Watch this segment of Neil deGrasse Tyson about America’s decline amid the changing landscape of modern science. I mean it.  Watch this and make your uncles and cousins watch it. Half of our economic growth since WWII came from science and technology. This last decade was the first in 60 years in which the US did not stun the world with some terrific “new thing” that let us get rich enough to then buy megatons of crap from foreign factory workers and uplift a new world middle class. The Fox War on Science is nothing less than pure, unadulterated treason.

(Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, and a popularizer of science. Dr Tyson is on facebook and twitter @neiltyson.)

Hm. The GOP narrative is factually challenged? Go figure…

Tonight was supposed to be the night that Mittens nailed down the nomination, following his glorious victories in Florida and Nevada. Instead, he got his ass handed to him.

Santorum swept Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. He’s now won more states than Romney, and spent $30 million less in the process.  Romney’s nightmare has always been running against a unified Not Mitt, rather than eking through pluralities against a divided field. It was clear he was going to have a problem in Missouri, where Gingrich wasn’t on the ballot; but the results in the other two states are stunning.

Not only did he lose all three, but in Minnesota he actually came in third to Ron Paul. It’s an epic rejection, and you’ve got to wonder if there’s any way he can pull out of this tailspin, even with all his millions and the entire GOP establishment rooting for him.

Here are the numbers….

Missouri:

• Santorum  55%
• Romney  25%
• Gingrich  -
• Paul  12%

Minnesota:

• Santorum  45%
• Romney  17%
• Gingrich  11%
• Paul  27%

Colorado:

• Santorum  40%
• Romney  35%
• Gingrich  13%
• Paul  12%

There are now three weeks till Arizona (2/28) and Michigan (2/28), followed by super Tuesday. You realize, of course, this means war… expect scorched earth tactics and carpet bombing against the forces of Santorum. But Arizona is very conservative, and Michigan… well, the punditry seems willing to hand it to Romney based on the fact that he grew up there and his dad was Governor.

But Michigan is also the home of the US auto industry, and Romney’s take on the auto rescue was that Obama shouldn’t have done it. “Let them fail,” he said. If the Not Mitts can tie him to that, he may not do as well in Michigan as he thinks.

 (Rick “the preacher” Santorum image  Some rights reserved by DonkeyHotey)

By James Howard Kunstler

A Martian psychoanalyst observing the US Superbowl on TV would be shocked by the vicious animal spirits emanating from that spectacle, starting with the triumphal trumpet blasts borrowed straight from the old 1950s Hollywood epic movies echoing the prideful mis-steps of ancient Rome, along with the by-now clichéd CGI trick in the opening credits of gleaming metallic heraldic insignia spun into a military cordon of stars so as to protect the tender collective ego of this anxious nation. America wears its zeitgeist plastered right on its sweaty forehead.

Everybody knows that the commercial messages between the play-action amount to a national Rorschach test, and this year’s collection made us look more psychopathic than ever – starting with the advertisement for the Chevy Silverado: Fade in on a devastated nameless American city, the buildings smashed, the streets littered with debris, a gray ash coating over everything, and no living creatures in evidence…. A newspaper headline proclaims “2012 Mayan Apocalypse….” How reassuring! Wait! Something stirs behind a heap of rubble… it cracks open… and out drives a plucky American male lumpen “worker” dude behind the wheel of a gleaming giant pickup truck. He is soon joined by other men and their trucks, all of them blithely unfazed by the end-of-the-world. (Watch it here).

A curious scenario. What’s the take away? I wondered, of course, where these plucky fellows would look for their next fill-up in the devastated landscape. Surely the service stations would miss the next scheduled fuel truck delivery. Are American men not expected to think beyond the immediate moment they are in? Are they on an intellectual level with lemurs and Holstein steers?

The Superbowl pageant is a window into the condition of American manhood, and the view is pretty pathetic. It’s a picture of men who feel so weak, insecure, and fearful that they have to compensate with fantasies of limitless destructive power. Ads for several new movies and (I think) video games followed the Silverado apocalypse romp. There were unifying themes throughout. All depicted the problems of life as 1) coming from outside our own society (or world); 2) in the form of aliens who wield mystifying technological destructive power; and 3) leaving a few human remnants on a smoldering landscape after a cosmic showdown.

