In a recent review about the TV series Portlandia, New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot gave a great definition of what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.” She called it “the need to distinguish oneself by minute shadings and to insist, with outsized militancy, on the importance of those shadings.”
Freud’s examples were of countries and nations, but it sure fits for a lot of individuals too.
My initial support for the war [in Iraq] was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility. We ‘experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we ‘perfect’ the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common—often wrong—wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.
- Les Gelb
President Emeritus
Council on Foreign Relations
in an article entitled Mission Unaccomplished
Summer 2009
Wow.
A professor and leading expert on hereditary diseases won a prestigious award. At the award ceremony, she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt to appease the conservative acting health minister. She was not allowed to sit with her husband; men and women were segregated at the event. She was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.
Which country is this? (Answer below.)
Continue reading
In today’s New York Times, columnist David Brooks wonders why, if “liberals” have so much “cultural power,” why are they so weak politically. Brooks posits that two perceptions are responsible: a) that “liberals” believe in the federal government, and b) that the federal government is not trustworthy or effective.
Brooks says: “Why don’t Americans trust their government? It’s not because they dislike individual programs like Medicare. It’s more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. Or to put it in the economists’ language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers. This is the disease that corrodes government at all times and in all places.” Interestingly, Brooks concedes that “Some of these rent-seeking groups are corporate types.”
Making things worse for the Dems themselves, Brooks notes: “In an attempt to match Republican rhetoric, Democratic politicians are perpetually soiling the name of government for the sake of short-term gain. How many times have you heard Democrats from Carter to Obama running against Washington, accusing it of being insular, shortsighted, corrupt and petty? If the surgeon himself thinks his tools are rancid, why shouldn’t you?”
All good questions.
In North Carolina’s eugenics program from 1929 to 1974, the state had one of the most aggressive programs to sterilize people to reduce welfare costs and cleanse the gene pool. In North Carolina alone, about 7,600 people were sterlized.
A task force charged with determining appropriate compensation produced its figure today: $50,000.
California sterilized at least 20,000 people.
Fordham University political science professor Costas Panagopoulos and a team of researchers have done a fascinating study of the people at the “Occupy Wall Street” protest in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Some media have tried hard to cast the protestors in negative terms, such as spoiled-brat kids who are too lazy to get jobs.
Several conclusions based on interviews of 300 of the protesters:
The average age of the protestors is 33. “That means for every college student you have a mid-career professional in their 40s,” Panagolopoulus says.
A report by two nonprofit groups — Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy — has uncovered yet more evidence that many of our biggest companies pay no federal takes and even get credits from the government that their lobbyists work assiduously to undermine.
(Below the jump is a chart with a small portion of the list.)
The report demonstrates that 30 of the 280 companies they looked at paid zero taxes or used loopholes to wind up with negative tax rates. Washington’s Pepco Holdings paid the lowest rate of all the firms investigated, clocking in at nearly minus 58 percent. Forty percent pay less than half of the established rate of 35 percent about which some politicians complain so much. Continue reading
The markets slipped another 300 points yesterday, more bombs killed Americans in Afghanistan, and the House last night reaffirmed our “national motto” — In God We Trust.
The debate reportedly was quite rich, such as this soliloquy by an Arizona Republican: “Is God God? Or is man God? In God do we trust, or in man do we trust? … If there isn’t [a God], we should just let anarchy prevail because, after all, we are just worm food. So indeed we have the time to reaffirm that God is God and in God do we trust.”
The “motto” is already guaranteed by an Act of Congress in 1956 and was reaffirmed in a Resolution in 2002.
Do they know something we don’t? Is this our nation’s most important business?
On the deficit/debt issue, are the Republicans just posturing or are they really serious?
In the so-called “Super Committee,” Democrats have worked hard to cut programs, offering a $3.2 trillion compromise. But their proposal was instantly rejected by Republicans on the panel … because it included new tax revenues.
The Republicans apparently think that their wealthy base — the only ones who don’t use or need government programs — will reward them for this, but it’s a risky proposition to enter negotiations with a no-negotiation attitude.
The Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation of Germany has published a study entitled “Social Justice in the OECD — How Do the Member States Compare?” It analyzed some metrics of basic fairness and equality among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. (OECD is the 34-member Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.)
It ranked America among the ones at the bottom — between Spain and Greece but far below a lot of countries that we popularly consider inferior or “socialist” such as France, Canada and even Britain.
According to this report, we rank very badly on poverty and poverty prevention and poverty among children and senior citizens. In the Gini Index on income inequality, only Mexico, Turkey and Chile are worse than we are.
