The Progressive Politics of Happiness

Here of some examples of the kind of policies we should promote:

Paid family leave. Only the United States, Swaziland, Liberia and Papua New Guinea don’t guarantee at least paid maternity leave. Most wealthy countries also offer paid leave for fathers.

Paid sick days. Only a handful of desperately poor countries and the United States, don’t guaranteed paid leave when you’re sick. 86 percent of food service workers get no paid sick days and they come to work sick and get you sick—they can be fired if they don’t.

Paid vacation time. Only the United States, Guyana, Suriname, Nepal and Burma don’t guarantee at least some paid vacation time. Every European gets at least four weeks off with pay a year. We should support the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, sponsored in Congress by a true progressive, Representative Alan Grayson of Florida. It’s a very modest proposal, but a step in the right direction.

Here’s another idea: the choice of shorter work-time. In the Netherlands and some other European countries, workers have a legal right to reduce their hours without losing their jobs. They keep the same hourly pay, pro-rated benefits and full health care. This is an enormous expansion of personal freedom—the right to choose time over money, to select shorter hours of work without losing one’s livelihood.

Each of these policy reforms is essential to good health. Indeed, our lack of these rights is part of the reason Americans have the worst health in the industrial world, despite paying twice as much as everyone else does for healthcare. We are almost twice as likely to suffer chronic illness in old age as Europeans are, for example. Workplace stress in America is a killer, the “new tobacco” in the words of one cardiologist.

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Fake Mars Mission: 'Real World' Meets Space Travel

A fake mission to Mars is getting under way at a research institute in Moscow, where six men will spend the next year and a half inside a mock spaceship.

The international "crew" includes two men from Europe, one from China and three from Russia. They'll spend the next 520 days living inside just a few bus-sized modules at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems.

The team will have to put up with endless astronaut food, the grind of exercise and maintenance work, science experiments, fake emergencies — plus extreme isolation from the outside world.

"We get to see what happens to them over the course of an awful long time, and that's not been done before," says Nick Kanas, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco who worked on a 105-day pilot study leading up to this new Mars simulation.

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No Longer a fan of Rachel Maddow!

Tonight I tuned into her show, which I rarely do anymore since she became a mouthpiece for republican jerks using her to spread their talking points. Tonight was the last straw. There is a ridiculously stupid saying in liberal blog land, iokiyr, which mean these weak kneed "liberals" and "progressives" believe the thugs can do as they please with impunity. Retarded, that's putting it mildly. How can you be an opposition party and believe such a counterproductive thing? To add insult to injury Maddow said, "iokiyr always and forever" I was boiling mad, and refuse to watch her show again. It's never okay, forever we must fight them, prove them wrong. Always. Sadly the transformation to corporate drone is now complete. Only Keith Olbermann still defends progressive values, although that is will no doubt change if MSNBC happens to read this post. Americans better wake up to the media monopolies who now brainwash them on all stations at all times, radio and the printed press are not better and sometimes much worse. God bless America and the independent thinkers that made her great.

War Is Making You Poor Act

Today, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation called the “War Is Making You Poor Act,” which aims to call attention to a) how much money is being spent to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and b) how budget gimmicks are used to pay for them. Grayson’s legislation would slash the $159 billion request for supplemental war funding and use that money to deliver a tax break for all Americans. Grayson demands the Pentagon use its currently existing $549 billion defense budget to fight the wars. Speaking on the House floor today, Grayson underscored that the point of his legislation is to highlight the costs of the wars:

http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=1098067

Future of the Car: The Electric-Car Cheat Sheet

In the past three years, the thought of companies like Chevrolet and Nissan selling lithium-ion-powered cars has gone from laughable to old news. Late this year, the plug-in Chevy Volt and pure-electric Nissan Leaf arrive. Carmakers from Ford to Toyota will follow in 2011 and 2012 with new electrified models of their own. In the beginning, the electric-car revolution probably won’t seem so revolutionary: a few thousand cars here and there. As long as automakers and battery companies keep pushing technology forward, however—by scaling up production and developing more-powerful ways to store electricity and power a car with it—the future for cars that plug into the wall will continue to brighten. Here’s where this emerging industry stands today.

