Links 11/3/2021

Subscribe to Post Comments

173 comments

1. zagonostra November 3, 2021 at 7:47 am

   >Health outcomes, and American exceptionalism. Elizabeth Bear

   We have this Puritan baked-in idea that if you are sick it is somehow your fault, and we deal with this by stigmatizing illness, by stigmatizing seeking treatment for illness, by treating sick people as if they have done something wrong

   Perhaps that is true, but not the crucial central issue. If there is an “American Exceptionalism” when it comes to the healthcare “system” it is the degree to which rapacious corporations, the politicians and MSM they control, are motivated by greed, avarice and lack of humanity.

   Whether I’m in France or Florida when my child need to go to the ER because she broke her arm I’m going to seek medical help, my personal “Puritan” inclination to tough-it out notwithstanding . The difference is the cruelty of the U.S. system that punishes a person if her employer does not offer affordable health insurance or one that offers only catastrophic coverage. Private coverage, forget it, unless you can fork over a grand a month. In the U.S. I am punished for seeking medical help. The poor are pariah.

   By any account Bernie’s plank of M4A should have won the day hands-down. That he didn’t I blame a corrupt political process that is bought and paid for by immoral actors who make billions on the pain and suffering of the least among us….I too would consider emigrating to another country if my ties here didn’t keep me geographically tethered.
   1. David May November 3, 2021 at 10:44 am

      The central value of the US is hustling. The defining feature of US “culture” is cruelty to the weak. It is not complicated. I’d give it about 5-10 years till the entire sh|tshow comes crashing down. It is interesting how the general tone of NC comments seems to be switching from “we gotta do [insert delusion here] to turn the country around” to “I’m learning to garden, buying a gun and a year’s supply of beans”.
      1. Mikel November 3, 2021 at 12:06 pm

         It’s also a country still teaching the myth that millions of peopls acting in selfish ael-interest leads to progress.
         They even hand out As in schools for compliance with this myth.
         Psyco babble…
         1. lance ringquist November 3, 2021 at 8:16 pm

            when fascism came to america, its was sold as free trade spreads democracy, and eradicates poverty.
      2. foghorn longhorn November 3, 2021 at 8:35 pm

         https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-encyclopedia-of-country-living-50th-anniversary-edition-carla-emery/1131265837

         Might want to grab this tome to go with your rice and beans. And be careful where you point that thing, all guns are loaded.
   2. anon y'mouse November 3, 2021 at 12:07 pm

      those ideas she referenced are the cultural/world view yin to the privatized, for-profit yang of the system.
      they tend to explain why it is necessary to maintain such a system, while explaining away its own faulty outcomes.
      neat trick, eh?
2. eg November 3, 2021 at 7:47 am

   Yesterday in the links Lambert referenced Jonathan Levy’s Ages of American Capitalism. It’s a door-stopper at 740 pages plus over 100 pages of endnotes (though these are mostly citations without much added commentary). It’s a pretty remarkable work of scholarship, spanning as it does 1660 to the end of the Obama administration in 2016 (the brief afterword opining that the post-2008 recovery having failed to alter the prevailing economic arrangements that preceded the Great Recession, and how the Trump administration was a reaction more of style than substance). My readings of US political economy have primarily been post-1900, and most of that post-WW1 and later, so this thing was a real eye-opener about the earlier periods (for instance the massive preponderance of capital embodied in black slaves during the “Age of Commerce”). Most of my reading for anything pre-1900 would have focused more on the UK, especially regarding the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath with respect to economic and political effects.

   Levy divides his 350 year subject into 4 segments:
   The Age of Commerce 1660-1860
   The Age of Capital 1860-1932
   The Age of Control 1932-1980
   The Age of Chaos 1980 – the present

   He argues that what separates the “Ages” are political initiatives: the British Empire’s mercantilist project of the 1660s as it transformed its fledgling North American colonies; the electoral triumph of the antislavery Republican Party in the 1860s and the secession of the southern slave states; the New Deal of the 1930s, responding to the Great Depression; and the beginning of the Volcker interest rate shock of 1979, followed by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

   The main thread running through them all is liquidity preference — “the history of capitalism is a never-ending conflict between the propensity to hoard and the long-term ability and inducement to invest.” As he admits, this observation was first made by Keynes who wrote in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), “There has been a chronic tendency throughout human history for the propensity to save to be stronger than the inducement to invest. The weakness of the inducement to invest has been at all times the key to the economic problem.”

   Levy’s basic conclusion is:

   “History does not confirm the belief in the existence of some economic mechanism through which the pattern of capital investment will simply lead to the best possible outcome so long as it is not interfered with. One likely outcome, among others, is that the propensity to hoard will win out, exacerbating inequality and crippling economic possibilities. As the profit motive is not enough, a high inducement to investment must come from somewhere outside the economic system, narrowly conceived. History shows that politics and collective action are usually where it comes from.”

   https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57679150-ages-of-american-capitalism

   Here the author speaks about his book:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w0yaP82mb4&t=34s

   As a companion piece of sorts, I just finished this morning Lance Taylor’s “Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump: Market Power, Wage Repression, Asset Price Inflation, and Industrial Decline” which in Levy’s term corresponds to the “Age of Chaos.” Unlike the super-long title, it’s very brief — almost a pamphlet by comparison at a mere 121 pages, and unlike Levy’s history it’s very math heavy, concentrating as it does on data from the period and the modelling of that data. As the title suggests, it’s a litany of macroeconomic failures spanning the era, connecting the dots between the shift in the profit/wage distribution of productivity through to changing employment composition between sectors further aggravating productivity decline — a vicious cycle. Depressingly he believes that this is a trap that will take decades to escape, even if the political will can be mustered to employ the necessary remedies, none of which will be welcomed by our “betters” any time soon. So, the “Age of Chaos” will likely continue until some rupture sufficiently dire occurs which, unlike the Great Recession, precipitates serious political and economic change. As the Chinese curse (probably apocryphal) says, “may you live in interesting times …”

   A summary of the book is here:

   https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/macroeconomic-inequality-from-reagan-to-trump
   1. Bart Hansen November 3, 2021 at 1:33 pm

      On the value of slavery, Ta-Nehisi Coates worked out that the economic value of the slaves was the largest single asset in the country.
      1. Watt4Bob November 3, 2021 at 2:10 pm

         The important part of that situation is who owned that asset.

         In a certain sense, the slave population was owned by a small minority, who in the scheme described could be considered ‘horders’.

         They hoarded wealth which included human beings, and it took a war and many lost lives to put an end to their hoarding, and the closely associated slavery.

         Of course, the age of capital that followed included the age of Jim Crow whereby the hold-over powers that be of the age of commerce were able to continue trading in slave labor.

         People are attracted to tidy stories, but as always, the devil is where he’s always been.

         The center of activity changes, but the hoarders are always at the front of the line.

         It would seem the hoarders are right now determined to share ownership of the planet among 5 or 6 individuals, and they’ve convinced 50+% of Americans that that is the result of the operation of the laws of nature, or God’s law if you will.
         1. GramSci November 3, 2021 at 6:21 pm

            Some hoarders are pathetic, as in the poor bloke whose studio apartment is stuffed with the last 50 years of the NYT. Some other hoarders are *greedy*; they are not merely hoarders, they are predators who savour taking bread from the mouths of infants.
            1. foghorn longhorn November 3, 2021 at 8:39 pm

               If you got a million of em, much less a billion, you might be a hoarder.
         2. lance ringquist November 3, 2021 at 8:49 pm

            have the link stuffed away somewhere, can’t find it at the moment. it was said that there were more millionaires in pre civil war america in just the mississippi river valley in the south, than all the millionaires put together in the north.
            free trade is very profitable indeed.
            another one,

            both madison and franklin opposed free trade, and saw it rightfully: free trade which tied value to hedonistic impulses and the worshiping of money….

            when the early bill clinton/woodrew wilson prototype came to power, andrew jackson, he instituted free trade, Manufacturing collapsed, speculation took over and the slavocracy grew in influence between the 1837’s bank panic and 1860.

            https://www.ianwelsh.net/week-end-wrap-political-economy-september-13-2020/

            andrew jackson was of course a free trader,

            https://thehermitage.com/learn/mansion-grounds/slavery/
   2. CanCyn November 3, 2021 at 2:08 pm

      Thanks so much for your care and this very insightful summary. To paraphrase Lambert, two more damn books to read!
      1. AW November 4, 2021 at 11:39 am

         Ditto, much appreciated.
3. Questa Nota November 3, 2021 at 7:53 am

   Daou List Additions

   No campaign finance reform
   No Wall Street non-prosecutions
   1. farragut November 3, 2021 at 8:39 am

      Of course, everything said by you & Daou applies to the Rs, but at least they’re up front about it, making no claims to the contrary. I would also add ‘No Introspection (or Apologies)’ to the list, as well; Hillary & Russiagate will serve as a classic case study for future historians, but we’re seeing the latest iteration play out in results of the VA goobernatorial election.

      So far this morning, I’ve heard virtually identical narratives on NPR & CNN, about how Youngkin ‘found a path to victory which didn’t involve Trump’ or something similar. CNN’s chyron read: “Dems misjudge mood of voters’. Perennial scapegoat Bernie will certainly be blamed, as well, as seen in Taibbi’s tweet. In stunning & unexpected defeat, the Dems can’t even acknowledge: “hey, maybe we own some of that abysmal failure through our inability (unwillingness?) to improve peoples’ lives’. No, they place the blame on any & all external factors, reserving none for themselves. Good job, fellas.
      1. Kevin November 3, 2021 at 12:36 pm

         The Dems are just doing their part of the dance they have going with the Republicans.
         They put up just enough resistance to justify exiting – and not one once more.
         They rely on each other to maintain this dance and their overpaid, extractive, parasitic, do-nothing existence. All the while making sure their constituents are constantly reminded that the reason their life sucks is due to the other side.

         It’s really a brilliant con, gotta hand it to ’em.

         Dead Country Walking.
         1. GramSci November 3, 2021 at 6:23 pm

            Jay Gould: “I can hire half the working class to kill the other half”.

