Recent Items

2:00PM Water Cooler 10/8/2024

Posted on by

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Kind readers, thanks to so many of you for asking after me yesterday, when I had described my fall. In fact, I am, as I thought I would be, in form today. No sprain or tear, which is what I was most worried about (since my back is stiff as the best of times). A few twinges in my knee. Scrapes nicely scabbed over. The whole episode brings home to me how lucky I have been, not only in this particular episode, but generally: Many, many people have experienced more pain in their lifetimes than I ever have. –lambert P.S. Also a hat tip to Big Pharma for the pills.

Bird Song of the Day

Back to the mimidae!

Tropical Mockingbird,Punto Sin Retorno, Ocotepeque, Honduras. “Imitando otras especies: 0:30 (Melanerpes aurifrons) 1:08 (Falco sparverius) 1:28 (Camptostoma imberbe) 2:00 (Piaya cayana) 2:08 (Rupornis magnirostris).” Quite a virtuoso!

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. New Trump’s 2020 polling underestimates vs. margins in the Swing States today.
  2. The Feds launder migrants through NGOs to firms owned by the American gentry.
  3. Boeing’s stock.

* * *

Look for the Helpers

It’s not like introverts need help, of course….

…. but it still can be nice.

* * *

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

* * *

2024

Less than forty days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

If you ignore the entire concept of margin of error, Trump gained a few inches of ground in the trench warfare (Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to a subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars especially might as well be quantum foam, but presumably the campaign professionals have better data, and have the situation as under control as it can be MR SUBLIMINAL Fooled ya. Kidding!.

* * *

The other day I muttered about making a map putting Trump’s 2020 voting underestimates against Trump (or Kamala’s) margins in Swing States. Hat tip to alert reader hk for doing the hard work and digging out the numbers. I did the easy part, which was making the handy map:

Legend: Numbers in Blue (Kamala) or Red (Trump) show the leading candidate in 2024. Naturally, orange numbers show Trump’s underestimates in 2020.

Obviously, if the polls in 2024 are off by as much, and in the same direction, as the polls in 2020, this election looks very, very different (and, in fact, in the bag for Trump). But are they? Opinions differ (“Infinite are the arguments of mages” –Ursula LeGuin).

Lambert here: I am not a polling maven!

“CNN data guru declares Trump will win White House if he outperforms current polling by one point” [FOX]. “CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said that the presidential race between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is so close that if Trump outperforms current polling by one point, he will win the White House. ‘We‘re talking about the closest campaign in a generation where a single point could make all the difference in the world,’ Enten told CNN anchor John Berman on Friday.” • Oh.

“The Asterisk on Kamala Harris’s Poll Numbers” [The Atlantic]. “The 2016 election lives in popular memory as perhaps the most infamous polling miss of all time, but 2020 was quietly even worse. The polls four years ago badly underestimated Trump’s support even as they correctly forecast a Joe Biden win. A comprehensive postmortem by the American Association for Public Opinion Research concluded that 2020 polls were the least accurate in decades, overstating Biden’s advantage by an average of 3.9 percentage points nationally and 4.3 percentage points at the state level over the final two weeks of the election…. According to The New York Times, Biden led by 10 points in Wisconsin but won it by less than 1 point; he led Michigan by 8 and won by 3; he led in Pennsylvania by 5 and won by about 1. As of this writing, Harris is up in all three states, but by less than Biden was. A 2020-size error would mean that she’s actually down—and poised to lose the Electoral College.” More: “[Don Levy, the director of the Siena College Research Institute] told me that, in 2020, the people working the phones for Siena frequently reported incidents of being yelled at by mistrustful Trump supporters. ‘In plain English, it was not uncommon for someone to say, ‘I’m voting for Trump—fuck you,'” and then hang up before completing the rest of the survey, he said. (So much for the ‘shy Trump voter’ hypothesis.) In 2020, those responses weren’t counted. This time around, they are. Levy told me that including these ‘partials’ in 2020 would have erased nearly half of Siena’s error rate.” What if Trump voters are so disaffected that they lie about supporting Harris? Nobody seems to have mentioned that possibility. And: “‘In 2016, the feeling was that the problem we had was not capturing non-college-educated white voters, particularly in the Midwest,’ Chris Jackson, the head of U.S. public polling at Ipsos, told me. ‘But what 2020 told us is that’s not actually sufficient. There is some kind of political-behavior dimension that wasn’t captured in that education-by-race crosstab. So, essentially, what the industry writ large has done is, we’ve started really looking much more strongly at political variables.’ If Trump outperforms the polls once again, it will be because even after all these years, something about his supporters remains a mystery.” • Perhaps the Republican and Democrat voters are fundamentally different not along ideological lines but in terms of capability. Republicans, after all, hated their party leadership and overthrew it. Democrats have done no such thing. Perhaps that level of commitment carries over to turnout (though I grant this possibility wouldn’t apply to undecided or irregular voters, unless they thought this capability worthy of emulation). One might speculate that Trump’s “fight, fight, fight!,” and continued presence on the campaign trail despite not one but two assassination attempts feeds into this propensity.

