By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
TPP/TTiP/TISA
“Opinion columns published in California newspapers over the last year in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership use language nearly identical to drafts written and distributed by public relations professionals who were retained by the Japanese government to build U.S. support for the controversial trade agreement” [The Intercept].
2016
Policy
Operative K is at it again: “As with so much else, this year’s election is crucial. A Democrat in the White House would enforce the spirit as well as the letter of [financial] reform — and would also appoint judges [Merrick Gardland *** cough *** moderate Republican *** cough ***] sympathetic to that endeavor” [Paul Krugman, New York Times]. Dear Lord, yes. The FIRE sector invested all that money in Clinton — without hope of return! — for a deeply spiritual purpose. Why, it’s almost as if they’re doing God’s work!
“The recent kerfluffle about Bernie Sanders purportedly not knowing how to bust up the big banks says far more about the threat Sanders poses to the Democratic establishment and its Wall Street wing than it does about the candidate himself” [Robert Reich, LA Progressive]. “Of course Sanders knows how to bust up the big banks. He’s already introduced legislation to do just that. And even without new legislation a president has the power under the Dodd-Frank reform act to initiate such a breakup.”
The Voters
“One answer is to talk with, not about, them. For waffling white working-class voters, we found that when we focused the conversation on issues, not personality, many working-class people were eager to hear new information and actually engage in a discussion instead of a yelling match. Connecting voters with more and better information can shift hearts and minds. We found that if we provide people with a systemic target for their economic woes and anxieties instead of focusing on “the other,” we can begin to counter bigotry” [In These Times].
“Fewer younger women have seen their prospects limited by discrimination and child-care responsibilities. Here’s what they have faced personally: being part of the generation hardest hit by the Great Recession, and seeing student debt and poor job prospects as major career obstacles” [WaPo]. In other words, people are a lot more likely to worry about identity politics when they can pay the bills.
“Show Me What Democracy Looks Like” [On the Top Step]. Running for office in Ferguson.
Money
“Chapman Cubine is being paid millions of dollars for direct marketing campaigns by the DNC, while it is also receiving millions of dollars to work on behalf of Hillary’s campaign and the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee set up between Hillary Clinton, the DNC and 33 state campaign committees. That last Committee has been raising serious questions of impropriety since Hillary has not won the Democratic Presidential primary race” [Wall Street on Parade]. The DNC is so transparent. And not in a good way.
Corruption
Watching the Democrat Establishment defending the indefensible majority opinion in Citizens United — the doctrine that anything short of an outright quid pro quo is not corruption — is both pathetic and enraging. For example:
In trying to defend Hillary Clinton, @BarneyFrank of 2016 seems to be arguing with @BarneyFrank of 2012 pic.twitter.com/u8Bp6Ij5Sk
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) April 10, 2016
Sad!
“Clinton’s family foundation has accepted millions of dollars directly from major fossil fuel companies — including from those that lobbied her State Department just before the agency approved a controversial pipeline delivering what environmentalists call one of the world’s dirtiest sources of energy. The Clinton Foundation did not respond to International Business Times’ request for comment” [David Sirota, International Business Times].
“Congresscritters spend 4 hours/day on the phone, begging for money” [Boing Boing]. Of course, the Sanders campaign shows the way out of that ethical and institutional morass. But the Democrat Establishment doesn’t want to hear it. Therefore, they like spending four hours a day on the phone sucking up to rich people, and then servicing them. It’s what they do, and who they are. (“When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite” — Frank Herbert.)
“NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio joins Hillary on list of Dems being investigated by FBI” [Bizpac Review]. How cozy!
New York
Hillary cutting the line to get into that subway car:
Hey, it’s not like that woman Clinton’s minders nudged out of the way actually had to get to work or anything.
New York’s closed primary: “In New York, about 20 percent of the state’s 11.7 million voters are unaffiliated with any party, according to Board of Elections data” [MSNBC]. “Also barred from the April 19 primary are voters registered with third parties, including the 48,000 people registered with the Working Families Party. The party endorsed Sanders and its volunteers have been working hard for the insurgent, but those registered on its line won’t be able to vote for him. Neither will the 26,000 Green Party members in the state.”
The Trail
“Sanders Supporters Call on Vermont Superdelegates to Drop Clinton” [Seven Days]. “The letter [from Rights & Democracy] specifically targets four Vermont superdelegates who have said they plan to vote for Clinton at the convention: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Gov. Peter Shumlin, former governor Howard Dean and Democratic National Committee member Billi Gosh. It notes that Sanders defeated Clinton 86.1 to 13.6 percent in the state’s Democratic primary… By Friday evening, more than 3,000 had signed.”
“After losing an embarrassing six straight primaries, including the critical states of Florida and Illinois, the upstart presidential candidate came under tremendous pressure from the party establishment to get out of the race. Party insiders called his proposals “simplistic,” pundits fretted he was too old and even a key aide admitted one goal was to show “we were not the candidate of kooks'” [Will Bunch, CNN]. “But the challenger insisted that he’d tapped into real anger among the ignored rank-and-file voters who wanted him to fight all the way to the party convention in July. … And so, in the spring of 1976, Ronald Reagan pressed on.” He got you, didn’t he? Ha.
“The Best from ‘Mad Dog Mattis'” [Free Beacon]. Still wondering if Mattis is Rove’s “fresh face.” Not that I don’t think highly of Rove’s existing face, you understand.
Clinton Email Hairball
“Obama on Hillary Clinton’s emails: ‘There’s classified and then there’s classified.’ How does that work?” [WaPo]. We already know how that works. If you’re a whistleblower like Thomas Drake, you go to jail. If you’re an elite member of the political class you have impunity, and so you don’t. Nice to see Obama standing between Clinton and the pitchforks, though.
Stats Watch
No interesting stats today, at least to Econoday.
Short Uber?
Just witnessed @Uber driver literally peeing in a cup and flinging it out window in city streets. Ridiculous
— Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) April 11, 2016
“The economic calendar is moderate. Once again, the Fed participants will be out in force. More importantly, earnings reports begin with Alcoa on Monday and the big banks late in the week. This season might be the most important in recent years. Economic reports reflect only modest growth. The Q1 GDP estimate is plunging” [Econintersect]. “For equity investors, nothing is more important than earnings and future earnings potential.”
“February 2015 Philly Fed Coincident Index Rate of Year-over-Year Growth Trend Unchanged” [Econintersect]. There’s also a handy map of state coincident indexes. Rust belt and New York between 0.6% and 1.0%.
Wholesale trade (April 8, 2016): “Here we go- the inventory liquidation looks to be underway in earnest” [Mosler Economics]. “Again, sales also fell, so the inventory to sales ratio remains at a still very high 1.36%.Look for more downward revisions to Q1 GDP.”
“Assets invested in ETFs/ETPs listed globally have broken through the 3 trillion US dollars milestone for the second time at the end of Q1 2016, according to ETFGI” [ETFGI]. “ETFGI [sic] the leading independent research and consultancy firm on trends in the global ETF/ETP ecosystem.” Ugh. “Ecosystem.” Another horrid cliché, in the “innovation” bucket.
