2010-06-05-samantha-clemens.Mp3

What’s on my mind….

RISK: What do Wall Street, Big Oil, climate change, saving for retirement, and wearing helmets have in common? Human are LOUSY at assessing risk.

KIDS KILLING KIDS IN BOSTON: Not my problem, you say? Well, if altruism makes you nervous, don’t you at least want these kids to be productive citizens so they can contribute to your social security fund? Oh that’s right…you want the government to keep its hands off your social security.

ANGRY PRESIDENT: Am I the only one that actually prefers that the President keep a cool head in the face of a disaster? Does that mean I am somehow emotionally-challenged?

A THRILL SEEKER’S PARADISE – THE MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION – Well, maybe not, but… Did the Scott Brown election light a fire under the Dems? Does the success of Dems in the mid-term elections hinge on the unemployment rate? Does it matter if the state auditor talks crazy sometimes?

What do you want to talk about?

I hear some folks (seems like people who sympathize with the tea partiers) say we need to run the economy like a business.  In other words, not the current deficit spending.  And that this is why Democrats (Obama) are ruining the country, and why Mitt Romney might be the best candidate for the Presidency – he ran Bain didn’t he?  He ran the Olympics, didn’t he?

BUT….

Wouldn’t ‘managing the economy’ be socialism (the boogieman of the conservatives these days)????

Well, we get down to  basics in this show – Timothy Taylor, Managing Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, author of Principles of Economics: Economics and the Economy, tells us all about it, and shares his thoughts on what experience might be useful for a President.

What’s on my mind…

• Guns – Is there a mandate in the Constitution for proper training on how to use guns safely?  Will the NRA be offering this free of charge to all citizens?  Who owns the bullets after they leave the gun?  (the shooter obviously, but…)
• Banning the burka – should people be legally required to show their faces?  Any other body parts?  Where do you draw the line?

What’s on your mind?

Audio

So Texas gets to decide for the ENTIRE COUNTRY what our children are going to learn?  Because a small group of very determined people with a religious agenda influences the state that buys the most books?  Seriously?

Can’t a few states that want children to learn critical thinking (and that have correspondingly high achievement ratings) band together to buy a bunch of books so at least it’s a fair fight…  and the book companies can afford to print what everyone else wants the children to learn?

Following the appeals from the public, the members of what is the most influential state board of education in the country, and one of the most politically conservative, submitted their own proposed changes to the new social-studies curriculum guidelines, whose adoption was the subject of all the attention — guidelines that will affect students around the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years. Gail Lowe — who publishes a twice-a-week newspaper when she is not grappling with divisive education issues — is the official chairwoman, but the meeting was dominated by another member. Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.  Sunday Magazine, NYT, February 11, 2010

A not to be missed commentary on our current health care system…..

Yes indeedy…GOP candidate for Ted Kennedy’s seat posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine about 20 years ago.  Check out the eye-candy here:

GOP Senate candidate for Ted Kennedy's seat, Scott Brown

• Craig Sandler, State House News Service – ethics, budget and Michael Jackson(!)
• Michael Jackson inspired by Manu Dibango (?)
• British view of American Revolution

The Samantha Clemens Show: Craig Sandler, State House News Service

Have you fallen for the Republican mythology that they are better for the economy than Democrats are?  Well, don’t feel bad, because that are the masters of spin.  However, it isn’t true.  Larry Bartels, professor of political science at Princeton University, writes about two facts in the post WWII era in his new book, “Unequal Democracy.”

Alan Blinder, economics and public affairs professor at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve describes these two facts as follows:

• The Great Partisan Growth Divide – the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.
• The Great Partisan Inequality Divide – over the entire 60-year period, income inequality trended substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over all

He goes on to point out that Republicans have won five of the seven elections since 1980.

What are the consequences of this great divide?  Well, “eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43 percent increases a family’s income by just 3.5 percent, while eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent.”

Interestingly, wealthy families do about as well under either Democratic or Republican administrations.  However, lower income families have much at stake.

The evidence is clear – poor people do better economically under Democrats.

Sam appeared as a guest on Mark Levine’s TV Inside Scoop:

• Foreign companies buying American – are they taking over?
• The Obama fist-bump on the New Yorker?  ugly smear or clever satire?
• Will the price of oil ever go down again?
• Is Obama a moderate pretending to be a progressive or a progressive pretending to be
  a moderate?