The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• Wake up GOP: Smashing system doesn’t fix it – CNN.com

  Great opinion piece by David Frum (a Republican).
  QUOTE
  Only about one-third of Republicans agree that cutting government spending should be the country’s top priority. Only about one-quarter of Republicans insist the budget be balanced without any tax increases.

  Yet that one-third and that one-quarter have come to dominate my party. That one-third and that one-quarter forced a debt standoff that could have ended in default and a second Great Recession. That one-third and that one-quarter have effectively written the “no new taxes pledge” into national law.
  UNQUOTE
  Frum then outlines 7 theses. Excellent read.

  tags: david_frum cnn republicans debt_ceiling fiscal_crisis

• Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader – NYTimes.com

  Curious. Counter-intuitively, the “addict” personality has *less* pleasure (or feels less pleasure) from his/her activities than the non-addict. On the plus side, his/her desire for stimulus serves him/her well in other endeavors.
  QUOTE
  The risk-taking, novelty-seeking and obsessive personality traits often found in addicts can be harnessed to make them very effective in the workplace. For many leaders, it’s not the case that they succeed in spite of their addiction; rather, the same brain wiring and chemistry that make them addicts also confer on them behavioral traits that serve them well.

  So, when searching for your organization’s next leader, look for someone with an attenuated dopamine function: someone who is never satisfied with the status quo, someone who wants the feeling of success more than others — but likes it less.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: addiction nyt david_j_linden brain neuroscience

• Debt ceiling history: Doing Battle the FDR Way

  Right on.
  QUOTE
  Americans making over $250,000 in 1944 — over $3.2 million today — paid 69 percent of their total incomes in federal income tax, after exploiting every tax loophole they could find. In 2007, by contrast, America’s 400 highest earners paid just 18.1 percent of their total incomes, after loopholes, in federal tax.

  None of the debt ceiling “deals” that House and Senate leaders advanced last week asked any of these top 400 — or any other rich Americans — to pay a penny more in taxes than they do now. In the 2011 debt ceiling struggle, inequality has clearly triumphed.

  So what ought we learn, amid this triumph for greed, from FDR’s debt ceiling battle? Maybe this: We really can have a more equal America. We just need to fight for it.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: fdr debt_ceiling taxation usa fiscal_crisis republicans sam_pizzigati too_much

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.