frankilin roosevelt

It's not about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.


Check out my old  Voice of the People page.


Gino Napoli
San Francisco, California
High School Math Teacher

jonsdarc@mindspring.com




Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.

a middle-aged
George Washington



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Sunday, 11 November 2012 at 16h 17m 29s

They never stop

Just two days after the election and the priority of the Republican Supreme Court is to gut the gut the authority of the civil rights voting act of 1965.

[from Raw Story]

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging the part of the law that requires all or part of 16 states in the south to receive federal approval before enacting laws that impact voting.

The Obama administration used that provision this year to stop voter I.D. laws in Texas and South Carolina from taking effect. Overall, the Justice Department has stopped 2,400 changes since 1982.

Pre-clearance “has been one of the most powerful tools in the civil rights arsenal,” according to Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken. “It’s made more of a difference in improving the civil rights of African Americans than any other statute I can think of.”


A part of the law referred to as Section 5, is at the heart of the matter. States and districts are qualified by a formula based upon historical voting patterns and records of past discrimination, and only these states and districts are affected by the preclearance provisions of Section 5. "Under the pre-clearance requirement, a covered jurisdiction must seek approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing voting district lines, polling places or other aspects of the election system." [from Bloomberg]

Basically, if an affected district does anything that changes the way in which voting occurs, such as arbitrarily end voting 2 hours early, change the polling places, or redistrict the voting wards, this has to be "pre-cleared" with the Justice Department. Otherwise, the only means of stopping the behavior would be through a local or state court. In the past, the local or state court was not impartial at all, and thus citizens could not have discriminatory actions halted or fairly assessed at the local or state level of government. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act gives the Federal Government this authority.

Now of course, Republicans have learned their lesson and don't do anything at all to hurt certain groups from being able to vote, right?

Puhleease. These people never sleep. They have nightmares about citizens they don't want voting, so they make up stories about non-citizens and illegal voters and pretend that's what they are stopping. Despite there being no evidence at all.

[SOURCE: Samantha Kimmey | Raw Story | 9 November 2012]
[SOURCE: Greg Stohr | Bloomberg | 9 November 2012]


Saturday, 10 November 2012 at 4h 42m 59s

Magical Thinking.


And why was Team Mittens so certain that they would win?

Easy: magical thinking. And that’s what makes Mitt Romney a true conservative.


Or,"We believe differently", as some Republicans on Upper Fillmore once said to me during the 2004 election cycle when I asked them why they refused to reconsider their policies in light of specific facts. In other words, their mind was made up, don't confuse them with facts.

[SOURCE: Dennis G | Balloon Juice blog | 9 November 2012]


Friday, 9 November 2012 at 1h 37m 7s

FEMA, then and now

A student in my Statistics class asked me today what I thought about "FEMA" and I declined to have an opinion, and said that today I'm having no thoughts. I teach Statistics, not History, and my opinions about this matter were not relevant to the teaching of the basic probability that we are currently learning in the class.

However, my opinion is exactly what Paul Krugman says in his opinion column (and on his blog). You cannot expect people who disdain government to actually use government effectively. All these anti-big-gummament Rethuglicans do is destroy government. They put people in charge who play by the same rules and will do the bidding of those who pay into the system, and these are often arrogant, pompous assholes, or dim-witted nincompops who mouth the party line.

[SOURCE: Paul Krugman | 4 November 2012New York Times | ]

What happened in New Orleans was off the logarithmic charts in comparison to the recent FEMA and National Government response to Sandy. During Sandy, the government and National Guard hit the ground running within 3 hours after landfall. During Katrina, the national guard wasn't anywhere nor was the navy even sent during Katrina until 3 DAYS after the storm hit landfall. UNLIKE THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, The Bush Administration, FEMA director Brown, and Louisiana (Democratic) Governor Kathleen Blanco were still unresolved about whether Blanco had the authority to call out the National Guard, and so the Guard did not have instructions. Volunteer Fire fighters and first responders from across the United States were often first shipped to Atlanta to get trained for a day on what to say and how to speak to the press.

Go back to my blog and scroll through the timeline from August to October of 2005 (the black table on the left-hand column) and you can get a day by day catalog of the scale of the disaster that was Katrina. It brought me to tears. The little bit I have written here is but 3 or 4 percent of the entire insane absolute abject disaster of government that was Katrina.

The propaganda organs of the corporate elite and some rich assholes who bankroll the operations will of course try to make Sandy Obama's Katrina. Bleech. Puhleese.

We have good leaders of government right now. They believe in government as something other than a patronage distribution system to their buddies and the people who bought their ticket to the party.


