Eric Hoefler's Public Library

17 Sep 09

Wealthcare | The New Republic

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this conservative view, the Randian inversion of the Marxist worldview, rests upon a series of propositions that can be falsified by data.
In reality, as a study earlier this year by the Brookings Institution and Pew Charitable Trusts reported, the United States ranks near the bottom of advanced countries in its economic mobility.
5 more annotations...
- The study found that family background exerts a stronger influence on a person’s income than even his education level. And its most striking finding revealed that you are more likely to make your way into the highest-earning one-fifth of the population if you were born into the top fifth and did not attain a college degree than if you were born into the bottom fifth and did. In other words, if you regard a college degree as a rough proxy for intelligence or hard work, then you are economically better off to be born rich, dumb, and lazy than poor, smart, and industrious.
- It is Wall Street, of course, that offers the ultimate rebuttal of the assumption that the market determines social value. An enormous proportion of upper-income growth over the last twenty-five years accrued to an industry that created massive negative social value--enriching itself through the creation of a massive bubble, the deflation of which has brought about worldwide suffering.
- The reality of the contemporary United States is that, even as income inequality has exploded, the average tax rate paid by the top 1 percent has fallen by about one-third over the last twenty-five years.
- The rich have gotten unimaginably richer, and at the same time their tax burden has dropped significantly. And yet conservatives routinely describe this state of affairs as intolerably oppressive to the rich.
- The bottom 99 percent of taxpayers pay 29.4 percent of their income in local, state, and federal taxes. The top 1 percent pay an average total tax rate of 30.9 percent--slightly higher, but hardly the sort of punishment that ought to prompt thoughts of withdrawing from society to create a secret realm of capitalistic übermenschen.

15 Sep 09

Wealthcare | The New Republic

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The psychological link between a certain form of childhood deprivation and extreme libertarianism awaits serious study.
moral defense of the individual will and unrestrained capitalism
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- Both tomes, each a runaway best-seller, portrayed the struggle of a brilliant and ferociously individualistic man punished for his virtues by the weak-minded masses
- She believed that the principle of trade governed all human relationships--that in a free market one earned money only by creating value for others. Hence, one’s value to society could be measured by his income. History largely consisted of "looters and moochers" stealing from society’s productive elements.
- In the Marxist analysis, workers produce all value, and capitalists merely leech off their labor. Rand posited the opposite.
- t’s time we realize--as the Reds do--that spreading our ideas in the form of fiction is a great weapon, because it arouses the public to an emotional, as well as intellectual response to our cause
- Objectivism was premised on the absolute centrality of logic to all human endeavors. Emotion and taste had no place.
- Objectivism taught that intellectual parity is the sole legitimate basis for romantic or sexual attraction.
- Ultimately the Objectivist movement failed for the same reason that communism failed: it tried to make its people live by the dictates of a totalizing ideology that failed to honor the realities of human existence.
- That contribution was to express the opposition to economic redistribution in moral terms, as a moral depravity.
- The political scientist C. B. MacPherson called this idea "possessive individualism," or "making the individual the sole proprietor of his own person and capacities, owing nothing to society for them."
- Rand pioneered this leap of logic--the ideological pity of the rich for the oppression that they suffer as a class.
- You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your condition which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.
- The first was Social Darwinism, the notion that the advancement of the human race, like other natural species, relied on the propagation of successful traits from one generation to the next, and that the free market served as the equivalent of natural selection, in which government interference would retard progress. The second was neoclassical economics, which, in its most simplistic form, described the marketplace as a perfectly self-correcting
  instrument.
- They may believe the consequentialist arguments against redistribution--that Bill Clinton’s move to render the tax code slightly more progressive would induce economic calamity, or that George W. Bush’s making the tax code somewhat less progressive would usher in a boom; but the utter failure of those predictions to come to pass provoked no re-thinking whatever on the economic right.
- For it harbored a deeper belief in the immorality of redistribution, a righteous sense that the federal tax code and budget represent a form of organized looting aimed at society’s most virtuous--and this sense, which remains unshakeable, was owed in good measure to Ayn Rand.