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ParEcon Questions & Answers

If not capitalism, if not socialism, if not anarchism, if not Green economics, if not Solidarity economics, then what?

Our answer is participatory economics or, for short, parecon.

We mean for participatory economics or parecon to transcend capitalism, to implement the best socialist values, to transcend what have been socialist institutions, to achieve anarchist aspirations, to be green, to promote solidarity, and to accomplish production, consumption, and allocation in a truly classless way.

We do not mean participatory economics to be a blueprint. It is not and could not be and should not be a detailed map of a better economy.

We mean for participatory economics to be a description of a new economy's institutions. We mean for participatory economics to be a description of the central features a desirable new economy will need to have to be both viable and worthy.

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96-0: Fed Audit Passes Senate

Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the Federal Reserve's most outspoken defender, came out in support of an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to force transparency on the Federal Reserve. Gregg's surprising support gives the amendment a major boost.

The Sanders amendment began as a reflection of language passed by the House and cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) that would authorize a broad audit of the Fed. In negotiations with Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and officials from the Fed, Sanders scaled back his audit and restricted it to a one-time look at lending activity from December 1, 2007 until the present -- information that the Fed has so far fought to keep from disclosing. It goes further in some respects than the Paul-Grayson measure, in that it mandates the disclosure of recipients of Fed largesse. (Background on the compromise here.)

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New Software Can Hire, Evaluate, and Pay Workers, Making Human Bosses Obsolete

Anyone looking for work these days knows how hard it is to get your resume into the hands of a human. Fortunately, perhaps, it may soon be possible to get hired without that step.

Freelancer.com, an Australian jobs site, is using software algorithms that allow computers to automatically recruit, hire and pay workers to do a wide range of tasks, New Scientist reports.

"Software can now simply post a job and hire one, three, or 500 humans; software can now literally assemble an army overnight to solve complex problems," says Matt Barrie, Freelancer.com's CEO, in a press release.

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Graphene is Next

The Substance Found in Pencils will Speed Up our Computers One Thousand Fold

Graphene. If you’ve never heard about it, don’t worry, a lot of people haven’t, because it’s really only been “discovered” relatively recently, and most of the truly interesting news about it has been in the last year. The amazing thing is that we’ve actually been using it for centuries, in the form of the common pencil. Graphene is a form of carbon, much like carbon nanotubes and other fullerenes, with one major difference. While fullerenes are 3D structures of carbon atoms, graphene is a flat sheet. It’s a 2D lattice of carbon with bonds as strong as diamond. It’s this sheetlike nature that makes it so useful in a pencil. As you write, individual planes of graphite are sheared off the end and deposited on the paper. Those individual planes are pure graphene.

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Obama Seeks To Stabilize A Risky Business

Obama's insistence on addressing derivatives — and the sense shared by lobbyists on all sides of the issue that derivatives will inevitably fall under greater scrutiny of some kind — represents a remarkable turnaround.

A dozen years ago, President Bill Clinton, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Congress all opposed government oversight of derivatives. A law enacted in 2000 made it clear that most derivatives could not be regulated. Derivatives serve a legitimate purpose in hedging risks and there was concern at the time that imposing too much regulation would put the U.S. out of line in what is truly a globalized market.

Some of those worries remain valid. Still, the former consensus against regulation has flipped around almost entirely. Derivatives are widely viewed as a key contributor to the near-collapse of the financial markets in 2008. It's clear that any financial overhaul bill that clears Congress this year will impose new restrictions on derivatives trading.

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Graceful Decline

Full piece is here

The end of Pax Americana

The epoch of American dominance is drawing to a close, and international politics is entering a period of transition: no longer unipolar but not yet fully multipolar. President Barack Obama’s November 2009 trip to China provided both substantive and emblematic evidence of the shift. As the Financial Times observed, “Coming at a moment when Chinese prestige is growing and the U.S. is facing enormous difficulties, Mr. Obama’s trip has symbolized the advent of a more multi-polar world where U.S. leadership has to co-exist with several rising powers, most notably China.” In the same Pew study, 44 percent of Americans polled said that China was the leading economic power; just 27 percent chose the United States.

Bankrupt Empire

The United States government is effectively bankrupt. Washington no longer can afford to micromanage the world. International social engineering is a dubious venture under the best of circumstances. It is folly to attempt while drowning in red ink.

