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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

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Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

Public Service Announcement

Zoë Schlanger in the Atlantic: "Throw out your black plastic spatula. In a world of plastic consumer goods, avoiding the material entirely requires the fervor of a religious conversion. But getting rid of black plastic kitchen utensils is a low-stakes move, and worth it. Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid." This is a gift link from laura h.

Mashable: "Following the 2024 presidential election results and [Elon] Musk's support for ... Donald Trump, users have been deactivating en masse. And this time, it appears most everyone has settled on one particular X alternative: Bluesky.... Bluesky has gained more than 100,000 new sign ups per day since the U.S. election on Nov. 5. It now has over 15 million users. It's enjoyed a prolonged stay on the very top of Apple's App Store charts as well. Ready to join? Here's how to get started on Bluesky[.]"

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Wherein Michael McIntyre explains how Americans adapted English to their needs. With examples:

Beat the Buzzer. Some amazing young athletes:

     ~~~ Here's the WashPo story (March 23).

Back when the Washington Post had an owner/publisher who dared to stand up to a president:

Prime video is carrying the documentary. If you watch it, I suggest watching the Spielberg film "The Post" afterwards. There is currently a free copy (type "the post full movie" in the YouTube search box) on YouTube (or you can rent it on YouTube, on Prime & [I think] on Hulu). Near the end, Daniel Ellsberg (played by Matthew Rhys), says "I was struck in fact by the way President Johnson's reaction to these revelations was [that they were] 'close to treason,' because it reflected to me the sense that what was damaging to the reputation of a particular administration or a particular individual was in itself treason, which is very close to saying, 'I am the state.'" Sound familiar?

Out with the Black. In with the White. New York Times: “Lester Holt, the veteran NBC newscaster and anchor of the 'NBC Nightly News' over the last decade, announced on Monday that he will step down from the flagship evening newscast in the coming months. Mr. Holt told colleagues that he would remain at NBC, expanding his duties at 'Dateline,' where he serves as the show’s anchor.... He said that he would continue anchoring the evening news until 'the start of summer.' The network did not immediately name a successor.” ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “MSNBC said on Monday that Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary who has become one of the most prominent hosts at the network, would anchor a nightly weekday show in prime time. Ms. Psaki, 46, will host a show at 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, replacing Alex Wagner, a longtime political journalist who has anchored that hour since 2022, according to a memo to staff from Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC’s president. Ms. Wagner will remain at MSNBC as an on-air correspondent. Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s biggest star, has been anchoring the 9 p.m. hour on weeknights for the early days of ... [Donald] Trump’s administration but will return to hosting one night a week at the end of April.”

New York Times: “Joy Reid’s evening news show on MSNBC is being canceled, part of a far-reaching programming overhaul orchestrated by Rebecca Kutler, the network’s new president, two people familiar with the changes said. The final episode of Ms. Reid’s 7 p.m. show, 'The ReidOut,' is planned for sometime this week, according to the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The show, which features in-depth interviews with politicians and other newsmakers, has been a fixture of MSNBC’s lineup for the past five years. MSNBC is planning to replace Ms. Reid’s program with a show led by a trio of anchors: Symone Sanders Townsend, a political commentator and former Democratic strategist; Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee; and Alicia Menendez, the TV journalist, the people said. They currently co-host 'The Weekend,' which airs Saturday and Sunday mornings.” MB: In case you've never seen “The Weekend,” let me assure you it's pretty awful. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: "Joy Reid is leaving MSNBC, the network’s new president announced in a memo to staff on Monday, marking an end to the political analyst and anchor’s prime time news show."

Y! Entertainment: "Meanwhile, [Alex] Wagner will also be removed from her 9 pm weeknight slot. Wagner has already been working as a correspondent after Rachel Maddow took over hosting duties during ... Trump’s first 100 days in office. It’s now expected that Wagner will not return as host, but is expected to stay on as a contributor. Jen Psaki, President Biden’s former White House press secretary, is a likely replacement for Wagner, though a decision has not been finalized." MB: In fairness to Psaki, she is really too boring to watch. On the other hand, she is White. ~~~

     ~~~ RAS: "So MSNBC is getting rid of both of their minority evening hosts. Both women of color who are not afraid to call out the truth. Outspoken minorities don't have a long shelf life in the world of our corporate news media."