“Can we trust the polls this year?” [VOX]. Various: “It has been getting harder because of Trump’s ability to turn out the kinds of voters many polls have trouble capturing.” If these “kinds” of voters are irregular or disaffected, that would mean that Trump is making “our democracy” work better than Democrats. More: “The phrase I heard most in my conversations was a worry about ‘solving for the last problem’ or ‘fighting the last battle.’ In other words, lessons have been learned, but will those lessons apply this time around? In 2016, for example, pollsters addressed some of the reasons they overestimated Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012 but missed that state-level surveys were overrepresenting college graduates. That miss ended up artificially boosting Hillary Clinton’s support, especially in the Midwest battleground states that proved decisive.” And a list of the worries: Nonresponse bias, unlikely and late-deciding voters, hard-to-poll subgroups (approached by looking crosstab results that “can yield conclusions with margins of error much larger than those of a poll’s topline results”). And tips: Look at the sample size, methodology, firm, margin of error, and stay skeptical.

“So, you’re sure the presidential race will be close?” [Roll Call]. “Remember, polls are based on turnout assumptions, and if Harris generates stronger turnout among younger voters, voters of color, former Republicans, and college-educated whites, she could outperform the polling.” • I’m doubtful. I’m seeing two swing states where voters meet the “crawl over broken glass” turnout test. Both sets of voters are Trump voters. The first is PA, where Trump was almost assassinated in Butler. The second is NC, where Trump voters in WNC may feel they have been abandoned (and disrespected) by the Biden Administration’s response to Helene. Now, NC cuts both ways, because those Trump voters, motivated though they be, simply may not be able to reach the polls (the Post Office isn’t getting many absentee ballots right now, for example). However, if Republicans successfullly frame the Biden Administration’s response to Milton as similar to the response to Helene, then WNC sentiment may spread to Georgia, another swing state hit hard by Helene, or even go national. And I think the Democrat counter-messaging on abortion is preaching to the choir. From Georgia, KLG amplifies:

My sources have no reason to lie. Perhaps some exaggeration but it all seems too likely to me.

FEMA is a charlie foxtrot, whatever its apologists and administrators say. Almost every person who applies for the $750 is denied. For example, if you have insurance, no $750 because your benevolent insurance company will pay. Yeah, but for many, only after being dragged kicking and screaming to cut the check. An assistant rents her house in rural Georgia. Her losses are real but because she is a renter, no $200 to replace the farm produce and meat lost in her freezer due to a week without electricity. That’s all she asked for. $200B or whatever for Ukraine but no $200 for her. Some areas still do not know when power will be restored. Compared to the mountains of North Carolina, these are the fortunate. This is the message the people are getting…It is likely to get worse when Milton slams into Tampa-St. Pete Wednesday night. Sustained winds back up to 150 mph with 24 hours to go. This can be a killer.

If that assistant is not afflicted with TDS, there’s another potential “broken glass” voter in a swing state (and thirty days is time to marinate a lot of grievance).