            Divide et impera.
      2. Anon November 3, 2021 at 7:51 pm

         Perhaps I’m too cynical; but, whether he intends to or not, Bernie serves his function, much in the way Manchin and Synema serve theirs. He will always go quietly into the night.
4. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 8:06 am

   “Is human consciousness creating reality?”

   Yeah, I’m not so impressed by their work as it is one step removed from Solipsism which holds that ‘knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.’ Only difference is that it has been given a quantum veneer to make it more acceptable. Newsflash. The Universe does not care about us. It does not even care about our species as it it so vast. When push comes to shove, the Universe may not even know that we exist. We can create meaning in and with our own lives but altering reality? Probably not so much.

   Another fundamental mistake is where it says that a network of observers influences reality by agreeing in certain aspects. OK, that may possibly, maybe true for the denizens of Terra Three but what about the inhabitants of Tau Ceti Five? Or Proxima Centauri Two? or Luyten’s StarPrime? Do they get a say in the reality of ‘our’ Universe?
   1. mistah charley, ph.d. November 3, 2021 at 9:39 am

      You may be right that the Universe is indifferent to us, but I prefer the postulates of the “mystical worldview”, which someone explained to me as follows:

      1. The Universe is here on purpose.
      2. Humankind has, or could have, some connection with that purpose.
      3. It is possible to improve your ability to perceive that purpose, and act to promote it.

      The central scene of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life film, in the boardroom of the Very Big Corporation of America, Inc., expresses a compatible perspective.
      1. QuicksilverMessenger November 3, 2021 at 6:58 pm

         Yes indeed! People are not wearing enough hats! Or do you mean the ‘second fundamental concept’?

         That boardroom scene in the Meaning of Life is like the Bhagavad Gita hidden inside the sprawling Mahabarata.
         The scene:

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2QJvc_SxFQ
   2. Henry Moon Pie November 3, 2021 at 10:17 am

      “The Universe does not care about us. It does not even care about our species as it it so vast. When push comes to shove, the Universe may not even know that we exist.”

      As Lao-Tzu puts it:

      Heaven and earth aren’t humane.
      To them the ten thousand things are straw dogs.

      Tao te Ching #5 (Le Guin version)

      But Rev, the Universe very definitely does know we exist because we are part and product of that Universe. The Universe has managed to create beings who can turn around and study that Universe, write music or poetry about it, interpret it visually. As Joni Mitchell put it, we’re “golden but just got caught up in some devil’s bargain.” If we went back to Joni’s garden and resumed tending it, writing about it, dancing in it, we could find just how content we could be while, as a bonus, we cease spoiling our little corner of the Universe.
      1. GramSci November 3, 2021 at 6:28 pm

         We’re a pimple on the ass of the Universe. It’s our choice to be purulent or beautiful.
      2. Craig H. November 3, 2021 at 8:07 pm

         Joni Mitchell’s Shadows and Light concert video is on youtube. It is tour de force. Her backups are every one a virtuoso. Pat Metheny for one.

         She doesn’t do Woodstock. Maybe my favorite is the Coyote. Edith and the Kingpin is terrifying.
   3. jr November 3, 2021 at 12:31 pm

      He does imply solipsism and it’s a mistake but it’s not the first one. He heads down the wrong path when he proposes that the brain is the source of consciousness. There is a better explanation.

      All we can know is within consciousness. It’s simply an irrefutable fact. No matter what you look at or think about, you have to be conscious to do it.

      This seems solipsistic at first but it’s really not. I seem to inhabit a world that precedes me and proceeds whether I’m there or not. I cannot prove whether it’s all some dream but I can make a highly educated assumption that it exists separately from me. It’s proven helpful in the past, like avoiding the pain of fire and not walking in front of cars for example. Those are some hurtful dreams.

      So, if I cannot experience anything outside of conscious but there seems to be an independent world out there, I must assume that it too is within consciousness just as I am. I don’t assume this world outside of me exists independently of consciousness; it’s just outside of me.

      But we do seem to experience are own little worlds and it’s true, I agree with the article that our brains collapse the wave function into a consensus reality. But as our brains, as with all else, exists within consciousness, a better word at this point is Consciousness, and therefore do not produce it we must be collapsing Consciousness into consciousness. We create our windows on the world but we don’t create the world. It’s the leaner answer

      As Kastrup described aptly, our brains are living antenna tuned to a radio spectrum called Consciousness, each of us shaping our bit of the bandwidth due to our unique exterior aspects such as brain structure but very closely clustered on that spectrum so we do inhabit a “consensus reality”.

      And yes this opens the door to some wild $hit. A living organism that was tuned to an utterly different frequency in this radio field would literally inhabit it’s own world separate from our own, collapsing it’s own sliver of Consciousness into consciousness. Woo.

      This isn’t the “many worlds” version of things. “Many worlds” tries to save a flawed theory while here it’s simply open to the imagination how many worlds there might be. Or not.

      It’s an open question as to whether the universe cares about us. I know that Consciousness does on some level because we are that level. I suspect that It cares on other levels as well.
      1. Soredemos November 3, 2021 at 7:05 pm

         I’m gonna go ahead and ask for an ounce of evidence for any of that.
         1. jr November 4, 2021 at 8:04 am

            Look around.
            1. Soredemos November 4, 2021 at 11:37 am

               So in other words, no.
      2. witters November 3, 2021 at 11:57 pm

         “All we can know is within consciousness. It’s simply an irrefutable fact.”

         That I must be conscious to make knowledge claims doesn’t mean those claims are about my consciousness. For instance that “the cat is on the mat” is true iff there is, indeed, a cat on the mat.
         1. jr November 4, 2021 at 8:17 am

            True, therefore we must assume a broader field of Consciousness exists. Otherwise, we have to propose the inflationary idea that the cat and the mat inhabit an additional layer of reality external to Consciousness, the physical world, for which we have no evidence.
   4. David November 3, 2021 at 12:47 pm

      Lanza’s books are worth reading, but in many ways his theories are just a scientific re-vamp of one of the oldest philosophical/religious doctrines in history-the idea that “all is consciousness” and that we as human beings are simply implementations of a universal consciousness, which the religious would describe as “God.” It’s found in ancient Indian and Chinese philosophy, in Sufi mysticism, and in Christian traditions from the earliest times up to at least Meister Eckhart. It’s distinct from solipsism, obviously but it’s also distinct from pantheism since it says not “God is in everything” but rather “God is everything.” It’s an attractive theory, in many ways, because it’s based on the common-sense recognition that we can have no direct evidence of the existence of a material world, although we have everyday experience of the existence of consciousness. Wait a while, and scientists have a habit of catching up with mystics in the end;
      1. Soredemos November 3, 2021 at 8:36 pm

         More like a pseudo-scientific revamp. Lanza doesn’t seem able to grasp that when quantum physicists say ‘observer’ they aren’t talking about consciousness. This is just a gussied up version of the same crap Chopra is slinging when he claims the moon doesn’t exist until someone looks at it.
   5. BD November 3, 2021 at 1:04 pm

      Is human consciousness creating reality?

      Fixed it. The universe creates itself with consciousness all the way down. Schroedinger’s cat doesn’t wait for us to open the box, because the inside of the box already witnessed the fatal event. A less complex framework of awareness doesn’t make the box’s account any less legit.

      https://qz.com/1490276/the-science-of-vibes-shows-how-everything-is-connected/
      1. Henry Moon Pie November 3, 2021 at 2:38 pm

         Absolutely! Thomas Berry puts it this way:

         The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.

         I’m an old fuddy-duddy and wary of granting any level of consciousness to a box, but I’m all in on the cat and, for that matter, the bacteria living in its belly.

         But I’m not dogmatic about. ;)
         1. Anon November 3, 2021 at 7:59 pm

            One day we may learn to communicate with cardboard, and my, how foolish you’ll feel.
      2. GramSci November 3, 2021 at 6:30 pm

         Nice one! We’re semi-consciousness pretending (or, charitably, aspiring) to consciousness.
5. Gregory Plotnikoff, MD November 3, 2021 at 8:09 am

   Re: Elizabeth Bear’s must-read article today
   Her points are right on. However, her use of the term “provider” is the preferred term of medical management that equates “providers” with “interchangeable point-of-service workers.”

   T-mobile or ATT or Verizon are “providers” and we know how much the public loves them.

   To be called a provider represents a form of moral harm. This term has insidious, adverse power that serves neither patients nor health professionals well.

   Among those who have professed an oath to be of service to those who suffer, the preferred term is “professional.”

   Reasonable synonyms also include “practitioner” or “clinician.”

   “Provider” is an inherently insulting word to those who value more than a one-way transaction to a recipient.

   One of the moral harms experienced by professionals is the lack of recognition and valuing of their relationship with a fellow human being who has also been termed a consumer or client or customer of the provider.

   The strep throat/urgent care visit model does not apply to persons with complex, chronic illnesses. Important elements in the care of such persons include all those values that can not be monetized as a transaction: trust, advocacy, commitment to go the extra mile, and, yes, love. Those follow from a relationship…where context, narrative, dialogue, and time are important.

   The ideal “provider” “municates.”
   The ideal professional co-mmunicates.