“Prada SpA reported its lowest profit in five years on ebbing demand in Asia and said it’s impossible to make any forecast this year” [The Fashion Law].
Shipping: “The red carpet was rolled out in Greece over the weekend as one of the nation’s most important foreign investors touched down to seal a huge port deal while promising further maritime investment in the Mediterranean country” [Splash247]. “Xu Lirong, chairman of China Cosco Shipping, came to Athens on Friday to officially sign for the takeover of Pireaus port. China Cosco is paying EUR280.5m to take the port private with an initial 51% stake. The company will pay another EUR88m within five years to increase its stake by a further 16%.” One European terminus of the Silk Road, and at a bargain basement price. Thanks, Wolfgang!
Shipping: “Today, Piraeus could again be a lifeline for Greece, helping attract billions in foreign investment and turning a backwater into a global hub” [Foreign Policy]. “COSCO is reportedly interested in snapping up the Greek railway system, which is also set to be privatized. Doing so could transform the Port of Piraeus into a key corridor linking Germany, Central Europe, the Indian Ocean, and China, [said said Frans-Paul van der Putten, a China expert at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations].”
“American Cities Are Nowhere Near Ready for Self-Driving Cars” [Wired]. No duh!
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 69, Greed (previous close: 68, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 75 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 11 at 11:27am. No Stormy Monday this time!
#NuitDebout
“Violent scenes break out in France as tens of thousands protest controversial labour reform” [Independent]. Well, of course. The tight focus shot of a black clad young man with a background of smoke and/or flame is such a cliche. “Scenes,” indeed; as in spectacle.
“Police evacuate protesters from Paris square following riots” [Guardian]. It will be interesting to see if #NuitDebout leaps the Atlantic to Montreal. I’ve seen rumors of a Facebook page, but no reports of events.
” «Nuit Debout» : citizens are back in the squares in Paris” [Open Democracy]. “[T]he movement in France is not casual at all. Since late February, all the ingredients have been united for the emergence of a movement similar to the Spanish ‘indignados movement’ and the ‘Occupy’ in 2011.”
“Podemos isn’t necessarily a role model that many want to follow. Nuit debout is founded on participation and the rejection of representation. By entering party politics, Podemos became part of the establishment that the Indignados and Nuit Debout are reacting against” [Independent].
#PanamaPapers
“[F]or many, the Panama Papers are reminiscent of a broader phenomenon that played out in the run-up and the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis: The perception of a system run and managed by a political establishment that serves the rich and connected and fails to hold these elites accountable for the damage they cause to the rest of society. There is still notable residual resentment that very few bankers were brought to justice for their role in a financial debacle that caused significant misery and almost tipped the world into a devastating multiyear depression” [Mohamed A. El-Erian, Bloomberg]. WTF do you mean, “almost”? One unintended side effect: “There will be even less appetite to govern from the bipartisan political center, thus making it more difficult to secure sufficient buy-in for pro-growth structural reforms, better demand management and more timely solutions for excessively high levels of over-indebtedness.” What a shame, given the operational definition of “pro-growth structural reforms” (like passing TPP, a Grand Bargain, and so forth).
“Iceland’s Pirate Party ready to board ship of state” [France24]. “Recent public opinion polls have shown the party with 43 percent of voter support, with many Icelanders furious to discover that hundreds of their rich and powerful countrymen were named in the so-called Panama Papers leak which exposed hidden offshore dealings around the world.”
Dear Old Blighty
“Thousands of protesters storm Downing Street calling on David Cameron to quit amid Panama Papers row” [Telegraph]. The Tories are very efficient at stabbing their leaders in the back and heaving them over the side if need be. If Cameron were in serious trouble with his party, I’d expect to see leaks in the press from his rivals, sticking the shiv in. Have I missed them?
And a historical note:
Dennis Skinner is a legend. #ResignDavidCameron pic.twitter.com/bMV70aIDeU
— Sean O' Donovan (@henriksen1) April 9, 2016
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“When black neighborhoods are compared with white neighborhoods of similar income levels, you see similar rates of crime. The fallacy of comparing white neighborhoods with black neighborhoods is in lumping together together wealthy and upper-middle-class neighborhoods (categories that not many black folks are in) with middle- and low-income ones. But that’s not how the world works. Poor white people in Memphis aren’t kicking it with rich ones in Bel Air” [(The excellent) Boots Riley (remembered from Occupy Oakland), Guardian]. “Yet the myth of black-on-black crime has enormous staying power.”
“Police used punches, knee strikes, elbow strikes, slaps, wrist twists, baton blows and Tasers at Homan Square, according to documents released to the Guardian in the course of its transparency lawsuit about the warehouse. The new information contradicts an official denial about treatment of prisoners at the facility” [Guardian]. Sure is odd the Guardian is pursuing this story, instead of the local Chicago press. And this is on Rahm’s watch. Maybe somebody should ask Clinton about this? Given that Rahm is the quintessential Democrat Establishment figure?
Water
“Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences” [Reveal]. “Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.” Maybe I should have filed this under The Jackpot…
“Following Monday’s announcement that Chicago is preparing a water testing program to determine whether the city’s pipes are partly responsible for problems with lead poisoning, Water Management commissioner Tom Powers has announced his resignation” [The Chicagoist]. “Powers has so far served as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s sole Water Management commissioner, and he will be replaced by Barrett Murphy—a deputy who has worked for the city since his appointment by former Mayor Richard M. Daley.” Maybe somebody should ask Clinton about this, too?
The Jackpot
“Researchers fly over 8,000 well pads and find hundreds of methane leaks” [Public Source].
Imperial Collapse Watch
“Ancient Rome’s Donald Trump” [Project Syndicate]. No spoilers!
“What Rome Can Teach Us Today” [Foreign Affairs]. A review of Mary Beard’s SPQR. “SPQR is a translation of Roman history into the English of today—into the phrases and patterns of thought that we absorb from mass media and that bring order and meaning to our lives—and Beard’s genius is in using this idiom alone, rather than outright comparison, to suggest ancient parallels with the politics and controversies of the twenty-first century.”
“According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ recently completed Lincoln Project report, between 2008 and 2013 states reduced financial support to top public research universities by close to 30 percent. At the same time, these states increased support of prisons by more than 130 percent” [The Atlantic].
Class Warfare
“Poor New Yorkers Tend to Live Longer Than Other Poor Americans” [New York Times]. And why?
research found that New York was, in many ways, a model city for factors that seem to predict where poor people live longer. It is a wealthy, highly educated city with a high tax base. The local government spends a lot on social services for low-income residents. It has low rates of smoking and has many immigrants, who tend to be healthier than native-born Americans.
Goddamn Communists. If we could clean them out, we could kill a lot more working people!
“Treating workers as if they are widgets to be used up and discarded is a central part of the revised relationship between employers and employees that techies proclaim is an innovation as important as chips and software. The model originated in Silicon Valley, but it’s spreading” [New York Times]. Read the story for the language. It’s absolutely vile.
“University of Chicago Medicine didn’t want an adult trauma center. What caused its change of heart? In part one of our two-part series, we examine how activists and their allies upped the pressure on the prestigious university health system” [Crains Business Review]. Surely an amazing source for an article with this theme?
