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There’s Still Time To Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
12/13/2011

If you’re like me, you were a little confused when you saw candy canes for sale at the same time as the Halloween treats this year. Traditionalists have long marked the start of the Christmas season not so much by the Advent calendar but by that day-after feeling of eating Thanksgiving leftovers, watching football, or [...]

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Second batch of trail cam photos
12/08/2011

I headed out to my local tree strip last weekend to switch cards on my trail cam and found some good photos. I captured around 20 different deer this time using the “whitetail highway” where our cam was sitting. This included … Continue reading →

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Mt. Lion travels 1,600 miles
12/08/2011

Most of you have more than likely seen the article (http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/apArticle/id/D9ONK6S80/ ) about the Mt. Lion with South Dakota origins making it to Conn. before being run over by a vehicle. It seems to me these large felines are beginning to range farther … Continue reading →

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Fishing report for July 25
12/08/2011

Below is a copy of the fishing report on the Missouri River for July 25 in South Dakota. Lake Oahe  In the Pollock area fishing is going really well and anglers are catching limits.  Many are using crankbaits in 7-15 feet … Continue reading →

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August Goose Management Take
12/08/2011

Here is a link to my story about the August Goose Management Take. http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/55843/ There are a few points I really want to drive home about the season. First off, when talked with the GF&P I found it astonishing that there … Continue reading →

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Fishing at Pike Haven on Lake Oahe
12/08/2011

I spent this weekend on Lake Oahe at Pike Haven with my father in law, brother in law, and dog Stella, doing some fishing and having an all around good time. We saw great success catching our limit of walleye on … Continue reading →

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Mourning Dove season
12/08/2011

For those hunters wanting a new challenge – try out Mourning Doves.  The season opens tomorrow (September 1st) for this fast acrobatic birds. Most hunting strategies include waiting at a small stock dam at sunrise or dusk and pass shoot … Continue reading →

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Duck Season Opens
12/08/2011

  One of my favorite times of the year begin tomorrow morning (Sept. 24). Duck season will open up for much of Eastern South Dakota.  Daily limit is six ducks and can be comprised of no more of following. 5 Mallards, … Continue reading →

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Firearms deer season in full swing
12/08/2011

As most of you know, rifle season for eastern South Dakota deer opened up last weekend. My father, brother and I did some hunting around Iroquois and found some good success. My dad took a warrior of a buck that was … Continue reading →

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Mountain lion quota increased
12/08/2011

Mountain Lion quotas for the 2012 season have been increased to 70 lions or 50 females after GF&P commissioners voted on the issue last week. Wildlife division recommendations for the season were 60-40. Last years quotas were 45 total and … Continue reading →

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No, the Payroll Tax Cut Doesn't Hurt the Trust Fund
12/07/2011

Senator Mark Kirk explains his opposition to extending the payroll tax cut that was originally passed last year:

The White House has redefined this as the payroll tax deduction. It's not the payroll tax deduction — it's contributions to Social Security. And when the American people hear that we have legislation moving forward to cut contributions to Social Security and drive the trust fund into the red, I think opposition would be fairly overwhelming.

Everybody gets to put their own spin on things, and this has become a common Republican meme over the past week or two. Unfortunately, it's just factually false. Normally, a reduction in the payroll tax would indeed reduce contributions to the Social Security trust fund, but last year's bill specifically made up for this loss from the general fund. The trust fund got every penny it normally would have, and all the proposals on the table this year do the same.

What changes here isn't the solvency of the trust fund. What changes is where the money comes from. Payroll taxes mainly come from the middle and working classes. The general fund is supported by income taxes, which mainly come from the well-off and the rich. So, generally speaking, a payroll tax cut that's compensated for by transfers from the general fund reduces the taxes of the middle and working classes and raises the taxes of the well-off and the rich.

If Republicans object to this — and they do — they should say so. But it's long past time to stop pretending that this has anything to do with the trust fund, and long past time for the media to stop passing along this claim unchallenged.

