Sunday, November 25, 2018

Week-end Wrap - November 24, 2018

Week-end Wrap - November 24, 2018
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

NASA Seismic Probe Insight to Land on Mars
[Machine Design 11-20-18]
After a six-month space flight, Insight is poised to land on Mars for a two-year mission exploring the planet’s geology.
NASA is providing live coverage of the landing, scheduled for Monday. November 26, at about 3:00 p.m. Eastern time.  Scores of viewing events and parties are planning to take advantage of the live feed.
Major viewing events at museums include "Countdown to InSight" at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia; a "NASA Mars Insight Landing Livestream" at The Museum of Flight in Seattle ; a 6-hour pop-up Landing Event at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago; an "InSight Lands on Mars" simulation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; and many more.
In North Carolina, there are two events:

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
11 W Jones St, Raleigh, NC 27601
November 26, 2018 
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM Local Time

Robeson Planetarium
210 E. 2nd St.
Lumberton, NC 28358
November 26, 2018
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Local Time

A Grave Climate Warning, Buried on Black Friday
Robinson Meyer, November 23, 2018 [The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]
In a massive new report, federal scientists contradict President Trump and assert that climate change is an intensifying danger to the United States. Too bad it came out on a holiday.
On Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, the federal government published a massive and dire new report on climate change. The report warns, repeatedly and directly, that climate change could soon imperil the American way of life, transforming every region of the country, imposing frustrating costs on the economy, and harming the health of virtually every citizen. 
Most significantly, the National Climate Assessment—which is endorsed by nasa, noaa, the Department of Defense, and 10 other federal scientific agencies—contradicts nearly every position taken on the issue by President Donald Trump. Where the president has insisted that fighting global warming will harm the economy, the report responds: Climate change, if left unchecked, could eventually cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and kill thousands of Americans to boot. Where the president has said that the climate will “probably” “change back,” the report replies: Many consequences of climate change will last for millennia, and some (such as the extinction of plant and animal species) will be permanent.

It’s not wage rises that are a problem for the economy – it’s the lack of them
Thomas Frank, July 12, 2018 [The Guardian]
The textbook solution to the labour shortage problem – paying workers more – rarely merits more than a line or two, if it’s mentioned at all. So unwilling are business leaders to talk about or consider this obvious answer that Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, scolded them last year: “If you’re not raising wages, then it just sounds like whining.” 
.... think of all that whining we’re hearing from the US’s management, who will apparently blame anyone and do anything to avoid paying workers more. Every labour-management innovation seems to have been designed with this amazing goal in mind. Every great bipartisan political initiative, from free trade to welfare reform, points the same way. When Republicans are in charge, it’s open season on working-class organisations. And you can forget about increases in the minimum wage, regardless of who’s in the White House.... 
This is the central story of the last four decades, the vast social engineering project to which all our recent presidents and both parties have contributed. Next to this stupendous transformation, all the culture wars and flag-fights and stupid tweets fade into insignificance.

The Egregious Lie Americans Tell Themselves
Jacob Bacharach [Truthdig, via Naked Capitalism 11-18-18]
The social wealth of a society is better measured by the quality of its common lived environment than by a consolidated statistical approximation like GDP, or even an attempt at weighted comparisons like so-called purchasing power parity. There is a reason why our great American cities, for all of our supposed wealth, often feel and look so shabby. The money goes elsewhere. Seville, a pretty, modest city of less than a million people in the south of Spain, built 80 kilometers of bike lanes for $40 million in less than two years, and eliminated a lot of ugly, on-street parking in the process. Imagine a commensurate effort in New York City, a far wealthier place on paper. Well, its supposedly liberal mayor is going to give Amazon $1.5 billion in tax breaks instead.... 
Poverty—both individual and social—is a policy, not an accident, and not some kind of natural law. These are deliberate choices about the allocation of resources. They are eminently undoable by modest exercises of political power, although if the state- and city-level Democratic leaders of New York and northern Virginia are the national mold, then our nominally left-wing party is utterly, hopelessly beholden to the upward transfer of social wealth to an extremely narrow cadre of already extremely rich men and women. 
[Jacob Bacharach is the author of the novels "The Doorposts of Your House and on Your Gates" and "The Bend of the World." His most recent book is "A Cool Customer: Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking."]

