Readers: Reddit’s /r/Politics thinks that Naked Capitalism is an “unacceptable source,” since it’s a “personal blog.” (Dayen, all the guest writers, and I might have something to say about that; NC is personal the way that the NYT is personal to the Sulzbergers.) Any insights?
Praying mantises watch movies while wearing tiny 3-D glasses Los Angeles Times
Who Owns U.S. Business? How Much Tax Do They Pay? NBER
At Jacobin: The Fed Doesn’t Work for You J.W. Mason. This version has the footnotes.
Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist, by L. Randall Wray Times Higher Education
2016 brings more pain to U.S. shale companies as crude sinks Reuters
Rig Count: Capitulation? Oilprice.com
Ocean Imports to Remain Flat for Several Months, Retail Report Says WSJ
Regulator Warns Tech Companies of Big Data Bias WSJ
Up to 70 Percent of Global Internet Traffic Goes Through Northern Virginia Nextgov. Terrific reporting on the physical plant of data centers. They are not all out in the boonies, and they are not all shiny.
Juniper Networks will drop code tied to National Security Agency Reuters
The Company Behind LA’s Methane Disaster Knew Its Well Was Leaking 24 Years Ago Vice
VW proposes catalytic converter to fix U.S. test cheating cars – Bild am Sonntag Reuters
China?
Hong Kong publishers spooked, anti-China books off shelves Reuters. Kill a chicken to scare the monkeys…
Deflationary pressures to continue ‘haunting China’s economy’ this year: economists South China Morning Post
Syraqistan
The Empty Threat of ‘Boots on the Ground’ NYT (Re Silc).
Carpet Bombing History in America Project Syndicate
Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi strong man in a power struggle FT
Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Has Debt-To-GDP Moon of Alabama
Chaos and Violence: How New Year’s Eve in Cologne Has Changed Germany Der Spiegel
Merkel backs plans to tighten the law on refugees who commit crimes FT
Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Reshuffle? Focus on Tory failings in health, housing and education instead’ Guardian. “We want to see the democratisation of public life from the ground up.” See, there’s your problem.
What Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ can teach us FT. The print version has the best headline ever: “Tsar Wars.”
Oregon Stand-Off
FBI arrival, call for donations hint at possible end game for Oregon occupation KSNV. Solicited donations (and I don’t think this is a parody):
The OR militants have updated their wish list. pic.twitter.com/ZmDB3XC4Ag
— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) January 9, 2016
#FirstWorldProblems
Blowhards, Beware: Megyn Kelly Will Slay You Now Vanity Fair (JT McPhee).
2016
Hillary Clinton Is Not Telling The Truth About Wall Street HuffPo
Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks Than Most of Us Earn in a Lifetime The Intercept
15 things Bernie Sanders said about Wall Street, and whether they make any sense Felix Salmon, Fusion. So Disney performs brain transplants now. Good to know.
Some GOP’ers so dislike Trump they’d rather see Clinton win Des Moines Register
Why it’s very, very, very hard to imagine Jeb Bush winning the Republican nomination WaPo
On the Meaning of “Natural Born Citizen” Harvard Law Review Forum
The Tale That Might Be Told The Power of Narrative (2008).
Obamacare is here to stay. Just look at Kentucky. Vox
Steve Israel: Confessions of a Congressman NYT (Re Silc). How can we miss you, if you won’t go away?
‘Difficult conversation’ on charters finally comes to LAUSD board LA School Report
Guns now allowed in Texas’ state-run psychiatric hospitals Austin Statesman
How Obama’s edict will resurrect smart guns Computerworld. Not that there’s anything wrong with using the Federal government’s purchasing power for good — though why not with, say, single payer? — but this proposal, besides being a giveaway to Silicon Valley, doesn’t do anything about guns currently in circulation, like proposals to, for example, apply the same requirements for insurance to responsible gun owners that already apply to responsible car owners. So it’s more Obama small ball, totes genuine tears or no.
Mexico’s Soda Tax Success Bloomberg
Imperial Collapse Watch
The British Are Coming: Meet the UK Lads Who Take Sex-Tourism Trips to Small-Town America Vice
Class Warfare
These are the towns that love Donald Trump WaPo
I quizzed dozens of Silicon Valley elites about inequality. Here’s what they told me. Vox
Silicon Valley is an optimistic crowd. In my survey, 80 percent of the 129 startup founders I surveyed told me that “almost all change is good over the long run,” compared with just 48 percent of the general public.
Let’s remember that [genuflects] “startup founders,” as a term and as (some sort of) social reality, has only existed for about five years or so, and coincides with the hunt for returns under quantitative easing.
The Hustlers at Scores New York Magazine
Japanese Profits Surge, but Not Wages WSJ
Japanification Revisited Ian Welsh
El Chapo Speaks Sean Penn, Rolling Stone. Check the “Disclosure.” Helpfully translated into English by the New York Times.
Down the Ratholes of the Future The Archdruid Report. I’m not the only one using the “20%” trope, I see.
Antidote du jour:
And I think this is an anti-antidote, though a reasonably benign one:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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On Reddit’s /r/Politics;
Because of the voting system in Reddit, almost every sub there is a circlejerk populated by ideologues and idiots. Anything that disagrees with the dominant narrative is downvoted and hidden while anything that supports the narrative is upvoted. This particular sub seems to be a Democratic Party circlejerk, and NC has criticised Democrats and challenged their narrative.
did a random quote search for Reddit…
“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
Elon Musk
Why would a site named Red-dit be on the defense? …Fortunate for them NC is at the helm of thorough investigations !
“Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.”
Ambrose Bierce
It is telling in that Musk quote that he neglects to mention the most fundamental principle, roots!
Reddit is the first site I pull up in the morning, because I like to start my day with a laugh.
