Republicans are More Concerned about Pills than Jobs

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Thursday February 23, 2012 · 7:23 AM PST

2012/02/23 · 07:23

The top 25 words in last nights' Republican debate was again missing words like jobs, unemployment, foreclosure and economy. Instead, the word "pills", short for contraception pills, made it in the top 25 words list. This shows that Republicans care more about what happens in bedrooms than in getting jobs.

Indeed most of the top words were about places and positions, showing that the Republicans are concerned about an entitled place in society not in fixing the problems of the country.

And of course, Obama is a focus word. But Republicans just substitute blaming the President for a discussion of policy. Indeed, "people think" still shows in the highest word usage in this debate as well as in previous debates showing that the focus is more marketing and illusion rather than substance.

thegracekelly

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Wednesday November 30, 2011 · 8:51 AM PST

2011/11/30 · 08:51

Corporations and capitalism are a human invention. Basically our human inventions have been causing our civilization to not respond rationally to the depletion of resources or climate change. Does capitalism structurally lead to disasters? Under a perfect system where every contribution is fairly priced, where knowledge is perfect, where there are multiple suppliers and buyers, then capitalism works fairly well. Unfortunately there are many contributions that are not fairly priced. The unpriced factors are very important.

Many individuals, acting in their own independent and rational self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource. This true even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen. This phenomenon is described as "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin and first published in the journal Science in 1968.

In my U of M MBA class, we ran the fishing game that models the Tragedy of the Commons. Even though the class was focused on social responsibility, the group could not negotiate a private solution of agreed limits - the official non-government solution. Our guest instructor said that he had run the fishing game under many conditions, yet always the fisheries ended up overfished even to the point of no recovery.

thegracekelly

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Friday November 18, 2011 · 11:09 AM PST

2011/11/18 · 11:09

I am really impressed that the Occupy movement is seeing, tracking and discussing the different types of policing. Most importantly the Occupy movement is seeing police as "one of us:"

As many Occupy protesters have pointed out, even as police officers help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police officers are part of the 99 percent.
(Alternet)

Within the peace movement there has been a discussion of the difference between a police office and solider, where "one of us" is the heart of the difference. Policing is a natural function. In fact, peace and protest communities will set up their own type of police force like marshals along side of protest. Also within the policing community, the same discussion of the difference between a police office and solider is also happening. Norm Stamper, who was Seattle’s police chief during the 1999 World Trade Center militaristic crackdown on WTO protesters, now says:

There will always be situations—an armed and barricaded suspect, a man with a knife to his wife’s throat, a school-shooting rampage—that require disciplined, military-like operations. But most of what police are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires patience, diplomacy and interpersonal skills. I’m convinced it is possible to create a smart organizational alternative to the paramilitary bureaucracy that is American policing… By building a progressive police organization, created by rank-and-file officers, “civilian” employees and community representatives… to build trust and mutual respect—qualities sorely missing from the current equation.
(Alternet)

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