Michael Lewis — Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming From Inside the White House

Donald Trump’s secretary of energy, Rick Perry, once campaigned to abolish the $30 billion agency that he now runs, which oversees everything from our nuclear arsenal to the electrical grid. The department’s budget is now on the chopping block. But does anyone in the White House really understand what the Department of Energy actually does? And what a horrible risk it would be to ignore its extraordinary, life-or-death responsibilities?

Vanity Fair
Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming From Inside the White House

Michael Lewis

Sandwichman — Here is a Little Economics Lesson

"Supply and demand."

Short.

Econospeak
Here is a Little Economics Lesson

Sandwichman

With first case of ebola in US, important to remmber that GOP cut $600 million in funding from CDC

In their insane, deficit cutting zeal, the GOP cut $600 million in funding from the Centers for Disease Control. Wonderful. Now we have ebola here in the U.S.and by the way, it couldn't have landed in a worse place--Texas--that's because the state, under moron governor Rick Perry, slashed health care funding to the bone. So if ebola has any chance of becoming a full-blown epidemic, it couldn't have found a better place to start.

Maybe police are finally starting to wake up to the fact that the neoliberal looting class is coming for their money, too!

Maybe this is a sign that the police are starting to wake up to the fact that even they are not immune to the parasitic wants of their neoliberal masters. Looks like the NJ State Police are suing Chris Christie over the matter of his cutting of their pensions. Good luck with that.

Of course this is all done so the rich don't have to pay another dime in Jersey or elsewhere. You see, it's happening all over, regardless of who's in office, Democrat or Republican. (Andrew Cuomo in New York State, Mike Bloomberg in NYC, Rick Perry in Texas, etc.)

All these governors and mayors can then boast about how they balanced their state/city budgets without raising taxes, which is a total joke because the budget cuts and looting of pensions IS a tax increase--only it falls on those least able to afford it.

During the Occupy Wall Street days most police were too busy (and still are too busy) cracking heads and pepper spraying peaceful protesters to pay any attention. However, they were warned. I remember very well watching many of these protesters trying to tell the cops that it would soon be their money at risk, but these "law enforcers" were too busy or excited by the thrill of throwing another victim to the ground to pay any attention, I guess. (Or maybe they were too dumb to process the information.)

Whatever the reason, I am personally happy to see the cops get their pension money confiscated and even happier that it's being done by the very same lawmakers who had been cynically praising them all along, for the great work they were doing fighting "crime." What bullshit.

To me, the cops are even more despicable than the neoliberal parasites who bought the government and are now conducting their own personal war against the rest of us. They couldn't do it without the law enforcement apparatus providing the muscle and running roughshod over our Constitutional rights. Shame on police everywhere. My hope is that you inherit a fate far, far, worse than those you helped to rob and brutalize.

I rooting for Christie to win this lawsuit. Take the cops' money, governor. Take it.

Thom Hartmann — Texas: The Conservative Dystopia

What Rick Perry doesn’t want you to know is that the “Texas model” is, by all standards (unless you’re a billionaire), a disaster.

Perry’s right when he says that Texas is great for business, but that’s exactly the problem. Texas’ model is only good for businesses, in particular big corporations. Everyone else is pretty much screwed.

Truthout | Op-Ed
Texas: The Conservative Dystopia
The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program

And the Tea Party is hell bent on making Texas the model for America.

Rick Perry-Getting to know the candidates

Presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry released his economic plan Friday, promising that an energy-centric program to expand offshore drilling and domestic oil and gas exploration would create 1.2 million jobs.

Perry, who spoke at a suburban Pittsburgh steel mill before a hard hat-wearing crowd, is building on the Republican Party's "drill, baby, drill" mantra, He'd move to open federal lands to drilling, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and would curtail the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory powers....

Struggling to seize a message of his own, Perry turned to the energy sector — familiar ground to any energy state lawmaker — as the basis for his jobs program....

Saying the premise for his plan is "Make what Americans buy, buy what Americans make and sell it to the world," Perry predicted that, "We are standing atop the next American economic boom ... energy."

"The quickest way to give our economy a shot in the arm is to deploy American ingenuity to tap American energy. But we can only do that if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down," he said.

"America has proven but untapped supplies of natural gas, oil and coal. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world's supply. Our country contains up to 134 billion barrels of oil and nearly 1.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas...."

Perry said he'd open up federal and private lands for exploration in states such as Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado and Utah. The Western states could produce 1.3 million barrels of oil per day by 2020, he said, adding that they also contain 87 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Perry's harshest criticism was for the EPA. He said he'd stop "the EPA's draconian measures related to the regulation of greenhouse gases" and return air and water oversight to the states, "rather than imposing one-size-fits-all federal rules...."

Perry plans to unveil the second part of his economic program Oct. 25 in a speech focused on overhauling taxes.

Read the full article at McClatchy, Perry, struggling in campaign, unveils economic program