Friday, 9 November 2012 at 0h 56m 49s

The machines are taking over

According to a paper by Henry Siu and Nir Jaimovich analyzing the jobless recoveries that have accompanied recent post-recession events:


Automation and the adoption of computing technology is leading to the decline of middle-wage jobs of many stripes, both blue-collar jobs in production and maintenance occupations and white-collar jobs in office and administrative support. It is affecting both male- and female-dominated professions and it is happening broadly across industries — manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, financial services, and even public administration.

There is a nice graph from the study, but out of respect to Kevin, I'll let you click on the source link below to see the graph.

[SOURCE: Kevin Drum | Mother Jones | 6 November 2012]


Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 4h 49m 23s

One of the reasons I don't post as much

I tend to comment on various other sites and don't have the time to blog on my own site.

Here is a perfect example. I'm commenting on this topic about the Social Security Trust fund. The Motley Fool article is titled "5 Huge Myths About Social Security". It's actually very good and quite accurate, which is why I like the Motley Fool. They are honest and accurate observers of the economy, the market, and government.

Anyway here is my response to a plethora of insanity. It wasn't the only defender of the truth. The others are also worthy, but you have the screen out the nonsense. Fortunately they are usually obvious.


I know I'm wasting my time, but please ignore 95% of the commetariat. They are trolls and/or ignorant fools. The author of the main article knows that which he speaks. The commentariat have an agenda to confuse the public. Plain and simple.

Someone faulted the Social Security Trust Fund for not investing in the private sector. You should go back and read the historical discussions about why the current method was chosen. Which companies should the funds invest in? Who decides? What if this becomes political? Do you want your government choosing which financial instruments to invest and which not?

Thinking of the last 10 or 15 years alone, that would be a very bad idea.

The Social Security Trust fun is used as an accounting mechanism to shore up the budget, but that doesn't take away the from the fund. It's just assets - liabilities. The assets are still assets. If the government wants to play games with accounting and every pretends that's okay, the assets are still assets. The value of the fund doesn't diminish.

It just means our political leaders will eventually won't be able to use the assets in the trust fund as means to conceal how much money is actually being spent.

It's really that simple.

This is not much different than if someone includes the value of their house as part of their net worth. Your liabilities are expected to paid out on a monthly basis not different than any business, or government.

Assets minus liabilities doesn't negate either one. Assets are still assets. The money doesn't get spent because they aren't cashing in the assets.

Just like when you take a loan out on your house. You're paying off the loan doesn't result in the diminished value of your house. Your house is an asset not any different then the Social Security Trust Fund.

The government sells loans call bonds and dollars everyday and everyday people buy them because they retain value for a long period of time. Using the Social Security fund as an asset to secure these loans is no different than a customer using their house as collateral.

It doesn't mean the Social Security fund is being spent, no more than your house got sold when you used it as collateral. The government pays the interest without any problem, so there is nothing to worry about except stupid politicians and person's with hidden agendas.

And it's an insurance system people.

You think you are so smart and saavy that you can make the right choices and invest in the right companies at the right times. All while making less then 30, 40, 50 , 70, 100 thousand a year.

Go for it. Many have tried. Too many have failed. And so we base are entire retirement system on these percentages. Are you so willing to believe that you will be in the win bracket and avoid the financial shocks that happen once or twice every decade?

Social Security Insurance guarantees a minimum floor of retirement. Otherwise we'd have 30% or more of our older citizens liveing in abject poverty.

That's why the system evolved from the Townsend Committees in the 1930s. The shock of so many old people living off of scraps and out of garbage cans by the restaurants. All over the United States.

Oh how we do forget the past.



Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 4h 46m 45s

One of the reasons I don't post as much

I tend to comment on various other sites and don't have the time to blog on my own site.

Here is a perfect example. I'm commenting on this topic about the Social Security Trust fund. The Motley Fool article is titled "5 Huge Myths About Social Security". It's actually very good and quite accurate, which is why I like the Motley Fool. They are honest and accurate observers of the economy, the market, and government.

Anyway here is my response to a plethora of insanity. It wasn't the only defender of the truth. The others are also worthy, but you have the screen out the nonsense. Fortunately they are usually obvious.



Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 0h 32m 57s

Just double checking

Just making sure

I want to make sure


Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 0h 31m 22s

Things are good now

Okay so I fixed the deprecated code. All should be well. It took 2 minutes. I just procrastinate.


Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 0h 29m 40s

Things are good now

Okay so I fixed the deprecated code. All should be well. It took 2 minutes. I just procrastinate.


Wednesday, 22 August 2012 at 2h 57m 14s

Sorry

Sorry about the lack of blogging. Notice the "deprecation" warnings. Obviously I have to update my code. I'll try to get to this before Thanksgiving.




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