Then I come to NC.
No, really. If a story appears in both places, I figure it’s a double-parity social phenomena I should know about.
It’s the Wikipedia “notable” problem all over again. Both Reddit and Wiki use hard and fast rules with completely fuzzy criteria, whose meaning is entirely determined by a consensus of power users. Those users, especially in Wikipedia’s case, overwhelmingly come from a rather narrow slice of the population, and so their worldview becomes Wiki’s for what is “worth knowing.”
In the case of subreddits, you get a panel of anywhere between 4 and 10 individuals who make arbitrary decisions under the guise of “objective” rules. Basically, if none of them have heard of NC, then it doesn’t fit into their framework of “acceptable content.”
Just as pernicious as financial inequality, non-financial inequality.
Some people just have too much power.
In case of people born looking like models, for example, that’s a non-financial (or indirect financial) wealth inheritance un-taxed.
But just look at the s—s the ‘models’ end up with. The story about the “strippers” shows the drawbacks to the “High Life” quite clearly.
Yup, it’s a dangerous world.
People born in the purple, with a silver spoon, or looking like a model.
All such inheritances should be taxed.
spreddyt…never understood what exactly it is or why it is of any value to anyone…just feels like old chat rooms from aol circa 1997…have never been able to spend more than 3 minutes trying to figure out why I wanted to understand why people even discuss it…same ole perpetual phd candidates eating cold grilled cheese in moms new boyfriends basement (visitors) bedroom…may it soon rise up to the status of myspace…
all hail ming(kiatz)
It has lots of neat pictures and little imgur animations of dogs and cats and stuff. I was going to find one to link to here, but Google is such a piece of shit now that I can’t even find it there anymore.
Gunz allowed in TX mental health facilities …http://healthyamericans.org/states/?stateid=TX#section=1,year=2015,code=hpsamental (slight shortage of facilities)
did TX give up recording facts as of 2010? http://www.mentalhealthconnection.org/tx_facts.php …Texans will be bulletshitcrazy by the end of 2017!
Going to be one big facility down the road so whats the problemo….
Skippy…. Close relative is moving out of Austin and off to Montana… previously thought TX was a safe haven for real Americans…
We’ll take your relative with open arms…but after that WE’RE FULL!
I really hope Texas secedes and builds a wall around itself to contain the crazy.
I hope the entire metropolis from Boston to DC does likewise.
Not before my wife and I get the h*** out of Northern Virginia!
Someone should email their nutball governor and suggest it. I’d even offer up the suggestion that they could partially fund their state by contracting with TLC for a reality show.
re: Sex Tourism in America “…they readily admitted to lying to girls when they met them, saying they were writers from the British GQ, or the entire band the Arctic Monkeys.”
the irony: in September 2005 Arctic Monkeys with Jim Abbiss producing,Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the fastest selling debut album in UK chart history
Sounds like a good time, but it’s gotta be waaay easier to get laid back home in Britain than in small town USA, and the women are in much better shape over there. These guys must just be looking for a bit of a challenge. That or they get screened out by the ladies’ Sleazedar back home.
Maybe they are trying to combine sex tourism with accidental US citizenship.
“My kid is a natural born, presidency-eligible American citizen.”
Hey! If the republicans believe that an individual’s life begins at conception, then it stands to reason that anyone conceived on American soil must have US citizenship, regardless of their other citizenships or parentage. Hmm. I wonder if this would apply to in vitro fertilizations? Have fertile eggs extracted anywhere in the world, ditto chilled semen, ship them to the US to be fertilized, and bingo, Uncle Sam’s your uncle!
Americans can be so provincial. Not too long ago we talked about British accents in punditry, now its British accents as a honey magnet. That’s not very surprising though, college girls love them Euro accents of all kinds. It is all very romantic! Euros are more practical in these matters. In BG, a British accents and 20 pounds will get you a BJ from a gypsy hooker.
Sean Penn interviews garbage
my best friend’s response: “So is the takeaway that even demented psychos living in the jungle wanna meet a guy that f***** Madonna!”.
That is the most rational explanation I have heard yet LOL.
That’s great! Thanks for the laugh!
Penn’s writing reminds me of Hunter Thompson minus the talent and self-deprecating humor. Insupportable.
And Robin Wright. Don’t forget Robin Wright.
re: Towns That Love Trump….
Looks like Trump is having rallies in communities with demographics that would likely support him in a third party run. Get the sense that Trump enjoys being a candidate too much to give it up if he does not win the GOP nom.
—He pointed out that many of the places Trump visits are not conservative strongholds where Republican presidential candidates usually venture. Instead, Trump often picks cities filled with dissatisfied blue-collar Democrats and Republicans who feel as if they haven’t had a voice.—
He wouldnt be able to qualify as third party for several states though.
Still, if he wanted to be a spoiler, all he would need would be access to one or two states and he could screw over Cruz or Rubio or whoever pretty effectively.
If he were not nominated, he could call on his supporters to not-vote-for-President and see how far the Repuglan ticket gets without the Trump supporters. That would be spoilery enough.
And if Clinton got the Democrat nomination, maybe a lot of the Sanders supporters would stay home or vote green or something, no matter WHAT Sanders himself calls on them to do. An election between RuBushio and the Clintron would reveal which ticket has a stronger repellent effect on turnout.
She’s probably got more pressing things to do, but it would be great to see Yves critique Felix Salmon’s commentary on Bernie Sanders approach to Wall Street.
Hard to critique commentary that lacks any substance behind it. I didn’t seen any real argument there apart from “Sanders is unrealistic”.
I’m overdue on a piece on Glass Steagall as relates to Summers and Sanders.
Felix has regularly made it clear that he does not care about being right, which I find dangerous in a pundit. The only good side is Felix is therefore perfectly willing to reverse his position.
