Plenty of Brits reckon a robot would make smarter decisions than a human boss Metro.UK
A vaccine that could block mosquitoes from transmitting malaria The Conversation
Alcohol is killing more people, and younger. The biggest increases are among women USA Today. More deaths from despair.
The mystery viruses far worse than flu BBC
One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future MIT Technology Review
The Other Constitutions New York Review of Books. Retired Summer Court Justice John Paul Stevens. One way of reading this is that with the Supremes captured by you know who, we’ll have to look increasingly to state courts for sensible jurisprudence. Alas, such judgements will apply to a specific state, and can be overruled by the Supremes. Note that Stevens was a Ford appointee.
California Burning
Here’s why researchers say breathing San Francisco air today is like smoking 11 cigarettes SFGate
Is wearing a face mask the new normal for Californians? TreeHugger
Search on for 1,276 now missing after California’s deadliest wildfire Reuters
California fires: Trump views devastation, vows to help prevent future catastrophic wildfires LA Times
Wireless throttling: Senators ask four major carriers about video slowdowns Ars Technica
Our Famously Free Press
The Media Wants Congress To Let It Gang Up On Facebook And Google Buzzfeed
Class Warfare
Tech Workers Need to Keep Organizing Jacobin
Barack von Obamenburg, Herr Donald, and Big Capitalist Hypocrisy: On How Fascism Happens Counterpunch. Read this, it’s much better than the title promises.
The Egregious Lie Americans Tell Themselves Truthdig
The Courts See a Crime. These Lawyers See a Whole Life. Marshall Project
Woman’s death casts shadow over France’s ‘yellow vest’ protests Agency France-Presse
UK austerity policies ‘punitive, mean-spirited and callous’ says UN expert DW
Voting advice on CEO pay is usually ignored by big asset managers FT
Enemies pursue Soros in Germany Handelsblatt
Brexit
Brexit: another fine mess EUReferendum.com
Brussels won’t allow Brexit deal do-over Politico
Brexit: ‘No question’ of further negotiations if Theresa May’s deal rejected, says Merkel Independent
From The Sunday Times:
Democrats in Disarray
Dems wonder if Sherrod Brown could be their magic man The Hill
Is Bill and Hillary’s tour a sideshow the Democrats don’t need? Guardian When you’ve lost the Guardian…
Ocasio-Cortez backs campaign to primary fellow Democrats Politico
2018 Post Mortem
Chuck Schumer Caved to Facebook and Donald Trump. He Shouldn’t Lead Senate Democrats. Intercept
Fight for House speaker explodes into national political campaign WaPo
Syraqistan
By Blocking Yemen Resolution, House GOP Is Abdicating Its Duty to Decide War and Peace TruthOut
Afghanistan takes center stage in the New Great Game Asia Times. Pepe Escobar.
Jamal Khashoggi case: All the latest updates Al Jazeera
Trump speaks with CIA about Khashoggi killing WaPo
Turkey reportedly has a second audio tape of a Saudi hit team discussing details of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, bolstering the CIA’s claims Business Insider
India
India’s plan to tackle antibiotic resistance is toothless without a strong public health system Scroll.in
Modi Govt to Propose Rules Allowing Closer Supervision of RBI: Report The Wire
India revives its dream of manufacturing passenger aircraft Economic Times magazine
Tariff Tantrum
Trump Transition
Big Pharma Bankrolled Pro-Trump Group As Trump Pushed Pharma Tax Cut Capital & Main. David Sirota
“Tough on Crime” Trump Comes Out for Sentencing Reform American Conservative
Trump’s Defense Spending Is Out of Control, and Poised to Get Worse Rolling Stone. Matt Taibbi
As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom Intercept. Glenn Greenwald. Important. Greenwald makes clear that too many Democrats misguidedly support targeting Assange, for the role they think Wikileaks played in thwarting HRC’s installation in the position that she – and many of her enablers – believed was her due.
Too Rich to Jail NYT. MoDo. And, what’s got into MoDo?:
Reading all the recent stories about the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis, it’s easy to see the neon line leading from Barack Obama’s failure to punish Wall Street scammers to the fact that Republican scammers are now infecting the entire infrastructure of government.
…
President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. made a terrible mistake by letting the miscreant bankers off the hook rather than saying, as F.D.R. did, “I welcome their hatred.”
It almost seems like she’s reading Naked Capitalism — and to that I say, welcome! The more, the merrier.
The day MIT won the Harvard-Yale game ESPN. Permit me a short amble down memory lane. I remember this well, as it was my senior year, and I was just finishing my tenure as editor-in-chief of The Tech, MIT’s oldest and largest student newspaper. The staff ate pizza the Sunday night after the Saturday game and put our next issue to bed. Seeing the pix, and the video, the years just fell away. And I realized that no one could get away with such a stunt today – at some stage, the perpetrators would have been frogmarched out of Harvard Stadium, to face who knows what charges.
Whereas way back when, Paul Gray, then MIT-prez, wrote to his Harvard counterpart, Derek Bok, after the fact (according to The Tech):
Dear Derek,
Word has come to me that your campus police are holding some property which rightfully should be located in the MIT Museum. Can this be true?
Surely you have little use for a makeshift device constructed from vacuum cleaner parts, points from a 1967 Mustang, and a handful of marbles. We, however, being the sentimental sort, would take great care of – indeed, we would enshrine – this symbolic highlight of the 1982 football season. Please give it back. Sincerely yours, Paul E. Gray
Antidote du Jour (blennylips, who asks for the help of fellow Links readers in identifying this bird):
Magda, meet the Naked Capitalists
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
180 comments
Comments are closed.
Re: Obama and Eric Holder….who could have predicted that a guy who defended Chiquita for employing death squads in Colombia might have a soft spot for corporate criminals?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/lawyer-for-chiquita-in-co_b_141919.html
MoDo’s willingness to connect the dots, that are familiar to a substantial percentage of Americans, and to a higher percentage of foreign observers, appears to result from some new combination of views that:
1. Trump’s election is not likely to be reversed quickly or fully by any buyer’s remorse among swing or variable turnout voters;
2. The generation of Democratic leaders who gave us Trump are shamelessly clinging to their status, rents and veto power over pro-99% policies;
3. MoDo herself has banked enough financial and reputational security to start thinking less about banking more more than about her legacy (“what did you write about while the economy and society of Nation and World crashed and burned, Grandma?”)
Perhaps such thinking will catch-on…
More likely a momentary lapse which will morph back into Modo-Lucy-Hyde yanking the football yet again. Or maybe she simply lost a bet and had to let a lil truth reason and decency slip through.
Perhaps that encounter with a ‘candy bar’ a while back actually did some good .. rearranging some oh-the-nerve! pathways and oh-snap!es, and thus giving her greater clarity ..
That’s my running joke on MoDo.
She thought she was dying, but her consciousness was kicking in.
A delayed reaction. We’ll see how she progresses.
You can criticize President George W. Bush’s presidency all you want and there is plenty to criticize him for: e.g. Iraq War, his handling of Hurricane Katrina, and a number of other things. However, unlike President Barack Obama, President George W. Bush’s administration actually brought prosecutions against high profile people and even some some to jail: e.g. Enron.
Plausible deniability. W had to engage in a few show trials as his political position was weaker compared to Obama, but keeping in mind Trump has pardon power, he might start lining up a few Wall Street types especially if any public spectacle would put 2009 into focus.
Mueller is the hot topic among DC elites, but I always thought Team Blue needed to offer up a few sacrificial lambs to secure the 2006 and 2008 gains in 2010. Mittens, a robber baron, only did as well as he did (the margins weren’t that far apart despite Obama’s electoral college success) was due to Obama’s inability to articulate a counter to Romneynomics.
If indictments and bad actors start to be brought to the forefront, there will be a race of msm types to declare they critiqued Holder first. Not that Trump is that smart, but he’s unlikely to face a GOP challenge a day has raised cash. Now he’s somewhat free to pursue those who didn’t join up.
Obama had a carefully calibrated campaign in 2012. Romney, as a vulture capitalist, was a ripe target for class warfare memes, but since Obama wanted to maintain his own discretion and capacity to deliver for his donors not his voters, he kept his powder dry, and his rate of fire low. If you watched the campaign carefully, you could see the Obama campaign manage the polling trendline with remarkable precision, firing off responses to every Romney uptick that knocked the Republican down without igniting any possibility of a broader surge of Democratic support or a commitment to policies hostile to the plutocracy.
It has been years since Dowd or anybody else on the NYTimes op-ed has been informative.
Armstrong Economics can publish some really flaky stuff but this one looked pretty awesome to me:
But there is something the press is overlooking. The senior Goldman Sachs banker in Asia who pleaded guilty to U.S. bribery and money laundering charges and his deputy was arrested in Malaysia, was brought by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, not the Manhattan Southern District of New York which the bankers own right down to the foundation stones. The Brooklyn prosecutors have laid out conspiracy allegations related to Goldman Sachs’s lucrative fundraising for Malaysian wealth fund 1MDB. The fact that he has already pled guilty means he has a cooperation deal to give up more information on the inside of Goldman Sachs.
(Goldman Sachs – Criminal Charges at Last? 15 Nov)
Too rich to Jail
This is shocking!
Sh-h-h! Don’t tell anyone. The NYTs not only admits to rejecting supply side econ recently, but actually catches up with why the Dems are no longer functional. Opps, when will Dowd retire/be pushed?
Sorry I accidentally put this in the wrong place. If you can more it, please do.