The Global Financial Crime Wave Is No Accident
Nat Dyner, November 24, 2018 [openDemocracy, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]
One reason all this financial crime is tolerated is that thinkers who shine a light on its systemic nature have been erased from the record. Top of my list of neglected economic superstars is Professor Susan Strange of the London School of Economics, one of the founders of the field of international political economy. In a series of ground-breaking books – States and Markets, The Retreat of the State and Mad Money – Strange showed how epidemic levels of financial crime were a consequence of specific political decisions. 
“This financial crime wave beginning in the 1970s and getting bigger in later years is not accidental,” Strange wrote. 
It would have hardly been possible to design a system, she said, “that was better suited than the global banking system to the needs of drug dealers and other illicit traders who want to conceal from the police the origin of their large illegal profits.”\ 
For Strange, money laundering, tax evasion and public embezzlement were a result of the collapse in the 1970s of the post-war financial order. Here are four ways she showed how politics and the financial crime epidemic were intimately connected.
See also my Wall Street's Fraud and Illusion of Social Utility from July 2016.

The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager
[Vox, via Naked Capitalism 11-23-18]

Subprime Rises: Credit Card Delinquencies Blow Through Financial-Crisis Peak at the 4,705 Smaller US Banks
[Wolf Street, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18]

Wealth cannot save you from climate change
Ryan Cooper [The Week, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18] 
 “The bedrock reality here is that wealth is a claim on the material resources that are still socially developed. Money gives you power over other people — the ability to buy goods and services that others work to create. If those other people are harmed badly enough, that wealth could easily evaporate into nothing.”

[Data for Progress, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18] 
“The magnitude of change necessary to halt global warming in the next decade demands nothing short of a revolution in how countries consume resources, especially the United States. The US finds itself at or near the top of any list calculating contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions: cumulative, current, per capita, or consumption-based. The suggestion that the US tops these lists as a result of individual failures to make sustainable choices reveals a willful ignorance of the policies and power interests pushing carbon-intensive lifestyles. Focusing on the role of individual choices distracts from the true potential for change, which lies in policies that allow for, incentivize, or require lower-carbon behaviors. tPresently in the United States, a large proportion of CO2 emissions comes from electricity production and transportation. Lists of ways to fight climate change miss the critical fact that individuals cannot, on their own, build wind turbines, close coal power plants, protect carbon-absorbing forests, or expand subway systems. These actions require government policy and investment.
Why do billions of people still lack basic sanitation? 
[BBC, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]

[LRB, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]

The IRS hired private debt collectors who are squeezing poor people and hurricane victims
[Quartz, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]
Two US senators pushed the IRS to outsource its debt collection to private companies through this program: Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York who has hailed the initiative for bringing jobs to one of the poorest parts of his state. As if by coincidence, three of the four debt-collecting companies contracted by the IRS are based in Iowa and New York. They declined to comment on the program.

Democrats need a bold agenda. Here’s what they should do in the first 100 days of Congress.
Bernie Sanders [Washington Post, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]
[ABC Australia, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]
Distorted clickbait headline, but good quotes from Stephanie Kelton (explanations, not one-liners).

[Benjamin Studebaker, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]


American Politics Could Use More Conflict 
[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-18] 
an ideology... of Washington’s most powerful and influential figures, whatever their professed party allegiance: namely, that there is a phenomenon called “tribalism” (or alternatively, “partisanship”) that is needlessly dividing the country and obstructing progress — a march towards some common interest that presumably consists of its negation....

By my estimation, no other single narrative has quite the same hold on the political imaginations of mainstream commentators, politicians, and pundits. Some mostly cosmetic liberal or conservative texturing aside, it’s one that is remarkably prevalent among two factions with supposedly intractable differences....

Among other things, David Frum’s bestselling book partly accounts for the Trump presidency by decrying the two major parties’ failure to compromise and find common ground. Faced with a majority Republican Senate bent on pushing through its destructive, plutocratic agenda at all costs, Chuck Schumer has taken to complaining about the lack of inter-party cooperation when it comes to cutting taxes and periodically suggesting he may help fund Trump’s infamous border wall. No sooner had the Democrats been declared the winners of this month’s midterm elections and Nancy Pelosi was already preaching the “bipartisan marketplace of ideas” and talking vaguely of unity in place of the more aggressive, adversarial strategy many Democratic voters would undoubtedly like to see.