“As we argue in our forthcoming book, the neo-liberal narrative of a diminishing state is a myth. The capacity of the currency-issuing, legislating state is well understood by the neo-liberals and, while they have publicly declared the state to be irrelevant in the globalised world, the reality is different, they have actively co-opted the state to advance their own ends at the expense of the rest of us” [Bill Mitchell].
News of the Wired
“Software is too important to be mediocre” [Seth Godin].
“How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell” [Fusion]. Watch those defaults…
This is defiantly retro and could be fun [HTML etext]. Only works in Chrome, for me.
“One Artist Holds the Exclusive Rights in This Shade of Black” [The Fashion Law]. And not Frank Stella.
“Swearing, it seems, can be creative, smart, and even downright lyrical. This should also open our eyes to the unique subfield of research that spends its time deconstructing the many and varied ways in which, and reasons why, we swear” [Scientific American].
Readers seemed enjoy funk from Bernie Worrell, so here’s James Brown’s Escape-ism:
(One of the more amazing transitions in popular — vernacular? — music at 2:38. And here, unbelievably, are the lyrics, with exegesis.) This should get you going after your coffee break!
Readers, I still need to fix my fershuggeneh contact form! Hopefully noting that fact publicly will serve a lash and a spur to my endeavors. (Meanwhile, thanks to readers, who already have my email address, who sent in images of plants!)
See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (Kokuanani):
Kokuanani writes: “As one of my friends noted: ‘What the heck, April?!!'”
Readers, Water Cooler will not exist without your regular support. Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. If you enjoy what you’re reading, please click the hat!
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“Chapman Cubine is being paid millions of dollars for direct marketing campaigns by the DNC, while it is also receiving millions of dollars to work on behalf of Hillary’s campaign.”
From now on, we’ll call them “Chapman Concubine.”
Slogan: “Putting the ‘Con’ in Concubine!”
‘Fledgling Bene Gesserit Witch’ ??
Cubine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles?
In related news, ActBlue, the PAC that facilitates all Dem candidate donations including Bernie’s, charges a 3.95% fee on every donation (according to ActBlue FAQ). So for example, February 2016 Bernie raised $40M. Actblue took $1.6M of that.
The PAC does say it donates to Dem campaigns (somehow). But I checked their website and could not find anything about where the money is going this year.
Ok, so call me Tinfoil Foobar, but should it really cost Bernie $1M a month to transfer web donations to his account?
A lot of that, maybe all, is legitimate processing fees. Paypal charges 3.5%.
what do you mean ‘legitimate’? it’s a toll.
There are fees associated with credit cards. If you don’t like them, send check or cash.
I doubt actblue has as much pull as paypal to get rates as low as they can, plus they have to do extra verification to make sure political donations are legally allowed.
Maria Bartoromo: Just witnessed @Uber driver literally peeing in a cup and flinging it out window in city streets.
Then he got upset and yelled at me to sit down and stop peering over his backrest.
Maria Bartoromo doesn’t pay for a *real* taxi? Noted!
She may well pay more than cab prices if she takes Uber during surge times. And she would consider it worth it too, because Uber is cool, groovy, hip and with it. The cab is just soooo square.
Only maybe now she is thinking that Uber is not all that crazy sexy cool if Uber drivers fling pee out the window. I mean, what next? Fling poo too? If the Uber driver can then get away fast enough to not be caught or even phone-cammed?
I hope you are going to comment at some point on Obama’s extraordinary intervention yesterday, during his Fox News interview, in the Clinton email investigation.
I agree the remark was stunning, but that actually having a classified material handled improperly harm national security is not the legal standard. The standard is merely handling it improperly. Very high level government officials have gone to jail for that.
None from the aristocracy though.
Right, so you got the prez saying Hill is above the law. She laughs like a hyena when reporters raise the possibility she might be indicted. And then she’s puzzled that she has low favorability ratings.
Nice summary.
It looks to me like she’s goading the FBI. If they fail to do something about Hillary, for whatever reason, in particular the FBI’s reputation is going down the toilet and in general the US will have hit a new benchmark on its transition into a third world banana republic.
not just the FBI, but the entire ‘just US’ dept. as well !!!!!
Hey Maria B….you shoulda stepped closer……
I think that perhaps he just missed his target!
Does that service come extra?
In that Hillary video — “Girl Pushes Button” — what button?? There’s no button on NYC subway car doors…
did anyone notice the gom jabbar that the hellery had up her sleeve?
Ha! Double Ha! That so made me chuckle.
I can entirely picture Hillary behaving in the same way as Siân Phillips’ portrayal of The Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in the incomparable David Lynch film of Dune.
I didn’t think much of the captions. But it’s not in the visual, and the woman does get pushed aside.
Regarding the coming water crisis: The Bush family credo is, Never let an impending apocalypse get in the way of a good investment.
http://agorafinancial.com/2015/04/24/why-did-george-bush-buy-nearly-300000-acres-in-paraguay/
When I first saw that in a documentary, my first reaction is, luckily, we have a strong military to protect all our investments overseas, especially if there is some sort of global resource crisis.
Wonkette did a story about the Bush Paraguay land purchase back in ’06 — apparently the Rev Moon bought an adjacent plot —
http://wonkette.com/208549/we-hate-to-bring-up-the-nazis-but-they-fled-to-south-america-too
God bless Ken Layne
Hmm, isn’t that the definition of prostitution?
The ladies and gentlemen of negotiable affection of my acquaintance would not spend four hours per day on the phone. The services become fairly routine for regulars and since the services recur, ‘cold calls’ and begging calls are not required. In fact, an experienced sex worker will sell her/his “book” to a newcomer, first payment goes to the original “owner”. When the newbie has turned over a one-time and one-“date” payment for each of the names, that book is hers/his.
This is much better use of a hetera’s time, and that of her/his clients as well. Politics appears to be different.
The Augmented Human Being
There are now people walking around who are genetically modified: There are some that are resistant to AIDS because they have had their T cells, or more generally, their blood cells modified. There are children that have been cured of blindness by gene therapy. None of this is CRISPR, but it’s in the same vein. CRISPR is overtaking it very quickly and it’s drafting behind all the beautiful work that’s been done with delivery of DNA, delivery of genetic components to patients.
GEORGE CHURCH is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Personal Genome Project.
http://is.gd/qmLoKU
…but nothing could possibly go wrong …
If you read the article, you might actually be at risk of finding out some of what could go wrong and what’s going wrong now that these immensely powerful technologies could transform.
Of course, that would require actual intellectual effort. So much easier to recite a cliche and relieve yourself from making the least effort to understand.
You’ll then be dumbfounded and uncomprehending over your life’s remaining years as these technologies transform the world.
“There are some that are resistant to AIDS because they have had their T cells, or more generally, their blood cells modified.”
Really? Who are these people? Why is this not bigger news? When will it be available on the NHS, because it will probably be cheaper than the annual treatment bill?
Yes, inevitably. They exercise more because they have to walk. Other poor Americans drive everywhere.
Cars increase obesity.
