StreetScooby

Have you seen the latest release of Sun's sunstudio debugger? The thing takes at least 10 minutes just to come up. LOL.... We are all engines of karma

Lawrocket's summary seems to be on the money here. Here's a piece from today's WSJ: The Ball Heads for His Court Same-sex marriage looks like a sure thing, at least in California. By JAMES TARANTO Same-sex marriage will resume in California over the will of the state's voters if a new federal court ruling stands up on appeal. In Perry v. Brown, a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld a trial judge's ruling that struck down Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that amended the state's constitution to restore the traditional definition of marriage. The Golden State's Supreme Court had earlier held that the unamended California Constitution mandated same-sex marriage, but then upheld the amendment that effectively struck down that ruling. "In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing enduringly significant about today's ruling," writes National Review's Edward Whelan. A perceptive reader will recognize the ponderous qualifiers "grand" and "enduring" as signals that Whelan's assertion is a trivial truth. As he explains in his next sentence, "The Ninth Circuit was just a way-station on the path to the Supreme Court." It's possible that the Ninth Circuit will rehear the case en banc--i.e., before an 11-judge panel--though Whelan doubts it. In any case, an appeal to the high court is a certainty, and the justices' agreeing to hear the case is a strong possibility, if not an overwhelming likelihood. The Ninth Circuit has a poor batting average in Supreme Court appeals, and this decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who is notoriously liberal. Those facts are likely to inspire optimism among conservative commentators who oppose same-sex marriage. They shouldn't. Reinhardt's decision was expertly crafted to appeal to his former Ninth Circuit peer Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose view of the matter is all but certain to prove decisive. [botwt0207] Associated Press In August 2010, this column ventured a prediction: "When the Supreme Court takes up Perry v. Schwarzenegger--perhaps under the name Brown v. Perry or Whitman v. Perry [it will be Perry v. Brown if today's opinion is appealed]--the justices will rule 5-4, in a decision written by Justice Kennedy, that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage." Although we still think that is Justice Kennedy's inclination, we hereby walk back our prediction a bit. The court will not find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in this case, but it will strike down Proposition 8 and thereby reimpose same-sex marriage in California. Reinhard's decision lays out a way in which Justice Kennedy can do so--and indeed makes it very difficult for Kennedy to uphold Proposition 8. The trial judge in the Perry case held that same-sex marriage was itself protected by the U.S. Constitution. But the Ninth Circuit judges set aside this holding and decided the case on "narrow grounds." They found that Proposition 8 was analogous to Amendment 2, a Colorado ballot measure that the Supreme Court struck down in Romer v. Evans (1996). Amendment 2 barred state and local government in the Centennial State from official actions "designed to protect the status of persons based on their 'homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships.' " In a 6-3 ruling, the high court held that the amendment violated equal protection by "imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group." The author of that decision was Anthony Kennedy. Today's Ninth Circuit decision relies almost entirely on Romer (quoting with citations omitted): Proposition 8 is remarkably similar to Amendment 2. Like Amendment 2, Proposition 8 "singles out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status. . . ." Like Amendment 2, Proposition 8 has the "peculiar property" of "withdraw[ing] from homosexuals, but not others," an existing legal right--here, access to the official designation of "marriage"--that had been broadly available, notwithstanding the fact that the [U.S.] Constitution did not compel the state to confer it in the first place. Like Amendment 2, Proposition 8 denies "equal protection of laws in the most literal sense," because it "carves out" an "exception" to California's equal protection clause, by removing equal access to marriage, which gays and lesbians had previously enjoyed, from the scope of that constitutional guarantee. Like Amendment 2, Proposition 8 "by state decree . . . put [homosexuals] in a solitary class with respect to" an important aspect of human relations, and accordingly "imposes a special disability upon [homosexuals] alone." And like Amendment 2, Proposition 8 constitutionalizes that disability, meaning that gays and lesbians may overcome it "only by enlisting the citizenry of [the state] to amend the State Constitution" for a second time. The only difference Reinhardt acknowledges between the two ballot measures is that whereas Amendment 2 imposed "a broad and undifferentiated disability" on homosexuals, Proposition 8 "excises with surgical precision one specific right." Those who hope for a reversal of today's decision can perhaps take comfort that Justice Kennedy emphasized Amendment 2's breadth in his decision striking it down. But if Romer was correctly decided, as Kennedy obviously thinks it was, then Reinhardt's logic is compelling. It would take a lot more work to overturn today's ruling than to uphold it. For Justice Kennedy, then, the path of least resistance is to follow what probably is his inclination to begin with--and he can do it without (yet) taking the momentous step of finding a new constitutional right to same-sex marriage. It seems perverse to suggest that the U.S. Constitution prohibits a state from amending its constitution to reverse a dubious ruling by the state's judiciary. But that would seem to be the inexorable consequence of Romer. We are all engines of karma

