Researchers developing autonomous snake-like robots to support search-and-rescue teams Phys.org
The sham of ECB independence Bill Mitchell
Firms that burn up $1bn a year are sexy but statistically doomed The Economist
Amazon Counts Its Suitors: 238 Want to Be Home for 2nd Headquarters NYT
Cash prizes for bad corporate citizenship, Amazon edition City Observatory
Harvey Weinstein: how lawyers kept a lid on sexual harassment claims FT. Through NDAs, ubiquitous in Silicon Valley.
Climate change already costing U.S. billions in losses, congressional auditor says in report Japan Times
Democrats Are Letting the Climate Crisis Go To Waste The Intercept
Puerto Rico
Shifting The Map Post-Maria: Estimates of Puerto Rican Arrivals Stateside by Age & State 80grados
‘Days were lost’: Why Puerto Rico is still suffering a month after Hurricane Maria Miami Herald
Hurricane Maria: US postmen emerge as heroes of Puerto Rico’s recovery effort Independent
Brexit
Brexit Negotiations: Not without pain. Medium. (English translation of the Frankfurter Allgemeine story on May’s “facial expressions and appearance,” as ascribed to Juncker.)
Juncker on German press reports about Theresa May meal BBC
Merkel left ‘furious’ by Brexit leaks against May The Times
Tusk warns May future of Brexit is up to UK FT
Barnier plays down hope of ‘special’ UK deal EU Observer
Catalonia
Referendum, in Lombardia non c’è ancora il dato sull’affluenza: il voto elettronico fa flop La Stampo (Google translation). You read that last word as “flop” correctly. DG comments;
La Stampa above reports that the turnout in Lombardy was below 40 percent, which is very low for Italy. Even during municipal elections, Italians get turnouts over 60 percent. Lombardy is lefty (not as left as, say Piedmont or Umbria). So they boycotted the referendum.
Just to make smoke pour out of Lambert’s ears, you’ll note that the autonomists, who are neoliberals in the main, decided to use electronic voting machines, which are called “voting machines” in Italian. Un flop. Italians normally vote with paper ballots.
Veneto is a different case. It has gotten more and more conservative and provincial. A shame, given the 1100 years of the Venetian Republic and its profound influence on the Mediterranean.
China?
Anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan steps down from top Chinese leadership as Xi Jinping’s name is enshrined in Communist Party charter South China Morning Posts
How Effective Is CCP Propaganda? The Diplomat
Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens Wired
Japan’s Abe to push pacifist constitution reform after strong election win Reuters
Trump to Golf With Abe, World No. 3 Matsuyama During Japan Visit Bloomberg
BFFs:
JA notes Trump called Abe after victory & congratulated him for 40 mins: "They address each other Shinzo & Donald."https://t.co/hV1TnkWPqs
— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) October 24, 2017
North Korea
North Korea Is No Longer the Hermit Kingdom — but How Long Will China Be Its Lifeline? NYT (Re Silc).
Syraqistan
Breakingviews – Cox: Aramco clouds Saudi’s coming-out party Reuters
Steve Bannon’s already murky Middle East ties deepen McClatchy
Senators Stunned to Discover We Have 1,000 Troops in Niger Daily Beast (Re Silc).
The Pentagon Can’t Say What Happened In Niger. Local Officials Say Troops Were Set Up Buzzfeed
Top U.S. military officer seeks to address criticism of fatal Niger operation Reuters
Eugene Robinson: Congress needs to reclaim its war-making powers Salt Lake Tribune
New Cold War
US agents deny Russian diplomats access to remove archive from San Francisco consulate TASS
Mueller Now Investigating Democratic Lobbyist Tony Podesta NBC
Hopes Dim for Congressional Russia Inquiries as Parties Clash NYT
The History of Russian Involvement in America’s Race Wars The Atlantic. Little known fact: John C. Calhoun was a Czarist agent. This thing goes a long way back.
Trump Transition
Forty Years of The Firm: Trump and the Coasian Grotesque Corey Robin
Trump is a bad fascist. But what about the next one? The Week
Trump Breaks With GOP Over 401(k) Changes in Tax Bill Roll Call
All eight of Trump’s border wall prototypes stand in San Diego
An Old Colonel Looks at General Kelly Thomas Ricks, Foreign Policy
Replacing Tillerson Doesn’t Fix Anything The American Conservative
EPA yanks scientists’ conference presentations, including on climate change WaPo
A Presidential Bellwether Is Still Waiting to Start Winning Under Trump NYT (Furzy Mouse).
“The Crowning Insult”: Federal Segregation and the Gold Star Mother and Widow Pilgrimages of the Early 1930s Journal of American History
Democrats in Disarray
The DNC picked a bunch of sleazy lobbyists as superdelegates, can’t figure out why no one is donating Boing Boing
Even the Anti-Trump Resistance Can’t Unite the D.N.C. Vanity Fair. “Even”? “Several factors are at play in the D.N.C.’s anemic performance, including the state-level atrophying of the party structure in the years
afterwhen Barack Obama‘s electionwas party leader.” Fixed it for ya.
Our Famously Free Press
Publishers might have to start paying Facebook if they want anyone to see their stories Recode. Ha ha ha. Never trust a platform.
YouTube censors low-church theology:
These videos were deemed too controversial so YouTube suspended them. pic.twitter.com/2G3MPp1IGi
— Ryan Reeves (@RyanMReeves) October 19, 2017
A reader comments: “I subscribe to his channel, not to your taste, but a basic systematic theology and religious history from a low church protestant perspective, NOT red hot stuff.”
Imperial Collapse Watch
F-35s Hobbled by Parts Shortages, Slow Repairs, Audit Finds Bloomberg. Did you know “sustainment” was a word? It is.
NYT Laments ‘Forever Wars’ Its Editorials Helped Create FAIR (UserFriendly).
One in four troops sees white nationalism in the ranks Army Times (DK).
Dying for the Empire is Not Heroic Counterpunch
A New Language for a New World The Disorder of Things. Dense, but not without interest.
Class Warfare
On Safari in Trump’s America The Atlantic. Third Way goes on a listening tour. Hilarity ensues.
Invisible women: Domestic workers underpaid and abused Al Jazeera
Americans Are Retiring Later, Dying Sooner and Sicker In-Between Bloomberg. “At the same time that Americans’ life expectancy is stalling, public policy and career tracks mean millions of U.S. workers are waiting longer to call it quits.” America is already great.
The founder of the world’s largest hedge fund just shared brutal analysis of the US economy Business Insider (Re Silc).
The Family That Built an Empire of Pain New Yorker. Which one?
Dutch courage—Alcohol improves foreign language skills Medical Xpress (CL).
Antidote du jour (Furzy Mouse):
Furzy Mouse writes: “High noon parade in Baan Amphur, Thailand.”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
.
199 comments
Comments are closed.
There is an anti Trump tsunami on its way
In the Heart of Appalachia, Democrats are FIGHTING BACK!
Most of this same group has been a part of our letter-writing committee, which will soon have sent out more than 1,600 hand written letters and post cards. This group has brought paper and envelopes of their own, and with the help of the local committee, paid for postage.
http://bluevirginia.us/2017/10/in-the-heart-of-appalachia-democrats-are-fighting-back
My goodness, you are an optimist! Kudos to you! That is truly thankless work.
I spend a lot of time in SW Virginia (Carroll/Grayson Co). If the rats don’t win the rat race (and it’s looking like a photo finish), I will be a full time resident in a very few years. My neighbor and I haven’t spoken, since he told me a Trump/Palin ticket was just what this country needed IN 2012!
I can find some decent conversation at the local brewpub from time to time, as there are more refugees from city life/experience moving in every week. But that’s about it.
It is a truly beautiful area. Most of the locals are no different than rural citizens everywhere, staunchly conservative, religious, gun loving, well meaning people. But I won’t be joining their book club, or either political party.
FOX News has turned so many minds into clabber.
Move in a bunch more urban refugees, who have placed high or won in the rat race, and pretty soon the vectors and “forces” that are operating all across the “beautiful areas” will price the unpalatables right out of the chosen refuge. All better then, all one has to do is wait them out…
JT, don’t want to give you the wrong impression when I spoke of urban expats moving to the area. Think “retirees, moving to an economically depressed area, supporting the struggling local economy”. Appalachia is much too vast an area to gentrify!
As far as pricing out the unpalatables, my property values are about 80% of what they were when I purchased 2 decades ago.
DCBlogger,
I hope I am w/i the rules. I do not feel that I am being argumentative. I just don’t get it.
I read your link and still don’t know what you are objecting to. I get that you don’t like Trump, but what is Trump doing or has done that you don’t like. If it is just that he was elected President, then he is not who you are protesting about since the voters did that.
This is a real question.
This seem too defuse to be helpful in getting Trump to change his behavior.
I don’t like Trump because when he announced for office he labeled all Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. A bit rich coming from Trump as he brags about assaulting beauty contestants. I don’t like Trump as he has a history of cheating his workers, contractors, investors, basically everybody. I don’t like Trump because he wants to build a wall at the Mexican boarder, even though we already have a wall.I don’t like Trump because of the Muslim ban which is cruel and stupid. I don’t like Trump because he appointed a bunch of notorious kleptocrats to the cabinet and horrible people to the judiciary. And he was not elected, he won the electoral college. Most people voted for Hillary.
Bah.
Let me know when you get to REAL CONCRETE MATERIAL BENEFITS.
Most people held their nose and voted. I, for one, did not vote for either one of the degenerate candidates.
Concerning Trump labeling all Mexican immigrants drug dealers, he really did not say all. Here in Mexico, in Xochitepec, there is a mass exodus of people from the town because narcos are taking over their homes. The thing is, many of them are blond young men who speak English. Is it really so wrong to complain that these fair Americans in Xochitepec are drug dealers? Not all, of course.
In my opinion, Trump can insult Mexicans all he wants as long as he dumps NAFTA. Many of us in Mexico would rather Americans’ support in this respect than in defending our collective honor as long as you come and collect your fellow citizens from Xochitepec.
I think THIS is exactly the kind of response we should all be looking for regarding Trump.
Thanks Lupita. Hang in there amidst the warzone….
dcblogger,
I am not questioning your dislike of Trump. I agree with you on every issue. I want to discuss how we get positive change given that Trump is President. I did not vote for him either.
I really think we have to find ways we are going to sabotage, delay, redirect, stop the negative changes he is putting in place.
