Sunday, February 24, 2019

Week-end Wrap - February 23, 2019

Week-end Wrap - February 23, 2019
by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

A Centuries-Old Idea [by Alexander Hamilton] Could Revolutionize Climate Policy
Robinson Meyer, February 19, 2019 [The Atlantic, via PDOC executive committee member Kathy Kaufmann]
This is a lengthy article, but very important because it puts the Green New Deal solidly in the correct context of the actual Hamiltonian policies which created the USA economy. Meyer's weak point is a lack of hostility to the laissez faire, free trade, market fundamentalism that are always the opponents of Hamiltonian nation building policies.
....the Green New Deal is a leftist resurrection of federal industrial policy. It is not an attempt to control the private sector, according to its authors; it is a bid to collaborate with it. And it draws on a set of ideas with a rich American history, extending long before the great World War II mobilization to which the Green New Deal is regularly compared. 
“This goes back to Hamilton, the daddy of it all,” says Stephen Cohen, a professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley. He argues that industrial policy has birthed the transcontinental railroad, the cookie-cutter suburb, the home appliance, and the computer—nearly every major American economic transition since 1776. 
In short, the Green New Deal’s supporters hope that industrial policy can now bring forth another transition—to cheaper energy, faster trains, and an altogether more climate-friendly economy. “The core of the Green New Deal, if you just look at the projects, is just like industrial policy, industrial policy, industrial policy,” says Rhiana Gunn-Wright, a policy researcher at the think tank New Consensus who helped draft Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal. “It’s very, very, very central. The Green New Deal is one of the largest interventions in U.S. industrial policy in a long time.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s love of industrial policy did not come from nowhere. In the past few years, a group of scholars has revived an old school of economic thought that says a strong manufacturing policy is an absolute necessity for large, developed nations. They argue that the United States has neglected its domestic manufacturing sector since the 1980s, a move that risks national failure.
This is the crucial policy question on which any successful government is decided.  For example, Meyer writes midway through the article:
Some mainstream economists aren’t as convinced that industrial policy could transform the future of the United States. Many of the ideas in the books have not been “closely vetted” theoretically and may lack empirical evidence, according to Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who previously worked in Barack Obama’s White House.
It is exactly because of such economic malpractice typified by economists and advisers such as Greenstone -- and the Obama administration was brim full with them -- that Barack Obama's presidency was such a sharp disappointment for the majority of Americans, which made possible the rise and victory of conman grifter Donald Trump. 

....Mariana Mazzucato, the director of the University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose... argues that the private sector cannot innovate without the public sector giving it purpose and direction. In fact, innovation depends on the state. First, the public sector defines a challenge. Then it asks—or demands—that the private sector address itself to that challenge. She cites the Apollo program as a perfect example. 
“How to get to the moon was a result of 300 different homework problems that had to be solved, and most of them failed,” Mazzucato told me recently. The sheer difficulty of the Apollo program generated those problems, which ranged widely across sectors, touching even nutrition and fashion. After the challenge was set, the government used the inspirational power of its leadership and the extensive power of its purse to nudge companies, universities, and labs into identifying those problems and solving them.
New Review of Dozens of Studies of Insect Population Decline, the Causes, and Things You Can Do Lambert Strether [Naked Capitalism 2-20-19]

Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster
[Gizmodo, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19]. 
From 2018, still germane. “Influential native gardening writer Sara Stein perhaps summed up the absurdity best: ‘Continual amputation is a critical part of lawn care. Cutting grass regularly—preventing it from reaching up and flowering — forces it to sprout still more blades, more rhizomes, more roots, to become an ever more impenetrable mat until it is what its owner has worked so hard or paid so much to have: the perfect lawn, the perfect sealant through which nothing else can grow—and the perfect antithesis of an ecological system.'” • Plus cutting the lawn is work. Why do it? One thing you can also do to help out the index is fight fight with your local zoning board and/or homeowner’s association to disfavor lawns with respect with property values, and favor gardens.
[Nature, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19].  
“Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct factors (human land-use management) and indirect factors (such as climate change, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition and recovery from natural disturbances). Among these, climate change and CO2 fertilization effects seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface- and/or groundwater irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth’, accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area.” 
World’s biggest terrestrial carbon sinks are found in young forests 
[Science Daily, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19].  
“More than half of the carbon sink in the world’s forests is in areas where the trees are relatively young — under 140 years old — rather than in tropical rainforests, research at the University of Birmingham shows. These trees have typically ‘regrown’ on land previously used for agriculture, or cleared by fire or harvest and it is their young age that is one of the main drivers of this carbon uptake…. this age-driven carbon uptake was primarily situated not in the tropics, but in the middle and high latitude forests.”
Highly Unusual Upward Trends in Rapidly Intensifying Atlantic Hurricanes Blamed on Global Warming
[Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, via Naked Capitalism 2-20-19]

The $32 Trillion Pushing Fossil Fuel CEOs to Act on Climate Change 
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19] 
“Behind Glencore Plc’s decision to limit coal investment is a little-known, but powerful group of investors. Glencore made its decision after facing pressure from a shareholder network known as Climate Action 100+, which has the backing of more than 300 investors managing $32 trillion. The group was founded a little over a year ago, but has already extracted reforms from oil heavyweights, like BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. While skeptics may regard Glencore’s changes as minimal (the company still stands to reap billions from its huge coal business), the announcement still shows the influence that investors hold at being able to push even the most reticent companies to respond to their demands.”
Green New Deal is feasible and affordable
By Jeffrey Sachs, February 22, 2019 [CNN, via Naked Capitalism 2-23-19]
Each of the three ideas is discussed, with lots of linky goodness. 
There are three main ideas of the Green New Deal Resolution introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. The first is to decarbonize the US energy system -- that is, to end the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning coal, oil and natural gas, in order to stop global warming. The second is to guarantee lower-cost, high-quality health coverage for all. The third is to ensure decent jobs and living standards for all Americans, in part by making colleges and vocational schools affordable for all.
[Des Moines Register, via Naked Capitalism 2-22-19]  
“While many on the right have responded with predictable hysteria — calling it communism, fascism and the end of air travel — there’s one criticism, coming from both left [i.e., liberals] and right, that speaks volumes about what America is in this moment. It says the GND is simply too big an idea. As in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dubbing it, ‘the green dream;’ columnist Jonah Goldberg ripping it as a ‘fantasy;’ the Washington Times calling GND supporters ‘the unicorn caucus.’… it has always been in the country’s DNA to believe it had the power to transform destiny. Given the frightening state of our affairs and the planet’s imminent meltdown, we could do a lot worse than to reclaim that conviction. Instead, we get dour pragmatism and lectures on limitations.”
Opinion: Wind presents a huge economic opportunity for N.C.
[WRAL-TV (Raleigh, N.C.), via American Wind Energy Association 2-22-19]
North Carolina's two-year moratorium on new wind projects ended in 2018, and it's time for the state to take advantage of the energy source and its various economic benefits, writes Ulrich Tombuelt, vice president of operations for SAERTEX. "I care about wind energy because I support clean, affordable energy that helps make our communities and economy more resilient," he writes.
Offshore wind, supply chain poised to grow in N.C.
[Energy News Network, via American Wind Energy Association 2-19-19]
Offshore wind and related supply chain projects may be the next big thing for North Carolina's economy, says Southeastern Wind Coalition President Katharine Kollins. The state's 18-month moratorium on new land-based wind projects has also ended, but the measure's reinstatement remains a concern for companies.
[Transmission & Distribution World online, via American Wind Energy Association 2-21-19]
The Climate Institute has proposed the creation of The North American Supergrid, a high-voltage direct-current transmission system that would run underground, connecting the lower 48 states and make it easier for the system to absorb generation from renewables like wind. NAS offers a cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change, a Climate Institute analysis reports.
Tsvetana Paraskova, February 20, 2019 [oilprice,com, via American Wind Energy Association 2-21-19]
Thanks to continuously declining costs, a hybrid renewable electricity generation system that combines wind, solar, and storage could become competitive with the cheapest fossil fuel electricity in the United States—combined-cycle natural gas generation, an MIT professor suggests. 
John Deutch, an Institute Professor at MIT, has recently presented a study, ‘Demonstrating Near Carbon Free Electricity Generation from Renewables and Storage’, at an energy seminar at Stanford University. 
According to Deutch, the best way to see if the hybrid electric systems (HES) of wind, solar, and storage could compete in costs with natural gas-fired electricity generation is to organize a large-scale demonstration to show if those HES could meet electricity demand of a relatively large service area “rather than rely on government sponsored large scale demonstration projects or regulatory mandates compelling deployment of storage.”
100% renewables goal is driving innovation in Hawaii
[Bloomberg BNA (free content), via American Wind Energy Association 2-19-19]
Researchers in Hawaii are exploring wind energy, tidal and other technologies to help the state meet its 100% by 2045 goal for renewables. "We definitely think of Hawaii as a 'postcard from the future' as to how renewables will attach to the grid," says Andy Hoke, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Report: 24.9 GW of land-based wind added in Asia-Pacific in 2018
[Renewables Now (Bulgaria) (tiered subscription model), via American Wind Energy Association 2-19-19]
Companies brought 24.9 gigawatts of new installed land-based wind capacity online in the Asia-Pacific region last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. China accounted for 21.2 GW of the new capacity.
[Axios, via Naked Capitalism 2-19-19] 
“Although U.S. production continues to rise, it still accounts for only 11% of global consumption, compared to OPEC’s 32%. The recent supply cuts illustrate that sudden disruptions and U.S. sanctions that take oil out of the market can put OPEC, and Saudi Arabia specifically, back in charge of global oil prices.”