 Why Losing Out on Amazon HQ2 Isn’t So Bad for Cities
[Governing.com, via Naked Capitalism 11-18-18]
....a new study from the Urban Institute suggests that landing such a large corporation isn't actually the best way to build a local economy and spur job growth. Instead, the report says, cities shou ld focus on growing existing local firms, not trying to lure out-of-town companies and poaching firms from other cities. “Most job expansion and contractions come from birth and deaths of homegrown businesses or expansion or contractions of existing home-based businesses,” says Megan Randall, a research analyst with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and a co-author of the report.
The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager
By Chavie Lieber, November 23, 2018 [Vox, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]
What was your job title and salary?
I was an area manager, inside a new facility that had about 1,000 associates. I oversaw the packers, managing about 55 associates. My salary was $80,000, which is on the higher end. They gave me more because I said I wouldn’t accept anything less, since I had a master’s. 
Were there a lot of US vets working at your facility?
Yes, it’s a pretty typical thing for Amazon. It’s easy for Amazon to hire us because they know vets are willing to shut up and cooperate. In my opinion, Amazon is preying on the work-life balance issue that the military has, and feeds off the rigid order the Army teaches. The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse experience at Amazon. It’s way more cutthroat.... 
Are all those reports about timed breaks and surveillance true?
Yes, it is all extremely accurate. We had to track how long someone hadn’t packed or picked something. If we saw that five minutes went by without any activity from an associate, we were supposed to go over and talk to that person. Everything is tracked inside Amazon because all the packages are being scanned and have time stamps. I would watch the internal system on my laptop and monitor all the packers to make sure there were no dead spots in packing rates that might be due to a system problem. 
We didn’t specifically have timed bathroom breaks, but the break system was rigid. Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.” If they did nothing for a set period of time, the system would note they were off task. If they had an emergency they needed to leave the area for, I could scan their badge or go back and change their time off task later to an actual task, but bathroom breaks weren’t something we were supposed to change time off task for.
If someone was out for more than 30 minutes, it was a first writeup, unless they’d been written up for time off task before, then it would be a progressive writeup. If they were off task for more than an hour, it was an immediate firing. 
It was really difficult for me because the firings were automatic in the system in general, and I had no control over helping out associates. I had to fire people multiple times, and they were devastated because they counted on the health insurance....
Do you think Amazon could have trained you better as a manager?
Amazon never trained us in how to communicate with associates. We weren’t trained to be understanding of their struggles or communicate with them. It was all about mechanics. And Amazon has built the system so that managers and workers have entirely different incentives. Workers constantly feel like their jobs are on the line, because they are. We were supposed to be observing their [packing] rate and not be concerned with how hard it is to pack things. Managers were pressured to identify the weak links and get them out so that we can have a faster rate. It’s a pressure cooker environment, and that’s what you have to be to get to Amazon’s level of efficiency. 
Would Amazon be a better place to work if they took a more humane approach to their warehouses?
It could help, but I also think that would be a Band-Aid for the real problem, which is that the workers need to unionize. It’s immoral at this point, considering we all basically got anti-union training....
What do you want people to know about Amazon and Black Friday?
People need to know that their free shipping comes at a human cost. They might be shopping for things that are cheaper and arrive faster, but those packages are artificially cheap. They are being paid for in other ways. People who are watching the expansion of Amazon need to know that it’s not necessarily a good thing. Sure, you’ll get cheaper and faster packages. But Amazon runs on a logistics system that’s based off working people to the bare bones.
‘We Are Not Robots’: Amazon Workers Walk out on Black Friday over Low Wages and ‘Inhuman Conditions’
Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. [Alternet, via Naked Capitalism 11-25-18]
Amazon workers across Europe staged a walkout on Black Friday—when retailers offer major deals to holiday season shoppers the day after Thanksgiving—to protest low wages as well as “inhuman conditions” at company warehouses. 
“It is one of the days that Amazon has most sales, and these are days when we can hurt more and make ourselves be heard because the company has not listened to us and does not want to reach any agreement.”
—Eduardo Hernandez, Amazon worker in Spain 
Eduardo Hernandez, a 38-year-old employee at an Amazon logistics depot in Madrid, Spain—where about 90 percent of staff walked off the job—told the Associated Press that the action was intentionally scheduled on the popular shopping day to negatively impacting the company’s profits.

