2:00PM Water Cooler 7/9/15

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Patient readers: In line with Yves’s thinking on comments here, I want to say a word on comments about US domestic politics in Water Cooler, before election 2016 really gets going. (Only 487 days!) Out-of-bounds topics are: (1) How you will vote, or how others should vote; (2) General partisan cheerleading, party-building, sloganeering, petitition building, meme propagation, scripts, etc. None of these are the “nuanced, non-binary, information dense argument” that is NC’s calling card. James Madison wrote: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” (Federalist 51). There is plenty of NC calling card-style political material to be had that isn’t framed by party, faction, or candidate. And there are other sites, like Kos, or any number of conservative sites, where people can wave their pom poms to their heart’s desire. If that’s what you want to do, go there.

TPP/TTiP/TSA

List of traitors in House and Senate, with phone numbers. Hat tip, reader Vatch. Be sure to visit them when they return to the district. If a traitor is mentioned in Water Cooler, their name is in bold.

“Obama To Upgrade Malaysia On Human Rights Despite Mass Graves” [HuffPo]. And the slavery, let’s not forget. 

Cato Institute: “The president should act decisively to boost support for TPP by eliminating or modifying ISDS” [The Hill].

“New Leaked TPP Chapter Shows Countries Converging on Anti-User Copyright Takedown Rules” [EFF].

“Of the 31 chapters of a proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, six are expected to require “political settlement” at a ministerial meeting, according to Japanese government sources” [Japan News].

2016

Sanders

Nate Silver: Sanders could win in Iowa and New Hamster [FiveThirtyEight]. “And then lose everywhere else.” Regardless, Clinton better rev that oppo machine.

The S.S. Clinton

So-called Millenial voter to press, after Brooklyn campaign tsotchke sale: “No thanks, we are good,” one young woman said while giving this reporter the “talk to the hand” signal.  [Guardian]. Oh, is that the script?

“The Clinton Foundation will not be returning any funds raised from GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump” [The Hill].

Warren and McCain introduce a bill to bring back Glass-Steagall [The Hill]. Since gutting financial regulation at the behest of the Rubinite wing was a signature achievement under Clinton I, somebody should ask the would-be Clinton II what she thinks about this.

Republican Principled Insurgents

Scott Walker seems to have trouble using the phone [New York Times]. Remember when Walker got p0wned by a prankster posting as one of the Koch Brothers? Now there’s this:

Last Wednesday, Stephen Moore, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation who is an outspoken supporter of an immigration overhaul, described a recent telephone call with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, in which he said Mr. Walker had assured him he had not completely renounced his earlier support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

“”I’m not going nativist, I’m pro-immigration,'” Mr. Walker said, according to Mr. Moore’s account of the call to a reporter for The New York Times.

On Sunday, after three days of pressure from Mr. Walker’s aides, Mr. Moore said that he had ‘misspoken’ when recounting his call with Mr. Walker — and that the call had never actually taken place.

First, I’m amazed that Walker would use the “nativist” frame, and I’m not deploying the “Party of Stupid” card. He’s done his homework (see next link). Second, I really hate the use of the word “scholar” to describe a think tank propagandist; it’s language that drips with the rankest, most vile corruption and is, therefore, treated as completely normal in our political class.

“A Political Lifer, Scott Walker has Always Been Hhis Own Strategist [New York Times]. He’s a student of the game. As Rove was.

Walker’s budget passes: “The budget as passed holds property taxes in check, does not raise income or sales taxes, cuts University of Wisconsin funding by $250 million while freezing tuition for two years, and largely holds funding for public K-12 schools flat next year while also expanding the private school voucher program” [Post-Crescent]. Republican state legislators actually made it less virulent.

Republican Clown Car

“Trump [said] his call with [RNC chair] Priebus only lasted about ten minutes and that it was more of a “more of a congratulatory call” than a request to play nice on immigration [Talking Points Memo]. Crossed fingers Trump gets in the debates!

Stats Watch

Jobless Claims, week of July 4, 2015: “Claims data have been remarkably stable at very low levels since March. But now initial claims are up” above consensus [Bloomberg]. “[A]n important special factor will soon be at play in the claims data and that’s auto retooling which shuts down parts of the auto sector in rolling layoffs centered in July.” And: “Claim levels remain near 40 year lows” [Econintersect]. For a labor force of this size….

Chain Store Sales, June 2015: “[M]ostly stronger rates of year-on-year sales growth in June, hinting at a second straight month of strength for the core ex-auto ex-gas reading” [Bloomberg].

Consumer Comfort Index, week of July 5: “After a run of gains, the consumer comfort index eased back” [Bloomberg].

“The federal government ran a budget deficit of $314 billion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2015, CBO estimates. That deficit was $52 billion smaller than the one recorded during the same period last year” [Econintersect].

China Markets

“In short, a collapse in the stock market, in a climate of stagnant-to-negative growth in real estate, would almost certainly lead to a drop in household consumption and thus in consumption-driven industries. This is exacerbated by an environment that lacks substantial alternative investment avenues, in a period of slowing economic growth, slowing wage increases and rising unemployment” [Stratfor]. tl;dr: it’s a mandate of heaven thing.

Corruption

“The brainpower that moves from government (not just the Justice Department) to private industry (not just Covington) in any given year could drive an entire economy. You might argue it does just that” [Bloomberg].