1. Obama came in with a great deal of real power beyond the Presidency. He was more powerful than Trump.
2. Every elite threw themselves in with Obama or the official opposition. Sanders was a lonely filibusterer over the Bush/Obama tax cuts for the wealthy.
3. I do suspect resentment built up over Obama among the moral cowards who knew better. I believe part of the Hillary mania which never matched her record was linked to buyers remorse over Obama, a chance to correct the course. I forget when, but we were inundated with articles about Obama’s missing groove. The real answer is his speeches were always vapid exercises in acceptable American banality and everyone simply projected values onto Obama.
4. The Obama hagiography is decidedly lacking. In less than two years of Trump, we’ve been treated to pleas from Obama’s stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg that Trump was about to undo 44’s entire Presidency. Bear in mind, Trump is also a vaguely competent buffoon. If the smallness of the Obama Presidency can get to Goldberg, a leading celebrant of dear leader, what goes unsaid for fear of reprisal (Bernie Bro style insults didn’t start with Hillary!) is quite different.
5. Does AOC or Sanders make regular invocations to Dear Obama? No. Their popularity is completely delinked from Obama. They even criticize if not directly Obama’s only domestic accomplishment he liked to mention, ACA. The other side is Abrams in Georgia. Between demographics and pulling out all the resources including an Obama visit, it’s over. Throw in losing seats in the Senate instead of a singular governor’s race, Obama is a faded figure. There were federal candidates who could have really used the publicity generated by a former President visiting. He’ll content himself with the Ozymandias Ziggurat, but he’s not a threat anymore.
Excellent comment, Mr./Ms. NotGeithner.
Re your fifth point, I do think it’s worth considering that Obama may still have considerable pull within the ”permanent” party—the superdelegate set, party functionaries, donors, etc. He certainly did during the DNC chair election.
Many are expecting him to be ‘First Gentleman’ to the 2nd President Obama. I have heard 10%ers spontaneously suggest Michelle O for president. They have learned nothing…
There’s no spontaneity there. Michelle O for President has been pushed since before Trump’s election. Michelle for Prez memes have been floating around FB for several years now.
In the Gillian Tett’s FT book review of “Becoming”, Michelle Obama made a Sherman statement about never running for elective office.
Thank God!
I Ditto Katz, however, Street’s Counterpunch crucifixion of Obama (after impaling Trump) says pretty much the same thing in relation to who put the US on the fascism track we enjoy today. NotTimothyGeithner just said it more succinctly and less vituperatively.
That health care is one of the top issues for the populace, if not the top issue, speaks to the paltriness and ineffectiveness of that accomplishment. That single payer is overwhelmingly popular among Democrats (and even now Republicans) speaks to opportunities lost, if not actively quashed. People, even those who don’t quite get the nature of President Obama’s legacy, know that we live in a country where not a few have to resort to Gofundme to pay for medical bills—250,000+ medical campaigns each year, according to the site—and where a woman, with her leg trapped between a subway car and the platform, has to plead with bystanders not to have an ambulance called because she can’t afford it. The signature accomplishment of the Obama is acquiring the ignominy it richly deserves. One doesn’t have to look hard to find the evidence.
I think you misunderstand his interpretation of accomplishment: Obama gave the healthcare denial cartel a decade or two of extra life by giving the insurers guaranteed customers, and giving pharma carte blanche, while conning democrats into supporting, defending, even identifying with a vast scam.
That is an accomplishment few others could achieve. Only Nixon could go to China, only Obama could rescue the insurers from their death spiral on the backs of eager Dem.s for so long. The side benefits of turning off a generation of potential lefties and ensuring GOP dominance for a decade were just icing on that cake.
Prior to the White House, wasn’t Michelle a “healthcare executive”?
That might be quite a hard sell to the electorate.
Oh, heck, what was I thinking? It was an unparalleled accomplishment! I’m rather dense at times. Thanks for setting me straight.
No 3
Hillary and Obama look different but totally share the same donors
She was running for his third term
Those outraged that sone voted for Bernie, or have anything negative to say about either Hillary or Obama, are the same.
If we didn’t have the 22nd Amendment, would Obama have chased a 3rd term? I’m not sure he had it in him…he really wanted to get started on his endless mega-vacation.
In any case, I do wonder how the Trump-Obama race might have panned out. It would provide an interesting counter-factual to test how much of Clinton’s loss was about her own personal incompetence and corruption and how much was the substantive difference Trump offered as compared to a traditional Republican on issues like trade and immigration.
I suspect Obama might have held on, but there would have been a lot more nail-biting on election night than the media and team dem cheerleaders would permit themselves to believe. Specifically, Trump would have still flipped Iowa and Ohio. Both states moved hard right in 2016. But I think Obama might have held WI, MI, PA and maybe FL. All would have been <2% wins, though.
Nice article by MoDo. But read the comments after clicking Reader Picks. The 10%ers that read the NYT are resisting absolutely the idea that Obama’s eight years might have had anything to do with the coming of Trump. Obama was, if anything, too caring, they think. It was all Bush’s fault and the republicans. Prosecutions? It would have affected the economy who know how?
These people are stuck firmly in the Obama myth even after MoDo, gently actually, points out to them the truth.
Obama announced Rahm as his Chief of Staff a day or two after the election then swooped into save Joe Lieberman and make sure he was charge of Homeland Security oversight. Day in and day out, Obama did horrible things that simply were not motivated by politics (Rahm? He’s incompetent and his candidates lose), and so many of his supporters chose to be ignoramuses or create elaborate stories to justify their overt support which was largely based on his attractiveness and safeness.
As events like Shinseki and the VA or the repeal DADT demonstrated, Obama could be pressured into at least not being completely heinous. Obama still craves the applause of the crowd. The crowd gave it away for free.
“Its a republic if you can keep it.” The cult of personality being place ahead of anything else represents a moral failing as citizens or at least they were conned by Obama when he really didn’t offer much except to appeal to “hope” and word salad.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
Its worthy of a President in a Chuck Norris movie.
Agreed. No matter how anyone might have voted in 2008, after all Obama was in fact running against McCain and the Sarah Palin creature for “god’s” sake, an observant person had to have realized after the election that it was no good when Obama announced Rahm, Timmy the RealTimGeithner, Bush’s Def Sec to be his own, Bernake would be reappointed, Larry Summers, and so on. You knew down deep that the guy was fake when you saw that although you still “hoped” out of fairness that his administration would turn out better.
When I emailed an image of the face of George W. turning into the face of Obama to a Dem friend of mine (I thought it was funny), they emailed back saying I was being “unfair”. Well, I’ve been called worse.
This was not true of the comments I read. Perhaps they are tailored to the individual reader .
I clicked on “Reader Picks” and read the first 25 or so to see the ones which were most popular. But it was interesting that the comments selected by the NYT as “NYT Picks” were mostly in favour of MoDo. But as you say, who knows if or how they might be tailored? I also wonder if, in the course of reader voting, the rankings can change within a few hours as more people read the article because of being directed to it from other sites since it is kind of a significant article. But I think you do have to be registered to vote. Interesting.
Additionally, an analysis still needs to be written about Obama’s eight years of inaction on voting rights and the Georgia Gov election. Perhaps the NYT’s commenters would like to take that on.
“eight years of inaction on voting rights”
What part of Shelby County v. Holder was administration inaction?
What Obama Administration proposals were there for fixing it?
Presumably Merrick Garland was intended as a start.
The basis of the holding in Shelby County was that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was based on data that was over 40 years old. Congress could have redone the bill based on more current data, which would have made Garland irrelevant. Congress chose not to do so. So far as I know, the Obama Administration made no effort to push alternative legislation. And no, I’m not impressed by their claim that the big, bad republicans stopped them. Haven’t seen McConnell too bothered by filibusters, have we?
In the 113th Congress (2013-14), the House GOP majority was 234-201.
In the 114th Congress (2015-16), it was 247-188.
If any revisions of the VRA had been proposed, not only would they never have made it out of committee, they never would have had a hearing.
Hope is not a plan. Neither is Obama hatred.
neither is pretending that obama would have pushed for paper ballots, or anything effective at getting more people to vote. he didn’t do anything with congressional majorities and a flood of support for change from the american people.
It appears Obama didn’t have a plan.
Pointing that out isn’t Obama hatred.
Unless we are saying that ‘when we get sued in Court, we will respond’ is a plan.
Shelby County sued the Federal gov’t .
Not the other way around.
Responding to a lawsuit, that you then lost, isn’t my idea of ‘action’.
IANAL, but I daresay this part:
“no jurisdiction will be subject to Section 5 preclearance unless Congress enacts a new coverage formula.[4]”
Did Obama try to get a new formula when he had a D congress? Did he at least kick and scream when he didn’t? I’m sure I missed that happening.
Not a prank at a Harvard football game but a halftime show with political content indicative of the different ethos of the time:
The year was 1973. The event was the Harvard-Princeton game played at Soldier Field on the B-School side of the Charles. The Harvard Band, with its bang-and-jump performance style that enabled it to put on a halftime show with only a Saturday morning practice, was performing the “Chile show.”
Toward the end, the narrator intoned, “Now we know who really runs Chile,” as the band played “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard” and morphed from forming “ITT” on the field to “CIA.” How true that was though the University of Chicago would later bear more notorious responsibility for that atrocity. The show ended with the band playing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” while forming “CASTRO” on the field.
Now that’s a halftime show!
I was in the stands, not far from the ballon and eat hed it inflate. The crowd was silent. The reason nobody thought there was anything to fear was because the thing said MIT all over it. But for that, the outcome could have been a different story.
