle (read finance) they need to go along with their overwhelming majority votes.

Yet you will never never never get any human male progressive economist between the ponds to say the words "sector wide agreements" out loud.

I have a social instinct theory to explain that. The (pea sized) human male midbrain (social brain) is so heavily slaved to cooperate with its immediate hunting pack members that any new idea that has to spread even one layer beyond the pack to be effective is instantly discarded -- with no consideration of its merits. The human male very instinctively (and unconsciously) thinks in terms of individually spreading any new idea to a pack of 300 million (in America's case) – recognizes that to be physically impossible – and instantly guillotines the new idea. It's all down to heavy heavy stupid social instinct.

Human females on the other hand – instinctively individual gatherers (nuts and berries) – are able to think for themselves. Is not that they are receptive or more easily intimidated that they consider any new idea on its actual merits – it is that they do not have a heavy heavy stupid social instinct instantly freezing their (giant) forebrains.

Zimmerman -- not guilty -- slam dunk!

There seems no doubt a roll on the ground fight occurred between Zimmerman and Martin. A larger, older man with a gun does not get threatened enough by skinny kid to throw the first punch (unless he's a biker bar bouncer) -- an underweight kid easily gets threatened enough by an encroaching adult. A 17 year old boy can put up a "shark feeding frenzy" of a fight -- it's just hormones. Once you accept the boy likely hit first you are forced to take the word of only person who survived the fight: slam dunk -- not guilty.

If he gets a fair trial.

PS. I'm the one trying to spread the (eighth-grade math) word that if New York police upped frisking 6X after crime went down 4X, then, New York police are now frisking 24X as much per reported crime: slam dunk -- unconstitutional.

Is there one Jew anywhere who feels -- both ...?

Is there one Jew anywhere who feels -- both -- terrible about West Bank Palestinians being made destitute, being ejected from their generational homes and lands -- and -- that God commands it? One? Anywhere?

"God said to Abraham "kill me a son"
Abe said to God "you must be putting me on"
(B. Dylan, "Highway 61")

MY RESPONSE TO: Subway Kills Five-Dollar Footlongs in S.F. Due to "Higher Cost of Doing Business"

The $10/hr minimum wage hurts San Francisco fast food stores -- only -- because San Francisco is so affluent that raising the minimum wage doesn't raise demand at the same time. In my more typical Chicago middle class neighborhood a few years back, a quick rise from $5.15/hr to $8.00/hr saw business in my local McDonald's visibly pick up (others agreed with me) mostly in the Mexican end.

A nationwide jump to $15/hr (doubling!) would add all of 3 1/2% inflation* (about what we grow every two years, normally!) and give half the country a raise -- a good time to invest in McDonald's.

http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html

Enter $1.60/hr in 1968 -- LBJ's minimum wage -- in the BLS online inflation calculator below and you will get $10.40/hr in today's money (in average U.S. prices, not S.F.'s higher prices). Per capita income has almost doubled since 1968, from $15,000/yr to $28,000/yr.

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

The eight-grade math of massively frisking New York City's minorities

The eight-grade math of massively frisking New York City's minorities:
After -- crime was reduced by 4X, stop-and-frisk went up by 6X = 24X as many frisks per reported crime.

This means -- either -- that those police officers and administrators responsible for reducing crime to 25% of what it was were totally remiss and neglectful in their patrol duties (wouldn't that be a contradiction in terms?) -- or -- that the Fourth Amendment has been totally suspended for New York City minorities (the mayor's intended victims?).

Could 24X increase in frisking be a move by Mad King Bloomberg* to reduce the numbers of the less affluent and minorities -- to make room for more of their opposite numbers? ???

* The allusion is to Mayor Bloomberg wasting a half billion dollars (in today's money) to build a massive new courthouse in the Bronx -- to replace the beautiful courthouse at the corner of 161st street and Grand Concourse, a courthouse so beautiful outside and functional inside they cannot tear it down (it's the black and white striped building you used to see in the background looking to the outfield of the old Yankee Stadium) and the brand new,when I was going there in the late 1970s, courthouse down the hill; two of the nicest courthouses in the country -- in, until the recent incursion of yuppies, the poorest congressional district in the country -- a half billion dollars!

