By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Readers, this is a bit light, but I need to run along and do some stuff. So I will natter on tomorrow at excessive length, to make up for my dereliction today. –lambert
Politics
2020
“TRUMP NAMES DIGITAL GURU BRAD PARSCALE CAMPAIGN MANAGER FOR 2020 RUN” [Wired]. “A political novice prior to the 2016 race, Parscale oversaw the campaign’s digital operations from the San Antonio offices of his web design and strategy firm Giles-Parscale. What began as a one-man operation in 2015 grew into one of the most successful—and controversial—digital campaigns in presidential history, with Parscale’s team working alongside embedded staffers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to fine-tune the campaign’s advertising online.” Surely both campaigns had “embedded staffers” from Silicon Valley?
2018
Ha:
"The left can't compete in deep-red sta— pic.twitter.com/E3VU0PSwWi
— ? IPM ?????? (@IPM_Tweets) March 2, 2018
PA-18:
Conor Lamb asked in #PA18 debate for 3 places he'd vote outside his party, has real answers:
1) "Government-run medicine" (single-payer) – "I don't think that'd be a good idea," adds "too expensive."
2) Fracking.
3) "I don't support Nancy Pelosi."— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) March 4, 2018
As I keep saying, stopping the menace of #MedicareForAll is a key goal for liberal Democrats.
2016 Post Mortem
“Democrats grapple with Clinton-Sanders fallout ahead of 2018 election” [WTOP]. “The spat’s spillover was evident at the organization’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Friday as Democratic National Committee members discussed limiting the power of superdelegates and adding transparency to the budget process — controversies in the party that came to light in the 2016 election…. But a proposal in the rules committee meeting would not allow superdelegates to vote in the first round of ballots at the convention, but would allow them to vote on a second ballot, which happens when there’s no consensus candidate. That proposal will be discussed further at next week’s DNC meeting. ‘There’s a clear consensus that the status quo will change,” Roosevelt said of the superdelegates. “Whether that impacts all automatic delegates or only the automatic delegates who are not members of Congress or governors remains to be seen.’ He noted it’s a ‘continuous; issue “because this is asking a group to limit its own power. That’s always a challenging question.'”
Gunz
“War Room” [New York Magazine]. Parkland student organizing. Oddly, or not, the Democrats are all over this, while virtually silent on the West Virginia teachers strike.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“The Collapse of Racial Liberalism” [The American Interest (DK)]. “By racial liberalism, I mean the basic consensus that existed across the mainstream of both political parties since the 1970s, to the effect that, first, bigotry of any overt sort would not be tolerated, but second, that what was intolerable was only overt bigotry—in other words, white people’s definition of racism. Institutional or “structural” racism—that is, race-based exclusions that result from deep social habits such as where people live, who they know socially, what private organizations they belong to, and so on—were not to be addressed.2 The core ethic of the racial liberal consensus was colorblind individualism.”
Conservatives, the left, liberals:
photo of U.S. Congress pic.twitter.com/MlKkgA5kUe
— IL for a People's Party (@MPP_Illinois) February 1, 2018
Readers will recognize this image as a riff on the “Distracted Boyfriend” meme. I like it because it’s not binary. Thinking in threes — like, say, thesis, antithesis, synthesis — is a handy mental tool to have.
Stats Watch
Purchasing Managers Services Index, February 2018: “PMI services had shown softness compared to other small-sample surveys but strength is now accelerating” [Econoday]. “Hiring is solid and business optimism is also strong, at a 13-year high. Unsustainable strength is the signal from many private surveys, still in contrast to actual data from the government where strength is much less severe.” And: “Both services surveys are in expansion – but their intensity of growth were different” [Econoday].
Institute For Supply Management Non-Manufacturing Index, February 2018: “The ISM non-manufacturing index, at 59.5 in February, easily beats Econoday’s consensus and follows this morning’s services PMI to hint at accelerating and perhaps unsustainably strong conditions for the bulk of the nation’s economy” [Econoday].
The Bezzle: “Backdoor drivers: Hackers threatening connected cars” [Bangok Post] (of all places). “Manufacturers are beginning to develop vehicles that require automated security with real-time threat intelligence and strategic segmentation to protect the car’s complex architecture.” Everything is fine.
Tech: “Here Are 911 Transcripts of Some of the Times Apple Employees Walked Directly Into Glass Wall” [Gizmodo (KW)]. “It is now known that a perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.” C. Northcote Parkison, Parkinson’s Law.
Tech: “Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices, escalating its war with Google” [Business Insider (KW)]. Oligopolistic scorpions on a jar.
Rapture Index: Closes down 1 on drought. “Drought conditions have declined with winter rains” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 184.
Five Horsemen: “Apple leads the tightly-clustered Silicon Valley contingent with Alphabet and Facebook right behind it” [Hat Tip, Jim Haygood].
NakedCap Mania-Panic Index: “At Friday’s close the mania-panic index remained flat at 31 (worry) as two short-term technical measures — new highs vs new lows and up volume vs down volume — continued deteriorating” [Hat Tip, Jim Haygood]. (The NakedCap mania-panic index is an equally-weighted average of seven technical indicators derived from stock indexes, volatility (VIX), Treasuries, junk bonds, equity options, and internal measures of new highs vs new lows and up volume vs down volume … each converted to a scale of 0 to 100 before averaging, using thirty years of history for five of the seven series.)