Amazon Gets $3 Billion in NY Tax Breaks While Underfunded Public Transport Enters ‘Death Spiral’
[Real News Network, 11-23-18]
Prof. Richard Wolff explains why the $3 billion subsidy for one of the world’s largest corporations is a terrible waste of public money

Antitrust and How Kleptocracy Corrupts What Markets are Supposed to do Well
[Real News Network, 11-23-18]
Bert Foer, Senior Fellow at the American Antitrust Institute speaks at the forum, “Destroying the Myths of Market Fundamentalism,” held in Washington DC, on October 19, 2018

How Fraud Corrodes Weak Market Regulations Governed by Market Fundamentalism
[Real News Network, 11-24-18]
Prof. Bill Black’s talk at the forum, “Destroying the Myths of Market Fundamentalism,” held in Washington DC, on October 19, 2018

Ralph Nader: Destroying the Myths of Market Fundamentalism
[Real News Network, 11-23-18]
Market fundamentalism’s ideological tyranny is metastasizing, afflicting the young, silencing politicians and hoodwinking the media. Too few progressives have a handle on the powerful arguments that can be made to counter market fundamentalism. It’s time to confront the myths with compelling empirical reality that deconstructs and destroys the plutocratic hoax.

The Biggest Threat to Free Speech No One Is Talking About
[Truthdig, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18]
Since the repeal in June of Obama-era rules guaranteeing net neutrality, websites like Truthdig, Democracy Now!, Common Dreams and more risk being pushed into an internet slow lane that could severely hamper their readership, if not drive them out of business entirely. For Jeff Cohen, editor and co-founder of the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting(FAIR), it may be the most urgent threat to the First Amendment no one is talking about.
Matt Stoller [BuzzFeed, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18] 
Chinese journalist Liu Hu always knew he’d have trouble with the authorities; he had been exposing corruption and wrongdoing for years. He was used to being hassled with regular fines and forced apologies imposed by his authoritarian government. He nevertheless persisted in truth-telling. 
One day in 2017, Hu logged onto a travel site, but couldn’t book a flight because the site said he was “not qualified.” Soon he discovered he was blocked from buying property, using the high-speed train network, or getting a loan. And there was nothing he could do about it. His rights to essential goods and services were now circumscribed through an algorithm designed to discriminate against the 7.5 million people on China's “Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement” list. 
Welcome to the Chinese “social credit score” system, whose goal is to rank China’s 1.4 billion people. Conceptually, it is not that different from a financial credit score in the US. But the social credit score includes things like political outspokenness, shopping habits, friends, travel habits, and anything the authorities want to encourage or discourage. This score then fine-tunes your access to essential social goods based on a discriminatory algorithm. 
Such a nightmarish system could never, of course, happen in the United States. Or could it? Three recent decisions in Washington suggest it is not as far-fetched as we might imagine, with both our courts and our government effectively endorsing the way a handful of giant companies are centralizing control over our society.

What the Big Tech Companies Know About You
by Barry Ritholtz, November 24, 2018 [The Big Picture]
A HUGE graphic that shows exactly how much of your private life really is not private anymore.

[San Jose Mercury-News, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18]
“The tech industry should throw its full support behind Bay Area Congressman Ro Khanna’s Internet Bill of Rights proposal, which would end the United States’ distinction as the only major developed nation without fundamental online user protections…. 6) To access and use the internet without internet service providers blocking, throttling, engaging in paid prioritization, or otherwise unfairly favoring content, applications, services, or devices.”
[Climate Liability News, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-18] 
Jerri-Lynn Scofield notes: Don’t underestimate the power of state AGs– they brought us the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
In four formerly reliably Republican states—Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada—GOP attorneys general were ousted by Democratic challengers. It is a development, observers say, that represents a stunning defeat for the oil and gas industry, which poured millions of dollars into those campaigns. And it could alter the landscape for several high-profile cases that seek to hold the industry accountable for the ravages of climate change. 
“Democratic AGs now hold 27 offices,” said Lizzie Ulmer, communications director for the Democratic Attorneys General Association. “That puts us in the majority.”
The Democrats’ gains on Nov. 6 give them precisely the slim majority the Republicans used to hold. Among the ousted were some staunch supporters of the fossil fuel industry.
The question is whether this new coalition of Democratic attorneys general will act en masse, launching investigations and filing suits as a coordinated bloc, as their Republican predecessors did. 
Throughout most of the Obama administration, the GOP attorneys general formed a united front. They challenged the Democratic administration on a host of issues, from health care to critical environmental issues like the Clean Power Plan, which sought to leverage market forces to cut carbon emissions, and the Waters of United States rule that gives federal regulators a larger role in regulating tributaries to major navigable waterways, which previously had been beyond federal reach.
“They were very coordinated in their efforts to be a bloc and to be obstructionist during the Obama administration,” Ulmer said.
These Unheralded Democratic Wins Could Reshape Voting Rights Across the Country 
[Mother Jones, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-18]  
“[Three Democrats] took over secretary of state jobs previously held by Republicans [in Arizona, Colorado, and Michigan]. These races were unheralded next to congressional and gubernatorial races across the country, but these officials now have the power to enforce state voting laws in 2020, advocating and implementing practices that will make it easier to vote in critical swing states.
GA Governor: “Stacey Abrams: The Exit Interview”
[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-18]
“The more than 200 polling precincts that were closed, the 53,000+ registrations that were suspended and the untold thousands of voters who were purged from the rolls were not a specific attack on the Abrams campaign. The voter suppression we witnessed in Georgia was not happening because Abrams is a black woman; this was a consequence of a Republican Party that has taken advantage of a neutered Voting Rights Act and shortchanged millions of their small-d democratic voice.