[An] amendment from Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and John Cornyn, R-Texas [to the massive K-12 education funding bill currently up for congressional reauthorization] would allow local officials to divert money from the federal government’s multibillion-dollar fund for low-income school districts and use the cash to hire financial consulting firms. Both lawmakers are among the U.S. Senate’s top 10 recipients of campaign money from the financial industry, and Warner is a former venture capital executive [International Business Times]. Ka-ching. It will come as no surprise to readers that Mark Warner is a trade traitor. Wherever there’s a pile of money, these guys are on it like locusts.

“Just 12 weeks after Rahm Emanuel won a bruising battle for re-election, the Chicago mayor has unveiled a pension initiative that could be a significant financial boon for his largest campaign contributors. On Wednesday, the mayor proposed shifting city teachers’ retirement savings into a state fund that invests heavily in — and pays big fees to — financial firms whose executives bankrolled the mayor’s campaign” [International Business Times]. Ka-ching. Yes, the locusts seem to be in their swarming phase. On the bright side, locusts are edible!

Cancer stick flexians: “Starting in the 1980s, tobacco companies worked to create the appearance of broad opposition to tobacco control policies by attempting to create a grassroots smokers’ rights movement. Simultaneously, they funded and worked through third-party groups, such as Citizens for a Sound Economy, the predecessor of AFP and FreedomWorks, to accomplish their economic and political agenda. There has been continuity of some key players, strategies and messages from these groups to Tea Party organisations” [British Medical Journal].

Cancer stick flexians go international: “From Ukraine to Uruguay, Moldova to the Philippines, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds, according to interviews with government ministers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public health groups in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States” [New York Times].

“Amid a federal probe of airline pricing practices, a search on popular air travel booking websites shows virtually identical ticket pricing between popular city pairs on several carriers” [McClatchy]. Who knew?

I have the feeling this quote will be a gift that keeps on giving [@bettermarkets].

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch 

Asked whether Justice was in talks with Snowden over a plea bargain, Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates dodged  [Wall Street Journal, “Deputy Attorney General Dodges Question on Status of Snowden Case “].

Black Injustice Tipping Point

“Becoming a member of a private mobile group chat for white supremacist teenagers was surprisingly easy” [Buzzfeed].

“Despite the efforts of lawyers, former co-stars and misguided pseudo-Black Nationalists who have fought desperately over the past year to protect the legacy of Bill Cosby, it has finally been revealed that in a 2005 deposition, he admitted to giving women drugs ‘for sex’ [Ebony]. Pound cake my Sweet Aunt Fanny.

“[A]rguing about personal non-racism is missing the point” [Medium].

Non-violence program in Richmond, CA yields 76% drop in homicides [Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer]. Richmond, CA is a place to watch…..

Class Warfare

“How To Eliminate Extreme Poverty In 169 Not-So-Easy Steps” [NPR]. Interesting history of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, and their revision.

“In 2011, [Kelly Shue of the Chicago Booth School of Business] found that having the right friends matters a lot for executive pay” [Bloomberg]. Or, in MBA-ese: “[H]uman networks were a very important determinant of pay levels.” A network is composed of nodes, and nodes are divided into classes, according to their properties. Just saying.

Climate

“According to the NOAA and NASA, the first five months of this year are the hottest since records started being kept in 1880. The data put 2015 on track to be the warmest year on record” [New York Magazine].

“ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial” [Guardian].

I love this tweet, and I am so happy that it comes up in Google under “plucky billionaries.”

“Three billion-dollar weather-related disasters hit the Earth [in May]: a severe weather outbreak and flooding on May 23 – 28 in the Central U.S. that caused at least $1 billion in damage; flooding in China that caused $1.15 billion in damage; and the on-going drought in California and neighboring states that now has a price tag of at least $3 billion” [Jeff Masters, Weather Underground].

 Global Catastrophe Recap, June 2015 [Catastrophe Insight]. OK, the guy’s in the insurance industry. On the other hand, they think about these things.

News of the Wired

“Making the Most of Your Time in the Archives: Research Technology” [The Junto]. Good stuff if you’ve gotten boxes of material in response to a FOIA request and you’re a mere citizen.

“I feel as if we, in the cultural classes, have been perfectly happy to get caught up in the mythology that L.A. is somehow a Xanadu of art-making. Certainly, there are worse places to be an artist. (Brooklyn comes to mind.) ” [Los Angeles Times].

“Brainflayer: A Password Cracker That Steals Bitcoins From Your Brain” [Wired]. “Money’s out there. You pick it up, it’s yours.” –Blake, Glengarry Glen Ross 

“There are clear traces of the [Normandy invasion] landings still in the sand” [The New Yorker]. One can only wonder about the mud of Flanders, or the Somme.

“̌How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?” [Political Violence at a Glance].

According to our research, the average nonviolent campaign takes 3 years to run its course. Most activists do not plan for three year’s worth of tactical sequencing, communicating a viable alternative, broadening and deepening the levels of participation, prompting loyalty shifts in the regime’s key pillars, etc. I think this problem is exacerbated by over-reliance on social media, which is facilitating rapid connections and communication—all great—but oftentimes thrusting activists and their movements into primetime before they are sufficiently prepared and organized.