The MIT prank is priceless. It makes me think of all that’s lost when we try to “manage” young peoples’ imaginations. A little danger is inspiring to young men. Not to mention women! Intellectual ferment creates fertile ground, and should be encouraged everywhere it occurs.
I’m going to read this to my husband (who can build/fix anything) and son (an aspiring engineer/inventor) over our Thanksgiving dinner.
An important companion piece to the LA Times article on the fires:
Despite what Trump says, Finland fires are totally different from California fires
Hard as it is to believe, he’s spouting complete nonsense, but which will be used as an excuse
by Zinke and Perdue to change forest management policy on federal lands.
Because never let a crisis …
Trump: “Nobody could have thought this would happen.”
Asked whether the scenes of devastation had changed his view on climate change, Trump said: “No. I have a strong opinion. I want great climate and we’re going to have that and we’re going to have forests that are very safe.”
As has been noted too many times to count, Trump doesn’t think, he doesn’t read, he doesn’t listen. Yes, somebody thought this could happen, but not him.
In his fact-free world of opinions, wishful thinking is the only kind of thought that penetrates.
Wow, will posterity have a field day with him.
I think posterity, if there is one, will shrug their collective shoulders and say, “Well, every so often you get a really bad one, Jackson, Johnson, McKinley, Harding, Wilson, Trump, but somehow we muddle through.”
Ocasio-Cortez backs campaign to primary fellow Democrats Politico:
Transparent stenography by author, who apparently is too stupid or too obsequious to remind his quoted anonymous source that AOC’s precise point is that incumbents won’t be targeted by AOC & Justice Democrats if those incumbents
which are desired by voters but routinely vetoed by donors
They didn’t get things done the last time they had power, so why would anyone think they will this time? What is different this time?
Exactly. And for more of what’s not different this time, just watch Sherrod “Single payer will never happen” Brown.
Team Blue elites used ID politics as a bludgeon to protect Obama. You might remember “no President has ever faced such obstacles” or “Obama is on a ledge because of pre-Russian interference racism but will be great if he can be re-elected” They did it again for a time against Sanders too with the goal of preventing complaints being heard by less informed voters who might react to say learning about bankruptcy Biden.
The problem isn’t that there are people who think the Dems will get anything done as much as a cadre who didn’t hear the critiques of the Team Blue’s time in power over the yelling.
Well, they got certain things done (like promotion of the slick water fracking pyramid to power ‘bagger air-conditioners and harvest their homes to rent to any survivors). I’m picturing the first of the rookie Democrats to sign onto the “bail-out California’s old nuke plants” bandwagon. Or, basically ANY geoengineering scam promoted by WaPo, Grist, Bloomberg or Guardian is the… now how did Don Vito put it to Michael Corleone?
https://grist.org/article/closing-nuclear-plants-risks-rise-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-report-warns/
Are M4A/universal single-payer (and other extremely popular policies that we are told aren’t realistic ) part of a”far-left agenda”? I suppose from an ivory tower academic ideological perspective you could say they are, but the fact is than something like a third of Republican voters favor the idea. Are those millions of Republicans far-left? I don’t think so, and I don’t think that framing is helpful , or even reality-based for that reason. Sometimes issues are simply commonsense or popular, and writing them off as “extreme” is inummerate and simply ignoring reality. Here’s a list of issues and polling data compiled to buttress my point-
http://prospect.org/article/most-americans-are-liberal-even-if-they-don’t-know-it
The Economy
82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington.
69 percent think large businesses have too much power and influence in Washington.
59 percent—and 72 percent of likely voters—think Wall Street has too much power and influence in Washington.
78 percent of likely voters support stronger rules and enforcement on the financial industry.
65 percent of Americans think our economic system “unfairly favors powerful interests.”
59 percent of Americans—and 43 percent of Republicans—think corporations make “too much profit.”
Inequality
82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view.
66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.
72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important, and 23 percent say it is “somewhat important,” to reduce poverty.
59 percent of registered voters—and 51 percent of Republicans—favor raising the maximum amount that low-wage workers can make and still be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, from $14,820 to $18,000.
Money in Politics
96 percent of Americans—including 96 percent of Republicans—believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the U.S. political system.
84 percent of Americans—including 80 percent of Republicans—believe money has too much influence in politics.
78 percent of Americans say we need sweeping new laws to reduce the influence of money in politics.
73 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Taxes
80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
78 percent think some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.
60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes.
87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.
67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.
Minimum Wage
66 percent of Americans favor raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
59 percent favor raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.
48 percent support raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. (A survey of registered voters found that 54 percent favored a $15 minimum wage.)
63 percent of registered voters think the minimum wage should be adjusted each year by the rate of inflation.
Workers’ Rights
61 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—approve of labor unions.
74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave.
78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
Health Care
60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.”
60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”
58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.”
64 percent of registered voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state.
Education
63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.
59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education.
Climate Change and the Environment
76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change.
68 percent of voters think it is possible to protect the environment and protect jobs.
72 percent of voters think it is a “bad idea” to cut funding for scientific research on the environment and climate change.
59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change.
Gun Safety
84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.
77 percent of gun owners support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.
Criminal Justice
57 percent of Americans believe police officers generally treat blacks and other minorities differently than they treat whites.
60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents).
Immigration
68 percent of Americans—including 48 percent of Republicans—believe the country’s openness to people from around the world “is essential to who we are as a nation.” Just 29 percent say that “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.”
65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”
64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. Only 5 percent say it makes the United States a worse place to live, and 29 percent say it makes no difference.
76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. 58 percent think Dreamers should be allowed to stay and become citizens if they meet certain requirements. Another 18 percent think they should be allowed to stay and become legal residents, but not citizens. Only 15 percent think they should be removed or deported from the country.
Abortion and Women’s Health
58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
68 percent of Americans—including 54 percent of Republicans—support the requirement for private health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control.
Same-Sex Marriage
62 percent of Americans—including 70 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans—support same-sex marriage.
74 percent of millennials (born after 1981) support same-sex marriage.
The Economy
82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington.
69 percent think large businesses have too much power and influence in Washington.
59 percent—and 72 percent of likely voters—think Wall Street has too much power and influence in Washington.
78 percent of likely voters support stronger rules and enforcement on the financial industry.
65 percent of Americans think our economic system “unfairly favors powerful interests.”
59 percent of Americans—and 43 percent of Republicans—think corporations make “too much profit.”
Inequality
82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view.
66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.
72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important, and 23 percent say it is “somewhat important,” to reduce poverty.
59 percent of registered voters—and 51 percent of Republicans—favor raising the maximum amount that low-wage workers can make and still be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, from $14,820 to $18,000.
Money in Politics
96 percent of Americans—including 96 percent of Republicans—believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the U.S. political system.
84 percent of Americans—including 80 percent of Republicans—believe money has too much influence in politics.
78 percent of Americans say we need sweeping new laws to reduce the influence of money in politics.
73 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Taxes
80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
78 percent think some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.
60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes.
87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.
67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.
Minimum Wage
66 percent of Americans favor raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
59 percent favor raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.
48 percent support raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. (A survey of registered voters found that 54 percent favored a $15 minimum wage.)
63 percent of registered voters think the minimum wage should be adjusted each year by the rate of inflation.
Workers’ Rights
61 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—approve of labor unions.
74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave.
78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
Health Care
60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.”
60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”
58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.”
64 percent of registered voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state.
Education
63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.
59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education.
Climate Change and the Environment
76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change.
68 percent of voters think it is possible to protect the environment and protect jobs.
72 percent of voters think it is a “bad idea” to cut funding for scientific research on the environment and climate change.
59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change.
Gun Safety
84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.
77 percent of gun owners support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.
Criminal Justice
57 percent of Americans believe police officers generally treat blacks and other minorities differently than they treat whites.
60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents).
Immigration
68 percent of Americans—including 48 percent of Republicans—believe the country’s openness to people from around the world “is essential to who we are as a nation.” Just 29 percent say that “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.”
65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”
64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. Only 5 percent say it makes the United States a worse place to live, and 29 percent say it makes no difference.
76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. 58 percent think Dreamers should be allowed to stay and become citizens if they meet certain requirements. Another 18 percent think they should be allowed to stay and become legal residents, but not citizens. Only 15 percent think they should be removed or deported from the country.
Abortion and Women’s Health
58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
68 percent of Americans—including 54 percent of Republicans—support the requirement for private health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control.
Same-Sex Marriage
62 percent of Americans—including 70 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans—support same-sex marriage.
74 percent of millennials (born after 1981) support same-sex marriage.
So the actual numbers tell us that the “centrist” Democrats (who in reality on a policy-by-policy basis are frequently more correctly pretty extreme right) tell us those many policies, often popular even with Republican voters, are “far-left” and the Republicans obviously agree to say they are as well. Why are they both lying in unison? Because they oppose those policies a majority of Americans support, and one very effective way of preventing those policies getting a fair hearing is to have both sides telling the same lies. and to have both parties in a two-party system using those lies to prevent those policies from ever being allowed to be seen on ballots.