I don't remember where I saw it, but the North American growing season takes a staggering amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Not as much as we're pumping in, but still alot. We are all engines of karma

The article says moss can take alot of CO2 out of the atmosphere. There was a time in the planet's history where they did so, and it put us in an ice age. We are all engines of karma

Interesting article in New Scientist today, thought I'd post it. I recently spent some time diving deeper into global warming. The one thing I walked away with is this - there are some very smart people working on this problem, and the work they're doing inspires significant confidence in me. There's alot more going on in the dynamic energy balance of the Earth than we fully understand right now. But, we're going to get there. Clearly, we can't continue pumping 15GT of carbon into the atmosphere as a way of life, but I don't think we need to destroy our current way of life to properly address the problem. First land plants plunged Earth into ice age Never underestimate moss. When the simple plants first arrived on land, almost half a billion years ago, they triggered both an ice age and a mass extinction of ocean life. The first land plants appeared around 470 million years ago, during the Ordovician period, when life was diversifying rapidly. They were non-vascular plants, like mosses and liverworts, that didn't have deep roots. About 35 million years later, ice sheets briefly covered much of the planet and a mass extinction ensuedMovie Camera. Carbon dioxide levels probably fell sharply just before the ice arrived – but nobody knew why. Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK, and colleagues think the mosses and liverworts are to blame. Moss versus rock It's not the first time that plants have been fingered as a cause of glaciation. Researchers already suspect that the rise of vascular plants in the Devonian period, some 100 million years later, triggered another ice age. The plants' roots extracted nutrients from bedrock, leaving behind vast quantities of chemically altered rock that could react with CO2 and so suck it out of the atmosphere. Non-vascular plants like mosses don't have deep roots, so it was thought that they didn't behave in the same way. Lenton suspected they might have played a role nevertheless. To find out, he set up an experiment to see what damage a common moss (Physcomitrella patens) could inflict on granite. After 130 days, rocks with moss living on them had weathered significantly more than bare ones – and about as much as they would have if vascular plants were living on them. "The secret seems to be that the moss secrete a wide range of organic acids that can dissolve rock," Lenton says. When Lenton added this effect of non-vascular plants to a climate model of the Ordovician, the CO2 dropped from about 22 times modern levels to just eight times modern levels. That was enough to trigger an ice age in the model of Ordovician Earth. In his experiments, the non-vascular plants also released lots of phosphorus from rocks. Much of this would have wound up in the ocean, where we know it can trigger vast algal blooms. As other bugs feasted on the algae, they would have used up the oxygen in the water – suffocating oxygen-breathing animals and accounting for the mass extinction of marine life known to have occurred at the end of the Ordovician. Although the first land plants were responsible for these mass deaths in their ocean-dwelling neighboursMovie Camera, Lenton says they themselves probably came out of the Ordovician ice age largely unscathed. That's because the ice was concentrated around the South Pole, while the plants lived in the tropics. Life may also have caused an even harsher cold snap much earlier in Earth's history. The first complex animals appeared some time around 800 million years ago, and may have sucked so much CO2 from the atmosphere that the entire planet froze over in a "snowball Earth". Journal reference: Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1390 We are all engines of karma

...a DZ owner? We are all engines of karma

A recent article from the WSJ... I believe it's fair to question the magnitude and timing of change being sold by the "alarmists". The 50 year economic case doesn't seem unreasonable to me, at this point in time. Also, I'm really curious to see what the government(s) would do with all that carbon-tax money... Has anyone heard what the EU is going to do with the airline carbon tax? No Need to Panic About Global Warming There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy. Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article: A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed. In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts. Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2. The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job. This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death. Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money." Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them. Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically. Related Video A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet. If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review. Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence. Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. We are all engines of karma

At this point in time, I don't see most informed deniers saying the physics is wrong. What I see them denying, myself included, is the "political" solutions being "imposed" by our government having any real effect on the problem. I believe most are in agreement that those "solutions" aren't going to have any real impact, other than to give more power and money to the government. We are all engines of karma