These onslaughts from elsewhere in the universe always end with superior American guile and the latest technology defeating the purblind invaders. The aliens are vanquished by Apple computers, Air Force stunt pilots, and a little extra help from God Almighty, who is surely on our side. From these realms of engineered grandiosity, we slip in and out of the grinding ground game in Lucas Oil stadium in Indianapolis, another pseudo-military operation loaded with acronyms and jargon intended to confer an illusion of control and competence.

The reality out there in “flyover” land is an audience of diabetic fat men in clownish loungewear slouched on sofas in foreclosed houses enjoying stupendous portions of cheesy and lard-laden foodstuffs between cigarettes and beers. They have a lot to worry about and they have no idea how they might overcome their financial, familial, and medical problems. The real onslaughts besetting the nation in realms such as banking fraud, money in politics, peak oil, climate uncertainty, and economic contraction are at once too complex for the diabetic fat men to comprehend, and grossly misreported in the public arena, were Cable TV and newspapers work the levers of propaganda for one client or another.

Then there was the grotesque half-time extravaganza featuring Madonna, which was a weird parallel commentary on the state of American womanhood. Pretending to be ageless and indomitable, the old trooper performed a variety of standing crotch-locks on her Praetorian guard of hoofers and then stumbled more than once on the ridiculous bleacher stage-set that looked as if was designed to trip the performers up.

Message to American women: be sluts as long as you possibly can because there is nothing else for you in this culture. I couldn’t help thinking that American chanteuses of yesteryear – say, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Carole King – sang about adult problems and emotions with a greater thematic range, and would never have subjected themselves to such a display of pitiful narcissism. (Did anyone notice that Madonna’s corps de ballet all wore her monogram on their loincloths?) America needs a prayer, all right, but I don’t think they’ll find it by calling Madonna’s name.

Meanwhile, in whatever remains of the Real World, we have a couple of things to be concerned about this week. One is the ultimatum tendered to Greece by the Lords of Euroland to make a deal or die-dog-die. Last time I checked, they had until 11 a.m. today Berlin time to reply… and nothing happened.

The other matter is the pending possible robo-signing settlement with the TBTF banks, which is designed to let them off the hook for any and all future lawsuits in this matter if they pay a penny-ante fine. This latest ghastly trespass of the rule-of-law is a joint project of the Obama White House and 50 states attorneys general in an epic act of perfidy. You can read about it at Yves Smith’s excellent NAKED CAPITALISM BLOG.

Your country is being stolen from you. I hope you are getting ready to re-occupy it with your bodies and minds. Don’t plan on giant magical robots flying to your rescue.

   

  

By David Brin

Russ Daggatt’s latest missive discusses whether the Stimulus Bill has had good effects.  His analysis is well worth perusing… and spreading the link.

My own take on things is more abstract. So let’s step back and examine how Democrats and Republicans have become identified with two quite opposite economic theories. We’ll start with the Republicans, who still clasp fealty to Supply Side Economics (SSE), a theory once labeled “voodoo” by the elder George Bush, but now mainstream conservative catechism for three decades.

A PRIMER ON SUPPLY SIDE VS DEMAND SIDE ECONOMICS

Supply Side holds that you best stimulate economic activity by Increasing the net wealth possessed by society’s top echelons — people and groups who have no urgent material needs.  Instead of spending it on direct “demand” purchases, these wealth-owners will invest any marginal wealth-gain (say from tax cuts) on things that increase “supply” — factories, new businesses, innovative goods and services.  Thus the name Supply-Side.  

Interestingly, the most famous proponent of this approach was Karl Marx, who maintained that the owner-capitalist class propels industrial development by re-investing profits in plants and equipment, thus building up society’s capital stock and the means of production. SSE is, in that respect, an entirely Marxist theory.