As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom 
Glenn Greenwald [Intercept, via Naked Capitalism 11-18-18] 
Important. Greenwald makes clear that too many Democrats misguidedly support targeting Assange, for the role they think Wikileaks played in thwarting HRC’s installation in the position that she – and many of her enablers – believed was her due.
Closing the Racial Wealth Gap: A Conversation 
[Belt Magazine, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18]  
“The real estate business as a whole has explicitly kept Black and brown families down. Even though we are repairing credit and finding employment and getting families prepared, we have way too many homes vacant in our community. The value of our homes is almost flat, while in other areas of the city the value of the home increases. The whole appraisal and valuation of the homes in our community are impediments and stacked against us. Additionally, some seniors have beautiful brick bungalows, two-flats and three-flats. We’re having to take out a second mortgage or refinance, and it’s not to invest in something else. Our money often is used to hire a lawyer to address our son’s or grandson’s issue with the criminal justice system. Or it can be something as simple as a parking ticket or a red light violation. (Note: A ProPublic Illinois investigation this year showed how motorist ticket debt is disproportionately driving Black Chicagoans into bankruptcy.)”
Paul Krugman explains why single-payer health care is entirely achievable in the U.S. — and how to get there AlterNet. And the Quora session: Session with Paul Krugman
[via Naked Capitalism 11-20-18]

Why the Perfect Red-State Democrat Lost
[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18]

 
How the Democrats Took Back Michigan
Edward-Isaac Dovere [The Atlantic]
By April 2017, organizers were knocking on doors all over the state, earlier than the party had ever activated before. It had always waited to see who the candidates were, what went down in the primaries. It had always sent people out with a list of talking points to promote. This time, they were told to have a conversation, to find out what people were talking about. They weren’t sure they knew anymore. 
Each organizer got a handheld device to input notes from the field remotely into the central voter database—devices the Clinton campaign had deemed too costly, opting instead for clipboards of pages of information that got taken down, but never entered anywhere. Organizers knocked on 180,000 doors, made another 20,000 calls, and got through to about 48,000 people. The answers that came back: Health care was far and away the top concern, followed by roads and infrastructure and the water in Flint, then education....
And, by contrast:

There Was A Red Wave--In Ohio, and Kicking Off Ohio Day At DownWith Tyranny
[DownWithTyranny,11-24-18]
Does Ohio have the worst state Democratic Party in the nation? With so state parties at rock-bottom, there's too much competition to say precisely, but the Ohio party is about as bad as it gets... and has been for longer than anyone I know can remember. "Many Democrats," wrote John Russo, "seem ready to give up on Ohio. Michael Halle, who coordinated Hillary Clinton’s battleground state strategy before managing Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray’s campaign this year, told the New York Times that “it was time for Democrats to jettison Iowa and Ohio in future campaigns in favor of Arizona and Georgia.” Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri now says that that the Clinton campaign should have spent less time and money in Ohio and spent more in Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas. Speaking from ground zero for Democratic crossover voters in Youngstown, Mahoning County Democratic Chairperson David Betras commented after the midterms that it wasn’t the people who had left the party. Instead, Betras stated, the Democratic Party had left Ohio." 
Jennifer Palmieri is a moron and being quoted by anyone just demeans their work. She should get a job working as the spokesperson for the Arkansas Democratic Party so no one ever has to hear from her again. As for Halle, jettisoning Iowa, where the Democrats did, across the board, incredibly better than he did for Cordray-- after all Iowa Dems flipped half the state's congressional seats and came close to totally wiping out the GOP-- no one's jettisoning them for Georgia anytime soon.
[Independent Voter Network, via Naked Capitalism 11-20-18]
“Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, Brand New Congress and the Democratic Socialists of America endorsed a combined 107 candidates for Congress this year. Forty-four of them won their primaries and only 12 won their general elections. Five of those 12 were already incumbents. Five more of them were longtime party politicians in line for higher office, rather than insurgent candidates. Only two of them were actually opposed by the party and unseated establishment Democrats in the primaries — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. There are 435 members of Congress…. As a result, the blue wave is a corporate wave that has swept in the same kind of Democratic politicians that drove working people into Donald Trump’s arms after eight years of Obama.”