Apparently, automatic hikes are built into everything. What they're doing is cutting back a little on the automatic hike. Net/net, there's still an increase in spending. That's my understanding. We are all engines of karma

+1 We are all engines of karma

Aren't you a little bit concerned that might start a whole new fashion trend in the 'hood? We are all engines of karma

I've concluded that most leftists (excluding billvon, of course) aren't very good at math. We are all engines of karma

Thanks! Then, I wonder what they were doing at tax time? I recall very clearly being told they were taxed "on the unrealized" by my boss at the time. Considering he was a tremendous guy, he wouldn't have lied to me. Wonder what I misunderstood? They would "joke" around about generating losses before taxes. We are all engines of karma

From today's WSJ: A book review on where Obama's Stimulus money went... Thought some in here would be interested. Link to amazon.com here: Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History Your Tax Dollars Not at Work From Solyndra to Bobber the Water Safety Dog, an epic spending program ran amok and then ran aground, its goals unmet. By JAMES FREEMAN Last week, President Barack Obama refused to allow private citizens to spend $7 billion improving America's energy infrastructure. Three years ago, he insisted that taxpayers spend more than 100 times that amount on an outlay that also addressed the nation's energy needs, among other goals. But while the Keystone XL pipeline that Mr. Obama rejected was certain to deliver a product that people want, the benefits of the president's 2009 stimulus program are harder to discern. Sold as a way to create jobs while building infrastructure and an environmentally sensitive economy, the stimulus plan was drafted in haste by Democrats in Congress and then signed by Mr. Obama on Feb. 17, 2009. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was priced at $787 billion when enacted; the official estimate is now more than $800 billion. In "Money Well Spent?" Michael Grabell of the nonprofit news organization ProPublica explains where all those dollars went. Mr. Grabell does such a thorough job of cataloging the program's misdirected funds and misplaced priorities that one wonders how he settled on the inquisitive title. Page after page of "Money Well Spent?" seems to answer with a resounding "No!" But despite the evidence that he has painstakingly compiled, the author seems reluctant to conclude that the stimulus program was not worth doing. He makes a point of saying that the country's unemployment rate would have risen much higher without the government's spending binge. "Money Well Spent?" would make a compelling book-club selection for politically oriented readers, who could argue over which recipient of taxpayer funds was the least deserving. The failed solar-panel maker Solyndra has attracted a federal investigation, but there are other worthy competitors for the title. Mr. Grabell reminds us of the $783,000 grant to study why young people consume malt liquor and marijuana, and the $219,000 to study the "hookups" of college students. (Perhaps these research efforts could have been combined.) Then there is the $92,000 spent by the Army Corps of Engineers "on costumes for mascots like Bobber the Water Safety Dog." Democrats said at the time of the bill's passage that it included no earmarks, or spending specially targeted by individual politicians, but this claim turned out to be false. The Senate's closed-door negotiations over the bill were described for Mr. Grabell by Mel Martinez, a Republican senator from Florida who has since retired: "It was essentially about going around the table and instead of talking about the merits of the bill, it was what goodies they could get, what pet projects and the value and the price of it." Mr. Martinez was appalled and ended up voting against the bill. After the act was signed into law, Vice President Joseph Biden became a stimulus cheerleader and urged the local politicians who would be receiving much of the money not to waste it on "stupid things." He was asking the impossible. But what is perhaps most striking in this tale is not the waste of particular boondoggles but the program's failure to meet its own goals. If the aim was to create jobs, why were the funds not specifically directed to areas with the highest unemployment? If the aim was to underwrite vital construction projects, why did an Alaskan village called Ouzinkie, population 167, receive a $15 million airport? "By contrast," Mr. Grabell notes, "major hubs such as Newark and Las Vegas didn't get any stimulus money. Atlanta, the busiest airport in the world, received nothing in the first round of grants." With money carved out of the stimulus for Democratic constituencies such as government workers and for various anti-poverty programs, only about 10% of the spending, or $80 billion, was devoted to infrastructure—and very little of that total went to critical work. The political necessity to fund the "shovel-ready" projects promised by the president meant that money didn't go to the bridges most in need of repair but to jobs that could quickly clear the thicket of regulatory permitting. Repaving roads was a typical activity; less than 12% of the infrastructure spending went for work on bridges. Bureaucratic red tape blunted the stimulus in other ways. Particularly slow-moving, Mr. Grabell says, was the effort to weatherize American homes. "By the end of 2009, only 9,100 homes had been weatherized nationwide out of a goal of nearly 600,000 in three years." In California, a total of 12 houses had been weatherized. The Obama administration justified its spending blowout with an economic analysis that claimed the bill would keep unemployment from rising above 8%. More than two years later, in the spring of 2011, the rate was still above 9%. The stimulus had failed on its own terms; the promised green-jobs boom never materialized. Mr. Grabell acknowledges the failure while also accepting the White House line that without the stimulus things would have been worse. The Recovery Act, he writes, "certainly prevented the unemployment rate from reaching 12 percent." Mr. Grabell also argues that infrastructure spending helped put a floor under the construction industry and that the government funded some useful projects. He seems to accept John Maynard Keynes's view that government spending revives stagnant economies by increasing aggregate demand. "The Recovery Act failed to live up to its promise," Mr. Grabell says, "not because it was too small or because Keynesian economics is obsolete, but because it was poorly designed." Of course it was poorly designed—politicians designed it—but given the resulting joblessness, Mr. Grabell should hardly give Keynes a pass. Summing up the stimulus, Mr. Grabell concludes: "The nation might never see such an extraordinary and flawed endeavor as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act again." Taxpayers can only hope. Mr. Freeman is assistant editor of the Journal's editorial page. We are all engines of karma

