What I'm Reading Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Politics

• Poll: Tea party support cools – Tim Mak – POLITICO.com.
• Morning Joe: Newt’s a Flip-Flopper of Romnetic Proportions | The Nation
• Joe Scarborough Destroys Newt Gingrich’s ‘Conservative Principles’ | Mediaite
• And the media doesn’t seem to like the new Morning Joe promo that’s been airing. Is it sexist? I don’t think so, I didn’t think of it as a promo when I first saw it and thought it was the folks on the show just making a small piece to poke fun at themselves. I guess they (the critics) just don’t like satire and parody.
  

  Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

• Morning Joe’s ‘obnoxious,’ ‘sexist’ promo – The Week
• Morning Joe Doesn’t Get Why Its New Promotion Is Sexist – Entertainment – The Atlantic Wire
• For quite a while now my own thinking has been Herman Cain problem (and it may have indeed been the key to his success so far too) is he’s an ego-maniac with a narcissistic personality disorder. Looking around I’m not the only one thinking that that way it turns out:
•  Daily Kos: A Perfect Portrait of Narcissism: Herman “the High Achiever” Cain Reflects on His Career and Life
• dollyfedup: There’s a level of egotistica­l, narcissist­ic, selfishnes­s that plagues Presidenti­al
• Hey, Herman Cain: Why Shouldn’t We Believe Ginger White’s 13-Year-Affair Story?
• Does Herman Cain Suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder? | Michael D. Sellers
• I went looking for some information on Newt’s “Economic Plan” this evening:
  • Newt Gingrich’s plan for the economy – Nov. 29, 2011
  • A closer look at Gingrich’s ‘flat tax’ plan – The Washington Post
• Obama is the Best Republican President Since Lincoln

Economics & The Economy

• 7 Ways to Support the Real Job Creator: Main Street | NationofChange (the emphasis is mine)
  

  If you’ve been following GOP debates lately, you’ve heard that Wall Street businesses are the real “job creators” of our economy, and that the best way to put Americans back to work is to remove all the troublesome fetters—like environmental and safety regulations, or taxes, or unionization rights for workers—that hold them back.

  But Wall Street’s goal is to make money, not create jobs. Wall Street institutions view wages and worker benefits as costs to be minimized. Wall Street executives know that the most certain way to boost the share price of their company, and thereby pump up the value of their personal stock options, is to announce that thousands of people are to be laid off, their jobs eliminated or moved abroad.

  […]

  And those 7 ways…

  …A seven-part program to restore the middle class, advance a power shift from Wall Street to Main Street, and get America working again.

  1. Redefine our economic priorities by replacing financial indicators with real-wealth indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance.
  2. Restructure the money system to root the power to create and allocate money in Main Street financial institutions that support Main Street job creation.
  3. Restore the middle class by restoring progressive tax and employment policies and a strong and secure social safety net.
  4. Create a framework of economic incentives that favor human-scale enterprises that are locally owned by people who have a natural interest in the health and well-being of their community and its natural environment.
  5. Protect markets and democracy from corruption by concentrations of unaccountable corporate power.
  6. Organize the global economy into substantially self-reliant regional economies that align and partner with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere.
  7. Put in place global rules and institutions that secure the universal rights of people and support democratic self-governance and economic self-reliance at all system levels.

  A serious jobs program will necessarily include short-term stimulus measures. Its primary focus, however, will be on structural interventions to shift the balance of economic and political power from Wall Street to Main Street and rebuild the American middle class.

On Technology & Society

• A great article from Crooked Timber or should I say “lead” to some important things to think about: 10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion — Crooked Timber