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thinkahol *

The bin Laden dividend - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

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    Numerous people have argued that one potential benefit from the death of Osama bin Laden is that it will enable the U.S. Government to diminish its war commitments in that part of the world and finally arrest the steady erosion of civil liberties perpetrated in the name of the War on Terror (as though any of that is the government's goal).  By contrast, I've argued from the start that the bin Laden killing is likely to change nothing of any significance, except that -- if anything -- the resulting nationalistic pride, the vicarious sensations of power and strength, the substantial political benefits for the President, and the renewed faith in military force would be more likely to intensify rather than arrest these trends.  But that was definitely a minority opinion.
thinkahol *

A Road Map to Economic Armageddon - Book Review - Truthdig - 0 views

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    By John B. Taylor This review is from a syndication service of The Washington Post. In "Reckless Endangerment," Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner argue that cozy connections between government and the financial industry were the primary cause of the financial crisis. While many economists-including this reviewer-have argued that government actions caused the crisis, Morgenson and Rosner use their investigative skills to dig down and explain why those actions were taken. The book focuses on two government agencies, Fannie Mae and the Federal Reserve. The mutual support system is better explained and documented in the case of Fannie, the government-sponsored enterprise that supported the home mortgage market by buying mortgages and packaging them into marketable securities, which it then guaranteed and sold to investors.
Skeptical Debunker

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview : NPR - 0 views

  • "People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.
  • "Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.
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  • Then there's the "messenger" effect. In an experiment dealing with the dangers versus benefits of a vaccine, the scientific information came from several people. They ranged from a rumpled and bearded expert to a crisply business-like one. The participants tended to believe the message that came from the person they considered to be more like them. In relation to the climate change debate, this suggests that some people may not listen to those whom they view as hard-core environmentalists. "If you have people who are skeptical of the data on climate change," Braman says, "you can bet that Al Gore is not going to convince them at this point." So, should climate scientists hire, say, Newt Gingrich as their spokesman? Kahan says no. "The goal can't be to create a kind of psychological house of mirrors so that people end up seeing exactly what you want," he argues. "The goal has to be to create an environment that allows them to be open-minded."And Kahan says you can't do that just by publishing more scientific data.
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    "It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy
Skeptical Debunker

Google Argues That Chinese Censorship Was "Trade Dispute" - ITProPortal.com - 0 views

  • Bloomberg.com has reported that the Obama administration is planning to launch an official complaint against China with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) pertaining to the country's stringent web censorship policies. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin has announced that he plans to pass a legislation that will allow the government to prosecute US internet companies if they violate the human rights of their customers when a foreign government asks them to do so. 
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    A Google representative has announced that the web censorship policies adopted by China can be classified as 'Trade Dispute' as local companies benefit when the government restricts the operations of foreign companies.
Skeptical Debunker