Furthermore, regimes often have huge amounts of resources to dedicate to cyber-suppression, to usurping complete control of the media, co-opting real or potential dissent, preventing fraternization by security forces, and frightening people into supporting the status quo. With the exception of a few brutal leaders in Syria, North Korea, and Uzbekistan, most authoritarians can rely on a “velvet fist” to control populations and suppress dissent. They don’t need mass violence.

Activists are forced to operate in fluid, quickly changing environments. They often lack access to key pieces of information while their movement is ongoing, making it difficult to evaluate what’s working and what’s not and adapting their strategies and tactics accordingly. Their heavily resourced, patient, regime opponents are simply out-performing and out-maneuvering them in many cases.

Questions of organizational capacity crop up everywhere once you look.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (Dimitri):

Dimitri

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About Lambert Strether

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

75 comments

  1. Anon

    Maybe there’s some formatting goodness still going on behind the scenes, but shouldn’t that be New Hampshire? Reading the tweets from the bettermarkets account, brought me to this article by Taibbi:

    Eric Holder: Double Agent.

    What I especially love about this is that it really makes you realize how milquetoast Holder was during his stint as AG, with moments like this:

    One is that he failed to win a single conviction in court for any crimes related to the financial crisis. The only trial of any consequence brought by his Justice Department for crimes related to the crisis involved a pair of Bear Stearns nimrods named Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, who confided in each other via email that the subprime markets were “toast” but told their clients something very different to keep them invested.

    After a jury acquitted both in early 2009, the Holder Justice Department turtled. Sources inside the DOJ told me over the years that both Holder and his deputy, fellow Covington & Burling alum Lanny Breuer, were obsessed with winning and refused to chance any case where they felt a jury might go sideways on them. Thus the Cioffi-Tannin case was the last financial crisis case they dared to bring into to a criminal courtroom – virtually every other case ended in settlements.

    It sure must be nice to be rich – I can utterly fail at the main responsibility of my job AND land a cushy job with no real effort on my part! Going on that tangent reminds me of that PBS parody video with Lanny Bruce.

  2. Gareth

    The First World War bombs that are still killing people in France – Mirror Online

    “Nearly 100 years since the conflict ended, an estimated 300 million unexploded bombs lie buried under farmland of Northern France and Belgium. As recently as March, two construction workers in Ypres died when a shell exploded.

    The Belgians call it the iron harvest, and there is a team of army bomb disposal experts permanently stationed here.

    In the past four years alone, they have removed some 629 tons of bombs, shells and other explosives on former battle lines in Flanders…”

    1. Dugh

      Off Wiki:

      “During World War I an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every three shells fired did not detonate. In the Ypres Salient, an estimated 300 million projectiles that the British and the Germans forces fired at each other during World War I were duds, and most of them have not been recovered.”

      1. ambrit

        During the middle sixties when we lived in Petersburg Virginia, I once watched an Army Demolitions Team blow up an 1864 or 1865 era artillery shell. Civil War ordinance is still being found in Virginia today. Early nitro cotton explosive shells are most dangerous. The nitro cotton deteriorates into something like nitro jelly. Hit it with a hammer and the authorities will be looking for some part of you to identify.

    2. vidimi

      sounds like a few years’ worth of war creates a century of jobs (permanently-stationed bomb disposal experts). what’s not to love?

  3. timbers

    “On…tour last week after the Supreme Court ruling on insurance subsidies, Obama bragged at an event in Tennessee about the many wonderful aspects of the law, including the fact that “we’re actually seeing less health care inflation.”

    “…a questioner…asked Obama about massive rate hikes in the state: “I don’t know if you’re aware,” the questioner said, “that BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has announced a significant increase after the one that they gave from 2014 to 2015.”

    BCBS is asking for a 36.3% hike in premiums this year, on top of the 18%-plus increase they got last year, because “claims significantly exceed the premiums collected.”

    Obama’s response was to tell her to “stay on your insurance commissioner, pay attention to what they’re doing.” Those insurance companies, he said, always ask for sky-high rate increases, and if the commissioner “does their job in not just passively reviewing the rates” then rates will “come in significantly lower than what’s being requested.”

    http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/070815-760698-obama-tries-to-blame-insurance-companies-for-rate-hikes-obamacare-caused.htm

    Obama is fighting for us!

    1. Lambert Strether

      This from the guy whose operation censored single payer questions at his own town meeting!

  4. Carla

    Beautiful Hellebore (common name: Lenten Rose) antidote today–thanks, Dimitri and Lambert!

    1. nippersdad

      Are you sure? That looks like apple blossoms to me….something that bears fruit from a tree.

  5. different clue

    ” Sanders could win in Iowa and New Hamster . . . and then lose everywhere else.” New HAMSter?
    Is that a state?

  6. Jeff N

    Charles Bukowski — ‘You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.’

    1. John Smith

      And who is Charles Bukowski that one should ignore the Old Testament’s clear teachings on social justice as “grandiose romanticism or politics?’’

      That said, social justice in the US has been so bungled that it is understandably, though still inexcusably, largely held in contempt by many, especially white Protestant, churches.

      1. hunkerdown

        Seems to me that, in juxtaposition to tales of empire, war, ample sexual abuse, and the righteousness of mass murder, such teachings might be discounted as insincere, with good reason.

        Likewise, with the OT’s numerous exceptions from just behavior against outsiders continuing up to this day, and with politics primarily a means of negotiating distribution, to call the OT’s approach to social justice “political” is not unsound.

        1. John Smith

          Likewise, with the OT’s numerous exceptions from just behavior against outsiders continuing up to this day,

          One understands little of the Bible if one makes no distinction between the Canaanites (who were to be annihilated if they did not flee first) with other foreigners. See the story of the Gibeonites in Joshua 9 which makes this distinction very clear. Later, Saul broke that treaty and made war on the Gibeonites. For that dishonorable act, all seven of his sons were hung (2 Samuel 21:1-9).

          As for modern day Israel, it’s not uncommon for believing Jews to deny its legitimacy based on the Hebrew Scriptures so Scripture can hardly be blamed for the treatment of present day Palestinians – especially since most Israelis today deny its authority.

          But this is all beside the point that even if the social justice teachings in the OT were limited to fellow Hebrews, they are being GROSSLY ignored by modern day Christians for whom the Hebrews are a model of sorts for inter-Christian behavior. The Alabama Baptists, for example, recently ruled that payday lenders should be limited to 36% APR – 3 times what the OT condemns in Nehemiah 5!

          If Christians are to be pried away from the extreme Right in the US, the Bible is the tool to do it with but that will require far more than a superficial acquaintance with it.

  7. allan

    Science: Bumblebees being crushed by climate change

    As the climate changes, plants and animals are on the move. So far, many are redistributing in a similar pattern: As habitat that was once too cold warms up, species are expanding their ranges toward the poles, whereas boundaries closer to the equator have remained more static.

    Bumblebees, however, appear to be a disturbing exception, according to a study on p. 177 of this issue. A comprehensive look at dozens of species, it finds that many North American and European bumblebees are failing to “track” warming by colonizing new habitats north of their historic range. Simultaneously, they are disappearing from the southern portions of their range.

  8. grayslady

    Nate Silver article is very similar to an article in the NYT today by Nate Cohn (what is it with all the Nates?). In the comments section of the NYT article, readers eviscerated Cohn–and the Times–for desperately trying to push the horse race over the issues. Numerous commenters saying “I’m a moderate Democrat and I intend to vote for Bernie”, or, even, “I’m a Republican, but I intend to vote for Bernie because he’s addressing the issues I care about”. Although the common wisdom is “9-11 changed everything”, it seems many ordinary citizens feel that it was actually 9-08 that changed everything.

  9. Roland

    The armies in the Great War all experienced ammunition shortages after about six months of fighting. In Britain this was called the “Shell Crisis,” and it led to some changes in cabinet.

    The worst off, though, was Russia, whose artillery was virtually silenced during critical times of the big German 1915 offensive in the east. Bereft of fire support, all the Russian armies could do that summer was keep retreating. To try to relieve the pressure on Russia, the French and British hurried their own 1915 offensives, while short of ammo themselves, resulting in their own very heavy casualties in Artois and Champagne.

    All the powers embarked on crash programmes to expand ammunition production. Shell casings weren’t a problem, fillings were a bit of problem (shortage of high explosives), but the biggest problem was with the mass production of reliable fuses.

    Quality control eventually improved, but especially during 1915-16 the dud rate for artillery shells was very high (up to 15% duds–a significant diminution of effective firepower). There were also a high number of premature detonations, but of course those don’t cause us problems today!

    Troops were detailed for battlefield salvage, to pick up unexploded shells and other material. Much was recovered, nevertheless by the end of the war millions of pieces of unexploded ordnance remained in the ground.

    Even today there are still a few thousand hectares in France that, either due to UXO or uncertainly marked mass graves, are forbidden zones.

    1. JTMcPhee

      Lest we forget the nature of the Narrative, and the Raw Industrial Power that going balls-to-the-wall to Defeat The Nazis unleashed (with all the many threads and branches that came out of that hairball), a nice propaganda piece on one sexy war toy from WW-II, the Bell P-39 Airacobra, and how Wee All Did Our Complicated Choreographed Parts to put ’em in the air — for Us, the Russians, the UK, Australia, Free French, Italians, and fortuitously the Portugese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_P-39_Airacobra#Italy

      Here is a nice breezily un-self-aware portrait of our Fellow Freedom-Loving Patriots and the development and operation of the military-industrial complex, as its constituents went breezily about the first stages of globalizing the Forever War Machine, a self-licker of truly Brobdingnagian proportions…”Cannons on Wings – The Bell P-39 Airacobra (1942),” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeRvqA2GzAM Great Technicolor panorama of all that made America such a wonderful place, worth any sacrifice, any cost…

      This disabled and vastly disillusioned Vietnam veteran, once a great and intimate fan of the Bell (same lineage as the P-39,unit cost about $60,000 in 1944 bucks, a very different corporate entity by 1967) Huey (unit cost $4.7 million, more or less, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_UH-1_Iroquois) and lover of the Flag and all that, offers a phrase or two from my military experience: FUBAR, and really, folks, WTF?

  10. DJG

    Ahh, Rahm. With regard to the article about forcing a teacher-run pension plan into a state-run pension system that has problems keeping away the skimmers, I note that the teacher-run plan has stricter rules. So this maneuver is typical of Rahm and his friends, who are skimmer capitalists:

    Friends:
    http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/governor-rauner-economic-reforms-corporate-ceo-pay/Content?oid=18169058

    With regard to Lambert’s comments up top, I would like to point out that Chicago voters often gave the excuse that Rahm had “learned his lesson” by being forced into a run-off by said ultra-daring voters. It is simply not true that modern-day legacy-party candidates learn lessons. The point is to gain power and do as one pleases–the lesson that Rahm in fact did learn.

    The question is whether the voters have a quaint view that voting is communication with the candidate or that the voters have been dulled by horse-races and celebrity politics into learned helplessness. I think it is important to think about “learning lessons” in discussions of Hillary being pulled satisfactory to the left by Bernie Sanders. It is not going to happen. I hate to harsh your hope. Chicago voters actually claimed to believe that Rahm had more fiscal expertise than Chuy Garcia, his main competitor, and it turns out the fiscal expertise is in looting pension funds (something already foreshadowed).

    1. Lambert Strether

      Rahm learned his lesson, alright. And he’s applying it just as we see.

  11. C

    Before comments disappear for good I have to squeeze this in regarding the Hill piece on ISDS. The piece attempts to deflect the criticisms of Warren and others about undermining domestic laws by calling them “outlandish” and “scare tactics” yet it does not explain how the rules would prevent domestic standards from being undermined. Nor does it address any of the real cases such as the Phillip Morris suit in Austrailia or the Czech bailout suits that Warren and others cite. They then ironically note that: “ISDS does nothing to enhance trade liberalization.”

    This is funny because they then move on to trying to argue for ISDS and come up with this (emphasis mine):

    Supporters of ISDS, which includes most of the U.S. business community, argue that being able to pursue claims against unfair treatment by governments makes firms more willing to invest. Although the evidence is inconclusive, this may lead to greater economic growth and increased prosperity, while providing an incentive for good governance. There are thought to be several thousand ISDS agreements in force. They may have played a role in boosting cross-border economic integration and global supply chain efficiency.

    If the best argument that can be made for ISDS is that it probably isn’t as bad as opponents say and that it “may” have helped then that is pretty sad. To my mind it begs two critical questions: 1) why is it there anyway?; and 2) what else is in there solely because it “may” help?

  12. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    “In short, a collapse in the stock market, in a climate of stagnant-to-negative growth in real estate, would almost certainly lead to a drop in household consumption and thus in consumption-driven industries. This is exacerbated by an environment that lacks substantial alternative investment avenues, in a period of slowing economic growth, slowing wage increases and rising unemployment” [Stratfor]. tl;dr: it’s a mandate of heaven thing

    Plus the crackdown on corruption.

    Ask the casinos in Macau and antique auction houses in many places.

  13. Oregoncharles

    “regimes often have huge amounts of resources to dedicate to cyber-suppression, to usurping complete control of the media, ”

    Not only regimes: the companies themselves. This is the reason I’m very concerned about the recent dependence on social media for organizing. Twitter and Facebook are huge companies with interests of their own. Not only are they spying on you, they can shut you off any time the want to.

  14. Lisa

    “How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?” [Political Violence at a Glance].”

    I have posted on this elsewhere (Ian Walsh for example). Activist groups need to learn from LGBTI ones.
    How have we managed to get succees in many areas, while every other one has failed, despite having far worse opposition and far less public support?

    3 Years? Not even enough time to start setting up infrastructure, if you are not thinking 20 years at least then you are not in the game.

    Thing long term, focus on what you want and don’t deviate and be endlessly persistent.
    Never, ever compromise from your core aims.
    All politicans are corrupt and will turn on you. Just because ‘your party’ gets in doesn’t mean they will not turn on you as soon as they can (hint: they always will if allowed). Endlessly hammer them to keep them in line. Day 1 after an election is just another day of fighting.
    I’d also add internally police yourselves rigorously, there will always be those sell outs and traitors, you have to shut them down and kick them out real fast.
    On the ground community activists are your real core and heart. Build them up before thinking of anything else, then always support and maintain them.
    If you can’t put many, many thousands of people on the street that are prepared to be beaten up…again you are not in the game.
    Handle the media properly…duh…and create your own seperate media.

    And so on.

    1. hunkerdown

      LGBTIs (thank you for being honest and leaving out the Q), who simply want to “buy in” to the bourgeois capitalist mainstream, assimilate its values, and consume its harvest, are playing on a rather different field than, say, economic justice activists who seek to challenge the privileges of said bourgeois capitalist mainstream or environmental activists challenging the foundations of consumerism.

      Playing “the game” doesn’t seem to do much good for those not seeking pro-consumerism outcomes. Why is it that any outcomes that cannot be reached through “the game” are deemed illegitimate?

      1. JTMcPhee

        As with decriminalization of pot (great retail and investment opportunities there) , it helps that marriage freedom is important to a lot of “conservatives/people with a lot of Wealth.” Harmonic convergence.

        What outcomes do we want from the political economy? And yes, all that stuff about organizing and long haul and all that is true. And so is the reality that a lot of non-gay people put a lot of effort into that campaign. The techniques work for items like and NRA, too, of which the organizing principles are boresighted on stuff that is near and dear to their fiercest entanglements. A little harder for those who organize by building evanescent coalitions.

        What outcomes do we want, again. And who is “we”?

        1. different clue

          If legalization goes all the way and includes personal plants for personal use, there would also be a lot of opportunities for un-money subsistence cannabis.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      I agree. ACT-UP is one of the great lost histories. Original tactics, focused, strategic, successful. And for those reasons, I imagine, erased. (Those who were closer to the battle do correct me. In my copious fe time I should look for some posts on lessons learned…)

      1. different clue

        ACT-UP has been kind of cone-of-silenced. But altogether erased? I bet most of the people here have heard of ACT-UP and could go google it if they wanted to re-learn something. How many people here have even heard of “parity economics” or Carl Wilken or The Association of State Secretaries of Agriculture or other famous-at-the-time but deeply forgotten things and people now?

  15. Synapsid

    Jess, vidimi, all,

    Yesterday I replied to comments about fracking’s ‘produced’ (flowback) water being lost to further use. There is a good descriptive article about some of the efforts made to reduce this loss in California, at Rigzone. Click on News in the top bar, and then Headlines.

  16. different clue

    Lambert Strether,

    Just today in a comment on Sic Semper Tyrannis, someone used the word “squillionaire”. So your word is creeping into the language.

    A few thoughts on comments occur to me.

    Given several posts per day, the sheer volume of comments, however good, could in itself be overwhelming through unbearable mass. In which case, stopping comments would be the only self-defense possible. But if the problem is indeed a matter of many bad comments from new people, are there ways of pre-excluding the bad comments or banning the repeat bad commenters which would take less energy then is now spent cleaning up the drive-by bad comments after they have been posted? I had thought that restricting commenting privileges to a carefully selected group of “hi-valu-added” commenters might achieve that. Some other readers noted that this undemocratic approach to “who gets to comment” had injured other blogs’ comment sections in the past.

    So another idea occurs to me. Why not exactly copy the exact system that Colonel Lang uses over at Sic Semper Tyrannis? He pre-moderates all comments and no comment prints for the readership to see until he previews it first. If he deems it unfit to print, it never even prints. That keeps trash comments off his threads to begin with. Then too, if a person makes enough valu-subtracted comments, he will run the most embarrassing part of those comments, condemn the commenter for it, and then announce that the trash-commenter is hereby BANNED from SST. And he means it, too.
    Then three, he apparently only views the stacking thread-loads of comments twice a day. This means that replies to any comment appearing by virtue of having been deemed “fit to print” sees no visible replies for half-a-day or longer. This discourages the people who seek instant gratification by seeing their reply instantly show up to a comment. He once referred online to his commenters as a valuable resource which he has carefully developed over time, and which he will not let just anyone join.

    Since the downside of No More Comments for many posts is the exclusion of any future input by Guy Faukes (for example) or other highly valuable commenters, one hopes that it is indeed a “bozo exclusion” problem and not an outright “too much mass” problem. Because if it is a “bozo exclusion” problem, perhaps Colonel Lang’s approach points the way to excluding the bozos and KEEPing them excluded.

    Finally, I wonder if all the trash comments by hordes of “newbies” are merely an expression of the puerile juvenile mainstream of blog-comment culture. I wonder if some of them might be deliberately sabotaging threads with trash in order to frustrate you-all into giving up under their weight and closing comments largely down. If there is indeed a problem with strategically placed and directed sabotrolls
    taking tactical actions to drive Yves and yourself into shutting down most comments to make the pain stop and avoid health-breaking lack of decent rest, then perhaps adopting Colonel Lang’s exact method of aggressive exclusionist pre-moderation would solve that sabotroll problem. He has written that it is effective in keeping hasbarists off of his blog altogether, for instance.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      These are all good thoughts. However, I’m not sure that NC has the resources “aggressive exclusionist pre-moderation.” And if those resources fell from the sky, should they not go to original reporting?

      1. different clue

        It is true that Colonel Lang only runs one post per day . . . and sometimes less than that. Also, he lets a fair number of guest posters post on his blog and They do all their own aggressive exclusionist moderating on their own guest-posts. So the leisurely-by-comparison-to-here tempo at SST would require a lot less resources. Still, I wonder whether aggressively pre-moderating comments here nice . . . and . . . slowwww . . . in order to keep resource use to a pleasant limit might deter so many of the drive-by commenters so as to reduce the number of commenters here to the number
        over at SST. And they are all high quality value-adders at SST because the drive-byers and the sabotrolls have all been excluded. And while that would go against the earlier stated desire to have more commenters, now that it has been discovered that the volume of trash-typers has reached genuinely health-threatening levels such that no-more-comments is necessary to preserve basic health for a while, perhaps at some future point the concept of a limited number of
        high value commenters might be re-thought at leisure if and when leisure should permit?

        Naked Capitalism could become the Marine Corps of blogs. ” A Few Good Commenters.”

        1. sleepy

          Many commenters at SST appear to be sycophants of Pat Lang for some reason, primarily imho because he tends to demand it. As a result, there’s a good deal of very narrow self-selection regarding what is said or not said. In many cases it becomes an echo chamber.

          Using that blog as a model would not be anything I would consider.

          1. different clue

            A blogmaster could pre-moderate and exclude comments based purely on the quality of argument and expression and information-density and so forth of the comment. It need not be run as an echo chamber for preferred lines of thought.

            And I recall some disagreement with Colonel Lang from quite a few commenters on some key areas. He didn’t censor them for it. For example, commenters noting that
            the overthrow of Khaddafi has turned out to be a harmful failure. Much as he disagreed with that for some time, he did not suppress those comments. And the same is true in other areas. There is more pressure to uphold a Southern Gentlemanly form of expression than to agree in all things. Now . . . genuine scholars of Civil War affairs could I suppose test that by going there and presenting just as fact-dense a case for their point of view as Colonel Lang presents for his point of view. If they stayed polite and fact/data based, would they be hounded right out?

            I could certainly imagine our hosts here maintaining the same respect for diversity of opinion as they maintain now even while pre-excluding the trash typing and the sabotrollage. Couldn’t you?

            (Parenthetically, there are some subjects which get the same echo chamber treatment here as Lang has been accused of fostering over there . . . but over here enforced by the howling unanimity of the commentariat. For example, anyone pointing out any actual facts in Israel’s favor, if indeed there be such, would be hooted down as a hasbara troll. So echo-chambering is a risk we might all strive to avoid.)

            1. Yves Smith

              With all due respect, are you prepared to pay for this magic “blogmaster’? This is the role Lambert and I have been playing, and it’s massively time consuming and requires constant attention during the day and night. We’ve had to rope other site writers in to help, so of late, we’ve had five people spending time on this.

              1. different clue

                I claim no standing to argue with the basic fact as you explained that doing comments on all these posts is so time burdensome that it has to stop.

                Since Lambert Strether has said that he will continue permitting comments on Water Cooler, that means he will continue reading all the comments that post on Water Cooler threads, just as he has to this point.
                If indeed he (and others) will continue reading all the comments that post to Water Cooler specifically, how does reading them before letting them print take any more time than letting them print and then reading them all after they have printed? If it takes more actual time to read them beFORE printing them and then letting some print while simply clearing out the others without letting them print at all, then my suggestion is not helpful in the way I hoped it would be. But if the amount of time taken to read the comments on posts where commenting will still be permitted takes the same amount of time if they all print and are then read after-the-fact as it would take to read them all before-the-fact and then simply not let the low quality ones print at all, then what exactly is wrong with the suggestion when targeted specifically to those posts where commenting will still be accepted?

                It would seem to me that reading comments would take the same amount of time whether they are read “before” printing or “after” printing.
                Am I wrong about that? If I am not wrong about that, and reading them “before” printing and letting only the good ones print would take no more time, then what exactly is wrong with the suggestion? In the specific cases where it has been announced that commenting will continue? Does one approach actually take a different amount of time than the other approach? If so, please let me know and I will say no more about it.

                ( Then too, how much time would be saved in the longer run by cutting the number of commenters on posts where Lambert Strether has said commenting WILL be continued regardless. . . . if the numbers of commenters were cut down to Colonel Lang’s numbers by using Colonel Lang’s methods? Which by the way Professor Juan Cole also uses . . . which shows prior exclusion-moderation is compatible with left wing blogging . . . )

            2. Massinissa

              Hey do you wanna be blogmaster? Or are you willing to pay for one?

              Otherwise your comment isnt useful.

      1. ambrit

        He ‘left’ over a doctrinal dispute. I don’t know where his Rhode Island is, but he did spend some time on Whidby Island.

        1. different clue

          I had thought he was finally banned for offering too many free bible study lessons to people who felt they were worth every cent. He then came back under another name . . . perhaps from a different computer? And now he is back under another different name.

  17. likbez

    === quote ===

    “̌How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?” [Political Violence at a Glance].

    According to our research, the average nonviolent campaign takes 3 years to run its course. Most activists do not plan for three year’s worth of tactical sequencing, communicating a viable alternative, broadening and deepening the levels of participation, prompting loyalty shifts in the regime’s key pillars, etc. I think this problem is exacerbated by over-reliance on social media, which is facilitating rapid connections and communication—all great—but oftentimes thrusting activists and their movements into primetime before they are sufficiently prepared and organized.

    === end of quote ===

    The article might be a sign that architects of color revolutions recently start to experience some unanticipated difficulties and cost overruns ;-). The whole American neoliberal project looks much less attractive then in early 90th, when it took the Eastern Europe and the USSR by storm. So the authors are setting ground for multi-year cash financing from McCain’s NDI and other “sponsors”.

    You need to pay at least $25-$30 per night, per extra during street protests in such cases. So the bill for one night of protest is at least $70K. Double this figure as you need to provide food and amenities too.

    Plus there should be a several hundred of “core professional activists” who need to be trained and supported like salaried professionals for all those years.

    also it looks like local compradors and media personalities now want more money to compensate for the risks they are taking too. As risks look higher then before. So all those “liberal professors” at universities, now understand that they can lose the position and forced into immigration. For such risks research grants and some trips to Western conferences is not enough. You need some guarantees in case of worst case scenario materialize.

    If we look at the recent set back in Hong Cong student protests (I think they are not over yet, and the next stage in on the drawing boards) governments now probably start to understand the key mechanisms of color revolutions, Which will dramatically rise the costs of staging such an event.

    Also sometimes events goes the way the architects did not fully anticipated. Unless bringing far right nationalists to power was the goal, I am not sure that Ukrainian Euromaidan can be counted as their success. If we are not taking literally the famous Nuland’s remark “F*ck the EU” as a policy goal, a proposal which now definitely looks like being successfully accomplished ;-)

    I think that reading Professor Bacevich’s book “Washington Rules:
    America’s Path to Permanent War” might be a good prerequisite to this article.

  18. Jack

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/04/paul-krugman-asimov-economics

    Old, obviously, but I just stumbled upon it. The Foundation series is basically one long wank about the glories of neoliberalism (indeed, at one point it explicitly champions free-trade) and the arrogant belief that human activity can be reduced to a series of equations. Eventually ‘the plan’ gets derailed, but only because an unforeseen anomaly appears, so the problem is that something wasn’t entered into the calculation, not that the entire concept is complete and total bunk.

    That this formed a key part of Krugman’s early years explains a lot of things.

    1. ambrit

      Have a look at Asimov’s history and you’ll learn a lot about Krugman et. al.
      Asimov was a legitimate Chemistry Professor. The scientific method informs his fiction writings.

  19. jabre

    Yves/Lambert – This is directed to Clive. Would really be interested in seeing his comments regarding this Bloomberg article. Perhaps the processors have been *pre*paring for a possible change – days <–weeks<–months?

  20. blowncue

    re: NYSE shutdown

    From the NYSE Blog:

    “On Tuesday evening, the NYSE began the rollout of a software release in preparation for the July 11 industry test of the upcoming SIP timestamp requirement. As is standard NYSE practice, the initial release was deployed on one trading unit. As customers began connecting after 7am on Wednesday morning, there were communication issues between customer gateways and the trading unit with the new release. It was determined that the NYSE and NYSE MKT customer gateways were not loaded with the proper configuration compatible with the new release.”

    I think the root issue behind the meltdown was a failure in scheduling, namely not doing the software update on Friday June 26, or signing off on an industry test date that fell 7 days after a holiday weekend.

    I have never heard of any corporate entity doing a software update mid-week, unless it was a dire emergency e.g. plugging raging exploit, and I’ve never seen it in person. Software updates happen over the weekend. But the weekend before the July 11 industry test…was the 4th of July weekend.

    Even if there hadn’t been a compatibility mismatch between the customer gateways’ software update and the trading unit’s software update, one still ran the risk of incurring other causes of software issues, such as incorrect settings, inadequate resources, invalid credentials, or a bug.

  21. Fool

    Lambert, when you post links to DailyKos & HuffPo daily don’t be surprised when you attract their readers.

    1. ambrit

      Unfair complaint. The two “offending” sites you mention themselves mine stories from other, more “reputable” sources.
      Look on the bright side, perhaps Lambert has a ‘cunning plan’ to siphon off those sites ‘cream’ readers and commentators.
      (I personally think that the occasional sighting of a DailyKos piece is in the nature of an inoculation.)

  22. ewmayer

    Re. CBO review of budget for first 9 months of FY 2015:

    Let’s see what Treasury’s own debt to the penny data say for the first 9 months of FY 2015:

    9/30/2014: 17,824,071,380,733.82
    6/30/2015: 18,151,997,510,872.44, thus +327,926,130,138.62, or ~$328 Bln in the first 9 months of FY 2015. Close enough to the cited $314 Bln.

    But “$52 billion smaller than the one recorded during the same period last year”? I don’t think so – we were still running a $Trillion-plus deficit last year, here are the first 9 months:

    9/30/2013: 16,738,183,526,697.32
    6/30/2014: 17,632,606,234,365.92, thus +894,422,707,668.60, or ~$894 Bln in the first 9 months of FY 2014. Perhaps they intended “$552 billion smaller than the one recorded during the same period last year”? But hey, what’s a little leading digit between friends? After all, we regularly deal with the kinds of “projections of leading economists and pundits” on this site where more often than not they don’t even get the *sign* right.

  23. different clue

    Well . . . I don’t know for a fact that the “John Smith” upthread is the F. Beard under another name, but his mention right away of his favorite hobbyhorse of Postal Savings Bank and then his swift resort to “Old Testament” this and “bible study” that makes me feel intuitively that it is him. I will copy-paste the telling (to my mind) comment from up above into this comment here. . . .

    John Smith
    July 10, 2015 at 12:23 am
    Likewise, with the OT’s numerous exceptions from just behavior against outsiders continuing up to this day,

    One understands little of the Bible if one makes no distinction between the Canaanites (who were to be annihilated if they did not flee first) with other foreigners. See the story of the Gibeonites in Joshua 9 which makes this distinction very clear. Later, Saul broke that treaty and made war on the Gibeonites. For that dishonorable act, all seven of his sons were hung (2 Samuel 21:1-9).

    As for modern day Israel, it’s not uncommon for believing Jews to deny its legitimacy based on the Hebrew Scriptures so Scripture can hardly be blamed for the treatment of present day Palestinians – especially since most Israelis today deny its authority.

    But this is all beside the point that even if the social justice teachings in the OT were limited to fellow Hebrews, they are being GROSSLY ignored by modern day Christians for whom the Hebrews are a model of sorts for inter-Christian behavior. The Alabama Baptists, for example, recently ruled that payday lenders should be limited to 36% APR – 3 times what the OT condemns in Nehemiah 5!

    If Christians are to be pried away from the extreme Right in the US, the Bible is the tool to do it with but that will require far more than a superficial acquaintance with it.

    Reply ↓

    1. different clue

      Lambert Strether . . . this comment was meant to be a reply to your question: ” He is?” But it did not nest.
      It just ran “fresh” here at the bottom of the thread. So this comment is supposed to be my evidence for “John Smith” pretty far upthread being another name for the “F Beard” we all came to know and love.

Comments are closed.