DARPA Unveils Game-Changing High-Tech Weapon

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announces the latest in cutting-edge military technology in this promotional video released exclusively through Reason TV.

The new Cranial Response Online Weapons Network will allow instant executive branch-level command of U.S. military resources, without the need for congressional authority, debate, or national unity.

Are Electric Cars Really Green?

ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT: SOCIAL MOBILITY IS THE SILVER LINING TO AMERICA’S INEQUALITY CRISIS

by Joel Kotkin 04/04/2016

Yes, wealth concentration is insane. But the ways in which wealth is shifting are surprising—and give reason for a little optimism.

In an age of oligarchy, one should try to know one’s overlords—how they made their money, and where they want to take the country. By looking at the progress of the super-rich --- in contrast with most of us --- one can see the emerging and changing dynamics of American wealth.

To get a sense of these trends, researcher Alicia Kurimska and I  tapped varying analyses from the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. No list, of course, captures all the relevant data, but the Forbes list (I am a regular contributor to that magazine’s website) allows us to look not only at who has money now, but how the dynamics of wealth have changed over the past decade or more.

The bad news here is that our oligarchs are getting richer, and, unlike in the decades following World War II, they are primarily not taking us on the ride. Indeed at a time when middle-class earnings have stagnated for at least a decade and a half,   the oligarch class is making out like bandits. This, of course, extends to much of the infamous “top 1 percent.” The share of income of the top 1 percent of households in the US increased from 10 percent in 1979 to upwards of 20 percent in 2010, as famously found by economist Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. 

But if the highly affluent are thriving, the super-rich are enjoying one of the brightest epochs since the days of the robber barons. These people , according toa study by economists Steven N. Kaplan and Joshua D. Rauh, the top 0.0001 percent of 311.5 million US individuals. In constant 2011 dollars, their wealth has grown seven-fold since 1992 --- from $214 billion in 1982 to $1.525 trillion in 2011. This at a time when most Americans have endured little or no real income growth.

 What we are talking about is a concentration of wealth and power unprecedented since the turn of the last century. According to an analysis by the left-leaning Institute for Policy studies, America’s 20 wealthiest people own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population—152 million people in 57 million households. The top 100 own as much wealth as the entire 44.5 million-strong African-American population  (there are only two African Americans on the list), and the top 200 have more than the entire 55 million-strong Latino population (there are 15 Latinos on the list). To make an international comparison, the 400 have more wealth than the GDP of India, arguably the most up and coming big economy on the planet. 

The Rise of the self-made

Not all the news is bad, however. The proportion of the 400 who inherited their money has been steadily decreasing. There are more self-made billionaires than existed in the 1980s. Kaplan and Rauh report that since the 1980s the share who grew up wealthy fell from 60 percent to 32 percent. 

This does not mean so much the return of Horatio Alger --- the share who grew up poor remained constant at 20 percent --- but that most super-wealthy came from affluent but not rich families, which gave them some head start, notably in education.They did not hand the keys to the kingdom to their offspring. Rather than country clubbers clipping coupons, the rich since the 1980s have become largely, if not entirely, self-made.  

But origins are not the only thing that has changed in this era of oligarchy. So too have the industries that create the wealth --- largely represented by the shift toward technology and finance --- and, not surprisingly, where that wealth tends to concentrate. These shifts are already changing not only our economy, but also the outlines of political power, as industries friendlier to Democrats, notably tech and finance, supplant those, notably energy, that have long been associated, particulary in the last decade,  with the Republicans.

The shift in the fortunes of the super-rich reflect changes in our industrial structure over the past third of a century. The big winners have been in scalable businesses  where capital is king and rapid accumulation possible. Rauh and Kaplan, for example, report that the big winners have emerged  not only in tech, but also include owners of retail and restaurant chains, tech firms and private finance, including hedge funds  Over the period between 1982 and 2012, finance’s share grew the most, followed by technology and mass-retailing.

Who’s losing ground? The big losers are a bit counter-intuitive. Despite all the attacks on “big oil,” energy has actually suffered the biggest decline in terms of presence on the Forbes list. Energy, for example, used to account for about 21 percent of the 400,  but that has shrunk to about 11 percent. Equally puzzling, amidst a high-end building boom (not so much for the hoi polloi), real estate’s share has dropped about as much. Perhaps less surprising are the losses among non-tech based consumer industrial companies. 

Since 2012, the year the Rauh study was completed, the tech billionaires have, if anything, expanded their presence, while it’s likely that, with the drop in energy prices, the oil barons will slip even further. On the 2014 list, for example, in terms of dollar gains, five of the top six were from the tech sector, led by Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortunes increased by a remarkable $15 billion (Warren Buffett was the lone exception). Mark Zuckerberg’s gains were larger than the $12 billion increase between Charles and David Koch, even at the peak of the energy boom.