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Squatting in the USA
12/07/2011

 As Josh Harkinson reported today, squatters groups and housing rights activists are teaming up with Occupy movements across the country to help evicted tenants stay in their foreclosed homes.

Occupy Our Homes, as the movement is called, isn’t the first time evicted homeowners and squatters have mobilized under a political banner in this country. Here are a few examples of landmark occupations going back to the Great Depression.

Lower East Side squats
From 1989 to 1999, Giuliani spent millions attempting to oust groups squatting in eleven abandoned buildings in New York City's East Village and Lower East Side, at one point dispatching sharpshooters and a tank to 13th street to remove squatters who had welded themselves inside four buildings. When the city was successful in clearing one building of squatters, others would come and take their place. For many squatters, the action was as much about the practical necessities of finding shelter as about sending a political message about housing inequality and rising rents in once-affordable New York neighborhoods.

Continue Reading »

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Human Rights Gets a Hollywood Anthem
12/07/2011

First, international human rights got an official logo (with a little help from Qaddafi's old PR firm). Now the universal yearning for freedom has its own anthem, written by Oscar-winning Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Amnesty International, the man who's scored everything from Gladiator and Rain Main to The Lion King and Kung Fu Panda 2, has bestowed the group with what it calls "a deeply moving composition that pays tribute to generations of human rights activists whose achievements have meant the difference between life and death, freedom and terror, justice or repression for people around the world." And all that in a little more than two minutes.

Here's a version of the anthem released earlier this year:

That's pretty much standard Zimmer fare: A not too subtle attempt to wring tears from your eyes via a barrage of etherial vocals and relentless percussion. But there's more: Amnesty's just announced a contest to remix the official (and as yet unshareable) version of "One More Voice for Freedom" (the winner gets $1,000).

You really have to hear it—it's somewhere between airplane boarding music and the most stereotypically inspiring movie montage ever. Still, it was very nice of Zimmer to contribute a fraction of his output to Amnesty on its golden jubilee. Now, if you'll excuse him, he has to get back to putting the finishing touches on his soundtrack for Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, the first animated 3-D movie about the International Criminal Court.

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Fukushima Fallout
12/07/2011

There's been a flurry of troubling news from Fukushima's crippled nuclear power plant. Here's a recap:

1. The Tokyo Electric Power Company estimates that of 45 tons of radioactive wastewater that leaked from the plant, some 40 gallons (150 liters)  leaked into the Pacific Ocean in recent days, reports the New Zealand Herald.

2. The Japanese milk-powder company Meiji, whose factory lies within 200 miles (320 kilometers) of the Fukushima plant, recalled 400,000 cans of baby formula after discovering 30.8 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilo in the product, reports the BBC. This level is considered within the safety range, though infants and children are more susceptible than adults to lower levels of exposure, and eating radiation is worse than external exposure. Until now, Meiji had been checking waterborne but not airborne radioactivity levels near their factory, reports the New York Times—hence the "new" findings.

3. A new paper (open access) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports that two episodes of rain in the days following the disaster dispersed most of the radioactive iodine, tellurium, and cesium now found in Japan's surface soils. The first rain on 15 March spread the contamination around Fukushima prefecture. The second rain on 21 March transported and deposited radiation on Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, and Chiba prefectures, as well as in Tokyo.

4. Another new paper (open access) in PNAS reports on the distribution of Cesium-137. With its half-life of 30.1 years—meaning it will lose only half its radioactivity in the next three decades—cesium-137 is the most dangerous of all fallout for livestock and hence human life in the area for decades to come. The researchers found Cesium-137 strongly contaminated soils in large areas of eastern and northeastern Japan, whereas western Japan was sheltered by its mountain ranges. Soils and ocean waters between 130–150 °E and 30–46 °N were estimated to contaminated by 5.6 and 1.0 petabecquerels, respectively.

