by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus
Lawler: US Death Rate Up, Life Expectancy Down in 2017
[Calculated Risk, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
“What is especially striking about this table is the sharp increase in death rates among 25-44 year old over the last five years.”One part of the U.S. yield curve just inverted; what does that mean?
[Reuters, 12-6-18]
....yield curve inversions - when shorter-dated securities yield more than longer maturities - have preceded every U.S. recession in recent memory by anywhere from 15 months to around two years. “The yield curve has sent a chill down investors’ spines in regard to the future outlook of the U.S. economy,” said Chad Morganlander, senior portfolio manager at Washington Crossing Advisors in New Jersey.13% Of Americans Will Boycott Christmas Spending
[Safe Haven, Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-3.
“The 2018 Bankrate Holiday Gifting Survey showing that 13 percent of American shoppers are planning to completely boycott holiday spending…. Despite growing consumer resistance, 45 percent of shoppers will still spend beyond their comfort zone, says Bankrate’s survey. And in this race to show their love by gifts—where larger gifts apparently mean more love–Americans are prepared to plunge themselves into heavy debt."If that percentage tripled, to over a third of USA shoppers boycotting holiday shopping, it would wreak havoc in the boardrooms of hundreds of really large corporations.
Nearsighted Neoliberalism Helped Mobilize Today's Far Right
Susan Crawford, November 21, 2018 [Wired, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
Back in 1994, the Social Democrats decided they’d get more votes if they lobbied for privatizing the then-government owned telephone monopoly. Following the Clinton administration’s lead in the US, they supported Germany’s 1996 removal of all regulations from telecommunications.
Twenty years later, the result of this free-market celebration in Germany and in America has been the worst of all worlds: After a tsunami of consolidation, an oligopolistic handful of companies has divided markets and, because they are subject to neither oversight nor real competition. They feel no particular pressure to upgrade to fiber-optic lines or charge low prices. Today, German homes have, at most, a choice between a not-so-modern copper phone line and a local cable company with an exclusive agreement with their local housing association. Deutsche Telekom is heavily dominant and very slow to upgrade to fiber connections, preferring to "sweat" its existing copper assets as long as possible to avoid increased capital investments.
And where Deutsche Telekom is installing fiber, the company's CEO Tim Hoettges has called for a complete regulatory holiday, as it is loath to share its network with competitors. Germany's engineering industry is alarmed; automated manufacturing can't happen at scale without world-class connectivity.
The trouble is, for many government leaders born in 1964 or earlier in either Germany or America, "freeing the market" from the dumb overhang of government involvement is an unquestioned article of faith.
....political parties need to propose a new vision of the appropriate role of government quickly. It’s necessary in both Germany and America that people come forward who haven’t ridden the wave of faith in the market throughout their careers. This will require the departure of the elders to welcome these new ways of interpreting the world.Crawford explicitly identifies the root problem and its solution: We need to abandon the “unquestioned article of faith” of “freeing the market from the dumb overhang of government involvement, and ” propose a new vision of the appropriate role of government.”
But it is not really a “new” vision. It is simply a return to insisting on the “promotion of the General Welfare” as the paramount object of government.
But the left cripples itself by believing that the present systems -- which have “cut social services to the bone, lowered taxes, celebrated public-private partnerships, and enthusiastically embraced the idea of limited government—eliminating hundreds of civil service jobs in the process” -- are following “original intent” of the founding of these governments. If these systems are the “original intent” then WHAT, I must ask, has been the purpose of the incessant multi-billion dollar lobbying and “education” efforts of the Smith-Richardsons, Kochs, Adelsons, Milton Friedmans, Mont Pelerin Societies, American Enterprise Insititutes, and the rest of the ghoulish gang of “small government” ideologues who insist selfishness is a virtue?
Has their purpose been to preserve the “capitalist” original intent from the “road to serfdom” of the modern welfare state?
Or has it been to reinterpret history, to squash the idea of republicanism and the promotion of the General Welfare, and impose their own alien, reactionary, feudalistic ideas, which limit and cripple government?
History has been a war of ideas, and the purest form of an idea has seldom been embodied in reality. We are left to pick and choose from the vast depository of the historical record those actions, statements, and conditions that we each think best conforms to our preferred interpretation.
Here is what I have chosen:
“In a republic “each individual gives up all private interest that is not consistent with the general good, the interest of the whole body.” For the republican patriots of 1776 the commonweal was all encompassing—a transcendent object with a unique moral worth that made partial considerations fade into insignificance. “Let regard be had only to the good of the whole” was the constant exhortation by publicists and clergy. Ideally, republicanism obliterated the individual. “A Citizen,” said Sam Adams, “owes everything to the Commonwealth.” “Every man in a republic,” declared Benjamin Rush, “is public property. His time, his talents—his youth—his manhood—his old age—nay more, life, all belong to his country.” “No man is a true republican,” wrote a Pennsylvanian in 1776, “that will not give up his single voice to that of the public.”
— Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic, pp. 60-61.
Does that sound like capitalism to you?
“The great fault of the existing Confederacy is its inactivity. It has never been a complaint against Congress that they have governed overmuch. The complaint has been that they have governed too little. To remedy this defect, we were sent here.”
— James Wilson, USA Constitutional Convention, Saturday July 14, 1787.
“The great fault of the existing Confederacy is its inactivity. It has never been a complaint against Congress that they have governed overmuch. The complaint has been that they have governed too little. To remedy this defect, we were sent here.”
— James Wilson, USA Constitutional Convention, Saturday July 14, 1787.
Does that sound like "small government" to you?
George Monbiot [Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
Jim Hightower [FAIR., via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
Volcker's solution destroyed the American working class for a generation. Unemployment peaked as high or higher than in the Great Recession. Unions, already in decline, went into free fall. Volcker explicitly viewed breaking the power of organized labor as a critical piece of his anti-inflation crusade. "The standard of living of the average American has to decline," Volcker declared shortly after becoming Fed Chair. Trace the modern trends in wage stagnation and inequality, and they lead back to Volcker's recession.
There's also the lesson Volcker taught the Fed. In many ways, the institutional culture of the Fed remains fixated on the moral narrative of the 1970s inflation and guided by Volcker's tough-love disciple. Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, Volcker's successor, argued that keeping workers "traumatized" was key to restraining prices.I would be even more harsh: Volcker was faced with a choice between usury and real economic production, and he choose usury.
The details are clearly presented in Willian Greider’s The Secrets of the Temple. Volcker forcibly “advised” state governments to repeal their usury laws. Volcker granted millions of dollars in support to large banks that got caught in the Hunt brothers’ squeeze on silver. Volcker at about the same time rejected giving millions of dollars in support to Chrysler. Volcker lauded and proclaimed the inventive genius of new financial products, such as interest rate future and swaps. Volcker refused to follow the evidence that much of the funding for mergers and acquisitions and leveraged buyouts was coming from organized crime.
Why “Green Growth” Is an Illusion
Enno Schröder, Senior Lecturer of Economics, Delft University of Technology. [Institute for New Economic Thinking, via Naked Capitalism 12-6-18]
Note, for example, the oracle of speculation lamenting the rose of "state support" for industry in the next entry, below.
Our statistical analysis shows that, to avoid a climate catastrophe, the future must be radically different from the past. Climate stabilization requires a fundamental disruption of hydrocarbon energy, production and transportation infrastructures, a massive upsetting of vested interests in fossil-fuel energy and industry, and large-scale public investment—and all this should be done sooner than later. Steffen’s analogy of massive mobilization in the face of an existential threat is fundamentally correct. The problem for most economists is that it suggests directional thrust by state actors, smacks of planning, coordination, and public interventionism, and goes against the market-oriented belief system of most economists....
We thus have to discard the prevalent market-oriented belief system, in which government intervention and non-market modes of coordination and decision-making are inferior to the market mechanism and will mostly fail to achieve what they intend to bring about. Without a concerted (global) policy shift to deep de-carbonization (Sachs 2016; Fankhauser and Jotzo 2017), a rapid transition to renewable energy sources (Peters et al. 2017), structural change in production, consumption and transportation (Steffen et al. 2018), and a transformation of finance (Mazzucato and Semieniuk 2018), the decoupling will not even come close to what is needed (e.g. Storm 2017).
Again, it's a question of ideology of preferred political economy. The "radically different" future needed is really not that radically different. We need to disenthrall ourselves of the neoliberal idea of government as a barrier and obstacle to the accumulation of wealth, and return to the historically accurate idea of government as the primary means of the people to compel markets and the rich and the powerful to serve a useful public purpose.
[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-3-18.
“State support for maritime business is rising as countries look to protect national interests and extend their influence abroad, …even as operators struggle to recover from a financial battering and structural upheaval… The latest examples are coming in Asia, where China’s support of its maritime sector is part of the country’s massive trade infrastructure initiative. South Korea, meantime, is lining up new aid for its shipyards and container operations as Seoul seeks to protect employment in an industry critical to its export-focused economy.”And note in the next entry, the author explicitly identifies ideology as the reason why Republicans / conservatives / libertarians want to smash Social Security.