Fully half of the top 10 on the list came from the tech community, with the balance made up of Wall Street/finance people (Buffett and Michael Bloomberg) along with the Kochs and David Walton, the youngest son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

The New Geography of Wealth

Perhaps more surprising has been the shift in the location of the rich. Despite the rise of the tech oligarchs, the biggest gainers over the past decade have not occurred in California but in New York, Florida and Texas. This reflects not only the power of Wall Street and the investment class (some of whom have decamped to Florida), but the growing diversification of the Texas economy. 

Oil, of course, still plays a critical role among the Texas rich, but it’s much more than that now. The richest people in the Lone Star Stateinclude Alice Walton, the Ft. Worth-based heir to the retail fortune, but also Austin tech mogul Michael Dell, Dallas financier Andy Beal, and San Antonio supermarket mogul Charles Butt. The first energy billionaire, pipeline entrepreneur Richard Kinder, clocks in as fifth richest Texan. Even if energy remains weak for the next decade, Texas seems likely to keep producing gushers of billionaires.

If we break the rich list by region, it’s no surprise that New York, long the nation’s premier financial center, would rank first, with 82 billionaires. In second place is the San Francisco area, with 54 billionaires, most of them tied to technology. The Bay Area, with about one-third of the population, surpasses third-place Los Angeles, with 34. Miami ranks fourth with 27, Dallas fifth with 19; each is ahead of the traditional second business capital, Chicago, which ranks sixth with 15, just a few paces ahead of  Houston with 12.

The Future of Oligarchy  

What is the future trajectory of wealth in America? One thing seems certain: the twin tech capitals of Bay Area and Seattle, now home to nine of the 400, are likely to expand their reach. One clear piece of evidence is age; people generally do not get richer when they retire. In contrast, virtually all self-made billionaires under 40 are techies. 

Of course, the biggest growth can be expected in the Bay Area, particularly as tech people think of new ways to “disrupt” our lives – for our own good, of course. Whole industries such as music, movies, taxis, real estate are increasingly controlled from the Valley; as these companies wax, many of the old fortunes made in these fields will begin to wane. This is also true across the board in retail, where Seattle’s Jeff Bezos now looms as a colossus greater than any individual chain of traditional stores.

Ultimately what will make “the sovereigns of cyberspace,” to quote author Rebecca MacKinnon, so dominant is precisely what made John D. Rockefeller so rich: control of markets. Google, for example, accounts for over 60 per cent of Internet searches. It and Apple control almost 90 percent of the operating systems for smartphones. Similarly, over half of American and Canadian computer users use Facebook, making it easily the world’s dominant social-media site. 

And soon, they, like the old Wall Street elites or the energy barons, may be able to regard the government as yet another subsidiary. They will benefit greatly from the likely electoral victory of the Democrats, who are increasingly dependent on tech contributions, while the old economy oligarchs already in retreat, in energy, manufacturing and real estate, fade before them. 

The prognosis for the future of American wealth, then, is for an ever-expanding role for both tech and private investors, and a gradual shift away from basic industries that are geared to our diminishing middle class. This may not be good for America but will be wondrous indeed for the ever more powerful, and outrageously wealthy, new ruling class.

This piece originally appeared at The Daily Beast.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

Oh, Good, It’s 2016 and We’re Arguing About Whether Marxism Works

By Jonathan ChaitFollow @jonathanchait

18.6kShares

Share18.6kTweet0Share7Share28Email331Print

Joseph Stalin, hero of the working class. Photo: Buyenlarge/Getty Images

Every Marxist government in history has been a repressive nightmare. Marxists — aside from the ones who defend the remaining Marxist regimes — consider this a strange coincidence that has no bearing on Marxist ideology. I recently pointed this out, in light of the resurgence of Marxist thought among some left-wing intellectual circles. In an essay inIn These Times, Tyler Zimmer writes what he purports to be a response, but that in fact confirms my point for me.

Related Stories

Reminder: Liberalism Is Working, and Marxism Has Always Failed6 Years After Obamacare’s Passage, Haters Refuse to Accept RealityDonald Trump Versus the Republican Brain

The problem with Marxism, I argue, lies in its class-based model of economic rights. Liberalism believes in political rights for everybody, regardless of the content of their ideas. Marxists believe political rights belong only to those arguing on behalf of the oppressed — i.e., people who agree with Marxists.

Zimmer begins by insisting that self-described Marxist regimes such as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, North Korea, etc., all of whose leaders were immersed in Marxist thought, were not real Marxists at all. (Zimmer: “[T]hese authoritarian monstrosities had virtually nothing to do with [what] Marx himself said or did.”)