Yet another can of worms... What happens when they never sell the stock? They just pass it along to family members? It used to be very common for these folks to pass their wealth along to their children and completely avoid taxes, with minimal market risk along the way. Here's how they did it - they would "box the position". Basically, when Dad was about to die, they would go and take a short position in equal amount to whatever long position they had. This would net them flat. Voila, no death taxes. They would have to carry the cost of the short for a little while, and be exposed to market risk while this went on. Dad dies, stock ownership passes, the child then covers the short and now is really, really rich. This has since been outlawed by Congress. Good question. I'm not a stock guy, so I'm probably not the best person to answer. I believe the company gets its money only in the IPO. Once the stock is in play, that company can claim it as an "asset" (not sure that's the correct word, I'm not an accountant) and use it for other financial purposes (getting loans, "Hey look out our stock capitalization, we're a thriving company!" ). We are all engines of karma

Many years ago, I worked for a "discretionary money management" firm in the city. These folks, and their clients, were in the 0.0001%. Tax time was always a big deal because they did get taxed on their unrealized gains. They were allowed to offset those gains by loses in other stocks. That's what I saw happening, looking from the outside trying not to fall off the boxes I had stacked up I could have missed something... We are all engines of karma

+1 +2 We are all engines of karma

+1 We are all engines of karma

Here's the rationale behind taxing long term capital gains at a lower rate.... Let's say I'm an investor, and I've put my money into a stock that has been successful. I keep my money in that stock, because it's working. My understanding (kelpdiver help me out here) is the government actually taxes your "unrealized gains". Even though you haven't cashed out the stock, the government steps in and taxes your gains, anyway, every year. Thus, as an investor facing a call from the tax man, I have to go and sell my successful stock to pay the tax man. In order to ease what many consider the unfairness of taking cash from something that hasn't been cashed, the government graciously accepts just 15% instead of the normal amount. We are all engines of karma

I agree with everything you said. Personally, I'm looking forward to the day when Marco Rubio runs. With what I know of him at this point in time, I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. We are all engines of karma

Agreed. Truth be known, I'm inclined to actually agree with what you advocated more than I may have let on. We are all engines of karma

Huh? You lost me here. Are you saying that I'm saying we should spend all of government revenues only on the military? (...gee, I need to sit down after writing that) We are all engines of karma

So you're advocating that we massively reduce military spending, and see what happens? We are all engines of karma

This topic really boils down to what Mitch Daniels said in his "rebutal" to Obama's State of the Union address last night: One side in this argument doesn't see the average person as being able to take care of themselves, and thus the government must fill in the details. The other side sees that as flawed, and expects the average person to take care of themselves. In order for a civilized society to function well, each and every member has an obligation to take care of themselves, and their family, to the best of their ability. That ability is directly proportional to your willingness to work hard and better yourself. We are all engines of karma

Agreed, we spend an enormous amount of money on our military. Taking our troops out of Europe would be a good starting point, IMO. Revising our procurement procedures is another area where there's significant potential for cost savings. We are all engines of karma