Of course, Marx then looked farther ahead.  He hypothesized an eventual “completion” of this capital-formation process, a final phase when all the factories are finished – an image we now find ludicrous, since productive capacity must be updated at an accelerating pace. (Hence there will always be a need for capitalists.)  Still, it seems kind of sad that SSE supporters won’t ever acknowledge this fundamental root of their theory. They do not study their ideological forebear. Nor do they try, as Marx did, to extrapolate where their prescription may eventually lead.

But let’s examine the key SSE predictions. (All theories should make confident predictions that are clearcut and testable.) For thirty years we have heard Supply Side zealots forecast that reducing taxes on the rich will:

1) result in direct investment of the released wealth into “supply” capacity for producing innovative goods and services.

2) stimulate so much new economic activity that even lower tax rates will rake in enough new revenue to erase any deficit caused by reducing taxes on the rich.

3) eliminate government debt, resolving any apparent conflict between reducing revenue and fiscal responsibility.

EFFECTS UPON POLICY

This lengthy definition is needed understand why a credibility deficit now burdens the Republican Coalition.  All through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, the mantra was:

• If the federal budget is in deficit, cut taxes on the rich, in order to repair that deficit.
• If the federal budget is in surplus, cut taxes on the rich, because it’s their money, not the government’s, and there will henceforth be no rainy days.
• In times of peace, cut taxes on the rich,because government has lower priority in peacetime.
• In times of war, cut taxes on the rich, because… well, this one never made sense even by conservative logic. Indeed, this was the first time in US history that the clade of uber-wealth demanded ever-increasing state largesse even while the nation was under deadly threat.
• In any event, we must admit that the core demand of SSE believers has been utterly consistent. Reducing taxes on the uber-wealthy is good for America, across all circumstances, under all conditions and without limit.

TESTING SUPPLY SIDE THEORY

For three decades, SSE proponents told skeptics “just watch and see what will happen!”  (Whenever top tax rates were cut.)  Okay, we’ve watched. And absolutely every large-scale forecast made by promoters of Supply Side Economics failed – diametrically – without major exception. 

The uber-rich did not take their tax-break largesse and invest it in innovative/productive equipment.  They poured it into either passive investments — what Adam Smith derided as “rent-seeking” — or else risky financial instruments and asset bubbles.  Above all, the direct forecast that reduced revenues would erase federal deficits went directly opposite to observed fact.

TESTING THE OPPOSING THEORY

The one period over which deficits decisively vanished came right after Bill Clinton got moderate increases in taxation on the rich, in 1993, followed by stringent pay-as-you-go budgetary management. What we saw then was a combination of budget balancing, strong economic activity and revenue-based debt reduction.

So now let’s examine the competitive theory - Demand Side Economics (DSE)… also called modified-Keynsianism.

Named for long-ago FDR advisor John Maynard Keynes, this theory holds that economic activity is driven by demand for goods and services. Moreover, money in the hands of the middle and lower classes has greater inherent VELOCITY — meaning that a given dollar will be spent and then re-spent more often, if the middle class is passing it around with sequential purchases, than if it is stockpiled in a rich person’s portfolio.

(Mind you, by this theory, tax cuts for the rich might actually make sense when rapid inflation in an overheated economy calls for decreased monetary velocity!  I never said that such cuts are NEVER called for. Indeed, JFK’s tax cuts did achieve all of its intended goals.)

Under Keynsian or Demand-Side theory, the government should spend heavily, even deep into debt, when the nation is in recession, in order to get high-velocity economic activity going again.  Hence the recent surge in stimulus activity, in the first year of the Obama administration (see Daggatt’s article)… in sharp contrast to the equal-scale “stimulus” measures taken in the last year of George W. Bush’s term, most of which went to shoring up the positions of those at the top of the social-economic order.

Now, to a person who genuinely despises all deficit spending, both SSE and DSE methods may seem horrific.  Both claim to use deficits and state-largesse to stimulate the economy, under a notion that economic activity will thereupon surge ahead and resulting revenues will later erase the incurred debt.  Only there are some truly major differences.

1) Demand-Side (Keynsian) deficit spending goes to where each dollar will have high velocity impact, as their theory predicts. In contrast, Supply Side largesse for the rich definitely did NOT go into predicted capital formation. (Marx was wrong.) It simply made the rich richer.