Obama is not the "food stamp president" -- Obama is the minimum-minimum wage president

Obama is not the "food stamp president":

Obama is the $3.15/hr below LBJ's $10.40/hr minimum wage president -- 190% the average income later.

Obama is the $1/hr below Eisenhower's $8.25/hr minimum wage president -- 250% the average income later.

Check it out on the BLS online inflation calculator:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

My email to "Wired" story about a "cute" female airline passenger scanned 3X

My email to "Wired" magazine story about a "cute" female airline passenger scanned 3X
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/female-body-scans/


LIGHTLY EDITED

OPPOSITE GENDER PAT DOWN MANDATORY once you enter the screening zone if no same gender TSO is on duty. That is the letter of the law anyway. In practice they will let you leave without the fine I presume -- but you are not getting on a plane without the 4X genital grope, etc.
http://www.airsafe.com/issues/security/tsa-sop-not-redacted.pdf
*********
4.3.14. OPPOSITE GENDER SCREENING
Extraordinary circumstances [not extraordinary at small airports I have read] may occur where a TSO of the same gender as the individual being screened (the gender of an idividual is determined by who he or she presents themselves to be]) is not available to complete HHMD and/or pat-down screening procedures (for example, staffing shortage emergencies at any airport or limited staffing at Category II, III, and IV airports). Under these staffing shortage emergencies, screening procedures for individuals of the opposite gender, as provided for in this Section, are authorized and STSOs must apply the following procedures.

A. The following notifications must be made within 24 hours of each new staffing shortage event:
1) The STSO must notify the FSD, specifying the anticipated duration of the staffing shortage. The STSO must provide subsequent updates to the FSD if the reported duration is exceeded.
2) The STSO must maintain a count of the number of passengers affected during the staffing shortage and report these numbers to the FSD after the shortage is resolved. No personal or identifying information must be taken from the passenger for purposes of this report. For example, “three female passengers underwent opposite gender screening at Airport X” is an adequate count; however, including the names of the three female passengers in the count would be inappropriate. [my note: Do Touch; Don't Tell]
3) The FSD must in turn notify the Area Director, who must monitor such reports and consider how the patterns of staffing shortages, if any, can be addressed. The Area Director or his or her designee must notify the Office of Civil Rights of the staffing shortage and provide a copy of the report indicating the number of passengers subjected to opposite gender screening at each affected airport.

B. The STSO must ensure that the following notice is provided to an individual of the opposite gender before the individual enters the WTMD:
1) A TSO of the same gender as the individual presents him or herself to be is not available.
2) A TSO of the opposite gender will be required to complete the screening process, which may include physical contact between the TSO and the individual.
3) An LTSO or STSO, if possible, will be present.
4) Once the individual enters the WTMD, the individual must complete the screening process.
*********
MY WORST SHOCK UPON RESEARCHING FURTHER: Male police all over the country apparently have no qualms at all about frisking females, mostly heel of the hand risking breasts but otherwise heavily all over hips and legs -- convenience rules if you believe what police say on the net anyway -- I haven't seen it in real life; but I don't live on the poor side of town.
If you touch my wife I should be able to get you arrested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI7JEA4iK4
Leg and breast frisk 1st minute -- released 10th minute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RxH1CnYhd8Police "cadets" at play (presumably over 18), at 2:00 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1-dcSUDPE8&NR=1
Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/us_news/2010/Nov/24/full_body_scanners_popping_up_at_courthouses.html
My take on "officer safety":
No arrested female yet has done the Houdini and slipped her cuffs and then done the "Incredible Hulk" and torn aside the police car partition, then taken a sharp object from her bra and scratched the arresting officer. Police themselves say they can frisk for a gun without touching anything with their fingers.

