Another phrase I say to myself, or recall frequently throughout my life is the following:

You have to find comfort in the truth, and achieve peace through understanding

In 2011, Jon Cohn wrote a story called "The Two Year Window," about new research demonstrating the importance of the first two years of a child's life. Roughly speaking, most child care that's average or better is probably OK. But down in the bottom third, conditions are often bad enough to cause permanent cognitive damage, sometimes at a biological level. One third is a lot of kids.

Appropriately, two years later Cohn is back with a follow-up, "The Hell of American Day Care." Children who get proper attention and interaction, he says, "tend to develop the skills they need to thrive as adults—like learning how to calm down after a setback or how to focus on a problem long enough to solve it":

Kids who grow up without that kind of attention tend to lack impulse control and have more emotional outbursts. Later on, they are more likely to struggle in school or with the law. They also have more physical health problems. Numerous studies show that all children, especially those from low-income homes, benefit greatly from sound child care. The key ingredients are quite simple—starting with plenty of caregivers, who ideally have some expertise in child development.

So if we pay $100 billion a year for universal Pre-K, we save ourselves the expenses of later years when we will have to deal with the 30% or more of young adults who have substance abuse issues, are involved in crime, have mental or psychological health issues, or are cognitively diminished. How many of our prisons and how many of the homelessness on the street could be prevented from this kind of program?

So is it "socialism" when government provides an important community service paid for with taxes? And without the service, the community pays the costs of the lack of service two or three times more. And each of these defective people affect others in the population in often negative and life-changing ways.

In 2011, Jon Cohn wrote a story called "The Two Year Window," about new research demonstrating the importance of the first two years of a child's life. Roughly speaking, most child care that's average or better is probably OK. But down in the bottom third, conditions are often bad enough to cause permanent cognitive damage, sometimes at a biological level. One third is a lot of kids.

Appropriately, two years later Cohn is back with a follow-up, "The Hell of American Day Care." Children who get proper attention and interaction, he says, "tend to develop the skills they need to thrive as adults—like learning how to calm down after a setback or how to focus on a problem long enough to solve it":

Kids who grow up without that kind of attention tend to lack impulse control and have more emotional outbursts. Later on, they are more likely to struggle in school or with the law. They also have more physical health problems. Numerous studies show that all children, especially those from low-income homes, benefit greatly from sound child care. The key ingredients are quite simple—starting with plenty of caregivers, who ideally have some expertise in child development.

Last fall, the California Fair Political Practices Commission revealed what it called "the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history" after it discovered that three nonprofits had funneled $11 million from Virginia to Arizona to California. This $11 million got spent against prop 30 (increasing state taxes to pay for schools) and for prop 32 (which would have made union dues deducted from you paycheck illegal). This money came from a "non-profit" in Arizona called "Americans for Responsible Leadership".

(what a misnomer? Here's a better one: self-serving greedy ideologues who hate the Middle class.)

Ah but this group got it from another non-profit, who got it from another non-profit who got it from an Alexandria, Virginia outfit called "Americans for Job Security."

But who are the "people" behind the funds? Well, that will come soon enough, thanks to a California law that requires the names of all donors to California elections.

"Investigators recently issued a dozen more subpoenas to individuals and nonprofits in connection with the case, the Huffington Post reported....After initially balking, the nonprofits are now cooperating with investigators."

Americans for Job Security, founded by Republican operative Dave Carney, who ran Rick Perry's 2012 presidential campaign, is suspected of being little more than a slush fund for donors seeking anonymity. After investigating AJS in 2009, staffers with Alaska's Public Offices Commission concluded that AJS "has no purpose other than to cover various money trails all over the country." Its M.O.: Donors give money to AJS with a cause or campaign in mind, AJS effectively scrubs the donor's fingerprints, and then it spends the money. AJS paid $20,000 to settle the Alaska case and promised not to encourage future anonymous giving in Alaska, but admitted no wrongdoing.