2) Completely aside from macro-economic effects, the beneficiaries of Demand Side largesse – the poor and middle class – may have some actual direct need. Fulfilling that need (if done well) may result in creation of either more-skilled workers or more small businesses. In contrast, it is hard to see how Supply Side sends the money to a place (the rich) where a direct need merits government intervention.

3)  Supply Side is a monotone.  “Give money to the rich under ALL circumstances, at all times and conditions, no matter what.”

In contrast, Keynsians have proved that their policy is adaptable and variable, un-dogmatic and contingent upon circumstance.  They spend lavishly in order to get out of recession, because that is what Keynsians do. (Right-wing rants and rails against the current governing party acting consistently with its own economic theory is simply hypocritical.  You had your turn, now it is theirs.)

But the 1990s prove that Democrats have credibility for being situationally flexible.  When a recession ends, they spend more cautiously, remove the largesse, and start building up savings. In fact, had Bush continued the Clintonian policy of debt buy-down in good times, a considerable reserve fund would have been available to help us ride out the present crisis.

4) The experts -  professionals who have actually spent their lives studying this difficult field – generally despise Supply Side Economics. That may seem a good thing from the perspective of those who increasingly call expertise a disqualifying trait. From contempt for the Civil Service and the US Officer Corps to distrust of universities and the climate experts who have achieved miracles in weather forecasting, it’s become clear that one side in our tragic, debilitating “culture war” does not want to hear the professionals on any matter, least of all economics.

5) In fact the situation is not entirely black and white! Keynsianism has had its failures. Economics is a dismal “science” and Demand-Side has many problems dealing with a complex economy.  Furthermore, pre-Clintonian Democrats sometimes acted as if the law of gravity did not apply. That potential always lurks on the left (witness Greece, today.) Moreover, Democrats did play some (lesser) role in the unleashing of our recent Asset Bubble.

Nevertheless, Keynsianism has a long, eighty-year record of being right in the most general sense.

Government should outspend its revenues in recession, directing high-velocity stimulus toward the middle class.  Then, in good times, it should use adequate revenues to build up reserves.  The Pharoahs knew this. It is even in the Biblical story of Joseph.  It is common sense.

What does not make sense is to hold fast to an alternative “voodoo” theory – Supply Side Economics – that has always and universally failed in every major prediction, after being tried repeatedly for three decades.

A theory that is quasi-Marxist, in that it openly aims to propel the rise of an all-powerful aristocracy of wealth in exactly the manner that Marx prophesied, taking us toward the sort of class divisions that had old Karl chortling and rubbing his hands, murmuring “Yessss!”

(David Brin is a scientist and best-selling author. His future-oriented novels include Earth and Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. The Postman inspired a film by Kevin Costner. Brin is also a leading commentator on technological trends. His non-fiction book, The Transparent Society, explores issues of privacy and accountability. This column was originally posted at his blog, Contrary Brin.)

(Tom Toles brilliant illustration of GOP hypocricy ©2004 The Washington Post.)

• Will Romney pull in more than 50% of the vote? In 2008 he won with 51%; less than that would be disappointing,
• Will second place go to Ron Paul? He’s been working Nevada hard for months, and this state – built on “guns, gold and gambling” – could be one of the most receptive to his unusual message.

We’ll keep you updated with numbers as results come in. With each locale setting its own time, caucuses have been held from early morning to later this evening, so results will be trickling in for a while.

UPDATE 9:40 PST: Another reminder about Clark County, where 62% of Nevada Republicans live. We’re still seeing just 3% of precincts reporting, but – their votes total to almost 2500. When the rest of Vegas and Clark County weigh in, you can expect Romney’s percentage to rise.

Nate Silver @fivethirtyeight tweets: “Based on actual results so far + Clark County exit poll, final NV results would be Mitt 53, Newt 20, Paul 18, Santorum 9.” In the meantime, we’re stuck at 43% of precincts, and it’s Saturday night. I’ll come back later and update these numbers once the final tally comes in.