You know they’re scared when they bring out Bill and put him in the largest auditorium at Dartmouth to try to shore up the Upper Valley dem votes. They should have been a sure thing, or at least probably would have been in the past. I may try to go if I am not too tired-but I have class at 745 the next morning. I suggested my Chinese roommate go so he can witness the circus, you know, to get the full American Experience and all. Cheers.
They are also sending Chelsea up to NH for 3 stops in one day, and Bill will be doing 3 stops in a day. Is it just me or does this reek of desperation?
Bernie supporters have be pretty relentless in social media, lots of Hillary bio, republican lite, neocon affiliation, et al with Hillary supporters basically saying Hillary or we all die.
I checked Hillary’s twitter and it’s mostly identity politics targeting certain demographics—Lena Dunham and soccer star Amy Wambach figured. In case you didn’t know, Hillary is a woman.
Sanders outperforms Clinton in general-election matchups
The NBC/WSJ/Marist polls also show that Sanders outperforms Clinton in hypothetical general-election matchups in these two presidential battleground states – something other surveys have found, too.
In Iowa:
Clinton leads Trump by eight points among registered voters (48 percent to 40 percent), but Sanders is ahead of him by 13 (51 percent to 38 percent);
Cruz tops Clinton by four points (47 percent to 43 percent), but Sanders beats him by five (47 percent to 42 percent);
And up Rubio is up by five points over Clinton (47 percent to 42 percent), while he’s tied with Sanders (44 percent to 44 percent).
In New Hampshire:
Clinton is ahead of Trump by just one point (45 percent to 44 percent), but Sanders tops him by 19 points (56 percent to 37 percent);
Cruz beats Clinton by four points (48 percent to 44 percent), but Sanders leads him by another 19 points (55 percent to 36 percent);
And Rubio bests Clinton by 12 points (52 percent to 40 percent), while Sanders leads him by nine points (50 percent to 41 percent).
The primary reason why Sanders tests better in these general-election matchups is due to his stronger performance with independent voters.
NH independents/unaffiliateds can choose which party’s primary they want to vote in. Should be interesting.
And I believe the unregistered can still register the day of the primary with just a document or bill listing an address in New Hampshire.
I was just reading about this at the NYT “First Draft” blog. Apparently they are in such a hurry to post items that they only covered the Bernie results; they mentioned he “outperformed” Hillary but didn’t indicate that she actually lost to Cruz and Rubio. Hmmm…
—Bernie Sanders Makes Strong Showing in New Polls
Sloppy NYT journalism or are they trying to downplay the bad news for their anointed candidate Hillary? You decide.
Reckon like a cat trying to cover up something with newspaper, etc. If it’s not there, it doesn’t exist, right? La la la la!
Whereas in Maryland registered Independents have to re-register as democrat to get a chance to vote for Bernie in the primary. Then you expose yourself to all that democrat persiflage.
“Independents” are now 50% of the electorate.
This makes the primaries something of an exercise in futility: 57% of (maybe) 30% is how many? You don’t win elections with 16%.
It also means the polling is probably off, since a large part of Bernie’s support aren’t actually Democrats. Still, that 57% is going to be hard to overcome.
The poll #’s also mean that nominating Hillary, as they seem determined to do, is a way to throw the general election.
And see this post here on how perverse that is.
“The Nation’s” Katha Pollitt ratchets up the identity politics deal by taking on her “friend” Doug Henwood’s book “My Turn.” One commenter said,
There is also this strain of inevitability acceptance of Hillary, e.g., I like Sanders but the monied PTB have Hillary written in; they won’t allow a Sanders to win.
Presumably Hillary’s hit man, ‘ol Sid Blumenthal, don’t even get to ride the campaign bus no more:
So Hillary might have had a back channel to the NSA? This puts “Big Sister” in a whole new light!
U.S. Supreme Court set to hear challenge to public sector unions [Reuters]
Yet another ball or strike for umpire John Roberts to call, just in time for the Fall elections.
I’m starting to try to look outside the box we are in. I’ve read that European unions, for example France, do not have mandatory dues. The union leaders are workers and don’t get outrageous salaries. Not as much corruption because not much money sloshing around. It would be great to get the money out of politics by unions and corporations and the rich although it has always been thus. Maybe it’s better to concentrate on election reform. Have short election seasons. No big money for ads and crappy flyers in your mail. Union members can still do what they do now in campaigns by going door to door to get out the vote. But how?
Money corrupts.
Boundless money corrupts boundlessly.
Mmmmm, I wonder who is paying those teachers legal dues. Charter school companies, or maybe their union-negotiated salaries.
OR occupiers in need of tampons & french vanilla creamer…
“Those that much covet are with gain so fond,
For what they have not, that which they possess
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.”
Bill, The Rape of Lucrece
You seem to say, they have sent out a Bill,
I say rather, that they have not the Will.
With the list of food they require, they don’t need laxatives or toilet paper. They will not give up what is theirs.
but seriously, they went to a camp out without supplies.
I know, right? They were immediately talking about staying for years, but didn’t bring any warm blankets? Not Boy Scouts, obviously…
To contrast, at our Occupy camp, we came somewhat unprepared, but quickly were overloaded with donations and well provisioned. We also had a needs list, but it was short and included things like “justice” and “equality.”
That short list is still pertinent.
