An extensive reef system at the Amazon River mouth (PDF) Science Advances. In a site marked for oil exploration.
Back from the dead: Russians revive pre-historic amoebae Russia Beyond the Headines (MR).
The dark tales of the world’s most epic sleep-talker BBC
Banker fails to appear in cat-cruelty case FT
VW, setting aside $23 billion for diesel scandal costs, reports record loss Sidney Morning Herald (EM).
Fiat Chrysler recalls 1.1 million cars, SUVs for rollaway issue Reuters
Mossack Fonseca
Hong Kong cabinet heavyweight caught up in Panama Papers row agrees on need for more transparency South China Morning Post
The Taxcast, Edition 52, April 2016 (YouTube/podcast) Tax Justice Network
One more scandal in the European Parliament the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens (ChrisSp).
Boris Johnson suggests ‘part-Kenyan’ Obama may have ‘ancestral dislike’ of UK Independent
Vibrant, Noisy and Booming: Welcome to the New Moscow Der Speigel. Reads like a puff piece, to me. So, why now? Although “free WLAN in subway cars, parks, restaurants and cemeteries” makes New York’s WiFi kiosk system look a little… provincial.
Mish’s Sure Fire Proposal to End Japanese Deflation: Negative Sales Taxes, 1% Monthly Tax on Gov’t Bonds MishTalk. A progressive consumption subsidy. From Mish. What a year this has been!
Syraqistan
When Media Shill For Saudi Money Moon of Alabama
Syria Peace Talks in Danger of Collapse, Says U.N. Envoy WSJ
U.S. to buy heavy water from Iran’s nuclear program Reuters
Workplan: Issues Relating to The FBI Informant with Whom 9/11 Hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar Resided (PDF) Dana Lesemann and Michael Jacobson, The 9/11 Commission (Watt4Bob).
Brazil
To See the Real Story in Brazil, Look at Who Is Being Installed as President — and Finance Chiefs The Intercept (RS).
The real reason Dilma Rousseff’s enemies want her impeached Guardian
Brazil’s Rousseff may appeal to Mercosur if impeached illegally Reuters
An Ominous Collapse Casts a Shadow Over Rio de Janeiro Bloomberg
Caterpillar says business in Brazil has ‘basically tanked’ FT
China?
China, U.S. pledge to ratify Paris climate deal this year Reuters
Renewable Energy Stumbles Toward the Future NYT
Unearthing America’s Deep Network of Climate Change Deniers Bloomberg (original). From 2015, but still useful.
Range Resources exec’s well-site remarks drawing sharp criticism Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “‘We heard Range Resources say it sites its shale gas wells away from large homes where wealthy people live and who might have the money to fight such drilling and fracking operations,’ said Patrick Grenter, an attorney and Center for Coalfield Justice executive director, who attended the lawyers’ forum. A handful of attorneys in the audience confirmed that account.”
Flint water plant continues to reel with sudden death of foreman Detroit MLive and Woman in leading Flint water crisis lawsuit slain in twin killing MLive (MR).
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
FBI Hints It Paid Hackers $1 Million to Get Into San Bernardino iPhone Wired
Google’s Remarkably Close Relationship With the Obama White House, in Two Charts David Dayen, The Intercept
2016
The Story of the Great Brooklyn Voter Purge Keeps Getting Weirder Mother Jones
Routine Voter Purge Is Cited in Brooklyn Election Trouble NYT. “On Thursday, the Board of Elections announced that it had suspended a longtime employee, Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the chief clerk at the Brooklyn office and a Republican appointee. Ms. Haslett-Rudiano’s Democratic counterpart, Betty Ann Canizio, who would, by the rules, be required to sign off on any voter removals, remained in her post.” Odd.
Despite questions about Brooklyn voter purge, it doesn’t seem to have hurt turnout WaPo
Clinton doubling down on transcripts The Hill. Of course, if the transcripts were exculpatory, she’d already have released them, with a million-dollar budget media offensive.
Firms that paid for Clinton speeches have US gov’t interests AP. Film at 11.
The desperate scramble for Bernie’s secret weapon Politico. Not his message, silly. His list. So that’s “desperate and unseemly,” Politico. Fixed it for ya.
Why Elizabeth Warren Would Have More Clout As Hillary Clinton’s VP HuffPo. A trial balloon made of lead?
Sanders says Clinton’s platform could determine how much he would campaign for her WaPo
These are the 5 demands Sanders can get from Clinton at the convention Business Insider. Another trial balloon, and a distinctly flabby one. See here for some real demands.
For Occupy Wall Street Alums, Sanders Just a Means to Their Own Ends Bloomberg
Hillary & Women NYRB. Context of the “stayed home and baked cookies” line. Of course, there’s no need to bake cookies personally when so many are so willing to provide a whole jar…
Trump’s new image-maker honed his ‘dark’ arts in Ukraine FT
While Trump Tries to Mainstream His Message, His Supporters Are Sending Death Threats to Delegates New York Magazine
Biden Looks Back, Aspirations Intact NYT. Biden: “I don’t think any Democrat’s ever won saying, ‘We can’t think that big — we ought to really downsize here because it’s not realistic.’ C’mon man, this is the Democratic Party! I’m not part of the party that says, ‘Well, we can’t do it.'”
Sen. Michael Bennet comes out against ColoradoCare Colorado Independent. ColoradoCare is a single payer proposal, “Amendment 69.” Bennet is, of course, a Democrat.
What Happened to Sandra Bland? The Nation
The Women Rebuilding Nepal Refinery29
Class Warfare
A Silicon Valley entrepreneur says basic income would work even if 90% of people smoked weed instead of working Tech Insider (Furzy Mouse).
The Hills Are Dead — Without the Sound of Internet Access Back Channel
At schools with sub-par Internet, kids face a poor connection with modern life WaPo
The Psychopath, the Altruist and the Rest of Us WSJ
The Secret History of Tiger Woods ESPN. Excruciatingly toxic and fragile masculinity. And not just Woods.
Starhawking the Privilege Game The Archdruid Report
Antidote du jour:
And since there can never be too many snow leopards, a bonus video:
A Snow Leopard showing off. pic.twitter.com/emnqGmJjck
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) April 21, 2016
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
210 comments
Comments are closed.
– And since there can never be too many snow leopards
Yes, please.
“there can never be too many snow leopards”
If you could see my living room, you might disagree!!
striking feline! take the one in the video…’why jump down when i can walk on walls’.
i’ve read about their urine used during Russian/Afghan war…german shepherds were used to patrol Russian compounds and were uncontrollable (scared shitless) when they neared snow leopards urine. Afghan & Indian stealth weapon…
Is that
.. snow leopards
or
.. representations of snow leopards?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfrVo3VKzQM
Published on Apr 23, 2016
Rare footage: Three snow leopards wander in snowy SW China mountains. The endangered predators are usually solitary.
I think Sanders is pretty much on top of things. We’ll see what happens if he comes in second. The way I see it is that Hillary has no choice but to become Bernie. She’s one hard headed lady, and I think that she will reject any substantive concessions to Sanders, Then he gives her nominal support during the election. But on 1/21/17, he publicly comes out and says that he is going to start a third party, in the same fashion that the Radicals did in 1856, which resulted in Lincoln becoming president in 1861. His first endeavor will be to define a party platform based on the issues he has espoused during his recent campaign, with one exception, the minimum wage will be increased to $22. by 2022. “22 by 22”.. That simple act will put Hillary on notice that she could very well become a one term president. And beelieve me, we can teach her how to be just like FDR.
But on 1/21/17
Waiting that long would be self/movement-defeating. Only serving the purpose of waiting on/helping Hillacrats. When they must be defeated/ignored/considered part of the problem.
I’m sure Bernie is a nice guy, but the “movement” of which I do not see or experience has to be issue based… Seems to me if a movement relies on a leader then the powers that be will decapitate said leader in any number of ways. It’s who they are and what they do.
Furthermore how can anyone think for a moment that Clinton wouldn’t be a least as ruthless if not more so when responding to a “movement” as the Obama admin (and so many state and local Demos) were to OWS back in the day?
This is a sorry excuse for a human being who cheer-led many a wars… cackled out loud after watching Daffi bludgeoned to death with a stick up his bum in the streets.
Know your enemy. And for pete sakes please know she and her party are the enemy when it comes to so much of the modest to feckless Sanders platform.
You don’t join and cure the mafia. You don’t reform it from within. You damn sure don’t consider it an acceptable lessor evil….. you eliminate it.
Well put.
Hillary will start wars and then demand that Americans support them first, and if not, she will start something worse than the Red Scare. Trial balloons have already been raised about “loyalty.”
All Hillary had to do was run a mildly positive issue based campaign, and there simply would have been no demand for an alternative which largely exists because Hillary ran on a slogan and “experience.” Clinton Inc. is one of the most tone deaf political outfits ever. The GOP at least understands they are unpopular.