• Romney: 42.5% | 6,858
• Gingrich: 26.2% | 4,228
• Paul: 18.2% | 2,966
• Santorum: 13.0% | 1,811

UPDATE 9:15 PST: Gingrich gave a press conference, rather than a prepared speech as is traditional, post-election; that may have been a mistake.

He vowed to keep fighting right through the convention, but in doing so he may have reshaped the narrative into “Newt’s too mean and angry to win it.” @jimantle tweets: “This press conference is a much bigger disaster for Newt than his showing in the Nevada caucuses.”

Markos Moulitsas adds, “Newt’s press conference was the Dean Scream of 2012.” And @Hesiod2k11 tweets: “Are we sure this Newt press conference isn’t an SNL skit?”

Meanwhile,  PublicPolicyPolling  notes that “Gingrich‘s net favorability with Colorado Republicans has fallen by 33 points in the last 2 months”.

Watch the full presser here:

-> Next page: What’s next? Has Mitt won this thing, or is he still deep in Santorum?

UPDATE 9:00 PST: I’m still amazed at the tiny numbers here. Many in the media are trumpeting this as a “major victory” for Romney, but hell, hardly anybody showed up. Compare: In Florida, Rick Perry polled 6,768 votes after dropping out of the race. That was good for 0.4% of the vote. Here, it’s got Romney a “major victory”.

Now with 43% of precincts reporting.

And still just 3% reporting from Clark County, home of Las Vegas and the vast majority of this state’s voters.

• Romney: 42.5% | 6,858
• Gingrich: 26.2% | 4,228
• Paul: 18.2% | 2,966
• Santorum: 13.0% | 1,811

UPDATE 8:30 PST: Here come some numbers at last. Now at 38% of precincts reporting.

Reminder: We still haven’t gotten any numbers in from Clark County, home of Las Vegas and the vast majority of this state’s voters. Romney did well here last time, and exit polls show him winning an amazing 69% this time, so we could yet see his number push back over the 50% mark.

• Romney: 42.7% | 6,019
• Gingrich: 26.3% | 3,699
• Paul: 18.1% | 2,551
• Santorum: 12.9% | 2,102

UPDATE 8:15 PST: More enthusiasm gap from the exit poll numbers: not only is overall turnout down, but Latino participation is down (from 8% in 2008 to 5%) and youth participation is down (from 11% to 8% – also, Paul beat Romney among under-29s!). Neither number bodes well for the GOP in November, or the future.

One more: in 2008, 80% of GOP Nevada caucus voters were white. This year: 90%.

blogbat tweets:

UPDATE 7:45 PST: This will be disappointing for Ron Paul if he doesn’t crack second. Last time around he bumped John McCain into third place (which tells you how much the Nevada caucuses OUGHT to matter, but that’s not going to stop the pundits from blathering on about Romney’s “two wins in a row”). But if Paul can’t do better in this hotbed of Libertarian, don’t-tread-on-me conservatism, he’s gonna have a hard time resonating anywhere else.

If these numbers hold up, we may once again see a night that disappoints everyone… Now with 16.6% reporting:

• Romney: 38.9% | 3,642
• Gingrich: 27.5% | 2,573
• Paul: 19.8% | 1,810
• Santorum: 14.4% | 1,347

UPDATE 7:25 PST: In 2008, only 44,000 GOP voters showed up at the caucuses. It looks like this year only 35,000 will bother, out of more than 400,000 eligible. Can we say “enthusiasm gap”?

Counting is going slowly, but starting to trickle in after a long gap. With 14.8% reporting:

• Romney: 42.5% | 3,569
• Gingrich: 24.5% | 2,059
• Paul: 19.8% | 1,663
• Santorum: 13.2% | 1,112

UPDATE 7:00 PST: The biggest surprise so far tonight has been how god-awful slow the GOP has been at counting and releasing votes. This is not going to endear them to Ron Paul supporters, many of who are convinced the GOP establishment is in a conspiracy to keep his numbers small.