“Polling isn’t broken, but pollsters still face Trump-era challenges” [ABC]. Report from the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in May: “[Cameron McPhee, chief methodologist for SSRS} told me the industry has moved toward agreement that multi-mode approaches are the best way to get a more representative sample. She stressed that it’s not that one mode is better, but rather a combination is ‘better than the sum of its parts.’ For instance, one SSRS survey experiment saw improved response rates for state-level surveys that recruited respondents by various means, including postcard or SMS text message, and gave respondents six potential access points to respond: URL, QR code (directing them to the survey), text, email, a phone number for respondents to call (inbound dialing) and SSRS reaching out to them by phone (outbound dialing).” • I wonder if the different recruitment mode affects the response. I might not be “the same person” answering a call as I am when making a considered response to email.

* * *

Kamala (D): “Kamala’s Comedown How the Harris campaign became a grim slog” [New York Magazine]. “Her once-ascendant polling numbers have stalled and her campaign has become cautious, granting TV interviews mostly to a handful of local news channels in swing states. If the first month of her candidacy was an exhalation after the suffocating defeatism under Biden, the last weeks before Election Day have felt like a collective holding of breath.” Perhaps to a Democrat. More: After the Vance-Walz debate, “[i]t was apparent that the Harris campaign had backed away from its primary value-add: the promise that it would break with the politics of the past… In response to Republican smears casting her as America’s ‘border czar’ responsible for a dysfunctional immigration system, Harris has pivoted rightward on the issue, promising a more restricted path for asylum seekers during a September trip to the U.S.-Mexico border… Harris’s deference to the status quo has been even more pronounced on foreign policy, which has been dominated by Israel’s grinding war in Gaza…. [S]elling nostalgia for a pre-Trump world raises the question of how Harris is any different from Biden. It also sends the message that Democrats have failed to convince voters that Trump and his acolytes are beyond the pale. So what’s to be done about a political reality in which voters want the opposing forces of liberalism and authoritarianism to be reconciled? The answer, for Harris, increasingly resembles a paradox: stave off Trumpian calamity through politics as usual.” • “Acolytes” being approximately half the population, deplorable though they may be?

Kamala (D): “Doug Emhoff was a foul-mouthed ‘a**hole’ and ‘misogynist’ who hired a ‘trophy secretary’ because she was ‘pretty’ and ‘retaliated against women who didn’t flirt back’ at LA law firm, ex-staff claim” [Daily Mail]. IOW, he was an entertainment lawyer? “Attorneys who worked with Doug Emhoff at his former firm Venable say he yelled expletives, held a men-only cocktail hour in the office, revoked work perks from women who didn’t flirt with him, and took only young, attractive associates in a limousine to a ball. A 2019 lawsuit also claimed sex discrimination by other partners in the LA office Emhoff ran, and that while engaged to Harris, he hired an ‘unqualified’ part-time model as a legal secretary ‘because she was young, attractive and friendly with the powerful men in the office’. The claims are the latest in a string of allegations revealed by DailyMail.com that threaten to shatter Emhoff’s image, heavily promoted by the Harris presidential campaign, of a feminist ally and ‘wife guy’. In August DailyMail.com revealed the Los Angeles lawyer cheated on his first wife and got his daughter’s grade school teacher-cum-nanny pregnant. And last week we uncovered claims that he struck his ex-girlfriend in 2012…. Now his former colleagues from the Venable Los Angeles office, which he ran from 2006 to 2017, are coming forward with allegations about his ‘inappropriate’ and ‘a**hole’ behavior in the workplace. They all spoke upon agreement they would not be named, fearing retaliation. One senior former staffer claimed Emhoff ‘bragged’ about yelling ‘get the f*** out of my office’ to a female partner at the firm, later telling his top male colleagues that he had ‘put her in her place’.” • Put the weight of evidence here against that presented during the Kavanaugh nomination, and compare the levels of hysteria.