I’m working on a care package for our brave boys snowbound up there at the wildlife refudge. Even though they forgot to put it on the list, I have packed several canisters of glitter because who doesn’t need more glitter to make a campout festive. Could someone please enlighten me as to the nature of these 4″ Aprans requested? What is a tiny “apran” used for? I googled it and am still mystified, but there’s a little room left in the cardboard box to ship a couple “aprans” if i can just figure out what they are.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/BundyEroticFanFic?src=hash
Sun Tzu says the wise general will live off the landscape, forage and loot. Sun Tzu understood procurement and logistics better than the Yeehaddists…
Of course Sun Tzu would slap our kings and Generals silly for all these aimless, pre-lost foreign adventures that he explained in simple accounting terms would bankrupt the nation. At least before MMT explained how to extend the bleeding and futility to the limits of practicable political economy…
Speaking of understanding soil, root, trunk, branch, leaves, flowers and fruit, here’s Sun Tzu’s simple wisdom that our effingg Rulers claim to have read but I guess in the Neobizarro world they are willing into existence, ancient timeless wisdom is just “quaint” and thus no longer operative:
http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html
Re the Charter Schools and LA – although the article is technically right that charter schools can only be stopped by the State, I wanted to drop a reminder that the Obama Administration, upon taking office, made it its policy that any State that didn’t permit charter schools or “artificially” capped their number put their federal funding, particularly the huge new funds that Obama put in his budget under his Race to the Top initiative – at risk. So it’s a State policy decision that is actually very difficult for any State to change given the federal incentives (unless they’ve changed, but given that it’s Obama, I doubt that very much).
maybe medicaid expansion can’t go away but medicare for all can be overlain on top of it?
Wouldn’t Medicare for all make Medicaid superfluous? One of the big advantages is that it would roll up a number of other programs and simplify the landscape.
yes, just trying to get around the whole “ACA never going away, never…” meme by using ACA supporters main selling point against them
Also, medicare for all would hopefully not include the extremely regressive poor tax known as the “clawback”
Yes.
Some GOP’ers so dislike Trump they’d rather see Clinton win Des Moines Register
I”m pretty sure that you would see the same thing on the Democratic side if Bernie were the nominee.
About three days after the convention nominates Sanders, I could see Donna Brazile and DWS set up a “Wait for Cory Booker in 2020” fundraising effort.
For what its worth, id rather whoever comes out of the Republican clown car would beat Hillary, but I dont know how many people like me there are.
I wouldnt actually vote for whatever clown, mind you, but I would be elated if Hillary lost, no matter to who.
Her losing to Cruz might give me pause, but not enough to merit voting for either one.
It may well be that the only way to reform the Democratic party is to lay waste to and destroy all its current leadership.* I know I’d rather have a muscular minority party that defends my interests forcefully than a flabby quasi-majority party that sells me out every chance it gets. And I trust the minority status would be temporary.
* To be fair, they’re doing a pretty good job of that themselves. Democrats at the state and local levels keep getting in trouble for corruption, whacking black people, and so forth.
“Archdruid” compares the idiots in Oregon to John Brown: “John Brown looked just as pointless in his time” A time when the slaveocracy was living in fear of a slave revolt and when a violent civil war was ongoing in “bloody kansas.” Harper’s Ferry was anything but “pointless” to the millions of slaves and to the thousands of slaveocrats. Robert E. Lee already had the nooses ready in his baggage train. Compared to that what do the Oregon Idiots risk? Probably merely the same ridicule your Archdruid deserves for his prediction of a “Solar PV Bubble.”
In Jacobin re the Fed doing a subtle switch of its rationale from proclaiming its mandate to promote full employment while at the same time keeping wage/price inflation down (that was just a spoof to hide the fact that the real mandate was to keep capitalism alive to exploit labor) to a revised mandate to simply establish “stability” from the top down by preventing gdp/growth/inflation/wages and anything else labor related from exceeding 2%… at least that’s how it looks… kinda seems like the Fed has given up on a capitalist free market fantasy and they don’t care who sees it. I’m wondering how many ways there are for capital to loophole this because if it can’t then capital will be stabilized along with labor. Which makes sense because capital has always exploited labor and if the Fed prevents it – goodbye capitalism hello something completely different.
And also too on that “maverick” Randall Wray. Times. From Keynes to Minsky, to Wray and Keen – we are unable to mitigate crashes even tho’ we’ve known for a long time that they will happen on cue. Maybe Janet and Stanley are finally taking modern economists seriously then? No more bubbles. But there is a better way to do it than pretending capitalism still exists and only requires a tweak of the deaf-dumb-and blind interest rate. It’s a Jobs Program funded at no expense by our sovereign Treasury; the counterbalance to all imbalances in the economy so nobody needs to game the system for the benefit of private finance and big corporations. What MMT does here is leave out the financial circus, the brokers of neoliberal economix, and prevent them from making a profit from both inflation and deflation. And it creates green jobs in the process.
Sanders-Warren Before New Hampshire Would Rock the Nation
Elizabeth Warren should endorse Bernie Sanders before New Hampshire, or they should run as a ticket
Elizabeth Warren should endorse the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders before the New Hampshire primary or, in the alternative, Mr. Sanders should publicly state that if he receives the Democratic nomination his first act will be to ask Ms. Warren to run with him as his vice-presidential nominee in a historic and revolutionary campaign to bring back the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to the leadership of the nation.
The coming weeks will be one of the most important moments in the history of the American progressive movement.
It is possible Mr. Sanders will win both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire, shock the political world, electrify the Democratic party and turn the presidential campaign from a sickening spectacle of personal insults and phony politics into a forum to create and bring to power a new progressive populist majority.
It is also possible Mr. Sanders will ultimately lose the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, proceed to lose the Southern primaries that follow, and cease to be viable candidate for the presidency, in which case a triumphant Hillary Clinton will shift her tactics and begin her inevitable move toward the right with the false belief, guided by her corporatist campaign consultants, that this would be her path to victory in November.
Here is what almost certainly happens if either of my suggestions becomes reality in the next few weeks:
On the morning after the New Hampshire primary, a triumphant Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren will be standing on a platform in New Hampshire celebrating a great victory and taking their progressive populist vision from one corner of the nation to the other.