“Democratic Donors Suggest They May Withhold Donations If Nancy Pelosi Isn’t Elected Speaker” [Huffington Post, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18] 
From their wonderfully clarifying “Open Letter” to the House Democratic Caucus: 
Because of her diligence, her powers of persuasion, her enormous effectiveness and her adherence to our values, we have provided a portion of the financial resources required to be competitive cycle after cycle. We look forward to a day when we achieve the reforms necessary to reduce greatly the impact of money in elections. But until that day we must do what is required to contest the Republicans on an equal playing field. 
When it came to funding this recent effort to retake the Majority, would we have contributed anywhere near as much as we did if Nancy was not the Leader? We think not…. 
Inserting ourselves into internal House Politics is not something we would normally do. But if we lose Nancy, and the new Leader can only raise half the funding, the Republicans will not reduce their funding and we will be back to the structural disadvantage that prevailed for many years.
The Democrats’ White-People Problem
Joan C. Williams [The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]
....Trump’s carefully timed injections of racism: the Muslim ban; his shocking comments after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia; his unsolicited advice to the NFL on how to handle player protests; family separations and the weaponization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These gestures may seem like pandering to racists. But in truth they are aimed equally at the left, in an effort to keep liberals’ attention focused on race rather than class. If Democrats were to focus more attention on economic issues, they just might be able to win back the non-elite white voters they’ve been bleeding for half a century. People like Bannon seem to realize this. If Democrats want to regain the presidency in 2020, they need to realize it too.

We’re Headed Toward Perpetual Conflict and Cataclysmic War
Maj. Danny Sjursen, US Army [Truthdig, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18]


Frustrated by its inability to close the deal on any of the indecisive counterterror wars of this century, Washington had decided it was time to prepare for “real” war with a host of imagined enemies. This process had, in fact, been developing right under our noses for quite a while. You remember in 2013 when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began talking about a “pivot” to Asia — an obvious attempt to contain China. Obama also sanctioned Moscow and further militarized Europe in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Crimea. President Trump, whose “instincts,” on the campaign trail, were to pull out of America’s Middle Eastern quagmires, turned out to be ready to escalate tensions with China, Russia, Iran, and even (for a while) North Korea.
Volkswagen AG will put nearly a third of the $150 billion it is investing over the next five years toward the development of electric cars, self-driving vehicles and digital services
[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism 11-19-18]
“Volkswagen’s budget underscores the challenge posed by technology, as electric vehicles are set to go mainstream and self-driving cars get closer hitting the streets. That’s triggering upheaval in automotive supply chains as tech companies move into the sector and the cost of new technologies pushes conventional auto makers to cooperate with competitors. Volkswagen plans to build 16 electric-vehicle factories world-wide, largely by converting existing plants, and acquire battery capacity to build millions of electric vehicles. That will push expansion of the charging infrastructure that could spur moves toward electric trucks.”
[Boing Boing, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]
In The State of 4G Pricing, Finnish researchers Rewheel identify the US as having some of the most expensive wireless data (fifth highest prices) in the world, and they predict things will get worse thanks to looming mergers in the already super-concentrated wireless sector.
[Science, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18]

[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18]

World’s first full-body medical scanner generates astonishing 3D images
[New Atlas, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18]

Hybrid Propulsion Pushing Pace Of Electric Aircraft Development
Graham Warwick, November 21, 2018 [Aviation Week & Space Technology]
An odd-looking little airplane’s first flight in Austria on Oct. 31 was something of a milestone for aviation. That 20-min. flight from Wiener Neustadt East Airport was heralded as the first in the world by an aircraft with multi-engine hybrid-electric propulsion.