Health
“California nurses union leader RoseAnn DeMoro retiring, but remains ‘on call'” [San Francisco Chronicle]. “[T]he nurses union [helped] deflate former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. When few others would take him on early in his first term, the nurses dogged him with 107 demonstrations within a year, helping to shrink his once sky-high approval rating. In much the same way, they torpedoed the 2010 gubernatorial campaign of his potential Republican successor, billionaire Meg Whitman, by following her around California with a living prop — a pearl-draped actress dressed as ‘Queen Meg’ riding in a horse-drawn chariot.”
The 420
“A Canadian Marijuana Company Is Now Trading On The NASDAQ” [Forbes]. “There are some key potential regulatory tailwinds that could rapidly enhance the growth prospects for Cronos and other marijuana companies. Canada is expected to legalize the use of recreational marijuana this year. Medicinal and recreational use of marijuana is becoming more accepted in the United States, with eight states allowing recreational use and more states expected to vote for legalization this year. There are some significant headwinds, however, that could impede progress. Marijuana is still prohibited in the United States on a federal level, both for medicinal and recreational purposes.”
MMT
“The dangers of pluralism in economics: the case of MMT” [Mainly Macro]. “I like ____, but their supporters on the Twitter….”
Class Warfare
“Frontier Communication workers on strike” [WDTV]. West Virginia. Would be nice to see some synergy here…
“Unions mull legal action after wrong bill passed; schools remain closed Monday” [Gazette Mail]. Oh, yes. Let’s divert the West Virginia teachers strike (and the narrative) into the courts and write the lawyers some checks. Please.
“Organization claims Oklahoma teachers are organizing strike” [KFOR]. Well, that headine seems a little dubious…
“Community protests new Dollar General, says they want more grocery stores” [KTUL]. OOOOk-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain…
“Preempting the states: US Ed to shield debt collectors from consumer protection” [Credit Slips].
“How ‘the Kingfish’ Turned Corporations into People” [New York Review of Books]. Huey Long, in a battle with the press.
News of The Wired
“Roll Models” (PDF) [Tadashi Tokieda]. “These notes attempt a case study of applied mathematics for beginning students via problems of rolling. They do so by pointing out diverse surprising phenomena, many of which the reader can try at home, modeling them, and testing the limits of these models. One message is that rolling, because it tightly coordinates different modes of motion, tends to be more exactly solvable than meets the eye. Another message is that the thrill of applied mathematics is not in how difficult the mathematics is, but rather in what diversity of surprises in one’s own experience one can discover, then understand.” Fun!
Word of the Day:
today I learned the word "saeculum," which is the length of time between an important event happening & the moment that everybody who was alive when it happened is dead.
Apparently Etruscans believed each civilization was alotted a certain number of saecula from its founding.
— David Hines (@hradzka) March 4, 2018
Rather like telomere shortening, but for civilizations?
Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (via):
I love the smell of damp earth in the very early spring, during snow-melt.
Readers, thanks for all the photos! I think I’m all set for now (though do feel free to send more, especially if you’ve never sent in a plant photo before).
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I’ll add something about tomorrow’s Texas Primaries.
https://ballotpedia.org/Heart_of_the_Primaries,_Democrats-Issue_8_(March_5,_2018)
Last Friday in Austin a half dozen voting machines were set up in the Fiesta market for early voters.
In the parking lot we were approached by a young get-out-the-vote organizer whom I took to be a Democrat owing to his not-from-here yankee accent … and the fact that shoppers at an hispanic-themed supermarket are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.
Hangin’ out at Fiesta is a lot more fun than the sleek, antiseptic Domain where upscale millennials live and shop in “retail disneyland.”
30 years ago I used to go to the Fiesta Mart in SW Houston. Even then it was like a foreign bazaar, especially out in the parking lot where vendors from Mexico, Africa, Korea, the ME, and so on all hawked their wares. Don’t know if that’s still allowed or not, i.e., the parking lot vendors.
Inside the store it was pretty cool too. Houston, 50% deep South, 50% Los Angeles..
Didn’t see no parking lot vendors at Fiesta in Austin. Totally agree that Houston is 50% Deep South; 50% LA. Whereas Austin has become a traffic-choked dystopia … Lake Travis is now ringed by the baroque castles of the Dellionaires and newer parvenus.
we went to Austin saturday(100 miles) and wife drove there(I drove back). The boys and I tallied the campaign signs…prolly in the thousands along 290: zero democrats until one was within bow-shot of the Y at Oakhill.
the repub signs were for everything from US Senator to county commish to constable. if there’s an office, the gop is running someone.
…and spending $$$ on signage, apparently.
I know that dems are running more candidates in Texas than in the last 25 years, and I’ve had issues with the state party regarding signage(I’ve been making my own for decades)…but I wonder about the disparity in roadside representation.
are dems still scared and in the closet?
is the state party still sucking badly in getting signage out there?
or is the disparity representative of fewer fired up dems with fences along the highway?
out here, there are a surprising number of signs for the woman(Jennie Lou Leeder)running against Mike Conaway(Texas 11th)…and that’s a welcome change.
And the further question: do signs actually matter?
A couple of good articles today:
Wealth Inequalities and the Fallacies of Impact Investing
Home Care Cooperatives and the Future of Work
Thank You!
and
https://ballotpedia.org/Heart_of_the_Primaries,_Democrats-Issue_8_(March_5,_2018)
God they reallllllly hate Sanders.
Levi is not Bernie.
Repeat after me: Levi is not Bernie.
OTOH. Chelsea is Hillary. Squared.
