GET THE FACTS

Jim McDermott is under attack from the right. Why? Because Newt Gingrich is a scumbag weasel and Jim and the House Ethics Committee said so.

Get the facts and help Jim mount his legal defense here.

OY GEVALT

Third week of school and I'm already working 16+ hour days...

SHALOM SIMON WIESENTHAL

NYT writes:

A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life's mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal spent more than 50 years hunting Nazi war criminals, speaking out against neo-Nazism and racism, and remembering the Jewish experience as a lesson for humanity.

WORK, A GOOD PLACE TO DIE

In the edenic "realm of Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham", people choose freely whether to work and at what wage. Apparently, they also choose whether they want to die in the line of duty working, at least according to this new ILO report (careful, big PDF).

According to the latest ILO estimates for accidents and diseases, there are globally about 2.2 million work-related deaths annually, which represents about a 10% increase on the estimate given in the Introductory Report to the XVIth World Congress on Safety and Health at Work in Vienna, 2002.

China alone accounted for 477,000 of those while India chalked up 302,000. That's a lot of deaths. But even more striking perhaps is the fact that the advanced economy countries actually had more deaths than China or India as a share of the economically active population. Yes, the deadliest regions of the world to work in are the Middle East, the former Soviet countries, and Sub-Saharan Africa--which only barely beat out the advanced economy countries by one one-hundreth of a percentage point in their fatality rates.

Of course it would be convenient to blame the employers for all these deaths. But as the Oracle of neoclassical economic theory clearly instructs us, these workers freely chose these jobs with full information about the risk of death and injury and according to their risk preference (or perhaps discounting the prevailing wage rate by their disutility of dying). The beauty of ou free society is that individuals get to choose their own fates. If people chose to work in risky jobs, it must reflect their preference for these jobs and their willinginess to sacrifice themselves on the altar of Capital. Because they chose freely, it would be wrong--nay, immoral--to blame employers or to--GASP!--request compensation from them for the fate of workers choosing to seek their own destiny.

LESS BLOG, MORE BLOG

Less blog from me, more from John Schmitt.

When John isn't eating Cosi salads or telling me how to do econometrics, he resides here where he tells it like it is.

Note No Apparent Motive has been added to my discriminating blogroll.

LET THEM EAT RISK

Came across this in my work today...seems rather apropos:

Disaster-vulnerability reduction is an impure public good: when provided to one it is provided to others, but not equally provided to all. This means that in addition to the question of how much disaster-vulnerability reduction to provide, policy makers face the question of to whom it should be provided. This essay distinguishes between two broad classes of approaches to the latter question, one based on wealth, the other on rights.

By James Boyce

THE HELIO-TERRORISTS...

will never stop until we hunt down and kill every last one.

Today our satellites, tomorrow...who knows? New York, Los Angeles, Omaha?

Damn you 798!

I don't care what those liberals say, it's better to fight helio-terrorists over there than over here. Time to put some moon boots in the sand.

THEY MAKE PUPPETS

From the BBC:

Bhanwar Gopal, an artist from the Barefoot College, prepares masks for plays
and puppet shows with material from recycled World Bank reports.

"We keep getting these reports that no one reads, so we decided to put them
to some use," Mr Roy says.

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE HOUSE OF LOTT

Transitioning from vacation to back to school, so I am a little behind. Nonetheless, I couldn't let this one slip by.

Bush, last Friday, rallying spirits and assuaging fear and anger on the Gulf Coast:

We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch.

Yes, I was really worried about what would become of Trent Lott's house. That poor man has suffered so much. First he was born a priviliged, racist white man with a silver spoon up his ass. And now this. Has the Lord no mercy?

But thank g-d and George Bush we live in a society where government recognizes te priority in rebuilding Trent Lott's house. I am confident that with the Commander in Chief's steely resolve, we'll be hosting Klan rallies chez Lott in no time.

If we don't rebuild Trent Lott's house immediately and at the public's expense, the metero-terrorists have already won.

LYNCH THE FUCKERS!!!!!!

For the past three years the Bush administration has been handing out fat government contracts to its cronies and political allies via the bloated Department of Homeland Security rather than, say, instructing DHS to develop and implement emergency plans.

That much should be evident from the chaos ensuing in New Orleans and elsewhere in the Gulf Coast. Yes, it was inevitable some storm at some time would submerge New Orleans under a red tide. We can't blame the Feds for that--maybe we can blame state and local incompetence for not maintaining the levees. But the fact that no one knows what to do with the survivors--how to get them food, water, and the fuck out of there--that's a job for the Feds.

What if, rather than a flood, an entire major city's population needed to evacuate because of a chemical, biological, or radiation attack? This is, after all, the scenario the Bush administration has threatened us with since 9/11.

They have no plan. Period. And now, people are dying today because those fuckers feasted at the trough rather than do what they told the public we needed to do to make our country safe; what they told us only they and not a Democrat could do.

Getting people out of these areas and to a safe, clean place where they can get the immediate help they need is only the beginning. There is a major class issue obviously to be addressed here, but I still haven't finished my internship paper, so for now all I will say is that Bush's government has failed the people (again), and these people need our help. Help them to put their lives back on track after this travesty.

The agribusiness lobby will make sure that people have enough food while the faith lobby will ensure people have ample Bibles to cry on. Why not give where it is needed?



ACORN, founded and headquarterd in New Orleans (and whose headqaurters is now partially submerged), has established a Hurricane Recovery and Rebuilding Fund.

The money will go to help low income families devastated by this disaster get the ongoing help they need.

Put your money here.