You generally can’t vote for poeple, D or R, who are committed to implementing these widely popular policies. Both parties work together to keep these ideas and people who are commited to them off of our ballots. Sometimes you see theater where these policies appear ro be up for serious legislative consideration, but instead the parties collaborate to ensure the votes to enact them aren’t there and allow some of their politicans to take the popular position, but at the same time they do the vote counts to ensure that enough politicians in “safe” blue or red seats–who can take unpopular voting positions with no consequences– follow the whip and defeat the policies. You’ll again and again see popular initiatives fail by a few votes, just enough so those safe seats can swing the result in the desired direction. This is theater, not democracy, but it gets the job done nevertheless. Of course the job is to protect those donors’ financial interests (that’s really what it always comes down to in the end, ideology is essentially irrelevant and used mostly for show and strategic lying) and to thwart the democratic will of the people, but that is in fact their job.
The two parties aren’t in reality two parties representing two polarized groups of voters who disagree on policy as they, and the media owned by the same wealthy elite that rig democracy, present and sell themselves; they are much closer to one party that works together to divide and disempower the voters and to keep choices their ultra-wealthy donor class don’t want put before the people as an option form ever coming to pass as law and policy. Hence you even get people who are very politically aware–people generally written off as non-political or apathetic –who don’t vote. Not because of apathy or not being politically conscious but for the simple and obvious reason that they see through the BS and know their votes and their opinions don’t and won’t be counted even if they do vote. These non-voters and people not aligned with either duopoly party–who are a majority of the American electorate now– are often the most politically conscious of all the electorate. Yet they are called names and told they have no right to complain because they–and to some degree understandably so– didn’t want to vote for the rigged choices put before them.
The problem with all of the poll results is that all Americans have incrementally, and substantially regressed in any form of critical thinking in the last four decades. All of the responses noted, with few exceptions reflect this. Many of the responses suggest unlimited amount of resources or money available and necessary to correct perceived social ills. In the 70s, our public school system was among the best in the world; now decidedly inferior due to indoctrination over education. March in line and in concert like a good corporate sheep should.
It’s interesting to discover a primary school test of math, science, history, etc given in the early 20th Century. To get even a C required critical thinking and ingrained “connect the dots” thinking. Few on this site could pass such a test. I have multiple degrees in science from elite universities, but I was hard pressed to do so.
I don’t think you really get it. First of all, I went through all the “ills” that the surveys comprise, and none of them are merely “perceived”. Second, many of them cost no money at all, so they are immune to the paucity of resources objection. Third, other areas like med4all and free college education constitute not an additional cost to the u.s. people, but just switching who’s paying who. Finally, MMT suggests that even in areas where poll results show u.s. people want to devote more actual $ to something, that the austerity/cost argument against it is largely a pile of banker bs.
As a general rule, arguments about the stupidity or childishness or fecklessness of the people leave me cold. These are tales our masters tell us, friend. In truth, we are the most lied to people, the most stockholmed people, if that’s a verb, in the history of the world. It’s a wonder we get anything right, us common folk. And yet our instincts are mostly right. So go easy on us.
Thanks for that. I have retreated somewhat from the eternal rightness of the voter, which came from my upbringing as a progressive (in the old sense), but I still think the Trump base, and working class voters in general, have reasons which the media and the Democratic Elite are not trying to find. In fact, they are probably trying to suppress any mention of the real reasons, because the media exist to sell advertising, not to sell papers or ‘the truth.’
Here is J. Dore covering one bit of popular good sense in the US: not giving a s%$* about Russia. Somewhat heartening if you’re of a mind to be heartened.
Hear, hear.
Wow. Thanks for this post!
Thanks for this. That took a lot of work to put together.
And yet The American Prospect does not support Medicare for All, but rather one of the faux alternatives involving a public option, or Medicare for Some.
http://prospect.org/article/road-medicare-everyone
That is perhaps illustrative to some degree but essentially also irrelevant. The data speaks for itself, res ipsa loquitur.
Thank you for laying out the poll numbers, Kurt! That took a lot of time and effort! I’ve been arguing the same thing, with just a few of the numbers, in these comments for years.
As Tom Ferguson said (about the 2010 midterms, but it could apply to US politics perennially) “…the American people will not accept the policies that leaders in both parties prefer”—which might be one reason why voter turnout in the US is so low, something that “has confounded politicians, activists and academics”—and what majorities, in some cases overwhelming majorities, want is routinely labeled by politicians and the mainstream media as “far left” and kept out-of-bounds. Whatever I might call that situation, one word that does not immediately spring to mind is “democratic.”
> Ocasio-Cortez backs campaign to primary fellow Democrats Politico
This is very heartening. Without someone beyond Sanders leading, he turns into a cult of personality, regardless of what he wants. And there are people beyond AOC doing the good work.
But she is the one successfully levering the msm into getting out her message. There is an aspect of the word ‘wise’ which is a shift from an adjective to an adverb, in that How something is done is as determinate as What is being done. Ends achieved are means realized.
Her How is inspiring. Can’t stop the signal.
But the downside is that they’re going to alienate the all important Sebastian Gorka voters.
I’m sure anglicized Hungarians are a crucial part of the triangulation strategy.
I agree. So far, she’s been impressive as familyblog getting her message out. And, as I outlined above, much of that message, just like Bernie’s did, will find real traction if she plays it right. The duopoly system is so rotten, so crooked, and people–Dems, Republican, Indies, and non-voters all– can see it. They can *smell* it. There is so much power lying in the street today waiting to be picked up. Trump picked a little bit of it up but mostly threw it back into the gutter. A whole slate of issues where the status-quo political process is completely unresponsive to public opinion is just building a swelling log jam of unfufilled discontent and frustration and anyone who can read a poll and has the will can start pulling pieces of the flimsy dam out at will. People are sick of the status quo. people are sick of having their opinions, their wishes and desires, their political will, ignored so that a few thousand people can act out their obscene wealth-hoarding psychopathologies. If someone can tap into the indies, the discontented partisans who can smell the fetid rot in their own parties, the politically aware non-voters, maybe we can sweep the whole fetid mess away. These people vastly outnumber the tribal partisans now. When it breaks–not if, when– there’s going to be a lot of deeply impacted assumptions and supposedly iron-clad dogma washed away in the debris stram. I just hope there are people with wisdom and competence ready to channel and direct and keep it away from the vulnarable and the powerless when it does. I’m halfway between hopeful expectation and downright fear.
“There is so much power lying in the street today waiting to be picked up.” I, for one, fully agree with this.
In a weird way it’s like Bannon’s too too beguiling argument: The elites have messed things up so badly and too many people realize it. So people must understand that the choice now is between Right populism and Left populism, not Hillary Jeb Bush Pelosi Paul Ryan elite business as usual. From a left perspective it’s critical that Bannon not get his way on this and sheepdog the Deplorables away from the policies you listed above with his degraded “nationalism” song and dance non sense.
Evidently MoDo thinks “President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. made a terrible mistake by letting the miscreant bankers off the hook rather than saying, as F.D.R. did, “I welcome their hatred.” To be fair to her, I admit I haven’t been able to penetrate the paywall to read the column.
Who says it was a mistake? MoDo does. Instead Obama and Holder may have achieved the goal they sought intentionally. I won’t believe it was a ‘mistake’ until Obama (and the rest of his gang) owns up to it publically. Seeing how he, Holder, et al. have conducted themselves financially since their periods in office, I’m not holding my breath.
Old-time Democrat: “I welcome their hatred.”
Modern Democrat: “I welcome their cash.”
Unseemly, the Obamas’ legacy:
https://nypost.com/2018/11/17/the-obamas-are-becoming-a-billion-dollar-brand/
or do you mean Un-Becoming?
I agree. I think that was the turning point for many people. All the hope and change bullshit was just a Trojan horse play that succeeded in the disillusionment of much of the progressive left, at which point there was nothing they could do. I myself turned away in disgust and shame for having any belief in the political process. Obama was the epitome of the “empty suit” president and Holder his protegee. The entire system is/was corrupt and rigged; all Obama appointees predisposed to support the banksters. What a rude awakening for many Americans.
https://pastebin.com/qyjfFpGb
Yes indeed, Dowd is letting Hague-Fugitive Obama and Unindicted-felon Holder off the hook. Keys to establishment propaganda — “mistakes we’re made”, “who could’ve known?” “We all share responsibilty”
None of their betrayals and crimes were mistakes:
–Not the bailouts
–Not the bonus protections
–Not foaming the runway for banksters
–Not the failed Cat Food Commission
–Not the Healthcare Racket Bailout
–Not the coups
–Not the wars
–Not the torture
–Not the assassinations
–NONE OF IT
I appreciate your vehemence, which is “proportionate to the actual situation”, as J. Dore would say.
Re: Alcohol is killing more people, and younger. The biggest increases are among women. From the article:
This is an important point that I don’t see made often in relation to alcoholism and other addictions. There is a world of difference between drinking with friends and drinking alone because you are miserable due to other factors like workplace stress. I knew some hardcore party animals in high school and college and few of them became alcoholics in their later adult life.
The people who seem to be in the most danger are those who use alcohol to cope with other problems. That is why I think the “deaths of despair” label is very appropriate. The spike in these deaths must be seen as part of larger changes in society but public health policy seems to be obsessed with making everyone a puritan as opposed to trying to improve general conditions of life. This is a product of seeing every problem as one of individual failure.
There was a similar tendency in the 19th century and early 20th century when widespread misery among workers was seen as a product of moral failure so you had things like the temperance movement, alcohol prohibition and attempts to shut down working-class tavern culture. This had the added benefit of attacking working-class institutions like taverns and religious organizations that did not prohibit alcohol and served working-class immigrant communities. Progressives were often at the front of movements to regulate the bad habits of working people.