Something to ponder from Bruce Dixon at BAR:
https://blackagendareport.com/are-intersectionalism-or-afro-pessimism-paths-power-probably-not-part-3-3
“A class analysis tells us that unless and until we make the planet and the fruits of human labor and culture available to all, we haven’t accomplished anything like a revolution. A class analysis suggests that in addition to organizing black and latinx neighborhoods, prisoners and their families, and organizing fast food workers – really organizing them with shop floor actions and home visits which Fight For $15 doesn’t do – the US left ought to look for opportunities to organize the large multiracial workforces in the strategic sectors which can bring significant pieces of society to a halt. Hospitals and health care workers. Public workers. Logistics . Power grids and the communications infrastructure. Teachers and educational workplaces on all levels. That’s a realistic, though incredibly difficult path to leverage and power that intersectionality simply does not provide.”
Thanks. Can’t say I disagree with the content, but it’s difficult to evaluate the claim about class analysis without knowing what classes are supposed to be. Class doesn’t seem to be a matter of income, since by that criterion some rentiers I know (landlords) would end up in the same class as hourly employees. It can’t be a matter of sources of income, since the income of both CEOs and auto mechanics takes the form of salary or wages. And surely people are not in distinct classes because some are paid a salary for their work and others a wage.
Can you elucidate on what benefit it will bring the argument to focus on such distinctions, and not on, say, level of income, income by capital investment or wealth gained by inheritance?
I’m not the first to say this: classes are made, not identified statistically.
I would interpret Dixon as suggesting that the (re)making of the US working class will require the active participation of many categories of humans that were not called on, or allowed to participate, last time around.
Now if you had said, “…without know what classes are supposed to do,” I would say you have a point. Dixon and most socialists, me included, still think that something like a “working class” can be created that will overtly challenge a capitalist class and prevail, or at least force a new compromise that is a significant upgrade over the current circumstance. But TBH, that is more “optimism of the will” than fact-based analysis. And it still leaves open lots of issues, like if this working class is supposed to be made at the national, supra-national, or sub-national level.
Paul, classes aren’t hard.
Class membership is defined principally by one’s relationship to the control of the means of production.
Here’s the typical breakdown in a mature capitalist society:
Bourgeois: controls productive capital, doesn’t need to sell labour in order to live.
Petty Bourgeois: controls some productive capital, but still needs to sell some labour in order to live.
Proletarian: does not control productive capital, must sell labour in order to live. Most of the people in North America who have come to habitually consider themselves as “middle class” are in fact proletarians.
Lumpenproletarian: does not control productive capital. Does not sell labour. Survives by crime or charity.
Clergy, aristocracy, petty aristocracy, and the three peasant classes (yeoman, middle peasant, small peasant) have all been liquidated or rendered vestigial in the advanced countries.
I’m not so sure that aristocracy is dead, when we look at the presence of clans in politics and Hollywood.
It does make sense, when you think about it, that in a capitalist society, the relationship one has to capital would be, as it were, “the magic key.”
Eh…. 450ish billionaires….
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-43292047/burger-flipping-robot-begins-first-shift/
Flippy, a burger-flipping robot, has begun work at a restaurant in Pasadena, Los Angeles.
It is the first of dozens of locations for the system, which is destined to replace human fast-food workers.
–
From the video: “Each robot costs $60,000 and costs a further $12,000 a year to run.”
So over 5 years that’s $120,000. That’s $24,000 a year. Over 10 years that’s $180,000 or $18,000 a year. It’s relatively slow and I assume it needs a human to set up everything for it and can only do one job (cooking the burgers). Meh. Currently, it only seems viable in quite high-wage areas.
Here’s a little more eye candy…
Opinion | Dethrone ‘King Dollar’
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/dethrone-king-dollar.html
But new research reveals that what was once a privilege is now a burden, undermining job growth, pumping up budget and trade deficits and inflating financial bubbles. To get the American economy on track, the government needs to drop its commitment to maintaining the dollar’s reserve-currency status.
@CaterpillarInc
Via@Reuters- Customers working on the Belt and Road initiative are choosing Caterpillar due to our global dealer network and technology expertise
Caterpillar drives sales on China’s new Silk Road | Article [AMP] | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-caterpillar-china-b-r/caterpillar-drives-sales-on-chinas-new-silk-road-idUSKBN1GG146
Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order | International Affairs | Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com/ia/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ia/iix242/4851910
I don’t know for sure where we’re going from here, but it won’t be boring.
The Silk and Road stuff is wrongheaded. We’ve been running news stories for the last month-plus saying it’s a big China headfake. Very very little if anything actually being done. We said early on that the same was true of the much hyped Asia Infrastructure Bank (where in fairness, the gap between the PR and the project was much more obvious).
The critical bit would be the railroad (+?) that connects right across Central Asia to Europe through Sinkiang – the New Silk Road. Most importantly for China, it would solidify their control of Sinkiang, which is a bit shaky.
I had the impression it was actually going forward. Is that incorrect? The port projects seem like very ordinary development/foreign aid projects; they don’t actually create routes that didn’t exist. In practice, they’d be very much like a lot of US foreign aid.
A head fake, or just much harder than they expected?
Due to the hour plus the crapification of Google, it’s difficult to find the critical stories I’ve seen in the past two months, but their salient characteristic was that they all had hard information, like status of deals or resistance of supposedly critical participants (India is not on board and Pakistan is plenty wary) or just plain economics, which the ones touting OBOR are just basically repeating Chinese PR about the scheme with no new information. In other words, the actual sighings of late have been overwhelmingly negative.
This was one I could locate readily. Key section:
http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2133858/chinas-got-trade-problem-cant-be-solved-belt-and-road
Thanks, I overlook some things. That’s exactly what dad has has been saying, “you’re wrong headed, you should have went into the military, discipline and how to take orders etc…” After taking care of him for two+ months and getting him set up with a number of VA care options he never explored on his own.
Now that he’s taken care of, Superstar wants me to help her a few days with her home remodeling project. Point taken, I’ll try not to be too ‘wrong headed’ over there. Lol, I can’t wait to get back out on a truck and become one with the wild weather again soon.
The Arctic is sending us a powerful message about climate change. It’s time for us to listen | World Economic Forum
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/03/arctic-melting-beast-from-the-east-why-we-should-be-worried/
Dubious. How many “civilizations” had the Etruscans experienced (before becoming Romans), and how did they define “Civilization?”
How did they calculate the “alotted a certain number of saecula?” Or was it a fixed number for all Civilizations, and if so what’s the number?
Aka: Show me the proof.
Synoia: I am more familiar with this way of Etruscan reckoning, which the Romans adopted and used in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol Hill:
“The region around Orvieto hides a great mystery: the location of the Fanum Voltumna. It was a sacred place of greatest importance, where every year the representatives of the Etruscan 12-City League would meet to discuss important political and economic transactions. There must have been numerous religious ceremonies, when we recall that every year a nail what driven into the wall of the sanctuary of the goddess Nortia. According to the belief of the Etruscans, when the wall was covered with nails, the Etruscans would cease to exist. This custom of driving a nail into the wall was carried on by the Romans for long afterwards.”
This comes from a website describing the possible ruins of the Etruscan city, Velzna, near modern Orvieto in Umbria.
As to civilizations that the Etruscans experienced, the strongest case is made that they were indigenous, although there is much disagreement about the origins of the Etruscans. Rome took them over piece by piece, city by city, and the Etruscan language went extinct around 50 C.E.
Thanks for the Tadashi Tokieda Lambert! This guy is a treasure.
Coincidentally, he has a Numberphile video out today:
Round Peg in a Square Hole – Numberphile
Check out Tokieda’s “Toy Models” video series.
Yes, that was excellent, although obviously pitched at a fairly high level (university students and maybe some advanced high schoolers would enjoy it, others not so much).
I liked the definition of rigor in applied mathematics as the testing of models, and the throwaway comment about pure mathematicians lacking rigor in this sense. That language would make any pure mathematician bristle, but he has a point.
Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier
Quite an illuminating article. Some interesting quotes:
>After Kramer promised to share the document only with McCain, Steele arranged for Kramer to receive a copy in Washington. But a former national-security official who spoke with Kramer at the time told me that one of Kramer’s ideas was to have McCain confront Trump with the evidence, in the hope that Trump would resign. “He would tell Trump, ‘The Russians have got you,’ ” the former official told me.
>One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney.
My main takeaway is that Democrats are going all-in on the Steele dossier’s credibility as way to prove #Russiagate and get rid of Trump. But I don’t think it will work out the way they want it to.
I believe that there is a saying in governments that you should never, ever, hold an inquiry unless you know exactly what it is going to find out! Otherwise you may find yourself very unpleasantly surprised.
Maybe the same is true here in that the Democrats had better make damn sure they know what will come out of pursuing this rubbish dossier or that it might blow up in their faces.
In a related article (yeah, I know, esquire):
> corruption everywhere he looks
Film at 11!
It’s the republicans with the dossier fetish. I don’t see democrats talking about it at all. And the FBI started the investigation before they were handed the dossier.
Come on. The article is in the New Yorker, which is an orthodox Dem outlet.
And if you Google “Christopher Steele,” one story is from Fox, one is from Forbes (which is no longer right-wing, you need to look at the author/headline) and the rest are from places like the Washington Post, Vanity Fair and Business Insider.
If you do a search from the day before yesterday back for a month to screen out the impact of amplification of the New Yorker piece, you get 2 from Fox, one from WaPo, one from The Hill, one from Politico, one from Business Insider, the rest from UK papers. The UK ones are consistent with US MSM coverage.
Making stuff up is against our written site Policies.
Why would the Democrat party talk about it? They were trying to cover up the the fact that they paid for it.
Does this mean Hilary finally gets an orange jumpsuit? Um, no. So still a banana republic.
Just checking.
And the FBI started the investigation before they were handed the dossier.
This is far from being conclusively proven. I note that Trey Gowdy stated two days ago that a second special counsel is likely unavoidable.
Conor Lamb asked in #PA18 debate for 3 places he’d vote outside his party, has real answers:
What’s his position on the Defense Budget?
A real answer to how he would vote, but “outside his party”? I thought he was a Democrat? How is dissing single payer not the most mainstream D position there is? The most reflexive punch left they’ve got.
And to be fair to Mr. Lamb, I can’t tell the diff between R and D on the Defense budget, it seems to be the only time they partially understand MMT I guess – missing, of course, that the money printed has to be spent on something actually useful. So what answer would you expect (you don’t actually have to answer that, of course ;))?
Wrapping up the (first round) Italian election coverage with a salty and eccentrically structured column by Andrea Scanzi. In Italian and well worth the read, if you read Italian:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2018/03/05/elezioni-qualche-considerazione/4204413/
You can take this Italian paragraph and translate it into Clintonian, and events will all make sense:
Un uomo politicamente senza pregi, privo di qualsivoglia qualità, goffo e caricaturale, arrogante e vendicativo, tronfio e circondato da una classe dirigente terrificante al cui confronto la Carfagna è Nilde Iotti. Eppure, se lo criticavi nel 2014, ti lapidavano. Da allora, com’era naturale che fosse, le ha perse tutte. Ma proprio tutte. Se avesse smesso dopo il 4 dicembre 2016, come del resto aveva promesso (come Boschi, Carbone, Fedeli e altri intellettuali), avrebbe fatto bene anzitutto a se stesso. Ma non ha smesso. E la slavina si è fatta gogna, e poi martirio, e poi strazio, e poi Armageddon.
Translation:
A man politically without merits, devoid of any quality, clumsy and caricatural, arrogant and vindictive, pompous and surrounded by a terrifying ruling class to which the Carfagna is Nilde Iotti. Yet, if you criticized him in 2014, they stoned you. Since then, as it was natural, he lost them all. But all of them. If he had quit after December 4, 2016, as he had promised (like Boschi, Carbone, Fedeli and other intellectuals), he would have done well first of all. But it has not stopped. And the avalanche has become pillory, and then martyrdom, and then torment, and then Armageddon.
Graph showing 1/2-, 1- and 5-year CD rates 1985 – 2016. Useful for anyone who thinks the economy is healthy…
1848, the teacher’s edition
Jersey City teachers take step toward first strike since 1998
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018/02/jersey_city_teachers_take_step_toward_first_strike.html
Re: 1848
Since it is commonly known as “the turning point that didn’t turn”, I’ll hope your analogy is a bit off :)
Aggressive Volcker rule changes to come quickly, top Fed official in charge of regulation says [Marketwatch]
Shouldn’t a faith-based administration be in favor of “fasting and prayer”?
Another massive win for the back row kids.
Re ““Democrats grapple with Clinton-Sanders fallout ahead of 2018 election”
Ya gotta love the weirdo wonky DNC plan to keep the superdelegates as a backup in case the first round doesn’t come up with a candidate.
Obviously makes the whole delegate counting and primary process much less transparent but somehow if you framed it with the right drafting it would seem like a concession to the Sanders wing.
“Community protests new Dollar General, says they want more grocery stores” [KTUL]. OOOOk-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain… ”
Sigh. Oscar Hammerstein – when all was new and optimistic, around 1907 I guess:
They couldn’t pick a better time to start in life!
It ain’t too early and it ain’t too late
Start up as a farmer with a brand new wife
Soon be liv-in in a brand new state!
Brand new state
Gonna treat you great
Gonna give you barley, carrots and per taters
Pasture for the cattle
Spinach and ter-may-ters
Flowers on the prairie where the june bugs zoom
Plen’y of of air and plen’y of room
Plenty of room to swing a rope
Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope……..
How did all of that morph into a slew of flippin’ Dollar Generals, teachers needing to strike, and beaucoup earthquakes? R – E – P- U -B- L -I -C -A- N -S!
They should do what Oklahoma City did and request a WinCo Foods or two be built there. I’ve been trying to get WinCo to come into Arkiefornia for decades. The Walton’s just might lose their minds if they did.
Over in Ochelata, OK the Dollar General built a popular store right beside the driveway into the Wal~Mart distribution center and it really infuriated them too. So I’ve been trying to get them to make a big truck stop out of it. Especially since all Wal~Mart wants is bring your stuff and leave ASAP, no parking even if you’re ELD is screaming!
Actually some bigger Dollar General stores around the country are loaded with groceries, fresh produce, meat, veggies, fruit and bakery.
Boy Oklahoma! shows it’s age. Even as a 70s teenager I thought ‘girl who can’t say no’ was so creapy I went to learn more about what the musical was about. Nice songs, terrible premise, starting with who they got all those wide rolling acres from. I had to recheck wiki, because I misremembered the immigrant dying on the flaming haystack–like Frankenstein. Imagine if Oklahoma were revived with Jud as the only white guy in the cast?
Lots of nasty stories about most states exist, I guess., if one searches. The rolling acres of the whole country were stolen, and are dowsed in the blood of Native Americans, so i have to defend Oklahoma, at least on that score, if on nothing else. .
If I recall correctly, parts of Oklahoma were irrevocably environmentally damaged where the Dust Bowl was created. Again, Republicans.
When the Democrats went into fix it, it was like Humpty Dumpty.
I think Dollar Generals will be the least of their problems. My fear is fracking is going to turn that place into a wasteland.
I’ve been here only since 2004, but yes, I understand much of the state was devastated during Dust Bowl years – many Okies moved west into California. (“Grapes of Wrath” and all that). I’m not sure whether we can blame Republicans fully for that Dust Bowl – but let’s do it anyway! ;)
Agreed, fracking and Gov. Mary Fallin are our greatest dangers, Dollar Generals do at least help some of the worst off in parts of the state, which is more than can be said for Fallin – or fracking.
It would be interesting to know if the injured Apple workers were buried in their phones as they walked into the walls.
And wouldn’t it be helpful if the Five Horsemen and the Mania Panic charts were aligned on the same time scale?
Apple workers took to putting stick pad notes on the glass walls so that they would know that there was a glass wall there but Apple took them down as they ruined the “aesthetic” of the glass walls. Tom Wolf in his book “From Bauhaus to Our House” talked about this same sort of mentality with similar architects who would design, say, a house whose interiors were all white and then after it was built would rigorously police it to make sure that the owners would not throw in a coloured cushion for some sort of relief from this all whiteness and then admonish them their behaviour.
This situation is not really funny as I had an aunt who walked through a glass door once in the dark and cut herself pretty bad. Apple seems to have made a decision that a moderate casualty rate among its employees is acceptable because – vision! It’s all fun and games until the day Tim Cook slams himself into an invisible glass wall.
There are all sorts of things you can do to make a glass wall noticeable, like a railing, or silvered patterns on the glass. Somebody is showing no imagination at all.
The solution to hacking cars is very simple:
Anything that has to do with actual driving, brakes, throttle, speedometer, etc., cruise control, etc. needs to be air gapped.
If this makes things difficult for Elon Musk and his ilk, who wants to f%$# with critical systems in your car after you buy it without your permission, f%$# the.
This ain’t an app, it is a 1-ton+ death machine.
Thank you for your great work Lambert !
I think that Parkland students are receiving more attention from democrats than the West Virginia teachers strike because they live in an affluent city (http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/florida/parkland)
And the Democratic party is the party of the 10 %. Also, democrats seem to care about something only when it gets a lot of attention in the mainstream medias, they neglect the everyday life conditions of West Virginia teachers.
Of course, the students who are organizing against gun control are doing very useful actions, they are brave and more effective than most of the dem elites.
(sorry for the mistakes, English is not my first language)
The Democrats haven’t supported the Teachers Union in a long time. I ask this of me fellow teachers:
“When is the last time you remember a Democrat doing something for you?”
No o one can answer that question.
Oh yeah, and when was the last time your shop steward worked for you instead of positioning himself with the administration? Teachers are like canon fodder until they realize they need to support each other and not wait for the well paid and corrupt.
Like the vast majority of the workforce, I don’t have access to a union. (I, nevertheless, belong to a union on a personal basis.) However, I have come across more than a few shop stewards over the decades who are dedicated to forwarding the concrete material circumstances of their compatriot workers. Yes, they have ambitions to better their own lives and prospects – that’s why they choose to move up in the labour organisations to which they belong. They are not there to don sack clothe and ashes but to do another job of work in addition to working for the boss.
Having said that, yes, you have a point that the workers themselves must bear the chief responsibilities and burdens of fighting for better conditions. Unions are strongest when their members are all committed to each other and their communities, but organisation still requires administration, coordination and such minutiae. Solidarity is nice but organisation is required for the long term – warts and all.
“The dangers of pluralism in economics: the case of MMT” [Mainly Macro]
Oh man, some of the comments on that:
“They are so sensitive to criticism because their theory is weak and they cannot defend it on its merits. Instead, MMT interactions inevitably turn into personal fights often times with the “leaders” of the cult leading the charge.”
Ah yes, the ‘theory’ that objectively and verifiably describes real-world money creation is ‘weak’.
Learning neoclassical economics literally makes you stupid.
One of the hazards peculiar to my occupation is theory. I’m familiar with lots of theories about human beings and our place in the world. With most, it only takes a few well placed nudges to send the whole edifice tumbling to the ground. I’m relatively new to economic theory, and not all that familiar with much of the dominant approach, but I’ve been very surprised by what I’ve learned thus far. I’m very surprised by how seriously it’s taken, given what appear to me to be quite dubious assumptions. I’m not just talking about assumptions at work in generating supply and demand curves. I mean the assumptions about rational agency, together with the notion that a mathematical theory of rational agency can somehow result in an explanatory social science, a science that identifies causes and/or law-governed but contingent regularities. If I knew nothing of the institutional and broader cultural context of neoclassical economics, the fact that it’s so widely and uncritically accepted would be completely baffling.
That said, I think the author is correct in saying that it shouldn’t be dismissed on political grounds. That would be intellectually irresponsible. Besides, if it is in fact as flawed as it appears to me to be, it would probably be instructive to take it apart. The temptation to accept some such theory of human affairs is clearly very strong in present circumstances. If the dominant approach is fundamentally flawed and the flaws haven’t been clearly identified, they’re likely to reappear in new, supposedly improved theories.
>I’m very surprised by how seriously it’s taken, given what appear to me to be quite dubious assumptions.
That’s because what you call “dubious assumptions” they call “workable assumptions”. See it was all about getting tenure and stuff. They figured they wouldn’t mess up the world too much and they could author lots of papers that held together, again given said assumptions.
Otherwise they would have to get real jobs.
Help me. There are voluminous critiques of orthodox economics written by economists. I wrote a book summarizing what is wrong with financial and “mainstream” economics, with extensive citations. I suggest you read it.
Even orthodox economists admit the crisis showed their theories were crap, yet no one has been held accountable nor have the theories been changed. Why? Because the point of mainstream economics is political: to support an ideology that markets are best and should be left alone. As I discuss long form, mainstream economics literally assumes the outcome: that economies have a propensity to find an equilibrium (they deliberately omit phenomena that create feedback loops) and that equilibrium is at full employment! I am not making this up.
I hat to seem harsh, but you seem to harbor the naive belief that truth wins out in the marketplace of ideas. No. What wins in the marketplace of ideas is the idea that people with money will pay for.
‘mainstream economics literally assumes the outcome: that economies have a propensity to find an equilibrium‘
To paraphrase the great Barack Obama, “I believe in
American exceptionalismnatural equilibrium with every fiber of my being.”Believing the antithesis — that central planners can add value — presupposes that an enlightened class of superior human beings are more godlike than the rest. #Resist
Yes, your book is on my list. I have every reason to believe it’s excellent. But I have read other critiques, and my impression has been that certain issues, having to do with what might be called foundations, haven’t been addressed. Perhaps I’m wrong though and all the necessary work has already been done. So much the better, as there’s plenty else that needs doing.
As for the marketplace of ideas, I think you sell yourself short. Given the Propornot business, your ideas clearly matter to some people, regardless of whether most of the money is against them.