Yeah, but a New York minute is faster (or shorter) than your average American minute.
Projected over a life time, 70 New York years is also shorter as well.
But if you walk fast, time slows down.
Translated: If you walk fast, you can visit, say, 5 deli shops in ten minutes, while an out-of-towner would only get to 3 deli shops. So, by walking fast, and talking fast, like a New Yorker, you get more out of life (of the same span) – it’s like to get more time to do the same amount of activities. In that sense, you live longer.
Sorry, didn’t see this. Repeated it below.
Not really. the goods have to be transported from Pireaus to Trieste to reach all of Europe.
At least they haven’t taken over the Suez Canal…yet.
Will the Sun never set on the Middle Kingdom in the future?
China’s trying to buy it’s way into getting rail links, etc; but Xi J.P. is a rather arrogant and ignorant ass along the lines of a Mao, surrounded by yes men in his personal staff. Cosco did the purchase to suck up to Xi, but they’ll probably live to regret it, as I can’t see North Europe’s governments spending to cut their own throats and China doesn’t have the cash.
http://www.ejinsight.com/20160412-getting-lost-one-belt-one-road/
James Brown reminds me an enigmatic phenomenon from my high school days in San Jose, CA. The group best described as greasers loved black music, and most particularly James Brown, and at the same time absolutely despised most white groups such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys. But they were also virulently racist. I never got up the courage to explore the subject with them. Any thoughts?
To clarify: I used the term “greasers” not in the racist sense as when it is applied to Mexicans but to refer to a white, working class 1950s and ’60s subculture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greaser_%28subculture%29
I wonder if this is the group of “tough kids” who I remember as being called “hoods”.
I once attended a John Mellencamp concert in which he recounted a vignette from when he was starting out, and the band he was playing with had a gig in (IIRC) Kansas City. He particularly recalled one of the band members, who was a gifted musician (I don’t remember the instrument) and happened to be black, was forced to take his breaks outside the bar because they “didn’t serve those kind of people”. He related his incredulity that the bar patrons loved this guy when he was on stage, but didn’t think it was ok for him to chill with them when he wasn’t.
I also recently read Jefferson Cowie’s superb Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. Cowie opens the book with the story Dewie Burton, who in 1972 was a 26 year old autoworker at Ford’s Wixom plant. Burton was intelligent and articulate -over the course of the decade the New York Times would feature him a half dozen articles that sought to interpret working class anger and angst to its firmly middle class professional readership- and in the inaugural article he discusses his decision to support George Wallace in 1972. Liberals today mainly understand Wallace as the segregationist monster who tried to resist the arc of the moral universe. There was another side to Wallace however, one which liberals have found convenient to forget: like Donald Trump today Wallace intuitively grasped the nature of working class angst and ably capitalized on it. Dewie was specifically motivated to support him because of his opposition to school busing. He was careful to articulate that he had nothing against people of colour, and welcomed them as co workers and neighbors, but he and his wife, like a great many Americans, had specifically chosen to purchase a home in a certain community in part because it offered access to quality schools for their children, and busing completely defeated that rationale, as well as lowering the value of their principle asset (by negating proximity to quality schools as factor in evaluating property value). Needless to say this consideration didn’t impinge on the comfortable upper middle class who both strongly supported busing and also could afford to send their children to private schools. Was Dewey a racist? You decide.
So I think the lesson is this: racism is actually a lot more nuanced and complex phenomenon than most people want to acknowledge. So much easier to pigeonhole people in boxes and be done with it.
I’m glad to see that Obama has exonerated HRC, she was just “careless”.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I quite frankly don’t understand why anyone would want a “careless” President.
Isn’t judgment supposed to be part of the job?
This person is going to be literally responsible for hundreds of thousands of lives in our military. Careless shouldn’t be an option.
The fix is in:
We need to denounce in advance this sham election, fixed by the crooked Clintons and steeped in the sewage of their ethical pollution.
This election is being stolen right in front of our eyes. When push comes to shove, the crooked elite casually jettison even the flimsy illusion of propriety.
^^^ This ^^^. Oh and Hillary’s concern for women, wasn’t always.. viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2016/04/hillary-clinton-children-and-law.html
put
http://
in front of the link
my attempts to thwart skynet trigger
Dem primary is a joke.
1. VP Biden just said he’d like to see a woman become president.
2. Wyoming primary was 55.x for Bernie and 44.y for Hillary and he gets 7 delegates and she gets 11.
The day after I vote in the CT primary (2 weeks) I’m becoming an unaffiliated voter. Frankly this time the Republicans (as odious as they are) are being more ‘democratic’ than the democrats.
Today the R party is trial-ballooning their plan to nominate Paul Ryan on the front page of the NYT.
And they’ve got plenty more ringers on the same farm team he came from.
@hreik, I can relate.
The day after the botched AZ primary, I returned to Indie status. I’d been an Indie since 1992, but switched to the Dems so I could vote for Bernie.
Buh-bye, Democrats. I’m done with you.
Personally, I thought hijacking the Democratic Party was a long shot. Yes, making another party and then nationally making it viable is going to be hard work.
However, it isn’t going to be any easier to force the Democratic Party to recognize the majority of us that want representation and don’t think we should have to pull out our wallets to get it.
Considering all the discriminatory laws against Third Party formation and entrenchment, and considering the inertial loyalty of many Dvoters to the Dparty, it may not be any harder to conquer the Dparty from below and within, either.
It wasn’t easy for the Teavangelicals and the hard conservatives to conquer the Rparty from within, but they stuck with it and got it done. The Dparty has all kinds of lucrative assets and defensible fortifications of use to a Newer New Deal movement if such a movement can conquer the Dparty and secure it and wipe out all resistance and all “left behinds” within its structures. It is the work of decades, to be sure.
Actually you are witnessing all the ways the inner party can screw over their activists whether it be by denying primary candidates access to voter roles or “superdelegates” putting their fingers on the scale, they’ve rigged the system for you and I to fail.
At least with something like the Green Party you would not be facing that. You wouldn’t have a power structure resisting change because there really isn’t a power structure there. Now you just need to get those who saw this cycle how rigged the Democratic Party has made things to jettison it and work just as hard to get a third party on the ballot. The best thing to do with the Democratic Party is to make it as irrelevant as it chose to make voters.
It might be more rational for leftists to hijack the Republican party. Not for any ideological reasons but just because they are in the worse shape (total disarray), and thus in the best condition to be taken over at this point.
I’m not touching that big ball of crazy. The Tea Party can figure out their own game plan.
RE: Sanders doesn’t know how to break up the big banks. Isn’t that what Bill Black is for?
RE: quid pro quo corruption. It used to be that just the “appearance of corruption” was enough. If it looks shady, better not do it. How this ever changed is beyond me. Surely it doesn’t have anything to do with quid pro quo corruption.
#HillarySoDown She is channeling Joe Biden.
