Finally! A product the Chinese wanna buy from Michigan!

"...[M]uskrat pelts are in high demand by the Chinese. The lust for fur on the other side of the globe is driving the price of the 'poor man's mink' -- the lowly muskrat -- higher and higher." *

Who'd have thunk it?

* "Michigan muskrat trappers enjoy boom as demand for fur grows" [Detroit Free Press]

Getting our terms right: free enterprise isn't the same as capitalism

The real divide in our political economy is the Wall Street versus Main Street outlook amongst the business management folks.

"At many companies," says Felix Salmon writing at Wired, "both public and private, the optimal course of action is a modest one — run the business so that it makes a reasonable profit, and can continue to operate indefinitely. If you chase after growth, you often end up in bankruptcy: that’s one reason why the oldest companies in the world are all family-run. Families, unlike public companies or private-equity shops, don’t need growth: they’re more interested in looking after their business over the very, very long run."

Yep. Even though "in the long run we're all dead", as John Maynard Keynes observed we at least have something to pass on.

Another reason nation-states need to die

Elites run state entities for their own benefit and justify it all to the sheep with cynical appeals to nationalism, patriotism, and economic mythology and fill in any holes in their story with out-right lies.

"This portfolio is a half step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and 9-millimeter rounds.” *

An examination of U.S. Representative and GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul's financial disclosure documents by the Wall Street Journal shows that he holds cash, silver and gold mining stocks, and real estate. Less than 1 percent is in stocks and none is in bonds, derivatives, futures or other paper assets. Paul thinks that a financial collapse is on the way and has bet his net worth on that assumption. I have mixed feelings about those predictions myself, but say what else you will about Paul you still  must admit that he puts his money where his mouth is.

*William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors as quoted in The American Conservative.

Credit unions are a better deal for most people than banks are

So says this article from Business Insider. I agree. But then I thought so before the Great Recession hit.

Large price increases for peanut butter hitting us hard

Due to poor harvests they say. Yikes! We about live on that that stuff around here. PB is one of the few staples that's easy to store, nutrient dense, and until  now relatively cheap. Bad news.

Confirming the obvious

After a decade long (and counting) recession a US Census Bureau study finds that Michigan is now much poorer.

Jack Lessenberry says former Michigan governor's book lacks candor, honesty, and insight just like her terms as governor did

But old Jack still thinks her eight-year tenure as Michigan's governor was characterized by indecisiveness and lack of candor and that her book was written for all the wrong reasons.

So why in the world did she write this book, anyway? 

"This [book] isn't for a Michigan audience," says a Lessenberry undisclosed source. "They've got her number. Nobody wants to see her, let alone buy a book she's written. We had eight years of her blowing us away. 'This is for Washington and New York audiences, to keep herself out there, to get speaking engagements and keep her job as a commentator on MSNBC, and maybe add to that."

That is how I see it too.


*

Why bookstores don't work in downtown Ann Arbor any more

Short answer: The rents. The rents are high and the margins are too small. So say the current and former  Ann Arbor booksellers who were interviewed by Domenica Trevor for her Ann Arbor Chronicle piece about the economics of the bookstore business in Ann Arbor. Interesting conundrum. But I am sure that somehow or another the market will sort that issue out. It's the larger cultural change that worries me.

The sad reality is that books are becoming an expensive hobby like fine wines, exotic foods, horse racing, classic cars or Cuban cigars. For the class of people with lots of disposable income and intellectual refinement and who also have an interest in browsing around looking for books to read. Like the kind of people who browse estate sales and antique shops looking for just the right armoire for their guest bedroom instead of buying one from an Ikea warehouse outlet. The rest of us can just buy what we want off Amazon for our  Kindles or at the ground floor display at Barnes & Noble if we don't have a Kindle. Because for most of us time is money and money is dear. That's reality and it is indeed sad.

Weblog

My back yard, a rose in a vase, and Molly

Garry Lillie dies at 70 (Ann Arbor.com)
Lillie was an Ann Arbor-based realtor, Vietnam veteran and life-long veteran's affairs advocate who was well liked. I met him a few times and he seemed like a good guy.