Sometimes we complain and argue w/o finding ways to effective change the situation. We often feel better w/o accomplishing anything. That is what I am afraid of.
We need a strategy, not isolated tactics, to be effective.
I am on your side.
yeah, it is not protest, it is organizing. not oriented to changing trump behavior, oriented toward retaking political power at a local level upwards.
You can tell it’s for serious because it’s in ALL CAPS!
As for the tsunami, I’ll believe it when I see it. Engaging with the voters is important, but, absent a coherent narrative of what the Democratic party can offer them (something which Blue Virginia, based on the article linked, seems to actively oppose [“there is … no issue we can add to the platform” to win over the working class instantaneously, so better not try, amirite?]), I’m skeptical that the group will be swaying anywhere near enough people to turn an election.
An MMT question from an old programmer trying to keep up.
The massive tax cuts that our congress-critters swear are coming would, according to MMT theory, reduce demand for the dollar. This would result in a weaker dollar, which should make exports “more competitive” (i.e. make them cheaper to buy in other currencies) and increase the price of imports. This would result in increased domestic manufacturing employment. I realize in this era of globally optimized supply chains, it is very complicated, but is this too far off? If so, why? Did any thing like this happen with the Bush tax cuts?
I think you have all the cause-effect concepts correct, but you need to consider proportionality. Will the tax cuts have a large enough effect suppressing demand for the dollar, causing the dollar to decline enough, to cause a proportionate (or larger) increase in demand from abroad for our manufacturing exports?
I think not.
Secondly — the news reports are pretty poor. I am not convinced that taxes will be cut for the middle class. So if taxes are cut predominantly for the wealthy, but the poor and middle classes do not see a tax cut … then will the anticipated effects on dollar demand play out?
Again, I think not.
We don’t know whats in the tax plan. Heck, the congress critters dont even know!
Thank you! Do you think the global move towards electric vehicles will reduce (global) dollar demand? It seems that just about every country other than the US and OPEC are announcing electric vehicle initiatives. Surely, it is in their self-interest to behave exactly as they are in this regard.
But they’ll vote for it anyway!
With all due respect, you are waaaay off. MMT does point out that government taxes/fees/fines etc. that can only be paid in the gov’t money are what ultimately gives value to a national currency. However, it does not therefore follow that a reduction in taxes will “reduce demand for the dollar.” The reason is simple: there are a lot of things besides taxes that can be paid for in US dollars…like pretty much everything. The value of the dollar relative to other currencies is dependent on a lot of things, and marginal tax rates are extremely unlikely to have much of an effect.
And your assumption that a “cheaper” dollar, compared to other currencies will lead to an increase in domestic manufacturing is also not a valid one. In general, yes, having a cheap currency is good for your export sector, but there are a whole lot of other things that have even more effect on where US manufacturers decide to operate…like wage rates, environmental regulations, labor protections (or lack thereof), etc.
The Trump tax-cuts will accomplish nothing of value for those who aren’t already exceedingly well-off. They will help increase wealth and income inequality and they will make passing useful social policies more difficult, since most people (and all congresscritters) still think that taxes fund spending at the federal level. The tax-cuts will not lead to increased domestic manufacturing but will likely assist in propping up ridiculous P/E ratios on Wall Street.
On the other side of the balance, imports are more sensitive to changes in income than the exchange rate. In fact, as the dollar experienced a long term decline from 2002 to 2007, the trade balance worsened. The income effect (Thirlwall’s Law) is more important than the price effect (Marshall-Lerner), which is why it took the Great Recession to improve the US trade balance.
More to learn! Thank you.
@diptherio – Can we just say the “petrodollar” is the primary driver of global dollar demand? Would you agree with that?
As I recall the petrodollar is a dicey subject, here’s one from nc archive
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/dollar-dominance-deconstructing-the-myths-and-untangling-the-web.html
FTA…
“The impact of Nixon’s petrodollar agreements on US foreign policy have been largely overblown and remain a distraction from the true nature of US imperialism. Dollar hegemony remains at the forefront of US international policy, but it isn’t through specific instances of US military action that this policy is manifested. Instead, it is the entrenchment of the global financial system in the developed world and the vested interest that Western leaders have in the status quo that keeps the system afloat. The US empire is one of Multi-National corporations and International Trade Deals. For these reasons, European central banks and foreign governments act in their best interest when they collude with the Federal Reserve to lend much needed support to the US dollar. This collusion, not the much misunderstood petrodollar, is dollar hegemony fully manifested, and remains a key aspect of western dominance of the global financial system to this very day.”
Yes, good point.
Also, it points at the reason the petrodollar is a thing in the first place. Why would Saudi Arabia want to park its stock of capital (built up from years of surpluses) in USD? Because the US has the broadest, deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world. It doesn’t have a ton of other options.
“Mr. Trumpochev, tear down that Wall Street!”
(Very sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)
The primary driver of foreign dollar demand is the addiction to access to the US as an export market for foreign producers. It is a way of stabilizing their local economies by providing employment without enriching their own working classes.
The willingness of the US to use the American un-employed as a price anchor for the value of the dollar, making it scarce to US workers in order to maintain its purchasing power abroad (strong dollar policy), has created a condition in which foreign producers who want to sell goods to the US market suppress local wages below their competitive value in the US and use the excess profits to purchase US Treasury bills. This has the effect of taking that excess profit and dumping it as cash back into the American economy where, through the banking system’s ever expanding and increasingly un-sustainable debt instruments, it is re-cycled eventually into purchases of imported goods.
The Petrodollar crisis that followed the OPEC crisis was the result of US banks saddling South and Central American countries with un-payable debts when the oil producing countries re-cycled their Petrodollars through the US banking system after the US went off Bretton Woods. US bankers abandoned conventional underwriting to exploit other foreign nations with the no longer gold-linked dollar. Exporters to the US had been getting US gold for their exports and Nixon’s 1971 decision to stop that was central to the OPEC embargo. When US natural gas de-regulation broke OPEC, oil producers, having become addicted to both the jobs and the export market, began recycling dollars through US banks while those banks could not find productive investment for all the money. Their solution was to start making un-sustainable loans abroad, to saddle foreign countries with debt US bankers knew could not be repaid.
What happened with the Petrodollar crisis in the South of the Americas was then replicated across the world over the next 40 years as nations and regions across the world discovered that IMF and World Bank loans were really nothing more than re-branded petrodollars and that US banks were less interested in the sustainability of their foreign loans than they were in using foreign debt to break the global working class into forms more easily exploited by US based multinationals. As more and more foreign peoples gleaned this understanding the hard way, increasingly the exploitation came home to roost as conventional notions of sustainable lending, or in fact underwriting at all, was abandoned in the US in favor of “credit scores” that rationalized ever higher debt loads for US consumers until they were wiped out by the debt load.
Since the 80s various ever less sustainable and more socially destructive new credit instruments have been under continual development by Wall Street. The initial charge of US dollars into the world economy with the Marshall Plan after WW2 created the initial global dollar demand: to purchase things from America, which all our trading partners then needed, they needed dollars to make the purchase. As they began to export, they learned to the trick I mentioned above with Treasuries, the basic tool of mercantilism always and forever, to suppress local consumption and export demand in order to get US gold.
Theory said that when we went off gold, our trading partners would no longer export to us but instead, by that point they were all too hooked on the jobs exports to the US created at home, so rather than quit trading with us what began as the Petrodollar became a normal function of export led development abroad: the US wanted these countries to produce cheap, dangerous and toxic things for US consumption abroad while those producers liked the political rewards of sustaining jobs at home. The US Fed/Treasury, on the other hand, were perfectly happy to see the US middle class collapse into debt penury so long as the banks who took a cut of all this import/export and currency trade action were getting rich.
The problem now is a world addicted to dollars that has signed on to the ecological race to the bottom bankers conceive of as a pliant “labor market”. With the center of the system, the US Fed/Treasury now flooding all those parts of the world that remain in accessible to decent working people with limitless money, there’s no political will anywhere to alter the system. Taxes do drive demand for money, but so long as the unemployed are used as the price anchor for the dollar, the dollar will hold its value. What the NeoLiberal system has perfected is a system in which by starving large majorities, the rich can become exponentially richer.
It’s like the old joke about the farmer, “every day I was feeding my horse just a little bit less, just when I had him living on nothing, he up and died!”
The primary driver of foreign dollar demand is the addiction to access to the US as an export market for foreign producers. It is a way of stabilizing their local economies by providing employment without enriching their own working classes.
The willingness of the US to use the American un-employed as a price anchor for the value of the dollar, making it scarce to US workers in order to maintain its purchasing power abroad (strong dollar policy), has created a condition in which foreign producers who want to sell goods to the US market suppress local wages below their competitive value in the US and use the excess profits to purchase US Treasury bills. This has the effect of taking that excess profit and dumping it as cash back into the American economy where, through the banking system’s ever expanding and increasingly un-sustainable debt instruments, it is re-cycled eventually into purchases of imported goods.
The Petrodollar crisis that followed the OPEC crisis was the result of US banks saddling South and Central American countries with un-payable debts when the oil producing countries re-cycled their Petrodollars through the US banking system after the US went off Bretton Woods. US bankers abandoned conventional underwriting to exploit other foreign nations with the no longer gold-linked dollar. Exporters to the US had been getting US gold for their exports and Nixon’s 1971 decision to stop that was central to the OPEC embargo. When US natural gas de-regulation broke OPEC, oil producers, having become addicted to both the jobs and the export market, began recycling dollars through US banks while those banks could not find productive investment for all the money. Their solution was to start making un-sustainable loans abroad, to saddle foreign countries with debt US bankers knew could not be repaid.
What happened with the Petrodollar crisis in the South of the Americas was then replicated across the world over the next 40 years as nations and regions across the world discovered that IMF and World Bank loans were really nothing more than re-branded petrodollars and that US banks were less interested in the sustainability of their foreign loans than they were in using foreign debt to break the global working class into forms more easily exploited by US based multinationals. As more and more foreign peoples gleaned this understanding the hard way, increasingly the exploitation came home to roost as conventional notions of sustainable lending, or in fact underwriting at all, was abandoned in the US in favor of “credit scores” that rationalized ever higher debt loads for US consumers until they were wiped out by the debt load.
