By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
TPP/TTiP/TISA
“[T]he National Farmers Union (NFU), which represents over 200,000 family farms and ranches, believes the USDA’s promises are the same kind made with previous trade pacts that did not come to fruition” [Crop Protection News]. “‘In its current form, the TPP stands to hurt our rural economies by pitting American jobs against foreign labor that is paid mere pennies per hour,’ [NFU President Roger Johnson] said. ‘Beyond the farm gate, any consumer that cares about where their food comes from should be concerned with the TPP. This is an issue that affects all Americans alike. I continue to urge Congress to give thoughtful consideration to opposing the TPP.'” If Sanders is indeed a “prairie populist,” those 200,000 family farms and ranches will help him.
“Paris would like to “copy-paste” key passages from the EU-Canada free trade agreement, concluded last week, particularly those relating to the arbitration court that is such a controversial issue in Europe” into the TTIP [Euractive].
“Trans-Pacific Partnership Provisions in Intellectual Property, Transparency, and Investment Chapters Threaten Access to Medicines in the US and Elsewhere” [PLOS]. “The recently negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) contains provisions that would dramatically and negatively impact access to affordable medicines in the United States and elsewhere if it is ratified.”
2016
Policy
“[T]he real reason people are disinclined to believe that Obama made financial regulation stronger is that they never saw a banker in handcuffs headed to jail. I know law enforcement and regulation aren’t precisely equivalent, but letting fraud go unpunished created a rot at the heart of our democracy, and made any claim about deterrents to another meltdown suspicious” [David Dayen, The New Republic]. Dayen is absolutely correct, and this disinclination applies across the political spectrum, left to right. When Sanders finally criticizes Obama, this is the point he should make. It’s the unspoken truth everybody knows, exactly like Trump on Iraq in South Carolina.
“In interviews with International Business Times, two former Democratic senators took issue with the notion promoted by the former secretary of state that their vote to block Wall Street bailout money somehow put them at odds with the auto industry. Another Democratic senator’s office told IBT that the vote was about reining in the financial industry — not about opposing help for autoworkers” [International Business Times]. Yes, Clinton struck a “false note” there.
“Election 2016: Voters’ Concerns About U.S. Trade Policy Fueled Michigan Primary Election Results” [International Business Times]. “According to exit polls, 58 percent of those who voted in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary said that trade with other countries takes away American jobs — and of those, 58 percent voted for Sanders. In addition to Michigan, some of the states that have been hardest hit by trade-related job losses include Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Those delegate-rich states are scheduled to soon hold primaries that could tip both parties’ presidential nominating contests.”
Money
“That Silicon Valley elites would support Clinton has been a foregone conclusion throughout the 2016 race so far. Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, has funded two companies—The Groundwork and Civis Analytics—that are both working with the Clinton campaign. Laurene Powell Jobs, widow to Steve Jobs, has donated to Clinton’s campaign and plowed $25,000 into the Ready for Hillary Super PAC back in 2014. Also in Clinton’s corner are Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, venture capitalist John Doerr, Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, Box CEO Aaron Levie, Tesla founder Elon Musk, and others” [Wired].
The Voters
“Educate, Agitate, Organize” [Corey Robin, Jacobin]. Using the Tweeted version, just because it’s smaller on the page:
A message to Sanders voters: focus on the delegate count, yes, but remember what it is we're really doing here. pic.twitter.com/MVjfBRyw7m
— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) March 9, 2016
Trump Panic
“Much to the dismay of some Republicans, the party’s primary process is working just as intended. Designed to choose a nominee quickly, this year’s rules have advanced that air of inevitability forming around Donald Trump, who has won 15 of the first 24 contests” [WaPo].
“Poll: Trump dominating Rubio in Florida, Kasich in Ohio” [Politico]. Surreal. Their home states!
Trump on unity: “I can get along with people. Look, the bottom line is, we have something going that’s so good, we should grab each other and we should unify the party, and nobody’s going to beat us, okay?” [WaPo].
“In every state to vote on the Republican side so far, Trump wins in states where the African American population is above 8 percent and the unemployment rate is above the national average (5 percent in December, the latest state numbers available). He’s seven for seven in those states – Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, South Carolina and Tennessee” [NBC].
“‘When’s Donald coming out? When he’s good and ready,’ said Ken Beer, a West Palm Beach dermatologist, reassuring friends and defending his candidate. Beer, along with most of the others in attendance, is a dues-paying member at one of a trio of lavish clubs Trump owns in Palm Beach County. As has become Trump’s habit in South Florida, he invited club members to the news conference, and seated them in the first few rows. For all the huge rallies and talk of angry outsiders, this small, expensively dressed group is Trump’s real base. There are CEOs, insurance brokers, health-care executives, former debutantes, trophy wives, and a woman in a short, sparkling silver dress (and thick bracelet to match) with an animal fur wrapped around her like a sash” [Bloomberg].
This is
awesomean awesome trope:Q: What is better than Trump winning?
A: These people losing pic.twitter.com/imdNxh0rzA— Coach Finstock (@Q1776) March 9, 2016
I could take the same idea and apply it to Democrats….
Michigan and Mississippi Primaries
CNN Michigan exit polls for Republicans and Democrats. Not really very granular.
“Watching the March 8 Primary Results” [American Communities Project]. Useful county-level maps.
“Presidential election in Michigan, 2016” [Ballotpedia].
“Bernie Sanders’s Win in Michigan Changes Race but Not Probabilities” [Nate Cohn, New York Times]. But in the body of the article, this: “But these things don’t explain his victory. All elements considered, Mr. Sanders looked like a 12-percentage-point underdog, based on an unpublished demographic model of the results so far. He beat expectations everywhere….. It’s tempting to look for another explanation, but none add up.” Odd. Pundits are supposed to add things up.
“With his unexpected win in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, Mr. Sanders proved his voting base still has power, just as the nominating calendar is about to turn to similar Midwestern states, including Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin” [Wall Street Journal, “Sanders Coalition Shows Strength in Michigan”].
Mr. Sanders carried a commanding 8 in 10 voters under age 30, according to preliminary results of surveys of voters after they cast ballots. He won more than two-thirds of voters under age 45. And while Mrs. Clinton won a lopsided share of African-American voters [Sanders won 30%], Mr. Sanders won nearly 6 in 10 white voters, according to exit polls reported by CNN and other media. … Its white, non-Hispanic population, at 77% of all residents, looks similar to the 80% share of white residents in Ohio, 78% Pennsylvania and 82% Wisconsin. The percentage of people who are 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree, at 26%, is in line with those three states. The median household income in Michigan, at $49,000, is also close to those in the three nearby states, which all sit between $49,000 and $53,000. And each of the states has deep roots and history in blue-collar manufacturing.
“Sanders campaigned hard against housing foreclosures in the black community… ‘The African-American community lost more than half of its wealth in the housing crisis,’ political commentator Van Jones, who worked for a time in Obama administration, noted on CNN – suggesting that Sanders might have found a better pitch to working-class blacks, on foreclosures, than he did with his frequent blasts against greed on Wall Street” [Will Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News]. “Clinton, for her part, focused much of her campaign in Michigan on spotlighting the lead contamination of public tap water in the hard-hit city of Flint and on vote-rich neighborhoods in Detroit – but ignored much of the rest of a large and diverse Midwestern state.” Weird. Was her campaign schedule that tough?
“Hillary Clinton spoke twice yesterday about how Bernie Sanders is an ally and how she hoped to enlist his supporters in her fight for the White House” [ABC]. Clinton’s still picking out the drapes for the Oval Office, I see. Sanders responds: “We’re running for president we think we have a path toward the White House and if we win it, we look forward very much to have Secretary Clinton’s support.” Sanders is really doing only what Clinton herself did in 2008; she has no standing in this matter.
“But none of the major cable news networks carried [Clinton’s concession speech], which came as Mr. Trump was speaking” [New York Times]. So, Trump’s hour-long speech — hawking his products?! — was genius; it sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
“Trump Sweeps Republican Primaries in Mississippi, Michigan” [Bloomberg]. “[Trump] also responded to critics who have bemoaned what they have called unpresidential behavior and comments, saying, ‘I can be more presidential than anybody, if I want to be.'”
Florida Primary (Tuesday, March 15)
“How to watch the Washington Post-Univision Democratic presidential debate” (tonight) [WaPo]. Should be a barn burner. Whatever else Clinton’s debate performance in Flint might have done, it didn’t help her.
A new CNN/ORC poll in Florida, finds Donald Trump leads the GOP presidential field with 40%, followed by Marco Rubio at 24%, Ted Cruz at 19% and John Kasich at 5%. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders, 61% to 34% [CNN].
The Trail
“Clinton Tosses Unpledged Superdelegate In Trunk Of Car” [The Onion].
Stats Watch
MBA Mortgage Applications, week of March 4, 2016: “Purchase applications for home mortgages have been strong this year but have yet to give much lift to underlying home sales which have been no better than flat” [Econoday].
Wholesale Trade, January 2016: “Inventories rose 0.3 percent in the month which isn’t alarming in itself but relative to sales, which fell 1.3 percent, inventories look heavy” [Econoday]. “Industries where inventories rose relative to sales include furniture, farm products, computers, and autos. Very few industries at the wholesale level show leaner levels in the month.”
Hysteresis: “The most dangerous man in the industry” [Splash247]. An excellent, must-read parable. I wonder how much of our “productivity slowdown” is caused by intangible factors like this?