Things are bad out there: "You know the economy is in bad shape when customers can’t afford to shop at dollar stores anymore." (Slate)

The end of "right-wing progressivism" (Jack Hunter AKA The Southern Avenger @ American Conservative)
America can't afford to "make the world safe for democracy" or anything else. We're broke, exhausted, and have problems of our own we need to deal with.

Mobile credit card reader app makes a great simple money launderer (Popular Science)
"A simple tool that can turn any iPhone into a credit card machine can also be a simple way for crooks to steal cash, hackers demonstrated this week. Square can eliminate the hassle of money laundering."

Sign of the times: When the well dries up everbody's dry

Obama as FDR Gorbachev: Trying to preserve a dying system (Richard Miniter, Forbes)

Bottom line up front: The trouble with living off government handouts is that eventually the government runs out of other people's money to tax and spend.

Contra the main stream media propaganda fluff President Obama is not the new FDR or LBJ but is actually a man trying like crazy to prevent the demise of a political system he desperately loves and wants to preserve.

"This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit", says Miniter this week in Forbes.com/, "exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies. Every vital element of the Democrats’ coalition — unions, government workers, government contractors, 'entitlement' consumers — requires constant increases in payments, grants and consulting contracts. Without those payments, they don’t sign checks to re-elect Democrats."

True that. And the GOP has it's parasites who seek the same sort of stuff when they're in power too. In fact minus out the unions and add the so-called "defense" contractors and it's the same list. Whatever. The point here is that the pie itself is shrinking. And that particular reality is bi-partisan.

Sign of the times: The Gentrification of the Democratic Party

The new gentrified Democratic donkey

Although private sector labor unions are still a big influence on the Democratic Party the policies actually followed by Democrats once in office is distinctly anti-working class. Democratic Party politicos tend to work hardest for policies favored by the gentrified college educated professionals that inhabit the suburban areas. And  if you are a non-unionized blue, pink or white collar working-class stiff the Dems don't do much for you; you just don't have enough clout.

"...California, New York and Washington, D.C. represent progress due to the enlightened social and environmental rhetoric espoused by the media, academics and politicians based in these regions. But in reality,"says demographer Joel Kotkin, who studies these things," this new ruling class seems likely to create an American future that looks a lot like today’s Great Britain, with a significant affluent population concentrated in core cities and some affluent suburbs that lives an exciting life at the top of the world economy, surrounded by a large underclass and a fading middle class."

Modern Democrats will fight to the death to make sure urban, unionized public employees like bus drivers, cops, firemen, teachers and bureaucrats get top pay and benefits, and gold-plated retirements that they can take at age fifty in return for their money and votes. The rest of us peons with no clout get downsized, privatized, out-sourced,  and displaced by immigrants and are then told to shop at Wal-Mart for the best value for our food stamps. I wonder what FDR would say about all this? Wall Street banksters and well connected corporate CEOs are green-lighted to scam the system in every way possible. And then merely wrist slapped and then bailed out if they fail. It's no accident that in recent years as much money from the financier class goes to the Dems as to the Republicans. State socialism for the rich and laissez-faire for the poor.

"The genius of our ruling class", says Gore Vidal, "is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."

Indeed.

Weblog

China's threat to America is economic not military (Mark Thompson, Battleland blog)
"Military relations are fundamentally altered, he argues, when the prospective foe is making 90 iPhones a minute for the U.S. and world markets, and American Walmarts are crammed with its goods...".

If  the US Gov would just balance its budget (and so quit borrowing money from the PRC) they'd be more vulnerable to Americans than we'd be to them. Just a thought.

Ex-Democratic Party goon "operative" charged with planting bomb in St. Louis attorney's car (St. Louis Today)
"A former political operative with a history of gun and drug charges has been indicted in the 2008 bombing that seriously injured a Clayton, MO lawyer."