Police think the following California law for instance leaves opposite sex frisking all up to convenience -- even for private security!"When ever possible have a security guard/proprietary private security officer of the same sex conduct the frisk, and always try to have witnesses to the frisk."
http://www.bsis.ca.gov/forms_pubs/poa.pdf (see page 57)

My take on the (felony) legal implications (this is about battering not popping open a glove compartment, i.e., constitutional privacy -- equal protection works though):
Police delusionally see it in terms of simply professionals doing a job -- even liken themselves to doctors (maybe if they anesthetize the female and don't tell here they did it)! Coming soon to high school security near you (no legal or substantive difference)?!

I see it in terms of subjecting the female to the experience of sexual battery -- there can be no doubt about that. It is up to the criminal justice system to explain why -- and how -- the experience of sexual battery is not sexual battery just because a government functionary is performing a government function.
******
THE SECTION BELOW IS IN FIRST DRAFT
[added on after original email and post]: I don't know but it may have come to a high school near you in Los Angeles. The stories below show possibly massive arrests, cuffing and searching (frisking?) of Los Angles high school students (47,000 tickets for sure) -- meaning massive search contacts with perfectly everyday kids who did nothing more than arrive a little late for school (allowing the bird brains who run Los Angeles to take that for violating the school hours curfew -- intended to prevent truancy -- and grabbing kids away from school for the trip to the police station).
http://www.calendow.org/Article.aspx?id=5643
http://thestir.cafemom.com/teen/133267/teens_should_not_be_handcuffed

"Early-morning police "sweeps" that netted kids as they approached schools inspired a movement to protest students being handcuffed and then forced to miss more school to go to juvenile court to deal with tickets."
"Juan and his cousin, who's also 15, were one block from school when school officers stopped them, handcuffed them and searched them. When Juan said, "You can't do this," an officer used profanity and told him to "shut ... up or else I'll slap you in the face," according to the complaint."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/21/v-print/139530/los-angeles-weighs-impacts-of.html
"Nabil [a student whose story and received wide coverage], who's turning 18 this month and hopes to become a doctor, was a senior at Roybal Learning Center when he was twice handcuffed and prevented by school police from attending classes that he was late for but urgently trying to get to." Again, how many of the 47,000 were cuffed and searched and how searched -- and by whom?http://libertyhill.typepad.com/main/2011/11/speaking-out-for-students.html
Belatedly, Chief of Police Steven K. Zipperman says: “Nor is truancy, by itself, a justification for “frisks, the use of handcuffs or physical restraints, and searches.” Of course what I am worried about is what happens in the searches of females by males. Think our male "cadet" finger frisking our female above -- they seem to think nothing of it.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/la-school-police-fewer-truancy-tickets.html
So back to the question: Do you want the police attitude that a male can frisk a woman's hips, legs and bottom of her bra line (assuming he is trained to be that "careful" -- no real legal line in their view) as casually as wiping down a windshield -- because that is clearly the attitude of the officers pictured above (and who knows how many more -- most?!) -- coming to a school near you? In light of this massive cuff and search story the school kid question seems to have too real everyday relevance.
If not, reflect that there is no substantive, legal or constitutional difference between your daughter facing a Los Angeles school cop (who seem to have written 13,000 of the 47,000 summonses) on the stairway or in the hallway -- or a private security guard in a movie or book store and the poor women being victimized in the videos above. It's all or nothing at all.

Can celibacy make priests into INCURABLE pedophiles?

Can celibacy make priests into INCURABLE pedophiles? Obviously not. End of discussion.

Don't know why I -- and nobody else -- never made this obvious connection before.

Most pedophile Boy Scout leaders have been failed heterosexuals. This doesn't open the door for homosexual priests however unless somebody can explain how they will resist impossible sexual temptation in the seminary -- and when they graduate the seminary. The problem when they get to a parish is that they and the gay alter boys are going to know who each other are and the impossible temptation is liable to pick up where it left off.

Questioning the Idea of Israel (in the 22nd century?) -- the Misbegotten Diaspora (the true "lost tribe"?)

In a hundred years, when all the world uses one currency, speaks the same language and eats in the same restaurants (or whatever takes the place of restaurants) – what will be the importance of “returning” to (not that you or yours ever personally left) any historic native land? 