Trump’s budget director reveals plans to attack Social Security and Medicare
[Alternet, 11-30-18]
Speaking at a conference of state legislators hosted by the anti-government American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”), Mulvaney just revealed that he plans first to go after what he sees as more politically achievable cuts. He explained that the next step, presumably after Trump is in his second term, will be for the administration not just to cut these programs but to end them as we know them.
Mulvaney is apparently so eager to go after our earned benefits that he threw the point into a speech to state legislators, even though both Social Security and Medicare are federal programs....
The private sector is incapable of providing the wage and health insurance that Social Security and Medicare provide as efficiently, universally, securely or effectively as the federal government. Insurance works best when the greatest numbers of people are covered. The only entity that can require that everyone is covered and pays premiums as soon as they start working is the federal government. That is one of the reasons both Social Security and Medicare work so well.
And that is why Mulvaney, McConnell, and other opponents of these programs want to end them. These programs put the lie to their ideological zealotry, which insists that the private sector is always better than government.
Decades ago, opponents of these programs were forthright that their objections were ideological. They did not see the creation and administration of universal insurance programs as an appropriate role for the federal government. But the American people overwhelmingly disagreed, so this argument was utterly unsuccessful....
Mulvaney, McConnell, and other opponents hide their straightforward ideological opposition. Rather, these opponents subversively seek to undermine confidence in Social Security’s and Medicare’s future by asserting that both programs are unaffordable.
Worse, in their efforts to end Social Security and Medicare, they seek to turn Americans against each other. They tell us that seniors are taking from children, that people with disabilities are taking from seniors.
Senate Republican warns of civil war if Democrats continue supporting the Federal government
[DailyKos, 12-02-18]
Senator Mike Lee of Utah delivered the opening speech at The Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention on November 15, 2018. (The Federalist Society has worked for decades to successfully pollute the judiciary with the anti-republican and anti-democratic ideology of market fundamentalism.)
Bernie Sanders: Concentrated Wealth is Concentrated Power
[DailyKos, 12-02-18]
Senator Mike Lee of Utah delivered the opening speech at The Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention on November 15, 2018. (The Federalist Society has worked for decades to successfully pollute the judiciary with the anti-republican and anti-democratic ideology of market fundamentalism.)
These and the knotty, interconnected problems of welfare dependents and healthcare would all be more easily untied if 50 diverse and motivated states were working on them; 50 diverse states where, by the way, populations disperse differently, healthcare is provided differently in each locality, and each state has more of an ability to decide what solutions will most benefit their respective populations.This is exactly the same argument made after the Civil War by defeated Confederate leaders, including the Klu Klux Klan.
[Huffington Post, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18].
“‘The notion of being able to just write a check for that much to help pay for ads and such ― that would be completely out of my abilities,’ said Shawna Roberts, who quit her part-time job at McDonald’s to run as the Democratic candidate in Ohio’s 6th congressional district. ‘It’s absurd to imagine people who don’t have deep pockets doing it on their own,’ she added. ‘And yet, it’s one of the things that we have to do if we’re going to have an actual democracy that actually functions instead of what we have right now, which is an oligarchy without the name.'”
Sanders: ” My vision is pretty simple. My vision is that we have got to have the guts to take on Wall Street, take on the pharmaceutical industry, take on the insurance industry, take on the 1 percent, create an economy that works for all. And while we do that, we bring our people, and that is black, and white, and Latino, and Native American, and Asian American together. I think that’s the way you do it. And we’re beginning, beginning, beginning to see that. We’re seeing great young candidates who didn’t wait on line for 20 years to get permission to run, but kind of jumped in and beat some long-term incumbents. They’re saying, hey, I come from the community. I know what’s going on in this community, and I’m going to fight for working people, and I’m not afraid to take on big money. We’re seeing that. We got to see more of that.”Concentrated wealth, and how it misdirects government of, by, and for the people:
Our “bipartisan” Congressional orientation is cohosted by a corporate lobbyist group. Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn’t told to us in advance.
Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where‘s labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?
Rep. Mark Pocan [Huffington Post, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-7-18]
“No Labels is a centrist, corporate organization working against Democrats with dark, anonymous money to advance power for special interests. Period. So newly elected members, learn from my mistakes. Run. Fast. No Labels needs a label: ‘Warning: Wolf in sheep’s clothing inside. Join at your own risk.'”Lambert Strether adds: "Since Joe Lieberman is the national leader, I would have thought this was obvious. But sometimes the obvious needs to be said."
