Republican budget cuts would cut GDP growth and cost jobs

The Republican budget cuts would cut GDP growth by 2% and cost 800,000 jobs. The federal budget cuts supported by the US House Republicans will stifle US economic growth by some 2% of the GDP and cost some 800,000 jobs. The state budgets cuts by Republican and other governors have caused .5% less growth in the US GDP in the 4th Quarter of 2011. It is apparent that Republicans are cutting spending at federal and state levels so they can defeat President Obama in 2012 because the worse the economy is, the better chances Republicans will defeat President Obama and make him a “one term president.” The US House Speaker, John Boehner (R-OH) says; “So be it!” Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN), mentioned as a future GOP presidential nominee, told Meet The Press said; “...yes” to state budget cuts even if they would result in fewer jobs and less economic growth. I guess the 2010 mid-term voters who voted for Republicans all thought that it would be a good thing for their Republican office holders to stall economic growth by 2% of GDP and cost some 800,000 jobs. Mr. Boehner, where are the jobs?

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Useful fragile accidents

I have long struggled to understand how it is that otherwise intelligent adults can make religious claims that make no sense at all. For instance, otherwise intelligent people will claim that Jesus walked on water, or that Mary had a baby even though she was a virgin. These claims have no factual basis. To my ears, these are ludicrous claims. How is it that the human intellect allows these things to be uttered? Well, perhaps the intellect barely tolerates this. The human intellect is a relatively weak Johnny-come-lately to our cognitive apparatus. What really drives our decision-making is a big elephant underneath a tiny lawyer. Each of us is a tiny lawyer riding a big elephant. It turns out, however, that the elephant has almost irresistible power to reach up and invade the lawyer's ability to articulate. It takes great training to resist the elephant and to maintain disciplined abstract self-critical thought.  When we speak words, then, it is rarely the lawyer in full command of the mouth. That elephant is smart in the sense that it was evolutionarily honed over many millions of years to allow us to survive; most of those years, we survived even though we were not even conscious. And that elephant is still powerful, compelling decision-making based upon millions of years of trial and error. And the intellect? We give it far too much credit, even though this is where humans can sometimes shine above and beyond the other animals. After all, other animals cannot calculate a 15% tip, and they cannot figure out how to invent medicines or discover DNA. [More . . . ]

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They’re still testing the wrong people.

Dafna Linzer wrote a piece for ProPublica (I found it on Slate) on February 23rd, titled "The Problem With Question 36" with the subtitle "Why are so many of the answers on the U.S. citizenship test wrong?" (On ProPublica, she called it "How I Passed My U.S. Citizenship Test: By Keeping the Right Answers to Myself"). She was summarizing her experience becoming a naturalized American citizen in January of this year. As you may guess from both titles, she found a few problems with some of the questions on the test administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). She quotes Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS:

"The goal of the naturalization test is to ensure America's newest citizens have mastered a basic knowledge of U.S. history and have a solid foundation to continue to expand their understanding as they embark on life as U.S. citizens."
I thought of my own short rant I wrote a year ago on my personal blog that I called "They're testing the wrong people". I considered rewriting it for here, but I'll just highlight (and elaborate) a few points in relation to this and not quite in relation:
  1. We make people wanting to become citizens of the USA take a test that I doubt most natural born citizens could pass. I speculated that many of our elected legislators couldn't.
  2. Adoptive parents endure tremendous invasion of privacy, screening and considerable financial impact, yet "natural" parent require no such tests.
  3. The military requires a test, but Congress doesn't.
  4. Civil service may require a test, but Congress doesn't.
  5. Boards of Education decree testing standards, but undergo no such tests themselves.
Ms. Linzer's story might enlighten you, or not, but I now have to add the USCIS - or at least the scholars, educators, and historians they consulted to create the current test - to the list of people who need to be tested.

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