Paul M. Jones

As with any good scam, the government must maintain public confidence.  The moment someone says ‘the Emperor has no clothes,’ that shallow, fragile confidence will come crashing down and expose the scam. Dissent must be vigorously and swiftly pursued.

So when S&P finally downgraded the US one notch in August 2011, the SEC and Justice Department announced that S&P was under investigation, just two weeks later.

Egan-Jones, a smaller rating agency, has been even more aggressive, downgrading the US credit rating three times in 18 months. And while the federal government may not have imposed Diocletian’s death penalty, they are just as willing to squash dissent.

In a country that churns out thousands of pages of new regulations each week, it’s easy to find a reason to go after someone. As you read this letter, in fact, you are probably in violation of at least a dozen regulatory offenses.

In the case of Egan-Jones, the SEC brought administrative action against the agency within two weeks of their second downgrade. And a few days ago, the case was settled.

I’m sure you have already guessed the ending: Egan-Jones is banned from for the next 18 months from rating US government debt. They’ve effectively been silenced from telling the truth.

Emphasis mine. Notice the running theme lately of prosecutorial discretion: when there are so many laws, everyone is a criminal waiting to be prosecuted. Do something the government doesn't like, they'll find something to charge you with, even if it's not related to whatever it was they didn't like. Via Scam Complete: The US Government Takes A Page From Diocletian’s Book... | Zero Hedge.

The dissident temperament has been present in all times and places, though only ever among a small minority of citizens. Its characteristic, speaking broadly, is a cast of mind that, presented with a proposition about the world, has little interest in where that proposition originated, or how popular it is, or how many powerful and credentialed persons have assented to it, or what might be lost in the way of property, status, or even life, in denying it. To the dissident, the only thing worth pondering about the proposition is, is it true? If it is, then no king’s command can falsify it; and if it is not, then not even the assent of a hundred million will make it true.

This explains *so much* about me. Via Dissident Of The Month « Chateau Heartiste.

In a hushed but gruff tone, he [Nixon] told me he wanted me to call Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, because he wanted legal action taken against the demonstrator.  When I asked the President if the demonstrator was throwing anything, he erupted, red-faced:  “The little shit broke the police line.  For all I know he was going to kill me.  You tell Petersen to find a law he’s broken, and nail him.” Then, smacking a clenched right fist into his left hand, Nixon said, “Let’s make an example out of that goddamned jerk: prosecute his ass!”

When there are so many laws that daily living means you are a felon three times a day, those in power can prosecute you whenever they feel like it. Via Dealing With Aaron Swartz in the Nixonian Tradition: | John Dean | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia.

Seriously: What difference does it make? Just for low-stakes starters, there's a guy in California who was put in jail basically because the Obama administration said his stupid, irrelevant video trailer for "The Innocence of Muslims" was to blame for anti-Americanism in Libya and beyond. President Obama went to the United Nations and bitch-slapped free expression in front of a global audience on the premise that "Innocence" was the cause of the attack on Benghazi. Our own U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, took to the talk shows to peddle a line that was either wilfully misleading or simply totally wrong (Rice was the admin's point person in early appearances about Benghazi partly because, as Clinton explained yesterday, she doesn't like doing Sunday morning shows!).

Contra Clinton, it makes a great deal of difference because understanding how this all happened is the first step to making sure it doesn't happen over and over and over again.

via 3 Incredibly Outrageous Evasions by Hillary Clinton About Benghazi - Hit & Run : Reason.com.

The Economist also brings us big news on the “settled science” of climate change. A new study has found soot to be twice as bad for climate as was previously thought, making it the second most damaging greenhouse agent after CO2. This is actually good news for two reasons.

First, soot is easier to control than CO2, and targeting that kind of pollution provides lots of benefits that have nothing to do with climate change: it’s a dangerous pollutant and a health threat on its own. Second, controlling soot will seriously slow the speed of climate change. One of the study’s authors told the Economist that fully addressing the soot problem would strip half a degree from potential warming, buying politicians and scientists more time to make informed decisions.