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

Constant Comments

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolvesEdward R. Murrow

Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns

I have a Bluesky account now. The URL is https://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.

Sunday
Jan022011

The Commentariat -- January 3

Steven Davidoff of the New York Times: "Goldman Sach’s investment in Facebook once again raises the issue of whether the Securities and Exchange Commission will force the social networking company into an initial public offering. In particular, this issue arises because of the special purpose vehicle that Goldman plans to create in order to allow its clients to invest up to $1.5 billion in Facebook." ...

... Evelyn Rusli of the New York Times: "Goldman Sachs may have found a new friend in Facebook, but the financial firm isn’t finding much love from members of the social network." ...

... Related News Stories: "New York Times: "Facebook, the popular social networking site, has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a deal that values the company at $50 billion, according to people involved in the transaction. The deal makes Facebook now worth more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner." AND "As part of a deal that values Facebook at $50 billion, Goldman Sachs is offering wealthy clients a chance to invest in the company without its going public." CW: so fucking egalitarian.

New Yorker art."Oh, Shut Up." Rick Hertzberg: "In the absence of the filibuster, the health-care law would offer a public alternative to private insurance, the financial reform would be strong enough to close off the likelihood of another meltdown, and the very rich (and their heirs) would pay something closer to their fair share of taxes. Nearly two hundred qualified nominees for executive and judicial offices would be on the job instead of in limbo. And a climate-and-energy bill, a bill to require corporations to be open about their political spending, the DREAM Act, and dozens of other worthy measures — all of which passed the House and had majority support in the Senate — would now be the law of the land."

Steve Kornacki of Salon takes the MSM approach to the Obama presidency & declares that 2010 wasn't a bad year for Obama after all. CW: I don't really agree with Kornacki, but his POV is worth considering.

Paul Krugman: "... what we’re looking at over the next few years, even with pretty good growth, are unemployment rates that not long ago would have been considered catastrophic — because they are. Behind those dry statistics lies a vast landscape of suffering and broken dreams. And the arithmetic says that the suffering will continue as far as the eye can see." ...

... Emily Kaiser of Reuters: "U.S. private employers have recorded 11 consecutive months of job gains, yet the number of people who are so discouraged that they have given up searching for work stands at an all-time high."

"Chewing Gum for Terrorists." Law Prof. David Cole in a New York Times op-ed: "Under current law, it seems, the right to make profits is more sacrosanct than the right to petition for peace, and the need to placate American businesses more compelling than the need to provide food and shelter to earthquake victims and war refugees." ...

... Glenn Greenwald has a different take on the Paris meeting, which David Cole references, in which "Rudy Giuliani and former Bush officials Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend ... appeared at a forum organized by supporters of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) -- a group declared by the U.S. since 1997 to be [a] 'terrorist organization' -- and expressed wholesale support for that group." Greenwald writes that, "The reason there isn't more uproar over these Bush officials' overt foreign-soil advocacy on behalf of a Terrorist group is because they want to use that group's Terrorism to advance U.S. aims." ...

... John Cook gives the story a Gawker flavor: "Rudy Giuliani & John Bolton Are Terrorists Now."

NEW. Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: Pennsylvanian "Patrick J. Toomey was elected to the Senate in November as part of the Republican revolution, with a big assist from Tea Party activists, an endorsement from Sarah Palin and the expectation that he would join with other antiestablishment conservatives to remake Washington. But as he prepared to take office this week, Mr. Toomey hardly sounded like a partisan rabble-rouser." ...

... "Lindsey Graham Joins the Loonies." Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "... Graham seems to grasp ... that default could be catastrophic. But that's not stopping him from making his demands." ...

... BECAUSE, as David Dayan of Firedoglake argues, "... the Democrats and the White House are talking about insanity, while the Republicans are banking on the responsibility of their opponents."

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in a New York Times op-ed: during the state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, Presidents Obama & Hu should establish "a joint charter ... [which would], in effect, provide the framework not only for avoiding what under some circumstances could become a hostile rivalry but also for expanding a realistic collaboration between the United States and China."

Justin Elliott of Salon on the neo-imperialism of Sen. Lindsey Graham & amigos. With video.