Zimmer proceeds to explain why the liberal idea that everybody should enjoy the same right to express their political idea is a failure, and lays out the Marxist concept of what free speech should really mean:

Marxists value free speech because they are committed to building a society where all can decide matters of public concern democratically, as genuine equals. Thus, the Marxist has a consistent way of explaining why speech that aims to dominate or marginalize others should be challenged rather than protected: it is contrary to the very values animating our commitment to free speech in the first place. …

This explains why, to quote Jelani Cobb, “the freedom to offend the powerful is not equivalent to the freedom to bully the relatively disempowered.” It also provides a principled, consistent basis for opposing and disrupting the public acts of openly racist organizations that seek to subordinate, harm, scapegoat or marginalize others. …

[T]he (socialist) goal of cooperating and governing public life together as full equals gives us a principled criterion for deciding which forms of expression deserve protection and which don’t.

Zimmer is articulating the standard left-wing critique of political liberalism, and all illiberal left-wing ideologies, Marxist and otherwise, follow the same basic structure. These critiques reject the liberal notion of free speech as a positive good enjoyed by all citizens. They categorize political ideas as being made on behalf of either the oppressor class or the oppressed class. (Traditional Marxism defines these classes in economic terms; more modern variants replace or add race and gender identities.) From that premise, they proceed to their conclusion that political advocacy on behalf of the oppressed enhances freedom, and political advocacy on behalf of the oppressor diminishes it.

It does not take much imagination to draw a link between this idea and the Gulag. The gap between Marxist political theory and the observed behavior of Marxist regimes is tissue-thin. Their theory of free speech gives license to any party identifying itself as the authentic representative of the oppressed to shut down all opposition (which, by definition, opposes the rights of the oppressed). When Marxists reserve for themselves the right to decide “which forms of expression deserve protection and which don’t,” the result of the deliberation is perfectly obvious.

In the contemporary United States, these ideas are confined by the fact that only in certain communities (like college campuses) does the illiberal left have the power to implement its vision, and even there it is constrained by the U.S. Constitution. If illiberal ideas were to gain more power, the scale of their abuses would widen.

Marinwood CSD Meetings 2014

2014 was an eventful political year for Marinwood CSD. Three new CSD directors were elected,  Deana Dearborn, Justin Kai and Bill Shea and they promised to curb spending and improve civic transparency.  

Kate Sears and even More Dirty Smears Part 3

Kate Sears doubles down on the smears

Kate Sears Responds – Doubles Down on Koch Brothers Conspiracy Allegations
Posted by: Bob Silvestri - April 5, 2016 - 11:32am

Late yesterday afternoon, The Marin Post received the following email from Marin County Supervisor Kate Sears, commenting on my recent blogs in the Marin Post (All the Supervisor's Men, The Devil Made Me Do It, and Elections Are Not Only About Issues).

Bob:

Your coverage of my poll is anything but fair. I assume that's because you did not hear the poll yourself. Contrary to your reporting, the poll did not change the questions depending on answers. It also did not talk about Susan Kirsch's campaign taking money from the Koch brothers.

The 21 minute poll asked, as part of a much broader question, whether it bothered voters if they knew: "Her organization, Citizen Marin, has worked with organizations affiliated with the Koch brothers".  Read the Story in the Marin Post HERE

Editor's Note: As a member of Citizen Marin,  I find this allegation of Koch Brothers money laughable.  It is almost a funny as some of the allegations coming from the wacky fringe of the  housing activists.  It really shows how desperate Kate Sears is to get re-elected.

Monsanto’s Roundup—Most Popular Weed Killer in US— ‘Probably’ Causes Cancer, WHO Report Says (and it is being used in Marinwood CSD Parks, Playgrounds and Open Space)

The Word Health Organization’s France-based cancer research arm recently classified Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, Roundup, as "probably" carcinogenic to humans. So why does the U.S. government consider the herbicide safe for agricultural use?

Published: March 25, 2015 | Authors: Lorraine Chow | EcoWatch | News Report

Glyphosate, the toxic active ingredient in the Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup, was “classified as probably carcinogenic to humans” according to a new report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the Word Health Organization’s France-based cancer research arm.

Roundup is one of the world’s most widely used weed killers and the most popular in the U.S. Among farmworkers who use the herbicide, traces of the compound were found in their blood and urine that linked to a slightly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to the report issued last week. “Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA, Canada, and Sweden reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides,” it said. There is also “convincing evidence” that it can cause cancer in laboratory animals.

Traces of the weed killer can also be found in food, water and in the air after it has been sprayed, according to the WHO report. In fact, according to a different study from the U.S. Geological Survey which focused on Mississippi’s highly fertile Delta agricultural region, the herbicide was present in 75 percent of air and rainfall test samples.