I’m glad there is an Ireland somewhere but “returning” never crosses my mind. Nor does "returning" to Israel seriously cross the mind of most Brooklyn Jews – who would not move to New Jersey. If there were 120 million Jews in the world today instead of 12 million, how many could “return”?

******

So, who “returns” to Israel?

Until the 1990s, when 1,000,000 Russians arrived (and commenced making babies), 70% of Israel’s Jewish population was so-called Oriental Jews, immigrated from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kurdish areas, the eastern Caucasus, Northern and Eastern Sudan, Ethiopia and India. Most of Israel’s now 50% European Jews descended from Eastern Europe and Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews

All of 1 1/2% of Israeli Jews have “returned” from the United States (not counting babies).

The “moral hazard” in this demographic is that most Jews arriving in Israel had little experience with or deep instruction in Western democratic ideals -- but with huge, if deserved, persecution complexes (Holocaust or no Holocaust) and more than anxious to stake their claims to the “land in the sand” with however desperate measures. Menachem Begin (early arriving Russian) began his career blowing up a hotel, killing 98 British soldiers, becoming inventor of the car bomb (as prime minister sent arms to Argentina to defend the Falklands).

When I was growing up in the Bronx we Irish got along so well with the Jews we likened ourselves to “the lost tribe of Israel" (in a neighborhood like the movie "The Chosen" except the Jewish boys were bigger than we were; nor did I know one bespectacled scholar :-]). In terms of liberal democratic dispositions, the majority of Israel’s "returning" Jews could have been styled the real “lost tribe” – separated by centuries of persecution and despotic rulers from the movements that democratized the West – they behaved the way human nature too often does in stark circumstances, especially when released from all checks and balances …

… they having received gifts of $200 billion dollars worth of the most potent Western conventional arms – and having armed themselves with nuclear armed ICBMs, second-strike subs, even artillery shells as well as gravity bombs.

 ******

Got to see these guys for what they do, not for what ethnic group they (mis)represent. In Israel “lunatic” is no longer a fringe.

Vanishingly few American or Western European Jews, even the most staunch supporters of Israel, would (could) personally order anything as terrifying as Israel’s, 26 day, bombing campaign on next door Lebanon, killing as many as 1000 men and women and 400 boys and girls, over three, on duty, uniformed soldiers KIA and two POW (Israel's cruel attack on Gaza over one POW suggests a single POW taken might have been enough to unleash all hell on Lebanon.) Why should progressive Jews in the West feel automatically obligated to support such defenselessly brutal regimes?

If immigrated American and European Jews happened to dominate today’s Israeli polity, would they personally be fool or just plain crass enough to attempt to crowd out an equal number of Palestinians from the remaining 22% of their unqualified personal homeland (pre-1948 Palestine)? From distant US shores, Americans in general have been known to equate the current, 1000 persons per square mile, industrial West Bank populace with 1850s, 1 per square mile, semi-nomadic American plains Indians. (I believe I read this blind, deaf and dumb take in Newsweek by Rabbi Marc Gellman of the "God Squad" of all people). Do the eighth-grade math, please, general Americans.

******

Now, the Western ways challenged Diaspora (all Western European figure heads but all warlike constituencies) ponders taking on a lately modernizing, oil producing nation of 43,000,000 with an out of the blue bombing attack – a nation tough enough to have fought off Saddam for eight years; a nation not passive enough to accept naked aggression supinely (imagine Syria blowing up Israeli diplomats, tit for tat?); a nation already threatening military retaliation over economic sanctions and making noises of hitting the homeland of their would-be assaulter’s chief armorer and enabler -- not that the trouble makers trouble themselves at all about the fate their chief dupe.

Neither do they fret much over inciting the Islamic streets, which could force their polities to mix in the fight. Think Pakistan, which has a population the sized of the US’s when I was in high school, 177,000,000, and possesses a panoply of nuclear munitions and modern delivery systems – plus a Jihad tilting cohort squeezing in on core government decision making (e.g., concealing Osama?).

Pakistan’s population has as much latent talent as the US’s. Israel’s population, 6,000,000 first-class citizens, has as much latent talent as New Jersey’s – and seems to use steadily less of it – as long as its luck holds and Uncle Dupe keeps holding its hand.