   Are such thoughts heresy? Or, if you have a complex, chronic, and/or mysterious illness, do they fit with your experience?
   1. Carla November 3, 2021 at 9:26 am

      Although I am fortunate enough to be basically healthy, at least so far as I know at this point, your words, Dr. Plotnikoff, deeply resonate with me, so thank you. I detest being called a “consumer” of medical care and a “customer” of our public library, which is supported by tax levies that I regularly vote to pass. To my mind, a hospital or other medical facility might be called a “provider” of health care — but the people who CARE for us within the walls of that built environment are doctors, nurses, therapists and other medical professionals, supported by large teams of para-professional aides, assistants and administrators.
      1. Brian H. November 3, 2021 at 12:00 pm

         That language bothers me too. With my own mental health struggles and my wife’s bout with colon cancer, I’ve been plenty beaten down by our health care system but it continues to surprise me with new disappointments. About two weeks ago I became concerned about some persistent congestion and headaches. My family doctor, a gifted doctor whom I trust, could only see me in 10 days. I expected that response, but it still pissed me off and I needed some counseling from my wife to see the value in making the appointment. In the interim, since I was sick and needed healthcare, I went to a clinic and got a once over. I was still experiencing symptoms when the family doctor appointment rolled around so I kept it, bringing my wife along for backup. There was one other patient waiting, but the doctor still managed to be running over an hour behind schedule. I received great care when she finally saw me and I’m on the road to a resolution. That being said, I feel awful about the experience. How can a general practitioner, a family doctor, not be available for at least a short visit when I need her? I understand the screwed up system she works in and the awful insurance system that stands between us, but I shouldn’t be forced to be OK with that and accept it. She’s a caring professional but there is a gaping hole in our relationship if I can’t see her when I’m sick and am forced to wait even when I show up on time. That unfortunately makes her a bad doctor even though I understand all too vividly how the system dictates many of her actions. I have to console myself with the fact that she’s exceptional at the rest of her job. That’s a horrible deal for me, the patient, but also a horrible deal for the doctor who’s trying, but failing to be a good doctor. This whole thing seems destined to fall apart, bringing plenty of good people down with it.
         1. GramSci November 3, 2021 at 6:36 pm

            I think Carla’s point is that your trusted doctor, otherwise a decent human being, has been reduced to the role of a “provider”. Shame on Americans.
         2. Ben S November 3, 2021 at 9:51 pm

            You don’t know how sick her 15 minute appointment before you was. Some doctors are bad about it thoughtlessly, but most don’t kick you out when time is up. So next person waits. Would you prefer a timely 15 minute appointment with an ejector seat?
   2. Katniss Everdeen November 3, 2021 at 10:10 am

      All due respect Dr., but this woman muses about the abysmal system of “healthcare” in america, a fact unacknowledged by almost no one, and your reaction, after a cursory nod to her points being “right on,” is to be “insulted” by her reference to members of your profession as “providers”???

      To say that you’re missing the point is beyond understatement.

      One of the biggest, most powerful and most ferocious lobbying efforts against universal national healthcare is consistently and unfailingly mounted by the AMA. Every single time the issue comes up.

      I call that state of affairs a lot of things. None of them remotely resemble “love.”
      1. PHLDenizen November 3, 2021 at 12:57 pm

         The AMA is interchangeable with the FOP in all but domain. For instance, I consider “tort reform” tantamount to “qualified immunity” — any and all actors are owed a release from liability from any and all malpractice.

         Lest any “clinicians” yap like junkyard bitches about the indignity of being compared to thugs who shoot dogs, shoot people, raid wrong addresses, etc., I present Christopher Duntsch and the thousands of other “clinicians” who maim and kill patients without any scrutiny. Hospitals and practices are often like the Catholic Church — NDAs on settlements, boards that take zero action (“professional courtesy”), and moving incompetent after incompetent around and around.

         Per the AMA:

         State medical liability reform (MLR) is essential to fix a broken liability system, ensuring that patients do not lose access to physicians and a full range of health care services.

         The AMA is fully committed to advocating for proven medical liability reforms, such as the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA). However, states should also evaluate and implement innovative reforms to see which can improve the nation’s medical liability climate. These ideas can complement proven reforms, such as caps on non-economic damages. They may also improve the liability climate in states unable to enact traditional liability reforms for political or judicial reasons.

         Typical MBA/Business Roundtable speak. And we’ve also seen it w.r.t. to the mRNA vaccine liability release.

         Even my dad, who’s been an invasive cardiologist for 4 decades, a staunch Reaganite, gave up his membership a decade ago and has come around on the necessity of single payer. Insurance companies and EMRs are forms of violence against physicians, patients don’t get continuity of care due to losing insurance, network changes, or being too broken to use it. And a large portion of his patients are Medicare and Medicaid.

         The AMA’s priority is protecting the guild and their income streams, not clinical care. This is the wrong priority. As are pout fests because you don’t like the nomenclature.

         Most of the best doctors I know don’t even really care if you call them “doctor”.
         1. Katniss Everdeen November 3, 2021 at 3:18 pm

            What you said–especially that “Most of the best doctors I know don’t even really care if you call them ‘doctor.’ “
         2. Ben S November 3, 2021 at 10:07 pm

            The AMA owns CPT codes. They make money off business as usual. I’m a physician and laugh at their unlabeled ‘renewal’ notices. Haven’t belonged in 20 years, mainly because I don’t have a secretary!

            American psychiatric association similarly monetizes the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) which my medical school library couldn’t afford for its first two years as DSM 5.

            The specialty boards created recertification to feed coffers with no tangible benefits over traditional licensure continuing education requirements… except the control over which products count benefits the boards in a conflict-of-interest sort of way.

            It ain’t happening, but free medical care and academic reform are both at or near the top of our internal national needs.
   3. TomDority November 3, 2021 at 10:22 am

      Excellent
   4. Ignacio November 3, 2021 at 12:19 pm

      Yep it sounded to me strange the use of the term ‘provider’ as applied to the practitioners suggesting that even EB, despite her very fine article had fallen in the business model that seems to be health care in the US. I wasn’t sure I was understanding correctly and you clarified this for me. I thought she was using the term in a cynical way intentionally.

      Primary attention is very well known to be the best way to reduce hospitalization rates, hence medical costs. So if primary attention is being reduced, you know what is the reason behind. More business!
      1. Gregory Plotnikoff, MD November 3, 2021 at 9:04 pm

         Yes, thank you for helping my clarify. An important element of the abysmal system of health care in the US is the loss of focus on both health and care in favor of finance.

         “Provider” and the all the business transaction entailments of this metaphor blind us to important ideals that I hope we don’t lose sight of.

         These ideals include the fiduciary relationship found in all of the oaths through history expressed by persons entering into the service of those who suffer.

         The business/financial models encourage use of a term like provider rather than professional. This highlights for all of us quid pro quo business transactions and blinds us to all non-business/non-financial concerns.

         Such blindness severely undermines any oath a health professional has professed. And such blindness severely limits the capacity of health professionals (as employed providers) to criticize the system.
   5. Skip Intro November 4, 2021 at 7:17 pm

      ‘Provider’ sounds like neoliberal newspeak that commoditizes a social relationship, reducing it to a cost. Well caught!
6. allan November 3, 2021 at 8:12 am

   Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown appears to win reelection as write-in candidate [WXXI]

   Aren’t binding primaries one of the most basic functions of a political party?
   How long can a party expect to exist when it doesn’t abide by them?
   1. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 9:04 am

      There’s the Bills Mafia and the Buffalo Mafia, not to be confused.

      My better half from the Queen City has some family connections in the guise of a fence for the mob who was her aunt, or something like that.

      For somebody from Cali the idea of a mafia was quaint.

      It does set a horrible precedence when you can do whatever it takes to get the results you want politically, but thats the way we roll these days, going about wrecking known norms.
      1. Laughingsong November 3, 2021 at 10:48 am

         Not true, I’m originally from CA, also 4th-generation Sicilian on Dad’s side, Family split between North Beach (fishing, we’re from a little village called Sant’ Elia), and farming (Santa Clara Valley, before the ‘Silicon’). Plenty of sketchy family anecdotes about mob activity, most especially around Prohibition. So mafia in CA is a thing.
   2. .human November 3, 2021 at 9:04 am

      Joe Lieberman
   3. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 9:06 am

      Wasn’t that the one where India Walton won the primary to become mayor so there was a move to basically eliminate the position of mayor at one stage? And how the Democrats flew in bucket loads of money to ensure that a socialist would never become mayor? And that to a large extent Brown depended on help from the Republicans and right-wing organizations to help him win? The Democrats in action.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Brown#2021_mayoral_election
      1. Huey Long November 3, 2021 at 10:03 am

         Yeah, and Chuckie, Kirsten, Kathy H, the AFL-CIO all supported Brown too. Disgusting.
         1. allan November 3, 2021 at 12:45 pm

            Schumer and Gillibrand actually did endorse Walton, although very late in the game.
            Hochul, who is a product of the Buffalo machine, did not.
         2. Procopius November 4, 2021 at 8:30 pm

            I’ve long wondered why modern union membership tolerates the top officers who have so much control. From the (rare) stories in the media, it seems conflicts of interest are rife. Is it because the officials control the muscle and can intimidate the members? I suppose I should spend more time on researching this.
   4. haywood November 3, 2021 at 10:00 am

      This is what a strong party does, to be honest. Brown ran one of the last city machine parties and Walton came from nowhere to win a super-low turnout primary. In the eyes of the local party, she won an illegitimate election. So the local machine and city patronage network organized to rally behind Brown, their longtime leader, to trounce the illegitimate nominee in a quite impressive fashion. Say what you will about the policies of those involved or their ethics, this is what strong parties look like.
      1. Darthbobber November 3, 2021 at 11:49 am

         A strong party machine doesn’t lose that primary in the first place. Strong machines are actually at their best in “super-low turnout” primaries.
   5. Mildred Montana November 3, 2021 at 12:41 pm

      @ allan

      “Aren’t binding primaries one of the most basic functions of a political party?”

      I speak just to Presidential primaries here, but why should they be? After all, they’ve only been used for fifty years. From Wiki: “The impetus for national adoption of the binding primary election was the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention. Vice President Hubert Humphrey secured the presidential nomination despite not winning a single primary….”

      Joan Didion wrote a good essay (contained in ????????? ?????? ??????????) decrying the change as a way to control candidate selection and reduce voter choice. As to evidence of its effectiveness, see Hillary vs. Bernie in 2016 and Joe vs. Bernie in 2020. In both cases it worked as intended, to prevent voters who preferred Bernie from voting for him in the Presidential elections.