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NASA to Launch Robonaut This Year

Later this year, NASA's R2 will become the first humanoid robot resident of the International Space Station. The launch of the handsome android, which until now had not been firmly scheduled, has now been fast-tracked to happen this September.

Before the bot goes up, it has to be tested in conditions of vacuum, low gravity, high radiation, and trained sensitivity to the unusual practices on board the ISS.

NASA has released a new video showing off R2's impressive capabilities.

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GM viruses offer hope of future where energy is unlimited

Breakthrough as US Researchers Replicate Photosynthesis in Laboratory

Scientists have made a fundamental breakthrough in their attempts to replicate photosynthesis - the ability of plants to harvest the power of sunlight - in the hope of making unlimited amounts of "green" energy from water and sunlight alone.

The researchers have assembled genetically modified viruses into wire-like structures that are able to use the energy of the sun to split water molecules into their constitute parts of oxygen and hydrogen, which can then be used as a source of chemical energy.

If the process can be scaled up and made more efficient, it promises to produce unlimited quantities of hydrogen fuel, a clean source of energy that can be used to generate electricity as well as acting as a portable, carbon-free fuel for cars and other vehicles.

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Nine Myths About Socialism in the US

Myth #1. The US government is involved in class warfare attacking the rich to lift up the poor.

There is a class war going on all right. But it is the rich against the rest of us and the rich are winning. The gap between the rich and everyone else is wider in the US than any of the 30 other countries surveyed. In fact, the top 10% in the US have a higher annual income than any other country. And the poorest 10% in the US are below the average of the other OECD countries. The rich in the U.S. have been rapidly leaving the middle class and poor behind since the 1980s.

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Geminoid F: Hiroshi Ishiguro Unveils New Smiling Female Android

eminoid F, a copy of a woman in her 20s with long dark hair, exhibits facial expressions more naturally than previous androids

Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro unveiled today his latest creation: a female android called Geminoid F. The new robot, a copy of a woman in her 20s with long dark hair, can laugh, smile, and exhibit other facial expressions more naturally than Ishiguro's previous androids.

Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University, is famous for creating a robot replica of himself, the Geminoid HI-1, a teleoperated android that he controls remotely. The new Geminoid F ("F" stands for female) is also designed to be remote controlled by an operator.

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Inducing 'Plasticity' in Brain, Allowing it to Rewire Itself Like New

The brain is the body's most complicated biological machine, and as such it can be very difficult to service when something goes wrong; after our neural wiring is put in place, at a very young age, altering or rebuilding it becomes extremely challenging. But researchers at UC San Francisco have figured out a way to induce a new period of "plasticity" -- a state in which neural circuitry is receptive to change -- in the visual cortices of mice, a breakthrough that could lead to treatments for brain circuits damaged by developmental problems or traumas.

All regions of the brain go through periods of high plasticity at various times in the development process during early life. During this time, neurons are highly responsive to signals -- in the case of the visual cortex, visual signals -- that shape the way they will function going forward. Through a process known as synaptic transmission, the cells rapidly relay signals from one appropriate cell to the next, creating the neural circuitry that enables functions like vision.

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President Obama Should Embrace the Socialist Label

 [...]

What's so terrible about being a Socialist? It's a perfectly respectable political philosophy and the last time I checked it wasn't against the law or anything and Sanders seems to be doing just fine. So why do President Obama and his Republican critics act as though it's such a dirty word?

If Barack Obama wants to be a transformational President like Ronald Reagan, inspiring a new generation of Americans to believe as he does, he would be wise to own the label and change the public perception of it rather than running from it. And the President's Republican critics should get over their timidity and engage in the kind of full-throated public discourse that debates the issues on the merits and calls him what he, objectively, is.

As for the rest of us in the vast mainstream of American life who aren't blindly beholden to any political ideologies, we'll continue to be believe in a sort of hybrid of Socialism and Capitalism, celebrating a political and economic system that allows people to get rich even as we aggressively encourage the wealthy among us to give away much of that wealth to charities and churches in order to help the less fortunate among us all.

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A Victory for the American People

Just a great picture of yesterday's historical signing ceremony for HCR.  President Obama and others broke out in a sudden smile for a moment.