******

Israel’s two most intelligent home critics – ardent supporters of (their idea of) Israel – historian-journalist Gershom Gorenberg (“The Unmaking of Israel”) and writer-activist Uri Anvery, (see weekly column) report the toxic political climate there going from bad to worse to more anti-democratic and more conflict prone. (For more bad news see Israeli mag “+972” and American blog “Mondo Weiss”.)

Israel does not have to end this way. Israeli immigrants could have put early depredations against the native populace behind them and worked out some kind of sensible social contract. Uri's favorite critic, the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, predicted that permanently occupying the territories taken in 1968 would turn Israel into a fascist state ("a nation of work gang supervisors and secret service agents" -- see Anvery's "Reluctant Prophet" column). In the early 1960s the French evacuated 1,400,000 "settlers" (and 500,000 soldiers) from Algeria to get peace. Today, 400,000 Israeli "expatriates" (and accompanying military) can practicably make aliyah again -- a shorter trip than the first time (shorter than the returning French too) -- anytime "Zionist 1984" wants to go "Israeli Spring" – if God wills. :-)

******

Israel’s train wreck bound tribe look too much like mostly European us, mostly talk the same English talk, walk the same middle class walk and for a long time have hung out cheek by jowl with us. Such wall-to-wall parallels clue Jihad prone fans of the besieged Palestinians – and next, of besieged the Iranians? -- to vent their rage against us by measures (e.g., trading skyscrapers for settlements) however desperate.

If Israeli cannot find in itself the sense or the courage to take up mainstream, Western ways, then, America in the interest of its national security -- and its public safety – will need to distance itself far enough from Israel for it to look a lot less like a 51st state – and our political leaders will need to face down Israel's, hopefully, not forever blinkered domestic partisans -- we are the 98%.

MY CONTRIBUTION ON THE ROOT TODAY

http://www.theroot.com/views/santorum-right-time

In his book "Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods", professor Martín Sánchez-Jankowski -- who spent 9 years on the ground observing the goings in 5 ghetto neighborhoods in NYC and LA -- concludes that ghetto schools don't work because there is so little waiting for graduates (or non-graduates) in the American labor market that working at getting a good education often isn't considered worth the bother.
http://www.amazon.com/Cracks-Pavement-Social-Resilience-Neighborhoods/dp/0520256751/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326986246&sr=1-1

Look up president LBJ's 1968, $1.60/hr minimum wage on the BLS inflation calculator (which uses CPI-U -- the most broadly accepted inflation index) and you get just short of $10.50/hr -- in 1968! Look up senate majority leader LBJ's 1956 minimum wage (he snuck it through the chamber when the opposition was out -- senator Hubert Humphrey wanted $1.25/hr -- in 1956!) and you get just over $8.25/hr!
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Look up Census historical income tables (historical > people > all races) and you get $15,000 per capita income in 1968 -- $28,500 in 2006 (before the bottom fell out). 2012's federal minimum wage is over $3/hr lower -- almost double the average income later.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/

Before the "big" Democratic increase in 2007 the federal minimum wage in 2011 dollars was $5.60/hr -- dropped almost in half since 1968.

MUCH MORE SHOCKING (!):
The annual US median wage is $26,363 -- as reported by Harold Myerson -- which if you divide by 2080 working hours (you would probably need to factor in how many full or part time jobs was average, etc. -- this is the best my non-expert self can figure), today's US median wage comes in at $12.68/hr -- about where it probably was in 1968! The US median wage is reported at about $14/hr in 1973 -- the year wages stopped keeping up with productivity increases; or regressing -- in the book "The State of Working America 2008/2009", p. 134, table 3.5.
http://www.prospect.org/article/what-americans-make
http://www.amazon.com/State-Working-America-2008-2009/dp/0801474779/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326987915&sr=1-3

The answer to all this is legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements, the only labor market setup that produces both a fair labor market -- and fair political forum because labor is effectively organized -- everywhere it is used world-wide in the decades since WWII -- back when it was instituted to avoid an organized labor "race to the top" in Europe so more money could go to rebuilding -- prevents the race to the bottom just as well (Wal-Mart closed 88 big boxes in Germany where it could not compete paying the same as everyone else). If you want to read more about sector-wide Google it -- it's mostly my (frantic) posts; nobody else discusses it (most economists not being as poor as retired cab drivers).