UPDATE 6:30 PST: With the small numbers expected tonight (last time around it was just about 44,000 voters) we can expect some see-sawing as the night goes on, particularly between Gingrich and Paul for second place. As of the moment, with 8% of precincts in, we’ve got:

• Romney: 40.6% | 1,956
• Gingrich: 24.9% | 1,201
• Paul: 21.6% | 1,040
• Santorum: 12.9% | 620

Have you ever had to turn away millions of dollars? It sounds crazy, but here’s why the Sierra Club chose to do exactly that.

In 2010, soon after I became the organization’s executive director, I learned that beginning in 2007 the Sierra Club had received more than $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries of Chesapeake Energy, one of the country’s largest natural gas companies. At the same time I learned about the donation, we at the Club were also hearing from scientists and from local Club chapters about the risks that natural gas drilling posed to our air, water, climate, and people in their communities. We cannot accept money from an industry we need to change. Very quickly, the board of directors, with my strong encouragement, cut off these donations and rewrote our gift acceptance policy. Let me tell you how it came about.

In the fall of 2005, Sierra Club staff and volunteer leaders agreed to make the enormous challenge of climate disruption the Club’s highest priority. By that time, we had already begun to have great success with our Beyond Coal campaign, which had started in 2002, and which had already stopped the construction of several dozen new coal-fired power plants.

How bad is the revolving door between Monsanto and government? This handy chart (from geke.us) pretty much sums it up.

Monsanto has been particularly talented at vacuuming up well connected ex-Congressmen, Senators and other government officials to go back and lobby the government, using their connections for the company’s benefit. And it also has been great at placing its own people into the agencies that are supposed to be regulating it.

One of the worst examples isn’t even on the chart - Michael R Taylor:

• Taylor started off as a partner at the law firm that represented Monsanto on GBH issues (artificial growth hormones that make cows give more milk).
• Then, as the FDA’s deputy commissioner for policy, he wrote the FDA’s rBGH labelling guidelines – the ones that insisted there was no difference between rGBH and regular milk.
• He also deleted references to problems with GMO foods, over the objection of staff scientists.
• Then he spent a few years working directly for Monsanto.
• And now? Barak Obama brought him back to the FDA to oversee Monsanto again, as his food safety issues czar!

(Diagram Copyright 2011 GEKE.US)

Delta advocates believe the construction of the peripheral canal would result in the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species, from increased water exports out of the estuary.

“Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar – met here in Sacramento with those in my administration who are working to complete the Bay Delta Conservation Plan,” proclaimed Brown. “Together we agreed that by this summer we should have the basic elements of the project we need to build.”

“This is something my father worked on and then I worked on – decades ago. We know more now and are committed to the dual goals of restoring the Delta ecosystem and ensuring a reliable water supply,” he said.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, took issue with his repetition of the canard about how the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) project “will ensure water for 25 million Californians and for millions of acres of farmland as well as a hundred thousand acres of new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife.”

“Ensure water for 25 million Californians to do what?” she asked. “Flush their toilets? Water their lawns? Grow more permanent crops or housing developments in the desert? We don’t want anyone to go thirsty. But the issue here is not thirst. It is the preservation of water-wasting lifestyles that California can’t sustain.”

Barrigan-Parrilla also criticized Brown for greenwashing the destruction of the Delta when he touted the so-called “habitat restoration” planned for the Delta under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

“And by the way, Governor, how many thousands of acres of Delta farmland are you prepared to take out of production to create new habitat for which there won’t be enough water for anyway? After all a new pipe will not make more water for the system,” said Barrigan-Parrilla.

Ironically, the BDCP aims to take out of production some of the most fertile agricultural land on the planet – in order to deliver more water to subsidized corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley that are farming selenium-laced, drainage-impaired land, soil that should have never been irrigated!

Shock therapy on the Delta

In the same “Delta Flows” newsletter, Barrigan-Parrilla made a great comparison between a pattern revealed by independent journalist Naomi Klein in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and state-federal plans to build the canal.

“Journalist Naomi Klein traces a pattern in which economic ‘shock therapy’ is used to gain control for large-scale corporate enterprises when the public is disoriented by wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters,” said Barrigan-Parrilla. “Klein’s book reads like a catalog of situations in which corporate interests have waited in the wings and set the stage to take advantage of some kind of disaster.”