Seeing Sanders challenge Hillary despite his lack of media coverage and Institutional support must really annoy Obama.
Re The Slogan:
WTF is “Fighting For You” supposed to import and impart? Anything like the slogan of that wonderful kleptocorporation, Lockheed Martin, whose slogan is or used to be, “We Never Forget Who We Are Working For…”? A hint of the meaning of which might be gleaned from this little awkwardness of a peek into the enormous voluptuous overstuffed belly of the Beast: http://www.symbolarts.com/testimonials/we-never-forget-who-were-working-for/
The original slogans were “ready for Hillary” and “I’m with her.” Creepy, Orwellian language.
“Fighting for you” besides the unfortunate reminder she is a thug on the world stage, a super predator if you will, is the first slogan which isn’t entirely about frau Hillary.
Creepy, but totally appropriate. Hillary’s only chance was/is a cult of personality growing around her. Her proposals are moribund, her record appalling, her background unappealing.
One of my first rhetorical questions when I saw that slogan.
Fight who exactly? The entities giving her money? If not who?
On the transcript thing, why would an intended POTUS candidate EVER give a speech with the assumption the content would not be made public?
Like an intellectual naked selfie…
Has Obama yet thrown support to his former SOS?
I’m not sure Obama cares. The thing about this batch of Democratic politicians(Hillary included) is they seem to care way more about themselves and their own interests than of others(to the point that they’d backstab if it suited their needs.)
I think that’s what makes Sanders feel unique to me. He, at least, seems to care about the constituency he’s supposed to represent and seems to have some sense of fairness.
I did a protest at a Hillary fundraiser at Jay Z’s club for “girls” in technology.
I carried a sign that read: Hillary is a girl that kills woman and children. Although other people had indicating she’s a liar and so on, the clientele turned on me when they came out.
“You’re unpatriotic!” was shouted at me and one guy got real beligerant and threatening.
She seems to be using that to be a “good little MurKKKan” you must be in her corner.
Who needs cops when your “troops” are willing to come to blows for you??
SumiDreamer, if you dont endorse the killing of thousands of brown skinned women and children by drone strike, you are unpatriotic and not a REAL American! Leave the country at once!
/sarcasm
From what I am reading here, apparently no other country wants US citizens unless their name is Marc Rich or something similar…
So good luck to all of us who weren’t born with a dual citizenship passport in our mouths…
Good for you!
“You’re unpatriotic!” WTF?
Yep, he’ll be too late. I kept noticing he was running but not building …Finally, I am glad to see his policy allies (Bernie for Pres, 350.org etc) are meeting/having a conference. Ideally, they would meet as soon as the last vote is over. The fragmented work actually needed an org/person to get focus w/some expertise so I am really glad to see this. Once the groups do some preliminary organization, it could directly feed off the D nomination so individuals could add an extra day, find a hall, vote on a name and a policy platform, and head on out the door for the general.
As an outsider looking in, but at least one with first hand experience of how the UK’s NuLabour Party tried to neuter Jeremy Corbyn (I was one of those purged after voting), I think people in the USA are deluding themselves if they believe Bernie Sanders and his followers can influence a Klinton Presidency.
First and foremost a leopard does not change its spots and despite all the supposed left of centre commitments Klinton has espoused in these Primaries, experience dictates all will be thrown under the proverbial bus come the actual Presidential election, never mind should Klinton actual gain her goal, namely sitting in the Whitehouse.
The fact remains Klinton is both power hungry and lusts after COIN, which means, as with Obama, her administration will be one of a neoliberal bent staffed by some of the worst warmongering neocons and mad neoliberals one could imagine – Krugman comes to mind here.
In the UK we have this saying, which is “I’d not trust that person as far as I could throw them”. Clinton’s actual track record for corruption, corporate whoremongering and warmongering is as impressive as they come, as is her and her families greed. As such, Bernie and his legion of supporters should not tarnish themselves in the future crimes of Klinton, nevermind cooperate in said crimes, which is what they’ll be doing if they think either the DNC or Ms. Klinton are capable of change. Indeed, as with many other real left-wingers, in my humble opinion it would be better to have Trump in the Whitehouse than Klinton, and if push comes to crunch, and if I could actually vote, I’d vote Trump if it mean’t denying Klinton her prize – this despite the fact Jill Stein is a worthy vote, but stopping Klinton should take priority over any and all other considerations if only for the sake of our offspring and future direction of the USA.
Hillary and Bill are surrounded by sycophants who love them. They are astonished they aren’t beloved. It’s why they have to reinvent Hillary with stories about the real Hillary every few weeks. Bills relative popularity is largely linked to the prospect of Bush and Gore.
Poll: Should Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches be released?
Thank you for voting!
Yes 96.65% (6,085 votes)
No 3.35% (211 votes)
Total Votes: 6,296
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2016/04/poll_should_hillary_clintons_wall_street_speeches.html
Love the lack of agency in the question. I gather the passive voice will be quite the rage in the Clinton II Administration.
“Mistakes were made.
Safeguards are being put in place.
Message: there is caring.”
“He died”.
“Mistakes will be made…”
“My bad.” I don’t understand saying “Oops”, but then doing nothing about it is OK.
“I will show everyone my apples when they show me their oranges!” — HRC
+100
Hillary and Bill are surrounded by sycophants who love them.
the satire is delicious
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/veep/s04/
despite the title this video is not CT tinfoil hat stuff, if you give it a listen. it’s MIC run amok on Planet Earth.
http://www.anonews.co/the-united-nations-says-chemtrails-is-real/
When are Sanders’ aides, at least, going to start talking about the widespread election theft and voter registration shenanigans. Why does no one in campaigns ever get irate about this?
http://ktar.com/story/1029529/allegations-of-voter-fraud-follow-hillary-clinton-campaign-across-nation/
To complain a lot right now would not do any good and would only make them look like sore losers. But legal processes are proceeding and they take time. We assume Weaver and/or some of the Bernie Bros will be writing books later. I guess the original lawsuit Team Bernie filed pertaining to the data base breach is still going on—anybody know? What about Arizona? The Democratic Party is a private institution—it’s not part of the gov’t—so if the machine steals the primary outright it’s not the same legal status as stealing the general election.
The DNC suit is still ongoing. It looks like they are using it as a stick to keep them in line, though the audit might bring up some interesting information. Rumour on the internets is questioning how they knew who to purge from the lists….
Thttp://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/bernie-sanders-campaign-still-suing-dnc.html
I believe outside orgs are still working on the Arizona suit as well. They are in a lot of the states, and it doesn’t look like they are going away.
There were at least two breaches of the data firewall, one of which we didn’t find out about until after the fact.
In retrospect, it struck me that I started receiving unsolicited emails from the Clint0n campaign shortly after the first breach. I do not believe this was a coincidence.
I think we know exactly where the information on which voters to purge came from.
As did I…lots.Still.
Other terms for this cyclical 4 year event might be, “A-Schneider-UP” or, “Rigged-Я-US” or, To Hillary The Results or, “Clockwork-USA”
https://jonathanturley.org/2016/04/19/voters-face-broken-machines-and-closed-polling-places-in-new-york/
this is what lets it continue. standing up for the voters will is not being a sore loser
“Forget Bernie or Bust. This is Bernie or Operation Take Down. Party elites, in particular the Democratic National Committee (DNC), have proven themselves so biased against Bernie and so willing to turn a blind eye to voting irregularities that the entire apparatus needs to go.
Even if Bernie ends up asking his supporters to vote for Clinton in the general election, many still won’t. Personally, I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself came down from heaven — wielding lightning bolts in both hands and commanding me to join Team Clinton. It.Ain’t.Gonna.Happen.”
https://medium.com/@yvonneclaes/christ-himself-couldn-t-persuade-sanders-enthusiasts-to-support-party-that-sanctions-participates-53f4c6ba6809#.3ura6tb1v
Hillary Clinton could kill Henry Kissinger on national television with her bare hands while begging forgiveness from a hologram of FDR for destroying the party, and I still wouldn’t vote for her
thumbs up!
By all means let her try…
but one flaw in the plan may be that it assumes Kissinger to be something killable, as distinct from the Cenobite indicated by clinical data.
Make that two!
I don’t know. I might reconsider, if that happened.
Jane Sanders addressed this issue in a town hall in Alaska. One of the questioners asked her if the campaign was going to do anything about what appeared to be rampant election fraud in Arizona. She explained that Bernie’s primary focus was on the campaign itself, which was requiring all their time and energy. Later, however, I noticed that the Sanders campaign had joined a lawsuit regarding Arizona voter issues.
Election Justice, which was formed following the Arizona fiasco, is an independent group trying to pursue the legal issues–New York, in particular, right now. I understand they could use contributions.