Since the 80s various ever less sustainable and more socially destructive new credit instruments have been under continual development by Wall Street. The initial charge of US dollars into the world economy with the Marshall Plan after WW2 created the initial global dollar demand: to purchase things from America, which all our trading partners then needed, they needed dollars to make the purchase. As they began to export, they learned to do the trick I mentioned above with Treasuries, the basic tool of mercantilism always and forever, to suppress local consumption and export demand in order to get US gold.
Theory said that when we went off gold, our trading partners would no longer export to us, but instead, by that point they were all too hooked on the jobs exports to the US created at home, so rather than quit trading with us, what began as the Petrodollar became a “the reserve currency” of export led development abroad: the US wanted these countries to produce cheap, dangerous and toxic things for US consumption abroad while those producers liked the political rewards of sustaining jobs at home. The US Fed/Treasury, on the other hand, were perfectly happy to see the US middle class collapse into debt penury so long as the banks who took a cut of all this import/export and currency trade action were getting rich.
The problem now is a world addicted to dollars that has signed on to the ecological race to the bottom bankers conceive of as a pliant “labor market”. With the center of the system, the US Fed/Treasury now flooding all those parts of the world that remain in accessible to decent working people with limitless money, there’s no political will anywhere to alter the system. Taxes do drive demand for money, but so long as the unemployed are used as the price anchor for the dollar, the dollar will hold its value. What the NeoLiberal system has perfected is a system in which by starving large majorities, the rich can become exponentially richer.
It’s like the old joke about the farmer, “every day I was feeding my horse just a little bit less, just when I had him living on nothing, he up and died!”
oops!
IPhone fail!
Sorry for the duplicate
Wobbly, the jsn comment is good too. Further to that…
Do a quick thought exercise on this. If you are Saudi Arabia and you want to diversify away from the USD with your hundreds of billions of USD, where do you go?
UK pound is too small, and too risky. China, Japan, and ECB don’t want your capital flows pushing up their exchange rates, asset prices, etc. and ruining their external competitiveness for their export industries. If capital flows their way, their central banks will just move the capital elsewhere by selling their own respective currencies. But, ECB, China and Japan don’t really want to expand their balance sheets and buy up lots more USD than they already have, so they have to find away to ‘scare’ away the capital flows (from Saudi or whomever).
What’s the solution? Negative interest rates!!!
Nothing screams ‘get out of my currency’ louder than charging someone for holding it.
But back to jsn’s point, USA is willing to run big CA deficits and act as the ‘demand source of last resort’. This is partially because neoliberalism (ordoliberalism) generally dictates that running govt budget deficits is bad, so govt can’t act as source of demand, therefore, if you want a decent level of employment, you need another source of substantial demand….back to the USA.
This is an important point. Years ago, I used to look at exchange rates as big drivers of activity. I first started learning about this stuff (political econ, balance of payments) in the wake of the Asian Crisis and I attributed a lot more importance to exchange rates in the US context than was deserved.
In present context for the US, it seems that CA surpluses and deficits in the US don’t lead, they follow.
In 2008-9, incomes crashed, and the CA deficit followed.
Argh! My head is exploding!
Thank you all. I’ve much to absorb before Nov. 15. :)
That’s a GOOD sign. If your head wasn’t exploding, we’d be worried you weren’t thinking hard enough!!!
You can ask a buddy of mine from college who was an econ major about how many times I asked him questions during my senior year about balance of payments related issues (this was 2001).
During the early-mid 2000s, I thought people like Richard Duncan were on the right track, predicting a dollar crisis. The FT’s Martin Wolf was pushing a similar line of thinking, I think the BIS was, too (if memory serves). All of these folks were right that SOMETHING was wrong, but they basically got it wrong and didn’t really understand what the problem was.
Nakedcap introduced me to the MMT line of thinking. I think this is much closer to the right answer.
I see the tax cuts as the reverse of more taxes.
If taxation destroys money, tax cuts let people keep more money…that is, more money remains in the system.
If that extra money goes to billionaires, they might buy Martian real estate or other stuff we mere mortals can’t afford.
If that extra money goes to you and me, we can spend it on, among other things, food and health care (thus making Big Pharma richer, I guess, but you and me get to live another day though).
an aside:
The proposed tax cuts are the ‘Kansas Experiment’ applied nationwide. And, boy, did those tax cuts have an effect. Consider this link:
“Earlier this year, Kansas’ GOP-controlled legislature voted to effectively end a five-year push to slash taxes on individuals and businesses after revenues plummeted and forced deep cuts and tax hikes elsewhere. In doing so, they overturned a veto by Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican who drew national attention in conservative circles when he launched his ambitious tax-cut program in 2012.
…
“Like Brownback, Trump is proposing simplifying and lowering individual tax rates. Like Brownback, he’s pushing an unusual tax cut for business owners that critics say opens up a major loophole. And, much more than Brownback ever did, Trump’s team is promising that explosive growth will make up for the cost of their cuts.
“Things, however, did no go according to plan.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/amp/gop-tried-trump-style-tax-cuts-kansas-n812701
“Things, however, did no go according to plan.” Possibly the biggest understatement of 2017.
In the midst of the Great Depression, it was very common for cities or banks to issue their own fiat paper money, some of which was accepted in the community, as federal money went awol in the worst of it.
Here’s a couple examples from Kansas:
https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/122271031234_/1933-5-The-American-State-Bank-Oswego.jpg
https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0713/24/1933-50c-chamber-commerce-neodesha_1_666040b43d802bbda956bc714afa4669.jpg
These are now known as ‘Depression Scrip’ and there are many thousands of varieties from all over the 48 states.
In the book The Great Depression: A Diary, by Benjamin Roth, he calls these ‘white rabbits’, as they multiplied in issue so rapidly.
It’s said that some guy named Murphy laid down a law that actually has proven out, time and time again: “If something can go wrong, it will. At the worst possible time. In a manner that causes maximum damage, And is exceedingly difficult to repair.”
“The most persistent principles in the universe are accident and error.”
And as many have observed, observing the human-space world, “Murphy was an optimist.”
Some context, who knows how valid in the flood of “content:”
While I admit that the name of Murphy’s laws is a pleasant one as is the story of how it came to light, but the original name for ‘if anything can go wrong it will’ was sod’s law because it would happen to any poor sod who needed such a catastrophic event the least. It also removes the ability to say “I coined this phrase!” because sod’s law has been around long before any living man and has existed in many forms for hundreds of years. In the English County of Yorkshire I know it to have been around for generations because it has been passed through several Yorkshire families I know. But this original name is dying out because sod over here is a cursory so is not used much. Murphy’s on the other hand is nothing insulting or lacking in hope I hope this clears any problems up and while this maybe hard to come to terms with, think about it, would such an obvious piece of logic have only come about in the second half of the 20th century???? ” http://murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html
[“Sod” = “mope” and/or “deplorable?”]
A triumph of PC liberalism…?
Barring the local currencies Wukchumni talks about (which Kansas might want to try), Kansas cannot print money; the federal government can and does. So unlike Kansas, the US can fund programs without first collecting taxes to pay for them. The barrier is purely political: an ideological objection to running deficits.
The potential penalty isn’t bankruptcy; it’s inflation.
“The barrier is purely political:….
I agree. It was the Reagan admin that began using deficit hysteria (austerity for the little people to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy) to cut social safety net programs and infrastructure spending. In the Kansas “experiment” medicaid has been privatized and cut; public school funding was cut and the school year shortened for lack of funds, though vouchers for private schools were increased; child foster care services have been privatized and 70 children have gone missing; rural hospitals have been hit hard and some are closing; the mental health hospital lost its accreditation and US govt funding; sales tax went up, even on grocery store food, in some places to 10%; road and infrastructure maintenance dwindled; I could list more, but you get the idea. Good companies have left the state. New companies haven’t flocked in. Kansas doesn’t look so attractive these days.
someone help me.
i see that the income effect is stronger than the price effect with exchange rates, that is a good point.
but how does cutting taxes effect the exchange rate in the first place? can someone explain this cause and effect to me?
it seems like the deficit in the govt sector has to be balanced by the other two sectors, private/foreign. why does it necessarily add to the foreign?
because we also have a trade imbalance, which by definition takes money from the ‘private’ sector and places that money into the foreign sector.
so we are assuming that people will buy more imports.
I thought the middle class was drowning in mortgage debt, student loan debt, credit cards, and can’t afford health care? Are we taking for granted that they will all go to Walmart or buy fuel or diamonds or whatever else we import? enough to weaken the dollar to the point of jump starting our own exports sector?
Is this the argument?
Some foreigners don’t trust their own currencies… where to save? Many pick us$… would you save in yuan or rubles? They are major nuke powers, but so What? Savers are not impressed. Us, its constitution, and its dollar has been around for a long time, thru two world wars and a civil war. Never had a revolution, hyper inflation, or bankruptcy.
It is the this demand from savers, plus mercantile nations such as china and Germany that favor their corp exporters, that buy up us$. All other issues are secondary to the voracious appetite of savers for dollars.
This drains us$ from the private sector, as does our own savers, made up only in part by loans from commercial banks and the fed deficit. We need either a bigger deficit or more lending from commercial banks to compensate for all the saving. But borrowers have already borrowed all they can afford, and deficit spending is out of favor. Savers will likely continue bidding up the dollar.
RE: link to Atlantic Article on Russian Interference.
Russia interference in the USA and vice-versa goes back a lot further than 80 years. Russia had a significant deterrent role on UK/France coming in on the side of the Confederacy, arguably the primary deterrent.
But then Japan in the lead up to WWII also played the race card, positioning Japan as anti-white supremacy, the result of which was significant gains for black activist by playing on the oligarchy’s fears.
The fall of the USSR is probably the most significant factor in the decline and fall of both white and black working classes in America. No need to buy loyal cannon fodder in mass, just enough to keep empire ticking will do. So I guess we still can blame the USSR for failing to keep our privileges – snark (there are no rights, except right to death, everything else is negotiable)
The old expression, with friends like that, who needs enemies probably should be reversed to with enemies like that, who need friends.
From your first link.
Whaaa??
Yeah, I heard the Brits has Boothe on the ground in the campaign.
No, really! http://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln74.html See especially #4…
Thomas, Benjamin Platt. Russo-American Relations 1815-1867. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1930.
– Woldman, Albert A. Lincoln and the Russians. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1952.
Thanks for that first link. Interesting read.