The WHO report focuses on industrial use of glyphosate. Home gardeners do not appear to be at risk. “I don’t think home use is the issue,” Kate Guyton of IARC told the Associated Press. “It’s agricultural use that will have the biggest impact. For the moment, it’s just something for people to be conscious of.”

According to Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group said, “The widespread adoption of GMO corn and soybeans has led to an explosion in the use of glyphosate—a main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and Dow’s Enlist Duo. Consumers have the right to know how their food is grown and whether their food dollars are driving up the use of a probable carcinogen.”

Monsanto has cried foul following the release of the report. “We don’t know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe,” said Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice-president of global regulatory affairs in a statement.

Monsanto is the world’s largest seed company. As Alexis Baden-Mayer of the Organic Consumers Association pointed out, the corporation invented the herbicide glyphosate and brought it to market under the trade name Roundup in 1974, after DDT was banned. The use of Roundup surged in the late 1990s thanks to Monsanto’s ingenious marketing strategy of genetically engineering (GE) seeds to grow food crops that could tolerate high doses of Roundup. With the introduction of these new GE seeds, farmers could now easily control weeds on their corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beets and alfalfa crops—crops that thrived while the weeds around them were wiped out by Roundup, Baden-Mayer wrote.

Besides cancer, glyphosate has since been linked to a whole slew of health issues including Parkinson’s disease and fatal kidney disease. Concerns about glyphosate in foods led to Vermont’s historic no-strings-attached billrequiring labeling of GE foods last May, a first for the nation.

The U.S. government considers the herbicide safe for agricultural use, neglecting concerns from organic farmers and other growers as well as the full range of impacts associated with these GMO herbicide-tolerant crops. As Reuters noted in 2013, Monsanto “requested and received approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for increased tolerance levels for glyphosate.” Since the release of the WHO report, the U.S. EPA said it would consider the French agency’s evaluation.

Editor's Note: In a recent post  I published the video of the February 2016 Marinwood CSD meeting where they approved the "Integrated Pest Management" Plan (IPM) which allows the use of pesticides like Roundup (aka. glyphosate) in our Parks, Playgrounds and Open Space.  Residents of Upper Lucas Valley have reported pesticide use by Marinwood CSD maintenance contractors in Open Space. Although they are required to post before spraying,  this did not occur.  Below is the CSD meeting video where the IPM was approved.  The Board of Supervisors recently approved a similar plan.  Damon Connolly was the only Supervisor who voted no.  In February 2016 the Marinwood CSD, the IPM was approved unanimously. 

Is this the same Richard Dovere of C2 Beta Holdings that is the partner with Marinwood?

The Marinwood CSD signed a contract with Richard Dovere of C2 Beta Holdings.  Is this the same man?  His company was formed just six months ago and it appears he has had multiple businesses since 2011 when this video was made.  Quite an achievement for a 29 year old man.

The real concern is with his company with whom we have a twenty five year commitment.  We could have done business with the established solar companies yet for some odd reason, Sol-Ed, won the contract.  It is owned by David Kunhardt, a company run out a cubicle in downtown San Rafael with NO SOLAR installations experience when it won the contract.  Strange isn't it?

Who is David Kunhardt?  He is an affordable housing lobbyist with  CALM and has testified frequently that Marinwood needs more affordable housing.  

Another key player is Cyane Dandridge, a former Marinwood CSD Director who owns SEI and runs the MSEL Environmental High School at Terra Linda High. She secured the exclusive consulting contract for solar engineering for Marinwood without competitive bids before resigning in 2012. Prior to that she was on the committee to approve eight sites for affordable housing in Marinwood Lucas Valley.   We now have a stunning 83% of all the very low and low income housing units for unincorporated Marin.  

Coincidence?

Sleazy Solar Powered Scheme in New Jersey

This Jersey Mayor used his position to secure a Solar Deal and got caught.  

Marinwood CSD meetings in 2015

Editor's Note: I have taped Marinwood CSD meetings for years.  In the past, I did not publish them because I thought they were too embarrassing.  The petty arguments, power plays and outright unethical behavior were better left unseen.  I was naive.  It turns out that making this behavior public is EXACTLY what is needed to curtail the abuse.

I am sorry to say, that the current CSD directors, while in some ways is MUCH BETTER than past boards, a few behave as authoritarian rulers instead of democratic elected representatives of the people.  Video can level the playing field.

Feynman on Scientific Method.

When a planner tells you that urbanizing the Bay Area will REDUCE greenhouse gases and traffic, ask about his PROOF.

The simple fact is that the iconic city of "smart growth", Portland, Oregon has INCREASED traffic,  HIGHER housing prices and REDUCED mass transit use.

Before we destroy the Bay Area through hypergrowth, we should  LOOK AT THE DATA in other cities who have tried the strategies in other cities around the world.

The Tax Trio, Kinsey, Rice and Sears are happy at Tax Time!