1) The draft House rules on “PAYGO” & a super majority on taxes are designed to set up roadblocks against:
- #MedicareForAll
- #GreenNewDeal
- #CollegeForAll
- Universal Childcare
- Paid Family and Medical Leave
- A Job Guarantee
- #HousingForAllnymag.com/intelligencer/…
- #MedicareForAll
- #GreenNewDeal
- #CollegeForAll
- Universal Childcare
- Paid Family and Medical Leave
- A Job Guarantee
- #HousingForAllnymag.com/intelligencer/…
[Eyes on Trade, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
“‘NAFTA not only didn’t deliver on its proponents’ rosy promises of more jobs and higher wages, but its ongoing damage ended decades of bipartisan congressional consensus in favor of trade pacts,’ said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. ‘For a final NAFTA 2.0 package to get through Congress next year, the signed deal will need more work so its labor standards are subject to swift and certain enforcement and the other improvements are made to stop NAFTA’s ongoing job outsourcing, downward pressure on wages and environmental damage.'”
SNIP
For Mexican workers, increased investment and trade with the United States failed to translate into per capita income growth or rising wages in Mexico. Annual per capita income grew less than 2 percent in the first seven years of NAFTA and less than 1 percent thereafter.
Real average annual wages have declined in Mexico under NAFTA. According to analysis by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, manufacturing wages in Mexico are now 40 percent lower than in China. Prior to NAFTA, Mexican auto wages were five times lower than in the United States. Today, even as U.S. wages have stagnated, Mexican auto wages are nine times lower
NAFTA devastated Mexico’s rural sector. Amid a NAFTA-spurred influx of subsidized U.S. corn, about 2 million Mexicans engaged in farming and related work lost their livelihoods.
Stirring the Waters: Investigating why many in Appalachia lack reliable, clean water
[Lexington Herald-Leader, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
“For many families in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia, the absence of clean, reliable drinking water has become part of daily life. They buy bottled water rather than drink what comes out of their taps. They collect rainwater in buckets, fearing there won’t be any running water at all the next day. They drive to natural springs on the sides of highways and backroads to fill up jugs for cooking and making coffee.”America: looking more and more like a "shit hole" third world country every day....
Wells Fargo computer glitch blamed as hundreds lose their homes
[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 12-6-18]
A family loses its home, a marriage is destroyed, and Wells Fargo offers $25,000 in compensation? Ten times that probably does not begin to represent justice.
Jeffrey Epstein and the Decline of the American Experiment”
Jeffrey Epstein and the Decline of the American Experiment”
T.A. Frank, December 4, 2018 [Vanity Fair, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
Well worth reading in full...
Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire financier who is said to own the largest residence in Manhattan, plus a Palm Beach mansion, New Mexico ranch, and Caribbean island. He is also a sexual pervert who, until about 12 years ago, preyed serially on teenage children, roughly until they reached the age of consent and became, in his eyes, unattractive...What did authorities do when they found out, back in 2005? They spent a couple of years investigating and drawing up an indictment, then proceeded to quash further investigation, cooperated with Epstein’s lawyers to avoid publicity, violated procedures about plea bargains, made Epstein serve only 13 months in confinement, put him in the county jail rather than state prison, allowed him to leave jail and go to his office for 12 hours a day, raised no objection to him hiring sheriff’s deputies from the jail to guard him outside of the jail, and concealed most of the terms of the settlement from the public and the victims themselves. (On Monday, Epstein settled a related civil lawsuit and agreed to a financial settlement with many of his victims, again avoiding a public trial.)
Now for the bad part. Epstein’s enablers weren’t a handful of Palm Beach rogues. (On the contrary, among the few heroes of the story were Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiterand the late detective Joseph Recarey.) Instead, the higher up the chain you went, the more sympathetic to Epstein the players seem to become. It was U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta who helped cut short the investigation and his lead prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, who e-mailed Epstein’s lawyers, “I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?’’ It was a prosecutor from Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office in Manhattan who pleaded before an incredulous judge to downgrade Epstein’s sex-offender status. Those who came to Epstein’s legal aid included Alan Dershowitz (who says he’s still offering advice to Epstein) and Ken Starr—yes that same Ken Starr. The man who once pursued a president for concealing an affair with a 22-year-old was now helping Epstein outsmart those pursuing him over the sexual abuse of 14-year-olds....
One must ask how our smart set could get this bad. It is a minor miracle of degeneration. When Alfred Sloan ran General Motors in the 1940s, he dined in the office cafeteria. On his weekly business trips to Detroit, he slept in a cubicle in a dormitory in the G.M. building. On commutes between New York and Detroit, he traveled in a railway-car roomette among other roomettes. Our leading executives had plenty of flaws, but a lack of ostentation and at least minimal sense of public spirit seemed to prevail among them. Not so today. Business today often seems more like a bunch of sociopaths on the right side of the bell curve bilking those on the left. It’s Trump University all the way down.Occupy Jamie Dimon: Activists Are Chasing the Billionaire Across the U.S.