The citizen-small donors who support the Sanders campaign will pour oceans of money into the coffers of his campaign that will shatter all historic records and create a true revolution in the history of campaign finance that would be one of the most democratizing events in America since Jefferson put pen to paper.
The ratings-hungry corporatists and sensationalists who run political television and have turned TV political coverage into a distasteful freak show of falsehoods and insults will swarm over the Sanders-Warren victory like bees swarm to honey and take the Sanders-Warren message of government of the people, by the people and for the people to every living room across the nation.
Some Democrats have suggested, incorrectly in my view, that the best course for Ms. Warren is to remain neutral in the presidential race to “preserve her influence.” I believe this is nonsense.
http://observer.com/2016/01/sanders-warren-before-new-hampshire-would-rock-the-nation/
dreaming or dream ticket?
I would vote for a Sanders-Warren ticket in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, they’re from adjacent states (Vermont and Massachusetts), and the politicians usually prefer that the two candidates running together to be from different regions of the country.
Tho the irony is rich. Sanders has to look outside New England for an east coast establishment outsider….
Bush-Cheney
Clinton-Gore
Kerry-Edwards
Gore-Lieberman
Geographical representation isn’t important. It’s the kind of thing that keeps Team Blue strategerists up at night.
Well spotted, or pointed out.
Of course Cheney had to dust off his “Wyoming” state credentials so he could run as VP. He had actually lived in Texas along with GWB for years IIRC. The candidates cannot be from the same state.
The problem is they are both sort of old and from the Northeast. But still…
Why isn’t El Chapo executed?
Other than being rich, powerful, and an asset of the US Intelligence Agencies drug cartel.
Mexico abolished the death penalty.
So, im normally against the death penalty.
But I do wonder if the drug cartels are somehow behind lobbying for said abolishment of said penalty…
Afghan forces struggle as ranks thinned by ‘ghost’ soldiers
Mr. Atal is a brave man.
File under Syraqistan, Imperial Collapse and Corruption.
Sounds like Chicago to me, ghost employees are a major part of the municipal workforce.
I’m a ghost employee, and I vote early and often!
You sir, are a genius! We’ve been needing that category for awhile now.
Antidote.
The cub’s name is Defeat and the mother is called Victory.
Let’s see anyone try to snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory.
I’ve been trying to figure out Antidote #2. It’s a prehistoric chicken swarmed over by pink flamingoes. But I can’t get any farther with it than that.
that’s not likely since Victory has many fathers and Defeat is an orphan
maybe she just bought him at a pet store?
either that or she’s hungry and he’s dinner
As regards Pass Through Entities: Remember that a Pass Through Entity can also be a small business, a couple with a 2 flat or four flat etc. These small businesses never make any money, particularly over the past eight years. To add a tax on the earnings before the couple or partners pay the tax personally is a recipe for disaster for the little guy.
Pass Through Entity tax law was passed with small businesses in mind. Unfortunately, giant privately held corps (see Koch Industries) can incorporate, or re-incorporate as a Pass Through. Maybe time to revisit the law and consider financial upper bounds for businesses wanting to so incorporate.
RE: Ammon Bundy is not a terrorist
I’m pretty sure you’re a yeehadist terrorist when you use the threat of armed force against government officials and local law enforcement in the course of political action. Whether this qualifies as an insurrection against the US government is another question. But I guess we’re labeling armed militants as protesters now.
It also seems the Islamic State wants to support their cause. If you think that religious extremists are all the same this makes sense. I can only imagine how emboldened these Mormon yeehadists would be if Romney was president. They already consider it their divine right to do whatever the hell they want.
Ahh, the sign of a first class genius at work. He couldn’t make it five sentences without contradicting himself!
Smart guns.
And smarter guns.
“Gotta get the next cool version. Just give the current one to your unemployed friend for free, but make sure he registers though. He has been dying to buy one, but couldn’t afford it.”
Of course NC is not an “acceptable source” of confirming mainstream preconceptions. If you believe TINA, then it lies outside the sphere of polite discussion contributing to the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds.
But who wants to be acceptable? (How did most NC readers get along with authorities in high school or college?)
I was quite obedient in HS and in college, truth be told, a real immigrant striver. It took military service to built a healthy contempt for authority.
I lost respect for authority when I was five, almost six. We were supposed to make little clay fired, glazed cups for our parents. I and another child with the same initials and same first name both wanted to make ours green. Now, his last name came first, and so he went first. The parent assistants said I had to use a different color so they could tell them apart. I said I’ll put my middle initial on it as no one else has that name. They told me the teacher said to use first and last initials as if that was the a required law. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to compromise on an issue as important as a green cup over minor trivialities. I will say that Mrs. Barbie, which was the nickname my mom used for my teacher, proved to be far more accommodating.
Oh, I also learned the value of non-violent resistance. I didn’t throw a tantrum. I just refused to participate. I broke the cup on the way home, but if you wanted my parents to get anything or a message, don’t leave it with me.
As a general rule, I’m a rule follower, oddly enough. I do question things though. It sounds like me an OlFvet have similar experiences. My military service experiences definitely made me start to question our government and whether or not it was acting in the best interest of the majority.
I don’t see why NC wouldn’t be an acceptable source as long as opinions are backed up by factual data that you could also find elsewhere. I’d think that the only people who might find it “unacceptable” might be those to lazy to sift facts from opinions or to do the research to counter the narrative they disagree with.
I’m not really familiar with Reddit and it appears I’m not missing much if there is a prevailing groupthink or mob mentality there where original thought is quashed rather than welcome.