Today, 9:59:20 AM

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annie nymess

opus512

EDMUND BURKE
Min. wage is def. a culprit. The unemployment of teens, part. of AAs, has grown over the past 60 years. Now in alot of cities, the only opportunities for some folks is drug dealing which produces about $3.50/hr. of income (Freakonomics).

Today, 10:17:07 AM

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ddrew2u
What's really a lost opportunity is that doubling the minimum wage would add only 3.5% direct inflation -- giving half the country a raise. As in the Crips and the Bloods couldn't whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald -- and presumably wouldn't want to.

To wit:
Jumping to a federal minimum wage to $15 would add about 3% direct inflation – easily computed: 70 million (half the workforce – at very most; many positions not hourly or salaried) X $3.25 average raise (close enough) X 2000 hours (work year) + 3.5 million* more half raises for those at or below the minimum (in 2009) X $3.25 X 2000 hours = $477.75 billion altogether -- out of a GDP of $14 trillion = 3.4% direct inflation.

* http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2009tbls.htm

Today, 11:30:49 AM

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opus512
There you go using liberal facts and context.

The reason the rich have gotten so much richer is because the poor and middle class have gotten so much poorer. The economy was much more evenly spread out back then, back in the days that conservatives claim to long for, yet they completely and willfully ignore the rest of what it was like back then.

Today, 11:03:17 AM

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ddrew2u
Right; basically, if you squeeze a toothpaste tube at the bottom it will all come out the top. The first baseman who recently got a contract big enough to buy half the stadium ($245 million over 10 years!) is not out to exploit anyone. Ditto for TV anchors and CEOs for that matter -- they are just taking what is available given no resistance. Who wouldn't?

Without organizing labor effectively -- and sector wide is the only proven way -- there will never again be resistance at the political lever in America either. My unfavorite example of no political resistance is what happened in my old Bronx neighborhood over the last 10 years.

First, Mad King (Mayor) Bloomberg closed two of the (legitimately) most beautiful courthouses in New York City -- one was brand new when I was going there with kids back in the 70s (sparkling new marble) -- after building a $500 million replacement (in today's money) -- after the bottom had dropped out of crime.

Second, over this hill, blocks away, a new Yankee Stadium was built over a track and field used by 39 Bronx schools (including my grammar school a mile north and my high school a mile south) so 43 more millionaires could be glassed in. When the Yankees moved into the new stadium did the city tear down the old one and replace the track and field? Too bad kids; it just left the old one there. (As yuppies move in in the future I am sure a much more beautiful new park than the old will be built.)

Could the proposition to leave 3 more derelict structures in the architectural center of gravity of the Bronx -- at the cost of $500 million and for 43 more millionaires -- have survived the outrage of the middle classes when I was growing up there? Not a howling chance; but now there is no opposition to anything anyone does to us.

Got to get organized again. Google "sector-wide labor agreements" to find out how.

Today, 11:48:38 AM

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An interesting insight into Israeli demographics -- from David McWilliams (Irish economist)

An interesting insight on Israeli demographics -- from David McWilliams (Irish economist)

A recent OECD report told them the message they least want to hear, which is that this year, for the first time ever, 50pc of all schoolgoing children are either Israeli Arabs or ultra-orthodox Jews. This means that the secular Israelis are witnessing what they have always feared, which is that they will be out-bred on one flank by the local Arabs and by the religious Jews on the other flank. They conclude that these trends mean the country will become politically more right-wing and more isolated while their ability to defend the place will diminish because the orthodox Jews don’t go to the army. All the while, the Arab population will rise which will obviously mean that the very Jewish nature of the Jewish homeland will diminish.

From: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2011/12/21/our-children-wont-be-able-to-pay-cost-of-our-debt-folly