WTF is does being an "operative" mean in this context? This guy worked on some Dem campaigns and stuff but his criminal convictions as well as this indictment was all strictly personal stuff unrelated to politics. Or so it seems anyhow. But the Reps would say, "but what if it was a Republican"? And they have a point. You'd never hear the end of it from the mainstream media types.

Someone super-gluing protractors all over Pittsburgh (Rob Beschizza, BoingBoing)
"One of the oddest things I've seen since coming to Pittsburgh was a protractor superglued to the stone in my neighborhood. It turns out that there are hundreds of them cropping up, sealed to surfaces so securely that authorities intend to charge whoever is doing it with a felony. Each is penned with a unique number, and tracking them down is becoming a local mystery."

One person's vandalism is another person's street art I guess. I doubt if the cops and property owners  see it that way though.

A documentary film on the Earth Liberation Front  (via Outside)
"For years, the ELF—operating in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership—had launched spectacular arsons against dozens of businesses they accused of destroying the environment: timber companies, SUV dealerships, wild horse slaughterhouses, and a $12 million ski lodge at Vail, Colorado."

One person's "environmentalist wacko" is another person's freedom fighter. But the feds don't see it that way at all though.  The ELF terror campaign compared with the much bally-hooed Weather Underground in the '70s didn't kill anyone and caused much more damage to their enemies. Weather Underground did just the opposite. Just sayin'.

Swedish doctors grow trachea from patient's own stem cells and then transplant it into him (Popular Science)
Kind of amazing. The best thing about this is that the patient can recover without the harsh regimen of anti-rejection drugs.

Revenge of the wage slaves: A movie review of Horrible Bosses (Kurt Loder, reason.com/)
Everybody (who is a wage slave) secretly yearns to kill their bosses.

Tips for talking to the police about your electronic devices (Adam Pash, Lifehacker.com)
A tip sheet from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Congress Whines, But Won’t Defund Libya War (Spencer Ackerman, Danger Room)
Gutless losers with no spine or integrity at all. At least 229 of them anyhow. Sheesh.

Weblog

An example of a typical case of metal theft (Jackson Citizen-Patriot/MLive)
"Officers were called about 3:40 p.m. to the home, which is for sale, by a real estate agent.The realtor found copper that had been cut from the plumbing of the home, and was laying on the basement floor, police said. The real estate agent called the homeowner, who in turn called 911.Police suspected the crime had taken place recently."

What makes these crimes especially damaging is that thousands of dollars in damage are done just to get a few hundred dollars worth of copper.

Detroit Tiger's ticket sales soaring as  season progresses (Lynn Henning, Detroit News)
Funny how a winning season will do that, eh?

Say goodbye to Los Angeles. Say goodbye to California. (Pat Buchanan, American Conservative)
I already have.

LSD alleviates pain and frequency of cluster headaches ( Kai Kupferschmid, Science)
Do we need to have "medical LSD" clinics now too?

Weblog

 Thousands without power in Pittsburgh area due to copper thieves (CBS TV Pittsburgh)
"According to First Energy, someone broke into a substation on Route 19 between Cranberry [PA] and Zelienople [PA] and stole all the copper ground wires."

What ever Obama says tonight the US is better off getting the hell out of Afghanistan (Tony Karon, Global Spin/Time)
"As Henry Kissinger famously noted, in an insurgency of this type, the guerrilla army wins by not losing; the conventional army loses by not winning."

Big News! Women don't want to marry you if you're unemployed (Life Inc.com/)

weblog

Michigan school superintendent asks governor to make his school district a prison (Nathan Boortz, Gratiot County Herald)
See, Michigan prisons aren't getting as big of a budget cut as the schools are.

Surprise! “Free Trade Agreements” do in fact damage the American economy (A.M. Spence, Council on Foreign Relations)

AQ Operatives arrested in Kentucky (Wes Bruer, Long War Journal)
They are both caught on tape bragging about fighting against U.S. forces in Iraq.  Both immigrated to the US in 2009.

Opinel carbon steel folding knife 
Less than $50 shipped. 