      So my question in answer to yours is: In a true democracy, should the primary system even exist?
      1. allan November 3, 2021 at 5:53 pm

         A reasonable question. But if there are no rules of the road for who gets the party apparatus
         behind them in November, why bother donating to or volunteering for a party?
         Other than to help send party apparatchiks’ kids to Sidwell Friends?
         1. Ben S November 3, 2021 at 10:11 pm

            Rhetorical question
   6. Lee November 3, 2021 at 12:42 pm

      Given all that Walton was up against, she did pretty damned well. I would take this result as an indication that if her base is well organized, they will do better in the future….assuming there is a future.
7. ObjectiveFunction November 3, 2021 at 8:19 am

   And why I am determined to become an expat: horrible and horribly overpriced health care in America.

   I look forward to hearing more about this (the first, we are sadly all too well acquainted with the second). In your own good time.
   1. Lee November 3, 2021 at 12:46 pm

      My admittedly limited research into becoming an ex-pat by moving to a country less effed up than the U.S. is that it is an option for the lucky few who have a lot of money or a desirable skill. The rabble need not apply.
      1. GramSci November 3, 2021 at 8:05 pm

         Eight years ago, my wife got citizenship in Ireland because her grandmother was born there. Not perfect, but infinitely preferable to the USA!USA! One of her friends got citizenship in Italy for a similar reason, no money or desirable skill required. But times may have changed.

         More precariously, my daughter got (but may soon lose, think “illegal alien”) residency in Spain (or elsewhere in the EU) because she’s white and not African/Islamic.

         So it’s possible, but only for a (maybe) lucky/intrepid/rootless/refugee few.
      2. Yves Smith Post authorNovember 4, 2021 at 1:14 am

         No, there are countries like Uruguay and the Mauritius that are not hard to get into merely with a decent Social Security check. Mauritius is also tolerant of the self employed.

         Costa Rica is not that hard to get into but more pricey.

         Panama is not hard at all but is Panama.

         Thailand and Malaysia are not hard. Thailand has very good health care but the heat is a killer. And the bad air.

         Greece and Portugal are somewhat accessible EU options (I am keen about Portugal) but do require more income.

         When there is a financial crisis, buying a not pricey house is the price of entry. Not that I can count on one happening on my timetable.
         1. Procopius November 4, 2021 at 8:48 pm

            Thailand is not hard if you have a provable annual income of at least $26,000 a year or have enough savings that you can leave $28,000 sitting in a Thai bank all year around, AND have health insurance that covers up to $100,000. Medicare does not work in Thailand. Note that private “health insurance” companies do not offer policies to people over 70. Citizenship is not possible unless you pay taxes (quite high taxes) in Thailand. Permanent residence is difficult and (by my standards) expensive to obtain. It helps if you pay substantial Thai taxes. Most countries have Treaties of Amity now, so expats pay taxes in their home countries but only VAT here. Foreigners cannot own land. Period. If your spouse is a Thai citizen, they can, but you must sign a declaration that the money used is theirs alone and you have no claim. Nevertheless, I like it.
   2. WhoaMolly November 3, 2021 at 8:48 pm

      > why I am determined to become an ex-pat: horrible and horribly overpriced health care in America.

      Hear! Hear!

      For those of us living on social security, the Internet seems to think the options are:
      – Panama
      – Costa Rica
      – Columbia
      – Malaysia

      Having traveled a small bit in Latin America, I would begin with Panama. Have not visited yet, but have heard good things from others.
      1. Yves Smith Post authorNovember 4, 2021 at 1:18 am

         Huh, you like Panama? I thought it was Greeneland (as in Graham Greene). Do tell.

         I was in Costa Rica briefly and it was clearly a very well run friendly country but it’s been discovered by expats. Plus terrific seafood.
8. bob November 3, 2021 at 8:24 am

   This guy is still ahead of the dem challenger. His platform? He fucks bitches-

   https://www.syracuse.com/politics/cny/2021/11/contentious-race-for-solvay-mayor-too-close-too-call.html

   https://www.syracuse.com/politics/cny/2019/09/solvay-mayor-unleashes-sexist-profane-outburst-while-insisting-hes-not-gay-audio.html

   The audio is in the second link. He also gets more into the details of his plans and accomplishments.
9. jsn November 3, 2021 at 8:34 am

   “Putin massing troops half way between Moscow and Ukrainian border” would have been a more accurate headline.
   1. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 9:21 am

      Such a stupid story. An American equivalent headline would be “Satellite images show new American military buildup near Mexico” – and then you learn that this happened at Fort Bliss. The Washington Post was also pushing this story which is no surprise. They have as their motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” but that is actually their mission statement. And Politico? They are now owned by German billionaire Axel Springer. People here may remember him taking over this magazine recently and telling staff, among other things, that they will not be allowed to criticize Israel in Politico from now on.
      1. jsn November 3, 2021 at 12:04 pm

         At least Fort Bliss has some proximity to Mexico.

         The Russian base they’re hyperventilating about, while closer to the Belarus border, isn’t even close to that.

         It’s more like saying Fort Leonard Wood (MO), closer to Mexico than DC, but not by much.
      2. Lysias November 3, 2021 at 5:19 pm

         More like Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio or Goodfellow Air Base in San Angelo (where I have been stationed.)

         Yelnya is very near Smolensk.
         1. jsn November 3, 2021 at 6:59 pm

            With regards to “forward posture”, half way between Moscow and the Ukraine, not exactly leaning over the border.

            I take your point though, in absolute distance, yes like San Angelo.
   2. Polar Socialist November 3, 2021 at 6:46 pm

      Except it’s not really Putin, but Russian Army. Which, we should know, is not completely in the leash of Kremlin but has also a will of it’s own. If it was up to the Russian Armed Forces, northern Syria would probably already be under Syrian government control. And Turkey would have suffered more from it’s “intervention”. And maybe even some Israeli fighters might have been splashed into Mediterranean.

      But they’re really not massing anything new, are they? There’s been troops positioned in Yelnya since 2016, and from at least 2018 a tank regiment (59th Guards) with a supporting anti-tank detachment (1259th anti-tank gun division) and a combat engineer battalion (340th). Something like 180 tanks and armored vehicles and 320 trucks and other vehicles, all together. Impressive sight, from above.
      1. jsn November 3, 2021 at 7:00 pm

         Can you imagine a US headline writer not placing the emphasis on Putin?

         Propagandist will tend to propagandize.

         I was proposing an alternate US headline;)
10. Worf's Prune Juice November 3, 2021 at 8:41 am

    Not sure if anyone saw the Wirecard documentary on the German/French channel arte last night. I turned it on halfway through and was very disappointed. The main focus of the documentary are on two former Wirecard employees: a Dubai-based Australian who ran Wirecard’s processing arm (separate from the card processing arm where all of the fake money was sloshing around) and a Singapore-based lawyer who alerted the Wirecard board to invoice fraud that led to an investigation led by…Jan Marsalek, the guy who did the fraud. When I turned it on, they were just getting to these juicy details of what actually happened before shifting the focus to the Singapore guy and his mom sending documents to the FT, the FT story initially not leading to big changes, and then the story of the non-existent 1.9 billion euros that ultimately led to Wirecard’s actual downfall.

    In this last half of the documentary, the focus seemed to be on the Singapore guy and his mom’s feelings and then on getting the story out via the FT. During this time, a number of very interesting and relevant facts were brought up and then promptly left unaddressed: 1) if this was really a case of all of the German authorities “missing” the fraud, is it possible that this was a feature instead of a bug of the German regulatory system? Was it incompetence or something else? 2) Is the culture within Wirecard of pushing out anyone who isn’t “on the team” (like the Dubai and Singapore-based guys) while committing massive fraud specific to Wirecard? I suspect definitely not. 3) What does the Wirecard story tell us about a) the financial services industry, b) the accounting and legal professions that sign off on these companies’ books, c) regulatory incompetence and/or inability and/or corruption, d) the entire global economy?

    This story is made for Hollywood (e.g. the Singapore guy was told to go to Jakarta for a business trip that he declined, thinking that he would not come back from this trip), but it’s unfortunate to see this documentary take such a lazy approach. It was also just downright boring hearing from some of these characters at the end. Long shots of former employees staring at the Wirecard headquarters with slow music in the background. Really disappointing from arte and sadly something we can probably expect more of from this story and others in the future.
    1. Mikel November 3, 2021 at 12:51 pm

       Wirecard got more press than the Greensill fiasco:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhkFbgxQuXA
       Greensill, Gupta and Cameron: what went wrong | FT Film

       Paraphrasing from the doc:
       Greensill’s trick was to take supply chain finance loans and package them into investment securities. They would basically package unpaid bills into securities called “notes”. They took these “notes” and sold them to investment funds.
       Big problem came to to light when it was discovered some of the invoices for those unpaid bills were fraudulent.

       Of course the words “supply chain”, used often in the doc, have a lot more resonance now.
    2. Follow the money November 3, 2021 at 12:59 pm

       Germany is known as the money laundry heaven in EU. So I am quite confident that the authorities’ negligence is a feature not a bug.
11. griffen November 3, 2021 at 8:44 am

    We are ruled by sadists indeed. The death benefit, at least as presented in that article, leads one to believe it’s not enough to contract the disease and unfortunately perish. Now the death benefit, payable prior to June of this year, can now be withheld. I’d submit these circumstances are highly unusual, and good on the MTA union for negotiating this aspect at the onset.

    I don’t have a handy thought or solution here. It’s picking lesser evils, or so it appears.
    1. Mikel November 3, 2021 at 12:59 pm

       Sadistic and horrifying story. It may just be showing us just how hard hit these companies were by paying out death benefits and they expect bigger hits to their bottom line.
       Insurance companies may have the real data on Covid deaths, etc….
12. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 8:44 am

    Jellyfish Keep Attacking Nuclear Power Plants Vice (furzy)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    The underwater version of insects attracted to a lightbulb @ night…

    Huntington Beach was my childhood haunt on some summer days with a stop @ Knotts Berry Farm for lunch or dinner on the way back. My mom was a world class worrier (Please move back from the color tv-the radiation isn’t good for you, you have to wait 30 minutes until after you’ve ate to go swimming, etc.)
    and jellyfish gave her the fits and should one of us be stricken in the ocean she was shit out of luck in saving us on account of not knowing how to swim.

