In summary: the administration loves to tout the 690,000 vehicles sold in July and August, but the Edmunds report says that only 125,000 (18%) of those sales were incremental, meaning the remaining 82% of sales would have happened regardless of the program.
In other words, 565,000 people were given free money for no reason at all, just as critics of this program predicted would happen.
Clinton, Goldstone and true cost of the occupation
Hever: The Israeli government is hiding the true cost of the occupation even from itself
The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported last Friday that at least 11 locations within settlement colonies in the West Bank are escalating construction in order to alter “facts on the ground.” In October, the joint Israeli-Palestinian organization, Alternative Information Center, organized a conference on the economy of the Israeli occupation in Bethlehem. The Real News' Lia Tarachansky attended and spoke to the AIC's Shir Hever about the real costs of maintaining Israel's occupation.
Cost estimated at US$9 billion to the governments of Israel and the USA, while profit is almost entirely privatized.
Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own
ISPs may not act for years on local complaints about slow Internet—but when a town rolls out its own solution, it's amazing how fast the incumbents can deploy fiber, cut prices, and run to the legislature.
THE GRISLY subject of torture is back with us again, with fresh allegations of CIA misconduct. It is a subject which first came to occupy my thoughts when I was writing a book on the Algerian War, A Savage War of Peace, back in the 1970s. It has never left me.
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YET NOT everyone was to become an apologist. Slowly, dissent and discord would rise. General Jacques de la Bollardière, a distinguished senior officer, highly decorated for his courage during World War II and sentenced to death in absentia by the collaborationist Vichy regime, was one such voice. . . .
The terrible danger there would be for us to lose sight, under the fallacious pretext of immediate expediency, of the moral values which alone have, up till now, created the grandeur of our civilisation and of our army.
Paul Kawika Martin, Political and Policy Director for Peace Action, said:
I think the question should be: How much U.S. credit should we use on the war in Afghanistan? As it stands, the over $230 Billion we have already spent has mostly been borrowed money adding to the U.S. deficit. Of course, just like buying a car or home, sometimes it's good to do things on credit. But this isn't the true cost. As Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes points out, that figure fails to include interest on debt, veterans benefits and other costs to society. They estimate the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could top a staggering $5 trillion to $7 trillion.
Phi Beta Iota: Other “pundits” can be read within the full story. The cost is far more than the “tangible debt.” It includes the hollowing out of America–the loss of integrity, the failure of paradigms, the cheating culture, and on and on and on. We have in essence sacrified the Republic in the name of partisan politics and corporate greed, enabled by civitas minimus. America is less safe and less prosperous today than it was on 9/12.
The Emdrive is an electromagnetic drive that would generate thrust from a closed system — “impossible” say some experts.
To critics, it’s flat-out junk science, not even worth thinking about. But its inventor, Roger Shawyer, has doggedly continued his work. As Danger Room reported last year, Chinese scientists claimed to validate his math and were building their own version.
Shawyer gave a presentation earlier this week on the Emdrive’s progress at the CEAS 2009 European Air & Space Conference. It answered few questions, but hinted at how the Emdrive might transform spaceflight — and warfare. If the technology works, that is.
Explaining Research – How much do drugs really cost to develop?
Although this does not seem like a fact that most people would commit to memory, somehow the average American has come to know that, not only is it insanely expensive to create a new drug and bring it to market, but it is expensive to the tune of $800 million dollars. Why is this important? It is the reason most often cited for why medications are so expensive in the United States.
So what is wrong with the figure? A number of things. First, let’s just approach the study from an economic standpoint. The actual out of pocket costs for developing a drug in the Tufts study were about $400 million, half of the final number. How did it get to $800 million then? Through a fancy piece of economic sleight of hand known as “opportunity costs of capital.”