The modern version of this tendency is represented by politicians like Michael Bloomberg who instead of helping to improve the general conditions of life for working people seek to moralistically regulate and supervise their behavior based on the assumption that individual stupidity and moral weakness are at the root of all social problems. Elites are afraid of working-class sociability so instead of promoting a stronger social life (which might include social drinking) most of our elites support solutions like nanny-state legislation and health apps to keep people atomized.
That was excellent.
BTW, are you the poster reading a book on the 19th cent. Catholic Left? Someone mentioned that in relation to temperance being a form of breaking up working class sociability.
Yes. I have been reading a number of books on the subject lately and it is interesting how many of the issues that we face today are similar to what was going on during the 19th century and early 20th century. Back then the main capitalist ideology was classical liberalism and neoliberalism has produced similar results.
Fantastic comment — thank you!
“Enemies pursue Soros in Germany”
You do have to wonder what a US Justice department investigation into George Soros and the organizations that he funds in the United States would uncover, especially if they took advantage of the RICO Act. There were rumours that some of the organizations that he funds were helping those first Antifa riots right after the 2016 election. If true, that would be foreign influence right there.
Links?
https://global.handelsblatt.com/finance/enemies-pursue-george-soros-germany-hungary-viktor-orban-berlin-budapest-980143
That’s a link to already-linked post, not to the “rumors” referenced in the last sentence of TRK’s comment
Just got back online. Soros funds all sorts of groups from the Ferguson riots, Black Lives Matters and many others but it is not like that you are going to find a cheque with his name at the bottom. To get back to your question, try this link for a start-
https://capitalresearch.org/article/origins-of-antifa/
His connections appear in all sorts of places. Remember recently when during the anti-Kavanagh hearings how women confronted politicians like Flake and McConnell? See this-
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/anti-kavanaugh-protesters-accosting-senators-have-ties-to-soros
A Bezos is your classic bald James Bond villain though he does not keep putting his pinky to the corner of his mouth – yet! Soros though funds all sort groups through his Open Society Foundations and Hungary was wary of his groups giving ‘training’ to Hungarians as his groups also gave lots of training to groups in the Ukraine before the putsch.
My original comment should have mentioned his New America organization as you do wonder about foreign funding and the aims of orhanizations like this in the US,
ALEC !!1!
Fox news and a disinfo website? Really?
Yes, Rev needs to be careful re US sources. It is Soros foundations, in which he has no day to day role, that have donated to BLM, and then only in a pretty minor way. And on a quick search, I see nothing supporting the idea that BLM had anything to do with the violence in Ferguson. BLM sponsored peaceful protests and BLM opposed violence:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/22/st-louis-missouri-ferguson-protests-black-lives-matter
That was me being lazy and not wanting to go into a back and forth on what Soros has and has not done. At the time I found a Snopes article (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/riot-act/) saying that his money had gone to groups that he may have not personally approved of, including groups eventually involved in riots.
I am usually reluctant to quote anything from Fox but give them the benefit of a doubt from time to time. My real point was that if money is coming from outside the US to go to, among other things, political causes inside the US, then perhaps it might be wise to track who is actually getting it. If that is not a law on the books, then it should be.
It is true that Soros is the premier boogey man of the rightwing. But it is also well documented that his Open Society Foundation has been a source for destabilization and regime change mobilization abroad right alongside the NED and other CIA infiltrated “humanitarian” organizations. Not sure why no one brought this up here, but it is not just anti-Semitism or rightwing conspiracy theory behind the criticism.
He’s a billionaire and where do billionaires go?
up against the wall !!
Elsewhere in the LA Times today: a major investigation of the Robinson helicopter safety record. The low cost and extremely common copter is made in California.
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-robinson-helicopters/
http://www.latimes.com/la-me-ln-robinson-heli2-20181118-story.html
Among other tidbits the company has recommended that pilots wear fireproof Nomex suits due to the risk from exploding fuel tanks during minor crashes. However rotor design problems seem to be the principal danger.
https://www.imageidentify.com/result/15bmevyyv27n7 shore bird
antidote
This is not much help.
Skua? Where was the photo taken?
Is it an African Swallow? Not the European one that can’t carry a coconut wihtout help from an additional bird.
My first thought was Snipe. A view of the bird’s profile would be a nice look.
The beak is short. “frosty zoom” suggested an immature female of some kind.
Juvenile Least Sandpiper? It’s definitely a peep of some sort.
My old bird guide Indicates the Least Sandpiper’s legs do look dark in poor lighting.
Thanks. I could not tell, on my tiny iphone 4 screen, if the bill was short or foreshortened. The eyeline is interesting.
Yes, the eyeline is very interesting. I can see why you thought snipe or woodcock.
Molting juvenile European starling?
I think it’s a Northern Flicker.
Re: The mystery viruses far worse than flu
Contains a glaring error: smallpox is not an RNA virus, its a double-stranded DNA virus.
RE: Is Bill and Hillary’s tour a sideshow the Democrats don’t need?
…Give that man a cigar!…
With some nice background music perhaps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDIZNWSDdgw
I think this is a violation of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines…
Re: Rolling Stone. Matt Taibbi
For those interested, the full report that Taibbi references is available at: https://fas.org/man/eprint/common.pdf.
One line from Taibbi’s article: “It said Congress should be focused on ‘domestic entitlement programs’ and ‘interest payments on the national debt’ as sources of savings.”
I would like to add here some quotes from the report itself related to (1) government spending; (2) projecting military power; and, (3) enlistment.
1. “Looking ahead, policymakers must address rising government spending and decreasing tax revenues as unsustainable trends that compel hard fiscal choices…No serious effort to address growing debt can be made without either increasing tax revenues or decreasing mandatory spending—or both…In the near-term, such adjustments will undoubtedly be quite painful. Yet over time—and probably much sooner than we expect—failing to make those adjustments and fully fund America’s defense strategy will undoubtedly be worse.”
“Quite painful” choices to protect the homeland. What happens when the pain translates into increased social unrest? Just up the ante of the use of surveillance state/militarized police?
2. Even though the US mission in Afghanistan has come up short (as described by Pepe Escobar), the report recommends this for Afghanistan, “a sustained U.S. military presence to prevent the country from once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists.”
And in Europe, “dealing with a revanchist Russia will entail rebuilding conventional NATO force capacity and capability on the alliance’s eastern flank and the Baltics.”
(3) On “Manpower challenges”. From the report, “[A]mong those eligible for service, only one in four exhibits the propensity to serve. Without a marked change in the way America approaches the idea of military service and the fitness and education of future generations, DOD will struggle to fill its ranks with highly qualified individuals, with profound implications for national security.” Is the report implying that the new marketing campaigns and nuanced benefit packages for enlistees are not enough? At The American Conservative, I have seen at least two articles on the need to re-institute some form of a draft. Would not be the least surprised if in the quite spaces where the members of the commission meet with legislators the term “draft” has not already been spoken.
Perhaps increased immiseration will do much to increase the propensity of the young to serve. A little regulation of the corn syrup/fried food industries a la Bloomberg might give more of the youngs that lean and hungry look. As long as we can get China to make the uniforms while we attack them.
Um, I thought all US military uniforms had by law to be made in the US — by prisoners, that is.
A dodgy area. A coupla months ago executives of the leading American manufacturer of US military boots were convicted of supplying boots that were actually Made in China-
https://taskandpurpose.com/wellco-execs-military-boots-china/
Right now the US military is trying to get the diversity of uniforms under control-
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-22/making-a-21st-century-u-s-military-uniform-every-branch-can-wear
Just as well. As an example, you may have seen US sailors in those blue aquaflage uniforms. Those uniforms had two characteristics. If a sailor went into the drink, he would be hard to find as he was now completely camouflaged. Second, in case of the nightmare of a fire aboard a ship (as in combat or accidents) those uniforms would melt to their skin. They finally dumped those uniforms about two years ago.
But of course with each uniform change and rollout there are huge contracts to be had at enormous expense. But for some reason, they never seem to get it quite right.
This is the same Department of Defense with a serious existing accounting problem. In 2016, before Trump was elected, its Inspector General said he could not properly track $6.5 trillion in defense spending. A later academic study claimed the number was $21 trillion, looking at the years 1998-2015.
Any government department which is willing to behave with such abject, ongoing disrespect for the public purse and to disregard, with impunity, other vital public budgetary priorities deserves neither respect nor autonomy.
The individuals making up the “The National Defense Strategy Commission” and their bogus “report” should be derided and discounted as the last gasps of a terminally corrupt sham of what should be an important “system.”
With debacles from Vietnam to the current F-35, how can any “recommendation” made by these people be taken even remotely seriously? They have proven immune to the usual reputational consequences of complete failure. The only logical course is to remove them and destroy the entire edifice.
Surreal report. By the DCI, the Department of Criminal Insanity.
“No serious effort to address growing debt can be made without either increasing tax revenues or decreasing mandatory spending—or both…”
We can’t possibly touch the 0.7 trillion in military spending, because Russia! And because we need to sustain a perpetual military force to protect an 18-year opium-heroin racket and foil Chinese Silk Road initiative.
War is a racket.
Five or ten trillion here or there, pretty soon you are talking serious money.
Only one in four? To serve what? My number one reason as a youngun to look at the military and say to myself, no phucking way, was that to be commanded to kill another human being by an idiotic desk jockey general is against my principles and it is my moral duty to never lift a finger to help the military, unless it’s to raise the middle one in a one finger salute.
Amen.
anyone under twenty five these days have spent most ,if not all of their lives in this post 9-11 propaganda storm. Everything people are told about american truth ,justice and the american way is total B.S..