    …we all somehow survived childhood & the threat of jellyfish and/or quicksand (a constant feature in movies & tv shows in the 60’s, and yet i’ve never seen any)

    We were car camping this summer in San Clemente just a few miles north of Dolly Parton’s place, with the famous Trestles surfing locale in between, and seeing as the nuclear plant was shut down rather all of the sudden a decade ago, i’d be so leery of living anywhere near it, as nice of an area as it is.
    1. Michael Ismoe November 3, 2021 at 11:33 am

       You won’t think it’s so funny when a 900 foot jelly fish attacks Long Beach Harbor and Secretary Buttigieg has to unleash the Coast Guard to open up the ports (again).
       1. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 11:41 am

          I feel certain the Transportation Secretary will banish them to the Antipodes, but say it in pidgin Aboriginal so nobody knows what he’s saying, the citizenry still in shock that an American seemingly knows all those languages.
    2. chuck roast November 3, 2021 at 11:39 am

       The so-called “jellyfish bloom.” In my extensive experience, the more degraded the body of water, the larger the “jellyfish bloom.”
       1. lordkoos November 3, 2021 at 12:29 pm

          Jellyfish will likely inherit the earth, as they thrive in anoxic waters.
          1. Paradan November 3, 2021 at 4:26 pm

             To be fair, untold millions of their ancestors were killed in the oxygen holocaust….
13. John November 3, 2021 at 8:49 am

    If you follow Ben Casselman’s and others analyses of recent quit rates, then the computational linguist’s (Wired) article also misses the point. A mass reexamination of values is not causing the quit rate increase in Michigan, Idaho, Georgia, etc.

    I’ve talked to people who decided to quit (n=10), service workers whose education stopped with high school. We blot out the fact that over 700K people died from Covid-19 and the resulting impact on families and co-workers. People are afraid, tired and worn out, confused. They’re trying to figure out what’s best for themselves because, as Tim Boyd reminded us, “No one owes you (citizens) anything.”

    I’ve also talked to heads of search/employment firms (n=2). Yes, corporations are posting jobs but they’re really looking for part-time professional labor (no tenure, no benefits) at the lowest possible price points. These organizations don’t trust the recovery enough to start hiring for full-time positions.

    I long for an inquisitive, methodological sound, sociological analysis of our labor market and our people.
    1. griffen November 3, 2021 at 9:06 am

       I think there are several here who have posted their personal anecdotes for leaving, and the reasons vary. Quality of life, being available to parent, no longer being always at the ready when the employer commands are just a few of the explanations. I can’t think of a scenario 15 to 20 years ago, where a required meeting was scheduled for late Fridays ( as in, after 5pm ). Granted, this is more likely in a Wall St / Consulting environment.

       Speaking personally, my physical health was turning into a “what the heck is or is not happening” episode. I wanted off the treadmill, and while possibly an indulgence I had 20+ years of planning and saving to support my decision to walk. Maintaining a low frills experience isn’t for everyone.
       1. Henry Moon Pie November 3, 2021 at 10:32 am

          “Maintaining a low frills experience isn’t for everyone.”

          We’re beyond the point when it needs to be.
       2. curlydan November 3, 2021 at 11:19 am

          I asked for a demotion a couple years ago, going from director and managing a bunch of people to being an individual contributor. I further just started half-time this week with benefits. I could no longer handle full-time after 26 years of continual work in the corporate world. I realize most people will not have this luxury, so I for now am extremely lucky.

          My friend at work was promoted to director recently. I was worried about him because he’d previously had some health issues. Last week, he told me that he’s now resigned from that position and gone back to his old one. He could not handle the stress. I know that 15-20 years ago he could have handled the position easily. But we run everything but corporate profits on thin margins these days as employees are asked to do more and more. Now employees are breaking down from the stress.
14. Hank Linderman November 3, 2021 at 8:57 am

    Re “determined to become an expat” – this is a conversation I am having more and more often and with more and more people. But the question is: where to go? Costa Rica? Ecuador? Portugal?

    Health care, yes. Climate change?

    My current stress relief is looking at Costa Rican real estate. Helps a little.

    Best…H
    1. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 9:25 am

       I’m loathe to be in agreement with illionaires the likes of Thiel and assorted Silicon Valley major major major majordomos. but NZ is hard to beat in terms of being an english speaking ex-pat even though they do talk funny there.

       If you’re outdoorsy there’s every kind of possibility in a country the size of Colorado where the Southern Alps are bigger than the European Alps, they grow a ton of food and the people are nice to one another, there’s a lot to like even if you’re merely looking for a place to sit out something wicked this way comes.

       On the downside, only 18% of their oil use is supplied from domestic sources, and the railway system was largely dismantled decades ago. The citizenry is fiat fat and happy-as anybody who owned a home has been the beneficiary of the biggest bubble of all in housing, good on ya Kiwis!

       Geologically, shit has happened there and how!

       Lake Taupō, in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island, is the caldera of a large rhyolitic supervolcano called the Taupō Volcano. This huge volcano has produced two of the world’s most violent eruptions in geologically recent times.

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taup%C5%8D_Volcano

       And did I mention earthquakes?
       1. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 10:06 am

          A NZ-er of my aquaintance (one who very happily emigrated to the UK – she said she loathed the macho rugby culture of her home town) once said that the best joke she heard about NZ was ‘whats the difference between New Zealand and yoghurt? One has a living culture…’.
          1. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 10:31 am

             When I first visited 40 years ago the running joke was that the 747 pilot would announce that we all please set our watches back 20 years, as we were approaching Auckland International Airport.

             It was a bit startling for a 20 year old Yank more than a little wet behind the ears. They really rolled up the sidewalk @ 5 pm.

             For a taste of what it looked like then in Auckland, you have to go to the deep south and Invercargill, which has many 19th century structures sill intact
          2. David May November 3, 2021 at 10:53 am

             I met a lovely Kiwi who had never heard of communism. I sht you not. He asked me to explain what it was, which I duly did. He said, “That sounds like a great idea, they should try it out!” I had to agree with him.
    2. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 10:20 am

       Its unfortunate, but healthcare ex-patriots (i.e. immigrants) can be a positive thing. A doctor friend who worked for a while in Andalucia in Spain said that the (excellent) local regional health system was pretty much funded by northern Europeans. Public and private insurance systems in northern Europe were quite happy to pay out healthcare for retired Germans and Dutch living there as it was cheaper for them, while this paid for a much better system than local taxpayers (in Spain, health is mostly organised on a regional basis) could afford. Similarly with Portugal. Thailand also has a thriving healthcare system at least partly funded by healthcare tourism.
    3. albrt November 3, 2021 at 12:01 pm

       My problem is that no decent country wants middle-aged American lawyers (unless they are already retired and bringing along lots of cash). Can’t blame them, really.
    4. lordkoos November 3, 2021 at 12:49 pm

       Uruguay is supposed to be very nice, we have acquaintances that moved there some years back. I know a couple that moved to Ecuador three years ago and obtained green cards so they could stay, they are liking it so far. I really liked SE Asia when we lived there for 7 months — Malaysia (almost everyone can speak English), Thailand, Vietnam etc but in coming years it’s probably going to get very warm there. Portugal and parts of eastern Europe also seem attractive, and cheap.

       One thing about being an expat — if your host country begins to have hard times economically, people can turn on wealthier foreigners. But I think that if you are a decent person and can interact successfully with the locals as opposed to only hanging out with other expats, that can help. Leaving still sounds more attractive to me than living in the USA, but my wife & I are 70 now and that puts a different spin on relocating somewhere far away.
       1. newcatty November 3, 2021 at 4:32 pm

          Us too, in our 70’s. Husband is what is sometimes called a lost Canadian. Mom born in Canada and her parents brought her across border to U.S. when she was a baby. A couple years ago we considered moving to Canada, but even with his mom being born there it was not a green light. We were old and didn’t have a big bank account. We really loved BC, when we visited. That was then. Now, Canada seems to have some of the same drawbacks as U.S. Now, we are focusing on where we now live and pondering if, and when, we might migrate somewhere else in country. Fortunate, we now live in a very nice place.
15. Pat November 3, 2021 at 9:41 am

    ByWhen I am wrong I…unlike the media

    I did think the race in NYC would be closer. I was wrong. Adams and the Dems did run away with it.* I think the results of the propositions were closer to the mood I was seeing in my travels through the city than the office results.

    I also think the Dems will find this to be more problematic than they would like no matter how much the Wall Street/Real Estate crowd like Adams. The city is very much on the rocks, and the likely good talk but strangling public services to suit the donors needs for the support instead will not work here either. Hochul facing a big primary will give Adams more of a honeymoon with Albany than DeBlasio ever saw, so we will know soon.

    *I will always have doubts about the accuracy of any electronic/digital system no matter who wins.
16. Mikel November 3, 2021 at 9:52 am

    Re: This Is Why Dems Suck

    Probably eventually get one thing off that list. I just know it’s not going to be one that is any type of universal benefit – that has no restrictions on who can access it or no requirement on having a particular type of lifestyle.
17. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 10:01 am

    “The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb”

    This story is proof to me that nature should have stuck with the dinosaurs instead of going with mammals. We might have had a hadrosaur civilization by now. There was a very interesting part in that article where Russian scientist Andrei Sakharov said ‘In 1958, he had calculated that for every megaton of even “clean” nuclear weapons, there would be some 6,600 premature deaths over the next 8,000 years across the globe, owing to carbon atoms in the atmosphere that would become radioactive under the bomb’s neutron flux.’

    Since Alamogordo, there has been 528 atom bombs let off in the atmosphere. So using Sakharov’s calculations, how many people will die eventually from all of them? Our species was stupid enough to irradiate our entire planet and some of that radiation must be in our bodies. That is why thieves illegally raise WW2 shipwrecks to break them up to steel the steel in them. Any steel made after 1945 has been contaminated with radiation which spoils some scientific experiments, hence the need for pre-1945 steel. Below is a link to a paper on all those who died because of these atom bomb tests prematurely in America alone-

    https://cms.qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/6043f-meyers-fallout-mortality-website.pdf
    1. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 10:11 am

       Atmospheric tests did have one very important scientific use – measuring tritium levels in groundwater is a very efficient way to date how long its been underground.