The Top Ten Immediate Benefits You'll Get When Health Care Reform Passes

As soon as health care passes, the American people will see immediate benefits. The legislation will:

* Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;

* Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;

* Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;

* Lower seniors' prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;

* Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;

* Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;

* Require plans to cover an enrollee's dependent children until age 26;

* Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;

* Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;

* Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

By enacting these provisions right away, and others over time, we will be able to lower costs for everyone and give all Americans and small businesses more control over their health care choices.

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A Computer That Processes Faster Than The Speed of Light

How fast is too fast? According to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a good boundary, as going beyond it opens you up to all sorts of paradoxes and space-time phenomena that are usually the stuff of sci-fi. But a couple of researchers in Austria have come up with a way to compute information faster than the speed of light.

The idea is not quite as crazy as it might sound, though you may wish to limber up your mind before delving deeper. It's based on the same principle as that of quantum entanglement -- the notion that two particles on opposite sides of the universe can be linked through their quantum states such that one cannot be adequately described without the other. That is, an action on one particle instantaneously influences its counterpart, even if they are separated by light years.

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The Myth of Europe's High Taxes

Americans pay just as much-- and receive far less in benefits, says author Steven Hill

Do Americans really pay fewer taxes than Europeans? Contrary to conventional wisdom, the answer surprisingly is: not really. That’s because in return for their taxes, Europeans – even those unemployed during these tough times – have access to a generous support system for families and individuals that most Americans can only imagine. That includes not only quality health care but also child care, a good retirement pension, inexpensive college education, job retraining, paid sick leave, paid parental leave (after a birth or to care for sick children), ample vacations, affordable housing, adequate senior care and more. In order to receive the same level of benefits as Europeans, most Americans have to fork out a lot of out-of-pocket payments, in addition to our taxes. These payments often are in the form of fees, surcharges, higher tuition, insurance premiums, co-payments and other hidden charges.

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HR 4789 and The Public Option: The Way Forward

by Rep. Alan Grayson
[...]

And to the right-wing loons who call it socialism, we say, "if you want to be a slave to the insurance companies, that's fine. If you want 30% of your premiums to go to 'administrative costs' and billion-dollar bonuses for insurance CEOs who figure out new and creative ways to deny you the care you need to stay healthy and alive, that's fine. But don't you try to dictate to me that I can't have a public option!"

And there is a way left to get it. By insisting on a vote on H.R. 4789. Three votes on health care, not two. The Senate bill, the reconciliation amendments, and the Public Option Act.

We got 50 co-sponsors for this bill in two days. Including five powerful committee chairman. But we need more.

Sign our Petition at WeWantMedicare.com.

Call. Write. Visit. Do whatever you can do to get you Congressman to co-sponsor this bill, and push it to a vote. Right now, before it's too late.

Let's do it!

An Oscar for America’s Hubris

What a shame that the one movie about the Iraq war that has a chance of being viewed by a large worldwide audience should be so disappointing. According to press reports, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally found a movie about the Iraq war they liked because it is “apolitical.” Actually, “The Hurt Locker” is just the opposite; it’s an endorsement of the politically chauvinistic view that the world is a stage upon which Americans get to deal with their demons no matter the consequence for others.

It is imperial hubris turned into an art form in which the Iraqi people appear as numbed bystanders when they are not deranged extras. It is a perverse tribute to the film’s accuracy in portraying the insanity of the U.S. invasion—while ignoring its root causes—that the Iraqis are at no point treated as though they are important.

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The Coffee Party USA Wake Up and Stand Up

MISSION: The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

We are diverse — ethnically, geographically, politically, in age and in experience.

We are 100% grassroots. No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement. We are a spontaneous and collective expression of our desire to forge a culture of civic engagement that is solution-oriented, not blame-oriented.

We demand a government that responds to the needs of the majority of its citizens as expressed by our votes and by our voices; NOT corporate interests as expressed by misleading advertisements and campaign contributions.

We want a society in which democracy is treated as sacrosanct and ordinary citizens participate out of a sense of civic duty, civic pride, and a desire to contribute to society. The Coffee Party is a call to action. Our Founding Fathers and Mothers gave us an enduring gift — Democracy — and we must use it to meet the challenges that we face as a nation.

Visit their Home Page