Re: the MMT column, I think he is correct (obviously) in saying that MMT advocates ought to address arguments on their merits and not just engage in ad hominem attacks. This is a problem of the Internet and not unique to MMT, and it’s particularly pronounced when it comes to economics discussion since the track record of the profession in sticking to fact-based and scientifically grounded reasoning is so poor.
It does however require the other party to be making a good-faith effort to engage, and not wilfully ignoring criticisms that are raised or adopting a faith-based approach by stating axioms that need no proof. I think Wren-Lewis may be in this category (he certainly thinks he is) but I’d have to read more of his columns to be sure.
Looking at his linked argument about generational transfer, there seem to be some pretty obvious points of attack. For example he is assuming that output remains the same even under changes in government spending or taxation, which is a classic case of assuming what you are trying to prove (and is also at odds with what MMT predicts). So there’s an argument to be made right there. That said I would be cautious about trying to argue that generational transfers are impossible simply because there are so many ways to frame the premise.
The commenter over there who explained how real resources would be transfered to the next generation made the argument purely in terms of money, not of real resources.
In real resource terms the process becomes very surreal.
With Modern money, we can create more than we need, and we can write a number in a ledger to reflect the amount of money that we didn’t use. Then we hand the world over to the next generation.
“Children, children, look at this number. We wrote this number for you. You can use this number to buy seeds and plant wheat.” A lovely sentiment, but if they’re normal children, they’ll be a bit careless about hurting our feelings; “Pops, the fields are there, the seeds are over there, we’ve got together here to start planting. How does this number fit in?”
How, indeed?
Yeah take your little bag of sestertii to Londinium and just try to get a cup of tea.
I think you’re assuming that Wren_Lewis et al engage with MMT in good faith. In my extensive reading of their mainstream academic writing they typically do not. They then cry foul when MMT people get fed up with their obvious intransigence.
There are some great Philip Mirowski lectures on youtube where he demonstrates how woefully ignorant the likes of David Harvey and other economists are of their own field and its intellectual history.
Dismal science indeed.
I am assuming that, and I said in my second paragraph that it was subject to confirmation and could be wrong. It certainly is wrong for many of them. Mankiw, for example, can deliver a line like “I don’t find [theory] convincing” with all the finality of a high priest issuing an excommunication. It is not subject to argument, reason, or discussion. It just is.
I do however believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt unless I have evidence to the contrary, so I didn’t want to lump Wren-Lewis in that bucket without reading more of his work.
I have read a few of Wren-Lewis’ blog posts. He is what I would call a moderate neoclassical economist. Not totally dogmatic but still very blinkered. He has engaged with MMT to some extent but not understood it yet.
Bill Mitchell wrote a long (as is his wont) three part demolition of Wren-Lewis’ paper. SWL did not engage with any of the arguments, just moaned that Mitchell had mocked his twittering.
I’m aware I engaged in an ad hominem (which I stand by, by the way: mainstream economists are morons).
I’ve kind of reached the point where I just don’t care anymore. And one of the reasons I don’t care is because MMT advocates on the internet are the exact opposite of what Wren-Lewis and his commentators are claiming. As a general rule they don’t engage in personal attacks or appeals to authority. instead they have a tendency to launch into in-depth explanations at the drop of a hat. They actually understand the minutiae of this stuff, and are eager to explain it. They do frequently cite MMT economists (there are maybe a dozen big names), but not because “well, Saint X says…” but because they’ve already written the in-depth explanations.
But in the end none of it matters. It’s all water off a ducks ass to the neoclassical mainstream. They either ignore it all entirely, or engage in dishonest portrayals of MMT so as to scare away any newcomers from giving it a serious look (or they do what Krugman does and steal bits from it without admitting the source).
MMT is slowly gaining ground among the general public, and it’s because of the validity of its ideas. If orthodox economists either won’t engage with it at all, or strawman it when they do, I don’t see much point in going out of the way to try and have a honest conversation with them in the first place. These dinosaurs have been a dead profession walking since at least 2008. Their world view is crumbling around them, and their students are rebelling. Let them stew and continue to teach from textbooks that lie about things like banks being intermediaries (this is a big one with me, because this is a 100% man made process, not some mystery of nature. No one in mainstream economic has apparently thought to ever actually go to a bank and ask how it works).
Meanwhile the ‘cult’ that actually can explain such things will continue to grow.
http://www.businessinsider.com/embiggen-simpsons-2018-3
Merriam-Webster added the word “embiggen” to its pages on Monday, the dictionary giant announced, culminating a 22-year journey to mainstream acceptance for the word that originated on a “Simpsons” episode.
The dictionary defines embiggen as “to make bigger or more expansive,” and notes that its usage is “informal” and “humorous.”
The nonsense word was used notably in the 1996 “Simpsons” episode “Lisa the Iconoclast.” In one scene, students from Springfield Elementary School learn that their town’s motto is “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.”
===================================================
I have always thought that “embiggen” was a perfectly cromulent word…..
now all we have to do is get the word “rebigulator” in the dictubenaries.
https://frinkiac.com/caption/S08E01/743225
Nice view today from my office of the snow capped Sierra (my appointment rescheduled so I had plenty of time to gaze out the window) – I’ll have to remember to take my camera to my HICAP office and see if I can get it in the daily picture – plenty of plants in the foreground…..
The town motto is also carved into the pedestal of the Jebidiah Springfield statue seen in the opening credits since the switch to HD.
Sometimes I feel like I live in a Simpsons episode. But then I realize I’m just a looney tune.