Yes, I donated to them yesterday.
they need support–they were removed from FraudBook. It’s not clear whether it was persistent flagging that triggered automated removal, or FB intention.
http://heavy.com/news/2016/04/why-was-election-justice-usa-removed-from-facebook-censored-back-who-new-york-lawsuit-voter-fraud-purged/
Here’s the link for anyone interested. They’re almost 1/5 funded.
https://www.gofundme.com/electionjusticeny
Thanks!
(O painful irony that Sanders and Election Justice get my tax return dollars…)
I just voted by mail for Bernie on June 7th. Can’t wait for November — when I get to choose between gonorrhea and syphilis.
It’s “super gonorrhea” now
The only thing “super” about her is supercilious.
I mean, really. as in incurable
Cyanide or arsenic. Voters’ choice – either Trump or Clinton.
Forget the platform, if the Dems want even limited access to Sanders list he gets to pick key Cabinet posts. Oh the platform too, but similar to the deal with the States, Sanders should take the Hillary Victory Fund share of the assets of the Presidency.
I don’t think he should give it up for anything. …. Use it to fundraise for specific candidates. But give it up to the corrupt politicians his donors are fighting? No. He really shouldn’t do that.
Totally agree.
Oh I don’t disagree. But the idea that all these Democrats who have worked so hard to defeat him are looking to get it makes me want to play with their heads. They would no more allow him to name the key players at Treasury and Justice than they would actually kill TPP outright. But somehow they think he will let them have it. I just want Sanders to play with the jerks and make them twist themselves into knots before walking away with it.
THAT sounds good!!!
I think it would be more helpful for him to turn it over to the new Independent Party that is being formed on his behalf, or the Greens. If he was serious about building a movement, veal penning it within the Democratic Party would be the last thing he should consider.
I certainly would not appreciate having my name turned over to those rapacious criminals at the DNC. I suspect many other Bernie supporters would react just as strongly to requests for donations from that group as I would. Many Democrats who are on DNC lists from previous campaigns have already been returning dunning notices with very blunt instructions as to what the DNC can do with said notices
Many people are sending in monopoly money in the prepaid DNC envelopes.
You need to put something heavier in those envelopes – the recipients are billed by weight, you know.
Should Sanders lose, his advisor ‘Alfred’ should be instructed to enter a code into the master cpu that destroys the the cpu, list and all.
I agree with KatieBird. Especially since a lot of the (volunteer) phonebanking is devoted to cleaning those lists.
If you donated through ActBlue, rest assured they’ve already got your information.
I am bearish on this prospect.
In order to win in negotiations, you have to hold something your counterparty wants. In this case, as the DNC has shown over and over again, they do not see any need to get votes from us DFHs. (Furthermore, as has been noted here extensively, the Democratic Party is not focused on getting votes but rather on suppressing votes and slurping up money.) You can certainly argue that HRC will need votes from Sandernistas this fall and she probably does, but making that argument to Team Blue operatives will fall on deaf ears– getting more votes is just not part of their operating model and threatening not to vote for their candidate will only fall on deaf ears. For the DNC the whole primary business and the revolt from the left is something to be overcome: Just get Clinton through the primaries so she can bolt to the right.
The parallel with HRC vs Obama in 2008 does not hold up, because HRC had something the DNC valued: not voters, bur rather donors. And she was able to use this to negotiate with the Obama faction.
To put this in other terms, I very much agree with Lambert’s hostile takeover metaphor. The primary goal was to remove the old management and keep the salvageable assets. If Sanders does not win California, that takeover bid will be dead. And after your hostile takeover fails you don’t get a say in governing the company as reward for your efforts. But there is also an ancillary (or is it main?) goal: movement building. The Sanders campaign has been a yuge part of a slowly building series of actions that start and stop: The Battle in Seattle, Occupy, BLM, the Wisconsin Uprising… Regardless of whether this Takeover Bid succeeds or fails, this is the “arc of history” that must be followed.
You have given a very cogent description of the power relationship and the historical moment for the Sanders’ campaign, the Democratic Party (and Republican Party), and the coalescing streams of emergent political movement/activism (a la the Tea Party).
“…a yuge part of a slowly building series of actions that start and stop…”
I don’t think the Democrats, as a party, care much about that except in the negative sense that hippie punching (in Susie Madrak’s felicitous phrase) is always a good thing. Denying them power by decapitating their leadership is the extent of their strategic vision. Everything else they’ll react to in office.
The oligarchs to whom they are responsible may have other ideas, of course, as may other factions in the state.
The Democratic Party is a fundraising machine which exists to provide a source of income for professional “political consultants”. It does not seek to implement policies, or even to win elections, unless that contributes in some way to fundraising.
Brilliant!
The DLC crowd has never negotiated honestly with anyone on the left. Does anyone seriously think they’re going to start now? Sanders will make a deal, and that’s the last anyone will hear from him.
And to put a finer point on it, let’s say HRC agrees to every single demand Sanders made in his Young Turks interview. Would you really trust her not to weasle out of those commitments at the first opportunity?
You can almost hear the apologists now: “Hillary wanted to make tuition universally free, but Republicans!” “Hillary wanted to make minimum wage $15 but we’re at war with Burundi!” “Hillary wanted to veto the TPP but Papua New Guinea just devalued the Kina”…
Thanks for the antidote…and the addition. There truly cannot be too many snow leopards.
Bennet is, of course, a Democrat.
Some of us are old enough to remember the 2010 Democratic primary
in which Bennet defeated progressive Andrew Romanoff:
A party rots from the head down.
From the Colorado Independent article linked above:
“Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet opposes a universal healthcare ballot measure Colorado voters will consider in November.”
Every time I read a “news” article in which a politician of either party “opposes” “universal healthcare,” I wait, in vain so far, for the follow-up question, “If ‘healthcare’ should not be ‘universal,’ who should be left out and why?”
As The Archdruid pointed out in his post last week, ‘Every society has a set of acceptable narratives that frame public discourse on any controversial subject,…’; the question of how our current ‘health-care’ (hah!) system is rationed does not have a place within that system.
But, as to Colorado’s Democratic Senator Michael Bennet’s stand against Colorado Care, as well as his pro-fracking, pro-pipeline and pro-TPP, etc., positions, I have been chuckling over a FB post, sponsored, I think, by The League of Conservation Voters. It has been popping up regularly in my news feed over the past few weeks. It attempts to portray Bennet as an environmental champion … but the comments, growing at a regular pace, are brutal. His constituents point out his consistent anti-environmental positions and votes. Colorado Care, a state single-payer system modeled on successful systems in Canada, NZ, Australia, and the EU, should provide universal health care coverage, with substantially lower administrative costs. And, all Colorado health care providers will be ‘in network.’ The fact that Bennet is opposing it speaks volumes about his fealty to his corporate sponsors.
Thank you for posting this review of Bennett’s ascendance to the Senate, Allan.
We had moved to Denver in the summer 0f 2007 and I became active in the local Democratic Party activity around the 2008 election. I believe that at that point Romanoff was just terming out of the Colorado Legislature, where he had been, according to everyone I talked to, a spectacularly effective legislator. Money was on him to be nominated to fill Salazar’s vacant Senate seat. There was much wailing when Bennet was appointed, a guy with no legislative experience and a rather dicey reputation for having gotten the Denver School District into a financial deal that made a great deal of money for the financiers. Not so much for the schools.
But, somehow, and I was dazzled too, Bennet came off looking like a gem and won the election. In the years following, I felt that we were the confused yokels crowded around the city slicker playing a shell game. But, except for the Dem party stalwarts whose perks and life are entwined with the current Party structure, or those Dems who just don’t pay attention, the blinders are off.
Bennet was head of the Senate Democrats’ 2014 election efforts, an election the Democrats threw. Since the goal was failure, Bennet is a valued member of the team.
Hiding $hillary’s 18 1/2 wall street minutes seems to be blowing back on her…it appears her refusal to “release” the transcripts is not so much certain folks in the media have not read them but that she is claiming copyrights and has somehow created a credible threat to the lawyer types from the media…my 2¢ in this 3 penny opera….
Re: NYRB
Pretty impressive. This part struck out the most at me:
That said, being around 60% of the way through, this is a pretty good read.
Just don’t call the “whores.”
Right. Calling them “whores” is an insult to all sex workers, just as referring to the official consort of “The Big Dog” by the appropriate five-letter word is an insult to the entire canine species (and as referring to the hostis genera humanae of Daesh by the US media’s version of an acronym is blasphemy against the Great Goddess).
+1 for tone
This seems highly topical. Not sure how reliable it is. Makes a lot of sense though:
“FBI May Leak Clinton Email Probe If DOJ Blocking Continues”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-23/fbi-may-leak-clinton-email-probe-if-doj-blocking-continues-grassley-warns
“On Friday, US Senator Chuck Grassley who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and who has pushed for additional scrutiny of Clinton’s email use during her tenure as secretary of state, dropped a dramatic “hint” during a breakfast meeting with the Des Moines A.M. Rotary club when he suggested that the FBI “might leak”, hypothetically-speaking of course, reports of its investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.”