I try not to hold military service against people. The people who were in when there was a draft, weren’t necessarily “for” what they were actually doing. And Many of the people who went in after were really going in to get education,training or just a ticket to another reality/location. The people who have been young enough to go in after 9/11 are really the victims of this mass propaganda program that the political class enablers of the military industrial complex has wrought. I try to remember that it really isn’t their fault, they have become tools……. BUT….
WTF
I also have to stress, no one alive today or in my lifetime has ever fought for my freedom. No one has defended the constitution, since 1865. No service person is helping americans; unless you mean shareholders. And as an american, the biggest threat to my life, my liberty and my pursuit of happiness; are the military full of “patriots” who can be trusted to combat any social movement or anyone who would protest or even argue against this pathologically corrupt governmental facade. The militarized police, the surveillance state, the military, etc. They are the average americans biggest threat to their personal liberty.
(In north carolina every year , soldiers from fort bragg go around into different counties and conduct “war games” where they take control of local populations. These games are called “rob and sage”. or some such. About a dozen years ago a county sherrif was killed in orange county nc, who didn’t know the two armed men he was confronting were soldiers in a live fire exercise.)
I do feel sorry for all those with their misplaced sense of loyalty to a gov’t that doesn’t give a sh%t about them. A gov’t that sees fit to keep them chasing their tails, while their families make do without them.
As an american, I hate the military, as it is the muscle for the local mafia dons. It is not the friend or ally of the people. Throw in the trillions they don’t even bother to account for. the environmental pollution they have wrought.The military is an affront to what is right . The military has no honor. On this march toward fascism,the military is the might . the boot that is kicking in the teeth of all who are in the way.
But hey at least we are americans, we aren’t the poor saps, women and children who are being killed,shot,bombed, or whatever, that all these trillions of dollars are being used for.Our society isn’t being wholly wrecked like that of iraq or yemen or wherever the military spends it bullets, and cashes its bombs. We aren’t the whales being deafened by navy games looking for make believe submarines from an enemy that doesn’t exist.
Now, If those soldiers were like the national guard soldiers who were helping americans in the wake of natural disasters,then we could say “thank you for your service”. And actually it mean something.
Well, it doesn’t say what the implications are. For example, one of the profound implications might be that we’d have more security without overseas military adventurism. Doubt that was how it was meant, but…
Anecdata on alcohol use… I’m on an online dating site, and the number of profile pictures or self descriptions with women referencing alcoholic beverages (mainly wine) is definitely more than 50%. I can underneath the desire to show an ability to be social in this context, but something feels off to me in society if this a signifier of attractiveness or personality. I’m not arguing that we need to return to Victorian mores regarding women and alcohol, but it also doesn’t feel like a step forward for feminism if drinking has becoming such a visible part of identity.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Wine%20Mom
Sorry, but in these times nothing but a glass of wine helps.
I can think of at least one alternative ;-)
“UK austerity policies ‘punitive, mean-spirited and callous’ says UN expert”: ‘British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach,’ he said. ‘The state does not have your back, you are on your own.’
Made a comment recently how a lot of the worst practices of the 19th century were being reintroduced into the 21st century. Well, I have read more than a few books on Britain in the 19th century and that sentence mentioning a ‘punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach’ in compassion is exactly the way that I would describe Britain’s treatment of the poor in the 19th century. Looks like everything old is new again. They did have those horrible Workhouses back then and to see what they were like, go to http://www.workhouses.org.uk/ and flick through the section called ‘Workhouse Life” on the left. Now in the 21st century UK they don’t even have them and people really are on their own. Those that will fare the worse will be those that follow Thatcher’s decree that ‘there’s no such thing as society’ while those that have a community will fare better.
Those who do not know their History are condemned to repeat it. I suggest some reading on “Tory Party.” Perhaps a focus on “The Enclosures Act”.
Or some of Dickens writing, Oliver Twist for start.
Or this brilliant journalism from Jack London:
http://www.freeclassicebooks.com/London%20Jack/The%20People%20of%20the%20Abyss.pdf
the bird looks like an immature female of some sort..
perhaps a clue as to location would be of some help.
Noted above but comment hasn’t shown up yet: perhaps a molting juvenile European starling. Found some photos with the eye marking. It’s a dominant species near where I live in Riverside Park, NYC. Color, markings vary greatly at different times of the year. Supposedly brought to NY in the late 19th century by Shakespeare enthusiasts.
RE: Barack von Obamenburg, Herr Donald, and Big Capitalist Hypocrisy: On How Fascism Happens Counterpunch.
Whoa!
After a devastating recap of the latest (2008-2016) episode of “Democrats Do Damage to the Working Class in a Way Republicans Could Never Get Away With,” Street comes up with this novel approach to establishing that, because Trump, there is still no alternative to them:
Along the way, the dreary and duplicitous Dems have helped hatch an online political phenomenon the likes of which I never thought I’d live to see: a de factoAmerican Trumpenleft. I’ve encountered it again and again on so-called social media and via e-mail. A strange group of mostly older and curmudgeonly online lefties (the new leading bane of my in-box, surpassing the Truthers in that regard) has been so jaded and enraged by decades of Democratic Party deceit and betrayal as to become unwilling to properly denounce and oppose a fascist president and his white-nationalist party. It’s as if they think they are in danger of becoming neoliberals and being infected by the fake-progressive Obama-Clinton-Pelosi virus if they dare acknowledge the true fascistic horror that is Trump and his ever more insane party.
In some cases I have encountered, previously serious-seeming leftists have practically embraced Trump and channeled Moscow-hatched Caitlin/Diana Johnstoneite “red-brown” and “geopolitical” talking points [2] in the spirit of “the [nationalist] enemy of my [globalist] enemy is [somehow] my friend.” Their understandable hatred of the neoliberal Democrats (whose evils I have relentlessly documented and denounced in book and essay after book and essay for many years) has poisoned their hearts and minds. It has gotten the better of them. It’s a bit reminiscent of the German Communist Party’s disastrous sectarian response to the political rise of the Nazi in the early 1930s.
Obligatory references to Kristallnacht, rabid dogs and malignant tumors also make an appearance.
I’m feeling a bit called out right now. I particularly object to the his obvious ageism. “Curmudgeonly????”
Balderdash!
I’m a proud…and lifelong…curmudgeon.
and I didn’t need faux newts/kremlin to make me that way.
I generally like Street…but his flirtation with “dissent=russian influence” is silly and insulting.
I thought about the potential similarities between the German Left and my own near total and immediate allergy of Clintonism by 1995.(Ross Perot, both times, here)
I rejected them then, and I reject them now. The Vichy Dems are worse by far than the Weimar Era Social Democrats ever were…I’d even go so far as to say that they’re more dangerous than Emperor Caught the Car, given that they all but engineered his ascendancy.
Balderdash, indeed!
“I’m with you in Rockland…”
(still my fave exegesis of where we’re at: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/progressive-neoliberalism-trump-beyond/ )
“The Vichy Dems are worse by far than the Weimar Era Social Democrats ever were…”
Yup, Trump’s two pluses: 1) he’s no Trojan Horse and unlikely to get away with saving SS or starting WW3 (I hope); and 2) he’s more likely to bring down the paper edifice of empire sooner than an another groomed Ivy-league Mesmerist.
Unlikely to get away with saving SS? Is that a Freudian Slip?
Perhaps it was meant to read: “…saving THE SS…” Now known, in it’s infancy, as Homeland Security.
Oh, thought you meant Social Security.
Be careful of acronyms…23 Skidoo!
I get your drift…Alphabet Agencies.
Politicians who want to “save” Social Security mean it like the way Obama tried to “save” it with his Cat Food Commission and the Grand Betrayal ploy,. They mean to save it the way Obama “saved” the Healthcare racket from single-payer
Exactly, it is ‘save’ in the Vietnam-era sense of ‘We had to destroy the village to save it’.
“vichy dems” is a bullseye, hippie, proportionate to the scale of their betrayal. I’m pushing the word “proportionate” today.
Yeah, Street was doing really well there until he spied the slavic sharktopus-nado over which he felt the need to catapult himself.
I’ll definitely read that open tab now, I could use a good smirk.
as to become unwilling to properly denounce and oppose a fascist president and his white-nationalist party
Because that’s how political change happens? Like MyFace, the establishment thinks we are all just playing this for the dopamine jags. If I was concerned about someone’s virtue, the last thing I would do is send them to the legislature.
“white-nationalist” I wonder if I’ll find out in the article what that means in the context of US politics? As opposed to ‘white federalist’? ‘white internationalist’? Is it, perhaps, in contrast to Farrakhan? Or will I find it is just a snarl word like ‘fascist’? I would be shocked to find out our elites have a self-gratifyingly simplistic view of ‘white’ as an identity: “What do you mean ‘We’, Ivy Boy?”
Meh. What’s the rhetorical term for ‘resorts to a Trolley Problem?’
I came back with no definition, but a list that included Poroshenko and Putin. I’m going to put headlines with the word ‘Fascism’ in the same bucket I put headlines with the word ‘This.’ It’s a hundred years old term (not counting the Romans) and now just is just shorthand for ‘I don’t like your version of global domination.’
Fascism started in the USA even before it was established in 1776. Don’t forget, Mussolini, and even more so the bureaucratic and legal system of the German National Socialist German Workers’ Party model their program on USA law, particularly the eugenics, Lebensraum, non-governmental party associated militia (slave /jim crow patrols / native american suppression patrols. Every president, we’ve had has been part of a Fascist system, some like Lincoln recognized it and died for that sin. It is only now that the extreme concentration of wealth has made the stresses hit all the harder.