Joe Klein of Time: President "Obama -- or his advisors -- undercut [Special Envoy Richard] Holbrooke from the very outset, which crippled our ability to push the Afghan government toward legitimacy and made Holbrooke's mission near-impossible." Here's Leslie Gelb's tribute to Holbrooke, which is the basis for Klein's post.

At the Diplomats' Bazaar. Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "United States diplomats were acting like marketing agents [for Boeing], offering deals to heads of state and airline executives.... This is the high-stakes, international bazaar for large commercial jets, where tens of billions of dollars are on the line, along with hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.... To a greater degree than previously known, diplomats are a big part of the sales force, according to hundreds of cables released by WikiLeaks, which describe politicking and cajoling at the highest levels." With links to related documents.

Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: in anticipation of a WikiLeaks document dump, the Bank of America does some forensic sleuthing of its own transactions.

Jake Sherman of Politico: "Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.... The House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown." ...

... Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars has a terrific reprise of Darrell Issa's appearance yesterday on CNN's "State of the Union." Issa's interrogator -- Republican-friendly Ed Henry, of all people. As Belle writes, "It's amazing how ridiculous these GOP talking points are rendered when the media does their job even a little bit." With video. ...

... AND Some Big-Mouth Republicans Retreat. Alan Zibel of the Wall Street Journal: "Earlier this year, leading House Republicans proposed to privatize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or place them in receivership starting in two years. Now, as Republicans prepare to assume control of the House next week, they aren't in as big a rush, cautioning that withdrawing government support in the housing market should be gradual." ...

... AND Carrie Johnson of NPR: the Justice Department gets ready for Republican attacks. Plus audio.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). New York Times photo.More Reasons to Miss Alan Grayson. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "He has zero faith in the incoming speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, whom he calls a 'tool of special interest.' He derides the Tea Party’s successes as 'bought and paid for by the enormously rich and the selfish.' And he can barely contain distaste for his Republican successor, whose views he sums up as 'bizarre fundamentalist.' Representative Alan Grayson ... is leaving office on Wednesday much as he entered it two years ago — as the pugnaciously partisan, verbal-bomb-tossing, liberal folk hero of the 111th Congress.... While surveying the wreckage of the November elections that cost him his seat and looking to the Congressional term ahead, Mr. Grayson posits that many Democrats have not been acting Democratic enough." Read the whole article.

Two Essays I've Been Meaning to Link:

(1) "According to most scientists, the sun rises in the east, although critics say...." Garrett Epps of The Atlantic on why lawsuits against the Affordable Care are crap & the judges who buy into the plaintiffs' arguments are dumb as posts. And journalists are not doing their jobs in explaining the crap cases, either.

(2) Sam Harris in the Huff Post: "... throughout the 1950's -- a decade for which American conservatives pretend to feel a harrowing sense of nostalgia -- the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent." Harris goes on to skewer just about every conservative economic myth. He then proposes a 21st-century American Renaissance, brought to you by our wealthiest countrymen.

Prisoners Go High-Tech. Kim Severson & Robbie Brown of the New York Times: "A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake."

Do give yourself a treat & read the blog post of Steven Lee Myers, et al., of the New York Times on the antiquities of Iraq. Update: a related story is here. Here's one of the videos incorporated into the post:

... Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post reports on a $5 billion U.S.-funded program that has done nothing but build new ruins: "investments under the plan -- known as the Commander's Emergency Response Program, have created no more than a temporary illusion of progress. They have also shown a lack of U.S. foresight and highlighted the shortcomings of an Iraqi government the Americans were trying to boost."

XO Movie Night. Anahad O'Connor of the New York Times: Navy "Capt. Owen Honors reportedly not only orchestrated the making of ... raunchy videos, but also starred in them and filmed them aboard the [U.S.S.] Enterprise with government equipment while the carrier was deployed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The videos were splashed across the Internet over the weekend, and are now at the center of a Navy investigation. According to The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk..., Captain Honors made the videos in 2006 and 2007 to entertain and boost the morale of sailors aboard the carrier. The videos were filmed with cameras and equipment from the carrier’s public affairs office, and were shown at least once a week on closed-circuit television throughout the ship. Captain Honors at the time was the carrier’s executive officer..., but he later became its commanding officer." Here's the Virginia-Pilot story & video.