A neat thread on apples:


Modern Monetary Theory Is Not a Recipe for Doom 
Stephanie Kelton, February 21, 2019 [Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 2-22-19]  
This is for policy wonks, with dozens of links to all sorts of major and minor economic issues; but I urge everyone to wade in, and see how far they get.
Paul Krugman first wrote about modern monetary theory on March 25, 2011. He last wrote about MMT in a two-part series on February 12-13, 2019. Although he’s had almost a decade to come to terms with the approach, he is still getting some of the basic ideas wrong.

This matters for two reasons: one, because people listen to Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel economics prize in 2008, and, two, because the approach he is discussing is at the heart of how to design economic policies that affect millions of Americans. I’d like to try to move the conversation forward by addressing his concerns....
Krugman adopts the standard line that budget deficits crowd out private investment because deficits compete with private borrowing for a limited supply of savings. 
The MMT framework rejects this, since government deficits are shown to be a source (not a use!) of private savings. Some careful studies show that crowding-out can occur, but that it tends to happen in countries where the government is not a currency issuer with its own central bank.

This seems like a disagreement we should be able to resolve either empirically or intuitively. But who knows? As Lerner wrote, “a man convinced against his will retains the same opinion still.”
[Buzzfeed, via The Big Picture 2-17-19]
...default rates are projected to hit 38% by 2023.

I Don’t Give A Sh*t How You Bend The Cost Curve 
[Eschaton, via Naked Capitalism 2-17-19] 
It isn't the job of voters to waste their beautiful minds worrying about what the best plan to cut health care costs is, and it's absurd that for some reason it's expected that voters all play Wonk for a Year and try to figure out who has the wonkiest wonko plan of all. 
People are paid a lot of money to figure that shit out. Go figure it out. What kind of health plan should pass that makes voters happy and doesn't make them upset because it doesn't raise their taxes or upset the status quo or isn't "moderate" or whatever the fuck? One which mails them a card on day one that they can use to go to the damn doctor without paying any money. Then the wonks and the politicians can get to work for the next 10 years fixing the engine under the hood. 
Make voters happy by making them happy. Tomorrow. Eat the up front costs because we are a rich country and we can afford to eat the costs, and then spend the next 10 years clawing money back from the other "stakeholders" who have been looting the bank accounts of dying people for decades. Just don't make us have to worry about how.
A network’s gender composition and communication pattern predict women’s leadership success 
[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, via Naked Capitalism 2-17-19]  
"From the Significance: \”Graduate programs increasingly place women directly into leadership positions. For men, centrality in the school-wide student network predicts job-rank placement. Women’s placement is also predicted by centrality and the presence of a distinctive inner circle of women in their network. The inner circle of high-placing women displays an unusual network duality: The network has cliquish ties among women, but each woman is connected to a separate set of third-party contacts. This dual connectivity of strong and weak ties appears to provide simultaneous access to gender-related tacit information important for women’s success as well as diverse job-market data needed for successful job search and negotiations.”
State of Working America: Wages 2018
[Economic Policy Institute, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19]
Trump and the massive multi-trillion dollar Republican give-away to billionaires and squillionaires has had no effect on reversing income inequality

Wage inequality. From 2000 to 2018, wage growth was strongest for the highest-wage workers, continuing the trend in rising wage inequality over the last four decades.
  • Since 2007, the labor market peak before the Great Recession, the strongest wage growth has continued to be within the top 10 percent of the wage distribution.
Over 60 percent of voters — including half of Republicans — support a wealth tax
[The Big Picture 2-17-19]
The Government’s Trillion-Dollar Student Loan Office Is a Train Wreck 
[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 2-23-19] 
[Splinter News 2-22-19]
The latest battle in the war on abortion has arrived: The Department of Health and Human Services announced a rule on Friday barring groups that provide abortions or abortion referrals from federal family planning funds

[New Statesman, via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19] 
“Put simply, MMTers believe that most people mistakenly view the economy backwards. Instead of taxing in order to fund spending, states spend first and tax later. Central to this analysis is that sovereign currency is a creation of the state. Rather than “finding” the money to “pay” for universal healthcare, governments can electronically create money out of nothing. When inflation begins to rise, the state can employ its fiscal lever, taxing excess money out of the economy.”



Economics After Neoliberalism 
[Boston Review, via Naked Capitalism 2-17-19]
The tools of economics are critical to developing a policy framework for what we call “inclusive prosperity.” While prosperity is the traditional concern of economists, the “inclusive” modifier demands both that we consider the whole distribution of outcomes, not simply the average (the “middle class”), and that we consider human prosperity broadly, including non-pecuniary sources of well-being, from health to climate change to political rights. To improve the quality of public discussion around inclusive prosperity, we have organized a group of economists—the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) network.... 
In the eyes of many, the turn towards neoliberalism is closely associated with economic ideas. Leading economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were among the founders of the Mont Pelerin Society, the influential group of intellectuals whose advocacy of markets and hostility to government intervention proved highly effective in reshaping the policy landscape after 1980. Deregulation, financialization, dismantling of the welfare state, de-institutionalization of labor markets, reduction in corporate and progressive taxation, and the pursuit of hyper-globalization—the culprits behind rising inequalities—all seem to be rooted in conventional economic doctrines. The discipline’s focus on markets and incentives, methodological individualism, and mathematical formalism all seem to stand in the way of meaningful, larger-scale economic and social reform. In short, neoliberalism appears to be just another name for economics..... 
Our response is fundamentally different. Many of the dominant policy ideas of the last few decades are supported neither by sound economics nor by good evidence. Neoliberalism—or market fundamentalism, market fetishism, etc.—is not the consistent application of modern economics, but its primitive, simplistic perversion. And contemporary economics is rife with new ideas for creating a more inclusive society. But it is up to us economists to convince our audience about the merits of these claims, which is why we have embarked on this project. Below, we have outlined a set of policy briefs (full versions available here) that we hope will stimulate and accelerate academic economists’ sustained engagement with creative ideas for inclusive prosperity.

List of links on police violence against Gilets jaunes protestors in France
[The Saker, via Naked Capitalism  2-23-19]
The police violence
Each new act brings its share of police violence, even if it seems, according to those on the ground, that it is slowing down. The government may be beginning to understand that they cannot discourage the people and that they are therefore counterproductive.
In homage to all the wounded of this popular revolt, here is the most touching video. Fiorina, 20 years old, lost an eye due to a grenade caught in the head while, as she recounts, she was on the sidewalk opposite the hooligans. The CRS did not target the hooligans but those across the street, as she explains. Doctors will soon put a prosthesis to give her back a more normal appearance. 
On this video we see a cop throwing tear gas at elderly bystanders not even wearing a Yellow vest. 
This one is a presentation of the different victims who have been amputated or lost an eye
In this one . 
we clearly see nurses being attacked with tear gas while treating an injured person.
In this one, a young girl simply sitting on the floor is violently arrested and handcuffed. She will be taken into custody. 
And this one, produced by the Human Rights League, shows a collection of treats that the CRS gave to the Yellow vests. 
This one is a must see because it shows a Yellow vest, which is trying to push other mates to throw stones, arrested by the police. He then says, “No, no, guys, I’m with you”. Of course the police don’t believe him and keep pulling him. An officer arrives, says a few words to them and, then, they simply release the guy. This video shows that the police are blending in with the Yellow vests and trying to stir up violence.
US elites remain incapable of understanding China 
[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism  2-19-19]
So we’re left with China-bashing. We learn of devious attacks against the “rules-based global order” – which is always not so subtly equated with the “interests and values of the United States;” China’s “mercantilist zero-sum policies;”and the “lavishly funded state-led effort to build China into a high-tech superpower” – as if no country in the Global South should be allowed to go high-tech. On foreign policy, the report warns about “expansive claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea,” which is a de facto regurgitation of the Pentagon’s master narrative.

Full steam ahead for China-Myanmar high-speed railway 
[Asia Times, via Naked Capitalism  2-23-19]
...plans to build a high-speed railroad connecting China’s southern city of Kunming and Myanmar’s Kyaukphyu port on the Bay of Bengal are firmly back on track. If completed, the 1,400-kilometer railroad will be a crucial link in a strategic economic corridor through which China’s imports and exports would bypass the congested Malacca Strait and contested South China Sea, both potential chokepoints in any conflict scenario.



Zillertalbahn hydrogen train design revealed
[Railway Age 2-19-19]
Austrian narrow-gauge railway Zillertalbahn (ZB) presented details of its new Mobility Plan and fleet of hydrogen trains at an event in Mayhofen on Feb. 15. Zillertalbahn awarded Stadler a contract in May 2018 to supply five trains to replace diesel traction on its 760mm-gauge line from Jenbach to Mayrhofen in the western province of Tyrol. Each 75-meter-long four-car set will accommodate up to 452 passengers.
Trinity 4Q18: Orders, backlog grow
[Railway Age 2-19-19]
Trinity Industries, Inc., in announcing financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended Dec. 31, 2018, reported that its Rail Products Group posted railcar orders and deliveries of 8,045 and 5,285, respectively, during the fourth quarter, compared to orders and deliveries of 3,180 and 6,150, respectively, during the same period last year. The railcar backlog at year’s end stood at $3.6 billion, compared to $2.2 billion on Dec. 31, 2017
Harsco Rail predicts rise in income
[Railway Age 2-19-19]
Harsco is predicting a surge in revenue in its rail unit for 2019, driven by a backlog and growing demand for maintenance-of-way equipment. The company, which provides railway track maintenance and construction services across the globe, forecasts a 25% to 35% rise in income this year in its rail unit. In particular, Harsco is expecting higher income from its Protran Technology unit, which develops personnel safety systems for transit railways and buses
Whither (wither) high-speed rail?
[Railway Age 2-19-19]
By now, everybody in the rail management and advocacy communities, along with much of the general public, knows what happened to California’s high-speed rail (HSR) project. It’s dead. In his State of the State address, Governor Gavin Newsom scaled it down. Seven days later, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) finished the job with a letter from Administrator Ron Batory to Newsom and California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) CEO Brian P. Kelly.

5 Ways to Increase the Number of Women in the Manufacturing Industry
[Machine Design Today 2-22-19]
For Engineers Week, we focus on women in engineering and manufacturing, the struggles they face, and how small manufacturers can help raise the number of women employed in manufacturing above 27%.
The Positive Effects of 3D Printing Accessibility on Society
[Machine Design Today 2-21-19]
3D printing has changed not just our industry but our very society. Here are five ways the process has impacted our lives.
Healthcare has changed dramatically under 3D printing. Doctors can turn advanced image scans into pre-op planning tools. The image above is of a hip that can be used for educational medical purposes.

Start-up to Launch CubeSats from Hot Air Balloons
[Machine Design Today 2-22-19]
Leo Aerospace Inc., a start-up company that came out of Purdue University with plans to use high-altitude balloons to launch rockets into space, has successfully fired a test rocket.
Podcast: How Electric Propulsion Will Shock the Aerospace Industry
Michael Bruno [Aviation Week & Space Technology 2-18-19]
The number of electric-propulsion aircraft projects continues to climb at a staggering rate. 2019 could be a year of many firsts in this dynamic industry. Listen in as we discuss the big changes to come for the aerospace industry.

America without Greyhound—and no replacement passenger trains
[Railway Age 2-15-19]
There is a threat to another component of our non-automobile mobility that is not as well-known: the potential demise of Greyhound, the country’s largest national-level bus carrier. Greyhound buses run up and down both coasts, across the South, and through mid-latitude parts of the nation. They do not operate in the northern latitudes, from the Midwest to just short of the West Coast; that is the domain of Jefferson Lines. There are also some remnants of the old Trailways network: Burlington Trailways in the Midwest, Adirondack Trailways in New York State, and a few others. Still, Greyhound operates the vast majority of the intercity bus service in America. 
Greyhound keeps going with a fleet of about 1,100 buses; less than one-third the number it operated in 1983. Since then, the company has endured strikes, bankruptcies and a number of ownership changes. It continues to operate relatively frequent service on a number of routes (often parallel to Amtrak routes), and sporadic service (often only once per day) on many others. It keeps going, but its operation could not reasonably be described as stable, over the long run. It is actually meta-stable. The company can keep going for now, but it highly questionable whether it can afford to replace its fleet as buses wear out. So, whether the Greyhound we know today will be recognizable five years from now is anybody’s guess. Greyhound does not have advocates like the trains do, either.... 
On July 10, 2018, Greyhound Canada shocked the nation by announcing that all bus service east of Quebec City and west of Sudbury, Ontario (about a seven-hour trip west of Toronto) would be discontinued on October 30. The company would continue to operate in Ontario and Quebec, including near the corridors operated by VIA Rail. Regional bus carriers were not affected. Orleans Express still operates in northern Quebec. Maritime Bus still runs skeletal service in Atlantic Canada, mostly along the routes of VIA’s tri-weekly Ocean (originally Canadian National) and the long-discontinued Atlantic Limited (originally Canadian Pacific). There are a few other routes left, too.
[Los Angeles Times, via Naked Capitalism  2-22-19]

[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism  2-22-19]
“Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook Inc…. The Journal tested more than 70 apps that are among the most popular in Apple’s iOS store in categories that handle sensitive user information. The Journal used software to monitor the internet communications triggered by using an app, including the information being sent to Facebook and other third parties. The tests found at least 11 apps sent Facebook potentially sensitive information about how users behaved or actual data they entered… just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook.”
Nearly a quarter of rural hospitals are on the brink of closure 
[Modern Healthcare, via Naked Capitalism  2-21-19]

Google Will End Forced Arbitration For Employees 
[CNET, via Naked Capitalism  2-21-19]
[Carl Beijer, via Naked Capitalism  2-20-19]
“The time to make your decision is now. Because the center is already fighting to win – and if you do want to win the presidency and you do not act now, you will find yourself out-organized, out-numbered, out-resourced, and out-argued before you can even throw your first punch…. The time for preparation ends when the fighting begins. And ready or not, the fight has already begun.” 
Lambert Strether argues:
"The fight began at the first DNC meeting after the 2016 election, when liberal Democrats punched the left right in the mouth (defenestrating Ellison, standing up Perez, purging all Sanders supporters from the Rules and Bylaws Committee, and subsequently rigging the primary calendar to favor Harris)."
The Red Menace Is Real
[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism  2-22-19] 
“Had Trump passed some version of universal health care, he would have probably secured a second term, increased the GOP’s domination of Congress, and left the Democrats wandering the political desert for a generation in the political realignment that followed. But because Trump has no real ideology, save getting nondescript ‘wins’ and lining his own pockets, he embraced the establishment wing of the Right and proceeded to govern as a stock-standard, if more extreme, Republican. Over the past two years he’s hemorrhaged supporters betrayed and disappointed by his embrace of radical neoliberalism, his approval rating has dwindled to historic lows, and his support has calcified where it was always going to go: the GOP base of Evangelicals, the wealthy, and the upper middle class. All of which is why Trump is terrified of Bernie Sanders’s presidential run and the democratic-socialist movement he represents.”
Bernie Tries to Steal the Rich Man’s Party
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor [Black Agenda Report 2-21-19]
The plutocrats did not invest billions of dollars every election cycle in the Democratic Party to see it used as a tool of their disempowerment.
Why Bernie Sanders Matters More Than People Think
Benjamin Studebaker [via Naked Capitalism 2-21-19] 
Includes an excellent concise abbreviated explanation of USA economic history post-World War II.
“Sanders and his opponents represent two very different ideologies. Each of these ideologies wants control of the Democratic Party so that this party’s resources can be used to advance a different conception of what a good society looks like. This is not a matter of taste and these are not flavors of popcorn.” 
The left in the 1930’s understood rising inequality as the core cause of the Great Depression. Because wealth was concentrating in the hands of the top 1%, the amount of investment steadily increased while the amount of consumption stagnated. Whenever there is too little consumption to support the level of investment in the economy, investors struggle to find profitable places to invest their money. Investment is usually a positive thing–it helps businesses increase their production and create jobs. But with consumption weak, businesses have little reason to increase their production, because no one will buy the additional goods and services provided. So instead, businesses that receive investment tend to reinvest that money rather than use it to grow. That investment circulates through the financial system and accumulates in speculative bubbles–places like the stock market, housing market, commodities market, or various foreign markets. These assets become massively overvalued until one day, the markets recognize the overvaluation. The assets collapse in value and the bubble bursts. People relying on these assets to pay off other debts get into serious trouble, and a contagion can spread throughout the economy with horrifying consequences.
So what did we do? As you can see in the chart, between the 1930’s and the 1970’s, the United States drastically reduced economic inequality. It redistributed wealth from the top to the middle and the bottom, resulting in consistent wage increases and consequently consistent consumption increases. This allowed investment to be put to effective use–because the bottom and the middle were rising, they were able to support the additional spending that business owners needed to successfully expand. This was accomplished through a series of policies that if they were proposed today, might strike many Americans as socialist–Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, strong union rights, high minimum wages, high marginal tax rates on the wealthy (with a 90% top rate under Eisenhower), and strong enforcement of financial regulations and anti-trust laws.... 
I’ve written about what happened in the 1970’s in detail elsewhere–the short version is that in the 70’s there were two oil shocks, in which the price of oil went up very rapidly (the OPEC embargo in the early 70’s and the Iranian Revolution at the end of the decade). Rising oil prices created stagflation, because they drastically increased the price of goods over a very short span of time. This reduced consumption, damaging economic growth, while simultaneously leading governments to increase wages in an attempt to prevent workers from rapidly losing purchasing power, creating inflation. To solve this problem, governments needed to stabilize oil prices or reduce dependency on foreign oil. They also could have allowed real wages to fall temporarily until that was accomplished (in tandem with a strong social safety net to protect those at the bottom of the wage scale).
[Other key causal factors of the 1970s stagflation were: the balance of payments problem caused by the Vietnam War and USA military spending overseas; which was tied to the creation and explosive growth of the Eurodollar market which rapidly became a way for banks to escape regulatory oversight; and the beginning of the flood of criminal money that began to buy control of USA industrial companies, with mergers and acquisitions spending eclipsing corporate spending on capital improvements by the late 1980s. --TW]
Instead what happened is that the right co-opted the oil crisis to claim that the entire project of balancing investment with consumption was fundamentally mistaken, that the problem was that there was not enough investment and too much consumption. The right embarked on a political platform of reducing union power, reducing the real value of the minimum wage, cutting welfare spending, reducing taxes on the wealthy, and deregulating the financial sector. Inequality, which in the US bottomed out in 1978, began rising rapidly and during the new millennium has frequently approached depression-era levels, having the same harmful effects on consumption that it had in the early 20th century and creating the same endemic risk of bubbles and financial crises. 
Many people think that it is the Republican Party alone that is responsible for this, but beginning in 1976 with Jimmy Carter, the Democratic Party was captured by this same ideology, which academics call “neoliberalism”. It is now largely forgotten that it was Carter, not Reagan, who began deregulating the market. Indeed, during the 1976 democratic primary, there was an ABC movement–Anybody But Carter. Democrats who remained committed to the party’s egalitarian ideology rightly feared that Carter was too right wing and would effectively strip the party of its historical commitment to the continuation and expansion of the legacy of FDR and LBJ. However, they ran too many candidates against Carter, splitting the left vote and allowing Carter to win the nomination.

....The Democratic Party, which was once the party that saw economic inequality and poverty as the core causes of economic instability, now sees inequality and poverty as largely irrelevant. Instead of eliminating inequality and poverty to fuel the capitalist system and produce strong economic growth, establishment Democrats now largely agree with establishment Republicans that the problem is a lack of support for business investment. 
So Bernie Sanders is not merely running to attempt to implement a set of idealistic policies that a Republican-controlled congress is likely to block. He is running to take the Democratic Party back from an establishment that ignores the fundamental systemic economic problems that lead to wage stagnation and economic crisis....

Senator Bernie Sanders Should Be Taken Very Seriously as a Presidential Candidate
Pam Martens: February 21, 2019 [Wall Street on Parade]
Unfortunately, eight years of Obama had produced zero criminal prosecutions of the executives of the largest Wall Street banks who had brought the country to its knees as they grew obscenely rich from corrupt, cartel behavior at their banks. Obama also seriously misinformed the American people about how little had changed in terms of reining in the risks on Wall Street. Obama also refused to provide a bully pulpit for breaking up the dangerous Wall Street banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act. 
Senator Bernie Sanders has, on the other hand, been an unrelenting critic of the dangerous threat that Wall Street banks pose to America since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, stating repeatedly, and correctly, through his last presidential campaign that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.” Sanders was right then and he remains right today that these banks must be broken up as a safeguard to the U.S. financial system, the U.S. economy and as a means of preserving democracy in America. 
Senator Sanders is a Democratic Socialist. Wall Street On Parade does not support socialism over capitalism. We do, however, believe that unchecked, corrupt crony capitalism in the U.S. has now morphed into an oligarchy that is dangerously threatening the economy and the very future of democracy in the U.S. Thus far, Senator Sanders seems to be the only candidate who is willing to confront this threat head on. For those who are making wild assertions that Senator Sanders could turn the U.S. into a socialist state, it would be well to remember that there are 535 members in Congress with a vote.
Posted by Tony Wikrent at 10:35 AM

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