5. The Telegraph reports that Japan's Environment Ministry has finally granted permission to animal welfare groups to enter the no-go zone around Fukushima and rescue abandoned cats, dogs, and other pets. Many are believed to have starved to death, though several hundred are thought to be alive and running wild. Only animals whose owners have requested rescue, and who can prove they can provide shelter, will be allowed a pick up. (Somehow I imagine the rescuers will find a kinder solution than that.)

 

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Doctors in America
12/07/2011

Aaron Carroll thinks that retail health clinics fill a useful niche. "There are times when you need to see a health care professional early in the morning, or later at night," he says. "Have you tried to get an appointment lately when you’re sick? It’s hard!" The chart on the right, which has made an appearance before on this blog, tells the story. Upwards of 20% of people who are sick have to wait a week to get an appointment to see a doctor. Matt Yglesias comments:

A lot of health care professionals in the United States seem to me to be slightly in denial about the level of service they're providing. Somehow we have the most expensive health care system in the world, with the highest paid doctors, and yet it's strangely difficult to actually get an appointment to see one.

My guess is that they're not in denial at all. The reason it takes a long time to see a doctor is because they're booked solid with appointments. They see 20 or 30 patients a day, every day, so most of them really have no particular incentive to make it any easier to make an appointment. Why would they when they're already working at capacity?

And why are they working at capacity? Part of the reason is that we just don't have all that many doctors in America:

These two charts are surprisingly uncorrelated, which presumably has something to do with how healthcare is run in various countries and something to do with cultural mores about how often we like to see doctors. Still, the overall picture is clear: we have relatively few doctors, they're all really busy, and they get paid a lot more than in other countries. That may not be so hot from a patient's point of view, but from a doctor's standpoint, what's not to like?

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Washington's New Focus: China
12/07/2011

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia—once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.

The new policy was signaled by President Obama himself on November 17th in an address to the Australian Parliament in which he laid out an audacious—and extremely dangerous—geopolitical vision. Instead of focusing on the Greater Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the United States will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific. "My guidance is clear," he declared in Canberra. "As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region." While administration officials insist that this new policy is not aimed specifically at China, the implication is clear enough: from now on, the primary focus of American military strategy will not be counterterrorism, but the containment of that economically booming land—at whatever risk or cost.

Continue Reading »

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Obama Meets Occupy Wall Street
12/07/2011

In a speech delivered at Osawatomie, Kansas today, President Obama debunked trickle-down economics, punctured the myth of the unregulated paradise, and slammed a Republican party fixated on making life better for the top 1 percent.

Calling for new investments in education and technology, Obama took it right to Republicans, defending his efforts to reform Wall Street, protect consumers through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and craft a more progressive tax code as part of a larger project to rebuild the Middle class. And his data points jibed with the income inequailty compliants that have been raised by Occupy Wall Streeters:

In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent. 

This kind of inequality—a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression—hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. . . . Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores. . . .

It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.

Fortunately, that’s not a future we have to accept. Because there’s another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country —a view that’s truer to our history; a vision that’s been embraced by people of both parties for more than two hundred years. . . .

This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare. It’s about making choices that benefit not just the people who’ve done fantastically well over the last few decades, but that benefits the middle class, and those fighting to get to the middle class, and the economy as a whole.

"We still have a stake in each other’s success," Obama thundered at the end of his speech. "We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. The fundamental rule in our national life— the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together."

Tweeting during the speech, The Nation's Ari Berman put it into context: "Three months ago Obama's speeches were about the deficit. Now they're about income inequality, basic fairness & jobs #OWS." Consider the national conversation officially shifted—and Obama's campaign for 2012 officially begun.

Want the numbers behind the speech? Check out our income inequality charts.

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Liberals and Fraud
12/07/2011

The Obama administration has announced plans to crack down on food stamp fraud among both retailers and users. Atrios comments:

Cracking down on thieving retailers is of course a good idea, but, really? Going after SNAP beneficiaries who try to convert their meager benefits to an even more meager amount of cash? I imagine some people who do this are using the money for Things We Officially Frown Upon, but some are probably trying to pay their damn bills.