Further to my 2nd link vis black leaders using international pressure on US government (leading to FBI infiltrating rights groups), it seems that Russian Bashing is now being used yet again to punch down on Black activist, just as it was used against MLK in the 1960s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_HI_N3DPUY
Further to the New Yorker’s feature on the family that built an empire of pain, the Sacklers will be rubbing shoulders with the royal family at receptions either side of the new year to launch https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/charles-ii-art-power/the-queens-gallery-buckingham-palace and https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/charles-i-king-and-collector, joining the likes of Henry Tate and Cecil Rhodes. The media, bootlickers eager for crumbs from the top table, will not be exposing the war on America, a genocide that some hacks / blogs and BTL commentators, especially in the Guardian and Observer, have rejoiced in, saying it’s punishment for voting Trump.
There will be a connection to Rhodes. The descendants of his bankers and co-investors will also be present.
You are something of a walking alternative ” Who’s Who “, thank you for lifting up those stones so that we can see what crawls beneath.
Thank you.
From an early age, I have been interested in history. I worked in private and investment banking and for two trade associations, around the world, and came across people I read about in history books and the press or their descendants.
I developed my love of history & therefore disillusionment at the age of eighteen from what would probably seem nowadays to be an unlikely source. A business studies course of which one of the modules was social history from the start of the industrial revolution in England. I fell in love with the subject while scarcely being able to stay awake for the rest of the course, which I later abandoned while keeping hold of just one precious book.
I was lucky to be blessed with a love of history, combined with an occupation that involved much time travelling to exotic pasts.
Please share the title of the book!
“Capital” or “The Great Transformation”?
Unfortunately I cannot remember the title as it was 38 years ago, which means that I would have actually been aged 20. The only reason I have been able to figure the above out is due to it being 1979 & Thatcher had been elected, leading to some panic in the Economics department, as they had no idea of what she would get up to. The module they tried to teach me was called ” The Organisation & the Environment ” & was based on a mixed economic system.
The title I think was something like Social History – 1750 the Industrial Revolution & it had as a cover part of the painting ” Coalbrookkdale by Night “, painted in 1801 by Phiilip Jakob Loutherburg. I have trawled through around 30 pages of Google books but no sign of it – it was probably put straight in the college dustbin soon after I left due to the advent of the Iron Lady.
I have moved around quite a lot since then & have had to often off load books, which always appear to be ones that I later miss. I do not know how good it was, but it was the one that sent me off down a long path.
Sorry that I cannot be of more help, but according to my search there are very many alternatives to choose from.
“The media, bootlickers eager for crumbs from the top table, will not be exposing the war on America, a genocide that some hacks / blogs and BTL commentators, especially in the Guardian and Observer, have rejoiced in, saying it’s punishment for voting Trump.”
Thank you for saying that. The Sackler clan are cutting a wide swathe of death and destruction through America, quite profitably and to their everlasting fame. All the while the mainstream press toadies are marching in time to the tune sung by Walter Duranty and the New York Times during the Holodomor. No crime to be seen here…it’s legal and its capitalism.
Re: Brexit, see here-
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-23/the-harder-brexit-gets-the-more-necessary-it-seems
Quote:
The Harder Brexit Gets, the More Necessary It Seems
The costs of the split in 2019 will be high — but it might be now or never.
——
Thank you.
Speaking of cost, I attended a Brexit event over lunch yesterday. Gerard Lyons and Liam Halligan were talking about their book, “Clean Brexit: Why leaving the EU still makes sense”, and, amongst other delusions, which is odd for well-educated and travelled persons, reckoned the UK owes the EU nothing and should take its case to the Hague. The pair thought the UK would win such a case, but, in that secnario, should be magnanimous and offer, say, £20 billion.
Much of their analysis of what’s wrong with the UK, economy and society, holds true even if the UK is not in the EU. They admitted as much, but think that these problems can only be fixed outside.
Lyons and Halligan admitted to having Irish passports and encouraged an Irish exit from the EU.
They took four mild interruptions and a question from Vicky Price, sans jail bird beau on this occasion, personally and had a swipe at Price, amongst others.
Lyons’ former colleague at Standard Chartered, Sir Tom Harris, a former UK ambassador to South Korea, explained geo-political realities, but that fell on deaf ears.
A former UK government trade negotiator pointed out that WTO rules are insufficient for an economy like the UK and few countries traded / relied exclusively on WTO rules, but she was brushed aside.
Most attendees were remainers, often reluctant remainers, but were resigned to the fate of a hard Brexit.
Indeed thank you CS,
There was a meeting today between our new Taoiseach (Vadakar) and the French President
(Marcon) which might have some bearing on the current Irish response to Brexit, to whit Lyons and Halligan, “…encouraged an Irish exit from the EU”
RTE HEADLINES at the moment -v
Macron: UK Must Find Concrete Proposals on Irish Border
https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1024/914733-varadkar_macron/
“The two men also discussed the idea of the Celtic Interconnector, a proposed €1 billion sub-sea power cable between Brittany and Ireland that could compensate for any potential loss of energy supplies from the UK post-Brexit.”
as for the border,
” ‘It’s up to the UK to come up with concrete proposals to minimise the impact of Brexit on the British/Irish border,’ said Mr Macron.”
also
“Earlier this month, Mr Varadkar had said Ireland wanted Britain to commit to a fallback option that would avoid a customs border returning to the island of Ireland, should its plan of keeping the closest possible ties with the EU fall through.”
Very telling snippets.
Thank you.
Barnier’s interview in today’s Les Échos is revealing.
Merci Beaucoup CS for the Reference (I’ve added them to my limited # of sites I visit),
4 take-aways from that interview for me:
Barnier: Irish border and EU citizens issues need to be resolved…but…the technical solutions can follow…hmmm
Barnier: The second phase of negotiations (i.e. trade) will take several years…ouch (It seems that an interim deal could be done within 2 years, but the UK needs to abide to EU standards during drawn-out negotiations and the devilish details will be, well, devilish.)
Again, many MSM outlets aren’t portraying the Canada trade agreement remark with complete frankness. He juxtaposed a Norway style agreement (which respects internal EU arrangements) against a Canadian style agreement (which largely ignores the internal arrangements of EU functions). He seemed to think that negotiations, given the current stance of the UK government, would likely result in a Canadian-EU style agreement. No sui generis agreement for the UK – full stop.
I’m beginning to rather warm to Barnier. He’s cautiously optimistic whilst still being pragmatic. He seems to see the nuances of each other’s positions and thereby can create some space for dialogue when the situation appears sparse, to say the least.
again, Ta
Varadkar fancies himself as an Irish Macron apparently. So no doubt he was busy checking out the Elysees for interior design hints. He’s already been sartorially influenced by Trudeau.
The prioritising of the Irish border by the EU was a concession to Ireland from the beginning. But unfortunately it is absolutely impossible to decide anything on this unless the issue of migration and the Customs Union is agreed.
What worries me is that while the Irish government is insisting that its up to the UK to sort out the problem, but as we are heading for a chaotic Brexit, this will lead to a complete lack of preparedness for managing border trade. The Conservatives simply aren’t interested in the issue, they will be quite happy to have a leaky border for smuggling and fudging trade issues, as will the DUP. There is huge opposition in border areas (both sides) to erecting barriers, and it would well turn violent. I’ve not seen any evidence that the Irish government has even started looking at the logistical issues in managing 400 or so road crossings. There are certainly not enough trained customs officers and even the army would be stretched to monitor all those roads 24/7.
I was reading a semi-official report on implications for the dairy industry in Ireland of Brexit which took a strangely binary view of trade, typical of that type of report. I’m sure the industry is aware, but I’m not sure its awareness has gone to the government, that the food industry on the island is very tightly interwined with very complex supply chains. If a major purchaser of European dairy (for example, China), decided that it would not permit non-certified milk (i.e. from NI) into products (Ireland is a major exporter of baby formula), the Irish government would have no choice but to erect a very hard border, or face the collapse of the dairy industry. Even a sharp slump in sterling would be devastating for the Irish economy if the border wasn’t tightly controlled.
No arguments with your insights into trade or the physical realities. The Irish government, and there are some adults in our civil service, will have to face up to these interlinked issues. They cannot be ignored. If the Irish government is ignoring them, the EU isn’t.
I don’t read that the statement that the UK must come up with border solutions by themselves as an absolute command by the EU but, rather, as a statement that the UK must begin to address the issue in some concrete terms that the EU can understand and respond to.
Maybe I’m wrong, but there seems to be a sense in many European capitals that the UK is still playing wish-list games rather than putting some hard proposals on the table; or maybe progress has been made that the public isn’t privy to yet and the rest is media optics by some EU nations. [The Barnier interview in Les Echos doesn’t seem to bear out the my last clause.]
Imo, there will be some sort of hard economic border. This seems unavoidable. However, there doesn’t necessarily have to be a hard social border.
The Irish agricultural industry has realigned itself before and it will have to do so again. Our local coop creamery is currently selling butter into the UK. I expect tariffs to hit the butter but it still may be cheaper than the UK produced butter. [Of course the virtual elimination of “red” tape will make exporting to the UK so easy. sarc/]
Colonel Smithers wrote: Barnier’s interview in today’s Les Échos is revealing
Yes, it is. God, Barnier is strikingly more lucid and competent than his opposite number and the Tories generally.
In some ways Brexit reminds me of the Romans up and leaving Britain way back when…
…leaving the locals to their own devices, and ensuing backwardation of culture as they knew it via Rome, with standards of living plummeting from the salad days
Of course, after the Romans moved out, the Germans moved in….
Oh yes, the Hunseatic league.
So did the Irish. Historical analogies from Europe can clinch both sides of any argument.
But the feckers got their revenge by sending us St. Patrick.
I saw Halligan in a TV discussion with Frances Coppola a few years ago – if I recall it right, his bloviations stunned her into near silence.
I forgot to mention Halligan’s complaint that remainers never declare who their donors are. The same could be asked of brexiteers. No one bothered to challenge him.
Such declarations should be the norm but are remarkably absent from campaigners. Sadly, inquiries about those are typically absent from journalists. The Fourth Estate seems to observe such only in the breach.
Blessed are those sites such as NC and their columnists and commenters who keep asking the tough questions.
Thank you BillK
I think a lot of what Crook says makes some sense but I am not persuaded by all of it.
He say that it is in the EU’s interest to have a prosperous country in the UK. Well they will not think that if it encourages other EU members to consider leaving. It is important for the EU 27 that the folly of the UK decision be seen visibly by the populations in their countries. I am afraid Crook is taking a typically English approach to these matters and only seeing them from the UK point of view. The governments of the EU 27 value their membership of the EU; they will not want to see the project disrupted further. They will also be very happy to take as much economic activity from the UK as they can.