In her book, Klein states, “I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, ‘disaster capitalism.’”

For the past five years, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has been setting the stage for southern Central Valley agribusiness to profit from a predicted disaster in the Delta, according to Barrigan-Parrilla.

“Nothing would serve their purposes so well as a flood or seismic event that gave them a clean slate in the Delta. And if they can’t have the disaster itself, threatening the public with disaster can work almost as well,” she stated.

Barrigan-Parrilla noted that the PPIC” is at it again, “cherry-picking data and misrepresenting facts” to support a major transformation of the Delta benefitting people who want water somewhere else.

“As usual, their latest report, ‘Transitions for the Delta Economy,’ is presented as an academic project, funded by The Watershed Science Center at UC Davis. But there’s some laundering going on here,” she revealed. “Page 62 of the report explains that the study was paid for by the Delta Solutions program funders, which once again includes the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.” (See: Bechtel family wades into California’s water wars)

“So it seems this time rather than checks going directly to PPIC from these pro-peripheral canal foundations, checks floated through the University and then to PPIC. Restore the Delta believes this is a worsening scenario because the average person will simply believe that the study was financed by an unbiased educational institution without a hidden agenda. And if there is nothing to hide, then why aren’t the funders on the cover?” Barrigan-Parrilla concluded.

There’s a good analysis of the “sloppy economics” behind the PPIC report here, and an analysis of the “sloppy science,” here.

Shock therapy on the ocean

It is no coincidence that the Resources Legacy Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, two of the three funders of the PPIC report promoting the construction of the peripheral canal, are also funding Arnold Schwarzenegger’s privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. The Brown administration, rather than doing the right thing, has forged ahead not only with Schwarzenegger’s BDCP process, but with his MLPA Initiative also. (See: Marine Protection: Jerry Brown has a Chance to Fix Arnold’s Mess.)

The initiative is a corrupt process, overseen by a big oil lobbyist, marina developer, coastal real estate executive, agribusiness hack and other corporate operatives with many conflicts of interest, that directly parallels the equally corrupt and corporate-controlled Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

The MLPA Initiative creates so-called “marine protected areas,” supported by Safeway Stores, Walmart and the Western States Petroleum Association, that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wave and wind energy projects and all other human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering.

In one of the most overt conflicts of interest in California history, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the “august body” that designed the “marine protected areas” that went into effect on the Southern California Coast on January 1. Reheis-Boyd, a big oil industry lobbyist advocating for new offshore drilling off the California coast, the Keystone XL pipeline and the gutting of environmental laws, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, as well as “serving” on the North Central Coast and North Coast Task Forces. (See: Why Is A Big Oil Lobbyist In Charge Of California’s Marine Protection Program?)

The Packard Foundation and four other “non-profits” donated a total of $20 million to fund the MLPA Initiative. The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation received the funds from these foundations to implement the unpopular MLPA process. (See: Tracing the big money behind Cali’s questionable marine protection program.)

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation contributed $8.2 million to fund the MLPA process. Julie E. Packard, the executive director and founder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the foundation.

The Laguna Beach-based Marisla Foundation, founded by Getty Oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart, gave $3 million over several years. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation donated $7.4 million, the Keith Campbell Foundation contributed $1.2 million and the Annenberg Foundation donated $200,000.

All of this money was dumped into the Resources Legacy Foundation to kick recreational anglers, commercial fishermen and seaweed gatherers, among the most vocal advocates of fishery restoration and true environmental protection and the most fervent opponents of the peripheral canal, off the water in a disgusting case of corporate greenwashing.

In both the BDCP and MLPA Initiative fiascos, corporate interests have waited in the wings and set the stage to take advantage of some kind of disaster, either real or imagined, as Naomi Klein so eloquently pointed out in her book. In the BDCP, the alleged impending “disaster” is an earthquake or a catastrophic drought.