* * *

Lambert here: Kamala’s said a whole raft of idiotic clarifying things in the past few days, but I have no time to aggregate the clips and review transcripts. Perhaps tomorrow.

Kamala (D): Sorry to quote World Net Daily, but here we are:

I’m so old I remember when Roger Mudd took down Teddy Kennedy — IIRC, while on Kennedy’s yacht — by asking Teddy to explain why he wanted to be President, and Teddy coughed up a giant hairball. This clip reminds me of that. Wouldn’t it be great to have a candidate whose voice you would actually enjoy hearing? For four years?

Kamala (D): Kamala’s Glock:

Can readers dig into the Glock? Guns are not my field of expertise.

Kamala (D): Why propagate a phrase like “what can be, unburdened by what has been” if you’re not going to use it when the time comes?

* * *

Kamala (D): “What Really Happened On Tim Walz’s Trips to China” [Politico]. Worth a read. From this story, those kids were lucky to have Walz as a teacher (and how stupid of the Harris campaign to frame him as “Coach.” I imagine the campaign felt that framing made Walz a manly man, solving some demographic problems for them, but being a fine teacher is one excellent form of manhood, and with way less bullshit than American football [snort]). And oppo me no oppo; if any appears, I’ll worry about it then.

* * *

Trump (R): “How Jack Smith Outsmarted the Supreme Court” [Sean Wilentz, The Atlantic]. “Smith’s filing tries to slice through the Court’s security shield regarding the insurrection. Skillfully quoting from or alluding to language in the Court majority’s own opinion, the filing demolishes the notion that Trump’s activities, culminating on January 6, deserve immunity. Outwardly, Smith’s filing respects the Court’s dubious ruling about the immunity of official presidential acts. Legally, Smith had no choice but to operate within that ruling, a fact that sharply limited how far his filing could go. But even though it never challenges the conservative majority directly, the filing makes a case, incontrovertible in its logic and factual detail, that the core of Trump’s subversion involved no official actions whatsoever. It persuasively argues, with fact after fact, that Trump was the head of an entirely private criminal plot as a candidate to overthrow the election, hatched months before the election itself. In remounting his case, Smith has taken the opportunity to release previously unknown details, some of which he says he doesn’t even plan to present at trial, that underscore the depravity as well as the extent of Trump’s criminal actions.” • Unless trying a case in the court of public opinion leads to conviction, Wilentz’s use of “criminal” is question-begging. Further, I don’t much like the outcome of Trump vs. United States myself. But the ruling is a case of “hard cases make bad law.” And IMNSHO case was “hard” because Democrat lawfare put Smith/Chutkan in the public mind, along with Smith/Cannon (dead), Bragg/Merchan (mind-bogglingly trivial, and appealed), James/Engoron (appealed, court dubious), and Willis/McAfee (farcial, not tried). Perhaps if the Democrats had tried for a clean kill with January 6, instead of starting five separate cases on the theory that one would prevail, FAFO would not have applied. (But perhaps they also felt internally — having held hearings on the matter including a documentary film, ffs — that a January 6 case was not all that strong.)

Realignment and Legitimacy

Expect continued volatility:

Nice shoutout from Tkacik [lambert blushes modestly].

“A Troubled Place” [Christopher F. Rufo and Christina Buttons, CIty Journal] (Charleroi, PA). This is well worth reading in full. It pains me to quote the Manhattan Institute, but they went and got the story, credit due. Here is the nut graf: “The basic pattern in Charleroi has been replicated in thousands of cities and towns across America: the federal government has opened the borders to all comers; a web of publicly funded NGOs has facilitated the flow of migrants within the country; local industries have welcomed the arrival of cheap, pliant labor. And, under these enormous pressures, places like Charleroi often revert to an older form: that of the company town, in which an open conspiracy of government, charity, and industry reshapes the society to its advantage—whether the citizens want it or not.” And: “The best way to understand the migrant crisis is to follow the flow of people, money, and power—in other words, to trace the supply chain of human migration.” • So this is “our democracy.” I wondered who was driving where migrants would relocate (though I’m sure some is spontaneous): The (Democrat-leaning and -funded) NGOs. And all to service the American gentry, too (making them the real problem, what a surprise). Clamp down on “local industries” and problem solved.