For better trade, give peace a chance - 0 views

  • Trade's effect on military conflict is one of the most important issues in international relations. The last decade has seen research and debate into the role of trade intensify; Liberals argue that trade brings peace, neo-realists and neo-Marxists reason that trade brings conflict, and classical realists contend that trade has no impact. This debate is not just academic: some key U.S. policymakers (Senator McCain and former President Clinton for instance) believe that trade brings peace, a view that contributes to their support for free trade. Economists developed bilateral trade models in isolation from models of interstate conflict, which were the work of political scientists. These two types of models handle distance between nations differently. Bilateral trade takes its cue from Isaac Newton's formula for the gravitational attraction between two objects: the larger the objects' masses and the shorter the distance between them, the larger the attraction. So the larger the trade partners' economies and the closer they are to one another, the greater their trade. However, conflict models instead incorporate shared borders by land or close distance over water (contiguity) - stressing the role of border disputes in sparking interstate conflict. Distance is included in conflict equations based on the idea that an army gets weaker the farther it strays from its base, but what point in a nation to pick for the trade and conflict equation is unclear. Often theorists use the distance between capital cities, which is problematic: wars generally happen around borders where armies are often based, and capitals have historically changed without this altering the likelihood of war between the nation and its neighbours. The authors suggest that the trade data set plugged into trade and conflict equations is critical. This type of data often contains gaps - there are a number of reasons why data from a particular nation might be unavailable, inevitably leaving researchers to make assumptions. The majority of trade and conflict studies define conflict to include all types of militarised interstate disputes (MIDs). But Keshk, Reuveny, and Pollins question the results generated when different conflict definitions are chosen. For instance, a conflict such as a threat to use nuclear weapons would not cause fatalities, but may still have some impact on trade and vice versa. In fact, by altering the data treatment and assumptions in the equation, the authors generated a variety of results, which supported several different theoretical viewpoints. The authors suggest that future research should investigate questions of missing bilateral trade data, and attempt a more subtle use of the meaning of "military conflict". Researchers might also develop distance and contiguity measures at a more sophisticated level. "Any signal that trade brings peace remains weak and inconsistent, regardless of the way proximity is modelled in the conflict equation. The signal that conflict reduces trade, in contrast, is strong and consistent," say the authors. "Any study of the effect of trade on conflict that ignores the reverse fact is practically guaranteed to produce estimates that contain simultaneity bias." Studies of the relationship between international trade and military conflict can be traced back many centuries, particularly in the works of luminaries such as de Montesquieu, Immanuel Kant, John Hobson, Vladimir Lenin, Henry Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, Frederic List, and Albert Hirschman. This latest study emphasises that international politics are affecting trade between nation pairs, while it is far less obvious whether trade systematically affects politics. "To our colleagues from the liberal camp we would like to say that we still believe there are limited circumstances in which more trade may help lead countries to more peaceful resolutions of their differences, particularly if they are already at peace," the authors state. "However, it is past time for academics and policymakers to look beyond the naive claim that the cultivation of trade ties will always and everywhere produce a more peaceful world."
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    Liberal theorists and politicians have long argued that trade leads to peaceful relations between nations - a view that informs the push for free trade. However, many international relations experts dispute this claim. New US research out today, in the journal Conflict Management and Peace Science published by SAGE, finds that rather than trade being the driver, peace is actually the vital ingredient that allows trade to flourish.
Felix Gryffeth

Leonard Pitts laments lack of critical thinking - 0 views

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    "There's been an abandonment of intellectualism, he argued, and "we're less concerned about being honorable than winning." "I came from an era where facts mattered," Pitts said. "It was a matter of honor - intellectual honor - that if you had better facts than I did, I have to either undermine your facts or concede the point. "
thinkahol *

Things We're Supposed To Be Quiet About - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Apologists for rising inequality often argue that since most Americans' income has risen despite rising inequality, there's no reason to complain about inequality other than envy. So it's worth remembering that we used to expect economic growth to deliver large increases in real income, not just a bit of a rise that's accomplished in large part through longer working hours; and that a major reason so many have seen such small gains is that a large part of growth has been siphoned off to the very high end.
thinkahol *

Video - Douglas Rushkoff on Why Jobs Are Obsolete - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    All the fixation on creating jobs in America is outdated and misguided, argues media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff. He explains to WSJ's Dennis Berman his theory on new models that could actually increase productivity and make Americans more satisfied.
thinkahol *

Bernard Lietaer: Money diversity - YouTube - 0 views

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    Bernard Lietaer argues that the monoculture of money is what creates economic instability, leading to liquidity crises. He calls for a greater diversity of alternative currencies, citing innovative and enormously successful initiatives like the Lithuanian Doraland Economy, the Torekes in Belgium and Switzerland's famous alternative currency, the WIR.
thinkahol *

Good Government vs. Less Government « The Baseline Scenario - 0 views

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    Recently, a controversy raged in the blogosphere about whether neo-liberalism has been a bane or a boon for the world economy. The argument is rather coarse, in that it fails to distinguish between the various elements of neo-liberalism, or moderate deregulation vs. extreme deregulation. But if we take the argument at face value, one of the major claims of neoliberals is that countries in the world which are more neoliberal are more successful (because they are more neoliberal). I disagree. My disagreement is not with the raw correlation between the Heritage Index and Per Capita GDP. A number is a number. My disagreement is with the composition of the index itself, and interpreting this correlation as causation between neo-liberalism and 'good things.' My primary contention below is that many of these measures used in the composite Heritage Index have nothing to do with less government, and a lot more to do with good government. It is these measures of good government that correlate to economic growth and drive the overall correlation between the "Freedom Index" and positive outcomes. Secondarily, I will argue that many of the other items in the index (like investment freedom) are not causes of growth, but rather outcomes of growth.
thinkahol *

Foreign Policy In Focus | The Political Consequences of Stagnation - 0 views

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    If the left doesn't come up with a credible and comprehensive alternative to a focus on reducing the deficit, argues FPIF columnist Walden Bello, the far right might eventually fill the policy vacuum.
thinkahol *

Obama argues his assassination program is a "state secret" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

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    When many cynics thought it impossible, the President reaches an all-new low in his abysmal civil liberties record
thinkahol *

In order to save biodiversity society's behavior must change, leading conservationists ... - 0 views

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    An innovative grouping of conservation scientists and practitioners have come together to advocate a fundamental shift in the way we view biodiversity. In their paper, which was published today in the journal Science, they argue that unless people recognize the link between their consumption choices and biodiversity loss, the diversity of life on Earth will continue to decline.
thinkahol *

What Makes Right-Wing Mobs Tick? | Psychology Today - 0 views

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    A lot of heavyweight thinkers have offered explanations of the irrationality of modern political behavior--you know, behavior like Medicare recipients at town halls screaming about the evils of government-run health care or otherwise reasonable people likening Obama's plan to Nazi eugenics. George Lakoff theorizes that conservatives interpret reality through metaphors and meta-narratives modeled after authoritarian family structures. Drew Westen argues that they interpret facts according to emotionally based investments in conclusions they already hold, bypassing cortical centers of reason altogether. These and other analyses are powerful and helpful. But they aren't satisfying to me because they aren't specific enough to account for the passionate urgency and self-destructiveness of the right-wing rejection of a program that will obviously benefit them.
thinkahol *

Hedges Laments The 'Death Of The Liberal Class' : NPR - 0 views

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    Liberals have conceded the good fights -- organizing workers, preventing war, a greener economy -- to corporations and the ruling powers for decades, argues Chris Hedges. In his book, Death of the Liberal Class, Hedges slams groups and institutions from academia, to the church, to the Democratic par
Skeptical Debunker

Obama, Republicans clash at heated health summit - Yahoo! News - 0 views

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    "We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem." With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats' Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props "that prevent us from having a conversation." And so it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House - a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public. The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation's health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favor much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next. Obama and his Democratic allies argued at Thursday's meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care as "one of the biggest drags on our economy," tying his top domestic priority to an issue that's even more pressing to many Americans.
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    Of course the "we" in "We can't afford this" is the big health care monopolies (pharma, insurance, etc.). Supposedly, the country and people can afford the continued gouging by those special interests (up to 40% in some places this year alone!). Too, if the government were to find a way to "afford it" (disregarding that Medicare and Medicaid savings might pay for it altogether!), that would probably be on the "back" of the richest 5% and by reducing corporate and business subsidies (like those to oil companies, the military industrial complex, "big finance" bailouts and sweetheart Federal funds rates and "liquidity" pumping, non-risk underwriting for things like coastal flood insurance, etc., etc., etc.). Since that is the "invisible hand" that feeds most "conservatives" and Republican politicians, that would never do.
Skeptical Debunker

