Stones Cry Out

Reports the Washington Post:

In his prime-time news conference Tuesday, Obama pushed back against bipartisan criticism of his plan, which is included in his budget blueprint, by saying that "there’s very little evidence that this has a significant impact on charitable giving."

No, actually there is evidence.  (Hat tip: Betsy’s Page.)

But a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said total charitable contributions would decline by about 1.3 percent, while the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University calculated that overall giving would drop by 2.1 percent. The highest-income households would decrease their giving by 4.8 percent, or $3.87 billion, the latter group found.

"Charities and the public need to understand that in the current economic environment, which is creating difficulty for some nonprofits and their constituents already, this public policy change is likely to have an additional negative effect," said Patrick M. Rooney, the philanthropy center’s interim executive director.

When you penalize something, you get less of it.  It’s a truism that Democrats like Obama have yet to figure out, but churches and soup kitchens are well aware of it.

The classic example is taxing yachts to soak the rich.  During the first Bush administration, a tax on yachts over $100,000 was instituted to try to increase the already huge percentage of the federal treasury that came from the rich.  The result was that middle-class ship builders lost their jobs because the sales of yachts sank by 70%, significantly faster than the overall boat market.  So President Bush came to their rescue and rescinded the tax. 

Taxes are not behavior-neutral.  They will affect the actions of those who are affected by them.  Democrats only seem to understand this when they do things like raise taxes on gas to try to reduce consumption, but they conveniently forget it when they trumpet how much they’re trying to help the little guy.  Problem is, their actions often hurt the little guy in the end, and the rich just do without one more yacht in their marina. 

1. OK. Bullet proof them … then what?
2. Succinct advice.
3. Chicago corruption coming to the beltway … or what?
4. Alternative answers to warming trends.
5. Classically speaking slavery has not just been about labor and wages.
6. Tiring.
7. Links? Notes? Both at once, courtesy of Brandon (on happiness too).
8. Epistemology of dreaming.
9. LOL.
10. Exactly right.
11. Big tent verse.
12. Lies.
13. China and power projection.
14. Coincidence.
15. Big rig efficiency.
16. Worst person? Now … love him.
17. New car access ideas.

What I’d really really like to see sometime is the following:

Ayn Rand and discussions of John Galt and her Atlas Shrugged abound everywhere these days. For a while, every time that I saw someone mentioning Ayn Rand I’d pop in with “did you ever read Matt Ruff’s Public Works Trilogy?” Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy is an absolutely hysterical book. It’s just a little dangerous … in the “you’ll laugh so hard you’ll be in danger doing harm to yourself and those around you.”

So, what would I like to see. I’d like to see someone take my advice and read this book and then tell me how much they enjoyed it. I’ve lent it to people and they’ve really liked it. Libertarians and the like are enamoured of Ms Rand it seems. Do they not have any sense of humor. Why does it seem that they’ve never heard of this book. And why do they ignore the chance to read this escapes me.

So humor me. Read the book, and when people start talking about “going John Galt” we can mutter about, “By which you really mean Harry Gant.”

1. Zoom. And Whack.
2. Defense of labor.
3. A question for the latest “great” plan.
4. A dissertation recommended … and now online.
5. A links post with an awesome title tag.
6. Octo-bots.
7. A question.
8. Exactly. That headline might make a better slogan than “abstinence education” for educational aim and program.
9. A reaction to our President.
10. An uncharity request for donations.
11. An interesting essay.
12. Confessions.
13. An important list.
14. Considering condoms.
15. One more lie.
16. I really really hate the illustrative use of equations. It bugs me and mathematically speaking is virtually meaningless.
17. Cool (and wet).

Henry Neufeld, long time blog neighbor, owns a small publishing firm. Quite surprisingly (to me), he offered to send me a pre-publication copy of a book which he is releasing shortly, more specifically on April 15. I readily agreed and here is a short review of the book he sent me. This book, Preserving Democracy by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. will be released next month. Mr Neufeld locates this as “a conservative” book, and I’m not entirely sure I agree with that assesment. First, bear with me for a quick overview of the book (my impression at any rate from a somewhat cursory/quick read) after which I’ll explain what I mean by that that claim.