Likewise with the sequencing issue. The EU are being quite logical in wanting to tidy up the issues relating to the UK’s departure before talking about the future. The Treaty does indeed say that they should take account of the framework for the future relationship but I have little doubt that they take the view that the relationship will be that of a third country, at the UK’s request, and that further discussion is unnecessary at this stage (they have agreed to talk about it amongst themselves). I do not doubt that it would suit the UK to mix the discussions up, link payment of money to a future trade deal, but I think the EU frankly are relatively unbothered about the UK’s future. I think they consider that it is no longer their responsibility.
So often one feels that having been granted special treatment as a member of the EU, the UK still wants special treatment as a non-member. ‘Spoilt little princes’ was one term applied to the English recently. I can understand why.
Thank you and well said.
Halligan and Lyons were similar yesterday.
I do agree that the EU believes that they MUST make leaving as unpleasant as possible for the UK so that any further departures from the EU are strongly discouraged. The structural problems appearing within the EU members make it into a bit of a race to see whether the UK disaster will happen any quicker than the EU disaster.
I agree that there could be an EU disaster because things happen (events dear boy as Macmillan said when asked what he worried about). However, I do think that the chances of one in the very near future are lower than you might suppose from reading the Anglophone press. Most of the English newspapers have of course been relentlessly hostile to the EU for decades and part of this hostility is reflected in predictions of disaster – the Eurozone is going to collapse, Greece is going to leave the EU etc. I suspect the US media (most of whose correspondents I think are London based) tend to be influenced by the English coverage. Yes, one of these things could happen (see above) but the probability is IMO probably not as high as people in the UK and US imagine.
I guess Catalonia is seen as the latest potential disaster but IMHO this appears to be more a Spanish issue than an EU one (though I recognise the EU cannot divorce itself entirely from developments)?
I’ve been reading about the impending financial collapse of France since I started reading business/economics news in the 1980’s, and similar sources have been predicting the demise of the EU/eurozone for many years. As you say, there are unquestionably major problems, any one of which could blow up at any time (the Italian banking system being a case in point). And of course the illogicalities built into the Euro have never been properly addressed.
But the Anglophone press and establishment consistently underestimates just how determined the key players are to keep the EU on the road, at almost any cost. It is absolutely central to the political and economic strategies of all the major continental countries and has been for decades. Everyone knows full well that the alternatives don’t really bear thinking about too much (and a key feature of Eurosceptics is that they tend to fall silent when asked what their alternatives are, beyond falling back on narrow nationalism). The EU is a surprisingly robust structure and it will take something catastrophic – or more likely a series of catastrophes, to pull it apart.
things tend to happen very slowly…and then all of a sudden.
Lambert – you missed a link.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/opinion/medicare-for-all-democrats.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=region®ion=region&WT.nav=region&_r=0
“I understand why Mr. Sanders and his acolytes believe that sweeping progressive ideas — however unrealistic they may be — might capture the public imagination better than the more carefully constructed proposals of centrists, policies that are harder to articulate and can come across as mushy.”
What’s there to miss?
Our model of (pseudo) democratic capitalism has stood us (richie riches, aka The People That Matter) well for more than two centuries; now is not the time to embrace the kinds of ideas (that will give the ordinary Joe a break), often involving deep government economic intervention (ordinary Joe’s only way to grab the steering wheel), that have often fallen short elsewhere (except for the universal medical care, which was the purportedly the point of this essay, it works much better than ours but hopefully you will have forgot what we were talking about after all my droning), notably in much of Europe.
Fixed it. Sort of. What’s also sad is I think this is written at a, roughly, 7th grade level – *and* I think that’s pretty much the level Mr. Rattner writes at. But he’s wealthy, for some reason.
Re “The History of Russian Involvement in America’s Race Wars The Atlantic,” as the author chronicles how the Soviets played up racism in the US she seems to be supporting the current hysteria. But then, in the last paragraph, she concludes by saying the best antidote is to not have any flaws for the Russians to play up. Still, she got ridiculed in the comments.
Note that in today’s Times there’s a front page article on Russia Today having become a Youtube success, rivaling CNN. No explanation offered, although the comparison itself may suffice.
Does it mean if we have flaws, the Russians can play up?
It’s like some states had their own inhumanity problem.
Some people were nonchalant, but would fight to preserve the union.
Some demanded immediate abolition of that intolerable situation.
Today, our problem will be addressed (hopefully) by ourselves…soon (again, hopefully). We will not accept other people, not the Russians, not the North Koreans, however well intended, if they were, to tell us what to do.
But we would tell our states, even after they left to form another nation, what to do.
And yet, back to the Russians, every nation has its own flaws. What are the accepted rules here? Can nations just exploit other nations? Can nations ask progress of other nations? Who defines progress? Are nations allowed to progress on their own paces, without being told, nicely or rudely?
Democrats are responding reflexively to Trump with “Wow! This gives us more room to suck than evahh!” The “how badly can we suck and still not lose?” calculation failed the Democrats in 2016. Now, it looks like Northam’s blowing it in Virginia. Or should I say throwing it?
Northam has always been a bum. What do you expect from a two time George W. voter and donor? Herring, the current AG, planned to run, but he dropped the ball over the potential closing of a small all girls college which ticked off all the women’s groups in the state.
Then of course, the Democrats abandoned organizing December 2008 (I was at this meeting; the state party chair said people were tired of policy based campaigns). The goal was to rely on demographics and personal relationships. One overlooked problem with Northern Virginia voters is many are federal workers or contractors who live in bedroom communities. They care about two issues transportation and public schools. The ones who are naturally conservative voted for the ilk of Hillary because some of Trump’s rhetoric represented a threat to how federal dollars were spent. If money goes to new ships or jobs are moved, what happens to sky high housing prices for lousy houses on dead end roads off a highway? There is simply no motivation to vote in this race.
In states with off year elections, people who are passing through often don’t vote in state and local elections.
Re Senators Stunned to Discover We Have 1,000 Troops in Niger
What are they going to say when they learn that the US has 1,000 bases scattered around the world? And Africa is huge with Niger only one small country. Take a look at the page at http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html to get an idea of how big the whole damn continent is. Sending troops out in penny-packets is just asking for trouble against experienced fighters in a place like that. It’s not like they are fighting Zulus there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raBNUUj1-fY)
But Lindsey Graham is a foreign policy expert! I imagine there is more push about the deployments than the electeds expected.
Pentagon cannot say what happened to troops in Niger.
If it is the slightest bit embarrassing to anybody in the government above pay grade 12 the Pentagon wouldn’t say what happened to the troops in Niger if they knew.
I wonder how many immunization shots an American soldier has to get before deploying to Niger. I bet that it is the max of any post. Imagine telling family members their relative died in military action in NIger. Say you work for the army and it’s your job to go visit the parents and tell them their son is dead.
They should already have the relevant vaccinations required for their branch and status, so soldiers can be deployed to see if anyone has nasty side effects before they go. Force readiness and all.
We’re shocked, shocked.
The Molly Ball article for the Atlantic references a Third Way report on Wisconsin. Here is the link to compare what Third Way wrote & Molly Ball observed.
http://www.thirdway.org/report/wisconsin-district-visit
or as a PDF
http://s3.amazonaws.com/content.thirdway.org/publishing/documents/pdfs/000/002/195/wisconsin-district-visit.pdf?1508506093
“On Safari in Trump’s America” is an excellent take-down of Third Way and illustrates their “we can’t ‘discover’ anything that contradicts our assumptions or makes us uncomfortable” MO.
An exact description of how Hillary and the Dems operate.
So now they can claim that their conclusion was based on a listening tour whose basic input was discarded. You want to know what I found was a missed opportunity? When a Florida official said “We don’t have any Muslims here, and that’s a good thing, because Muslims are trouble.” For the researchers that was the end of that line of inquiry but what if they had asked why to dig deeper on that attitude.
There is an interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships called the 5 Whys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys) which might have proved fruitful but it is obvious that this was never gonna happen with this tour. For the conclusions that they drew they might as well have stayed in Washington and spent the money on partying it up. At least that would have given them some change from that $20 million that they blew through.
If you don’t have an image or an idea in your brain, it’s hard to see it.
Hi Lambert I haven’t done a lot of reading on Calhoun but can you provide any more detail /sources his involvement with the Tsar? I’d not heard that before and cursory googling comes up blank.
https://scholar.google.com.hk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=john+c.+calhoun+czar&btnG=
try this.
Hate google, but it can be quicker some times. If you are not afraid of doing yoman’s work try
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=john+c+calhoun+russia&t=hf&ia=web
Wasn’t that a joke?
The Senate Intelligence Committee 702 Bill Is a Domestic Spying Bill [Emptywheel]
Really, really bad. And supported by Feinstein and Warner, of course. No 4 p.m. basketball needed.
Goooood Moooooorning Fiatnam!
The decision came from on high, Operation Loanbacker would bond the country back into the stone age, when money was what you made of it. The idea was to so pollute normal channels of commerce with seemingly free money, as to make a mockery of the economy as we knew it.
Imagine yourself a VC (Verified Crony) warrior hidden below the green felt jungle canopy, used to the chatter of a Huey dumping a few million over the skids, when above you, a B-52 opens it’s doors and lets loose with largess the likes of which you’ve never seen before?
Earlier problems with the chopper crew not taking the time to take off the bands holding each bundle intact were now a thing of the past, as the crew of the pressurized goliath was much more professional in their approach, which emphasized flutter tactics combined with release from 30,000 feet.
Fiatnam’s starving-dog municipalities bay for a steak drop:
Back in the real world, Amazon’s stock price has stalled at a glass ceiling of $1,000 since June. Now it’s fallen back to three digits and it can’t get up.
Amazon’s claimed fifty thousand jawbs are as phony as McNamara’s VC kill counts. A corporation with two headquarters will function about as well as the former East and West Pakistan, and will certainly go bankrupt before reaching 50,000 pixel pushers at HQ2.
We’ve reached Peak BS from the Bezos machine. Bring out the sharp knives!
He puts it in a small conservative state, and he could make it blue, capture all its electoral votes, and become the governor or senator there.
It’s all about the skill ratio in Fiatnam, you think being a hack coder in Silicon Valley is going to entice the venture capitalists?