“In practically laying out the next steps in Hillarygate, Grassley said “an anonymous and unauthorized release of FBI investigative materials could result if officials at the agency believed prosecution of Clinton was stymied for political reasons” according to the Des Moines register.”
“Is there going to be political interference? If there’s enough evidence to prosecute, will there be political interference?” Grassley wondered aloud on Friday. “And if there’s political interference, then I assume that somebody in the FBI is going to leak these reports and it’s either going to have an effect politically or it’s going to lead to prosecution if there’s enough evidence.”
Love how they end it:
“although we can’t help but wonder that just like the Panama Papers dump, the media will be prepared and will promptly redirect the public’s attention to Vladimir Putin once again as the guilty party behind it all.”
If they want to leak any damaging information, their timing can be itself political.
The people leaking it can favor the Republican nominee by doing it after the D convention, if Hillary is the Democratic candidate.
By leaking such damaging info beforehand, it will end Clinton’s campaign, at the minimum, and not necessarily benefiting the R party.
That is to say, we could still be manipulated.
Interview of a study showing the power behind how Google has the power to impact a large number of votes.
https://youtu.be/BmpFdVZIej0
I think Lambert posted this same link earlier this month or last month on Watercooler, but the site search is down for me right now.
http://www.wired.com/2016/03/bloomberg-clinton-owns-silicon-valley-vote/
Why Vancouver real estate prices are so crazy From foreign buyers, to unscrupulous agents, here are the factors that help push prices up
Some detractors of this data argue that rich foreigners only invest in luxury properties—purchases that don’t impact neighbourhoods (and prices) where regular, middle-class Vancouverites choose to buy homes. But that’s just not true.
Ley describes the impact as a “trickle-down effect,” which occurs when rich immigrants and investors push up housing prices across the entire lower mainland real estate market. It’s a phenomenon that Andy Yan, an urban planning researcher and adjunct professor at University of British Columbia (UBC), has been documenting for years. He turned his data and research into maps that document the growth of home prices in metro Vancouver. In the first map (below) there are virtually no properties east of Main Street listed for over $1 million.
(Andy Yan, 2014 / BTA Works)
(Andy Yan, 2014 / BTA Works)
The second map (below) shows 2015 home prices in metro Vancouver. Notice how many of the homes east of Main Street are now priced at $1 million or more.
http://www.moneysense.ca/spend/real-estate/8-factors-that-really-mess-up-vancouvers-real-estate-prices/
globalization?
This link is to 28 pages(dot)org.
It has a more user-friendly explanation of the issues surrounding the government’s reluctance to divulge what it knows about Saudi involvement in planning and financing the 9/11 attacks.
The PDF linked to this morning provides the raw information, the first link here in my comment explains what the PDF represents, and how it came to exist.
Please read both.
Thanks for that link. The invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were justified by the Bush administration and the media because of the 9/11 attacks. Most Americans believed that those actions were necessary to achieve justice.
It is clear, now, that the Bush administration had ample knowledge of what really happened that day and suppressed it in order to invade and instigate regime change – policy decisions that led to the deaths and immiseration of untold numbers of people and the destruction of countries. The price tag is of course in the trillions.
It is also clear that Obama has been covering for those involved both in Washington and Saudi Arabia.
If this were a different kind of country, the full public airing of the way the Bush administration suppressed this information would result in prosecutions and long prison terms.
Just to be clear. There were two investigations that often get confused with each other.
The Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001
And
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
The key investigation was the Joint Inquiry because it was under congress but it also was manipulated and could ignore, bury, or distract anyone from actually finding anything out. For instance, a small joint intelligence group who tracked Al Qaeda were never invited or allowed to testify to the Joint Inquiry intelligence committees. Makes you wonder why.
The second, the 9/11 Commission, was just a big show and actually distracted everyone from the Joint Inquiry so that no one would notice the failings of the first.
There has previously been some talk about water issues in the links. Reddit has a discussion where Tathagata Satpathy’s office is asking for feedback on India’s disasterous water situation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4fxos7/the_office_of_utathagatasatpathy_is_filing_a_193/
RE: Hillary & Women NYRB.
If the “gender equality” crowd was genuinely committed to getting a woman elected president, they should have taken a lesson from the history of the Civil Rights Movement and backed a less flawed candidate.
Rosa Parks was not the first black female to refuse to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. It was Claudette Colvin, an unmarried, pregnant 15-year-old. The NAACP decided against using her case to challenge segregation laws due to her age and unwed pregnancy, which could have brought unwanted negative attention.
Historic “firsts” must be flawless, as obama was perceived to be, with nothing but his vote against the Iraq war to point to. With hillary, gender-equality activists have stupidly put themselves into the position of defending the indefensible, and then falling back on flimsy, dis-empowering charges of “sexism” when her positions are legitimately challenged.
I’d guess that hillary, whose considerable political power comes not from her own accomplishments but her “marriage” to despicable bill, bullied them into this. Her overwhelming sense of her own greatness defeated sound judgement and opened up this giant, gender-focused sinkhole that is her candidacy. Not to mention her enthusiastic neoliberalism which was becoming so unpalatable that it needed a female face to soften the blow.
I have no doubt that the majority of voters in this country would elect a woman president–the right woman. This presidential “glass ceiling” BS is just self-serving, rhetorical crap intended to distract from the serious political miscalculation of backing a seriously flawed candidate.
‘Her overwhelming sense of her own greatness defeated sound judgement and opened up this giant, gender-focused sinkhole that is her candidacy.’
Downright poetic! Though the tragedy of her election would soon turn to bathos.
excellent comment, KE:
“Her overwhelming sense of her own greatness defeated sound judgement and opened up this giant, gender-focused sinkhole that is her candidacy. Not to mention her enthusiastic neoliberalism which was becoming so unpalatable that it needed a female face to soften the blow.”
and Heller’s wrap-up is brilliant:
“Horrid though it is that men have criticized Clinton’s figure and voice and called her “Hellary” and declared themselves repulsed at the idea of her going to the toilet—none of these things are very good or grown-up motives for electing her to the highest office in the land. It would be a fine thing to have a woman in the White House. But, really—let’s not put her there because someone once said she had “cankles.”
All you have to do right now is look at the Clinton foundation for some insight into her concern:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Clinton-Foundation-Pay-by-Nikki-Lambert-Clinton-Foundation_Equality-Of-Opportunity_Gender-Equality_Income-Inequality-160422-320.html
“…neoliberalism… needed a female face to soften the blow.”
This is some fantastic analysis that I have not encountered anywhere else. How else better to continue the New Democrat criminal operation in a increasingly intolerant environment? Why, slap the sexist image of a woman on the box. They are soft, delicate, and they love you.
Democrats; exploiting gender in 2016 the same way they used race in 2008.
Thanks too for the Claudette story. Definitely going to look into that.
“They are soft, delicate, and they love you.”
But sometimes they are “Mommie Dearest,” wielding a wire coat hanger.
“For your own good.”
Brava!
Fresh psy-ops from the Saddam’s WMDs paper today, as they speculate on $hillary’s running mate. No interest in who the other guy’s veep might be — in MSM Land, he’s dead meat on a stick.
This infomercial ‘news’ coverage flows from the NYT’s Jan 31st endorsement of $Hillary. With the MSM slowly receding into insolvency, journo-hos can be bought for a pack of cigarettes or a couple of slices of pizza. It’s hilarious to watch their frayed cuffs blur as they hungrily wolf it down.
Imagine Krugthulhu armored in a $hillary sandwich board, obliged to pace the sidewalk in front of the Port Authority bus station with a red rubber ball affixed to his nose.. If that’s the price of becoming Treas Sec, he’ll do it with a twisted smile.
The scent in the air is that Trump is either willfully or under duress adopting to his place in the big scheme of things and learning to read from a teleprompter. My guess is that his ardent acolytes would not be happy if they found out who was writing the speeches (every single time Trump has gone from impromptu to teleprompter his message has been “Republicanized” and neutered). I expect the media hostility to die down (I would argue it already is) as he is “brought into the fold” and it is made plain to him that unless he wants to pay the 400 million plus from convention to election out of his own pocket he better get with the program. Once Trump settles in a string of stories about him “getting serious” and “learning on the go” and “reaching out” to men with “experience” will flood the media.
Do others see this as well?
Remember “Dave” the movie? Not quite the same, but it reminded me…
Of course, Dave in the movie is on the opposite polar end from Trump.
The thing is, it might work.
I have seen it done successfully too many times…the importance of advertising. It can make (and has made) a good orator into a Messiah.
I’ve been expecting something of the sort. I don’t think he will be allowed to take Hillary to the mat the way he did Bush or the others and I’m not sure he really wants to anyway. A lot of that noise was clearly to stay on script – but the script is changing as the general gets closer.