“What Happens if a Hurricane Smashes Tampa?” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. “Regardless, we are entering a world beset by climate change, which will require a different political order. Last July, I wrote a piece on how we are forgetting the lessons from Covid. We are still highly dependent on China, and the fragility of our supply chains hasn’t improved. And that’s because, while there are some good policymakers in positions of authority like Lina Khan and Rohit Chopra, the bulk of our leadership class is still in thrall to a finance-friendly model of industrial fragility. And this dynamic is as much an ideological problem as anything else.” • Absent the sort of “change” that so many of us hope for, I think that our response to the Covid pandemic gives a clear precedent for our already-in-place “different political order”: The ruthless application of Rule #2. Stoller is more optimistic, and I hope he’s right.

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

* * *

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

* * *

Ticks

“Another Reason to Hate Ticks” [The Atlantic]. “When Clark Giles first heard about ticks making people allergic to meat, he found the notion so unbelievable, he considered it “hogwash.” Then, in 2022, it happened to him. Following a spate of tick bites, he ate a hamburger and went into sudden anaphylaxis…. This unusual allergy is most often caused by the lone-star tick, whose saliva triggers an immune reaction against a molecule, alpha-gal, found in most mammals besides humans. The allergy is also known as alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS. In recent years, the lone-star tick has been creeping northward and westward from its historical range, in the southeastern United States. (Oklahoma is in fact right on the edge; ticks are more prevalent in its east than its west.) Alpha-gal syndrome, too, is suspected to be on the rise. Farmers who spend their days outdoors are particularly exposed to lone-star ticks, and repeated bites may cause more severe reactions. And so, Giles is among a group of farmers who have become, ironically, allergic to the animals that they raise…. Farmers with severe AGS find it difficult, and in some cases impossible, to care for their animals at all.” • One way to solve the factory faming problem, I suppose.

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: CDC’s wastewater map should have been updated by Friday at 8:00pm. This is Tuesday. It hasn’t been.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC September 23 Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC September 28 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC September 28

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data October 7:

National [6] CDC September 14:

Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens October 7: ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 5:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC September 16: Variants[10] CDC September 16:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 28: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 28:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Much less intense!

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.

[4] (ED) Down, but worth noting that Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely down.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC).

[7] (Walgreens) Big drop continues!

[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up, though lagged.

[10] (Travelers: Variants).

[11] Deaths low, positivity down.

[12] Deaths low, ED down.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

* * *

Manufacturing: “Why Every Day the Boeing Strike Lasts Is a Bigger Problem for the Stock” [Barron’s]. “A month or so shouldn’t pressure Boeing’s balance sheet too much. Longer than that, the company, and its investors, will feel more significant pain…. The cash burn can go on for a while, though. Boeing ended the second quarter with almost $13 billion in cash and short-term investments on its books. Boeing also had $10 billion of unused borrowing capacity on its revolving credit lines. With some $23 billion available, Boeing can, in theory, survive for months. The fact that Boeing can survive a strike that long doesn’t mean it should, or that its lenders will be happy. CFO Brian West is meeting with company lenders this week. The lending syndicate, which includes many banks, will want an update about the strike, how Boeing will minimize its cash burn, and what cash flow will look like as production ramps up following the work stoppage. West will likely reiterate his recent messaging that Boeing is actively managing liquidity and that his company will maintain its investment-grade credit rating, which Wall Street has interpreted as a willingness to sell new stock to raise more cash…. Coming into Tuesday’s trading, Boeing stock was down about 37% since an emergency door plug blew out of a 737 MAX 9 jet while in flight on Jan. 5. Shares are down about 4% since the start of the strike. The relative moves show what investors are most concerned about. Production quality and the 737 MAX matter more than the strike—for now.” • Of course, the two are related. You can’t fix production quality without recreating a functional shop floor, and you can’t do that while screwing the workers as hard as you can.