Lisa: “Embiggen is not even a word”
Mrs Krabapple: “Nonsense Lisa, embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word”
Re Trump’s 2020 Campaign Mgr: now the interesting facts included in one of the articles that I read about Brad Parscale’s efforts in 2016 as Trump Campaign “digital advisor” was that he amassed a crew of over 100 people, who created 50K-60K ads on Facebook daily(!) to reach on-line Trump supporters and for hustling donations. In fact, the campaign spent $70,000,000 in the last four months before the elections, running 175K ads and raised $9mil in a single day. Do contrast this mammoth effort with the meagre $100K worth of ads placed by “groups linked to Russian interests”, much of which landed on FB after the elections ended. Unfortunately, the news piece did NOT mention the ludicrously dwarfed effort by “Russian interests” which the mainstream Demo Party just won’t concede is the reality of it all. The Parscale operation doesn’t even include the contributions of Cambridge Analytical, which also dove deeply into social media platforms for the express purpose of spreading pro-Trump and anti-Clinton messages. The numbers published in this article should be required reading for all who still want to blame “the Russians”, and indeed to threaten “cyberwarfare” or worse in order to stir up the masses to convince them of “election subversion” and the lot. Republican voter suppression, Koch Bros billions, scores of SuperPacs, well, there’s your “subversion of democracy”, FFS!
> for all who still want to blame “the Russians”, and
Ahem. I appreciate your thoughts, but the facts aren’t important to those people. At. All. Hillary was supposed to be coronated and she wasn’t. That is the issue.
As far as the Kochs, et al, those people als have to be careful not to offend the wrong money spigot. The Kochs have a lot more in common with Soros than you or I.
Does this in any way remind you of High School Heathers where the Russians are the slightly awkward, odd “out” girl? That you can kick with impunity because she has no friends?
The Clinton’s have always attacked others for doing things that they themselves are, in fact, doing. There should really just be a Clinton bingo card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Ew8Qi0ADY
Interesting interview of Kali Akuno by Chris Hedges about what Jackson, MS is up to.
Short version: trying to fight gentrification dictated by the state government who are trying to launch a land-grab as well as building community wealth without much cash.
More bold stances from Democrats, this time in the Texas gubernatorial race: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018-elections/2018/01/31/democratic-contenders-texas-governor-split-college-tuition-toll-roads-legalized-marijuana
Congrats to Adrian Ocegueda of Dallas for giving the most Third Way Obamaesque answer possible:
> Certified financial analyst Adrian Ocegueda of Dallas, though, dismissed Payne’s appeals for marijuana legalization and expanded gambling as “simple solutions.” Leaders should study who could be hurt before they leap, he said. Ocegueda called for Democrats to take a broader look at tax reform as the solution to state funding shortages.
Tom Wakely, who calls himself a populist, supports legalization as well as a state corporate income tax. Very interesting.
Are you kidding, Ukraine is overpaying for European gas & wants Russia to foot the bill
https://www.rt.com/business/420517-ukraine-russia-gas-overpayment/
Guessing that the neo-Nazi torches aren’t enough to keep everybody warm.
Heitkamp, Backing Deregulation Bill, Owns Stock in Financial Firms that Stand to Profit [Alex Kotch@TYT]
As they should be. As a link today pointed out, living in D.C. is expensive.
And pro-business moderates like Heitkamp need a safe space in order to grow their sensible centrism.
Two questions for Yves, first it seems there are 2 vacant houses for every homeless person, so the rising real estate prices seemed to be propped up by a manufactured shortage.
https://gritpost.com/vacant-properties-homelessness/
any way out of this that does not involve a crash in the wealth of the middle class, which is mostly in their houses?
second, what do you make of the Italian election? will any good come of it? this is not a rhetorical question, I am almost completely ignorant about Italy.
I would offer a different perspective on rising real estate prices. With investors buying up single family homes with stock winnings pumped up by Fed policies an end game seems clear to me. As asset prices continue to rise at much faster rates than worker incomes, the worker class is gradually squeezed out. High levels of liquidity support the ruling class in their never ending war against workers. At some point only the wealthy will be able to own property, including homes. Rentier paradise!
I would add a third interpretation. When the Fed went on their panic-stricken orgy (gee that’s quite a metaphor) to “save the banking system” the main lever they could pull was interest rates. In their fit of the grandest delusion (so now it’s a grand panic-stricken delusional orgy) they destroyed money. You know, the stuff that has a “time preference” for lending it out, paid as interest. Their “neo-money” paid zero (or even negative) interest.
So then money owners also panicked, and turned anything with a yield into “proto-money”. Houses are just one form of this proto-money. That they are entirely illiquid shows the level of panic-stricken desperation the money owners feel.
So in the end it’s just another way to sequester even more money away from society’s non-elite. Kinda like the stock market.
Re: “Ha:”
I don’t get it. The WVa map is all red. That tweet describes that, assuming all those counties are colored correctly via all their reps. Is it a wrong shade of red? Are we supposed to assume that such a map is impossible–that there should be some blue somewhere? I don’t get this or “ha” at all. Way too clever or smart or micro or thumb-on-some-kind-of-pulse for me to understand. And not sure what the WVa Dep’t of Education has to do with this.
[And I might not be alone in never, ever bothering to click on a tweet reference, as if doing that would ever lead to any facts….]
Call me confused.
Wowsers. Yes, you don’t get it.
That map is a map of all the counties participating in the teachers’ strike.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/21/town-cure-illness-community-frome-somerset-isolation
Even Monbiot can be ok sometimes