And recently he has been talking about this idea of, “Just wait, I’ll be more normal than normal” or what ever gibberish it is.
I don’t hear much Trump, nor Hillary unless she’s in a debate with Sanders, but while he may keep some of the bombast for verisimilitude, I think he is likely to tone way down.
The general is going to have a very distinct theatrical quality to it. Krugthulhu armored in a $hillary sandwich board… with a rubber nose will be PERFECT!
With the Times doing its bit to normalize him by comparing Trump to cranky but loveable Ed Koch…
(Incidentally, one of the very few characteristics that distinguish Republican elites from Democrat ones is animal abuse. I’ve never heard any stories like that about Trump. Perhaps he won’t fit it, since he doesn’t really conform to Republican cultural norms?)
The AP article provides a good summary of Hillary’s money making speeches two years before declaring. Add to that the NYT’s profile of how Hillary became a hawk and you have a nice primer to provide those who are thinking of supporting Hillary.
The inescapable conclusion–if you support Hillary you must believe money personally received by a politician from special interests creates no undue influence by those same special interests and the neocons foreign policy is the way forward.
Hillary needs Bernie to stay in the race so people stay distracted about her corruption–turning public office into private gain–and her neocon credentials.
The other inescapable conclusion – given practically everyone is funded by one special interest or another – almost all politicians are compromised (a little money received, a little tainted; much money accepted, much tainted – and as being little tainted is still tainted, let those without the sin of being tainted at all step forward and cast the first stone).
Just 50 righteous elected officials…
Campaign insights from Jimmy Buffett:
Somehow the “Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation” just doesn’t convey the same feeling. Nor does it cater to America’s middle class. But we can fix that by electing HRC to rule us all: welcome to Hillaritaville.
I have a lot of sympathy for the basic income article for the following reasons:
1. Most jobs in America today are bullshit jobs, and Americans, as well as the planet, would be better off if those jobs weren’t being done at all. Paying people not to work is a good solution to this problem.
2. Our society does not value jobs that are genuinely good for people or the environment. Therefore any guaranteed employment scheme will certainly shuttle people into useless bullshit jobs. Prisons and the military are already operating pervasive guaranteed jobs programs. Any more widespread program will be based on those models.
3. The puritan idea that work is good because work is good is dumb. In fact, doing nothing at all is far better than doing work for the sake of work. For example what if you employ someone to spend all day digging holes and filling them back up again. Seems harmless right? No, its actually exretmely harmful. How many tree roots, gopher tortoise burrows, and fungi colonies (to give a few examples) will be destroyed for the sake of this bullshiy job? And actually most jobs have these sorts of hidden impacts. Cumulatively they are disastrous.
4. Excess work fosters excess consumption. Self explanatory. Most of the consumer products and services that people buy in america are useless bullshit that people would be better off without anyway. Paying people not to work, and thus radically shrinking this bullshit economy would go a long ways towards ensuring the survival of the biosphere.
Well those are a few reasons off the top of my head. Let’s have a basic income already!
I have a really hard time agreeing with you. I look at the US and it has so many infrastructure needs: no high speed rail system, an entire energy system that needs to be converted to renewables, free wifi for all, highways in miserable states of repair… and it just boggles my mind that anyone can say there’s not millions of good jobs (not jawbs) that need to be done and which would improve the quality of life of those performing them. Not producing tchotchkes like you say, but rather doing real work that will help society. This will of course take political will to change the toxic work mentalities you mention, but it can be done and is better than throwing up our hands in dejection.
On top of this, if you want to argue for an income guarantee instead of a jobs guarantee you need to refute the disastrous Speenhamland experience and examples of successful job guarantee programmes like the Jefes y Jefas plan in post-crisis Argentina.
Off the top of my head:
Bike paths/roadways
Bike ‘garages’
Public recreation and excercise facilities
Parks
Libraries
Bus shelters at bus stops
Sidewalk repair
Tree planting
Grey water irrigation
Public restrooms
Housing for the homeless – even simple dormitories would be better than a pad on the floor
If you want to create jobs, there’s no shortage of projects.
Instead of trickling down, we can trickle up with Basic Income.
Let the people have enough money, and if democracy is to prove it can work, then, we, the people, surfeit with sufficiency, will vote to fund those projects.
I agree! A (generous) basic income is the opposite of trickle down, the demonstrably unproven economic assumption that our society has been burdened with since Reagan/Thatcher.
Excellent: let the people, not business moguls and warmongers decide what our economy will provide.
And where exactly do you propose the homeless pickup checks for their basic income?
Perhaps with a basic income they may not be homeless? Oh, I do understand there would need to be housing controls in many cities to help that happen, but it is one thought about it.
And I suggest we couple the suggestion with a requirement to reestablish postal banking. Which would could provide banking services for those who don’t want to waste a good portion of their basic income on the larger bank fees and all that the ‘homeless’ might need is a postal box and a postal bank account.
And yes I am thinking this would be a good way to stop the rentier crowd from trying to cash in on this. Think of Chase and the unemployment and welfare debit cards where the fees were a huge drain on the people who needed the help.
Basic income only works AFTER you stabilize a homeless persons life and get people help with basic health care, education, skills, addiction, mental health, trauma, and a whole host of problems that prevented them from having housing to begin with.
No, they can’t. JG provides more control over the workplace by workers. Basic income does not.
I mean, there’s a reason that Silicon Valley promotes one over the other; they’re selling the circuses, but they want the government to provide the bread.
We don’t have to wait for a Jobs Guarantee to create the kind of jobs that critics of a basic income trot out. We can (and should) fund infrastructure needs now. We can (and should) have more teachers, nurses, personal assistance aides, and so on. Yes, there are plenty of jobs that should be created. Creating them involves both logistical and political problems that a basic income does not have. They simply serve as a way to dismiss a basic income without really evaluating it.
I believe we can trust the people to choose wisely.
If not, we have to re-think our fundamental assumptions.
“I’m thinking… I’m thinking…”
That applies to JG, too. It’s a wash.
In the Shadow of Speenhamland: Social Policy and the Old Poor Law
http://bev.berkeley.edu/ipe/readings/Fred%20Block%20Shadow%20of%20Speenhamland.pdf
“In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act that ended the entitlement of poor families to government assistance. The debate leading up to that transformation in welfare policy occurred in the shadow of Speenhamland—an episode in English Poor Law history. This article revisits the Speenhamland episode to unravel its tangled history. Drawing on
four decades of recent scholarship, the authors show that Speenhamland policies could not have had the consequences that have been attributed to them. The article ends with an alternative narrative that seeks to explain how the Speenhamland story became so deeply entrenched.”
“The experience of the Speenhamland period is that poor relief did not hurt the poor; it helped to protect them from structural changes in the economy that had made it far more difficult for people to earn a living. Second, the doubts that have hung over guaranteed income proposals since Speenhamland lack historical foundation. While it is theoretically possible that afloor under incomes would be transformed into a ceiling, this certainly did not happen during the Speenhamland period, and there is little evidence that it has ever happened.”
Added to Sunday’s reading, thanks for the link!
Thanks for that link!
One of the complaints about the Speenhamland system was that some workers found it more lucrative to not work and receive the benefit than to work and not receive it. But that just shows how dreadful the wage and work situations were. To make the argument that workers should return to a system where they make less money and do more work (and for their own good, no less!) is something that only a rich man could do.
I don’t see why we can’t have both. I’m strongly in favor of a job guarantee, but that doesn’t address the problems of, say, single mothers who should be able to stay home with their kids, at least until they’re school age. And what about people with disabilities, injuries and the like? I agree we’ve got plenty to do (and you didn’t even mention taking care of old folks in their homes, so they don’t have to spend their last days in
prisona nursing home), but I don’t think it will provide an adequate safety net for everyone.I dislike the “prove you’re poor” model of social service delivery. Not only is it degrading to the beneficiaries, it creates a perverse incentive for people to not improve their situation, since doing so loses them benefits. Also, it’s expensive to administer and creates opportunities for power over beneficiaries by those who control access to benefits.
I say we give everybody a basic income, then tax it back from people that we think are “too rich” to deserve it, if we decide we want to do that. We can ditch a lot of the “prove you’re poor” programs too, since the BI will make us for SNAP, for instance. But make sure that everybody can at least provide the basics for themselves.
Another way to achieve that desired outcome would be government stocked “free stores” where people can just come and get generic commodity essentials (produced by people in the JG program?). Haven’t really thought that one through, but it might be another alternative for meeting the basic goal.
+1 on “mothers who should be able to stay home with their kids”. Makes 0 sense for a full-time parent to receive infinitesimally lower pay than jobs that are much less strenuous.