Re: On safari in Trump’s America. I have never seen a better example of Upton Sinclair’s quote that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The image of “the hippies” sending the nice, west coast anthropologist over the edge was worth the time spent reading about it.
I wonder who gave Herd-way (Kettlers) $20 million to conduct this nonsense?
The woman from S.F., former anti-nuke activist turned Third Wayer is just too rich. Like that was ever going to work inside the Dem party. You don’t have to leave S.F. (I lived there, owned a shop in the Haight for ten years in 80’s-90’s) to know a lot of so-called hippies have a strong libertarian attitude. She seems to have as much problem “listening” as any I’ve ever met.
“…..trying to find any deep meaning to events was like trying to find reflections in a mirror: you always succeeded, but you didn’t learn anything new. ” (Terry Pratchett- Science of Discworld )
Re the safari in middle America
I took off on an improvisational, personal, Red State Road Trip in Feb/March 2005 to talk to voters in the SE and try to figure out why they re-elected Bush in the wake of the Iraq War. After talking to a lot of strangers, my basic takeaway was that people didn’t want change in a time of war (remember both Afghanistan and Iraq Wars were new then); some explicitly said they were afraid to change in a time of war. I can’t pretend that’s actually why people voted for Bush, but it was sobering and didn’t reflect a pre-existing conclusion I’d had–my pre-existing conclusion was precisely the reverse, namely voters should want change b/c of the war. So to read the report of the Third Way anthropology and see how it will permeates through the fight for the Democratic Party’s soul is enraging.
Re the Opioid crisis, it depresses me that we are here, given that in 2006 I authored/NJPIRG published this report, which at the time got international coverage:
http://cdn.publicinterestnetwork.org/assets/tqWHL32WamCJ-pj9Vxuz1g/TurningMedintoSnakeOil.pdf
Not that one report would change the world, but it seems so much was not learned or was swiftly forgotten
Had trouble with your link, but this one worked for me instead.
Thanks
they were afraid to change in a time of war.
I recall this being The talking point for Bush. Don’t change horses midstream.
Sounds like it worked on some.
Shopping …
Remember, one never has to change their consumption habits .. Especially in times of faux wars !
That was actually the phrase one youngish white guy used. He said (roughly, I’m paraphrasing 12 years later): look, I know the other guy was better for people like me; the Republicans take care of rich people. But I just didn’t want to change horses midstream. I’m sure on the phrase, because it struck me as cliched/kinda hokey even if he was someone who rode horses. But I just assumed it was a normal local idiom.
A lot of times people are just parroting back something that doesn’t really have anything to do with why they made their decision — it’s just an easy answer that has proven to be acceptable. All the campaigning just gave them a way to explain their vote, instead of voting for dreaded Other party.
Allegedly, it’s from Abe Lincoln.
Reminded me of the old chant: Don’t change Dicks in the middle of a screw, vote for Nixon in ’72
“In 1968, Tuck utilized Republican nominee Nixon’s own campaign slogan against him; he hired a very pregnant African-American woman to wander around a Nixon rally in a predominantly white area, wearing a T-shirt that said, “Nixon’s the One!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck
RE: Opioid Crisis
You should probably prepare yourself to get more depressed. From the New Yorker article linked above:
In August, 2015, over objections from critics, the company received F.D.A. approval to market OxyContin to children as young as eleven.
20+ years of addiction death and destruction and all we can manage are some officially overruled “critics.”
But not to worry. Maybe we can all get us some of artie, morty and ray’s good-for-what-ails-ya other drug:
Sackler promoted Valium for such a wide range of uses that, in 1965, a physician writing in the journal Psychosomatics asked, “When do we not use this drug?” One campaign encouraged doctors to prescribe Valium to people with no psychiatric symptoms whatsoever: “For this kind of patient—with no demonstrable pathology—consider the usefulness of Valium.”
No. Demonstrable. Pathology. Good to know.
The Las Vegas shooter, motive obscure, had been on Valium. Not clear yet whether he still was or, quite possibly, was in withdrawal.
Harvey Weinstein: how lawyers kept a lid on sexual harassment claims FT
Unable to read this one. Also, I’m am far, far from being a lawyer.
But, I do recall that you can’t have a contract that involves anything illegal. For example, an agreement for various payments while you sell illegal drugs would not stand up in court (and you would be in jail when you tried to get it enforced).
Wouldn’t these non-disclosure agreements fall under the same? If someone talks, is Harvey going to take them to court to get his payoff money back? “I sexually assaulted this woman and she promised she wouldn’t tell.”
How does this work?
Because talking about sexual harassment is not unlawful.
The gist behind an NDA is that one person gives up their right to disclose the subject of the NDA (subject to certain caveats, such as responding to a subpoena or court order) in exchange for payment.
Thank you. Seems to me though that the subject of the NDA that the person gives up the right to talk about is a crime itself. It should invalidate the contract.
I’m sure it’s all legal. It might become clear if I read an NDA. Let me just say, how lousy, and how probably typical.
A good lawyer would probably phrase it to make it legal.
“Without admitting any wrongdoing, we, the undersigned, agree to not talk about what transpired on the afternoon of October 24, 2017, the room 314 of the House of Sin.”
First, you have to talk about it in order to determine if it is or if it is not legal.
When you sign it, what happened in that room has not been judged as illegal…yet.
The NDA will make the signer agree to not “disparage the company or its directors, employees, agents, representatives […etc.] through any means, in any form known now or in the future, throughout the Universe”.
So long as the crime that the signer might make public is not proved in a final court decision, violation of such a clause would result in a very big law suit. Probably financial devastation for a lower-mid level employee.
I think Schrodinger’s cat is involved somehow here.
Or not.
Seems like Schrodinger’s cat had a tryst with Pavlov’s dog.
They most certainly must have resided in the House of Heisenberg.
The point is that it SHOULDN’T be legal. If that’s all we get out of the Weinstein scandal, it would still be a lot.
You point make sense: they’re being paid to cover up a crime.
Major changes to the way Hollywood works, and especially is financed – the producers have such power because they represent the money that gets films made – would be more like a real solution, bu thow likely is that?
Yes, we need to clean up that industry.
The contract, though, if it says ‘I pay you to steal a car,’ the contract is not valid.
If it says ‘I pay you to not talk about this or that,’ it in itself is not enough to say it’s not valid. We need to show that not talking about this or that is obstructing justice, covering up a crime or something like that.
That’s my non-lawyer’s understanding.
Not sure how it works.
Here is how it is.
Hollywood, the “industry” knew for decades about Harvey, and without shame, tells one morality tale after another, be “influencers” of politicians and generally gloat about their moral superiority to everyone else, and how they should be taken seriously. Seriously?
This “industry” puts out some of the vilest product possible. Vile sells.
Harvey’s stain on society now runs deep. The dozens of women, that were young girls intimidated and coerced into performing for Harvey are the ones that passed Harvey’s muster, and they are now stars because of him.
Already Hollywood is out defending and moralizing. Watching Mat Damon, where he says, and I am paraphrasing “we didn’t think it was this bad“, the I know nothing defense, is an instant classic.
Their credibility is zero.
Yeah, but everyone involved publicly and loudly supports Team D! So that makes it OK!
Saw what I assumed was a rebel never without a cause-in L.A. over the weekend…
….he was attired in Levis and a white t-shirt, with one sleeve rolled up a few times extending to the flat of his shoulder, where his smartphone laid, as he took a drag off of an E-Cig~
A few different versions of the Niger attack being reported. ABC News is reporting a 2nd mission was tacked on to the original reconnaissance job. Article says a 2nd team was supposed to join to help, but then couldn’t make it.
Thanks for the article.
This idiocy goes on all the time, more so now that “battlespace managers” are conducting the conflict in real time with full-spectrum information channels up and running, just like we see in the movies with those satellite high-res green-toned starlight scope images of infrared Spec Ops toughies sweeping all before them …
For a real-world dissection of just one such “operation,” I suggest reading the later chapters of Jon Krakauer’s book on the life and oopsie death of heroic Pat Tillman, “Where Men Win Glory.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Men_Win_Glory. Fools’ errands. No consequences for effups by the Brass. What is the mission, again?
An Old Colonel Looks at General Kelly Thomas Ricks, Foreign Policy
I’m old enough to remember when this society portrayed “lifers” (a disparaging term we one enlistment people used to describe those who stayed in the military) as rather maladjusted people who couldn’t fit into polite society, e.g., The Sand Pebbles, From Here to Eternity, The Last Detail. But the indoctrination that we’re all equal, but that the military few are superior to the civilian many continues apace*
*Really, it is sad that the complexity and nuance of military life (as well as all life) is foregone from most popular movies with comic book characters. I just saw the movie “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” for the first time and besides the cynical/realistic view of the clandestine services, its bitter ending was a refreshing palliative to the audience tested modern trope that no good guy can die…because sequels.
If our country was a western movie, the headgear changed from donning the white one to switching over to a more sinister tone, after our Euphrates You Broke It gambit, and now we’re dressed in black ops as well…
…and the only message that continually plays, is every member of our armed forces is a hero and although 99% of us don’t play the Johnny Got His Gun game and few of us know anybody in the military, we play along out of guilt
If I can add one more portrayal of the career military man: Uncle Victor in “Harold and Maude.”
https://youtu.be/rxUZO7EvzcE
Last paragraph from the article:
–powerful paragraph. Before Patton broke his neck and died, he thought the Russians were the next big threat and advocated for attacking Russia as soon as he could. What does Kelly/Trump want to take on?
“I’m old enough to remember when this society portrayed “lifers” (a disparaging term we one enlistment people used to describe those who stayed in the military)”
You forgot to mention that NCO stands for “No Chance on the Outside”.
I’ve been on safari in Trump’s California for a dozen years, in the red bastion of the republic of, where it’s so to the right of right, it might tip over the rest of the state physically, but never on a population basis.
There’s no here, here.
All over the Central Valley Bible Belt you see signs that are repetitious in nature, as the makers of said similar monikers realized that the very heart of pravdaganda, is hitting the proles over the head with it until it sinks in as truth. That’s the message when they’re driving, and Fox or the like instills little pills in their heads in the other waking hours.
A variety of signs from the CVBB:
https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAOAAAAAJGQ3NzliNGQxLTZiMmUtNDJiNy1hODllLTNhNzUxN2VkMGEyMQ.jpg
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5b6a01b57eebdcd5760c9ab5e4c04e3b-c
https://californiawaterblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/water_signs.jpg
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/140430144045-aman-california-drought-pray-for-rain-horizontal-large-gallery.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/BOgBmGK.jpg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, and that dogma will hunt here, and getting a CCW permit ain’t no big thang around these parts, try and get one in SoCal or NoCal?
Wukchumni
October 24, 2017 at 10:06 am
There is probably no group more dependent and exists solely because of government sponsored support (the California aqueduct is the largest public water system in the world)
http://www.watereducation.org/photo-gallery/california-water-101
as well as tax supports and co-opts (raisins and almonds are produced under a cartel that makes the Soviet 5 year plans look like Ayn Rand free markets run amok) than California central valley farmers.
The only solution to ever increasing water demand is even more government involvement of the supply, storage, and distribution of water. But it serves the interests of the richest people who get the most water due SOLELY to their outside influence on government to pretend that true representative government causes water shortages….
As far as the single mother, the billboard sponsors support health insurance, daycare, welfare, and all sorts of other benefits for unwed mothers…..or do they believe she should marry the father? Central valley billboards are perfect examples of ill logic and inconsistency….
It’s a funny world here, run amok by big ag money, but almost in entirety run by skilled Mexican labor who tend the orchards & farms.
And yes, it is a socialist paradise, where the best paying jobs pertain to one of the 3 continual shifts @ many of our all bar motels.
There is pending groundwater legislation to be announced in 2020, and a funny thing happened in the Central Valley in the midst of the worst drought known to Americans living here, right square in the hardest hit section of the state as 100 million trees were breathing their last in the purple mountains majesty above, in that all of the sudden there was a veritable shitlode of new fruit & nut trees everywhere, in places such as adjacent to the Visalia dump, approx 8,000 trees went in, in a jiffy. As with all of the existent trees heretofore elsewhere, in the midst of the drought, nearly every last drop of water to irrigate that peach or plum you ate in 2015, came from down under, well water. So that wasn’t an issue in planting so many new hires.
It’s hard to say how many new trees were planted during the 3rd, 4th and 5th year of the drought, but i’d guess in the many millions, a good many of them in nooks and crannies, just get ’em in.
This leads me to believe that the pending groundwater legislation will pertain to residents with roots in the ground already.
Water is for lying over-whiskey is for lying under.
Fresno, you probably are aware of this, but other readers may not be:
“Resnick Valley”
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/oligarch-valley/
“The King Of California” is all about JG Boswell’s ag empire, little known to most in the state. All he managed to do was gain the rights to the water from 5 main rivers running out of the Sierra into the Central Valley down below, amongst other things.
Boswell’s story would make quite a Western. Water rights and the wild west.
Some gunsmoke could be airbrushed.
Where does Miss Kitty fit in?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-1000-bagel-the-westin-new-york-might-have-just-doomed-this-bull-market-2017-10-23
A decade ago, the Westin New York at Time Square made headlines by offering a $1,000 bagel, dubbed “the world’s most expensive piece of bread.” Smeared with white truffle cream cheese and adorned with “Riesling jelly” and gold flakes, the gilded breakfast item was a real PR hit for the hotel.
…
Now, with the financial crisis merely a blip on the rising S&P SPX, +0.12% chart and investors riding a historic wave of market optimism, the “over-the-top” bagel is back by popular demand — so says the hotel — and is available from Nov. 1 and through mid-December. It’s a screaming bargain, too, according to the Westin.
“Considering how pricing has risen in the past decade (try buying an apartment for the same price as it was in 2007), this bagel at its introductory cost is nearly a deal,” the hotel said in a press release.
====================================
Does anyone know what gold tastes like? Being of limited means, I have only inadvertently tasted aluminum foil and the ends of nails – well, now that I think about it, whatever metal forks and spoons are made out of. I imagine gold has a richer, more complex taste….
Gold is tasteless. On the other hand, Pyrite has sulfur in it.
Imagine I said something clever about California and the Gold Rush.
You are not missing anything, gold has no taste. It’s just for decoration. Trivia fact to astonish your friends — edible gold is 23 carat, the 24th carat is platinum.
There are Japanese ceramic artists, both contemporary and of times past, who incorporated gold leaf as a part of their glazing tehcnique, producing some very fine and beautiful works.
These are elegant and timeless ….. unlike a f#ckin donut !
Cheapest way to try edible gold is on Xmas chocolates. The big boxes we have in French supermarkets usually have a couple inside. There’s also that German liqueur.
goldschlager if you like to drink
https://newrepublic.com/article/145456/liberals-stop-applauding-george-w-bush
This article gets it partly right, but it still misses the point as to why Bush was a bad president – it was his policies. Unfortunately, he accomplished a lot, none of it good. The article mentions some of those, but prefers to criticism Trump’s language and stance on immigration.
In the primary, Trump basically campaigned against Bush’s policies as much as Obama’s (although the extent to which Trump was telling the truth is debate). Bush also supported privatizing Social Security, which was the key goal of his second term, something which Trump seems to oppose.
Miss Uranium One goes on the offensive against claims that the Clinton Foundation made millions from the sale of American uranium production to Russia:
You know, livin’ good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and my Barry Obee
— Kris Kristofferson
She got hurt on a long term buy and hold uranium position?
And want to piss her off if you’re a waiter @ the restaurant she’s frequenting?
No matter what dressing she asks for on her salad, put on Russian dressing instead, ha ha!
Russian dressing infused with white truffle cream cheese, gold flakes and Bernanke jelly.
It’ll change your day.
You had me until the Cagey B reference…
Somehow I can’t picture her ever eating anything, but instead discreetly producing a power cord from under her pants suit and sticking it in the nearest outlet.
Photo from Hillary’s presser, courtesy of Banzai7 news:
Who broke the story a few days ago?
It was not Fox.
Also note, it’s always the other guy’s motive…vast right wingers out to get my husband…question the other guy’s motive/his conflict of interest…
Like why are you for immigrants? Altruism? Or they will get you votes? That’s not conflict of interest?
Here’s TODAY’S story, which Hillary obviously knew was coming:
So the Clintons have reverted to their standard defense to all their 1990s scandals: “It’s old news, debunked a long time ago. Why do they hate us? Let’s move on with what’s important to the American people.“
I’m told it’s known as the Karl Rove technique: “[The Karl Rove] technique is to accuse your opponents of doing what you are doing in order to get the spotlight removed from what you are doing. You do it loudly, constantly, and repeatedly, until you have overwhelmed your opponents, dulled the minds of the ignorant and apathetic, and generally made your points – the points people accept and believe.” — Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell
Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens
This is bad, really bad. How bad?Let me count the ways. Can you imagine if the West adopted the same approach? I can see it now. Oh, you visit the Naked Capitalism website? Well, we’ll just slow your internet speed for that little piece of dissent and add you to our watch list as well. You save a lot of money? That is bad for the economy as we want people to consume so down goes the interest you earn for your money.
What if you were not religious in the United States? I have read anecdotal evidence that atheists in the US are hated more than strict Muslims in some places and organizations. Would that drop your score for not belonging to an approved faith or any faith at all? I have read too that not having a Facebook account looks bad when you apply for a job as they wonder if you are – gasp! – antisocial. Would having an account be almost mandatory? Would having a subscription to the New York Times and the Washington Post boost your scores then? Or never contacting your Senator or Congressman about something you dislike?
Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens. This is bad, really bad.
Does it talk about the Chinese move to biometric-based credentialization, too?
That’s a disaster waiting to happen.
F-35s Hobbled by Parts Shortages, Slow Repairs, Audit Finds Bloomberg. Did you know “sustainment” was a word? It is.
~~~~~~~~
F-35 = Bitscoin
We have a F-35 squadron based @ naval air station Lemoore, in the CVBB, which serves to protect what must be a million milk cows surrounding the area, along with many millions of almond trees.
There are numerous small clusters of humans as well.
http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/lemoore/the-f–c-has-landed/article_6a6962ce-224e-52d7-b95e-84deb991550a.html
“Sustainment” is not sustained by my dictionary, but “sustentation” and “sustention” both are.
Sustenance takes many forms, just make sure that the wiring instructions are up to date.
My macbook’s built-in dictionary app (based on the OxDicAmEng) has sustainment as a standard derivative of ‘sustain’. For sustentation it lists the following more-specialized usage:
“the support or maintenance of someone or something, esp. through the provision of money: provision is made for the sustentation of preachers.”
This editorial by Vicent Partal, of Vilaweb was originally published in Catalan on October 21. It has now been translated into English and posted. It takes a few days. This is how 155 will be met in Catalonia. https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/prepare-to-defend-freedom-later-this-week-independence-catalonia/.
Yves, Lambert, I don’t know if you want to include the above in the Links section. Last time I pressed the “links” button for a Suso de Toro article, it posted the full text and not just the link address as I intended. So obviously, I don’t know how to use that feature correctly.
On another note, I see in the papers today that Madrid is now threatening other autonomies: Castilla-LaMancha, Navarra, and the Basque Country with article 155. I cannot tell if it is simply bragadoccio or for real. Either way it is indicative of the runaway mindset, some might say panic, in Madrid.
Colm Toibin novelist had an interesting radio talk about Catalonia – about 1h: https://podtail.com/podcast/the-stand-with-eamon-dunphy/ep-95-colm-toibin-on-the-crisis-in-catalonia/
Thank you for the Colm Toibin link. It is excellent!! He knows the territory well. He also wrote the prologue to “What Catalans Want” which is in English.
I’d like to expand on what he said:
— AVE high speed train. Spain has the highest length of high speed rail gmileage in the world except for China. I didn’t believe it at first but research confirmed it. Many of these lines are so underutilized that they have been mothballed. Example: they built a line that was supposed to go from Madrid to Lisbon, and the Portuguese told them in advance that they did not want it, did not need it, couldn’t justify it. Spain built it anyway, and the line ends abruptly at the border, truncated on pylons in the middle of nowhere. Cost 28 billion euros. The line Madrid-Toledo-Cuenca-Albacete was mothballed 6 months after inauguration for lack of ridership. It costs a lot of money to run these trains I do not remember the exact figure anymore but it was in the 6 figure category per day. Another mothballed line had an average daily ridership of 7 passengers. By contrast, the line that does make economic sense, BCN-French border took 24 years to build, completed within the past 5 years, inaugurated by President Artur Mas. They calculated and joked that if a turtle had started walking from the starting line of the rail it would have reached the border with France before the high speed AVE did.