Univ chicago medici/crains business…it is crains 100 yr anniversary…they did a front page hatchet job on me back in the day…but the “prominent” bankruptcy atty who lied to them and placed the article ends up with 19 months in klubfed (did I mention I dont play nice…evil little clowns like him almost always have dust bunnies under the rug)…although his kid gets to keep playing in the bk biz…crains is not a vanity local biz press and…well I wish they would make their pension & investments archives available on some cd for less than the 1600 bux for a subscription…decades of insider deals with govt and private companies industry pensions.
maybe a special anniversary archives dvd like mother earth news has ?
interesting please comment in the future
Sharkeys machine…during the s&l crisis I got options to take two larger older office buildings out of involuntary 7’s…one you may have seen…the burt reynolds rachel ward flick where he drives a car off the garage complex into the chicago river…bumped heads with politcal hacks who had bought the delinquent taxes and were not keen on someone actually stepping in and restructuring the loans since they had apparently arranged(I was told later) for the lender to magically just let the property “go” for the real estate taxes owed…vrdoliac crew…
Smash the mafia elite: we should treat offshore wealth as terrorist finance
http://tinyurl.com/o2eshrd
An ode to the art of swearing….
Can you Stop this Man from Swearing?
http://tinyurl.com/pkj5gba
lambert, the term is Democratic not Democrat. I HATE Republican talking points.
When the the red-baiting stops, the -“ic” goes back. And while we’re at it, the superdelegates, the voting shenanigains, the debate calendar…
I know the history, but these guys need to earn their name.
Since the Democrat-ick party doesn’t like democracy perhaps it should just be known as the -ic party.
No. DWS and her ilk have named their Kewl Kids Klub the New Democrat Coalition.
Until those responsible are disempowered, they deserve the disrespect.
They’ve earned it.
I independently arrived at the same formulation as that about which you are complaining to Lambert. They lost their goddamned right to be pissy about this due to their years of applied treachery toward the interests of those whom they purport to represent, and whose support they have done absolutely nothing to merit. To my mind and experience, they have little to no genuine interest in democratic behavior, and thus have forfeited the right to the name “Democratic”. It’s their club, and we ain’t in it. They won’t secure voting rights, they won’t secure the integrity of the election process, and the very notion that their own Superdelegate-compromised primary process is “democratic” is risible. They can just get off of their damned high horse.
If ever the “ick” factor I associate with that cabal (I hesitate to say party, as that might connote an organization that actually gives a flying fuck about those who wish that it did have some recognizable interest in representing their views), is substantially reduced, then perhaps the “-ic” might once again have a place in conjunction with “Democrat”. Until such time, no dice for me, a registered Democrat for 45 of my 63 years.
Then vote for your favorite Republican, urh, sorry, Partay of Crazy, Hillary.
The democratic party died. It’s now the democrat party of more correctly the Surrender Monkeys.
Team Blue is a vile cesspool. “Surrender” suggests they have good intentions.
Re: Cameron
Cameron has already announced he’ll quit before his term is up so it’s not worth any of the heirs apparent incurring collateral damage inherent in being seen to be welding the knife.
Just as well because otherwise the power-hungry wannabe successors would definitely be trying to stitch him up.
(and P.S. — Dennis Skinner link — kudos for including it! An utterly incorruptible class warrior for the Working Class for nearly 70 years. He remembers that last time our corporate overlords had free reign and what they were capable of and, like me, being a Yorkshireman, knows how to hold a grudge; fortunately it’s a valid grudge against a legitimate set of transgressors)
Dennis Skinner calls Cameron “Dodgy Dave”. I watched this on the morning news & had a good laugh.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dennis-skinner-ejected-commons-after-7734075
Look at the vote tally at the bottom of the article.
Yikes:
Watching this is one of those times when I think “is this real life?”
I mean seriously.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3890946/ns/us_news-life/t/clinton-regrets-gandhi-joke/
The real Hillary.
At 8:15 she does a great “Neil Diamond getting the crowd at Summerfest to cheer louder for Heartlight” impression.
Now I know why everyone thinks NYC is a cool place. I think. Our mayor never does rap.
BTW, what was up with the Colonial threads on the black gentlemen? Does Hillary travel with her House Negro now?
LOL!
For some reason I thought I liked De Blasio. And well, what the hell was with the man dressed up as a not pc lawn ornament, sans lantern?
And what the hell, Hillary is morphing into Liberace, minus a few rings and broaches. I wonder if she can play the piano? Maybe she can get a gig in Vegas if this election thing doesn’t work out.
This video should come with a warning but I’m not sure what it could be.
Eeeeeeoooooooo, that was awful.
Uh it’s a skit, that’s why he’s dressed up. It’s supposed to be some kind of comedy. But really it is. It just raises the question of whether it’s still bad taste if it’s comedy mocking bad taste?
I don’t know. One too many levels of self-mocking going on here.
So he is dressed as a lawn ornament?
I think it’s supposed to not be a r-ist joke but a joke mocking a r-ist joke. This is not a pipe. Too clever by far. And people wonder why people like candidates who seem to speak straight to them, not meta levels of “I am not a r-ist”
It’s no different than family guy garbage. Let’s not excuse it or the myriad of campaign staff who approved this. This is how these people behave when they aren’t being watched, and their policies support this behavior.
Hard to say what if anything was rehearsed, Hillary didn’t seem to approve at all, but whether that was rehearsed …
Skits are approved by both camps. Hillary didn’t approve of the reaction from the crowd.
Hello, that is Leslie Odom Jr, who plays Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical Hamilton. He is probably wearing his Aaron Burr duds, and I presume that A Burr was a Clinton supporter. Or something.
But maybe this is just a gig — dunno.
“I presume that A Burr was a Clinton supporter”
-George Clinton perhaps.
That would be 18th C. George Cllinton, VP & gov of NY not George Clinton of p-funk funkadelic fame… oh well, who knows?
#ColoredPeopleTime is now a thing on Twitter — and none of it positive for HRC.
Honestly, she is the 3AM phone call candidate and oh-so-qualified but she keeps being “careless” with national security secrets, she raises less (real) money than a 74 y.o. socialist Jew from Vermont, and her campaign staff lets her participate in this kind of shit?
She really is clueless… in some pathological way. Just as when she pulled the sniper fire routine. There is really something scary about the idea of her as POTUS. And what’s with that gold outfit… Queen Hillary?
Re: “Opinion columns published in California newspapers…”
There seems to be an expectation held by a dwindling number of Americans that the media reports the unbiased truth. But the media produces products that are designed to generate revenue for their parent corporations. Just look at the advertisers on the Sunday morning political shows, for example.
Hey, a shout-out to Boots Riley! He formed what is probably my favorite communist hip hop group.
Number one in a field of two. Remember Consolidated?
The original title of that piece (which is great) was Guns Don’t Kill People, Capitalism Kills People.
He makes some very good points that I think everyone at NC would probably agree with. But then he goes someplace that I think might give a lot of people pause (it’s definitely never a way I’ve considered this issue before):
Ah, my fave is We Got the Guillotine.
NY might allow open primary. Although, I doubt it would pass soon enough to matter even of it does.
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2015/a9661/amendment/original
Assembly Bill A9661
2015-2016 Legislative Session
Permits persons registered to vote, but not enrolled in a party, to vote in the presidential primary
Considering the STATE and not the political parties cover the cost of these elections every single American eligible to vote should be entitled to vote in the primary of their choice.