Link to the Houswives’ Union:
http://www.sacra.org.ar/
Not for nothing, but can we say family member who stays home as a caregiver regardless of gender or age of the family member needing care.. Not just single mothers, but single fathers or even people in a couple might have reasons to stay home with a child. And there are a whole lot of the adult children taking care of aging parents. And even sadder is the spouse who must care for an ailing or disabled spouse. For all that this country supposedly believes in the family and children, it is beyond annoying how hard so many make it to actually care for family members who need more than a place to sleep and food on a regular basis.
Sorry. Should have been “parents.”
Agree that it should be both jobs and income. But at least as important if not more important still, is some sort of regulatory framework in which it will be difficult or impossible for banks and other financial predators to fleece people legally. Loan Shark interest rates should be illegal again, for instance. This shouldn’t single out the poor, it should be a framework for one and all that covers the poor as well.
Another example, people should have the same bankruptcy rights as they used to. Debtors prisons must go! Cops must cease to seize property in car stops. Judges who prey on poor to be thrown in the slammer with the other crooks.
You’ll need to be careful. Children are susceptible to the whims of adults and not all adults in charge of children have maturity. Giving those adults a blank check without providing some sort of safety net for kids could have consequences for those children.
Childcare is work, right?
Transforming the strip mall and highway strewn deathscape into somewhere even remotely inhabitable and enjoyable (gasp!) to humans would take generations.
Hell, I’d settle for a grocery store and/or cafe that I could walk to…
i’d like to see basic income simply because the reason for work, the need for work, has become far less important. But the system demands we all have money in order to buy the things we need. Trickle down was the answer for decades because it prevented inflation – but we seem to have reached the limits of that idea too. The post above from Verso/leComptoir on the Up All Night protests in France which are a continuation of Occupy account for this frustration. But nobody is telling the simple facts. I sometimes think French analysis is intellectual like the dinosaurs were big. But give them credit because along with their eloquence they actually do know what they want. Even tho the article does not mention it. They want to maintain the labor laws which protect them in France. Hollande et.al. have proposed “Flex-Security” which fell flat on its face because the French do not trust this idea – they’re pretty sure labor will be the ones to pay for corporate flexibility to fire employees as needed. But if the security part contained a deal for basic income, they might be on their way to the negotiating table.
What a disappointment Holland is, though at least an eye opener for many French who’ve taken loyalty to the FR Socialist party even farther into absurdity than we’ve taken it with the Democratic party.
Even Hillary Clinton, though the idea is odious, has more dignity than that toad even when she looks down the barrel of her nose at the wee supporters (under $100,000) with that condescending, frozen, barely concealed, what I put up with smile.
“The puritan idea that work is good because work is good is dumb.”
Especially because it creates an opportunity for demagogues to use the argument that because some people make less money, they must not work as hard (false; in fact, the opposite is generally true if you think in terms of the work:compensation ratio), and since work is good, those people must be less moral, less worthy, and (dog whistle) less human, thus being undeserving of a dignified existence or of having their rights upheld.
You can always design robots to work harder than humans.
True or false?
It’s not just that demagogues use the argument “work is good” to dehumanize the low paid. The argument justifies money as legitimate hierarchy. It’s not an accident that working long hours began to be accepted by the Puritans (as noted by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) and became more and more fetishized to offset the growth of democracy. All rights are invested in property — we organize society so that legal rights are available to you to the extent that you have money. So we proclaim in the English-speaking world, “All men are created equal” but we accept oligarchy because we accept “work is good” as an underlying principle of social control.
What is…work?
We should change work to wak. Then people won’t know if we are talking about a Wok or a walk or work. So officials can give out Woks, build paths for walks, and provide something to do optionally which is meaningful to the participants and which for lack of a better term could be called work
Food, health and, for those inclined, purpose.
I can’t let you comments go by without responding. In general your comment is filled with vast, glittering generalities that do not stand up well to closer examination.
I’ll just respond by comment number
1. You will want to be more specific. Just stating jobs are bullshit is not very helpful. There are many jobs that are quite beneficial to many people and we really need to keep those jobs intact. I can think of many examples: jobs in the medical field, first-responders, emergency medical, highway maintenance, pharmacy, teachers, bus drivers, college professors, people who administer government benefits, counselors, psychologists, and social workers. The list is almost endless. So your statement will really have to be clarified and enumerated as to what you mean by ‘bullshit’ jobs.
2. Your statement about the environment and jobs is germane. However, that situation can be changed. It is not true necessarily that a jobs program would have to shuttle people into useless jobs. Any and more of the jobs such as I’ve listed above are readily available for people to work and those jobs are not useless. And besides you have not defined very carefully what you mean exactly by useless; are you the one who gets to define what is meant by useless? Also we are not necessarily permanently stuck in our current economy where so much or our economic activity seems to harm the environment. Bernie Sanders outlined a program of change. We can certainly change the way we do business. Resigning ourselves to the fatalistic view that all is bad is not going to help anybody.
3. I would not be so quick to dismiss the idea that work is good. I’ll leave it to you to find the sources but I would encourage you to look at psychological studies that show that work is good for people. Your straw manning example of someone digging a hole and then just filling it in won’t serve for serious argument. As discussed in my response above, there is a way to change the way we do business in this country.
I’m not sure it was obvious but this was in response to JGordon’s comment.
Studies that work is good for people? Performed almost exclusively by and on behalf of the salary class and the inheritance class who want cheap stuff? I laugh in the faces of those studies and their authors, cruelly, derisively and contemptuously, and I won’t stop until they cry.
Enough “doing business”. “Business” is a disgusting way to run a society. That neoliberal garbage needs hauled to the street. The sooner we can erase English society and its arrogant, overweening hierarchical brutality from the world, the better off we all will be — animals, vegetables and minerals alike.
I vehemently disagree.
Work is good for people. It gives them something to do and a social group. History and literature are full of accounts of rich people who were unable to find a focus for their lives. They become addicts, depressives, or both.
I think you are confusing socially and environmentally useful activities with activities that bring in a paycheck. Rich people–that is rich people you’re talking about–who become depressed and suicidal from lack of work are people who have made the fundamental error of replacing all social relationships with commercial relationships. It’s no wonder that they want to kill themselves when they stop keeping themselves busy and get minute or two to spend on some introspection.
Luckily poor people do not have the luxury of falling into that trap. Or if they do they’re in for a very precarious and unpleasant (and likely short) life.
Our psychological wellbeing comes from the social bonds we have with other people. Believing instead that wellbeing comes from work and income is a serious error that’ll lead to all sorts of unfortunate outcomes.
No, this sort of thing happens all the time, long before the rise of neoliberalism. This has nothing to do with commerce and everything to do with people needing purpose. Working to help support a household is purpose.
Victor Frankl, concentration camp survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, would regularly start his therapy sessions with new patients by asking, “Why haven’t you killed yourself?” He found only 2 things seemed to keep people alive: belief in their creative work (a very small minority, he meant people who had a creative focus for their life’s work) and personal relationships (and by that he did not mean friends but loved ones).
Rich people who are not lucky enough to have a real talent around which to organize their lives are subject to having people pursue them romantically for their money (or even worse, having parents who were in a mercenary relationship, so bad modeling on that front) and are thus often wary of deep attachments (by observation or by being burned by golddiggers).
Based on the 70 year Harvard Study of Adult Development of which he is the current (and 4th overall) director, Robert Waldinger concludes that relationships are by far the greatest factor in health, happiness, and a long life. Not work or purpose, but relationships. I suspect that for significant numbers of men (the study started 70 years ago, when studying women seemed silly to researchers) strong peer relationships in our society are most likely to be formed on the job, but I’m still hesitant to coerce people into a particular kind of life on the grounds that I know best for them, and I can choose their lifestyle for their own good. I would, however, make wonderful choices for them.
We have a society with significant problems of physical and mental health, drug abuse, and social disfunction. If paid employment was the significant factor in healthy, happy lives, I would expect to see fewer problems than I do see.
There are plenty of poor people in similar situations. I have a friend who is disabled. She has a degenerative mitochondrial disease. She could potentially work part time and have the means to engage socially but if she did she’d lose the disability that it took her two years to get to begin with.
So instead she gets to sit at home and dwell over the fact that her health is failing and likely as a result is probably hurting her health since it’s been proven that stress produces cortisol and cortisol adversely affects health.
Not that I disagree with the premise that a basic income could be a boon. It could augment income provided by business to allow people to have “vacation/sick time.” I just think that some of the problems we’re seeing in society is a breakdown of our sense of community. I personally would like to see the government spend some money to promote community(community gardens, old fashioned town socials, etc, etc.)
She could volunteer. Thousands of causes need people to work. She could phone bank for Bernie Sanders, even. It used to be that the activities that maintained society – events, matchmaking, firefighting – were done without compensation or money involved at all. Now they are frequently appropriated by business for profit or not done at all.
Your friend has opportunities – to work, on socially-useful activities.
