Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, in an address Wednesday to a special commission on Georgia tax reform, called on the state and Gov. Sonny Perdue to reduce the public workforce in order to redirect money toward education.

Whoa. What a novel idea; don't cut taxes unless you can make up the shortfall, and eliminate the bloated state workforce to provide for an educated future work force.

-janelane

Atlanta's Mayor Reed suggests cutting state workforce �| ajc.com

Mr. Shiller also said he thinks the U.S. economy is "teetering on the brink of deflation." Deflation occurs when the general level of consumer prices falls, as was the case in the Great Depression. He said the U.S. is ill-prepared for such an event because of the lack of "indexing" in contracts.

In addition, the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index said he is worried that housing prices could decline for another five years. He noted that Japan saw land prices decline for 15 consecutive years up to 2006.

Mr. Shiller said the biggest problem for the economy and the national psyche currently is unemployment, and he called on the federal government and local government to create jobs. Specifically, he suggested that schools employ an additional person in each class room as a teacher's aide.

Thats exactly the opposite of what most school systems are doing...

Economist Shiller Sees Potential for 'Double Dip' Recession - WSJ.com

Righthaven acquires the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission.

Righthaven usually demands $75,000, but will settle for a few thousand dollars.

More hazards of thinking outloud.

Second Newspaper Chain Joins Copyright Trolling Operation | Threat Level | Wired.com

When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed.

This is what we're up against. Abolition of basic government services in pursuit of Big Business. At least no one can speak logically (I know, like that matters) about getting rid of the CIA with so much terrorism at our doorstep.

-janelane

Op-Ed Columnist - The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party - NYTimes.com

People who drink heavily live longer than those who completely abstain from alcohol, according to a new study conducted by a psychologist at the University of Texas.

Ha! A perfectly counterintuitive result.

-janelane

How does booze extend your lifespan? - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

This article encapsulates everything that is so much more wrong about today than in decades past. Every new generation decries the current times as the worst, but we are at a point where Americans are dumbening by the hour. I may over-internalize the problem of the extreme right, but before you know it, over half of the Republican party will believe anything and everything Rush Limbaugh and Fox News tell them. I don't know about you, but what a bunch of hate-filled, misogynistic, racist, wholly uneducated, and poor-people-and-basic-government-services-be-damned people we will become if they rule the country.

I'm just glad that the Daily Show is still on otherwise I would have turned my back on television and any semblance of accuracy in reporting a long time ago.

-janelane, pessimistically

Building a Nation of Know-Nothings - NYTimes.com