Things to Know - 13 April

1.  Changing Times means Changing Lifestyles.   This will hearten the Santa Monica News Bureau, since it is right down their alley  (off of 11th Street and Wilshire):

http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/nathan-norris/17803/why-gen-y-causing-great-migration-21st-century

2.  Apparently, Paul Ryan said that his Catholic faith is what drove him to the austerity measures in his proposed budget that left the poor to suck wind.  Catholic spokesmen jumped on this one and slammed back at Ryan:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/12/463211/catholic-leaders-ryan-budget/?mobile=nc

3.  Connecticut is about to become the next state to ban the death penalty.   At least there is some common sense taking place in the country:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8496-death-penalty-repeal-goes-to-connecticut-governor

4.  A retired naval commander, and a woman at that, steps forward and pushes back on the MIC (military-industrial complex).  It is not easy, but someone has to do it:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8488-naval-commander-stands-trial-for-telling-super-committee-to-end-the-wars

5.  This is an interesting article on the polygamist past of the Romney and Obama families.   Kind of a break from the usual chatter going on, so enjoy it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-and-romney-both-come-from-a-ancestry-of-polygamy/2012/04/12/gIQA3TI8CT_print.html

6.  Paul Krugman keeps up the narrative going around that Big Chris Christie of New Joisey really acted like a slimeball in stopping the construction of tunnel between NJ and NY to meet the needs of the future:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/krugman-cannibalize-the-future.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

7.  Timothy Egan is working on his IRS tax forms.  He's comparing his preparation line-by-line with Willard Mitt Romney, and the Etch-a-Sketch guy has all the angles (off shore accounts, no reported wages and tips), and Egan feels like his rate, which comes to about twice what Romney pays, may not be fair, or at least questions the system.   Romney says he pays what he is legally obligated, but not a dollar more.     Any time I hear someone justify behavior which would on the surface appear to be wrong, by saying "it's all legal", then you know it is really wrong, and the laws were crafted to hide the guilty:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/tax-face-off-romney-vs-me/?pagemode=print

8.  Bank of America, even after receiving bailout money to stay in business, still runs ham-fisted operations that foreclose on customers who have done nothing wrong.  If it were not for programs that grew out of the Occupy Movement, the following story would not have been possible.  It would have been just another dead-beat thrown out on the street to pay of a delinquent debt:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-holland-20120413,0,1142912,print.story

--
Juan

"Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard."

       -- Edgar R. Fiedler

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys." 
       -- Eric Hoffer

"A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation." 
       -- Bertrand Russell

"There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking." 
       -- Thomas A. Edison

"I am a deeply superficial person." 
       -- Andy Warhol