       Its often forgotten just how reckless those atmospheric tests were. The scientists involved really had very little idea what impact explosions at that level would have on the atmosphere – there were real concerns at the time that they could ignite uncontrollable atmospheric fires. They often got yield calculations wildly wrong. As the article shows, some of them, Teller being one example, had lost all sense of perspective. Those guys were like kids trying to ignite farts with cigarette lighters, except that we were all in range.
       1. Henry Moon Pie November 3, 2021 at 8:28 pm

          A story to keep in mind when the salesmen come pitching some geoengineering scheme to save the planet.
    2. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 11:11 am

       I was released from the bomb bay doors soon after the Soviet version was dropped. with a 4 kg payload which probably felt like a megaton or more to mom.

       She remembers everything and related to me that she was @ at the supermarket shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis had abated, and this woman out of the blue asked her stridently ‘how she could have brought another child into the world!’ said baby being yours truly.
       1. begob November 3, 2021 at 6:27 pm

          Did you wave your cowboy hat in the air as you plummeted toward the target?
    3. David November 3, 2021 at 12:58 pm

       The story has been told a number of times, and I’ve seen at least one documentary about it.
       The point of such a huge explosion was that the missiles that the Soviet Union was developing to attack the United States in a war were likely to be highly inaccurate. The effects of a nuclear explosion fall off very quickly (the cube root of distance, effectively) and even a large (for the day) warhead which missed its target by a few miles might leave it largely undamaged. So the search was on for warheads with such a high yield that anything resembling an approximate hit would destroy the target. The increasing accuracy of ICBM warheads (now down, apparently to hundreds of metres) made the pursuit of yield for its own sake no longer worthwhile.
       1. Basil Pesto November 4, 2021 at 1:55 am

          yeah I thought the “Untold Story” framing of the headline was a weird euphemism for “fairly commonly told story”. There were links about it here last year, including the amazing footage that was released.
    4. John Steinbach November 3, 2021 at 3:58 pm

       Rosalie Bertell estimated that 1.3 BILLION were killed or injured by fallout. https://ratical.org/radiation/NAvictims.html
    5. Gc54 November 3, 2021 at 6:08 pm

       The damage scaling in the article is wrong. Double bomb yield and damage goes by area not by radius so 4x not double. This assumes that detonation is in the troposphere although higher is almost the same. Can say no more here …
18. WIHAWN November 3, 2021 at 10:03 am

    RE the UK Energy companies going bust – it’s not quite as simple as being acquired, and the rot runs deeper than is being widely reported.

    Energy firms that go bust are passed to the regulator who then finds an existing company to take on their customers, usually one of the ‘big six’ energy companies in the UK. Those customers then get moved onto their new companies most expensive tariff by default, although I believe they are free to change once the move has been completed. Even then the available tariffs are generally more expensive than the one they were on, that being the reason their existing provider went bang after all. So overnight people see their energy bills, which they believed they had locked in at a lower rate, skyrocket in cost.

    There are two other knock-on effects that aren’t being widely reported that I can see. One is that all of these new customers are causing massive headaches for the suppliers that are required to absorb them. They generally haven’t planned for them in their hedging and so have to buy the extra gas/electricity on the spot market. But there is a limit on what they can charge, the energy cap bought in by the previous administration, which is currently lower than the spot price of that energy. So even healthy suppliers are being damaged by having thousands of loss-making customers dropped on them by the regulator.

    Secondly, the impact is moving further up the supply chain. I’ve only seen it covered by one BBC reporter in tweets (which I can’t currently find) but one of the gas shippers (COG from memory), who are the companies who actually do move the gas, has decided that it is no longer viable for them to serve the UK market and have liquidated their UK operations. Any of the suppliers who were with that shipper then have to find a new wholesale supplier of gas at much higher prices. And the shipper has declared that any existing hedges the suppliers have with them represent assets of the business and can’t be transferred to any new shipper, so even if a supplier had hedged their prices they have now lost that cover (and cash). This double whammy is what is driving even more suppliers out of business.
    1. WIHAWN November 3, 2021 at 10:12 am

       Found it, and missed the edit window while doing so.

       It’s not COG, it’s CNG and the Twitter thread in question is here: https://twitter.com/BenChu_/status/1451171340862599168
    2. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 10:13 am

       All this in an energy delivery system designed by the finest MBA’s and economists. What could possibly go wrong?
    3. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 10:32 am

       Hokey smoke! That is a big story. Maybe Boris could ask Russia if they could sell them a few boat-loads of gas until the Nord Stream 2 line come online. The US did so a few short years ago when they were short of gas one cold winter. If I was living in the UK and was depending on the Boris government to organize gas supplies for the coming winter, I would be heading off tomorrow to the nearest department store to lay in a supply of warm clothing for the coming winter. And no, I am not joking.
    4. Yves Smith Post authorNovember 4, 2021 at 1:25 am

       This is very helpful detail. The hedging part should have occurred to me.
19. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 10:04 am

    As per the latest ‘Made In China’ outbreak…

    Tortoise (Covid-19) & the Hare (Capitalism)

    Similar to the Covid mechanism causing illness and death by overwhelming the body, Capitalism attempted to overwhelm the market-because markets, as we enter a ‘adjust in time’ business as unusual economy.
20. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 10:12 am

    Zillow Quits Home-Flipping Business, Cites Inability to Forecast Prices Wall Street Journal
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Did anybody within the attention of this signal sell one of the 35,000 all different used homes that Zillow managed to acquire?

    Were they discriminating buyers or anything goes?
    1. Milton November 3, 2021 at 1:03 pm

       If Zillow has been buying homes for four years with the market continually appreciating, how is it possible they are losing money… unless that is what the division was meant to accomplish?
       1. rrrrrrrrrr November 3, 2021 at 4:22 pm

          the good ol’ dotcom “we take a loss on every sale but make up for it with scale”
21. Eureka Springs November 3, 2021 at 10:19 am

    “Hundreds of QAnon Fans Are Going to Texas to See JFK Return. No, Seriously.”

    “As Scranton Teachers Strike, Biden Is MIA in His Hometown”

    If I were a betting man I would wager the Q people have a greater chance of visiting Kennedy than D people seeing Biden or any leading D genuinely support labor.
    1. Bart Hansen November 3, 2021 at 1:48 pm

       It’s JFK, Jr. they are waiting for.
22. Lou Anton November 3, 2021 at 10:21 am

    Seems like the idea of voting for non-Trump Republicans felt fresh and new to swing voters. “Everything sucks, so let’s vote for the other guy/gal.” (and who can blame someone for that attitude?)
    1. Andy November 3, 2021 at 2:13 pm

       If true, that’s actually a pretty defeatist and IMO completely illogical attitude. If “everything sucks”, voting for one of the two entrenched establishment parties is hardly going to bring about a renaissance of fresh new thinking. In all likelihood what you’re going to get is more of the same.

       It constantly amazes me how much slack some people are willing to cut republicans these days. Lifelong gop voters aside, does anybody seriously think the republican party has the candidates and the policies needed to reinvent America as a sane, post-empire country that prioritizes the wellbeing of its own citizens over constantly courting apocalyptic conflict abroad and destroying itself at home? This is the republican party we are talking about.

       Gore Vidal said USA stands for United States of Amnesia and he was spot on about that. From the lies that launched “the global war on terror” to the awfulness of the republican party, how quickly Americans forget.

       Disillusioned dem supporters casting a “farck you” vote in favor of a republican presidential candidate is kind of silly but understandable given the way politics works in this country. But to jump on board the republican bandwagon and actually believe that they genuinely represent a meaningful alternative to democrat malfeasance is self-delusional.

       Voting republican at the local level might occasionally make some sense, particularly in rural areas. But if you are unhappy with dems lying to you and consistently failing to implement the mildly leftist policies they run on and supposedly stand for, why on God’s green earth would you vote republican? Because they sometimes say things you like to hear or because, thanks to lib/dem idpol fanaticism, they can pretend to be straight shooting paragons of clear-thinking reason? Of course, unlike liberal democrats, right wing republicans would never lie, deceive or make sh!t up.

       Many American leftists are very earnest people and have a hard time recognizing right wing attempts to influence them covertly via superficially adopting leftist jargon and talking points. If you are a former dem supporter and find yourself considering voting republican because you “feel” it is the “fresh and new” thing to do, you might want to counterbalance those “feels” by doing some critical thinking before you go cast that ballot.
       1. Anon November 3, 2021 at 8:40 pm

          While I agree with much of what you say, I’m not sure critical thinking will reveal a cogent solution… hence “everything sucks”. One may as well flip a coin. Throw in some nihilism and the Rs look pretty attractive. Once you recognize the hustle basted and baked into our society, Trump seems appropriate, almost.
23. Carolinian November 3, 2021 at 10:32 am

    From the Greenwald

    Even more disturbing was the telephone call which Goodman had on Monday with Reinhard and another Post reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, assigned to the health and COVID beat. During that call, Abutaleb in particular repeatedly demanded to know whether White Coat was concerned that the activism they were doing on these dog experimentation programs could end up harming Dr. Fauci’s reputation

    Shorter upcoming WaPo–torturing puppies ok when Fauci does it?

    Gah. What’s wrong with these people? It’s 24/7 circle the wagons with them.
24. t November 3, 2021 at 10:32 am

    Smash rooms? I suppose this might have some benefit for the tiny minority who aren’t in touch with anger, or maybe teenagers. Letting people rage is very negative. It’s the least mentally healthy thing you can do. And for debatable reasons, makes people more likely to rage and feel entitled.
    1. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 10:49 am

       Agree here. I don’t really get this whole smash-thing-up form of release or mentality. Saw first mention of them in the US decades ago where they had been copied from ones in Japan. And you see this desire for destruction shown in films like “Zombieland”-

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hERHWG0NC9E (2:19 mins)

       By coincidence, I was watching a video from the Critical Drinker today where he complains that modern films seem to be written by children when they depict how adults behave in those films as compared to earlier films or TV series. And that this is the only thing that young viewers see so take in their message. Here is that video clip for those interested-

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ92cggLMx8 (14;35 mins) Swearing alert.
       1. Louis Fyne November 3, 2021 at 12:04 pm

          I second the Critical Drinker (on youtube) recommendation if one likes discussions of the nuts/bolts of story-telling.
          1. t November 3, 2021 at 1:06 pm

             Thanks. I’ll check it out.

             The Purge franchise seems to have a better take on our understanding of rage and violence than most pop psychology magazine pieces.
             1. Louis Fyne November 3, 2021 at 3:21 pm

                My youtube guilty pleasure (along the lines of mental chocolate bars)…… “How to beat” videos that (tongue-in-cheek) explain how to survive the Purge, Japanese death match games, Korean zombie flicks.

                and PS, Critical Drinker’s humour is not for everyone so definitely YMMV…..some people will like it, others won’t be able to get past the alter ego he uses to critique film. This ain’t Siskel or Ebert.
       2. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 1:19 pm

          The Critical Drinker is good fun. For a deeper dive into the mechanics of cinematic storytelling, ‘Every Frame a Painting‘ YT channel is a must watch. The YTers are professional editors, and have very interesting insights into why, for example, many modern action films or any Marvel film can’t match the films Kurosawa was making half a century ago, or even more recent Hong Kong actioners.
          1. psv November 3, 2021 at 3:12 pm

             Hi PK, since you mention Kurosawa, I’ll add something I didn’t get to when you were discussing Asian, and Japanese film the other day.

             If there’s one current interesting Japanese director I’d mention it’d be Ryusuke Hamaguchi – his latest, Drive My Car, was at Cannes this year and I quite liked it. I’ve seen several of his films from the last decade and found Happy Hour and Asako I & II quite worthwhile.

             In an interview he once said that seeing a Yasuzô Masumura retrospective was a formative influence. Masumura is definitely worth a look as well.
             1. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 3:23 pm

                Thank you for that, I’ve not seen any Hamaguchi films, but I’ve heard ‘Drive My Car’ is very good.

                Masumura’s ‘Red Angel’ was one of a handful of films that inspired my fascination with early Japanese films. Its an amazing portrayal of military life (in a hospital) during the Manchurian wars. His ‘Kisses’ is also a lovely film. I haven’t seen any of his better known later films, they are very hard to find unless you want to buy pirates or pay a lot for imports. Its frustrating that I could find many obscure Asian films from my much missed old DVD rental shop than I can now find in the brave new world of streaming.
                1. psv November 3, 2021 at 4:05 pm

                   Yes, Red Angel is great! Ayako Wakao, who stars in it, is also in Yuzo Kawashima’s fine 1961 Women Are Born Twice – that whole film is on Youtube with English subs! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuZIMsIhuGg

                   I’ll keep my eyes out for Kisses, thanks.
                   1. PlutoniumKun November 3, 2021 at 5:31 pm

                      Thanks for the link, that looks very interesting (I always forget how many films are lurking on YT). So nice to see anything with Ayako Wakao, a very interesting and beautiful actress, she seemed to thrive working with more left-field Directors.
             2. begob November 3, 2021 at 6:52 pm

                2015 Japanese horror Tag: cheap-as-chips gore-fest by Sion Sono that turns into an epic poem. Amazed by how the images and editing created their own language.
       3. Procopius November 5, 2021 at 5:18 am

          I recall from the first version the Japanese and American proceedings used foam or sponge rubber bats. There was an Indian version that used real baseball bats, because it was important (in their philosophy) that the customers understand the real life consequences of violence.
    2. Craig H. November 3, 2021 at 8:21 pm

       It was all the rage in the 1960’s. Primal scream therapy. John Lennon endorsed it.

       There is some hilarious video in Curtis’ first big documentary (Century of Self?) of people whacking pillows with cricket bats but they omit the audio of them calling their mother or their wife bad names while whacking.
    3. Yves Smith Post authorNovember 4, 2021 at 1:32 am

       Actually, no. You’ve apparently never done it. I have.

       It’s a technique in the New Age which cult leaders can readily abuse because it’s cathartic when correctly done. You access deeply buried rage and related issues, not the surface shit. Part of the variant I did was repeated full body swing, like as if you were chopping wood, from the heels, and visualizing hitting whatever infuriated you, and screaming at it at full volume, your loudest possible voice. If you keep going, new layers of objects of rage appear. ‘

       Done properly, you are drained and shaking afterwards.

       The smash room people weren’t doing that. You need to hit the same thing successively. A baseball bat and a sturdy mattress (probably with more cushioning on top) will do.
       1. Basil Pesto November 4, 2021 at 1:51 am

          It’s a technique in the New Age which cult leaders can readily abuse because it’s cathartic when correctly done. You access deeply buried rage and related issues, not the surface shit. Part of the variant I did was repeated full body swing, like as if you were chopping wood, from the heels, and visualizing hitting whatever infuriated you, and screaming at it at full volume, your loudest possible voice. If you keep going, new layers of objects of rage appear. ‘

          Done properly, you are drained and shaking afterwards.

          sounds like another day on the golf course for me!
25. JCC November 3, 2021 at 10:57 am

    Regarding the “genetic gold”, wouldn’t it be easier to just grow mass amounts of the bacteria that helps these various plants and spread it around? Like most bacteria, it should evolve quickly enough to its new soil conditions, and hopefully continue its nitrogen-fixing for the plants.
26. The Rev Kev November 3, 2021 at 11:02 am

    “To Protect Fauci, The Washington Post is Preparing a Hit Piece on the Group Denouncing Gruesome Dog Experimentations”

    How long will it be until people who work for the Washington Post will be so embarrassed to admit that they work for them, that they will say something like ‘I work downtown’ instead? So WaPo selected Beth Reinhard to be their hatchet person. Her claim to fame is winning a Pulitzer prize for ‘reporting on sexual misconduct allegations against Roy Moore, which was widely regarded as having altered the course of the 2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama.’ I am not on social media but if I was and the Washington Post published this story, I would encourage everybody near and far to post pictures of Beagles to flood all their social media accounts and just that. Maybe have the National Beagle Club of America hold a parade outside the Wapo’s doors as well. **** them.
    1. drumlin woodchuckles November 7, 2021 at 1:58 am

       Maybe find a way to release millions of hungry sand flies inside the Washinton Post downtown offices.
27. TimH November 3, 2021 at 11:04 am

    On “Why Do More Men Die of Covid-19?”, I posit that men tend to take more risks. I saw a snake handling demo in Australia, and the husband/wife team said that men get more snakes bites than women… because women hear a snake and go the other way, while men are more likely to try to kill it.
    1. t November 3, 2021 at 1:13 pm

       That article was confusing. As a general rule, when you have a disease in a population the people who are left standing are men who never caught it and women who survived it. Some people think women are less expendable because they have to stay alive long enough to give birth.

       I’ve never been able to grasp how that evolutionary pressure would work – women better at mounting a response to an infection. But I don’t understand why my friends and fam i. Doctor-land say people “present with” and “mount.”

       As a horse girl, mount has a very specific meaning to mean and it is not an internal process.
    2. Lee November 3, 2021 at 1:25 pm

       I don’t know if it applies in this instance, but women it seems have gender based, genetically conferred immune system advantages (Sex differences in immune responses, Nature). Assuming that continuation of the species is selected for by evolution, men might be less averse to physical risk because they are reproductively more expendable. One man can father many more children than a one woman can give birth to.

       But this is not the case for some species, where females are larger and stronger such as among raptors and hyenas. And then there are the bonobos on their own much idealized evolutionary yellow brick road.
       1. Laura in So Cal November 3, 2021 at 4:27 pm

          I’ve seen speculation that higher iron levels might be correlative with worse outcomes if you catch the disease and it progresses to your vascular system…higher iron levels are more common in men.
28. TimH November 3, 2021 at 11:15 am

    From the must-read by Elizabeth Bear:

    “the prevalent idea in the US that Japanese citizens have a longer life expectancy than Americans because of diet, exercise, and other things we can control … but somehow these glossy magazine stories telling you to drink miso and eat seaweed never seem to mention that the average Japanese person goes to the doctor ten times a year.”

    Then the striking-staff picture on the 1,000 Huntington, WV Hospital Workers Striking piece… lots of fat nurses.
    1. tegnost November 3, 2021 at 11:29 am

       Lots of people, including nurses, don’t understand that the food pyramid is a production schedule.
       But yes, I see the upper echelons of the nation are busy outlawing HFCS…oh, wait…
    2. Louis Fyne November 3, 2021 at 12:01 pm

       So I looked up the source for that fact….

       interestingly Japan also average the longest hospital stays by far…..but also interestingly only 50% of their seniors got flu vaccines versus >80% in Korea

       https://data.oecd.org/healthcare/length-of-hospital-stay.htm#indicator-chart
29. diptherio November 3, 2021 at 11:55 am

    Re: Buffalo Mayoral Race

    Remember the narrative that progressive candidates like @Indiawaltonbflo
    don’t win in working class communities of color? *Unofficial* results say otherwise. Patterns appear to have shifted from the Primary. Walton won low-income precincts, lost in affluent & white neighborhoods.

    https://twitter.com/RustBeltGeo/status/1455863536832421893
30. Wukchumni November 3, 2021 at 11:59 am

    Too nice of a day to not take a hike, and 50,000 ladybugs lie in wait, often hidden in plain sight on today’s sojourn up the Ladybug trail in the southernmost part of Sequoia NP and the only part of SNP open to the public now, on account of the KNP Fire. The section we’ll be hiking today was burned quite heavily in last year’s Castle Fire.