Anecdotal data suggests that people forced to work too hard ALSO become addicts and depressives. It’s not a coincidence that it’s the working poor that have seen an increase in suicide rates.
There’s plenty of meaningful labor that does not have to fall within the boundaries of a “job” and I honestly feel that if people weren’t spending so much time laboring and the government spent some money on repromoting the idea of communities that finding social groups might take of itself.
From Archdruid Report: ” Your’re not responsible for the fact that you have whatever level of privilege you do–though you are responsible, of course, for what you choose to do with it.”
If things continue to incrementally deteriorate on an economic, financial, political and cultural level the choices made by the lower ends of the salaried class( much of the NC commetariat) about who they decide to align with politically and the political vision each decides to support will become more and more important.
Does the type of reform politics/vision advocated by Sanders hide any class privilege?
Speaking of class privilege the Times had a story on how cruise lines are now creating gated communities on their cruise ships where the super rich can avoid the peasants. It’ll be just like the Titanic, literally and metaphorically.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/business/economy/velvet-rope-economy.html
Ewwww. These gated communities and privileged areas must be stopped altogether. Soon enough they will be.
“Let Them Eat Cake.”
Sounds like the plot of Snowpiercer.
Which didn’t end well for the people towards the front of the train.
Free college could. Studies have shown that children from low income families tend to be less prepared to handle the pressure of college. My understanding is this can be overcome with help from mentors and counsellors, etc.
Students of the poor, who don’t have the benefit of a parent putting money away on their behalf, would also likely have to work through college while the more affluent would be able to probably use the money their parents saved for college on subsisting.
I have read that, there are financial aid progrmas for low income students currently, and free college helps the 1% more. Have not see that debunked here.
To me, free college is a special form of the general therapy for wealth inequality. The general form is Basic Income, that applies to everyone, even if they are not students.
Another special form is higher min. wage.
Think of the addition in min. wage as supplementary Basic Income to those who quality.
The general form would be for everyone to receive more money, whether they work now or stay home to care for family members.
Beef:
I never understood this argument so you will have to break it down for me. Education is a public good, like a utility. The equivalent to what you’re saying would be that we should charge for roads and sewers, but give the economically disadvantaged “toll grants” and a guaranteed income to cover the tolls. Which to me just seems like more moving parts and more openings for rentiers.
And full disclosure: where I live university is free to everyone, but the 1% usually goes to their crappy private U’s anyway.
I think their argument is that if you’re poor, you can go to college for free right now. That is, you can get help with paying tuition.
Assuming that is true (not a sure thing, given the cutbacks we have seen), then, by making college free for all, it means those from rich families who currently pay will not have to. They (from rich families and are college students) will be the ones benefiting.
If you are not rich, or if you have already graduated or are not planning on going to college, you see no direct benefit.
I don’t know the stats either, but it doesn’t make sense to me that the poor have free access to university, that those who are classified as poor has been increasing enormously, and there are millions of people with tens of thousands in student debt. Those three facts don’t square.
Also I don’t buy the budget cuts excuse, since tuition and administration costs have been skyrocketing in tandem. What I do know, however, is that low-income students are offered government-subsidised loans (as your phrase “you can get help” indicates)– which is obviously no solution (see the recent post on Health Care Loans for why it’s not).
Lastly, if you want rich people to pay their share for the public utility, why not tax them? Do you object to rich people being allowed to drive on the interstate for free just like the poor?
“I think their argument is that if you’re poor, you can go to college for free right now. That is, you can get help with paying tuition.”
By ‘help paying tuition’, you mean they can get a loan which takes a couple decades to pay off. If anything youre getting it the other way around. The help isnt enough to get poor students through college, but its enough to take the bite off the cost for wealthy kids, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, as it stands, most of the help under the current system goes to kids who had great grades during high school, who are more likely to be the children of the elite.
So youre getting it totally confused. The system as it stands is more beneficial to the elite.
As an addendum, I feel like youre almost talking like one of those people who complain about rich people collecting social security, when the reason social security works at all is because its universalizable and available to everyone. To make it have a cut-off point would make it a less popular program and thus easier for the elites to destroy.
Total student loan debt in the U.S. = 1.2 trillion dollars.
Total student loan debt if you are rich = 0 dollars.
Now, divide the top number by the bottom… o darn it.
That’s what I mean by debunking.
Appreciate everyone’s comment.
You can get help with your tuition, that’s not the same thing as free by a long shot. Additionally, they use parents income to determine if you will get aid. The thought process is force us middle age folks to choose between sending our kids to college and socking money away for our retirement. I have little to no doubt that when those funding their kids school now get old, they’ll get told that it’s their problem that they didn’t “save” when they were younger for their retirement.
The poor are always to blame for their predicament and the rich are always deserving of their wealth. At least that is the narrative we’re being sold.
You are not addressing that students from low income families are not prepared to handle college. It’s not just a money issue but cultural, social, emotional, etc. in other words, making college free and/or affordable still requires support in order for the student to succeed at school. Students from higher income families do not face this same hurdle.
As Sanders has pointed out, 50 years ago public colleges were free or very low tuition for city or state residents. In addition, many WWII veterans from modest backgrounds went to college on the GI bill. Students from low-income families today go to college despite problems of unequal preparation and on their own or with mentoring programs, are able to succeed. Publically funded higher education isn’t a revolutionary idea, nor does it solve all the problems of inadequate preparation, but it eliminates crushing debt as one of those problems.
I am a Vietnam era veteran who worked a few years after discharge in 1969. Both of my parents were 1st generation of immigrants. They rarely had 2 nickels to rub together. In 1974 I took a leave of absence to pursue my bachelors degree. I went to a college in the State University of NY system and I think the resident tuition at that time was around $400-500 per semester. I was married as well and my wife was also matriculating. I received about $340/month in GI Bill benefits and we both worked a few hours a week at the local co-op. We lived in an old 26 ft Roycraft trailer that I bought for $400 just before we married. It was the time of our lives and we owed nothing when we graduated. It didn’t lead to our being rich in wealth terms, but we’ve long felt it contributed to our stability as a couple.
A number of colleges in the SUNY system started as teachers colleges, completing the circle for a society that believed in public education by training the next generation of teachers. It’s sad to see public higher education being treated as some impossible dream these days when it has contributed so much, not only in wealth terms, to individual lives and to our society in the near past. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Well, if it’s an adjustment and can stil need other forms of assistance — people adjust much better when not under financial pressures! So no free tuition doesn’t fix everything — at all — but it fixes a lot!
“Maturity” ≠ bourgeois spirit-breaking. College ≠ liberal arts university. As much as the salaried classes would love all of us paying for our own indoctrination into their thrall, there are certainly other forms of formal education that can help one more directly produce and provide for themselves.
The colleges being proposed as free are junior colleges. They’re set up to help those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder catch up to speed. You take an entry exam that targets what skills you need help in.
Classist, much? I’ve known plenty of legacy admissions who were as unprepared as could be.
In any case, there’s surely a programmatic answer, as opposed to making the children of smelly proles ride in the second class car, eh?
Lambert, you sure are making a lot of assumptions there. Your comment says more about you than you realise. I was quite specific in citing that studies have raised concerns about the pressures faced by low income students that are not faced by students from families with higher incomes.
Instead, you turned it into something ugly.
“Studies have shown…” isn’t the same as citing studies.
That said, although I’ve processed Clinton talking points identical to yours, you weren’t making the argument that Clintonites make, which is to confine the proles to community colleges. So, sorry.
And that said, I don’t feel a need to apologize for leaping to the defense of working class people. There’s entirely too little of that going around.
The least academically capable student I knew at Harvard was a seventh generation legacy. His family had numerous buildings named after them. He was a sweet guy, and had no illusion that he was there because of his intellectual ability. He majored (concentrated) in Visual and Environmental Studies — which could be a robust program, but in his case, he painted unseriously and bided his time.
These days, families can be desperately poor and have children who have been extremely well-educated and well-prepared, to say nothing of those who may have been deprived of the education they deserve by our corrupted, crapified educational system. Neither of those types of kids deserved to be discussed this way. Plenty of wealthy students haven’t bothered to learn how to learn at all. They know the system is a scam and treat it as such. Income is absolutely no measure of who can and should have access to a college education.
Wow, this entire discussion has completely spun out of control from where it started.
The original question posed at the head of this thread:
Does the type of reform politics/vision advocated by Sanders hide any class privilege?