Manufacturing: “Boeing, striking union to continue negotiations” [USA Today]. “Boeing and its largest union said they would continue contract talks on Tuesday, as both sides seek an agreement to end a strike by around 33,000 U.S. West Coast factory workers. The company and the union, whose members have been on strike for 25 days, had resumed contract talks on Monday in the presence of federal mediators. ‘Although we met with Boeing and federal mediators all day, there was no meaningful movement to report. We will be back at it tomorrow,’ The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said late on Monday.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing Starts Union ‘Education Sessions’ as Labor Movement Stirs” [Bloomberg]. “Boeing Co. has started offering workers at a planemaking factory in South Carolina “education sessions” about the implications of joining a union, as a crippling strike at its sites in the Pacific Northwest puts the spotlight on the resurgence of organized labor in the US. The company is holding the voluntary meetings in response to ‘questions and concerns from many of you about union organizing activity taking place’ at the facility in North Charleston, according to an Oct. 7 memo by Scott Stocker, a Boeing vice president and general manager of the 787 Dreamliner program. Workers at the site, which isn’t unionized, will gain insights into the legal consequences of signing cards authorizing a union vote and what to do should a labor organizer knock on their door, according to the memo viewed by Bloomberg.” • Oh, sure, “voluntary.” So one of Boeing’s responses to a strike in Redmondis to crank up union-busting in North Charleston, showing the machinists exactly what will happen to them if they don’t win, and win big. This Ortberg dude had to approve this, too. I thought he was supposed to be a breath of fresh air?

Manufacturing: “El Segundo Boeing workers file whistleblower lawsuits alleging retaliation” [Los Angeles Times]. “Late last year, Boeing employee Craig Garriott says a 4-ton satellite inside an El Segundo plant fell after engineers failed to properly secure a clamp. No one was injured by the collapse of the $1 billion-plus satellite that happened over a weekend, but it could have been fatal if workers were present, Garriott claims. The incident highlighted a raft of safety violations that were ignored by management, according to a whistleblower lawsuit that was recently transferred to federal court in Los Angeles. In the lawsuit, the veteran Boeing employee alleges that his employer retaliated against him for speaking out about problems he saw at Boeing and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing defense contractor that makes small satellites…. ‘This is another black eye,’ Dan Bubb, a professor of history with a focus on aviation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said of the lawsuits. ‘The punches just keep landing one after the other.’ Boeing acquired Millennium Space Systems in 2018 for an undisclosed amount.” • McDonnel-Douglas was such a success, so they bought Millenium?

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 72 Greed (previous close: 70 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 8 at 1:57:20 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes up one on Oil Supply/Price. “Conflict in the Middle East has driven up oil prices” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 180. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Do these people know something we don’t?

Photo Book

Looks like a chip:

Zeitgeist Watch

Nice smile on that guy:

News of the Wired

“The blogosphere is in full bloom. The rest of the internet has wilted” [Guardian]. “Like many of us, he realised that what came to be known as the blogosphere could be a modern realisation of Jürgen Habermas’s idea of “the public sphere” because it was open to all, everything was discussable and social rank didn’t determine who was allowed to speak. But what he – and we – underestimated was the speed and comprehensiveness that tech corporations such as Google and Facebook would enclose that public sphere with their own walled gardens in which “free speech” could be algorithmically curated while the speakers were intensively surveilled and their data mined for advertising purposes.” • Well worth a read. And allow to me beg everyone wjho can turn on their RSS feed to do so; RSS is great, and if the right vertical is populated by RSS, RSS is more effective than search, at least for covering daily beats.

* * *

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From SR:

SR writes: “More rabbit brush.”

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This entry was posted in Water Cooler on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

Subscribe to Post Comments
14 comments

  2. Wukchumni

    Glad you’re feeling better Lambert, self-inflicted wounds are the worst and I did something similar a few months ago in falling out of bed and landing square on my back on the oh so firm ground, ouch-e-wa-wa!