Mr Hushbeck’s book is an eminently readable exposition detailing point by point what might be described as political or cultural catchpoints with each chapter addressing a different catchpoint. These catchpoints are issues which, if matters go unchecked might be seen as most likely stumbling blocks for our American political experiment. Taxes, Law, Central planning, Voting, Language and other issues are covered succinctly and simply. The language is plain spoken and non-technical with liberal illustrative examples from current events and past history. Graphs and charts are frequently used and contain no evidence of the sorts of trickery used to mislead via manipulation of axis, the data is honestly presented (and the source data cited).

Another item which I must praise highly is that Mr Hushbeck doesn’t fall into the all to common “Thomas Paine” fallacy. John Adams, according to his biographer, praised Mr Paine for being very good at “tearing down” and assisting the American efforts at Revolution but noted that Mr Paine was not well suited for “building up.” It is terribly easy to criticize. But criticism is incomplete without an offer of a solution. Mr Hushbeck in each of his chapters in which a catchpoint for our society is identified and located also then briefly sketches a way to avoid or steer clear of the problem.

My only criticism of the book is that some of his historical allusions to highlight a modern problem gloss over historical details perhaps stretching some points in order to make a point. Allow me to give one example, in the first chapter in a long historical overview of the (Western) Roman progression from Kingdom to Republic to Empire … Mr Husbheck notes that:

It was only with the fall of the Roman Empire 500 years later and the subsequent rise of Christianity that a new set of values would dominate the culture and slavery would be questioned

and to this a footnote expands

Slavery did disappear in Europe following the rise of Christianity, only to reappear following the Renaissance as the Church’s hold on the culture weakened and Europeans explorers started sailing down the coast of Africa encountering and then becoming part of the slave trade.

I’d take issue with that reading of the history of slavery and the Christian influence … setting aside the very Western reading of Christianity in general as an member of the Easter Orthodox tradition myself as well, e.g., Rome finally fell in 1453. It might be argued that the timing of slavery disappearing from the West in a large part coincided less with the spread of Christianity than with the economics of Western Europe. Western Europe slid back into late Bronze age subsistence economic and social conditions. Organized and widespread slavery needed a higher level of culture and standards of living in order to exist. When economic and social conditions improved … slavery returned. This aside is a brief sidelight to the main point of a brief summary of Roman political history. My only point is that Mr Hushbeck in painting the historical situation with a broad brush, well to be frank, paints with a broad brush and in doing so occasionally makes claims which when examined in detail are questionable.

Aside from that (minor) criticism this book makes for a very readable overview a number of issues facing America today. However, in conclusion I’d like to return to the claim that this book is not conservative. The issues chosen are in fact issues which conservatives would identify as the most serious issues facing our nation today. However by and large the methods used to address these issues and way in which these issues are framed are not “conservative” per se, but more aligned with classical liberalism. Mises and Hayek, the Founders, Locke, Smith and so on (for example) are quoted as much if not more often by Libertarian writers as conservative and these sources are used liberally in this book. I don’t see a Libertarian or Conservative disagreeing with much that is said in this book. What exactly a liberal/progressive would disagree with … that might be a task more suited for a different reviewer. 🙂

Lila Rose has been doing a great service with the Mona Lisa Project, exposing Planned Parenthood as the abortion mill it is.  In video after video on their web site, they expose cases where PP clinics have a "hear no evil" approach to statutory rape. 

Ms. Rose and other pose as minors who say they’ve been made pregnant by their adult boyfriend, and their hidden camera videos show PP employees ignoring this law that is to protect these children.  But no investigation of this corrupt organization. 

Stop the ACLU notes that PP gets, in addition to their profits, $300 million of federal taxpayer dollars every year.  And yet, no national investigation of laws being broken in California, Arizona and Indiana.

Phone conversations included PP employees telling her how to cover up the rape, and how to give money for the abortion of just black babies.

Regardless of your political party or stand on Roe v Wade, this is simply outrageous.  Why this organization has not come under investigation, by any administration or Congress, is beyond me.

1. Office rules, some years back.
2. Echo.
3. Mr Obama’s notions of bi-partisanship.
4. Mr Obama’s promises.
5. And a little “if Bush did” what Obama’s doing exercise.
6. Joy and life.
7. Intelligence reports in the UK.
8. Al-Qaeda.
9. Data loss.
10. A feast tucked in the midst of a season of repentance.
11. Or it might be just a failure of imagination? Take the wished for “third way” noted in that piece for the low impact lifestyle has to be imagined as better in tangible ways before people will really embrace it. On the other hand some have opted for the radical solution.
12. Cops.
13. Money for blogging?
14. Does the left have no shame?
15. One response of Mr Obama at South Bend.
16. Amazing animal.
17. Of sex and abstinence.
18. So, for the pro-choice/pro-abortion crowd … explain your defense of the protest here?
19. Of word and deed … and the Word.
20. Heh.

From a short dialog today in my combox as an aside to our discussion of Natures lack of determinism and any consequences on discussions of free will.

So you think the universe is not continuous because irrational numbers are not real? Do you think that differentiability is a useful concept but doesn’t really apply to reality? Why then Wigner’s “unreasonable success of mathematics” if there is no underlying reality to those mathematical concepts (like pi).I wasn’t clear. Pi does not exist in the real world. It’s not that we can’t measure pi exactly, but that it’s literally impossible for it to exist, exactly. How could you have a circle in the real world whose radius or circumference is an irrational number? You couldn’t. So pi, and math generally, is just an elegant approximation of reality.

This is worth a little elaboration. Continuity, mathematically speaking is all “about” that dense uncountable set of irrational numbers. Differentiability likewise requires not just continuity but that the manifold in question be “smooth.” Pi as was noted in a following reply is not limited to the ratio of circumference and diameter but crops of in a myriad of places. My interlocutor JA offers that just like that ratio for pi, all these others are “idealizations” and don’t reflect any reality.

When we make mathematical models of the Universe in Physics the common way of approaching these models is to assume that our measurements are inexact and that many of these models are closer to what is “really” being measured than our inexact measurements. When pi appears in descriptions of electron orbits we think that this value pi is “real” and the measurements of electron energy levels which depend on fundamental constants like pi and Planck’s constant and the electron mass are approximate. Someday we expect that we will arrive a a theory in which Planck’s constant and the electron mass like pi fall out as consequences of a mathematical understanding so that just like circumference/diameter all these numbers will be arrived at via fundamental relationships.

Or take the continuity/differentiability matter, which by the by depends as noted above on irrational numbers as well. Early astronomers like Galileo and Kepler took very imprecise measurements to deduce some relationships to describe motion. Newton and a host of later mathematicians went to work with this erecting an elaborate and very beautiful framework which today are known the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian descriptions of classical mechanics. These equations then can be pressed into service many many orders of magnitude past their original measurements without requiring modification and allow for example cis-lunar docking of spacecraft. These descriptions as well drive our methods and intuitions in the quantum (very short distance or high energy) regions and the relativistic ones as well. One suggestions as to why the mathematics of continuous differentiable manifolds is so important and successful at describing nature is that this description of nature (as continuous and differentiable) is accurate, that is it reflects reality.

Current Physics understands a number of fundamental particles to be “point-like”, that is to say that their best description physically speaking is as a “point.” A point in space is commonly thought to be an idealized mathematical concept. There is no “such thing” as a real “point.” Small dots or specks of dust are used to illustrate for the imagination what something approaching a point might be as a learning aid. However quarks and electrons, for example (and setting aside String theory for now) are described in the theory which we use today that best describes nature, the Standard Model, are point-like objects. Our best description of these (real) things is as a point (and it might be added that protons, neutrons, and baseballs are not point-like in our best descriptions). My eldest daughter recoiled when she heard my description of an electron as “point-like.” The principal problem for her was that electrons could not be point-like and massive. Yet mass is just a property. Like spin and charge, mass is just a numerical value assigned to that point-like object which affects how it interacts with other objects.

That being said, which is more real? The inexact measurement values or theoretical value which they approach? If the things you see with your eyes and other perceptive senses are seeing things which you believe to be real, then I offer that these concepts, pi, continuity, and point-like electrons represent our best understanding of what that reality “really” is. They are as real as the chair you sit upon for they are fundamental pieces of our understanding of how that chair is best described. If the chair is real then there are only two possibilities. Either our current (Standard Model) as our best description of that said chair reflects reality (in which case pi, irrational numbers and so on are also real) or there exists a future theoretical model (consistent with our current measurements) will replace it. If that future theory also has properties like continuity and constants (some irrational like pi) arise naturally in that future (correct) theory then … aren’t irrational numbers therefore real? How could it not be so?