Check out “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz , or if you don’t care to read that much, see Abby Martin’s recent interview of Dunbar-Ortiz on youtube.
The only goal of the article is to punch left. There is not a bit of new analysis. Those of us who don’t agree that Trump is a uniquely fascist development in American politics get the allemagnesque label of “Trumpenleft”. Boring old warnings that we are adherents of Stalinoid bureaucratism are justified with an appeal to a mythological and flattened understanding of the fundamental disagreement between SDP/KPD over basically everything, which is one of the scriptural stories for anybody who wants to argue that “further left than this line be dragons”. Any person who exists beyond that line suffers from dementia, is infected with Moscow-born meme-worms, and is probably an Avakianite.
To be honest, I like it when I see these articles. For all of his protestations that his leftist enemies are a tiny group of powerless nonagenarian crypto-fascists, the very fact that he feels the need to use a column to attack us like this is a sign that we are a threat to him. Good.
Thanks for this fine comment, and I think your last paragraph is spot on, too.
Completely disagree. Setting aside his colorful hyperbolic writing style, I think NCers are reacting to the mention of fascism as if it negates his valid insights. Which would kind of prove his point.
An excellent recent Intercepted podcast addressed fascism as well; it features Chris Hedges and others.
If RussiaRussia insanity has taken a foothold in Street’s world view it can be discounted; thinking seriously about power and its vicissitudes cannot.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/panoply/intercepted-with-jeremy-scahill/e/57108807
Pretty sure that nobody on this thread has argued that Street is mistaken in his critique of neoliberalism, or that his assertion that Trump is a fascist means that his critique of neoliberalism is wrong. His assertion that we must embrace liberalism because it’s an actual anti-fascist position is wrong, even if Trump were a fascist (and literally just a collection of insults, not an argument). It’s wrong because US empire’s liberalism is not an anti-fascist position, and cannot be one. Which, to be frank, is the same reason that Trump isn’t a special sort of bad as far as US government goes. I’ll check the podcast out, thanks.
Street’s essays have a way of overstaying their welcome, IMO. They always read like he’s adding grafs AP style to fill available space.
A variety of Russia nonsense is being bruited about at Counterpunch now. First by Jeffrey St. Clair and now Street, who is a regular writer at that site. They both have this idea about Russian influence over the left in the US. Don’t have a link, but St. Clair (among reams of good sense and fine writing, btw) recently bemoaned the RT influence over parts of the us left in his column that runs weekly at CP. He’s actually done this at least a couple times; it’s a “public position”.
Alex Cockburn would be on fire about this shit, Jeffrey and Paul. I’m not sure if any creature raised his ire more than liberals who punch left. He especially detested the figures, former leftists, who joined the russia hysteria in the 50s-80s, that constantly tried to paint authentic, home-grown dissent as “russia influenced”.
I ask, in the vein of St. Clair and Street: “How and why has this intelligence community narrative influenced Counterpunch?”
Ick.
and the Jacob Bacharach article: “….I voted last week, an exercise that now feels like mouthing polite prayers at someone else’s church. ….”
Damn.
Wife often chides me for my terminal cynicism….but once you pass some threshold of awareness, what else can you do?
I come down out of the hills, go among the teabilly mundanes…and almost in spite of myself, manage to open a few minds or insert a little doubt…even get a few “deplorables” pining for FDR…
Such anecdotal experiences gel perfectly with the 70% figure I see here and there regarding the popularity of a New New Deal…but what’s the MSM and the “Opposition Party” doing?
Lol.
and we wonder why folks are drinking themselves to death and burying themselves in sports and other innanities…
“regarding the popularity of a New New Deal”
January 11, 1944 – FDR, State of the Union – Second Bill of Rights
– The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
– The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
– The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
– The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
– The right of every family to a decent home;
– The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
– The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
– The right to a good education.
Why not that platform, Democrats???
Apart from the word “adequate”, which I believe has taken on a more negative connotation in the last 80 years than it had in Roosevelt’s day, you could pretty much just copy and paste it. And win with it. If you actually wanted to do that, of course.
Right. Very typical of Street and the main CP writers these days. Good points for a while, then a section of total bulls**t. Anyone who reads the Johnstone’s work knows that it is outlandish to call them Trump supporters. And buying the Russia crap needs no further comment here. What’s their game, though? That’s what I can’t figure out.
Of course, the German Social Democrats used the Right Wing Freikorps to murder the most ardent Communists is the Spartacist Uprising of 1919. (and many other armed actions by the Freikorps against Communists)
The Centrists will always use the right wing populists to murder the left wing populist – as we see now.
The fact the any centrist dem wastes a second attacking anyone on the left while Trump is president tells you what side they are on.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/1-dead-227-hurt-in-huge-french-protest-on-fuel-taxes/
Just some news on the heels of Macroneon’s call for a Euro army for protection against possible hostilities from China, Russia, and the USA….
Good news story coming out of CA Fires:::
https://usatodayhss.com/2018/calif-hs-volleyball-program-rallies-to-support-team-town-reeling-from-wildfires
suggested link!
the always thoughtful Current Affairs reviews
a new book by Jacy Reese The End of Animal Farming:
“Here is a bit of bad news: Humanity is committing an ongoing moral atrocity at an almost unthinkable scale. There is, however, also some good news: We might be able to end it more easily than people assume. ..”
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/11/can-we-end-animal-farming-forever
Re: New York Review of Books. Retired Summer Court Justice John Paul Stevens. “One way of reading this is that with the Supremes captured by you know who, we’ll have to look increasingly to state courts for sensible jurisprudence. Alas, such judgements will apply to a specific state, and can be overruled by the Supremes. Note that Stevens was a Ford appointee.”
Sounds like a recipe for eventual term limits for the Supreme Corp…assuming that in the future this will be a country that has citizens with any agency .
California air quality and smoking cigarettes.
From the SFGATE:
Do they smoke? Do they exercise?
Yesterday I worked out at felonious assault level. Gave up killer workouts because I am too old for that stuff. My noticeable level of impaired cardio function = 0. None. Zero. I am pretty sure if I had gone to the total-collapse-from-exhaustion-limit I could not have made it as far as I could have ten days ago because the air is terrible, make no mistake about it. I do not believe it is 11 cigarettes bad. In a past life I have smoked as many as 11 cigarettes in a day and could not do that without impairing cardio function at measurable level. The difference between say being able to do 1500 skip-ropes versus 2500. For no cardio impairment 4 cigarettes is the maximum and 3 cigarettes in 24 hours is probably noticeable.
The Craig H. measure of air quality in the San Francisco Bay Area is right now less than or equal to 4 cigarettes. 11 is an erroneously large estimate. If I had to put a number on it I think I would go with 2.
Re:The Egragrious Lie Americans Tell Themselves
More like a lie that that is the endpoint of many other lies. Big lies contain lots of “little” lies.
Notice that in everyday life the liars and cons have much to say about what allegedly will be, lots of hedges and excuses about what IS and what WAS.
Jimmy Dore had a good segment on Amazon’s HQ2 scam. It now has private, non-public data on the development plans of all the HQ2 contestant cities. It can now sell this data to third parties or use this data to locate future fulfillment center warehouses and/or negotiate incentives from local governments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REIafMQIgIs
Why does “private non-public data on the development plans of …cities” exist? What is being done “in our name”, by the supposedly public officials?
If it is an attempt to prevent insider information fueling speculation, I would argue it only reduces the size of the speculator pool to those doing the planning, and of course their families, friends, and political allies. Doesn’t cut the pool down much, does it?
Excellent On the Media podcast called Do Not Pass Go on this very topic. Dave Dayen among others is featured. Amazon acquired a huge quantity of free data, the very thing it runs on. The point us made that Amazon doesn’t want to dominate the market, it wants to BE the market.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/on-the-media-2018-11-16
Maureen Dowd:
What FDR said in late 1936, although a splendid piece of rhetoric, was less important than what he did three-and-a-half years earlier.
In the first 100 days of his administration, Congress passed and FDR signed into law, legislation creating the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal deposit insurance and requiring the separation of commercial and investment banking, helped by the so-called Pecora commission. Congressional investigation into the causes of the financial collapse of 1929, begun by the Republican-held Senate in 1932, had been winding down; in January, 1933, Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant district attorney from New York was hired to write the final report but, believing the investigation to be incomplete (the commission hadn’t uncovered much of any significance), he had asked for additional time. After taking office, FDR urged the new Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Duncan Fletcher, to let Pecora continue the probe. Pecora was already a sensation—through his investigation, he had revealed that National City, the nation’s largest Bank (now Citibank) “had hidden bad loans by packaging them into securities and pawning them off to unwitting investors,” disgracing and ruining Charles (“Sunshine Charlie”) Mitchell, the head of the bank, (and giving the country a new word “banksters”) in the process.
When the bankers and financiers said that Pecora’s theatrical hearings would destroy confidence in the US banking system, FDR said “they should have thought of that when they did the things that are being exposed now.” Contrary to destroying confidence, according to this piece in Vanity Fair,
[emphasis added]
The hearings generated enormous popular support for Roosevelt’s banking and financial regulation.
Sure, Obama could have said anything nearly four years after his inauguration—soaring, empty rhetoric was his specialty—but what he might have done in the days immediately following it, as Roosevelt did, would have been far more effective.
A really important paper from Steve Keen.
“We treat energy as an input to both labour and capital, without which production is impossible.”