Wealthcare

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politics

The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
7 more annotations...
- The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
- The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
- The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
- The idea is that the United States is divided into two classes--the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.
- I'm responsible for myself and I'm not responsible for other people
- It expresses its opposition to redistribution not in practical terms--that taking from the rich harms the economy--but in moral absolutes, that taking from the rich is wrong. It likewise glorifies selfishness as a virtue. It denies any basis, other than raw force, for using government to reduce economic inequality. It holds people completely responsible for their own success or failure, and thus concludes that when government helps the disadvantaged, it consequently punishes virtue and rewards sloth.
- It is one of the ironies, and the attractions, of Rand's capitalists that they are depicted as heroes of alienation

14 Sep 09

The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care

An excellent article about the way the public discourse has been framed to oppose health insurance reform.

www.huffingtonpost.com/...cyspeak-disaster_b_264043.html - Preview

politics healthcare linguistics brain

11 Sep 09

James Moore: The Lies of Texas Are Upon You

"So this is Texas, folks, created by god 10,000 years ago with all fossils and fossil fuels in place, where black presidents are not allowed to encourage our children, there are two sides to every story, even McCarthyism, Richard Nixon is the man that sav

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politics religion education freespeech

Why No More 9/11s?

Clear overview of the prevailing theories about why no major attacks have occurred since 9/11/01.

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politics middleeast terrorism security military

A 'Shattered' Republican Party?

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politics

10 Sep 09

Goodbye To All That

Good point about the balance Obama is attempting to return to politics.

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politics

09 Sep 09

The Day the Right Wing Lost Its Last Shred of Moral Standing

The right wing and libertarian gun nuts and yahoos (and apparently everybody who lives in Texas and Florida) have been fighting all their lives to keep the government from having these very powers, but they did so by using only one, single utterly ineffec

quichemoraine.com/...s-last-shred-of-moral-standing - Preview

politics

08 Sep 09

Sick and Wrong

Excellent summary of the problem

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healthcare politics

06 Sep 09

Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers

Also has links to other resources and a PDF version of the chart.

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copyright education

04 Sep 09

Real Canadians Talking Real Healthcare

Fair warning: the xylophone gets a little annoying.

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politics healthcare

Conservatives Say Attacks on Health Plan Get in the Way of Real Questions

Are we finally getting close to a serious debate of the actual issues? I’ve been waiting for the paranoid extremists to shut up so that the people who actually know something about the issues can discuss the legitimate concerns. The thoughtful conservativ

www.nytimes.com/...03conservatives.html - Preview

politics healthcare

Conservative media take note: Reagan preached tax cut gospel to America’s students

“Putting aside possible ulterior motives, the conservative freak-out over President Obama’s planned speech to students urging them to stay in school and work hard is due to fears that Obama will use his platform as an opportunity to push his agenda on uns

mediamatters.org/...200909030020 - Preview

politics

Lovecraft is Missing

A mystery webcomic that asks: what if Lovecraft’s stories were real? Creator Larry Latham has been at work on this since October 1, 2008. The link is to the first page.

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horror Lovecraft

Extremism in Media's Glare

"Price said he was told flatly: “Your meeting doesn’t get covered unless it blows up.” As it happens, the Durham audience was broadly sympathetic to reform efforts. No “news” there … But the only citizens who commanded widespread media coverage last month

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politics healthcare

Franken Talks Down Angry Mob

Al Franken and folks from Minnesota having a civil, serious discussion about health insurance reform. It is possible, and this is a model to emulate.

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politics healthcare

John Green's Thought Bubble: Health Care Overhaul

Good summary of the different approaches to the debate with excellent graphics.

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politics healthcare

02 Sep 09

Plastic Breaks Down in Ocean, After All -- And Fast

"Plastic hits marine creatures with a double whammy, Moore said. Along with the toxic chemicals released from the breakdown of plastic, animals also take in other chemicals that the plastic has accumulated from outside sources in the water."

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environment

Five Myths About Health Care in the Rest of the World

Brief debunking of common health-care myths

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009082101778.html - Preview

politics healthcare

Eric Hoefler's Public Library

Wealthcare | The New Republic

Wealthcare | The New Republic

Wealthcare

The PolicySpeak Disaster for Health Care

James Moore: The Lies of Texas Are Upon You

Why No More 9/11s?

A 'Shattered' Republican Party?

Goodbye To All That

The Day the Right Wing Lost Its Last Shred of Moral Standing

Sick and Wrong

Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers

Real Canadians Talking Real Healthcare

Conservatives Say Attacks on Health Plan Get in the Way of Real Questions

Conservative media take note: Reagan preached tax cut gospel to America’s students

Lovecraft is Missing

Extremism in Media's Glare

Franken Talks Down Angry Mob

John Green's Thought Bubble: Health Care Overhaul

Plastic Breaks Down in Ocean, After All -- And Fast

Five Myths About Health Care in the Rest of the World

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