And the adventure begins

Well, this has begun well. I get to the airport on Wednesday and see that my plane has a 40 minutes delay. Okay. That is manageable. I have a 1.4 hour layover, so I should be fine. Well, it turns out that delay is exacerbated by two things: the plane in the gate I am using has mechanical issues and the flight from NC to Boston that I am supposed to board, is also delayed. So, I talk to the gate and they tell me that there is no way I will make my connection in NY to get to Buenos Aires. Try 1: fail. Try 2. Thursday morning. I get to Logan airport in Boston hoping to catch a 3:05 plane to JFK (and luckily a 3:05 because the other 3 flights to JFK for today have been cancelled due to weather in New York. So, I get here around 12 and realize that my flight from JFK to Buenos Aires has been pushed back to 6:30 AM on Friday morning. I was supposed to arrive at 10AM on Friday morning. Now, the plane will get me in at 7:30 at night. Well, so, my 3:05 flight doesn't take off because there are mechanical issues with the plane. They announce that there will be a second plane that we can use. When we are about to board, we are told that there will be an even worst delay because of mechanical issues with the second plane. I just want to leave. I already have a 14 hour layover in JFK before my 14 hour flight. What more could happen? Let's just hope they don't cancel all the flights today, I couldn't handle that. I have already missed a day and a half in Buenos Aires of meeting my host family and orientation regarding transportation issues in the city. I am a patient person but even my patience is being tried here.

This is terrifying. Gun sales have soared higher than ever before.

Food Blog 1.0

So, I told Becca this wasn't a food blog. But, I have this picture of the most perfect BLT that I had to post. Mmm.

Starve the Beast

Paul Krugman has an excellent column today in the NYT on his take on Republican strategy starting in the Reagan years. The idea is that the GOP will "starve the beast" (with the ultimate goal of dismantling big government and its largest expenditures - Medicare, Medicaid, and SS) by supporting popular tax cut after popular tax cut until the government is in such a fiscal mess that they have to then do the "responsible" thing and cut the social welfare programs that they so oppose (again: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security). However, the GOP has refused to cut any of these programs because they remain hugely popular among the people in this country.

Then, this summer, during the health care debates, the Republicans even went so far as to be the opponents of responsible cuts in Medicare under the Democratic health care proposal (that aimed to get rid of the government subsidies to the health insurers established under Bush's Medicare Part D legislation). They lied that these cuts would create "Death Panels." Since when is the GOP the party that protects Medicare? The Republicans have been railing against these socialized programs forever.

Recently, Obama has been trying to force the GOP (through the bipartisan commission) to make the tough decisions and publicly decide which extremely popular programs they want to cut. Despite the fact that the bipartisan bill, written by Sens. Gregg and Conrad, had support from both parties, when Obama publicly endorsed the plan, 7 GOP Co-Sponsors of the bill voted against it, leaving the bill to die with just 53 Aye votes in the Senate. Kick the can down the road. Is Congress actually interested in Governing?

Response to CPAC

It is fairly clear that the cause of the recent economic collapse had a lot to do with deregulation.

Contrary to Adam Smith's belief, markets are not perfectly efficient. From my understanding, efficient markets are based on many underlying utopian assumptions (every transaction has insurance against risk, people are completely rational consumers, transactions are completely transparent, and externalities are non-existent). Of course, this never happens in the real world.

As Joseph Stiglitz states in his 1986 paper "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets":

"It has not, however, been widely recognized that the distortions that arise in economies in which there is imperfect information and incomplete markets-for practical purposes, all economies-result in there being real welfare consequences of what would otherwise be viewed as purely pecuniary effects. As a result, economies in which there are incomplete markets and imperfect information are not, in general, constrained Pareto efficient. There exist government interventions (e.g., taxes and subsidies) that can make everyone better off. Moreover, the distortions that arise from imperfect information or incomplete markets often look analytically like externalities of the familiar technological sort, and viewing them in this way helps identify the welfare consequences of government interventions. "

That is, all economies have externalities that prevent the economy from reaching the perfect Pareto efficient (free market efficiency) and there are certain actions that the government needs to take to ensure that markets work their best.

Unfettered and unregulated markets, as praised by ex-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, were whole-heartedly believed to be truly efficient. However, as we have seen in the economic collapse, they are not (and the guru of deregulation, Greenspan, has admitted this).

Instead, deregulated markets have lead to irresponsible financial practices that have created massive bubbles (tech in the 1990s and housing in the 2000s) that eventually pop with dire global consequences.

What have unregulated markets done? They may have increased US GDP and made a few people extremely rich but they have increased the inequality of wealth, crippled wages, sped up environmental disasters, and caused a horrible global recession.

I cannot believe that anyone would be calling for less government interference in an economy that clearly needs more. Our country needs a new vision for its future. We need to get passed our "rugged individual" and "big government is evil" mantra and join the 21st century. We have crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, outrageously expensive healthcare, immigration issues, trade imbalances, a huge debt, a disappearing manufacturing sector, horrible inequality of wealth, and depressing poverty that need to be fixed.

Look at most other advanced countries (all of Scandinavia, most of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.) and you see great public schools systems, wonderful public transportation, great technological innovation, clean cities, huge parks, and public health care that works. America is falling behind and our fear of "big government" and tax increases coupled with an inefficient Congress that is flush with corporate influences and cash are crippling our ability to act. Less government regulation means more money for the top 5% and little for everyone else.

We need to restore the balance between Government and Markets. They are both needed, they are both necessary, but both need to be adjusted to work in the 21st century.

Climate Deniers

I found this interesting statistic about climate change today. A Pew Research poll on public opinion of scientists reveals that 84% of scientists in the United States believe that global climate change, or my new favorite --global weirding-- has been fueled by man made actions (ie the burning of fossil fuels). To hear climate change deniers talk about it, one would think that there was little to no consensus on the research about climate change. Some would even suggest that the small but loud minority calling Al Gore's bluff is nearing a majority, or at least a plurality. But, no, the climate is warming, the glaciers and ice sheets are melting (some estimated 150 billion gigatons, that is 150 billion billion tons, of ice is melting and falling away from the Greenland ice sheets and not being replaced each winter by snow), the oceans are rising, and the CO2 in the atmosphere has surpassed levels ever seen on this planet (and mind you, increases in global temperature in historical events always immediately follow increases in CO2 from ocean warming and snow melting), and yet it is just another conspiracy invented by liberals to strengthen Big Brother.

9 days. I am bored.