Local News

Noah Kristula-Green of the Frum Forum: Christine O’Donnell is responsible "for destroying and cannibalizing the Republican Party in Delaware. Despite the media’s continuing fascination with O’Donnell ... less attention has been paid to O’Donnell’s negative effect on the down-ticket races in Delaware, or to the fact that the damage she did will last for several election cycles. There has also been no attempt to hold accountable the conservative media figures who endorsed O’Donnell." Kristula-Green bashes Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin & Jim DeMint.

David Catanese of Politico reports that my Republican Congressman Connie Mack the Umpteenth, who is the son & grandson of senators of the same name,  husband of Mary Bono & otherwise a dimwitted cipher who seldom gets near Southwest Florida, will run for Sen. Bill Nelson's seat. I'm not that big a fan of Nelson's, but Mack isn't qualified to wipe Nelson's boots. Still, he could win. Here's an uncritical (Fort Myers) News-Press story about him.

Saturday
Jan012011

The Commentariat -- January 2

For Slate, Mark Fiore looks back over "The Year that Wasn't":

"The Constitutional Option." In a New York Times op-ed, former Vice President Walter Mondale, who was also a Senator & President of the Senate, says, "Fix the Filibuster." Mondale makes several suggestions, but he also explains why Majority Leader Reid & Minority Leader McConnell's little scheme to require a super-majority to change the filibuster rules in unconstitutional:

A long-standing principle of common law holds that one legislature cannot bind its successors. If changing Senate rules really required a two-thirds supermajority, it would effectively prevent a simple majority of any Senate from ever amending its own rules, which would be unconstitutional. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution states: 'Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.' The document is very explicit about the few instances where a supermajority vote is needed — and changing the Senate’s procedural rules is not among them. In all other instances it must be assumed that the Constitution requires only a majority vote.

The Rich Are Held to a Lower Standard. Charles Bagli of the New York Times: "While a homeowner who lost a house to foreclosure would find it difficult to borrow for years, developers who defaulted on enormous loans have still been able to attract money. The reasons, experts say, are that there is still plenty of money floating around and that the market has a very short memory."

New York Times: "President Obama took time out of his Hawaiian vacation on Sunday to sign into law one of the surprise accomplishments of the lame-duck Congress: a measure covering the cost of medical care for rescue workers and others sickened by toxic fumes and dust after the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center."

Imtiwaz Delawala of ABC News: "President Obama's top economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, warned today against 'playing chicken' with raising the country's debt ceiling, saying it would cause 'a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008.' ... Some conservatives in Congress, especially new Tea Party members, have said they will vote against raising the debt limit again, saying government should drastically cut spending instead." Here's Jake Tapper's full interview of Goolsbee:

     ... Even George Will agrees with Goolsbee., saying that voting against raising the debt ceiling would be "suicidal." With video. ...

... Bridget Johnson of The Hill: Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz & Anthony Weiner introduce new Republican pontificator Rep. Mike Kelly (Penns.) to the real world on "Face the Nation." CBS News story & video here.

Washington Post: Darrell Issa, "the Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight, called President Obama's administration 'one of the most corrupt administrations' on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), incoming chairman of one of the House committees that oversees health policy, said undoing the Democrats' health reform law would be a top priority for the new GOP-controlled Congress. Upton said on 'Fox News Sunday' that he believes there may be enough opposition in the new House to reach the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto. Short of that, he said House leaders will 'go after this bill piece by piece.'"

Republicons Beware! Kate Zernike of the New York Times: "Just a month ago, Tea Party leaders were celebrating their movement’s victories in the midterm elections. But as Congress wrapped up an unusually productive lame-duck session last month, those same Tea Party leaders were lamenting that Washington behaved as if it barely noticed that American voters had repudiated the political establishment."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: Republican "legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.... Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them. Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents. Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states."

Norm Ornstein in a Washington Post op-ed: there are death panels, but they don't come from the Affordable Care Act. "They come from Republican administrations in states such as Arizona and Indiana.... The nightmares of conservatives bitterly opposed to health reform are coming true..., but with zero relation to the reform bill they opposed.... Things are about to get worse."

Daniel Gross of the Washington Post reviews All the Devils Are Here, a book the delves into "the hidden history of the financial crisis," by Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera. Gross concentrates on one of the devils -- a shady character named Roland Arnall, "the real subprime pioneer."

Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: the Mortgage Bankers Association, which successfully lobbied Congress last year to defeat a program to help foreclosure victims, "is once again standing in opposition to programs aimed at keeping families in their homes — this time by taking aim at what are known as mortgage mediation programs, which push banks to negotiate with borrowers before finalizing a foreclosure."

On Christmas Day, Pope Benedict XVI offered his "Thought for the Day," published in the Guardian, & recorded by the BBC; the link is to the transcript & video, the recording of which, the BBC notes, "followed months of negotiations between the BBC and the Vatican." Part of the pope's message:

And it was not a political liberation that he [Jesus] brought, achieved through military means: rather, Christ destroyed death for ever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross.

     ... CW: sounds like standard Christian fare to me, but it got Richard Dawkins in a lather about the implicit message, a central Roman Catholic tenet, of original sin. Dawkins calls the pope "Ratzinger":

Ratzinger has much to confess in his own conduct, as cardinal and pope. But he is also guilty of promoting one of the most repugnant ideas ever to occur to a human mind: 'Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness' (Hebrews 9:22). -- Richard Dawkins

Local News

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is sworn in (for a second time) & delivers his inaugural address:

New York Times: during his inaugural address today, New York Gov. Andrew "Cuomo said he would unveil an emergency financial plan this week — a month before his first budget proposal is due — and push aggressively for stronger ethics enforcement in Albany." Here's the full text of Gov. Cuomo's speech.

Danny Hakim of the New York Times on former Gov. Mario Cuomo, father of new New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. ...

... Elizabeth Harris of the Times on the Cuomo governors' housing in Albany's Wellington Hotel, which was "sort of a dump" back in the day & is an empty shell now -- and in the governor's mansion. ...

... Thomas Kaplan of the Times: "Andrew M. Cuomo flung open the doors of the Executive Mansion on Saturday, saying he wanted people to feel connected once again to their state government. But for some visitors, the real draw was ... Mr. Cuomo's girlfriend, Sandra Lee, the Food Network star, who for a time greeted guests alongside him in the mansion’s cavernous receiving hall...."

Elizabeth Stevens of the New York Times: four retirees from Livermore Labs "... have brought [suit] against the Regents of the University of California. The retirees, who received U.C. paychecks for decades, say the university unfairly cast them out of its retiree health care system shortly after the federal Department of Energy, which owns the lab, turned management over to a private company in 2007."

Saturday
Jan012011

Murder by Economic Policy

Nick Kristof writes, "There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul." He cites the work of epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett.

The Constant Weader comments:


I call this murder by economic policy. Republicans and ConservaDems have been working for decades to take from the poor and give to the rich. The obvious effects of their policies are more hungry children, more poorly-educated children, young people's curtailing their educations & thus making themselves poor candidates in the shrinking job market, millions of Americans going without adequate health care (50 million Americans still have no health insurance), & seniors doing without the basic necessities of life. But Wilkinson & Pickett suggest it's worse than we think: those policies result in mental health disorders and unnecessary early deaths.

Another interesting finding of Wilkinson & Pickett was that these higher mortality rates & stress levels in iniquitous countries & states were true across all income levels (though they admit their raw data are sketchy for the top one percent). That is, don't think you're not at risk just because you're in a higher income bracket. Everybody (with the possible exception of the ultra-rich) suffers.

"The Spirit Level," partly because it is such a devastating condemnation of conservative "starve-the-government" public policy, has been the subject of a lot of criticism, the most sweeping charge being that the authors have not really "proved" a cause-&-effect relationship between income inequality & early death. But do we need "proof"? If, as the authors show, closing the income gap leads to lower mortality rates, it is unnecessary to know exactly why it works. What's important is that it does work. Denmark, where taxes are much higher than ours but where income inequality is much lower, is famous for being the "happiest" country in the world.

After listening to Republicans, teabaggers & most other stripes of politicians, including President Obama, you might not think that higher taxes will make you happier. But if those higher taxes go into public programs that help reduce income inequality, then higher taxes will, ultimately, cheer you right up. So will laws that promote income equality: a higher minimum wage, for instance, and unionization facilitation.

We don't have to be a second-rate country, or as Mr. Kristof pointed out last year, Worse than a Banana Republic. But we've chosen legislators & Presidents & state governors who have pledged through their policies, to take us down.