The reddit moderators probably enforce that rule to keep the riffraff out. If anybody could dig up a Bloomberg or WSJ story that cites Yves as a source it could enlighten the mods to the greatness of Naked Capitalism. Maybe!
I used to read my answers to the whole classroom in high school during tests when the government/social studies teacher would usually leave the room. One of those tests was a mock citizenship test.
True story. Just doing my part to make America great again.
In some cases, growing up in authoritarian family and school structures, e.g., corporal punishment, verbal abuse, dress codes, will short circuit any interest in joining the military:). And in some cases lead to strong interests in punk and heavy metal and an rejection of religious belief as well an an embrace of sources of information outside of establishment group think acceptance:).
Hey,I don’t have a problem with authority figures, authority figures have a problem with me…
Chinese publishers spooked, anti-China books off shelves.
Probably with better optics, if China just buys more companies in Hong Kong. Workers, especially those barely hanging on to their jobs, don’t usually bad mouth their employers, unless they get desperate.
Today, many people say correct things, publicly, but we don’t know if hearts have changed. Perhaps more entrenched inside, as they can’t express outwardly.
“At Jacobin: The Fed Doesn’t Work for You”
I can see why Mason wanted to post the footnotes; they contain a whole essay themselves, especially the first one, arguably more damning about the central banks than the main article. IOW, he buried the lede, which is that the CBs have a shadowy secret agenda – in the service of the money power. Quelle surprise!
Which brings me to a current Salon article on the Deep State: http://www.salon.com/2016/01/10/hubris_takes_them_all_down_this_is_why_every_president_makes_the_same_dumb_mistakes/. Lambert debunked somebody’s definition, but that doesn’t address the reason the meme won’t go away – and it’s exactly the same as Mason’s point about the Fed: we can see it in action, and sometimes they admit it.
Using a metaphor to address the psychology involved: if we’re paying attention at all, we can tell there’s something going on behind the curtain. We can see it moving, and sometimes an elbow pokes out. We may even call visible “leaders” like Bush or Obama spokesmodels or greeters because it’s obvious that somebody is running them – hence all the speculation about Cheney being the real president.
But the real drivers are still very shadowy. I suppose we see them somewhat more clearly if we read something like NC, but it’s still intentionally murky. When we know something’s going on in secret, conspiracy theories become inherently appealing, even the silly ones. Conspiracies are actually very common, and we know we don’t know the half of what’s really going on.
Mason’s article is really about the fundamental corruption of economics. As he documents, the central bankers aren’t even all that secretive about their real agenda. Just one elbow poking through the curtain.
Bilderberg and ALEC, to name just two of the daemons…
Much like the Praetorian Guard choosing Claudius for Emperor; in 2016, we shall see which of the eight hawkish candidates the Military Industrial Complex pulls out from behind the curtain to be President.
The real question is the first woman or Cuban American President enough to satiate the public who no longer gives consent to be governed by a globalist Empire.
Many of the major subreddits are corrupt. But r/truereddit may be a good place for NC pieces to find a home.
There might just be something to this global warming business. Corps of Engineers is opening the Bonne Carre Spillway for only the eleventh time since its’ completion in 1931. This structure diverts Mississippi River water from the New Orleans area to Lake Pontchartrain, staving off flooding lower down the river. Of note to lovers of oysters, this dilutes the waters of major oyster beds near New Orleans and decreases next seasons yields. The more we try and ‘manage’ things, the worse things get.
See:http://www.weather.com/safety/floods/news/midwest-recovers-mississippi-river-flooding-pushes-downstream
Maybe read my distant cousin’s wonderful book, ” The Control of Nature,” by John McPhee– gives a real insight into the oxymoron…
“15 things Bernie Sanders said about Wall Street, and whether they make any sense ”
I haven’t read the comments yet, but I’d love to see a real critique of this article. Obscure snark (sorry, didn’t get it) doesn’t help.
Personally, I thought a lot of it made sense, but #7 depended on “weird logic” of its own (the real problem is the statute of limitations). Did Bernie really vote for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act? If so, that’s pretty damning.
And Salmon seems to completely misunderstand the financial transactions tax.
The root problem with the article is treating a political speech as if it were an economics essay. That’s fundamentally unfair, but also highlights the problems with political speeches.
As I understand it, there wasn’t a straightforward vote on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (H.R. 5660). Instead, it was rolled into the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 4577), along with about 10 other bills. Sanders voted yes on H.R. 4577, probably because there were things in that giant bill that he supported. See:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/house-bill/4577/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/house-bill/5660/
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2000/roll603.xml
He did vote against the similarly bad Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1999/roll570.xml
[B]ut this proposal, besides being a giveaway to Silicon Valley, doesn’t do anything about guns currently in circulation, like proposals to, for example, apply the same requirements for insurance to responsible gun owners that already apply to responsible car owners.
There isn’t a single state in the union where you’re required to have insurance to own a car. You’re required to have insurance to drive one on public roads – so a better analogy would be to require holders of carry permits to have insurance when they’re not on private property. Please note that those insurance requirements are imposed by states, not by the Federal government. I think one would have to stretch the commerce clause beyond recognition to find some constitutional basis for a gun insurance mandate – but that’s already been done with the ACA, so who knows? The FIRE sector is due for another dose of welfare (it being an election year and all), so I suppose this will do as well as anything.
The bad guys will respect this requirement at least as well as they respect “gun-free zones”. If you intend to commit murder (or suicide, for that matter), why would an insurance requirement slow you down?
