California just passed a law to study this, too: public banks!

In the U.S.,  North Dakota has long been the oddity of the states—aside from the "tiny little North Dakota" cold, "Fargo", underpopulated, all-farm flat plains, quasi-Canada jokes—to have its own public bank... just like a co-op utiliity or health clinic. California just passed a bill to authorize a study for one... the same thing that saved postwar Germany. Talk about bootstraps...


I dunno, it somehow seemed TOPICAL:

The Public Banking Option: The German Model

October 15, 2011 By Ellen Brown
One of the demands voiced by protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement is for a “public option” in banking.  What that means was explained by Dr. Michael Hudson, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in an interview by Paul Jay of the Real News Network on October 6:

[T]he demand isn’t simply to make a public bank but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility. . . . Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking.  There should be a government bank that offers credit card rates without punitive 30% interest rates, without penalties, without raising the rate if you don’t pay your electric bill. This is how America got strong in the 19^th and early 20^th century, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you’d have roads and bridges. . . . The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business.

We don’t hear much about a public banking option in the United States, but a number of countries already have a resilient public banking sector.  A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly-owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the world in the last few years. ...

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Wow—some SCIENCE as to why we're screwed

We never give accurate mental health and neuroscience enough shake in this country when it comers to politics and public policy (see Bush on the Couch—duh), much less any other aspect of society...

But here's a quick-n-easy chart —i.e., PRETTY PITCHERS—and story that uses a poll about socialization via brain wiring to reflect on why we have the current polarized mess in Washington:

Explaining The Debt Ceiling Debate

The Bush Tax Cuts' Decade of Damage. In Visuals. Again.

How many more times does the CBPP need to make this so obvious?

Once again--it's in pictures (10 charts) even a ______ —fill in your own political epithet—can understand:

10 Years Later, How Bush-Era Tax Cuts Changed America

... What [the graphs and charts] find is unevenly distributed benefits. The percentage increase in after-tax income tilts greatly in favor of those making over $1 million, for one, especially when compared to Americans making between $40,000-$50,000. And at a time when the country is sunk in $14.3 trillion worth of debt, it's adding vastly to deficit, too. Indeed, the cost of the upper-income tax cuts is roughly equal to the Social Security shortfall in that span, CBPP says.
...

The Republican Agenda

The list of riders attached to the budget bill H.R. 1 is pretty ugly.

However, one thing I started to realize as I went through the list of prohibitions against funding, is that none of this changes the actual law. For instance, one rider:

Prohibits funds to carry out the medical loss ratio restrictions in the health care reform law. These provisions require insurers to spend at least a certain percent of their premium revenues on medical care.

But they haven't repealed the Health Care bill at all. And if this goes through and then the medical loss ratio restrictions are phased in - a court will have to do the work on a case by case basis. Because it's still the law, right? Am I crazy?

Read the rest on the Daily Kos home of the Burbank Democratic Club

standup economist

Numbers don't lie: Wisconsin protests, NOT the Tea Party, had bigger turnout

But who got the bigger mainstream news coverage?

Oh yeah. If ONLY those simple, All-American middle-class cheese-state protestors had used racist and misspelled signs and banners... and had goofy hats. Yep, it's they're own fault they outlasted their 15 minutes of fame...

Madison Rally Bigger Than Biggest Tea Party Rally

from Think Progress via AlterNet

... But yesterday’s rally in Madison is noteworthy because at 85,000-100,000, it was bigger than the biggest tea party protest, the September 12, 2009 rally in Washington, D.C., which turned out only an estimated 60,000-70,000.