— Flightless airports Then there are numerous airports that have no flights. One of them was finally turned into a race track, but by that time the wildlife had taken up residence and over time had wrecked havoc with the electric lines and other infrastructure generating more expenses.
— The same applies to the numerous redundant concentric roadways around Madrid that are completely underutilized.
— A more recent mind-blowing insanity is the Corredor Mediterráneo. Approved by EU, with EU money set aside for it. It is a rail line that is supposed to hugh the coastline from the southernmost tip of Spain connecting Andalucía, Murcia, València, Catalunya to the French border to facilitate freight transport from seaports to Europe. This route was approved by the EU. Madrid wants this line to go via Madrid and to the French border through Aragon requiring the train to climb up the central plateau to Madrid and to drill a lengthy tunnel under the Pyrenees. Along the coast there is no need to climb plateaus and the Pyranees are not an obstacle at the coastal level in Catalonia. They repeatedly asked the EU to approve this route instead, the EU repeatedly refused it, so Madrid doesn’t build it. Last time I checked, Madrid was not on the coast.
Spain jjust builds things to build things, create a few, temporary construction jobs, and then go bankrupt or mothballed them because they are not viable.
This is why the Catalans are upset about the tax thing. Not that they are greedy, and don’t want to help the needy, but rather they’ve seen time and again their taxes used for expensive totally unnecessary and unproductive things while necessary viable and economically productive infrastructure in Catalonia is neglected.
Money in the hands of the central gov’t is totally wasted. Catalans do not like to see their hard won money wasted.
If you want to broaden your understanding of the depth of the Spain/Catalunya conflict, this by Matthew Tree is outstanding. Spot on. The video is about an hour, but includes a Q&A which you can chose to skip. The talk seems to be from 2010 but remains germaine to today. It adds to the Colm Toibin discussion. Very little overlap.
https://youtu.be/6vxdlD5KuCA
What the Spanish Government is doing should embarrass the entire Western World. We all saw Spain’s Secretary of State stating that the police violence on Oct 1st was fake propaganda. With all due respect to all Jewish people and their families who went through a historically unmatched inhumane humiliation and annihilation, the Spanish Government and Spain’s Monarch are spreading a narrative which resembles in form that of the neonazis who deny that the Jew massacre ever took place. There are the images, the reports and the certified medical accounts from hospitals. Catalans over 76 years old and kids under 12 were hurt.
We also have the repression against civic, community organizations. Baseless investigations over the grassroots organization, ANC, want to suggest that the organization used public funds to finance Catalan’s social movement. ANC’s own inner rules explicitly ban any use of public funds. ANC’s own official website requires donors to state their identities. The next step by Spain’s Government seems to be aimed at blocking ANC accounts and seizing their funds. ANC has been wise enough to stop accepting their members’ monthly fees, so that said monetary contributions do not end in Spain’s government’s pockets.
Linked from the “A Presidential Bellwether Is Still Waiting to Start Winning Under Trump NYT” above:
Why ‘Medicare for All’ Will Sink the Democrats shows how centrist Democrat shills like Rattner continue to cast Sanders, who is the most popular politician in the US today as “not even a Democrat” (that’s a plus in my mind) whose policy positions are lunatic fringe at best.
He then proceeds to set up straw man arguments about why Medicare for All can’t work (it’s expensive; several states have introduced bills for single payer which were emphatically voted down).
As someone who served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, you’d think he understands how the federal government actually pays for stuff (hint: it’s not taxes). Oh but wait, he is also a Wall Street executive so that explains it.
Funny how Rattner never allows comments on his op-eds.
About the resilience of the postal system in Puerto Rico.
It’s just amazing, for the price of a stamp, you can send a small physical object anywhere in the U.S. with guaranteed delivery. Paper, love letters, pressed flowers, household goods, it’s all good to go.
If teenagers would get hold of that idea, abandon Farcebook and social media and start sending things back and forth, the system would rebound economically from its artificially imposed alleged “bankruptcy.” (having to set aside pension money for postmen not even born yet). No other government agency has to do that. Oh, and they are now delivering packages for Amazon at a loss, paid for by other customers of the postal service.
A reminder, Diane Feinstein’s husband is profiting from dismantling the postal system:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/dianne-feinstein-postal-service_n_4423045.html
Thanks for the reminder about Dianne Feinstein’s husband. I hope that California voters keep that in mind in the 2018 primary election.
I really, really, really dislike Amazon.com.
within the multibillion dollar incentive package that broke Illinois and broke Chicago assembled for Amazon, here’s a beauty: $170 million in state sales tax breaks for building materials purchased by and new construction completed by “high-end businesses.”
Taxpayer subsidized marble lobbies! Your progressive politicans working for you, Chicago.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicagos-amazon-bid-includes-2-25-billion-incentive-package/
Louis Fyne: Yep, people are passing that article around today. My basic question: Does anyone truly believe that 50,000 workers (“jobs”) can be accommodated by the old post office over the Eisenhower? Or at the old Michael Reese campus, which is somewhat larger (but mainly parkland these days)?
I was on North Michigan Avenue this weekend, heading over to the film festival. Maybe I don’t get downtown often enough, but the supply of tatty high-rise residential buildings seems to be endless in the neighborhoods north of the turn in the river. I guess we’ll stick the 50,000 workers in some “luxury rental” in Streeterville.
back of the envelope:
the average worker gets about 160 sq ft in space * 50,000 workers = Amazon needs 8+ million sq ft, long-term best case scenario. (note that 50k is the ceiling Amazon promises, not the floor)
Willis/Sears Tower = 4.5 million sq. ft
So at the most optimistic, Amazon needs two to three super-tall buildings.
It’s nuts for cities/states to toss around $1+ billion in subsidies for buildings that go up on a routine basis. Oh wait, I forgot. when Democrats offer corporations subsidies, it’s a public investment.
When trust-busting starts, there will be no need for a second HQ.
We just need some candidate to make it a litmus test.
I’d go with the Amazon Jungle theme, and rip out what’s left of the Everglades, and put it there.
Up here in the (semi)wilds of Vancouver Island, the mayor of Langford, a bedroom suburb of Victoria, announced he was going to put in a bid. I don’t know whether the city actually followed through, or whether it was just another of his PR stunts to keep him in the news. I think he wants to eventually go for the vacant Liberal party leadership for BC, but is looking to get drafted, like the deposed Premier Christie.
With a current vacancy rate for housing of 0.5%, and like almost everywhere else with any economic growth in North America, a homelessness crisis, it would have been a place for investment in Amazon housing: RV Parks.
Of course, our Prime Minister, Trudeau II, also thought bidding for it was a good idea, but I suspect he would have favoured Toronto, which also has a housing crisis while announcing that they might bid. I don’t know whether either on actually completed a bid, and I don’t care. It would have been, in my view, a complete waste of money.
That would be NFL teams charging kneeling players, if they want viewers to see their freedom speeches or (short and nonverbal) stories.
Does the owner of Facebook not see the irony?
OPERATION PHOENIX BACK IN THE HEADLINES
More violations of international law
We had to kill talk of the environment in order to save it from being an issue…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EPA yanks scientists’ conference presentations, including on climate change WaPo
“F-35s Hobbled by Parts Shortages, Slow Repairs, Audit Finds ”
Retired defense analyst Pierre Sprey saw this coming in this 2010 interview along with all the other F-35 shortcomings.. In another interview when specifically asked what was the point of the F-35, Sprey candidly states “the point is to spend money” Start at 7:00 but the whole interview is worthwhile.
Any NC readers who find
A New Language for a New World The Disorder of Things
interesting might be interested by James C. Scott’s recent “Against the Grain” or his older “The Art of Not Being Governed”.
The title of that last book is basically what the discussion in the New Language for a New World The Disorder of Things link and the two books is about.
Thanks, I will check him out.
The difference between our pyramid schemes and the ones in Egypt, is there will be no tangible evidence that it ever happened, 3,000 years from now.
But mallsoleums will abound, in their decayed and ruinous state !
That’s cryptic!
That Atlantic story about the ‘safari’ in Trump country was really rather eye popping in its way. That little venture actually cost 20 million bucks? Really? Um…how is that possible? Even if it managed to produce any kind of useful data (which it obviously didn’t): Somebody dropped 20 million on that thing? How could it possibly cost so much?
You used to rarely see the X & Y chronozones backpacking in the High Sierra, as it was mostly boomers and fewer of them afield as attrition and the body not so willing anymore, turned into decades of really not that many people on the trail-a nadir not unlike what happened to bowling, and the cultural mix was strictly white as the driven snow, it wasn’t as if nobody else was allowed to come and play, it just didn’t happen.
But that was then and this is now, and i’ve never seen so many young adults in the backcountry, and i’m not positive if it’s a sure fire way to get away from connectivity, or a longing to connect with what’s real?
The most numerous new addition is Indian-Americans (think Mumbai-not Mohecan) of which i’ve seen around 50 in the past few years, along with 5 Black Americans, raising the total number i’ve come across on the trail for 30 years now, to 7.
I’m quite glad diversity and youth is being served what they must learn to cherish and protect, and no doubt will do so, as the torch is passed to a new generation exploring the back of beyond.
Why oh why do foreign journalists always misspell Italian words?
La Stampa, not La Stampo.
Come on people, this one was not even very difficult. You can sort of get away with too many or too few consonants in La Repubblica or Il Corriere. But La Stampa?
>Trump is a bad fascist. But what about the next one? The Week
“We’re just lucky that President Trump turns out to be such a bad fascist.”
Because he isn’t one.
“He certainly has the right temperament and inclinations. But he altogether lacks the commitment, the discipline and focus, the gumption to be a Stalin or a Pinochet.”
Neither of them were fascist either.
Do words just not mean anything anymore?
No Plenue.
Just that words mean what he says they mean, in Wonderland, or is it Wunderland (that’s my rye humour).
So ray Dalio is criticising the conditions his industry(finance) had a major share in creating. Oh the irony!
>>YouTube censors low-church theology<<
This is a joke, right? Looking at the twitter pics, the videos are just vanilla explanations of Christian theology. The type of stuff any mainstream, or near mainstream, church, or for that matter, a school, or especially, college class on religion would teach. I mean really?
If I was being, unduly I hope, all paranoid, and tinfoilish, I would suspect YouTube wants people to register to see the videos so that they know who exactly is watching them.