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 12-6-18]
The FTC’s top consumer protection official can’t go after Facebook — or 100 other companies
The FTC’s top consumer protection official can’t go after Facebook — or 100 other companies
[The Verge, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-7-18]
“The Federal Trade Commission’s top consumer protection official is prohibited from handling the cases involving 120 different companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Uber, according to financial disclosure documents published by Public Citizen today. Andrew Smith, who heads the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, would be in charge of handling investigations into some of the country’s largest companies and any consumer protection violations that may occur. But due to his conflicts of interest, Smith is barred from participating in any investigations involving the companies he previously provided legal services for.”
Under China’s New Rules, U.S. Recycling Suffers
[Governing, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
“Until this past January, China took 40 percent of America’s gently used paper, metals and plastic. Now, it accepts hardly any of it. China won’t take recycled material from this country, or others, unless it’s 99.5 percent free of contaminants. Some of the material is currently being processed domestically or is getting sent to other countries, but the loss of the biggest market has led some domestic recycling plants to shut down and some cities to end curbside pickup of recyclables. Cities could once count on processors to pay them for material, but now they’re being presented with hefty bills instead.”
[Deutsche Welle, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
”We’re sort of something between a company and an aid organization, if you will,” Carsten Waldeck explains. In principle, [Carsten and Samuel Waldeck] run Shift like any regular business but with one key difference: they have pledged to never distribute profits to themselves or anyone else. Any money that leaves the company’s coffers will finance social or sustainability projects…. Shift phones are modular, allowing their owners to easily replace broken parts and upgrade as technology improves. Part of the price of any Shift phone is also a small deposit that owners get back if they return the device at the end of its life cycle, allowing Shift to recycle the components rather than having them end up in a landfill somewhere.”
With Workers Under Attack, Labor Leaders Say Only 'Full-Throated Economic Populism' Can Defeat Corporate Elites
December 01, 2018
December 01, 2018
With the American labor movement under relentless assault by the right-wing Supreme Court, the Republican Party at both the state and federal level, and President Donald Trump's plutocratic administration, prominent union leaders convened during the final day of The Sanders Institute Gathering on Saturday to confront the existential threat facing the working class and emphasize the urgency of organizing at the grassroots level to fight back and build political power....
Moderated by RoseAnn DeMoro—former executive director of National Nurses United (NNU)—the panel of progressive union leaders attributed Trump's presidential victory to the Democratic Party's decades-long corporate turn and abandonment of the working class, which left a gaping void that the billionaire real estate mogul exploited in his rise to power.
The result, Dimondstein argued, was "a lesser of two evils duopoly"—two dominant political parties that side with the interests of business over those of the working class.
"Political parties have failed, absolutely failed, the working class," Dimondstein said.
....Good Jobs Nation Joseph Geevarghese argued that the tepid centrism and incremental solutions offered by the Democratic establishment will not cut it. "We don't need more centrism. We don't need more half-baked economic ideas," Geevarghese said... "We need more full-throated economic populism,"ALEC Outlines 2019 Agenda to Erode Union Power
[Governing, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
“ALEC’s ‘Public Employee Rights and Authorization Act,’ for instance, would codify the Janus decision at the state level…. More than half the states already have similar laws. Under the “Union Recertification Act,” what ALEC calls ‘worker voting rights,’ workers in unions would have to vote every couple of years on whether they want to continue with their current union representation…. Similar laws have already passed in Florida, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin, according to F. Vincent Vernuccio, a senior fellow at the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Then there are ‘workers’ choice’ bills, the ‘Public Employee Choice Act’ and the ‘Comprehensive Public Employee Freedom Act,’ which would allow government workers to opt out of union representation and represent themselves in negotiations with their employer. These type of bills have yet to be passed anywhere, though they’ve been introduced in states like Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Pennsylvania, says Vernuccio.”Marriott strike yields 40 percent pay hike for Westin housekeepers
[San Diego Tribune, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
[New Republic, via NC State AFL-CIO 12-3-18]
The defeat of Walker in Wisconsin, as well as Bill Schuette in Michigan, Bruce Rauner in Illinois, and Kris Kobach in Kansas, is evidence that union-bashing politicians are finding it difficult to appeal to workers in a humming economy, which would otherwise seem to validate their claims that low wages and right-to-work laws have unleashed the prosperity-making powers of the market. In fact, national support for unions is at 62 percent, a 15-year high, with particular muscle in the Midwest, and among women and millennials. “There’s a sense in which Scott Walker and his ilk have overplayed their hand,” said Lane Windham, the associate director of the labor center at Georgetown University. “People understand that unions counterbalance corporate power, and corporations are too powerful.”
Register Now for 2019 N.C. Labor Legislative Conference, Feb 12-13th in Raleigh
New York City just became the first US city to set a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
[NC State AFL-CIO 12-3-18]
The 2019 Labor Legislative Conference (LLC) will be held at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel, 421 S. Salisbury St, Raleigh, NC on February 12-13, 2019. This conference combines training on our legislative agenda with a Labor Lobby Day to advocate for working people.
[PERI, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
[PNHP, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
The GOP’s 2018 Autopsy: Democracy Is Our Enemy
Eric Levitz, December 4, 2018 [New York Magazine Intelligencer]
The GOP’s 2018 Autopsy: Democracy Is Our Enemy
Eric Levitz, December 4, 2018 [New York Magazine Intelligencer]
....the Times’ claim that the GOP has neglected to mount any constructive response to its 2018 losses is manifestly unfair. Republicans heard the electorate’s message loud and clear — and in Wisconsin and Michigan, the party is doing everything in its power to muzzle that electorate, and nullify its verdict.
[Vox, via DownWithTyranny 12-7-18]
The Republican Party has become institutionally indifferent to the health of democracy. It prioritizes power over principle to such an extreme degree that it undermines the most basic functioning of democracy....
Democracy is premised on the idea that political power is only legitimate when exercised with the consent of the governed. But in reality, people disagree about fundamental political and moral issues; no elected government will ever have 100 percent support of the population, or anything close to it. The purpose of a democratic political system is to bridge that gap: to create a system for resolving these disagreements that everyone thinks is fair. That way, everyone will accept the outcome of the election as basically legitimate even when their side loses.
The post-election power grabs amount to Republicans declaring that they no longer accept that fundamental bargain. They do not believe it’s legitimate when they lose, or that they are obligated to hand over power to Democrats because that’s what’s required in a fair system. Political power, to the state legislators in question, matters more than the core bargain of democracy....
ALEC Launches Effort to Protect Gerrymandering From Judges
Josefa Velasquez, August 21, 2018 [Center by Media and Democracy, via CommonDreams]
Josefa Velasquez, August 21, 2018 [Center by Media and Democracy, via CommonDreams]
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that connects lawmakers and private-sector organizations to craft model legislation, introduced a draft resolution earlier this month “reaffirming the right of state legislatures to determine electoral districts.”
The draft resolution argues that intervention by state supreme courts to redistrict congressional maps “violates the fundamental rights” of residents of that state who have elected lawmakers to make such a decision....
The Brennan Center estimates that there are at least 51 bills in 16 states that seek to diminish the independence of the judicial branch either by changing how judges are selected, scaling back resources available to the judiciary, implementing disciplinary action or restricting the courts’ power to find legislative acts unconstitutional.
Yves Smith, December 3, 2018 [Naked Capitalism]
An important suit, Mayberry v. KKR, alleging breaches of fiduciary duty by certain trustees and executives of the Kentucky Retirement System, along with three famous fund managers, KKR/Prisma, Blackrock, and PAAMCO, who set up customized hedge funds that were sold as providing stellar performance at low risk and turned out to be turkeys, beat a raft of Motions to Dismiss and can now proceed to discovery.
The plaintiffs scored an overwhelming victory despite having the defendants, which included Henry Kravis and George Roberts of KKR, and Steve Schwarzman and J. Tomilson Hill pf Blackrock, who are being sued personally, throw their biggest legal guns at them. The plaintiffs prevailed on every issue, save the inclusion of the Government Finance Office Association,
A legal expert observed:
Discovery is the Wall Street defendants’ worst nightmare, because all of their phony “trade secret” claims that blew-up in their faces on the statute of limitations are now going to be exposed as nothing but an artifice to cover-up unjust enrichment and fraud. They’re going to start throwing huge sums of money at the plaintiffs in hopes of avoiding discovery.
Global Carbon Budget 2018
[Earth System Science Data, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the “global carbon budget” – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties.Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help
[BBC, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
Naomi Klein on the Urgency of a ‘Green New Deal’ for Everyone
[Truthdig, via Naked Capitalism 12-3-18]
1st International European Modern Monetary Theory conference
California wildfires accelerated climate change as much as a whole year of power use
Naomi Klein on the Urgency of a ‘Green New Deal’ for Everyone
[Truthdig, via Naked Capitalism 12-3-18]
The right way to budget for a #GreenNewDeal is the way JM Keynes approached the question in his "How to Pay for the War." i.e. national resource planning. It wasn't about where to get the money. It was about how to manage the transition to a war economy.