This is where we’ve been for some time: the global approach to reducing CO2 emissions is a dead end, and while the overall science about the climate seems well established, there are some significant fiddly bits that haven’t yet been worked out. There may be more surprises like soot in the works, some good, some bad, but in any case the details, the timing, and the consequences of climate change are less clear than the overall arc, and the case for particular policies is often significantly weaker than the overall case that climate change is under way.

via The Economist Gives Up on Global Climate Treaties | Via Meadia.

Driving is a liberating technology, and we ought to recognize this, especially as we approach Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

Let’s think back to 1955, when African Americans stayed off segregated buses in Montgomery, Ala. During the year-long boycott, 325 private cars, some owned by African Americans, some by whites, some by churches, picked up people at 42 sites around the town.

Police harassed the drivers -- Martin Luther King Jr. was stopped for speeding (30 in a 25-mph zone) about 30 times -- but oppressing people in private cars is harder than oppressing them in public buses.

The boycott was successful, in part because of King’s fiery rhetoric, but also because of car ownership.

via The Volokh Conspiracy » Martin Luther King and automobility.

When the Affordable Care Act passed in early 2010, many in academia--faculty and students alike--cheered on. But now that its provisions are going into effect, some of these same people are learning firsthand that Obamacare has some nasty side effects.

A new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that many colleges are cutting back on the number of hours worked by adjunct professors, in order to avoid new requirements that they provide healthcare to anyone working over 30 hours per week. This is terrible news for a lot of people; 70 percent of professors work as adjuncts and many will now have to cope with a major pay cut just as requirements that they buy their own health insurance go into effect.

via Universities Bludgeon Adjuncts With Obamacare Loophole | Via Meadia.

The U.S. could become the largest producer of oil this year, seven years earlier than expected, a recently published BP report predicts. In less than 20 years, it will be 99 percent self-sufficient in net energy. ...

Prior to the BP report, it was thought that the U.S. would lead oil production only by 2020. The fact that we’re already there is a reflection of the rapid pace of the shale energy boom.

We are now speeding into the arms of a world that has a lot going for it compared to the old one. The American economy could soon be sitting pretty on a heap of new energy industry jobs and on the new revenues that will inevitably flow from natural gas exports.

It's unlike me to be optimistic. However, this does sound good. Via US Could Be Top Oil Producer This Year | Via Meadia.

The average G-type star shows a variability in energy output of around 4%. Our sun is a typical G-type star, yet its observed variability in our brief historical sample is only 1/40th of this. When or if the Sun returns to more typical variation in energy output, this will dwarf any other climate concerns.

The emergence of science as a not wholly superstitious and corrupt enterprise is slowly awakening our species to these external dangers. As the brilliant t-shirt says, an asteroid is nature's way of asking how your space program is doing. If we are lucky we might have time to build a robust, hardened planetary and extraplanetary hypercivilization able to surmount these challenges. Such a hypercivilization would have to be immeasurably richer and more scientifically advanced to prevent, say, the next Yellowstone supereruption or buffer a 2% drop in the Sun's energy output. (Indeed, ice ages are the real climate-based ecological disasters and civilization-enders -- think Europe and North America under a mile of ice). Whether we know it or not, we are in a race to forge such a hypercivilization before these blows fall. If these threats seem too distant, low probability, or fantastical to belong to the "real" world, then let them serve as stand-ins for the much larger number of more immediately dire problems whose solutions also depend on rapid progress in science and technology.

Via "2013 : WHAT *SHOULD* WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?" at Edge.org.There's no direct link to the essay I've quoted; search for the essay title "Unfriendly Physics, Monsters From The Id, And Self-Organizing Collective Delusions" on that page.

[T]here is a general wariness and nervousness about the return of the old dream of armed intervention. Above all because we realise that humanitarian interventionism offers us no political way to judge who it is we are helping in Libya - and thus what the real consequences of our actions might be.

Even if one's instincts are to help those fighting Gadaffi, it is no longer enough just to see it as a struggle of goodies against baddies. For it is precisely that simplification that has led to unreal fantasies about who we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fantasies that persist today, and which our leaders still cling to - because they give the illusion that we are in control.

via BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis - GOODIES AND BADDIES.