    I expect the Donkey Show to use some word salad magic when talking in regards to ‘Harris Pols’ which sounds an awful lot like Harris Polls’ if you know what I mean and I think you do.

    Reply ↓
    1. gk

      A friend of mine did something similar. But he was in Venice, and ended up in a canal. He couldn’t save the camera (or his phone).

      Reply ↓
  3. Anon

    Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes Interview: Interview

    There were some insights here, but still no sense as to (paraphrasing Lambert) who she is as a person. Credit to her for doing media, even if it might be too late.

    Reply ↓
      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        No no, not to worry. I think the real issue was situational awareness — stepping backward without being clear where my foot would land — and after that I did pretty well, all things considered. There are plenty of people who have “falls” in their homes and break a hip or whatever. I fell backwards onto concrete and got away with insignificant damage (though I must have twisted my body somehow, perhaps to cradle my camera, because I scraped a knee, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had fallen straight back).

        I was walking around pretty slowly last night, though. Now I’m walking OK, so that underlines my good luck.

        Reply ↓
  5. Pat

    The two things that come to mind regarding polls and their accuracy both have to do with selection.

    The methodology of data collection has to be both very complicated and yes, difficult. Phones aren’t answered, including mobile phones, emails are ignored, and how do you get the numbers or emails. Do you stand in the center of a shopping area and approach people, knock on doors, etc. I know there is a lot of supposed evidence that these things are ‘neutral’, but every method I have suggested involves a certain amount of ‘selection’ and exclusivity. And most allow many people to reject taking the polls, for whatever reason. Then there are the questions themselves. It isn’t just push polls that are biased. It is human nature to try to shape your world including asking people what they believe.
    My bias in this is that I believe that most of the people who write these polls, conduct them, and then aggregate the data are PMC or elite. They exclude the questions they need to ask or dismiss the responses they do not wish to understand in regards to Trump’s popularity. They are as captured by the deplorable myth as the most rabid DTS sufferer. I don’t think it is so hard to understand Trump’s popularity. I don’t like him but when I hear his supporters talk about what is important to them I recognize those concerns. I don’t automatically dismiss them as ignorant or racist. Personally I don’t believe either of the major parties has an exclusive on racist members, they just present it differently. Trump’s popularity is grounded in deep unhappiness with the priorities and the actions of the last fifty years that have wrought many problems in their lives. The only reason that they do not understand is that pollsters have recognition bias. A bias that will not allow to consider that their class and their leaders (both Democratic and Republican) have chosen to ignore huge swaths of the population because that might shatter their illusions of their own safety and place in the system.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > My bias in this is that I believe that most of the people who write these polls, conduct them, and then aggregate the data are PMC or elite.

      Yes, a poll should be considered an editorial product. Nothing wrong with that, as long as the editorial stance is clear (and the methodology is not opaque).

      Reply ↓
  6. Lee

    Lambert, if you have chronic back problems, as do I, then a work station using a zero gravity recliner with an overhanging laptop table might be helpful. You could probably get the least expensive but still adequate version of this set up for under two hundred bucks.

    Reply ↓
  8. Mark Gisleson

    For some perspective on how insanely huge Nippon Steel is, this is an aerial view of the world’s largest tire factory, or at least it was when I worked there in the 19 aught ’70s.

    Google Images tried to show me other Bridgestone-Firestone plants but all factories do not look alike, not even close. The complexity that amazed Lambert is replicated inside my old factory where seemingly every department used elaborate equipment like nothing you would find anywhere else. Steel is much more straightforward but it does take up a lot of space. Energy consumed is astronomical both in the production of steel and then the business of moving it around. Steel is heavy!

    Near as I can tell, almost every rectangle is a building. At first glance I thought the smaller ones were trucks! I’m sure there are rail lines everywhere and that in some way accounts for the “wiring” in this chip-like industrial complex. The kind of place where they probably have internal mass trans to help workers get to their assigned areas. There were 2,300 people who worked in the tire factory, I can’t begin to imagine how many workers it takes to keep that “foundry” running around the clock.

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *