- It’s Official: Tunisia Now Freer than the U.S.
- [Informed Comment - Juan]
An Arab country with neither secret police nor censorship is unprecedented in recent decades. Tunisia is inspiring similar demands in Egypt and Jordan. When skeptics wonder if the Revolutions of 2011 would really change anything essential in the region, they would be wise to keep an eye on these two developments in Tunisia, which, if consolidated, would represent an epochal transformation of culture and politics.
…The US government thinks our private emails are actually public. The FBI and NSA routinely read our email and they and other branches of the US government issue security letters in the place of warrants allowing them to tap phones and monitor whom we call, and even to call up our library records and conduct searches of our homes without telling us about it.
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- Video: Women’s Economic Opportunities Around the World
- For the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, you should check out this informative motion graphic from The Economist and JESS3.
The video looks at economic opportunities for women around the world and examines labor policies, education, maternity leave, and the cost of violence against women.
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- Competence is Catching!
- [FreeRangeKids - lskenazy]
Here’s a brilliant idea that came in response to the previous couple of posts about how our kids can become more responsible when we back off a little. This mom not only liberated her OWN kids from too much help (however kindly proffered), she liberated a whole classroom!
- Bradley Manning’s forced nudity to occur daily – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
- Has anyone before successfully committed suicide using a pair of briefs — especially when under constant video and in-person monitoring? There's no underwear that can be issued that is useless for killing oneself? And if this is truly such a threat, why isn't he on "suicide watch" (the NYT article confirms he's not)? And why is this restriction confined to the night; can't he also off himself using his briefs during the day?
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- A Visitor Watches Bradley Manning’s Mental Health Deteriorate
- For over seven months, Manning has been detained in solitary confinement …He has yet to receive so much as a preliminary hearing.
House, who was born in Alabama, was brought up in a conservative household…
…the detainment and subsequent treatment of his friend, Manning, came as something of a shock …
Below is a transcript of House’s story, taken from a phonecall on Thursday 3 March 2011. A recording of the call can be heard here.
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- What I Read – NYTimes.com
- [Paul Krugman names his top sources, but I just wanted to quote this bit in particular. -L]
I don’t mean to devalue other blogs. I read Calculated Risk, Econbrowser, Rortybomb, Naked Capitalism, Yglesias, the Jons at The New Republic, Icanhascheezburger, and more, just not so systematically.
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- Turning a Blind Eye to the Obvious – NYTimes.com
- Look: until 1980 or so the United States generally paid its way; the ratio of debt to GDP generally fell over time. Then starve-the-beast came to power, and fiscal realism went away. That’s the story; anyone who glosses over that, who makes it a plague-on-both-houses issue or, worse, makes it seem as if Obama is the villain, is in an essential way misleading his readers.
Bear in mind, too, that the signature initiatives of Republican presidents — the Reagan tax cut, the Bush tax cut, the Medicare drug benefit — have all been unfunded deficit-raisers…
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- Wisconsin: Democrats Unify While Another Republican Nudges Toward Compromise
- Dane 101 (one of the great sites of the Cheddarsphere, all of which have been invaluable to covering the Wisconsin story) has collected statements from 11 out of the Fab 14 Senate Democrats, all of which announce their unity of purpose and their desire to meet with the Governor to move this forward. Scott Walker’s contention that Mark Miller was holding up things does not fit with these statements.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, another state Senator has stressed his willingness to be flexible. As you know, Republicans control the Senate 19-14, so a shift of only three on this issue would change the balance of power. Sen. Dale Schultz (R) has already called for compromise and basically said he’d oppose the bill. Now we have Sen. Rob Cowles.
- Comparative Destructiveness – NYTimes.com
- [Paul Krugman]
You can propose simply cutting retirement benefits by 25 percent, and that’s doable. But you can’t decide to do only three-quarters of every operation and test that Medicare pays for (and no, you can’t demand that patients pay 1/4 of the cost without effectively denying care to many Americans.) So Medicare cuts are an inherently harder problem than SS cuts. In fact, I suspect that’s one reason, beyond the political motivations, why inside-the-Beltway types love to talk about Social Security, a trivial concern, while avoiding the vastly more important Medicare issue.
So how are you going to make decisions about what not to do? Um, you need good information about which medical interventions work, and how well they work: comparative effectiveness research. And no, that information isn’t already out there…
Why, then, are Republicans opposed to this kind of research?
…you should always remember that the GOP comes to bury Medicare, not to save it.
- The Depths of FDR's Anti-Semitism
- [EconLog - Bryan Caplan]
- Rabbit Hole Politics
- I think most people assume that both the federal and state governments are on the verge of collapse. Certainly, that's the narrative. And they are further convinced that the reason they are on the verge of collapse because of their pension and health obligations to their citizens. This is not true on every level. But most importantly, it is not the cause of the current budget shortfalls, which are also a result of the recession and the lower tax revenue due to unemployment.
We are taking a national trip down the rabbit hole cutting spending to solve problems that won't exist for decades (if at all), in order to pretend to be doing something about the current economy which is starved for stimulus.
- Bond Market Shows Why Boehner Saying We’re Broke Is Only Figure of Speech – Bloomberg
- A person, company or nation would be defined as “broke” if it couldn’t pay its bills, and that is not the case with the U.S. Despite an annual budget deficit expected to reach $1.6 trillion this year, the government continues to meet its financial obligations, and investors say there is little concern that will change. [via digby]
- Census Data Will Likely Signal Loss of Political Power for Bay Area – The Bay Citizen
- With the much-anticipated release of 2010 census data for California expected Tuesday, the San Francisco Bay Area faces the prospect of ceding political clout to its upstart neighbor: the fast-growing Central Valley.
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[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Tue, Mar 8th, 9am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.