1st International European Modern Monetary Theory conference
[via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
[Quartz, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
Volkswagen Says Its Next Generation of Internal Combustion Engines Will Be Its Last
[Jalopnik, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
For the first time, a major US utility has committed to 100% clean energy
Volkswagen Says Its Next Generation of Internal Combustion Engines Will Be Its Last
[Jalopnik, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
For the first time, a major US utility has committed to 100% clean energy
[Vox, via Naked Capitalism 12-7-18]
[The Economist, via Naked Capitalism 12-6-18]
“According to McKinsey, almost half of the CO2 emitted by the entire industrial sector comes from four industries; cement, steel, ammonia and ethylene. Unless consumption patterns change, all of them will have to cut emissions while meeting rising demand for cars, buildings, plastics and infrastructure. And because most of their products are commoditised, higher costs imposed by decarbonisation risk ‘carbon leakage’—the possibility that places with laxer climate policies will produce the commodities more cheaply.”
Lambert Strether adds: "Hmm. So perhaps there’s a place for tariffs after all?"
Report: Turbines will continue to increase in size, performance
Report: Turbines will continue to increase in size, performance
[ReNews (UK) (12/6), via American Wind Energy Association 12-7-18]
Manufacturers will continue producing increasingly more powerful wind turbines through 2027, driving performance and reliability increases and cost decreases, Wood Mackenzie reports. "Now that auction systems are driving down power prices worldwide, product and service evolution is paramount," the company's Shashi Barla says.Sierra Club: 100 US cities, towns have 100% clean energy targets
[North American Windpower online (12/6), via American Wind Energy Association 12-7-18]
One hundred American towns or cities have pledged to source their electricity needs from clean energy sources, and Cincinnati, Ohio, is the latest to do so, garnering the 100th spot, according to the Sierra Club. The report says 15.1% of the nation's population lives in areas with goals for complete renewable energy sourcing.EIA: US coal consumption expected to reach lowest in decades
[North American Windpower online (12/4), via American Wind Energy Association 12-5-18]
Coal consumption in the US for 2018 likely will fall 4% to 691 million tons -- the lowest since 1979 -- an Energy Information Administration report says. It attributes increasing coal retirements to aging coal generators, environmental concerns, the relatively low price of natural gas, strong competition from renewable energy and a shift in regional electricity demand.UK wind generation reached record high last week, data show
[CleanTechnica (12/4), via American Wind Energy Association 12-5-18]
Wind farms in the UK generated a record-breaking 14.9 gigawatts of electricity for a period on the evening of Nov. 28, according to RenewableUK. During the time, wind accounted for about 33% of the nation's total electricity needs.White House official confirms plans to end tax credits for renewables
[Reuters (12/3), The Hill (12/3), via American Wind Energy Association 12-6-18]
The Trump administration is expected to eliminate support mechanisms for electric vehicles and renewables, says White House Chief Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow. "We want to end, we will end those subsidies and others of the Obama administration," Kudlow says.
Groundbreaking begins for Southwest Light Rail in Minneapolis
[Railway Age 12-4-18]
[Railway Age 12-4-18]
South Korea begins 18-day inspection of the North’s railway
[Railway Age 12-6-18]
A cybersecurity expert quit Apple and joined the ACLU to help fight government efforts to put ‘back doors’ in smartphones
Novameat develops 3D-printed meat-free steak from plant-based proteins
The Trump administration is expected to eliminate support mechanisms for electric vehicles and renewables, says White House Chief Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow. "We want to end, we will end those subsidies and others of the Obama administration," Kudlow says.
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
The Steel Interstate & Sustainable Transport in the Age of Trump
[VoicesontheSquare 2-5-17]
[Ars Technica, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
Turns out even rare earths mined in USA have to be shipped to China for processing. No mention of deindustrialization destroying USA capacity.
Turns out even rare earths mined in USA have to be shipped to China for processing. No mention of deindustrialization destroying USA capacity.
[VoicesontheSquare 2-5-17]
....the key flaw of the basic approach advocated by Trump, as pointed out by Brad Plumer at Vox:
Other analysts zeroed in on that second point. If high user fees or tolls are needed to help private investors recoup their investments, then a lot of infrastructure in America may simply never get funded. Think of existing toll-free roads in poor shape, or urban bus systems, or aging water pipes in low-income cities like Flint where people can’t afford a big hike in their water bills. Many of these projects may be worthwhile, but they typically require public funding.