World's largest solar-powered boat uses over 5,000 square feet of solar paneling | DVICE - 0 views

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    While it's not the most exciting name, it certainly speaks to the boat's size. Christened the PlanetSolar, the 101 foot by 49 foot yacht is hailed by its designers as the largest solar-powered ship in the world. Either way, we're certainly not going to argue - it's one big damn boat. The 66-ton PlanetSolar boasts a whopping 5,380 square feet of solar paneling, a 50-passenger capacity with a crew of two, and a cruising speed of 15 knots (or 17 miles per hour, comparable to the speed of an oil tanker). Built at the Knierim Yacht Club in Kiel, Germany, the PlanetSolar will embark in April on a tour that'll have it circumnavigating the world, a voyage which is expected to last 140 days and will see the ship visiting cities such as New York, Hong Kong, Marseille and Singapore. Check out more of the solar yacht in the gallery below.
Yee Sian Ng

Is Europe Irrelevant? | Cato @ Liberty - 0 views

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    It could be argued that the costs to the United States of providing such services for the rest of the world are modest, but that is ultimately a judgment call. To be sure, the dollar costs will not bankrupt us as a nation, but Americans spend $2,700 per person on our military, while the average European spends less than $700. The bottom line is that Europeans have little incentive to spend more because they don't feel particularly threatened, and they aren't anxious to take on responsibilities that are ably handled by the United States. The advocates of hegemonic stability theory would declare that a feature, not a bug. Mission accomplished. And that might be true, if the greatest threat to global security were a resurgence of conflict in Europe, and if it is truly in the U.S. interest to forever have allies with few capabilities and many liabilities. But that seems extremely shortsighted. The sweeping political and economic integration in Europe has dramatically reduced the likelihood of another European war. In the meantime, the fact that we have many allies with little to offer by way of military assets, and even less political will to actually use them, is forcing the U.S. military to bear the disproportionate share of the burdens of policing the planet. And in the medium- to long-term, while I doubt that we will be facing "a militarily superior, post-Soviet Russia," allies with usable military power might ultimately serve a purpose if Moscow proves as aggressive (and capable) as the hawks claim.
Yee Sian Ng

The political limits to globalisation | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commen... - 0 views

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    "Is globalisation inevitable and irreversible? This column argues that globalisation is a policy choice. It examines the relationship between military expansion and international trade flows, finding that increased nationalist and militarist sentiments are negatively associated with trade. A 10% increase in military spending between 1985 and 2005 is associated with a reduction in the trade share of GDP of around 2%."
thinkahol *

GMF - The Copenhagen Consensus: Reading Adam Smith in Denmark - 0 views

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    Adam Smith observed in 1776 that economies work best when governments keep their clumsy thumbs off the free market's "invisible hand." Two generations later, in 1817, the British economist David Ricardo extended Smith's insights to global trade. Just as market forces lead to the right price and quantity of products domestically, Ricardo argued, free foreign trade optimizes economic outcomes internationally. Reading Adam Smith in Copenhagen -- the center of the small, open, and highly successful Danish economy -- is a kind of out-of-body experience. On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders. They score well in the ratings constructed by pro-market organizations. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index ranks Denmark third, just behind the United States and Switzerland. Denmark's financial markets are clean and transparent, its barriers to imports minimal, its labor markets the most flexible in Europe, its multinational corporations dynamic and largely unmolested by industrial policies, and its unemployment rate of 2.8 percent the second lowest in the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP on public outlays and has the world's second-highest tax rate, after Sweden; strong trade unions; and one of the world's most equal income distributions. For the half of GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment compensation that typically covers around 95 percent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world's most creative system of worker retraining. Does Denmark have some secret formula that combines the best of Adam Smith with the best of the welfare state? Is there something culturally unique about the open-minded Danes? Can a model like the Danish one survive as a social democratic island in a turbulent sea of globali
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