“We argue for the redefinition and measurement of real GDP in terms of exergy”
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Y3-c3Hb~0Ek42
I would dearly love to know what all that math is about but I think I am too old to learn. Will wait for the summary!
That was the same problem I had with this a couple of days ago. I like Keen, but I have to assume he proved his point since the math was front and center… and overwhelming.
Low-tech answer lies in the well-known saying “Behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy.”
Think about what, in a somewhat simplistic free-market supply/demand scenario, determines the price of a commodity for e.g. extractive industries like oil & coal, and grow-stuff ones like agriculture. If I want to drill for oil, there are up-front expenses related to licensing and land leasing, and after that the major expenses are for personnel, extraction equipment and energy to operate the latter. The cost of the equipment itself ultimately reflects the cost of the energy needed to produce it. Iron carried in ore underground doesn’t cost anything, the cost is all associated with the energy needed to extract and refine it.
Interestingly, thinking about things this way also appears to provide an excellent means for separating ‘fake’ GDP (e.g. FIRE-economy money-shuffling) not associated – or even negatively associated – with real-wealth creation from real-economy GDP. What is the energy cost of packaging a bunch of dodgy housing-bubble mortgage loans into a toxic debt security, for instance?
Of course there needs to also be thinking beyond energy usage – mainstream economics has forever and anon ignored things such as environmental-degradation impacts related to mining and goods production.
Not sure if I’m being off-topic here, but I think everybody forgets that “price” is not determined by cost of production, except insofar as cost of production exceeds the market price of a commodity it’s not going to be produced. Cost of production is the price paid for raw materials, labor, and energy. Thus, we have drugs whose cost of unit production is a few dollars, or a few cents, whose price is hundreds or thousands of dollars per unit. That’s why I hate Marx’s attempt to explain the value or commodities. He even had to define a third definition of “value” (I love the immense research he did into industrial abuses and exploitation, though).
I did qualify my take with “somewhat simplistic free-market supply/demand scenario” – Big Pharma as is well known has managed to bribe our lawgivers in order that any semblance of free-market competition does not apply to their racket. Like most of the FIRE sector, they are a parasite upon the economic host, a topic Michael Hudson wrote an entire book about.
Note that energy-based GDP measures have their own problems, as well – for example, Bitcoin mining is incredibly energy-intensive, which cost is reflected in the price of the BTC ‘commodity’. But what kind of durable wealth – as opposed to mere zero-sum wealth transfer among participants in that market – is produced thereby? This also points to the fundamental problem, which is that properly measuring real GDP amounts to the same problem as that of properly measuring real economic wealth, as expressed in, say, ‘net betterment of human lives’. *That* would be the proper metric, but it’s a heck of a lot harder to define and measure than metrics based on simply money flows.
On alcohol, I find if I’m at an event with drinking, usually at least one person inquires about why I’m not drinking if I’m not holding a drink.
The Sunday Times Brexit cartoon was very existential! Just about as madcap as Brexit politics can get and we all know how the Brits love their madcap. Funniest people on the planet. I only wish David Cameron were seated next to BoJo. It is like the prize-winning caption to that New Yorker cartoon of the mountaineer vigorously climbing nothing but air, “Because it isn’t there.”
If I had a Star Trek style transporter I’d beam you over for a day, just so you could truly appreciate what it’s like here at the moment. I feel, after having to watch our current ruling elite in action today, like Miss Jane Hathaway must have done whilst dealing with The Beverly Hillbillies.
Be careful with your metaphors; the underlying joke of the whole series is that the Hillbillies are much wiser, as well as kinder, than their gentrified neighbors – especially the banker Hathaway works for.
Too rich to Jail
This is shocking!
Sh-h-h! Don’t tell anyone. The NYTs not only admits to rejecting supply side econ recently, but actually catches up with why the Dems are no longer functional. Opps, when will Dowd retire/be pushed?
Re: The Marshall Project article
Putting aside the ignorant and arrogant assertion that rural attorneys are not “high quality” like their lauded lawyers in the Bronx, the author ignores the realities of the system. You would never know it from their fluff, but, for example, in some areas (like mine), there is constant pressure on prosecutors and cops to keep people OUT of jail. It’s expensive to jail people and usually accomplishes nothing. I’ve seen prosecutors (and have myself as one) argue with judges that the state wants a defendant released on a PR bond or just given a sentence of time served or suspended. (Especially when the judge backed building a new regional jail which needed paid for — suddenly, incarceration rates in all the adjoining counties without their own jails shot up)
Follow the money, and what you’ll find, at least around here, is some think tank based thousands of miles away on the east coast who got paid a fortune to make cookie cutter recommendations for public services to keep low-level offenders out of jail when nobody except judges were trying to jail them to start with.
2001: Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.
2018: Forest fires can’t melt steel beams.
Conspiracists Blame California Fires on Airborne Laser Guns [Daily Beast]
Surely there’s a way of working Seth Rich into this theory.
First, something ‘accessible’ on the WTC collapse: https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html
Secondly, why do we automatically jump to conclusions concerning the political orientations of “Conspiracy Mongers” and assorted “Tin Foil Hatters?” Could this be a legacy of HRH HRC’s “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” against her, propaganda campaign?
For something on that see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right-wing_conspiracy
If the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” is dogging HRH HRC’s heels, then where does that leave ‘Russia! Russia! Russia!,’ which is, if anything, the prototypical ‘Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?’ Hillary wants to be the girl with the most cake.
Western fires are the new abnormal. They are the sign of the end of human dominance of the West. My Grandfather escaped the Bitterroots Great Fire of 1910 with only the clothes on his back. I showed up 34 years later. The smoke covered PNW is new within living memory and it shoots Clean Air Act dead. Suppressing fires worked until it doesn’t anymore. Rising temperatures, insect infestation, undergrowth and drought has made wild fires uncontrollable. This is similar to the aftermath of hurricanes hitting New Orleans, Puerto Rico and Mexico Beach. Either the nation’s wealth is used to mitigate the causes (stop climate change, remove undergrowth, build fire berms and add home sprinkler systems) or only moated concrete bunkers will be left in No Man’s Land. All Western cities air will be unhealthy during fire season which is now year round in California.
Rising temperatures, insect infestation, undergrowth and drought has made wild fires uncontrollable.
And human population growth.
Climate change can not be stopped. You’re really fooling yourself if you think that’s possible in any way.
It’s already underway, with all the momentum of the turning planet. And you omitted the most obvious cause and focused on symptoms: there are houses in fire terrain that are going to burn no matter what is done, and they’re there because of denatured people too mesmerized by the profits of property lines to see that we are no exception to nature.
Here’s a thought: let’s not build in fire terrain. I’m thinking new zoning laws, and that we probably don’t have the time it will take to litigate all that, so declare fire terrain to be fire terrain, buy everyone out, and let nature take her course. Since she’s going to anyway, we might as well try currying some favor for a change.
Here’s a list of California cities that are rated as “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones”
http://www.fire.ca.gov/fire_prevention/fire_prevention_wildland_zones_maps_citylist
Note, Paradise is in the list as is much of Los Angeles County (including Beverly Hills)
As my house burned down during the October 2017 Sonoma County Fires, I have been watching the rebuild process with interest, but have not rebuilt..
From my readings, more building with concrete walls/roof would help a great deal, but the majority of the rebuilding effort I have observed is with standard wood framing, but with code upgrades, including improved attic vents and sprinklers.
These upgrades may not help too much, as one local city council member pointed out that 21 or the 22 homes in the burn zone that were built to the current code burned down.
Buying people out will be very expensive, if even remotely feasible, in CA alone, per https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/data/wui/state_summary/ in 2010 there were 13,680,081 homes in CA and 4,426,803 were in the wildland-urban interface.
So about 1/3 of the CA housing stock could potentially qualify for a buyout.
Given the building trends, in 2018, the percentage of homes in the California wildland-urban interface is likely even higher.
The link is interesting, because it shows that states such as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, Washington State and Georgia have a good percentage of their housing stock in the wildland-urban interface.
If climate change causes their wildlands to be come more tinder-like, the USA could have homes burning in somewhat unexpected regions.
Perhaps we can have better efforts to harden existing houses for wildfire, such as improved vents, boxed in eaves, additional sprinklers, better landscaping plants.
The pressure in CA is to add ever more people and build more houses.
My belief is that fire insurance companies will drive the changes to building codes and growth patterns to mitigate the risk.
One can imagine the insurance industry’s actuaries calculating their nationwide fire insurance risks right now.
There will be consolidation in the fire insurance industry, and a retreat from many fire ‘prone’ areas. With banks not likely to give up on policies that require that their investment in housing stock be insured against loss, expect the insurance companies themselves to be ‘deployed’ as weapons to limit the geographical extent of housing construction. So, the housing insurance companies will be witting tools of the population engineers. The other aspect of this trend will be the hyper-gentrification of the urban-wilderness contact zones. Only the rich will be able to afford the insurance premiums for such areas. This will probably be true no matter how the building codes are or are not ‘strengthened.’
You’re right that climate deterioration is a big factor, but you should look up the Tillamook Burn. It’s a huge area of the Coat Range east of Tillamook in Oregon: the Coast Range, so wet. It burned repeatedly starting in the 30’s, monstrous firestorms. Most of the forests here are fire-adapted, though not as extreme as California. But the forest soils are full of charcoal.
40 years on from Jonestown
This augments Rep Jackie Speier’s account.
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Jonestown.html
The bird looks a bit like a whippoorwill.