On “increased transparency” being now publicly favored by some Hong Kong pol whose dollar-dripping d___ was somewhat exposed by the Panama Papers:
I believe it was Hill + Knowlton that developed, decades ago, the artfully crafted “apology” as a big element of assisting their clients to manufacture shields of consequence avoidance and the dragging out of horrific mis-mal-nonfeasance exemplars beyond the end of the news cycle. Hey, it worked in Japan, where after a terrible airplane crash chargeable to negligence (as I recall), the CEO went and apologized to famil members of the dead, before resigning to a life of wealthy comfort. (Japan is a kind of special case, I know…) Now it appears that “Political Relations” consultancies have figured out another dodge, “Let’s seem to put ourselves on the side of the Angels!” Couple that with apology of sorts, general impunity immunity of great wealth, the linkages that the corrupt have to one another and the common interest they have in fokking the rest of us for fun and profit, and what do you get? Disney coined the best epithet I can come up with: “Bibbiti-Bobbiti-Boo!” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VNKuARjkWEg
There’s enough decency in too many of us that this kind of sh!t works, over and over and over again… “There, there, you have suffered enough, poor dear. Horrible damage to your reputation, embarrassment of you and your family… So unfair…” Almost as nauseating as the “too pretty to jail” and “affluenza…” http://www.cbsnews.com/news/affluenza-slammed-as-defense-for-wealthy-texas-teens-fatal-dwi-wreck/
“Clinton doubling down on transcripts The Hill. Of course, if the transcripts were exculpatory, she’d already have released them, with a million-dollar budget media offensive.”
I heard yesterday on the radio and don’t have time to find a link right now that Clinton did a Q & A – not a speech – and the questions were about foreign policy. She was a little too frank about her opinions of foreign leaders and that’s why she doesn’t wanted them released. Who knows.
I wonder if the Benghazi nuance was always meant to give Hillary the appearance of being untouchable and clean when the emails and quid pro quo and these “speeches” are so much more damning. A generic Democrat without baggage would have moved the election to questions about how many seats the Democrats can win. A party dependent on youth and anti-war voters is going to have an identity crisis with a Hillary candidacy and stumble into the election.
The GOP is aware Bill’s opponents were 41 and Bob Dole after Gingrich shut down the government. How would have Bill done against a cookie cutter Republican who wasn’t a member of the undead a day without the shut down is a fair question? As bad as Kerry was, he was only 10,000 votes from winning. The only real path to victory for the GOP is suppression and the Democrats nominating a lunatic.
You imply a real question: where is the country? I try to speak for myself and not “the people” but this does not exempt me from often ignoring where the majority of the American people actually stand on major issues. The biggest loser for most here at NC has got to be the appeal of American Exceptionalism. I think this is still a winner even though it appalls me. I also think that most Americans still like hierarchies and would rather have a small chance at a big windfall than a guaranteed income for all. But I could be wrong. Nevertheless, sometimes I think we all project onto the American electorate too much and assume it is “with us” when if given a choice it may well not be.
Although there are some disagreements about how much effect he had, do not forget that Bush and Clinton also were battling with probably the most successful independent candidate in 100 years – Ross Perot. I’m still not so sure we would have a President Clinton without him. There were several states that were only a couple of hundred votes difference. Ohio was less than a hundred, and Perot had almost a million votes. There is the meme that Perot’s support was almost evenly split between the two, but there is a lot of wiggle in ‘almost’.
Very arguably, Kerry won Ohio and the election.
The best thing I read today was from CounterPunch on Libya and what we all either didn’t know or ignored: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/22/new-push-for-military-intervention-in-libya-who-will-control-the-libyan-central-bank/
It is this same imperative that ensures that while there is massive propaganda on the ISIS threat there is less attention to the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council who finance and facilitate the deployment and circulation of ISIS elements. It is now time for the progressive forces to also indict Hillary Clinton in the Court of public opinion to expose her active cooperation with Sarkozy to facilitate the destruction of Libya. The current Gowdy Congressional Inquiry into the killings in Benghazi cannot expose the role of Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus in Benghazi and it devolves on the progressive forces to make this information widely known.
GOP want to hide behind the Benghazi killings and ignore the history of Libya from the average person who won’t read a long article.
From the Neocon site Gatestone Institute – totally blame the French and the US Neocons were all innocent bystanders. http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1983/france-libya-attack
TL:DR – HRC and GOP guarantee more war – lets go to Africa.
It was all about the dollar, IMO
https://www.rt.com/news/economy-oil-gold-libya/
A Silicon Valley entrepreneur says basic income would work even if 90% of people smoked weed instead of working Tech Insider (Furzy Mouse).
it is part of normalizing disemployment, A job guarantee would be better in every respect.
A quote from the article say it all. “Its past success stories include Airbnb, Reddit, and Zenefits. ”
Every company listed obtained “success” by breaking laws and buying politicians for access. I’m looking at you Ron Conway and Ed Lee.
Silicon Valley is fairly libertarian. They feel all those laws were unfair to begin with and were the mean ol’ government stymieing the free market.
“breaking laws and buying politicians” and rental extraction.
The justification is, in fact, that with income guaranteed, people would go on to do creative work.
So, it’s like the creativity “trickles down” from the income.
But what not simply guarantee the work directly? Well, because that would put some workplaces under democratic control, that’s why. Can’t have that.
I think we need both. An income guarantee means that people would be more free to do what they think is best regardless of what the market (or the government) thinks is valuable. For instance art, self improvement and community building are unlikely to be job options with under a job guarantee.
Without a job guarantee people who enjoy work or for whom work plays an important part of their mental health (I go pretty crazy if I’m not working regardless of my economic situation) will be left unemployed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3555333/Shakespeare-wishers-world-gather-birthplace-celebrate-playwright-s-legacy-400th-anniversary-death.html
Happy birthday, Will Shakespeare! You taught me so much
I only wish I read you before I started dating…
N.B. Shakespeare’s birthday is thought to be on the 26th of April
https://www.google.com/search?q=shakespeare+cat&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF-Yid36XMAhUCHD4KHeDWDAIQsAQIHA&biw=1024&bih=667#imgrc=dtE1rwiFFOpeEM%3A
In the U.S., there will be Democratic Presidential primaries in 5 states on Tuesday, April 26. There have been some interesting intellectual discussions about what should be done if Clinton is nominated or elected. But before we get to those points, we still have a chance to nominate Sanders. Those of you who live in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Delaware, or who have friends or family in those states, might consider asking people you know about the election. Do any of your friends and family members support Hillary Clinton? If so, please ask them why. Be sure that they know about some of her more important votes when she was a Senator.
For example, do they know that she voted for the bankruptcy “reform” bill in 2001 that was heavily supported by the credit card industry? In an era in which medical expenses and college expenses have been consistently rising faster than the rate of inflation, this bill was a Santa Claus gift to creditors, and a lump of coal to people whose medical expenses forced them into bankruptcy. (The bill didn’t pass until 2005, when Clinton was not present for the vote. But she voted for it in 2001.)
Do they know that she voted for the Patriot Act?
Do they know that she voted for the invasion of Iraq, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and cost the U.S. a couple of trillion dollars? Do they understand that Iraqis had no responsibility for 9/11?
Do they know that she voted for one of the biggest boondoggles in U.S. history, when she voted for TARP which bailed out the abusively fraudulent banks?
If they approve of the way that she voted on these bills, it’s unfortunate, but they’re being consistent by supporting her. But they might not support the way that she voted, and in that case, they ought to rethink their support for her.
For links to the Senate and House of Representatives votes on these bills, please see:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/04/can-sanders-win-over-rich-voters-in-new-york.html#comment-2573625
Good questions all.
i missed a family reunion at Stone Mountain today http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/dekalb-county/group-plans-to-protest-pro-white-rally-at-stone-mountain/151564455
“Since men are not equals in white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to?” bell hooks
(bell woulda been a hoot to throw in the mix…)
There’s a discussion of Universal Basic Income going on right now on slashdot, they’re tearing it up pretty hard. It doesn’t help that the proposal is from the former finance minister of Greece.
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/16/04/23/1916229/greeces-former-finance-minister-explains-why-a-universal-basic-income-could-save-us
Here’s a link to the rough GTranslate version of the article referenced for you:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tagesanzeiger.ch%2Fschweiz%2Fstandard%2Fdie-schweiz-ist-ideal-fuer-experimente-mit-dem-grundeinkommen%2Fstory%2F23669824&edit-text=&act=url
If it’s up there in English someplace, I didn’t find a link.
Basically Varoufakis makes an argument that Switzerland is the ideal experimental environment.
well, it seems there is no “dear old Blighty” on the weekends, so I will supply it, ahead of my summer retreat from the interwebz, a relief from American parents slugging it out at little league games:
Is there an op going on against 28 pages as the page is not loading?
I’ll just leave this here:
And:
Impressive!
The Fort Marcy Park joke just writes itself. So I won’t.
Just to be clear I fully believe that the current president of Waco University did waste more than $7 million
of the taxpayer’s money on a bat sh*t crazy wild goose (step) chase.
http://linkis.com/reverbpress.com/poli/N62NY NY, the lady responsible for the purge, selling garbage property for 6.6 million to daughter of Clinton Superdelegate.
Not just western Mass. but any where in rural upstate New York. My street has cable on one end and none on the other. Only satellite is possible. This is only 120 miles from NYC too.