    It’s a great hiking venue to see Sequoias as they range from 150 years old to around 1,500 years old, no great shakes in terms of world beaters size-wise, but it gives you a nice progression of ages in the 3 mile 1-way hike to the Homers Nose grove.

    The first mile or so has one of the biggest concentrations of California Nutmeg trees in the National Park…

    The seeds were used by Native Americans in Northern California as food. The seeds were once mentioned in pharmacognostic literature under the Latin name nux moschata Californica. The wood was used for making bows.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torreya_californica

    http://www.redwoodhikes.com/SequoiaNP/Ladybug.html
31. Grumpy Engineer November 3, 2021 at 12:01 pm

    “Even as Biden Pushes Clean Energy, He Seeks More Oil Production“…

    So Biden bans new oil and gas leases on federal lands, then asks outside producers to increase production? So any environmental benefit gets canceled out, and all we’ve accomplished is exporting US jobs. No wonder people are voting Republican.
32. Cocomaan November 3, 2021 at 12:01 pm

    Deer and covid:

    The hunters would seem to be at the greatest risk, but there’s no indication in this paper that their health was tracked following their involvement in the sampling.

    I doubt that. Hunters are seeking to kill deer. Suburbanites who feed their deer and live alongside them, the tame deer near my parents house are almost pets, would be way more susceptible
    1. Yves Smith Post authorNovember 4, 2021 at 1:38 am

       No, you have this wrong.

       Have you ever cleaned a deer??? OMG the blood. Blood blood blood blood blood.

       Blood is a transmission vector. Imagine hunter cleaning deer with abrasion on his hand. Deer cooties such as deer Covid go into his bloodstream.
33. Sheryl November 3, 2021 at 12:26 pm

    About “Kamala is a whore”

    Appearances matter: Mr. Kamala, Doug Emhoff Pharmed himself out to Merck as a corporate lawyer at DLA Piper.

    Vice president EmhoffHarris, rhymes with “embarrass,” is a gift to the GOP.

    To her supporters, please post one major thing that she has achieved in an elected office, other than picking the right parents.
34. zagonostra November 3, 2021 at 1:17 pm

    >”Left Shift” reason for Dem Losses

    This is why the country is doomed. When Democrats loose the reason shoved down your throat is that it’s because they strayed too far Left when we all know that the reason is they didn’t embrace programs that are overwhelming popular like M4A, paid family leave, student debt forgiveness, etc…

    It’s a Left/Right pincer hold the oligarchs/establishment uses that always succeed in defeating progressive policy wins in the U.S.
35. Vandemonian November 3, 2021 at 4:49 pm

    Re: “It’s hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is.” – Cory Doctorow

    I experienced this from the inside, and tried to avoid or bypass the commercial scam. Most of the “high quality” journals will accept an article for review, and publish it once accepted, without a cost to the author. As Doctorow notes, academic institutions then pay the publisher for access to the content. Some journals also provide an option to publish a particular article as “open source”, available to read at no charge, once the author pays a hefty fee.

    Predatory publishers such as OMICS charge authors a similar fee, and publish all articles as open source. However, their standards of editorship and peer review are not great.

    Another option is a journal such as PeerJ – online only, charges authors for submission and publication, but with a respectable editorial board and solid peer review.

    It’s generally accepted that the author retains copyright of the manuscript up to the point of final acceptance by the journal. Many authors add the final pre-acceptance version to their profile on a site like ResearchGate. This makes it generally accessible for viewing and download outside the journal paywall.

    And if you need to read a paywalled paper, you can always try Sc-Hub.

    As for peer review, I have an innate dislike for undertaking unpaid work, and mostly review only for those journals whose business model I approve of.
36. lance ringquist November 3, 2021 at 5:25 pm

    looks like another nafta billy clinton scam. and empty suit hollowman obama made it worse.

    https://www.cbp.gov/trade/nafta/guide-customs-procedures/other-instances-confer-origin/deminimis

    Why is U.S. customs law helping Amazon and China, and not U.S. manufacturers and retailers?

    https://www.yahoo.com/finance/m/f7fe8d33-5a47-3535-91bd-8bd1de192c1c/why-is-u-s-customs-law.html
37. Kevin Carhart November 3, 2021 at 6:10 pm

    (Kevin C) … (Kevin W) … (Dr. Kevin) … Kevin … The Rev Kev …

    Is there something in the water??
    1. Yves Smith Post authorNovember 4, 2021 at 1:36 am

       We have many Kevins! Including you! You would be a second Kevin C so if you submitted links I’d have to figure out a way to attribute to you.
       1. Basil Pesto November 4, 2021 at 1:48 am

          Kevin ? ❤️
38. Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg November 3, 2021 at 6:21 pm

    Here’s a question for my fellow analysts of global strategy:

    The Taliban- the original one- was a project of the Saudis and their Pakistani clients. Most people like to think Pakistan is a US puppet but it’s more a ‘Suadi colony” in the words of one journo.
    So the Taliban supposedly wins the war and the US immediately creates a rebel faction to continue the destabilization of the place known as Afghanistan. ISIS K is obviously an op to destabilize the country and it has CIA standard Gladio playbook written all over it.
    Is the idea to push Kabul to beg for US protection? I can’t imagine Pakistan and Arabia are happy their sponsord faction is being beset by this fake little group. If it’s just the remnant of the ‘Northern Alliance’ then it wouldn’t be calling itself ISIS anything. Someone is providing explosives, small arms and intel to these people.
    1. drumlin woodchuckles November 7, 2021 at 1:53 am

       If this ISIS of Afghanistan really is a transplant by the DC FedRegime and the Kingdom of Saudi Barbaria, why would the Taliban government come begging for security support from DC anyway? Wouldn’t they rather beg for support from Russia, the Ickystans, Iran, Pakistan and China which are right there on the spot?
39. juno mas November 3, 2021 at 6:47 pm

    RE: Dawn Chorus

    The dawn chorus of song birds is getting quieter because there a too many non-singing Crows in the choir now. Urban crow population expanding with the surfeit of half-eaten McNuggets in parking lots has re-scored the harmony into a dischordant squawk.
    1. drumlin woodchuckles November 7, 2021 at 1:36 am

       It is good to hear birds other than just crows.

       Still, it can be interesting to listen to a scattered flock of slow-flying overhead crows. Every single crow has its own slightly different caw. I bet they know eachother as individuals by the sounds of their voices.
40. juno mas November 3, 2021 at 7:26 pm

    RE: California may gut solar incentives

    This article isn’t very coherent. It really doesn’t explain the issue well. If you read the “comments” below the article you’ll get a better understanding of the arguments. The electric utility companies are seeking the denoument of “net-metering”, saying it benefits only the rich (since the poor can’t afford a solar array).

    The facts are that distributed solar (on rooftops, not mega-solar farms) saves the natural environment from industrial solar controlled by utility corporations (and reduces the need for more long distance transmission lines).

    There are innumerable sites in cities that can accommodate solar arrays and be controlled by local municipalities. Leave the desert to the tortoise.
    1. drumlin woodchuckles November 7, 2021 at 1:46 am

       ” Net-metering benefits only the rich” is the same fake argument that DTE Energy uses against the net metering concept here in SouthEast Michigan. I remember reading a few years ago an article in the print version of Detroit MetroTimes. It was about the ins and outs of DTE Energy’s persistent attempt to reject and refuse net metering. A very interesting wrinkle in all this is that the arm of DTE that makes “community improvement and do-gooding” grants to “community organizations” has given a lot of money to Black organizations in Detroit which have returned the favor by advancing DTE’s argument that net metering favors rich suburban homeowners and should therefor not be allowed. If these organizations keep selling their “social justice credibility” to DTE for long enough, they may not have any such credibility left.

       In the meantime, what can suburban homeowners do? Well . . . . they could have their houses co-wired with direct current wiring totally unrelated to the DTE wiring they now have and could still keep. They could set up rooftop solar electric panels charging batteries which would power a select few direct current lights and appliances. They wouldn’t try injecting any electric current back into DTE’s grid. All they would do is use more of their own electricity in order to use less of DTE’s electricity, thereby being able to withhold some money from DTE which might maybe reduce DTE’s ability to spend that money on gas and coal for power plants, or maybe even reduce DTE’s ability to spend that money on “community groups” in Detroit which propagandise against net metering even as DTE gives them money.

       I read this article several years ago. It may be in DetroitMetro’s digital archives. I don’t have the time and energy to look. For those who do, here is the website. https://www.metrotimes.com/
       1. John Anthony La Pietra November 7, 2021 at 6:58 am

          Is this the one?

          DTE Energy is quietly funding Detroit community leaders who publicly support the company

          by Tom Perkins
          December 10, 2019

          In the days that followed our Nov. 13 cover story investigation into problems with DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, several community leaders posted critical comments below the web version of the story.

          One was written by Rev. Horace Sheffield III, a pastor at Detroit’s New Destiny Christian Fellowship. Another came from Steve Hood, a Detroit producer whose father was the city’s second Black city council member, and whose brother is a reverend at an east-side megachurch.

          They charged that the Metro Times story seemed to “fit an agenda” and questioned why it didn’t include information about specific DTE programs.

          . . .

          In reality, DTE is paying its supporters. A quick Google search of Sheffield and DTE revealed that Sheffield is director of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations (DABO). Metro Times checked the DTE Energy Foundation’s 2017 donation records and found that DABO received $50,000 in funding — which calls into question the integrity of Sheffield’s comments.

          Hood’s and Sheffield’s talking points also matched those sent in emails to Metro Times by DTE Energy spokesman Peter Ternes, which suggested coordination.

          In fact, Sheffield and Hood aren’t alone. They and other prominent community leaders are publicly pushing DTE talking points while quietly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from DTE’s charitable arm. The move appears to be part of a coordinated DTE effort to influence policy and regulation by fabricating the appearance of grassroots support for its agenda.

          In reality, many of the individuals and groups that publicly support the company are effectively on DTE’s payroll. . . .

          Meanwhile, DTE is a sponsor of Hood’s television show, Detroit Wants 2 Know, and Hood ran an entire segment spotlighting its renewables program. . . .

Comments are closed.