Jeff Campbell:
http://youtu.be/Ys6wgOmTlHI
‘The austerity agenda is winning’
Krugman on the budget deal.
H/t
http://youtu.be/2jDBzUTDUBI I try not to think about these things. Ugh. If this doesn’t illustrate the problem, I don’t know what does: Sales more than $1 million in Philadelphia climbed 31 percent to 122 deals in the 12 months ending September 2012, according to data from Zillow Inc. Nine of those agreements were for properties priced more than $3 million, the most since at least 2007. This year so far, eight units at $3 million or more sold at either 10 Rittenhouse Square or 1706 Rittenhouse Square, according to Philadelphia property records. H/t to Jason Kalafat. This would be a good idea if so many of us weren’t already sold on the idea of supporting Costco because it treats employees so well. (Average annual salary? $38,000) I’m a Prime customer, and I would never use this service unless Amazon cleans up its act and pays a living wage. We know that won’t happen, because low-paid, desperate workers are the grease in the Amazon profit wheels. It’s up to progressive activists and orgs to educate the public about Amazon, the same way we did for Walmart: SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon.com is working on a new business called Pantry that will help it expand further into the giant consumer package goods market and take on warehouse club stores Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, according to three people familiar with the effort. Pantry, which is run by Billy Hegeman, a senior manager in vendor management and consumables at Amazon, is currently set to launch in 2014, the people said on condition of anonymity. They did not want to be identified because Amazon’s plans are still private. Amazon spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to comment Thursday afternoon. The service will be targeted at existing members of Amazon’s Prime shipping program. It will launch with about 2,000 products typically found in the center of grocery stores, such as cleaning supplies, kitchen paper rolls, canned goods like pet food, dry grocery items like cereal and some beverages. Amazon will let Prime shoppers put as many of these items into a set sized box, up to a specific weight limit. If the products fit and they don’t exceed the maximum weight, Amazon will ship the box for a small fee. Pantry will put Amazon into much closer competition with Costco and Sam’s Club, which specialize in selling a limited number of items in huge volume at very low prices, according to retail industry experts. “Amazon has the clubs in their cross hairs,” said Keith Anderson, who leads RetailNet Group’s Digital Advisory practice.”This will be a potential issue for Costco.” It really saddens me when I read these stories. I’m so determined to do some good in the world, maybe to balance out all the evil performed by our government: (Reuters) – Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday. The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone. “An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital,” one security official said. Five more people were injured, the officials said. The United States has stepped up drone strikes as part of a campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), regarded by Washington as the most active wing of the militant network. AmericaBlog’s Gaius Publius dissects this Chris Hedges interview: I don’t think that living in revolutionary times is any fun; and I think that revolutions very often go disastrously wrong. So I’m not cheering this one, and I’m angry indeed that the greed-mad (I mean that clinically) barons are determined to force us to rise up. Even without the climate chaos they may force on us, the next few decades will not be peaceful. But decide for yourself. Here’s Hedges on why he thinks we’re ripe for revolution, in the start of one already, and what we should do (source here): Some notes: ▪ At 7:15: “What happens in moments of breakdown, is that people not only turn against an ineffectual liberal elite, that in essence has presided over political or economic paralysis, but they also jettison the values that elite purports to defend. And that’s what’s dangerous. And we’re certainly barreling towards that kind of a crisis. I worry that we’re not only weakened, but unprepared.” ▪ At 8:45, Hedges talks about what vision replaces the current one, since people need to be fighting for something, not just against something. And he makes a nice connection between the current prison population and anti-revolutionary forces and critiques in our society. ▪ At 11:00 he talks about the recipe for revolution in current society as a fusion between “declassé intellectuals” — students whose lives are burdened and broken by debt and joblessness — and service workers, “who are in essence the working poor.” Think a student debt strike would light a fire? I do. ▪ He ends by articulating a vision (in my view, viable) of where and how change will come from. “It’s going to come off the ground, it’s going to come by stepping outside of the mainstream, it’s going to come by articulating a very different vision about how we relate to each other, how we relate to the economic system, and ultimately how we relate to the ecosystem.” The essay they reference, “Our Invisible Revolution,” is here. A related piece, “The Revolutionaries in our Midst,”is here. I think Hedges would offer these as further evidence that, well, it’s started. Thanks, April Cockerham. We all know this. And it’s not as if the establishment would be willing to rock this particular boat when there are campaign contributions to be had: As many as one in six children nationwide has a neurodevelopmental disability, including autism, speech and language delays, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that ADHD alone affects 14 percent of children, although experts debate whether it may be overdiagnosed. In any case, the number of children needing special education services has increased 200 percent in the past 25 years. In a 2000 report, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 3 percent of brain disorders are caused outright by environmental toxicity and an additional 25 percent by environmental exposures interacting with genetic susceptibilities. Every day, America’s pregnant women and young children are exposed to a trifecta of suspected neurotoxicants in the form of pesticides (mostly via food and water but also home, lawn, and farm applications), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH (mostly via exposure to vehicle exhaust), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs (flame retardants, mostly in upholstered furniture and electronics). The CDC routinely samples Americans for these and other industrial by-products in our bodies, so we know their reach is pervasive. But we are not all equally exposed, and some of us appear to be more vulnerable to them for reasons that may include genetic susceptibility, poor nutrition, stress, and age. Via James Pethokoukis, here’s an interesting tidbit of income mobility data from a new Brookings report. The chart below is a little tricky to read, but basically it shows how likely you are to make more money than your parents. You’d naturally expect smart kids to do better than dimmer kids, so it tracks that too. Take a look at the green column on the far left. It’s for kids who grow up in the very poorest families. If you have high cognitive ability, you have a 24 percent chance of becoming a high earner as an adult. That’s not too bad. But if you come from a high-income family, you have a 45 percent chance of becoming a high earner as an adult. Same smarts, different outcome. No society will ever get this perfect. Still, there’s a huge difference between 24 percent and 45 percent. Better schools, more extracurricular opportunities, different skin color, bigger networks of connected friends, higher odds of going to college, and the simple ability to get in the door all give richer kids a huge leg up that poor kids don’t have. We obviously have a ways to go before everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in America.Fox News presents: It’s A Wonderful Life
How restaurants are making you sick
Apparently some people are doing quite well
Amazon vs. Costco
Oops
`We`re in a pre-revolutionary society’
Polluting our kids’ brains
Equal opportunity?
Not exactly. Kevin Drum: