Occupations of the Top 0.1% in the USA
12 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, labour economics, politics - USA
Crooked @HillaryClinton far more honest than @realDonaldTrump @BernieSanders
09 Aug 2016 1 Comment
in economics of media and culture, politics - USA
@NZGreens very sane compared to @DrJillStein @GreenPartyUS
08 Aug 2016 1 Comment
in defence economics, laws of war, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: 2016 presidential elections, Left-wing hypocrisy, Middle-East politics, peace movements, Syrian Civil War, useful idiots
Jill Stein managed to denounce American imperialism without mentioning the invasion of the Crimea and Russian intervention in the Syrian Civil War to prop up the old regime.
Stein is what Orwell called a renegade liberal. Progressives hunt the world for dictators to worship. As George Orwell said in 1941
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.
@BERNIESANDERS SOLD OUT #feeltheburn
07 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, libertarianism, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election
Six Reasons Why the Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished
05 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, politics - USA Tags: taxation of investment
Do I #FeeltheJohnson?
05 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in libertarianism, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election
Johnson/Weld 2016 You In?
04 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election
The ‘hollowing’ of the American middle class
04 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, labour economics, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: child poverty, family poverty, technology diffusion, The Great Enrichment
The present rate of technology adoption is nearly a vertical line —@blackrock https://t.co/3oS3YAI4ld—
Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 22, 2016
#feelthe bernie debunked by #MiltonFriedman
31 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential elections
Political leanings of American professors @robhosking
29 Jul 2016 2 Comments
in economics of education, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: academic bias
Sociologists are rather level-headed compared to that hotbed of political bias, which is American history professors. Hardly any of them see themselves as a Republican. I must take back a few nasty things I said about political bias and sociologists.
Source: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS OF AMERICAN PROFESSORS Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, Working Paper, September 24, 2007
Film review: All the Presidents Men (1976)
28 Jul 2016 2 Comments
in movies, politics - USA Tags: Watergate scandal
This movie was on late-night TV. I have not seen it before so I thought I give it a look.
There are a number of big films from that era that I missed because I was too young when they are first released; later on I always ended up borrowing something else at the video shop. It helps to be an American political junkie because you understand much better who are number of the people are.
The reviews of the time describe it as spellbinding. For me, I found it rather chaotic where these two junior reporters splashing around in the dark, often relying on the fact that they knew someone who is the boyfriend or girlfriend of somebody junior in the organisation they are interested in. How a journalist of 9 months experience acquired Deep Throat as their source is not explained well. If it was, it was quick and I missed it.
The film starts with a simple report of the arrest of 5 burglars who broke into the Democratic National party headquarters in early 1972.
For all the CIA training of those involved, they never heard of hiding in plain sight. They immediately attracted suspicion because of the big end of town lawyers representing some burglars including one who gave his occupation as a retired CIA officer. The 5 burglars should have accepted court-appointed lawyers especially as their lawyers turned up despite their not making any phone calls to ask for an independent lawyer.
There is a tremendous amount of grunt work in the film. Countless cold phone calls and even going to the Library of Congress to check every book the White House asked for by going through thousands and thousands of paper request cards manually themselves.
Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) was highly competitive and a little more experienced than his partner Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), who was very ambitious and a dog for details.
The film is complicated with the step-by-step way in which they linked the burglars back to high people in the White House by the time in which the Republican bench and nominated Nixon. Most of the time they simply ask questions of people who answered even though they had no reason to do so.
Late in the movie one of the editors expressed scepticism about the whole conspirac theory because he could not work out why the Republicans would do it.
George McGovern, who was a far left candidate, was self-destructing before their eyes around the time of the burglary. 1/3rd of Democrats could not bring themselves to vote for him; Nixon won by a landslide. I believe it is on tape that Nixon first found out about the burglary, he asked who was the arsehole who authorise that.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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