Independants shouldn’t have to pay for the political parties little soirees otherwise. The parties should be required to pay for it themselves if they want it to be closed to anyone other than “their people.”
I’d go a step further and say everyone should be able to vote in all the primaries they want to. What public good is served by only being allowed to vote in one of them?
The lord-liege relationship is still a public good, in some light.
Signed. I hope this gets a huge response.
I’m a registered D, just for voting against the worst DLC types. But I am disgusted with the party and will never ever vote for Hellary.
Me too.
Everybody knows 139 mil speech payments are for past services rendered plus future protection from jail terms, no matter how richly deserved. Who will be shocked if the bribes, Er payments, dry up if/when she loses?
And arrogance is truly arrogant when there is no effort to disguise it:
I can take bank bribes and then run for pres because of who I am… If you don’t like it, tough, there’ll be plenty proles that know it’s my turn.
I can ignore security laws and sell state favors to foreign governments thru my private server (I just told you why.)
I came, I saw, he died… And who gives a F about the people that have to live there now, people that used to have a good, safe life, women were educated, etc, granted no democracy… Actually, exactly the same initial conditions and outcome as Iraq. Hugoodanode? What good is experience if you learn nothing from it?
How about, I came, I saw, I broke it, too bad? Repeat.
People voting for her are accepting this evermore corrupt status quo.
If she’s elected we deserve the more of the same that we’ll get.
The money didn’t come in until after Kerry lost. The CGI was started in early 2005. Those are investments.
Exactly.
The big banks wouldn’t pay out anything for past services if they thought they could get away with it.
The big sums they’ve paid to the Clintons are incentives for future politicians.
Example number one: Obama’s last 7 years.
~
It will be amusing to watch Obama try to raise money as he hasn’t produced an Obama Democrat class to rally around him.
It’s just like pro sports. You don’t get paid for past success.
Don’t forget Chelsea is waiting in the wings.
“And though no laws were broken in most cases, the documents will feed the perception that the privileged are allowed to play by different rules.”
News flash: The Rich are Different. They have more money to do things like this. Coupled with inequality and the bare fact that “the 99%” won’t ever, even in their grandchildrens’ lifetimes, be able to stash a wad offshore for whatever reason, and ergo, it isn’t a “perception” – it’s a reality. He’s also correct that the “bipartisan center” is going to get the short shrift in the upcoming years, but really, isn’t that just another term for the Money Party?
Nuit-Debout: On the glide-path to Trudeau International Airport, Montreal, as we speak:
https://www.facebook.com/Nuit-Debout-Montr%C3%A9al-1263894720291898/?fref=ts
Endorsed by the Council of Canadians, a progressive good government group:
http://canadians.org/blog/nuit-debout-inspires-protests-across-europe
:-) from Toronto. Anybody need a place to stay?
Robert Reich was OH-so-close when he penned:
“about the threat Sanders poses to the Democratic establishment and its Wall Street wing”
A slight correction may be more appropriate.
” about the threat Sanders poses to the Wall Street establishment and its Democratic wing”
The 1% hide their money offshore – then use it to corrupt our democracy | Aditya Chakrabortty
Because at root, the Panama Papers are not about tax. They’re not even about money. What the Panama Papers really depict is the corruption of our democracy.
Following on from LuxLeaks, the Panama Papers confirm that the super-rich have effectively exited the economic system the rest of us have to live in. Thirty years of runaway incomes for those at the top, and the full armoury of expensive financial sophistication, mean they no longer play by the same rules the rest of us have to follow. Tax havens are simply one reflection of that reality. Discussion of offshore centres can get bogged down in technicalities, but the best definition I’ve found comes from expert Nicholas Shaxson who sums them up as: “You take your money elsewhere, to another country, in order to escape the rules and laws of the society in which you operate.” In so doing, you rob your own society of cash for hospitals, schools, roads…
To flesh out the corrosion of democracy that is happening, you need to go to a Berlin-born economist called Albert Hirschman, a giant in modern economic thinking. Hirschman died in 2012 at the age of 97, but it’s his concepts that really set in context what’s so disturbing about the Panama Papers.
Hirschman argued that citizens could protest against a system in one of two ways: voice or exit. Fed up with your local school? Then you can exercise your voice and take it up with the headteacher. Alternatively, you can exit and take your child to a private school.
In Britain and in America, the super-rich have broken Hirschman’s law – they are at one and the same time exercising economic exit and political voice. They can have their tax-free cake and eat it.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/commentisfree/2016/apr/10/money-offshore-corrupt-democracy-
political-influence?
I know at least one country, Canada, for self-imposed exile.
(Many other possibilities, in the middle of compiling a list).
+1
Wow Bernie AND Bernie! I ingest all the content I can here, but a shout-out for Bernie W. makes my day. i finally got to meet him a few months back which was a thrill. Some of those 70s P-Funk tunes are just him on various keyboards with vocalists and a drummer. He’s seriously unknown except to music freaks.
Plus James Brown and Bill Black, two great soul artists…
Typical “techno-narcissism”, as Kunstler would say. The cars simply aren’t good enough for real streets, not the other way around. Forecast: the day that a majority of cars are programmed to automatically stop for obstacles is the day that pedestrians take back our streets… Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
The existential threat to the driverless car future.
My laconic ham sandwich eater standing in front of the autonomous vehicle., Silently but methodically chewing slowly, just enough for the 3D vision system algorithm to assess sentience, freezing up the routing algorithm as it furiously try’s to process theexpected trip delay as the rate of sandwich volume reduction is calculated and recalculated.
Sometimes it the simplest problems that are most insoluble.
. http://search.thedrive.com/?site=thedrive&q=Self-Driving Cars
The WaPo’s Fact Chucker is trying to carry a lot of water for Hillary.
~
Yeah, I’d like to take a few of those Pinocchios and “get medieval” on the fact checker.
‘There’s classified and then there’s classified.’
What a [glass bowl].
A quick query as I have been hunting around for a definitive on this. Has the FBI finished it’s investigation of what is likely a criminal probe of Hillary and her emails? as that is a current trending statement and I am having difficulty finding anything to back it up. I have found a recent vice piece stating that the FBI has refused to clarify what the scope of their investigation is but outside of that, trying to figure out the root of where this is trending from.
No. The FBI instructed the State Department of halt State’s internal probe almost two weeks ago. It was a Friday night news dump. The FBI investigation is ongoing.
Thank you
Just like exposing Hilary on Libya was a misdirection exercise about Benghazi, the real Libya story was much much bigger but it got encapsulated into the Benghazi stuff, a tiny package you could put a bow on.
So Hilary’s colossal corruption has been “micro-sized” to be about a few emails…once that’s gone it’s clear sailing.
Only thing I can see is that they are defining it incorrectly as fundamentally different then it was before as much less potentially severe and general, not specific to Hillary, probe. I don’t see any indication that the scope has changed, just that the usage of the potentially criminal element has been dropped and put aside by the source of this.
