The ideals and laws that allow the U.S. to provides its citizens with an abundance of toilet paper – a task that ran afoul in Venezuela – were flushed down the preverbal porcelain god last week.
The Obama administration, led by a president who has been so shaped by the evolution of laws, seemed to lose its way.
Government officials were caught hacking the accounts of AP reporters – one of the more shorter-sited plans of attack by our government officials – especially when the most cherished career trait of a reporter is that of tattletale. “If they catch us, I am sure no one at the Associated Press would tell anyone. After all, we’re just doing our jobs.”
This feat of complete bone-headedness was coupled with actions taken by employees at the IRS who were interested in the tax bills of some Tea Party members. No! not the one’s who began a process that tore us apart from tyrannical Briton, but the one’s who believe the absolute invisible hand cures all. After all, the US didn’t run out of toilet paper.
Best summing these events up was @frankrichny “So many Watergates, so little time. My thoughts on this week’s DC Circus” @NYMag nymag.com/daily/intellig…
Rich catches the silliness of Eric Holder recusing himself as the lead lawyer for the US. It blows the mind that someone of such modest background and able to earn so much success can simply say “time-out” when the role of the free press and government is at hand.
Propublica (http://www.propublica.org/article/how-irs-nonprofit-division-got-so-dysfunctional) took a look into what is going on at the IRS. One excellent data point was the lowly number of 200 low-level employees responsible for reviewing a highly number of some 60,000 nonprofit applications a year. Going nonprofit is in my near future.
My favorite story of the week came @heidimoore via her tweet and from @theguadian. Heidi gave a detailed looked into the world of genetically modified seeds and Monsanto. The comments in response to her story are a must review.
Monsanto has truly completed some serious science to help feed the world, particularly as populations expand in areas that are not the most hospitable for growing food. But, does a company so successful in developing leading edge products really need to so closely court the US government to push its wears. This begs the question: Enough already?
Heidi also produced a good read on Apple’s Mr. Cook coming to Washington to talk taxes. @heidimoore: “Apple CEO asks for a ‘new tax policy’ for a tax holiday. Actually, we tried that. We lost jobs. http://t.co/wGtrvvsoLg.” My guess is that a lot of this money was ill timely used for share repurchases as prices peaked in 2005-06 as well. CEOs can be such dingbats.
There were good facts aplenty this past week. Some pointing to good news and others not so good. @hblodget: The Deficit Is Shrinking Fast! http://t.co/vcCnjR83xn noted that extrapolation by many of the US deficit may be misplaced. (Also, there were some recent government data that point to healthcare costs actually coming down. For a number of years now our out-of-control healthcare costs seem not to be so out-of-control. We’ll see if it lasts.)
On a less pleasant side, a data point came from the @MilkenInstitute: “The US used to be in top 10 countries for high school grads, we’re now 30th in the world- Gary Becker at #2013GC http://t.co/3IFeAlAq3l.” While the US makes headways developing genetically modified seeds, we are less successful at developing intelligent kids. Well, at least our underdeveloped kids will have plenty of low-cost Doritos.
Another fact of note came from @FareedZakaria noting that “By 2030, half of global stock of capital will reside in the developing world: World Bank bit.ly/14bPhnz @WorldBank” – this would be a very positive sign of wealth broadening out.
While the world’s wealth is predicted to broaden out, the population of the United States may not be over the next few decades, as we Americans keep heading south. Everyone’s going south: “@MarketWatch: Texas dominates the country in new-home-sales http://on.mktw.net/18IOWMa pic.twitter.com/WgzojUxg7Y”
And finally, the tweet of the week came from @anoushasakoui responding to a tweet from @uberfact. Uberfact said “About 50% of breakups now occur via text message.” Anousha responded, “And 100% of those people who do that are losers.”
Until next week. @edmullane
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