This is how they hide the money of the uber-wealthy. They create these corporate charters and solicit donations that are used under the smooth smart sounding name of the non-profit. Actually, usually its the hired jackals who do this for them, like cleaning the kings toe-nails.

But hey, after all, these are Americans for Job "Security". They want to be Secure about those jobs, you see. That's why they don't support measures that will make government work by paying for the necessary services (prop 30). That's why they don't like unions. Because they want to be absolutely "secure" about their control over the people who are on the payroll. They don't want no back-talk from some upp-ity college grad who makes $30,000 a year typing numbers into a computer. They don't want no 40 year old engineers telling them somethings wrong with the blueprints. Are you telling me my money has stop growing because 2 plus 2 equals 4 ? This ain't about school boy logic, son (or mam). This is about taking the money now while it's still fresh and paying the tiny fine when we settle outta court later, so you just take what your master gives you and shut up. Damn unions telling us business folk what to do and when to do it. When did a union ever create a corporate charter in Delaware so it can break the laws making money in the other 49 states and have legal cover? When did a union poison the community by illegally dumping chemicals for 40 years, and then go bankrupt so it can form another corporation and not have to pay any of the legal claims of the first corporation? When did unions send legislators to extravagant vacations in Hawaii or the Bermudas or the Philippines complete with booze and prostitutes and the blackmailing pictures to boot?

It's these gat damn unions that get in our way of doing whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. They keep reminding us that actions have consequences. That's why they gotsta go. Ya dig.

"Centrist Democrats" Have they been right about anything?

The "centrist" Democrats often adopt the 'liberal' line on social issues like gun control or gay marriage -- which, coincidentally or not, are also issues which have little or no financial impact on their corporate and high-net-worth individual sponsors.

But what's the verdict on the core economic issues of our time?

Prof. William K. Black Jr. was understandably displeased by The New York Times' description of the Third Way think tank as "center/left." Prof. Black writes that "Some lies will not die ... Third Way is Wall Street on the Potomac. It is funded secretly by Wall Street (it refuses to reveal its donors), it is openly run by Wall Street, and it lobbies endlessly for Wall Street."

Black adds that "Third Way, like every Pete Peterson front group, is dedicated to shredding the safety net as its highest priority and throwing the Nation back into a gratuitous recession through self-destructive austerity."

Offshore Tax Havens are now like what casinos used to be in the not so distant past, only much more comprehensive and powerful.

They are used to enable corruption so that officials can be bribed and kickbacks can be obtained without any scrutiny. They are also used as mailboxes so that profits can be screened from taxation. They are used to launder money and conceal the origins before the funds achieve their ultimate destination, just like the Mafia used Restaurants to legitimize money derived from illegal activity.

The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike.

The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories.

The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization. The total size of the files, measured in gigabytes, is more than 160 times larger than the leak of U.S. State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010.

The extent of the scandal is incredible. So watch for the news media to be on the move to create another puffy scandal to take the scent off the real one. I sense Justin Bieber exposees coming. Or Steroid use in MLB or maybe a few small-time local politicians getting busted in a FED sting. Or maybe its an epidemic of lice that has affected the President's children. Something else will become the "official" distraction (remember Terry Shiavo). Exposing the massive and systematic international connections of global politicians being bribed by the global elite is not going to get the light of day. I hope I'm wrong.

[SOURCE: DS Wright | FireDogLake | 4 April 2013]

A slideshow from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation makes the documentation easy to access.Click here.

Hmmm. Where's the NYTimes or the Washington Post on this story?

I'm sure the headline will be something like "Documents Reveal that Wealthy Avoid Taxes in offshore bank accounts" if they have to bother with the story. If necessary, scapegoats will be found, and this will turn into individualistic morality stories with some chosen bad actors ( like Oliver North, Bernie Madoff, or Martha Stewart). They will avoid making the obvious larger connections to international finance, corporations, world politicians and government officials. The system produces it's own victims. The rhetorical virgins must be slaughtered by the high priests. The marionette strings are never revealed

However, be not confused or distracted. This is not about Tax cheats. It's about corruption larger than the scale of BCCI Banking Scandal and the Iran-Contra shenanigans during the Reagan years. Look those up.