In the MLPA Initiative, the looming “disaster” is alleged “overfishing” by sustainable hook-and-line recreational and commercial fishermen, even though a peer reviewed study by Science magazine concluded that the California Current ecosystem, the most heavily regulated fishery on the entire planet, had the least exploited and healthiest fishery and marine ecosystem of any region in the world studied.

Meanwhile, the “marine protected areas” fail to protect California marine waters from the most pressing problems they face – increased pollution, ocean industrialization, military testing and massive water exports out of the Bay-Delta Estuary, an estuary that dozens and dozens of anadromous and marine fish species depend on for their survival.

If you like the “Shock Doctrine,” you’ll definitely like the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) and the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative corporate greenwashing processes!

Dan Bacher is the Editor of the Fish Sniffer online and print magazine. He blogs at Sacramento for Democracy, Alternet and DailyKos.

Why should Mitt Romney and the fabled “one-percent”  pay only a 15% marginal tax on investment income … half the rate charged to a dentist or auto mechanic on wages earned from work?  This was not the case until recent Republican Congresses slashed taxes on passive, unearned dividends and capital gains.

The rationale for that immense tax cut for (mostly) rich investors was simple and alluring – that super-low rates would entice more of the rich to invest in companies within the U.S., helping them to increase their productive capacity and hire more workers. Moreover, the resulting boom in economic activity would then result in so much new tax revenue, even at low rates, that deficits would disappear.

Let’s put this in context with a term you may have heard. “Supply side” economic theory maintained that this flow of investment capital would pump up the factory end of things, increasing the supply of goods and services, offering them cheaper, thus stimulating demand.

In contrast, the standard Keynsian “demand side” model was to fight recession by ensuring that poor and middle class folks had enough cash (“high-velocity” money) in their pockets to buy – or “demand” – goods and services. Whereupon producers would be drawn into greater production.

For a more detailed description of the differences between these two economic models, see my earlier missive  A Primer on Supply-Side vs Demand-Side Economics. (It really is one of the top issues of our day and an informed citizen should know about it.) Here in this place, I’ll try to be brief.

Once upon a time…

Who was right? Blatantly, the Keynsian approach worked in the 1940s, when massive government spending on WWII resulted in a boom that ended the Great Depression.  A boom that then continued for 30 years, till Vietnam crushed it against a wall. Throughout that period, high tax rates and stimulative spending seemed to work, whenever the economy needed a little help. Moreover, during that era, a very flat social structure – (CEOs earned only a few times what factory workers did) – combined with the most rapid growth of the middle class and the most vibrant era of startup capitalism in human history.

That does not make Keynsianism perfect! Critics like Friedrich Hayek, have indeed exposed some faults and blunders that later Keynsians, like Paul Krugman, openly admit and have striven to correct. Still, the Demand Side approach can point to many clearcut successes.

In particular, it is plain that during recessions, when economic activity lags and deflation looms, what you want is “high velocity” money in circulation – money that will pass from buyer to seller and then to another seller and so on.  Not money that just sits.

Does Supply Side have a similar track record? Not even remotely.  Not even once. Simple charts – and hard conclusions from the Congressional Research Service - show that the Supply Side assertion was… and is… utter mythology.  None of its predicted effects ever happened.  And let me reiterate.  Not ever, even once.

Specifically, cuts in tax rates for dividends and capital gains have never had any long-term effects upon capital investment, since records were kept in the United States.  (See this cogent article putting the myth to rest, once and for all. Also my article: A Primer on Supply-Side vs. Demand-Side Economics.)

-> Next page: Trading your cow for their magic beans

This should be fun. Julianne Moore playing… Sarah Palin? I get sparkles…

It’s Game Change from HBO films, and the trailer has just been released.

Based on the book by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 Presidential race, this should spice up the election season just as the primaries are winding down.

Ed Harris also looks… um… great… as John McCain. Word is that Woody Harrelson could steal the film in his role as campaign hand Steve Schmidt… but I’m putting my money on Moore.

“We have to win this thing. I so don’t wanna go back to Alaska…”

Coming March 20 to HBO…

(See the Game Change page at IMDB, or the official HBO page for more…)