Details of the CPD’s secret prison at Homan Square [Guardian]
The poor taxpayers of Chicago will be paying off the lawsuits long after Rahm has moved on to greener pa$ture$.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/08/source-no-coincidence-romanian-hacker-guccifer-extradited-amid-clinton-probe.html
Just going to drop this thing here…
The New York Post says not to vote for Bernie because he’s anti Semitic:
http://nypost.com/2016/04/10/if-youre-jewish-dont-vote-for-bernie-sanders/
Money quote:
Well, I was wrong. Even being Jewish by birth is no protection for Sanders against being slimed as antisemitic for daring to suggest that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need to get some benefit from a peace deal.
That’s what he gets for not interrupting his campaign out west to attend the AIPAC klan rally!
Hillary is the bestest Black Jew since Sammy Davis Jr. !
One more theory for birthers:
Could he have been adopted at birth, after being smuggled into this country from, I don’t know, say, planet Mars?
un.ucking believable. I say this as a Jew.
Peyser is a troll and a shanda. Pay her no mind!
Color me not surprised. Anyone – I mean anyone – who does not declare absolute fealty to Israel is considered de facto anti-Semitic. No matter what. That’s the level this is at. So sick of it. Bogus.
Bernie’s grandparents were Holocaust victims.
I wouldn’t even wipe my ass with the NY Post.
I use the WSJ for that.
No shit.
Well, thank goodness for that!!… ;-)
One driver , one cup? yawn
IIRC part of a Class C drivers exam to peeing in a two liter bottle and flinging it out to the shoulder so its not a traffic hazard.
At least she had a diversion while waiting to cross the street.
(statement: [ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QXuvW7mm4q-yZ7JwZ65GWs4SpnnYZE-aIyTUwr4pqLg/edit?usp=sharing ]) “I couldn’t help but think . . . if you are. . . [supporting the right to water globally] outside your borders, can’t you do it at the same time in tandem so nobody falls through the cracks? . . . It just hit me, because I literally cannot understand the most powerful country in the world having these kind of stories about the lack of clean, potable water and sanitation, it really blows my mind quite frankly… if you ignore your most vulnerable –I am sorry to say, I say it quite bluntly, you are not a civilized society. You must protect the most vulnerable! And in doing so, you respect their human rights, recognize them as human persons, and give them back their dignity.”– Commissioner Margarette May Macaulay, Rapporteur to the United States in response to the US Government testimony
On Monday April 4, 2016, members of the US Human Rights Network coordinated National Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Coalition [ http://www.ushrnetwork.org/our-work/project/waterisahumanright-human-rights-water-sanitation ]… talked about water contamination and the harmful health impacts in their communities; astronomical water rate increases and the lack of affordable water; criminalization of people who cannot afford water and sanitation services; and the lack of adequate sanitation in communities across the United States. In response, the US government ignored the testimony of the people sitting directly across from them to congratulate itself on water assistance around the world, while falling silent on the water crisis facing people in the U.S. (hearing video: [ http://youtu.be/uNqNhuNnFWE ]).
Throughout the entire testimony from the U.S. government, not a single government representative responded to the stories, crises, and conditions presented before them by their own residents. They sat across from U.S. civil society and reiterated multiple times that they are not legally obligated to ensure the human rights to water and sanitation; nor is it the federal government’s responsibility to ensure water and sanitation – all of the problems are at the hands of local and state officials and agencies…
*”It is insulting to hear how the U.S. is providing water to the rest of the world when we are sitting right here in front of you. We need to hear about what the U.S. government will do for its own residents,”* said Robert Robinson, longtime member of the US Human Rights Network on behalf of the National Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Coalition. *”Our delegation has presented stories from across this country to show how the U.S. has failed to uphold this most fundamental human rights obligation for its most vulnerable residents, and the government’s presentation today unfortunately reflects its continued indifference to our plight.”*
*”As a testifier, I was thoroughly ashamed that members of my own government felt so little about low income people, suggesting that we were less than “dirt” and not worthy of access to what my constituent tax-dollars provide for others. Clearly, we are not respected nor valued as they each repeated, ad nauseam, the same refrain about not having the obligation to provide access to clean water and sanitation to residents here in this country. How awful. How sad. How hurtful that this is the verification of what many of us have long suspected.” *said Maureen D. Taylor, State Chairperson of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization.
While the U.S. government focused on legal technicalities, (which they got wrong[1]), they cannot deny the hard truth that low-income, Indigenous Peoples, homeless, undocumented, and communities of color lack equal access to safe, affordable, and adequate water and sanitation in this country, and the impact is especially severe on women and children. Our government must be held accountable for ensuring that every person in the U.S. has access to safe, affordable, and adequate water and sanitation without discrimination.
https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/pdf/05_2011_human_right_to_water_reader_eng.pdf
More on Robert Reich’s endorsement of Sanders, gotta love the backhanded headline:
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Reich-has-known-Clinton-50-years-so-why-is-he-7240130.php
Did Reich not get a gold watch when Team Clinton retired him?
bars of gold and watched big dog
sign off on nafta
Has anyone asked Barack Obama if he felt it was appropriate for Clinton to communicate with someone who was BARRED from obtaining a State Dept gig about foreign policy?
If I’m a Republican I’m subpoenaing Sidney Blumenthal.
I guess they had a conversation with him behind closed doors.
I’m noticing a pattern with Clinton though.
She was told not to use Blackberry. She ignored it. She was barred from hiring Blumenthal from State Dept so she instead just passed his information along without identifying him as her source.
I wonder if there are any rules she felt she had to follow?
He (or she) who has gold rules, or makes the rules.
That’s one rule many follow.
But she doesn’t. That’s why she has to do all these fundraisers.
Ka-ching!
All the way down to cutting the line to get into a subway car for a photo op that wasn’t legal. Couldn’t she have waited thirty seconds to let somebody get to work?
Personally, I wish Bernie weren’t such a nice guy.
He should be making absolute hay out of the fact that Obama’s biggest mistake was expecting Hillary to actually be able to perform her job without being micromanaged.
Sidney Blumenthal, the guy the administration blackballed from State, was part of the Libya debacle thanks to Hillary sharing ol Sid’s “unsolicited” advice. Instead of spending all her time talking to people from the private Clinton Foundation, she should have been actively working with our allies to ensure that we didn’t end up with a big mess in Libya that could spread.
I detest HRC especially and then Bill C, and would be thrilled at a Sanders win. But if the Clintons do win it may be like “The Monkey’s Paw” short story… be careful what one wishes for. They’ll restore their dynasty but the Rethugs will have a field day investigating the complex, thoroughly corrupt house of cards they’ve constructed with the Clinton Slush Foundation, their cronies, the email server… all those chickens will come home to roost. And can Bill behave himself for 4 years (8 years god forbid!) in the media spotlight?
They really have bought off the DNC and the Democrat establishment, and thus the latter is about to nominate the most disliked, least trusted candidate in recent history with a fistful of emerging scandals. How’s that going to work out for them if Hillary does in fact win?
Two words: Pyrrhic victory.
The NRA is already pushing the connection between donations to the CGI and weapon sales.
The Teabaggers will want blood.
Not only the Teabaggers, but the Sanderistas or whatever they’ll call themselves.