“Smart guns” sound wonderful in theory, but I doubt if the implementation will match the high hopes of the advocates. The inevitable bugs and software design errors will only serve to frustrate, annoy, and perhaps endanger legal owners. Since guns are relatively simple mechanical devices, there will of course be a thriving black market in both”dumb” guns and in methods to override the interlocks in “smart” weapons. “Dumb” guns are pretty easy to manufacture as the illegal gunsmiths of Danao have proven (see:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwic-afRiqDKAhUHHR4KHWBkCX0QFgg8MAc&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2F2014-11-13%2Ffarmers-copying-guns-at-home-make-philippines-deadlier-than-u-s-&usg=AFQjCNF5Rwp_SC0doyzrk1hrsm8VtxGY_A,
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fna9WEO6BjE), so I think this would (as you’ve observed) really end up being another just form of corporate welfare masquerading as a solution for a social problem.
…and as to carry-permit insurance not being needed on private proppity, bullets from guns fired by Responsible Gun Owners on their private proppity can kill and wound other people and pets sometimes a mile or more from the point of firing. Too many examples to choose from…
“Guns don’t kill people (except when used as a club?), BULLETS kill people…”
“Guns don’t kill people (except when used as a club?), BULLETS kill people…”
But apparently not very efficiently. After all, there were an estimated 10 billion (“with a ‘b’,” as Gary Cole’s character on American Gothic used to say) rounds of ammo produced in the US last year. So, more accurately 0.00031% of bullets kill people (including homicides, suicides, and accidents).
Of course, that figure is really much too high, since your stated concern would seem to be accidents. That’s on average 600 deaths per year in the US (a figure which is deplorably high). This would suggest that bullets “accidentally” kill people 0.000006% of the time. Or, to turn that number around, bullets are 99.999994% safe. That sounds pretty good for a consumer product, but I admit I haven’t researched the issue.
[reply to ambrit at 3:28 pm]
The Bonnet Carre will be alright. It’s the Old River Control Structure (ORCS) about a hundred miles upstream that we need to worry about. It nearly washed away in 1973.
ORCS enforces a Congressional diktat to split the river’s flow at 30% to the Atchafalaya basin (which would now be 100% without the ORCS) and 70% to the existing Mississippi River channel.
Mother Nature exhibits precious little respect for our solons. Unfortunately she’s too elusive to be served with a terrorism indictment.
I’ve always thought of Reddit as a channel through which virginal young libertarians may express their angst, so I would not worry about this.
the hustlers at scores…you woulda thunk by now someone would have figured out these high end “strip” clubs with these “robin hoodz” getting these big tips from wall street types at places owned by mobsters…
that these are money laundering and bribe conduit operations…duh…kash baby…how easy is it for some biker chick to “claim” she earned a few grand today…was there anyone there from the revenue man to count the cars in the parking lots…last I checked, the harlots don’t give out receipts for the kash donations…easiest money laundering operations on the globe…
“I am a high end striper, call girl, escort, model, actress in waiting…never mind the tatz…and my drug dealing boyfriend…just trust me…”
and that is not beginning to discuss the whole LBGT world with all the ex-judicial offerings that no revenue nor law enforcement ever steps into…J. edgar / seat of power indeed…
hah…what a wonderful country this amerikkka is…land of money laundering opportunities…
Well… Once upon a time, /r/Politics was left essentially un-moderated by its absentee landlords. It was a default subreddit, meaning that all new Reddit users were subscribed to it and saw what went on there. Over the years, most users began to vote on things based on whether they agreed with it, not whether it was informative or nuanced, so the atmosphere became hard for the average Redditor to take. Conventional wisdom about it among Reddit users became that it was an echo chamber, though that always struck me as sour grapes from people that could not defend their opinions.
Eventually, Reddit management gave control of the subreddit to a new moderation team, and removed it as a default subreddit. By October, 2013, in secret at first, a new censorship regime was implemented. Suddenly entire sites, like Mother Jones, Huffington Post, and Salon were banned outright, as were entire categories of sites, like blogs. There was outcry. Many quit. Sturm and drang.
Where there had been too little moderation before, now there would be absolute over-moderation. Every post and thread would be subject to new rules, applied by ranks of new, volunteer moderators. However scrupulously they adhered to mod policy, however, ultimately the intent of the new regime was exactly as NC readers most likely suspect. “Politics,” as they would interpret it, would more closely mean “monied, corporate kayfabe.” So, for instance, Mother Jones was right out as an ‘unacceptable domain’ despite their having broken the Romney 47% story. Posts about the Beltway’s reaction to Snowden revelations would be removed as ‘not US politics.’ What bothered me the most was that anything, at all, could be removed by cult-like invocation of the new rule against ‘unoriginal sources,’ as if knowing about a thing was to have criminally stolen that knowledge from someone else. Though they threw the users a bone by permitting occasional Mother Jones posts, the takeover was a done deal.
El Jefe at /r/Politics in this time could have users ‘shadowbanned,’ that is, secretly disappeared from Reddit, and this they did early and often. Often, the victim wouldn’t even know, sometimes for months. Sending the moderation team a message, which they encouraged, was enough to get you shadowbanned. Discussing what was happening at /r/Politics elsewhere was also enough cause. For me, this blatant campaign of reprisal, more than the secret censorship, more than purposely antagonizing users en masse, revealed the basic corruption at Reddit.
That’s more or less how it stands today. By now, the griefer boss at the head of the mod team back then has been deposed by careful, patient effort of the mods that actually do the grueling, day-to-day work. The exodus passed. The sub has begun to grow again. Banned users have been invited to return, though warned to abide by the new rules. Comment threads have a patina of civility.
However, according to those glassy-eyed, easily-misapplied over-moderation rules, Naked Capitalism is still a banned domain. Which, let me suggest, is something to be proud of. Seems to me NC’s mindshare is more likely to be found at /r/PoliticalDiscussion, /r/Economy, /r/FoodForThought, or /r/TrueReddit. Or for something less overrun by snarling bigots, may I suggest /t/Politics at Snapzu. Point of disclosure, I’m chief of that tribe.