My guess is that this crackdown is hardly a huge program, so it's not as if loads of resources are being diverted to make life more difficult for the poor. Beyond that, though, Obama seems to instinctively get something that the rest of us lefties probably ought to appreciate more: like it or not, if you want the public to support government programs, you need to make sure they're administered effectively. That's doubly or triply true of social welfare programs, which are easily demagogued even in the best of times. If anything, liberals who support these programs ought to be more concerned about rooting out fraud and improving efficiency than conservatives, who'd be just as happy to see them simply go away.

This is fundamentally a Charlie Peters-ish neoliberal insight, and neoliberalism has obviously taken a lot of lumps over the past decade. Some of them were deserved, some weren't. Either way, this particular insight is one worth holding onto.

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Video: Ron Paul Is Your New Pickup Truck
12/07/2011

Libertarian presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking to the airwaves with a "fun and energetic" new ad that's heavy on graphic animation...and gumption. The spot—titled "Big Dog"—is laden with so much lush, manly word salad that NPR's calling it one of the "coolest commercials" of the season. "What's up with these sorry politicians?" the ad's gravely narrator growls. "Lots of bark, but when it's showtime? Whimpering like little shih tzus. You want BIG CUTS? Ron Paul's been screaming it FOR YEARS!"

Take a look:

Original, no? Actually, no. If you've watched any football on TV since the middle of 2008 NFL season, you've seen something like this:

That's Denis "No Cure For Cancer" Leary doing a voiceover for Ford pickup trucks. Seems like Paul's campaign is trying to appeal to the same demographic targeted by Ford when it went after "core truckers" who are into "football, NASCAR, pro bull riding, or country music." Bloomberg Businessweek ID'd those consumers less flatteringly as "'image' buyers…folks who are weekend warriors/Home Depot shoppers who liked the idea of a pickup when gas was $1.50 per gallon." The political analog for Ford's "image" buyer, I suppose, are folks who occasionally follow politics and liked the idea of Atlas Shrugged when their college tuition was being covered by government loans. If you're male, youngish, into proving that you're male and youngish, and a sucker for ads that suggest you'd never be a sucker for ads, then Ford wants to be your truck, and Ron Paul wants to be your candidate.

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Wedding Dresses & Women. Or “How women dream of Prince Charming and wakeup in ‘The Hangover.’”
12/06/2011

The wedding industry takes a regular beating for being over the top. But there are also good aspects to it. As a designer of high-end wedding dresses, Justina McCraffrey (full disclosure – a  friend of mine) sees a lot of the inner workings of weddings.  Her work brings her closely in contact with the bride, [...]

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There’s Still Time To Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
12/06/2011

If you’re like me, you were a little confused when you saw candy canes for sale at the same time as the Halloween treats this year. Traditionalists have long marked the start of the Christmas season not so much by the Advent calendar but by that day-after feeling of eating Thanksgiving leftovers, watching football, or [...]

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Firearms deer season in full swing
12/01/2011

As most of you know, rifle season for eastern South Dakota deer opened up last weekend. My father, brother and I did some hunting around Iroquois and found some good success. My dad took a warrior of a buck that was … Continue reading →

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Mountain lion quota increased
12/01/2011

Mountain Lion quotas for the 2012 season have been increased to 70 lions or 50 females after GF&P commissioners voted on the issue last week. Wildlife division recommendations for the season were 60-40. Last years quotas were 45 total and … Continue reading →

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Duck Season Opens
12/01/2011

  One of my favorite times of the year begin tomorrow morning (Sept. 24). Duck season will open up for much of Eastern South Dakota.  Daily limit is six ducks and can be comprised of no more of following. 5 Mallards, … Continue reading →

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Mourning Dove season
12/01/2011

For those hunters wanting a new challenge – try out Mourning Doves.  The season opens tomorrow (September 1st) for this fast acrobatic birds. Most hunting strategies include waiting at a small stock dam at sunrise or dusk and pass shoot … Continue reading →

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