Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Fuck the New Jersey DMV

So here's my New Jersey rant. About a year ago, I got pulled over for being on my cell phone. OK, you got me. Reasonable law, fine me, whatever.

But lo and behold, my driver's license is suspended. "Why is your license suspended?", asks the police officer.

"Why IS my license suspended?" asks the francis.

Turns out, a parking ticket i forgot to pay. So now I get hit with a big old driving on a suspended license ticket, plus the cell ticket and I can't drive home. I'm lucky the cop didn't arrest me, which he could have. For a parking ticket.

So i go to court, pay a butt load of money and get it all taken care of. So last week, I get pulled over for no reason. Ask the cop why and he says "I ran your plates and your drivers license is suspended. Why is that?". Well, long story short, turns out when my license was suspended the first time and I got pulled over, the DMV automatically charges an insurance surcharge of 250 bucks. They don't tell you that in court and I never got a notice in the mail. So my license was suspended again. And I had to pay 350 for that, and go to court next week with a max penalty of 750 + 10 days in jail or something crazy + resuspending my license again. FUCK NJ.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The sad plight of Rick Santorum

Stephen Colbert points out that Rick Santorum is still being dogged by the Dan Savage designed affiliation of his last name, Santorum, with the frothy mixture of lube and feces created during anal sex. Now, whenever anyone googles santorum, that's what comes up. And just by posting about it and adding another link to that definition, i've contributed to the problem. poor guy.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

For my pot loving and/or nmeeding friends in Cali

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/california-medical-marijuana-pot-card

I needn't have worried. Soon enough, I found Price-Less Evaluations, "the most trusted medical marijuana evaluation center in San Francisco," whose site features a photo of a model in a lab coat and a coupon for a "420 special" (good for a $20 discount on April 20, 2011). Many California pot doctors will ask patients to bring in medical records that prove that their problems are legit (though they don't always check them). But the woman who answered the Price-Less 24-hour info line assured me that despite my lack of documentation, "the doctor can just evaluate you, and he'll decide whether you qualify or not."
.,.....
The receptionist led me back into a hallway, where I saw a stooped, white-haired man in a rumpled pullover—the doctor. "Come on in," he mumbled. I stepped into an office and sat down at the edge of his desk. "So, can cannabis help you in some ways?" he asked, pen poised over a recommendation form. "I think so, yeah," I replied, trying to sound confident.
"So how does it help you?" he asked as the ink dried. "Well," I offered, "I have periodic pain from typing a lot, and in my lower back, and it could help me with that." He smiled. "Good. It's signed right there." The entire conversation had taken less than 90 seconds.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

out of laziness i steal content

From Krugman:
What’s striking about the you’re-so-ignorant critics, however, is their tendency to get all confused about very basic things – to insist that the savings-investment identity somehow implies that government spending can’t increase demand, that the Euler condition is somehow a causal relationship implying that low interest rates cause deflation, that Ricardian equivalence means that even a temporary rise in government spending will be fully offset by reduced consumption.

I believe that what we’re looking at is people who know their math, but don’t know what it means: they can grind through the equations of their models, but don’t have any feel for what the equations really imply.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/math-models-and-mystification/

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tyler Cowen, another supply sider with tired talking points

So via Kevin Drum I saw this post by Chicago School economist Tyler Cowen:



Yet Keynesian theory has a no less serious problem, namely that workers take a "stupid voluntary vacation" during the downturn, due to their stubbornness on nominal wage cuts......Aggregate demand macroeconomics works in many cases and it almost always "works" (predicts well) when the macro forces are pointed toward destructive ends.  We are not sure why it works at all, or if it always works, and yet we see a great fervor of belief in it and a demonization of those who are skeptics.


Huh? I mean you could say we're not sure of all the detailed dynamics of why it works, or it may be an incomplete theory which doesn't encompass the complexities of real world economies. But my understanding is we're pretty sure of the generalities of why it works. There's a mismatch between demand for goods/services vs supply, with an excess of supply. Thus unemployment rises above the natural level, lowered consumer and business confidence etc. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of less consumption, more savings, yet higher unemployment and possible deflation which further exacerbates the cycle. Some form of governmental stimulus to aggregate demand can help break this cycle and act as a counter cyclical force.

This model has fit quite well with real world data over many decades and several economic cycles. So there's a perfectly good model, it makes both mathematical and intuative sense AND it works (as Cowen says). But pointing this out to skeptics and saying their models don't seem to "work" is "demonization". I don't get it. And by the way, who exactly is doing this demonization?

And finally, I'd like to see the statistics for people taking "stupid voluntary vacations" and an explanation of what exactly he even means by that.  Currently I believe there's broad underemployment across all categories of jobs, so its not as if there's some huge pool of people refusing to work because the pay's too low.  Jobs aren't there because demand isn't there to justify hiring.  But apparently Cowen thinks this is all a problem of people being to stupid to work.  Good theory there.  We don't even need Keynes with that kind of genius explanation.