I’ve missed the latest Team Clinton pseudo-scandal about Jane Sanders and taxes (as though the Clintons are ones to talk about taxes!). But each week they seem to go out of their way further to piss off the Bernie supporters. Do they want 30% of them to sit out the election instead of just 25%?
I don’t think the tax scandal mud stuck so they dropped that and moved on. Unless Clinton plans to sandbag Sanders with it in debate (part of a strategy to make him lose his temper, like ratfucking Muskie in New Hampshire by attacking his wife).
Another reason it’s important to have gridlock as the outcome of a Clinton/[Cruz|Trump|”Fresh Face”] election, no matter which party wins the Presidency.
Good grief! Non-profit camping association paid Hillary $260,000 to talk about her experiences camping as a girl scout. Give me a break:
“The group is a small nonprofit whose $260,000 payment to Clinton (more than the $225,000 she received for talks to the Bank of America or Morgan Stanley) amounted to more than 10 percent of the group’s $2.1 million budget…
The key figure who arranged the talk was the group’s former president, Jay Jacobs, a prominent summer-camp entrepreneur. He is also the Nassau County Democratic Party chairman, a million-dollar donor to the Clinton Foundation and a Clinton campaign bundler”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/are-hillarys-big-speaking-fees-being-used-to-help-205257476.html
“Jay Jacobs, a prominent summer-camp entrepreneur”
Is this something like a silicon valley entrepreneur?
I like it! Truth!
Band camp runner up, hlllary clinton…
Summer camp is very important if you want to get your kids credentialled!
However, clicking through to the article, younger women (younger than 39) who HAVE experienced struggles with child care DO support Clinton. I don’t see demographic information but being young with kids and no child care does not signal making bank; rather just the opposite. It isn’t until we get to women over 40 who have have child-care issues that we see strong Sanders support. I really think we need more information (education level, race, geography of those polled) before we say that only financially secure women are supporting Hillary.
I don’t think we could ever say “only financially secure women.” I do think we can say “disportionately financially secure women.”
IBT article has internal link to Citizens for Tax Justice ( a short report). The table in that report is astounding. http://ctj.org/pdf/corpoffshore0416.pdf
Seriously worth a read. Or it can be linked via IBT article (embedded link above) from Lambert.
So the FOMC held a special meeting today to discuss “advance and discount rates.”
Then J-Yel went to see Obama. Then the White House released this statement:
What’s it all mean? Beats me. But “potential risks to the economy,” especially with the “globally” intensifier, is usually code for “don’t even think about hiking rates into this election.”
Strange days indeed!
Watching the Democrat Establishment defending the indefensible majority opinion in Citizens United — the doctrine that anything short of an outright quid pro quo is not corruption — is both pathetic and enraging.
It seems to me that’s actually the majority opinion in Buckley v. Valeo – the decision that equated money and speech.
Per Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United.
So Barney Frank has joined Paul Krugman on the bridge of the SS Clinton. I hope they both have the manhood and the decency to go down with the ship.
Jack Dorsey the hipster billionaire visits Australia
That Econintersect piece gave me a laugh. Seriously, they said: “For equity investors, nothing is more important than earnings and future earnings potential.” That is so quaint, so 20th Century. To the extent that there actually are equity investors, the smart ones have come to know that bad economic news is actually good market price news as the Fed responds with promises of ZIRP and more ZIRP. To the editors at Econointersect, “Get with the program!” (Let me be clear here, I think the Fed’s kneejerk response to bad economic news (low growth, high default rates, low consumer confidence, etc.) since late 2009 (QE and ZIRP) has been stupid, but that does not mean I think it will change.)
I was hoping somebody would demolish that. Yo, Haygood!
Re. the Atlantic article on the Lincoln Project prsions-over-schools study: Curiously, the article promotes “more taxes and means testing” as ways to increase funding for public unis … spending less on warmongering (at the federal level) and slashing imprisonment rates for nonviolent offenders (via rollback of war-on-drugs and mandatory-sentencing laws) are apparently not options. But I suppose that’s the kind of logical pretzelmaking one must engage in when one approvingly and prominently quotes elite-school warmonger Condi Rice to the effect that “higher-education investments are a form of national security at least as important as direct investments in bombers, military drones, missiles, or warships.”
Ah, Condi…
‘prisons’, not ‘prsions’. :facepalm:
One for
GaiahumanityHow did you like the antibiotics, steroids, anti-cancer drugs seasoning on your salad?
re the piece on default settings and the Kansas farmhouse.
Its a measure of how insane priorities are that even the author of this extensive piece doesn’t trouble to ask why “unknown” is not the preferred default when the desired information is, in fact, unknown. I mean, returning a bogus location in a large body of water may get rid of this particular problem (eventually), but they aren’t making mistakes. They are knowingly returning false information that end users are INTENDED to think is meaningful. (unless someone can think of a reason for using a real but bogus physical location for an unknown location other than trying to gloss over how many failures to return known results are actually being yielded.)
Horrible engineering.
“Software is too important to be mediocre.”
“Poor New Yorkers Tend to Live Longer Than Other Poor Americans” –
Plus most New Yorkers do not own cars and walk a lot.
Excellent point. It would be interesting to compare obesity rates of poor New Yorkers with poor people in cities where one is forced to use a car (Houston etc).
Re: U. Chicago opening a trauma center.
Those community groups had the right goals, but as much as they may be right, they weren’t the reason UC finally re-opened their trauma center. UC couldn’t care less about a bunch of local kids and their concerns. Although physically located in their community, it doesn’t consider itself a part of it. Furthermore, those kids were asking UC to jeopardize its financial health by becoming the primary destination for the firehose of violence in the South Side. No community group is going to persuade a hospital to risk bankruptcy (Which it did the last time it ran a trauma center, in the 80s), no matter what their concerns are.
And while there may have been some consideration for the Obama library, the truth is that that was Rahm Emmanuel’s baby, and he would never have let the library slip away from Chicago over a secondary spat with local groups about a trauma center.
I’d argue there were 2 reasons for opening that trauma center. Firstly, the passage of Obamacare meant a lot more of those patients are insured, either through Obamacare plans, or the expansion of medicaid. Although this isn’t as great as having private insurance, it still beats being uninsured, which means the financial costs of operating a trauma center in a poor area are less ruinous than they have been.
Secondly, UC is bursting at the seams. They consistently run at >90% utilization, and if they want to expand, they need to get a Certificate of Need from the state to authorize more beds. If you notice, the trauma center is part of a plan to expand the rest of the ER (which, even though loses money in and of itself, drives admissions to the rest of the hospital), and also build >200 extra beds. I strongly suspect that UC was told they wouldn’t get that Certificate of Need unless they also committed to opening a trauma center. I suspect it will also be the carrot used to negotiate zoning changes, land acquisition, and basically anything else on UC’s govt wishlist for the next 10 years that they want but otherwise would never have gotten.
In the end, the community got what it wanted, but that was incidental to the political machinations and economic drivers that usually determine these things.
Thanks for the background!
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/11/hillary-clinton-bill-de-blasio/?_r=1
Hillary continues in her husband’s footsteps, making almost racist joke about ”CP time” with Blasio.