Who would have ever thought this discussion would ever have an actual basis? This is Blade Runner technology.

The Story below from Brad Plumer at the Washington Post, gives a good view of whether driverless cars would decrease or increase energy usage.

[SOURCE: Brad Plumer | Washington Post | 30 March 2013]

From Matthew Iglesias at Slate.com

just consider that there is some level of government spending that you consider appropriate. Imagine that level of spending is achieved. Zero money is being spent on wasteful or useless programs, and no good spending is being forgone. We're doing everything we ought to be doing. Now we need to finance that spending with some mixture of taxes and borrowing. The Cooper viewpoint is that it's always the case that the optimal mix is 100 percent taxes and 0 percent borrowing. But why would that be? If the future is going to be richer than the present, there's a strong prima facie case for borrowing. You don't pay 100 percent cash for your house or your college tuition, and there's no reason you should pay 100 percent cash for your national defense or vital infrastructure either. How much should you borrow? It has a lot to do with the interest rates. Not only is borrowing at a high interest rate expensive, but government borrowing at a high interest rates crowds out private capital investment. But if interest rates are low, then you don't need to worry much about crowding out, and the economic burden of repaying the interest is likely lower than the economic burden of higher taxes.

So you borrow some money. Ronald Reagan did it. George W. Bush did it.

In other words, sometimes that which is called "government debt" is really just a decision to include borrowing as a component of getting the necessary government revenue to pay for the things that we decide government should do, or the things that government should invest. Framing the argument as one of getting government to spend exactly what is raised from revenue without bothering to "envision" what it is government should be spending or investing is as ridiculous a proposition as tying a rope of unknown length around a tree of constantly changing width. The "serious" discussions of cutting government mingles with cutting taxes when the actual decisions should be agreement on what government should be spending and investing. Worry about how to pay for it once that agreement is made.

Alas, as I say all the time, this rhetoric is not serious at all. The goalposts move all the time. Cuts are made, but then "necessary" costs are added, and taxes are always cut (if only for the upper few). The overall balance of what government spends and invests is never made, but rather occurs in a myriad of byzantine subsidies or tax credits in the name of "creating jobs" or maintaining "competitiveness". Military costs and investments have almost no oversight. The budget is thus a compilation of various different interests. There is no guiding oversight.

Dr. Roberts is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.

So when he speaks about a 9-11 Cover up, you need to respect his point of view, and try to understand that governments and politicians form cliques and keep secrets. History is proof.

A haunting quote from the interview "If you lie to cover up incompetence, then you could also lie about complicity."

CLICK THE SOURCE BELOW.

[SOURCE: PaulCraigRoberts | The Corbett Report | ]

A brief list of histories great conspiracies:

1. Vietnam advisors began during the Eisenhower administration
2. Augustin Pinochet topples Salvadore Allende's Chilean government with US aid and planning assistance on September 11th ... in 1973
3. The manhattan project during World War II
4. The invasion of DDay -- the Germans thought it would come in Calais, 100 - 150 miles further North
5. The USS Maine explosion in 1898 .. Admiral Dewey just so happened to have the US fleet off the coast of Manila in the Phillipines
6. The Germans send (smuggle?) Lenin to Russia on a train, to precipitate Russian withdrawal from World War One and the beginnings of the Russian Revolution occur as an ancillary result
7. Zachary Taylor had the American Army and Cavalry on the border of the Rio Grande, in what Mexico considered Mexican Territory and refused to leave ... under orders from President Polk who wanted to add Mexican Territory to the United States.
8. Hawaii was turned into an American "protectorate" on January 17, 1893, in which anti-monarchial insurgents within the Kingdom of Hawaii, composed largely of American citizens, engineered the overthrow of its native monarch ... because the safety of the monarchy was in "danger" of being taken by the European "Imperialists"
9. Julius Caesar stabbed by every Senator, called to the Senate under a ruse of national emergency -- "Et Tu Brutus" and the "Aides of March" are now legacies