It’s not clear that NC is banned from /r/politics. You can see that as recently as a month ago, it was not banned by looking at this list of NC postings on reddit. I would guess optimistically that a moderator made a quick limited decision that applied only to the post at hand (in spite of the stated reason having to do with the domain) and might have been reversed with a polite message from user aliteralmind citing some of NC‘s bona fides, e.g., NC is rated by CNBC as a top finance blog.
The moderators will drive you crazy though. If aliteralmind had prevailed on the personal blog issue, the next hitch might have been that the DownWithTyranny post was deemed by a moderator to be re-hosted instead of cross posted. The rules are conducive to systematic suppression of alternative media, but whether a particular post is killed or not depends a lot on luck of the draw with regard to moderators.
Mother Jones, Salon and… HUFF POST?
Salon is only center left, and Huff is barely left at all.
And let me guess, right wing sights are not given the same types of censorship?
By the way, your comment makes me sad for humanity’s future, because I feel like this kind of thing is almost standard human behavior
You need to pray that the Internet traffic is not correlated with the road closures and traffic foul-ups in the Tyson’s – Beltway – Dulles Corridor. I left in 1995 wishing never to see it again. I came back, and time has not been kind to the curious arrangement of uncooperative roads there. A straight correlation would leave the Internet gasping for bandwidth twice daily, over multi-hour stretches.
Though I often wish for a traffic solution that replicates the Internet strategy. Channel congested? No problem, just discard thousands of packets till the blockage clears.
Re. “Carpet Bombing History in America | Project Syndicate” — US also carpet bombed North Korea during the Korean War, killing hundreds of thousands. Warmongering “nuke ’em ’til they glow” psychopaths like Curtis LeMay even openly advocated the use of nuclear weapons there. So, as with so many other regions of the globe ‘touched’ by the US “democracy and freedom-spreading” zealots, however dysfunctional and crazypants things are in NK today, the US had a lot to do with bringing that about. Similar with Pol Pot and the murderous Red Khmer — I hope Henry Kissinger chokes on that Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize someday soon.
the meaning of natural born cuban (can00ban)…a sad article designed to make one imagine the sources described have anything to do with the subject matter…the congressional intent was for those who were away for a “short” time or due to government service should not be denied all the trappings and privileges of citizenship as if born on the mainland…not for someone who moved and was to remain outside the US by choice and in a permanent manner, including submitting to citizenship rites of a foreign entity, which includes submission to being “subject” to any royalty…
as to George Romney and his father Gaskill, they went to mexico, not to visit, but to avoid prosecution for polygamy…and only came back when forced to by the Mexican Revolution…so George Romney should not have been running for president, and was the first to attempt to test the issue…John Mac(not the Donald hero) actually had a law passed by his family in the early 20’s, iirc, to cover the problem of his having born outside the actual military base and thus outside the canal zone at that time, since his well off family wanted him to be born in a proper hospital…but Sir John of Arizona at least had a family out of the country while serving the government…
Rafi Cruz has a family who chose to leave america and go to canada…they were not visiting nor doing government service (unless my curiousity about daddy cruz and his time in dallas and new orleans in 1963 with other cubans is more than just coincidence)…and his mothers citizenship while in canada…well if she registered to vote and joined her husband in becoming a canukistani…then she took the affirmative steps to announce allegiance to a foreign sovereign…she is not covered by those who were born into a citizenship and are not required to pledge via naturalization…
but the last piece…rafi cruz (and marco rubio too) is a Cuban Citizen…and the cuban constitution does not have a process to renounce onces cuban citizenship…in the same way I have technically triple citizenship via my mothers birth outside of havana…no way I am comfortable going to cuba with the castro brothers still alive…
“Tsar Wars” may be the best headline ever, but it’s not original:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_Crest
From our “rotten floorboards” department: the South African rand (ZAR) is down nearly 5 percent overnight, after having been down as much as 10% earlier. Quote:
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/USDZAR:CUR
If the CNY (Chinese yuan) crashed that hard, markets prolly wouldn’t even open.
And J-Yel is doing what? Yes — raising rates. For the common good.
I’d be far more sympathetic to shareholders or investors had they not scooped up most of the gains that should have gone to workers over the years and cheered every time a job was sent overseas, a benefit was cut or a worker was screwed and increased the value of their stock portfolios.
I don’t see the “investment classes” contributions as “common good” much these days, although I am sure an argument could be made that at one time it was a means to help businesses expand responsibly.
Donations for the Carpetbaggering Welfare Ranchers occupying yours’ and mines’ peoples public property refuge building, ehh ?
No. Let NOTHing in. NO food. NO water. NO heat. If electricity is delivered by wire, cut it off. If there is running water, cut if off. Jam any and all WiFi and Radio/TV reception getting in there. Starve them out, freeze them out, parch them out, bore them out, dispirit them out. And also, NO reporters. Deprive them of their Drama Queen opportunities.
Await their unconditional surrender.
Re: 15 things. . . by Felix Salmon.
My understanding of Salmon is that he’s a generally smart guy. However, the 15 Things article reads like it came from a smart-ass!
Nitpicking Bernie’s campaign speeches for technical flaws on financial reforms makes Felix look small and disingenuous. Let’s see how he does after commenting on Trump’s tropes. When Bernie talks about Wall Street egregious behavior Salmon talks about “global banking” behavior; unfortunately Bernie is running for the US presidency NOT the IMF or World Bank president. (The “everybody was doing it” defense is unpersuasive, Felix.)
Felix Salmon reminds me of a 60’s truism: if you ain’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Thanks for pointing us to the old Silber piece, Lambert. Reading it every four years may become a tradition for me, if only to dream a little dream.
Silber is one of the greats!