Voluntary charities never actually worked

Which is why the state stepped in with social insurance in the first place. This article is quite well-written, with lots of historical detail.

Christians were never really persecuted much

Interesting....

The profit motive behind today's War on Drugs

Interesting coverage by the WaPo.

What is conservatism and what is wrong with it?

Conservatism is advocacy of the domination of society by an aristocracy.

"Redemption"

That sovereign-person thing has a name. Here's a rundown.

Profit in health care

Why it doesn't work.

The Left Business Observer

Interesting. I presume I bookmarked a specific article here sometime in the distant past, but it's gone.

The four turnings

A chart of American generations. I love this kind of stuff.

How did economists get it so wrong?

How indeed?

What happens to water management when there's no more water?

The drying of the (American) West.

Coup 2K

An analysis of the Bush "victory" in terms of its similarity to a coup.

Literary (or profane) legends

This is kind of what I was talking about earlier this week. A short list of European quasihistorical legends.

Economically important plant families

Cool.

More Koch mapping

Some of the organizations on a list of people who got face time with the Kochs in Florida.

The billion-dollar climate change denial network

There is a shitload of money behind denying climate change.

Mother Hulda

Wouldn't it be interesting to do some kind of semantically represented catalog of stories from all the world's cultures so they could be compared and contrasted and tracked?

Things like Santa Claus being partly descended from Lapp shamans who would slaughter reindeer and wear their skins while casting fortunes around New Year, or Santa Claus being Odin (both of which have come up in my reading this week) and a million and more others.

This stuff fascinates me. Anyway, here's also Mother Hulda on Wikipedia.

The Interlock Project

A map of problems facing America. Interesting!

The debt-collecting machine

Fantastic WP exposé of Aeon Financial and its ilk.

The Reactionaries

So apparently there are some guys in Silicon Valley who honestly want a return to monarchy. This FAQ rips them new assholes and reveals them for the puerile naifs they really are.

Was UnitedHealth responsible for the ObamaCare website debacle?

... Maybe.

Industrial civilization precarious

Finally some modeling being done at the right level. Ecological economics is the Elsevier rag that will be running this.

Military structure and ranking in Mordor

Insane Tolkienist detail.

Moyers: The Deep State

Anatomy of the Deep State, the inner circle that has coopted the United States Federal government.

8 ways to defang America's youth

Hmm.