“If [we] only built projects that could cover their costs with user charges, we would have far fewer white elephant projects,” says Harvard’s Glaeser. “However, we would also miss good projects as well. In particular, we would miss projects that mainly serve the less advantaged. Asking buses to pay for themselves would be a mistake.”
Groundbreaking begins for Southwest Light Rail in Minneapolis
[Railway Age 12-4-18]
More than 10 years after it was proposed, construction work will begin on the Southwest Light Rail system. The 14.5-mile line will connect downtown Minneapolis to the suburb of Eden Prairie.Guiyang inaugurates second phase of metro Line 1
[Railway Age 12-4-18]
Guiyang, the capital of China’s southwestern Guizhou province, almost tripled the length of its first metro line on December 1 with the inauguration of the 22.3km second phase of Line 1 from Guiyang North station to Xiaomeng Industrial Park south of the city.
South Korea begins 18-day inspection of the North’s railway
[Railway Age 12-6-18]
For the first time in a decade, a train has crossed the border from South to North Korea as South Korean engineers embark on an 18-day inspection of the north’s railway infrastructure, a key step in a plan to reconnect the two countries’ railways. Full Article
A cybersecurity expert quit Apple and joined the ACLU to help fight government efforts to put ‘back doors’ in smartphones
[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds
[The Verge, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
“According to a new study conducted by Google competitor DuckDuckGo, it does not seem possible to avoid personalization when using Google search, even by logging out of your Google account and using the private browsing “incognito” mode…. [T]here doesn’t seem to be any way to get a single, objective search result from Google that can be easily replicable across users or locations.”The Era of Cheap and Easy STD Treatment Is Over. What Went Wrong?
[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 12-5-18]
“Gonorrhea is surging back, along with its equally forgotten partner, syphilis. In August the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that cases of all STDs have risen for four straight years, to the highest levels in a decade. A sizable portion of that spike is due to gonorrhea, which has become resistant to all the generations of antibiotics that have been used to treat it…. STD control is founded on a health care structure that is otherwise unusual in the United States: freestanding clinics, often publicly funded, that allowed patients to avoid stigma by seeking care from doctors who may not know them. The ability to treat infections quickly, ideally with a single antibiotic dose, was crucial to that structure, since there was no guarantee patients would return for followup. STDs were so common that inexpensive drugs were paramount.”Sounds to me like those STDs are practicing godless, atheistic, socialistic pinko commie evolution.
Novameat develops 3D-printed meat-free steak from plant-based proteins
[Dezeen, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
New Metal-Air Transistor Replaces Semiconductors
[IEEE Spectrum, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
New Metal-Air Transistor Replaces Semiconductors
[IEEE Spectrum, via Naked Capitalism 12-4-18]
It is widely predicted that the doubling of silicon transistors per unit area every two years will come to an end around 2025 as the technology reaches its physical limits. But researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, believe a metal-based field emission air channel transistor (ACT) they have developed could maintain transistor doubling for another two decades.
The ACT device eliminates the need for semiconductors. Instead, it uses two in-plane symmetric metal electrodes (source and drain) separated by an air gap of less than 35 nanometers, and a bottom metal gate to tune the field emission. The nanoscale air gap is less than the mean-free path of electrons in air, hence electrons can travel through air under room temperature without scattering....
Using metal and air in place of semiconductors for the main components of the transistor has a number of other advantages, says Nirantar, a Ph.D. candidate in RMIT’s Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group. Fabrication becomes essentially a single-step process of laying down the emitter and collector and defining the air gap. And though standard silicon fabrication processes are employed in producing ACTs, the number of processing steps are far fewer, given that doping, thermal processing, oxidation, and silicide formation are unnecessary. Consequently, production costs should be cut significantly.
[Intercept, via Naked Capitalism 12-2-18]
Scientific communication in a post-truth society
[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, via Naked Capitalism 12-6-18]
“Distrust in the scientific enterprise and misperceptions of scientific knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication and more from the widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information. We describe the profound structural shifts in the media environment that have occurred in recent decades and their connection to public policy decisions and technological changes. We explain how these shifts have enabled unscrupulous actors with ulterior motives increasingly to circulate fake news, misinformation, and disinformation with the help of trolls, bots, and respondent-driven algorithms. We document the high degree of partisan animosity, implicit ideological bias, political polarization, and politically motivated reasoning that now prevail in the public sphere and offer an actual example of how clearly stated scientific conclusions can be systematically perverted in the media through an internet-based campaign of disinformation and misinformation. We suggest that, in addition to attending to the clarity of their communications, scientists must also develop online strategies to counteract campaigns of misinformation and disinformation that will inevitably follow the release of findings threatening to partisans on either end of the political spectrum.”
No comments:
Post a Comment