Weblog

Massachusetts job fair cancelled because of lack of jobs
Things are bad out there.
Solving the 2001 anthrax attacks: Did the feds get the wrong guy? Again?
Maybe says wired.com's Noah Shachtman. I think this story will be the Jack the Ripper story of the early 21st century complete with governmental incompetence, red herrings, false leads, witch-hunts, and mysterious clues that go nowhere or were never followed up. Not to mention the FUD amongst the public and a trail of dead bodies. To date no one has ever been indicted or arrested for these murders.
15,000 year old prehistoric tool-kit found
"The artifacts ... were mostly made from white chert, a popular stone for tools because like onyx it can be flaked into very sharp knife-edges."

Observations

Why statistical measures of GDP don't accurately measure real well-being

"Declining standards of well-being are politically destabilizing, and lead naturally enough to sweeping support for regime change. In Egypt and Tunisia the regimes happened to be despotic, and the call for change came as a commitment to democracy, an end to corruption, and demands for civil liberties. But within democracies, declining standards of living can have the opposite effect. Open and institutionalized systems of regime change—voting—will absorb the discontent for a time, but if the decline lasts too long, or  can’t successfully be blamed on a particular party in power, pressure grows for stepping outside established parties for new, radical, revolutionary approaches."

Lenin predicted that fascism (rather than communism) could emerge in industrially developed countries with liberal democratic governments if their economies faltered badly enough. And that's what happened too, first in Italy, then in Spain and finally in Germany and which resulted in a world war.

Weblog

Let them eat iPads!
Federal Reserve apologist shows he's totally disconnected from economic reality.
Human prejudice has ancient evolutionary roots
The tendency to perceive outsiders in a "us versus them" context isn't exclusively human but appears to be shared by other primates as well.
NPR’s Middle-Americaphobia
"'All things considered,' that bunch of decrepit pious prisspots at NPR could stand a breath of 'fresh air.' Today’s 'left' is just the inverse Christian Coalition, only more pious and sanctimonious. Cloistered snooty white bluebloods calling people they’ve never met and wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole 'racists.' ”
Why Japanese disaster victims don't riot or loot
" 'Diversity' is a source of conflict and tension, not strength, and the Japanese know it. Thanks to very restrictive immigration [policies], Japan is one of the most homogeneous nations on earth. Its people know that the country belongs to all of them, and they treat it and each other that way. If Japan had let in just a few of the Iraqis and Pakistanis who would love to come, there would not be as many admiring accounts of post-earthquake endurance and self-control."

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Belarus secret police used mobile phone operators to rat out regime opponents demonstrating in the streets over a stolen election - Charter97 (via BoingBoing)
"All people who visited the post-election demonstration are known to the police by tracing their mobile phone location. They call on these numbers now and invite people to come for a conversation." Activists beware. They'll be doing that here if they aren't already.

A Philip K. Dick android with loud shirts - Cnet



The speech/mouth synchronization could use some work. The beard needs some gray wisps in it too. But it looks just like him otherwise. The speech is kind of stilted. Witty banter doesn't sound like that. Nice effort, but they need to get back in the lab.

Self-Employment Key to Expanding Rural America’s Revival - NewGeography (Don Macke)
If no one will give you a job then make your own? Easier said than done, but I like the concept.

The Terminator Scenario: Are We Giving Our Military Machines Too Much Power? - Popular Science
That South Korean made Samsung Techwin SGR-1 robot that detects "intruders" and then fires grenades at them would be perfect for the border of the southwestern U.S. Gas to start, rubber balls if they keep coming and frags if they persist. Heh.

What if the Old Republic died and nobody noticed?  - Examiner.com/ (via Slashdot)
"When the Patriot Act was first signed in 2001, it was billed as a temporary measure required because of the extreme circumstances created by the terrorist threat. The fear from its opponents was that executive power, once given, is seldom relinquished." Continual war for continual peace.

Schrödinger’s Cat Lady - Escape Pod (podcast) Written by Marjorie James and read by Mur Lafferty
For sci-fi podcast fans who like their physics in the form of cute cat lady stories. Like me.