Romney’s missing hard drives raise questions over government records

Romney’s missing hard drives raise questions over government records

This is a near-automatic post from other sites to my Blogger account. I intend to use this facility for fast-breaking news.

Social Science Palooka

David Brooks seems sneaky. He writes like a rational human being, but always throws in a "whammy" that tends to discredit the assumed thrust of his article. This is what some people call "polemics."

His facile conclusions never fail to disappoint. This December 7, 2010 column in the New York Times is no exception.

Social Science Palooza

Ask any Republican or other member of the right wing what he thinks about the social sciences. You will receive either a blank stare, or a sneer. So, when David Brooks wrote an article about the social sciences, I wondered why.

The first thing I learned is that he finds such studies "bizarrely interesting." Which indicates to me, a social scientist, that he finds it difficult to grasp the scientific methods used to conduct these studies. Results based on the Scientific Method are not bizarre.

When I review social science studies, I always verify the underlying data before I apply it to new information. It doesn't take long. Really. It's a non-starter when the person writing the article quotes himself or the organization who paid him to write the article as far as maintaining objectivity.

This observation will explain what I mean. "For an article in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Mark Duggan, Randi Hjalmarsson and Brian Jacob investigated whether gun shows increase crime rates. They identified 3,400 gun shows in Texas and California and looked at crime rates for the areas around the shows for the following month. They found no relationship between gun shows and crime in either state."

Hypothesis: Gun shows increase crime rates.
Underlying science: Economics and Statistics

The problem: 1. Statisticians always allow for a margin of error in their analysis. 2. Therefore, the statement that "no relationship between gun shows and crime" could not be based in fact. 3. Because there HAS to be a variation in the data, just because we are human beings and inconstant. Therefore, Brooks should have stated the margin of error. 4. And, crimes that occur around gun shows are not always violent, and can involve fraud or misrepresentation.

For example, one of my friends bought a gun at a gun show, to be delivered later. He paid his money, but the gun never came. It took research and a trip to the town where the gun dealer lived to involve the police for my friend to get his gun months later. That counts, eh?

So, when one of these rational-sounding people cannot come up with a rational explanation for normal phenomena, one must assume that they are just a few bricks shy of a load. Or perhaps just Social Science Palookas.

Millions Are on the Brink of Disaster, as Extended Unemployment Benefits Are in Doubt

Millions Are on the Brink of Disaster, as Extended Unemployment Benefits Are in Doubt
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TruthOut.org
Posted on November 26, 2010, Printed on November 26, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148982/

According to official statistics, nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed. Between 2 and 4 million of them are expected to exhaust their state unemployment insurance benefits between now and May. Historically, during times of high unemployment, Congress provides extra cash to extend the benefits. Congress has never failed to do so when unemployment is above 7.2%. Today's unemployment rate is above 9% and the lame duck session of Congress has so far failed to extend the benefits.

Congress has until November 30 to renew two federal programs to extend unemployment benefits, as David Moberg reports for Working In These Times. Last week, a bill to extend benefits for an additional three months failed to garner the two-thirds majority it needed to pass in the House. The House will probably take up the issue again this session, possibly for a one-year extension, but as Moberg notes, it's unclear how the bill will fare in the Senate. The implications are dire, as Moberg notes:

The result? Not just huge personal and familial hardships that scars the lives of young and old both economically and psychologically for years to come. But failure to renew extended benefits would also slow the recovery, raise unemployment, and deepen the fiscal crises of state and federal governments.

But Wait! There's More:

The Paycheck Fairness Act died in the Senate last week, as Denise DiStephan reports in The Nation. The bill would have updated the 1963 Equal Pay Act to close loopholes and protect employees against employer retaliation for discussing wages. All Republican senators and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson voted not to bring the bill to the floor, killing the legislation for this session of Congress. The House already passed its version of the bill in 2009 and President Barack Obama had pledged to sign it.
Economist Dean Baker talks with Laura Flanders of GritTV about quantitative easing (a.k.a. the Fed printing more money) and the draft proposal from the co-chairs of the deficit commission. Baker argues that we're facing an unemployment crisis, not a deficit crisis.
Charles Ferguson's documentary "Inside Job" is a must-see, according to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive. An examination of how Wall Street devastated the U.S. economy, the film details the reckless speculation in housing derivatives, enabled by crooked credit rating schemes, that brought the entire financial system to the brink of collapse. The film is narrated by Brad Pitt and features appearances by former Governor and anti-Wall Street corruption crusader Eliot Spitzer, financier George Soros, and Prof. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the collapse of the housing bubble.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Lindsay Beyerstein is an investigative journalist in Brooklyn, NY. Her reporting has appeared in Newsweek, Salon, Slate, In These Times and other publications. She was the recipient of a 2009 Project Censored Award.

© 2010 TruthOut.org All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148982/

Seeds--Bruce Springsteen--circa 1980

Well a great black river a man had found
So he put all his money in a hole in the ground
And sent a big steel arm drivin' down down down
Man now I live on the streets of Houston town

Packed up my wife and kids when winter came along
And we headed down south with just spit and a song
But they said "Sorry son it's gone gone gone"

Well there's men hunkered down by the railroad tracks
The Elkhorn Special blowin' my hair back
Tents pitched on the highway in the dirty moonlight
And I don't know where I'm gonna sleep tonight

Parked in the lumberyard freezin' our asses off
My kids in the back seat got a graveyard cough
Well I'm sleepin' up in front with my wife
Billy club tappin' on the windshield in the middle of the night
Says "Move along man move along"

Well big limousine long shiny and black
You don't look ahead you don't look back
How many times can you get up after you've been hit?
Well I swear if I could spare the spit
I'd lay one on your shiny chrome
And send you on your way back home
So if you're gonna leave your town where the north wind blow
To go on down where that sweet soda river flow
Well you better think twice on it Jack
You're better off buyin' a shotgun dead off the rack
You ain't gonna find nothin' down here friend
Except seeds blowin' up the highway in the south wind
Movin' on movin' on it's gone gone it's all gone