[Repost] GAO Audits Fed

(Via Bill Maxwell)

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=BFA0CBEC-CCE1-4520-8899-122C8B719105

Topic List

This is mainly for administrative purposes, which I will be including in future posts at the bottom to help me remember, but the list of topics I want to do has grown so large I don't want to keep putting it off.

Neofederalism: Restrengthening the 10th amendment as an argument FOR liberalism
Neofederalism: the Oasis effect and who should rule?
Electing the Attorney General
Uniting Left and Right: Bitcoin
Why exactly does our DHS infrastructure need to be so secret? Who does that really serve?
The price of apathy
Corporations aren't actually evil vampires. They're just vampires. Its the Renfields that are the problem
How to exploit the apathetic
How to exploit the willing enablers of the Renfields
To Big to Fail: Entropy in Human Institutions past a certain size
The economy of scale vs the smaller element
The WTO: How it should be reformed or abolished
The UN: Dissolve the Security Council or Dissolve the UN

Repost from Daily Kos

They are becoming more sophisticated

Occupy wall street is becoming more sophisticated. The attempts to censor and oppress them are becoming more obvious. If the Tea Party REALLY cared about BOTH small government and controlling corporations they'd be all over this. If the news REALLY cared about 'the people' they'd cover #OccupyWallStreet in the hundreds to thousands when they covered Tea Party Rallies in the fifties.

The left is already aware that corporations own America. Some independents care. And as the Republicans have shown....if a sufficiently sized majority or even minority is willing to stand up and say, "NO!" then they cannot be stopped in this country. The wheels that make governance impossible without the will of a supra majority works both ways.

The false church of centrism combined with the fact that the rising generation is aware that their elders have been bought and paid for by Clinton Democrats and Corporate Democrats cannot hold the rank in file in check forever.

And all the pretty speeches followed by capitulative action by Obama cannot change that.

[Cons]The Founding Fathers

So the question is, how much should we take them as allegory and how much should we take them as historical persons?

I know that seems like it should be obvious, but it isn't.

You see as historical persons, they were flawed but brilliant men who lived in the context of their particular time frame. Conversely, as allegorical figures they are the architects that created the constitution that serves as the symbol of the social construct of our times. Having a written constitution provides stability to our system of governance, but we as a society decide how much of the written version we're going to accept vs how much of a 'living' document it might be.

Literalists interpret the constitution by the intent of the founding fathers and by the strict wording as it was meant a the time. But the problem is, that by restricting it to this, you can argue that you delegitimize it. Every flaw in a founding father (such as slave ownership) becomes another potential for angle of attack not just on a good but flawed man, but on the document that they helped create.

To white anglo saxon male, it is unfortunate that slavery happened, and it was eventually rectified with amendments to the constitution and (in the view of most) the civil rights acts passed in the 1960's. To someone of a different skin color, female or such, its not that simple. An amendment doesn't change the fact that the national story is SOMEONE ELSE's story. If the founding fathers are allegorical, then the document is living but if it is literal, then so too are the details of their stories. It is very hard to play down one without playing down the other.

I argue that the allegorical interpretation has its strengths. But then again, I'm in favor of having a constitutional convention every 50 years or so as a way of reconnecting people with the constitution. I understand why people are afraid of this, especially given our political difficulties now, but sometimes it is the hard choices that end up being the best ones.

[Science] The Tobacco Test

OK, for those of you out there who deny AGW, who are agnostic about AGW, or who have friends who are AGW deniers, yet who 'love' science, here's a challenge.

Name for me an issue in which you had a vested corporate interest on one side promoting one view point and the majority of the scientific community on the other, in which the majority of the scientific community proved to be wrong?

AGW deniers that 'love' science can find plenty of examples of mainstream science getting it wrong, because getting it wrong is part of science.

But can you find where corporations are on one side, and science on the other, in which science got it wrong?

I know I can find plenty where science was right. Specifically, I'm thinking of Tobacco.

But let's go farther:

Can you find such an example in the western world? In the last 50 years?

I'm willing to bet you can't.

Update: Bonus points if you can find one where Mainstream science has had the opinion for 40 or so+ years.

Qualifier: To be 'wrong' mainstream science has to actually change its opinion, like it did with Ether.

6 Killer Apps

Civilziation: "It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tryranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization- and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. Whien Civilization reigns in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people." - Winston Churchill 1938



What happens then to society where civilians no longer rule, but vampires, soulless blood sucking entities that cannot die, that have no morality but exist only for their own prof-ligation and profit, and that have by process of parasitic invasion co-opted the wealth of the masses into vast zombie wealth funds that only they control, thus enthralling the population into considering the welfare of Wall Street tantamount to their own? More over, what then will happen to a society when its greatest warriors, and those most resistant to change or the usurpation of our traditions have instead been beguiled into thinking that up is down and black is white and that the market is 'free' and that the very levers of society by which one can cage and control such monsters, IE government, is inherently evil unto itself?

It falls.

That's what happens. The question is, what rises in its place? And given the preponderance of modern technology it won't be pretty. Given the inevitable advances to come in genetics, cybernetics, pharmaceuticals, memetics, and robotics, and it is frightening beyond imagining. One can hope that our society's warriors will shake off their enslavement before it is too late, but I'm not holding my breath. A few have, but not enough.

Note: It may seem by praising conservatives I'm some how bashing Liberals. I'm not. Liberals are our explorers and wondermakers are those who push the boundaries that keep our society from becoming static ossified pieces of crap. Conservatives usually are on the wrong side of history, especially in regards to social change, but it was liberals that did propose the idea of Eugenics at the turn of the century. SOMETIMES resistance to change is a good thing. SOMETIMES that person who stands up and says, "Wait a minute maybe we should think about this..." is a good thing.

The person who tells you 'no' is worth their weight in gold.

But not when they're no longer even grounded in reality.