The modified Diamond DA40 piston single represents the latest step down a rapidly unfolding path from very light, short-range battery-powered electric aircraft to hybrid- and distributed-electric regional aircraft and—perhaps, in the longer term—commercial airliners.

The aircraft was modified by Diamond Aircraft Industries and electric powertrain developer Siemens under the HEMEP project (for Hybrid-Electric Multi-Engine Plane) funded by Germany’s LuFo aeronautics research program and Take Off, Austria’s equivalent.

The DA40’s piston engine has been replaced with two 75-kW electric motors, mounted on a canard foreplane and powered by a 110-kW Austro Engines AE300 diesel generator installed in the nose. Two 12-kWh batteries in the rear cabin provide stored energy. The demonstrator has an endurance of about 30 min. on batteries, but up to 5 hr. with the hybrid system....
Hybrid is more complex than conventional piston or turbine propulsion, but it does offer advantages, such as combining quiet, zero-emissions takeoff and landing on electric power with longer-range cruise on liquid fuels. Batteries and electric motors also can be used to boost power for takeoff and climb, allowing use of smaller engines burning less fuel, or as a backup in case the engine fails in flight.

First ever plane with no moving parts takes flight
[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]
The first ever “solid state” plane, with no moving parts in its propulsion system, has successfully flown for a distance of 60 metres, proving that heavier-than-air flight is possible without jets or propellers. 
The flight represents a breakthrough in “ionic wind” technology, which uses a powerful electric field to generate charged nitrogen ions, which are then expelled from the back of the aircraft, generating thrust.

Ion drive: The first flight
[You Tube, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]

Guy Norris,  November 20, 2018 [Aviation Week & Space Technology]
The airframe of the first Boeing 777-9 flight test aircraft has been completed in the company’s Everett, Washington, facility marking a key milestone towards rollout and first flight of the initial 777X family variant in early 2019.... Five 777-9 airframes, four for flight testing and one for fatigue tests, are currently in various stages of assembly....


Bart proposes second tunnel under San Francisco Bay
[Railway Age 11-22-18]
Proposals for a second rail tunnel beneath San Francisco Bay were discussed at a meeting of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) board of directors on November 15. Construction of the Second Transbay Rail Crossing could begin within a decade. Full Article

Guangzhou begins construction on six metro lines
[Railway Age 11-22-18]
Work on six new metro lines and extensions in Guangzhou, southeast China, was officially launched on November 19 with a ceremony at University South Station on Line 12. The Yuan 100bn ($US 14.4bn) expansion will add 110km to Guangzhou’s 400km network. Full Article
Sound Transit breaks ground for Tacoma Link Extension
[Railway Age 11-21-18]
The Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority has started the construction of its 2.4-mile Hilltop Tacoma Link Extension, which will extend the current rail line from the Theatre District in downtown Tacoma to the Stadium District and Hilltop neighborhoods. Full Article
Amtrak touts performance, financial records
[Railway Age 11-19-18]
Amtrak announced preliminary “record revenue and earnings” for its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2018. “Strong management and improved product delivery and customer service led the company to its best operating performance in company history." Full Article
I doubt this will deter Republicans, conservatives and libertarians from continuing to promote their narrative of Amtrak as a failure, which should no longer receive public "subsidies." 


[New York Times via Naked Capitalism 11-24-18]
Sperm whale found dead with 13 pounds of plastic in its stomach
[National Geographic, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-18]

Declassified 1949 CIA manual gives warning to disinformation on social media
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-18]


And a heads up: I've been slowly working on a summary on a series of SplinterNews articles that Vicki Boyer pointed to about a week ago. I have tentatively entitled it "Democratic Party betrayal of workers and blacks led to Republican takeover of North Carolina ." Here's a preview:


When Murdock fired 2,000 workers and cut pension benefits by a full third, he tried to quell the uproar by promising to pay out $800,000 in pension funds to 9,000 workers.  That would be $89 per worker. Standing at his side appealing to workers to remain calm was Democratic U.S. Senator and former governor Terry Sanford.

Senator Terry Sanford, left, and David Murdock, right, trying to calm mill workers 
Posted by Tony Wikrent at 12:04 PM

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