1. Quoting Williams on Dostoevsky. I found Williams book difficult, requiring of the reader a familiarity with the Dostoevskan canon that I didn’t have. When I do, perhaps I’ll return to it.
2. A quote. This is not unrelated.
3. Heh.
4. Self and Salvation … missing communion.
5. A big wind shadow.
6. Of time and measure. It is, I think, important to remember that employment is not a zero sum game.
7. Kosovo.
8. Lexicon and love.
9. Seeking global currency, now that the US is showing it is to provincially minded for the dollar to be used as such.
10. Starting young.
11. Hmm, a concise wrap-up of the latest plan, “Even if it were brilliant of itself, it doesn’t really address the issues including in the administration’s fiscal spending package, which includes tons of pork and politically motivated programs; it has nothing to do with the debate over carbon trading, health care, or education. In other words it might be a cherry, but still a cherry atop a mud sundae.”
12. Of God and the Dr Pepper matter.
13. Energy policy.
14. Zap.
15. Bang bang … and why.
16. Home away from home.
17. Speaking out.
18. Of stink and men (and truck).
19. Sign of the times.

As I mentioned Friday, I’m going to begin a short discussion about this paper on some consequences of special relativity and quantum mechanics on our view of determinism and the Universe. The authors, John H. Conway and Simon Kochen, establish three “axioms” (and a “paradox”) and from these statements establish consequences which have wide ranging implications. All of these measurements and the following discussion regard the behavior of a spin 1 massive particle. Spin 1 massive particles can have three possible measured values of quantum mechanical spin, namely -1, 0, or 1. Part 1 in which the axioms (and the Kochen-Specker paradox) are discussed can be found here.

In this installment of my discussions of this (which will have at least one and perhaps two more parts) I will examine the theorem which is at the heart of this paper. Blog neighbor Jim Anderson, noting my “homework assignment” finds the third paragraph daunting. The statement of the (strong) Free Will theorem is:

The Free Will Theorem. The axioms SPIN, TWIN and MIN imply that the response of a spin 1 particle to a triple experiment is free—that is to say, is not a function of properties of that part of the universe that is earlier than this response with respect to any given inertial frame.

Conway and Kochen prove this theorem by contradiction, that is they assume the theorem is not true and show that leads to a problem, in this case the the contradiction comes in the form of the Kochen-Specker paradox.

The basic form of the proof is to take two TWIN particles subjected to the SPIN measurement and begins to follow the consequences that these particles are “not free”. What is meant by free? This takes a particular meaning. If this measurement is free it means that the result of this measurement is not the consequence (a function of) of anything which has occurred earlier in any reference frame.

So, the authors express this measurement in terms of a collection of parameters denoted as alpha. In brief, the method employed in the proof is to pare down that unconstrained parameters sets (axis or other prior settings) via group arithmetic and MIN (one of the axioms from yesterday) to be able to finally express the measurement as a function which is recognizable as the same function which by the Kocken-Specker paradox cannot exist. Then, since the function cannot exist then the prior constraints on the particles measurement cannot exist either.

The paragraph quoted by Mr Anderson as less than transparent to the worlds most competent reader are placed there largely, I think, are included to these results to bear on a more recent proposal (called GWR and rGWR in the paper) which attempt remove by stochastic arguments the “measurement/collapse” of quantum wave functions which is philosophically speaking, uhm, difficult. I have not read any of the rGWR papers or any discussions of them so I will leave that for another time.

Mr Anderson (and his commenter) remark that this paper perhaps goes too far, offering

From what I can tell, it’s an attempt to demonstrate free will by noting that at least one property of elementary particles is nondeterministic. This still doesn’t prove the philosophical idea of free will, however. It appears only to impute it to an object, with a lot of anthropomorphizing to make it all work.

I don’t think that’s the case at all, however. The notions of free will which they think this offering lacks “intentionality, “responibility” and so on are not being discussed here. In any discussions of free will and compatabilism see for example wiki or the Stanford Encyclopedia, there is indeed a lot of discussions over whether determinism and free will are can co-exist. Yet, the universe in which we live is not deterministic. So the compatibility problem shifts. It is not a question of whether free will and determinism can exist but how free will arises in a fundamentally non-deterministic universe. The usage of the term “free will” for the theorem is to point that the freedom of the elementary particle to choose it’s “101” (squared) spin statistics result is equivalent and indistinguishable from the experimenters free will to determine the axis by which the measurement will be taken. No the axis of measurement (and the particles choice of 101,011, or 110) is not a moral choice obviously. But glancing through the compatiblism articles cited above, little space is seemingly granted to the considering consequences of a non-determinstic universe … or if incompatiblisim may be possible, i.e., “or that free will is true, therefore determinism is not” … and since determinism is not might free will be a possiblity?

The point is much discussion within the philosophical community grounds itself on the notions of whether or not determinism is true, i.e., whether the universe is really or is really not deterministic. Physics insists that there is an answer to that part of the question. The universe is not deterministic. So however you argue about free will that part of the argument should be settled.

1. The feminization of Christianity (and Jewish Orthodoxy) … I think that the example of the role of women in the Church in Russia during communist rule is an important point. The women save the church there in times of stress and the prosperity our culture enjoys currently riding the petroleum bubble is perhaps as stressful as persecution, just not in so obvious a manner.
2. Bioethics and modern (protestant) denominations as stress as well.
3. Credit crunch? Maybe not.
4. But in our minds … perceptions differ.
5. A perception of the Geithner/Obama relationship.
6. Dissent in mythical economic consensus.
7. That’s not where I’d place math in its role in our modern society … and it doesn’t have to “inspire any kid” just the ones with real talent.
8. Church and state … in the UK.
9. A prayer request.
10. Zap.
11. Boom.
12. POV.
13. School.
14. Verse.
15. Bang.
16. Two arches.
17. May God grant them many years.
18. Origen.
19. NPR, fairly unbalanced.
20. Examining economists.
21. Well, Congress gives many major league sports, baseball in particular special status regarding anti-trust. Why shouldn’t they limit their profits? It always strikes me as odd the “free market” American sports are heavily protected and structured while socialist Europe has a free wheeling market driven sports environment, e.g., compare baseball to European cycling.
22. Considering Orthodoxy.
23. Uninformed (or unlettered) liberals?

As I mentioned Friday in my blog, I’m going to begin a short discussion about this paper on some consequences of special relativity and quantum mechanics on our view of determinism and the Universe. The authors, John H. Conway and Simon Kochen, establish three “axioms” (and a “paradox”) and from these statements establish consequences which have wide ranging implications. All of these measurements and the following discussion regard the behavior of a spin 1 massive particle. Spin 1 massive particles can have three possible measured values of quantum mechanical spin, namely -1, 0, or 1.

The first of these axioms is a consequence of spin statistics known in this paper for reference as the SPIN axiom. If we take three orthogonal measurements and the norm (or square) of that spin value then the only possible value for a spin measurement consistent with quantum mechanics is that two of those squared spin values are 1 and one is 0 (or “101” in the paper for brevity). This leads to a paradox, named the Kochen Specker Paradox. This paradox arrives as follows.

If we were to set aside the more troubling aspect (from a classical viewpoint) of quantum mechanics for a moment and imagine that the values of possible measurements of the spin was known before the measurement was taken. If we then examine the set of 45 degree rotations about any and all possible axis from the original orthogonal axis. Takeing a subset of 33 of these possible axis and then attempt to assign “1” and “0” values for the axis points spread about the surface. If the measurement values were known ahead of time, then a value should be pre-assignable via some function to these nodal points. But it turns out that no such function exists. That is, it is impossible to assign these values consistently throughout all permutations these 45 degree symmetry transformations. Therefore no such function can exist. Yet of course, experimentally it does. Quantum mechanics is very well established experimetnally. This function does not exist yet this is what is observed. Which means that values of those experiments are not preassigned.

The next quantum mechanical conseqence that is used is called the TWIN axiom by the authors. This is the basics of quantum entanglement. If we create two particles “twinned” or created by a particle anti-particle pairing their squared orthogonal SPIN measurements will be the same if the two measurements of the two particles are taken on the same axis.

Finally the last axiom (MIN) isolates a particular peculiarity of special relativity and brings that into the context of this discussion. In special relatively simultaneity is not a clear cut matter as it was in a Newtonian system. An “event” in a relativistic setting is an occurrence, like the (idealized) snap of a finger which occurs at a singular point in space and time for any given observer. In special relativity two events separated in space can be seen to occur in the opposite order in different inertial frames. That is one observers moving past (and by internal frame that means the observer is not accelerating) by in different directions might observe event “A” to occur before “B” while another observer might observe “B” to have occurred before “A”. The MIN axiom basically asserts that our two experimenters measuring two entangled spin one particles SPIN measurement can independently and freely choose the axis by which they measure the particle.

Although the majority of evangelical Chrisians voted for John McCain in 2008, Christian leaders I’ve talked to said that it was the Obama campaign that did a far better job courting the evangelical community.  Obama seemed to better understand and relate to evangelicals, and indeed, far more voted for the Democratic ticket than in previous presidential elections. Now, writes evangelical ethicist David Gushee of Mercer Univeristy, Obama’s action on life issues has disappointed the evangelicals who supported him.

Gushee writes in USA Today:

What has occurred are a series of disappointingly typical Democratic abortion-related moves:

 First, the new president followed precedent by overturning the so-called Mexico City policy, which basically had withheld U.S. Agency for International Development funding from any organization that discusses, advocates or provides abortion as a method of family planning. Republicans withhold the money; Democrats provide it. Not great, but predictable. I stayed quiet on this one.

 Next, Obama revoked the “provider refusal” rule that President Bush promulgated by executive order very late in his presidency. The stated aim of this rule was to protect medical professionals from being forced as a condition of employment to provide health care services or information about services, such as abortion or contraception, that violated their consciences. Provider-conscience exceptions related to abortion are not new; the concern from the pro-choice side was that Bush’s version of that rule had become too broad. Concluding that the basic idea of conscience exceptions was probably safe, I stayed quiet again.

Then the president nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be head of the massive Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination of Sebelius, a Catholic whose bishop has condemned her stance on abortion, has gotten entangled in both national and Catholic abortion politics. Her opponents argue that she is a pro-choice extremist; her allies say she is a conscientious Catholic who has reduced abortion by 10% in Kansas. I signed on to a statement that was viewed as offering uncritical support for Sebelius. What I meant to say was that given the inevitability that Obama would choose a pro-choice HHS secretary, it seemed positive he would pick one with an abortion-reduction track record. I wish I had stayed out of this one, too.

 Finally, last week Obama signed his long-promised reversal of Bush policies on embryonic stem cell research. Again, this was not a surprise, either politically or, sadly, morally. A country that is willing to permit the destruction of a fetus at five months, when that destroyed fetus can provide no conceivable utilitarian benefit to society, is certainly going to permit the destruction of a leftover frozen embryo on the promise that it can contribute to medical breakthroughs someday.

He adds:

My understanding of the majestic God-given sacredness of human life tells me that a society that legally permits abortion on demand is deeply corrupt. It pays for adult sexual liberties with the lives of defenseless developing children. That practice, in turn, desensitizes society to the implications of paying for prospective medical cures with defenseless frozen embryos, which themselves are available because our society pays for medically assisted reproductive technology by producing hundreds of thousands of these embryos as spares. And yes, that same commitment to life’s sacredness has grounded my opposition to paying for national security with torture, or paying for today’s affluence with tomorrow’s environmental destruction.

Gushee is a thoughtful and principled evangelical centrist who is profoundly disappointed in a politician who appealed on the possiblilities of compromise producing some movement on life issues, but has not only failed to deliver on promises, but advanced policies that are totally contrary to the protection of life. 

Hope unfulfilled. 

…for stretched definitions of "temporary".

President Barack Obama’s budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to the latest congressional estimates, significantly worse than predicted by the White House just last month.

The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama’s budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That’s $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.

Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama’s policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.

Yeah, this is all just until we get back on our feet again.  Just something to tide us over, while we ride out the recession.

Or while we deepen it.

Early next week, I’m going to blog about the contents of this paper, via slashdot.

Your (optional) “homework” is to read through it … so our possible discussions might be all that more fruitful.