Hysteresis: “Why is U.S. labor market fluidity drying up?” [Washington Center for Equitable Growth]. “The U.S. labor market is a far less dynamic place than it was 30 years ago. Workers today are less likely to get a job while unemployed, move into unemployment, switch jobs, or move across state lines. You’d think just the opposite would be true given some of the discussion about our rapidly changing digital economy, but the data show what the data show. Even still, the reason—or reasons—for the decline in fluidity aren’t known.” My guess is that it’s so bad out there that people don’t want to take the risk of a change.
Hysteresis: “Reviving the Working Class Without Building Walls” [New York Times]. “The political system is in shock over the insurrection of the white working class, which has flocked to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.” Heaven forfend that the “working class” should be not white, or that “white working class voters” — this is code for racist white working class voters because, you know how those people are — might also consider Sanders, and indeed other candidates. Like that not especially useful idiot at Vox I linked to the other day, this reporter doesn’t mention the Case-Deaton study either. You know, the study that shows “‘Stunning’ Rise in Death Rate, Pain Levels for Middle-Aged, Less Educated Whites,” a consequence of the deintrialization of America sponsored by private equity and facilitated by both parties, but especially Clinton’s faction of Democrats through trade deals. Again, you don’t create organic damage like that without a political reaction. Now it’s happening. Anyhow, read the whole sloppy mess. “Skills mismatch” is in there, too, of course.
Brexit: “A huge section of British industry is against a Brexit” [Business Insider]. Putting this here because it’s so pig ignorant. What is this “industry”? “Buyout groups — companies owned by private equity or venture capital firms — overwhelmingly support Britain staying in the European Union.” Private equity is, as Veblen would have it, a business, not an “industry.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 70, Greed (previous close: 70, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 66 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 9 at 10:21am. We seem not to be making a run for “Extreme Greed.” What the heck’s wrong?
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“Health apps, like prescription drugs, come with side effects, it turns out. A new study has found that an astoundingly large number of health apps may be sharing users’ medical information. Many can also switch on smartphone cameras and make changes to the software on your phone” [Stat]. “The apps are not bound by HIPAA — the federal privacy law that governs doctors and insurance plans. “They are free to trade, sell, and use the information in any way that they want,” said Mark Rothstein, an expert on health privacy at the University of Louisville.”
Gaia
“Hotter planet spells harder rains to come – study” [Guardian].
“Crippled Fukushima Reactors Are Still a Danger, 5 Years after the Accident” [Scientific American].
A pigeon speaks: “We’re not ‘rats with wings.’ We’re dinosaurs with wings. You’re rats with messenger bags” [Medium].
Class Warfare
“[M]ore than half of Americans experience poverty at some point during their prime working years, the authors discovered. (Wonkblog did a deeper dive into the data last summer.) The risk can be as high as 76 percent for some Americans and as low as 5 percent for others. Education and marriage can change a person’s odds significantly. But a common theme that emerged in the author’s research was that the risk of becoming poor is often higher than Americans of any demographic group realize” [WaPo].
“There’s a horrendous lie being told by the brokerage industry and its army of lobbying groups. It goes something like this….” [Fortune]. “Middle-class Americans are not worth serving if we can’t charge them egregious fees and sell them products that they do not need.” Exhibit A: ObamaCare, which violates the Hippocratic Oath as surely as the author’s examples violate fiduciary responsibility (which, to be fair, doesn’t apply to brokers, the topic of the article).
“Rent seeking always has a cost in terms of resources that could otherwise be applied to the creation of new wealth. Not only is it a legalized form of economic theft, but it also diverts resources from the real economy. And of course, the only people able to engage ‘successfully’ in rent-seeking activities are people who are already so well off that they don’t need to find work in the real economy” [Medium].
“The group of Latin Americans still vulnerable to fall back into poverty has moved tantalizingly close to middle class status in the past decade” [The World Bank].
“Thousands of French high school students and workers protested against labour reforms Wednesday” [AFP]. “”Young? Yes, Stupid? Maybe. Slaves? Never” read one poster in Rennes where local government officials said some 4,500 protested. In Toulouse police estimated a crowd of 10,000.” But Hollande says the “reforms” are for their own good…
News of the Wired
“Why Women Are Choosing Virtual Boyfriends Over Real Ones” [Vogue]. “Virtual companionship, once a niche Japanese subculture, has mushroomed into a lucrative global industry. The first wildly popular virtual romance game created specifically with women in mind, called Angelique, was released in 1994 by a team of female developers at the Japanese gaming company Koei. Since then, others have been quick to capitalize. Voltage, the leading company in the Japanese market, currently offers 84 different romance apps.”
“Facebook is eating the world” [CJR]. “First, news publishers have lost control over distribution… Second, the inevitable outcome of this is the increase in power of social media companies.”
There are huge benefits to having a new class of technically able, socially aware, financially successful, and highly energetic people like Mark Zuckerberg taking over functions and economic power from some of the staid, politically entrenched, and occasionally corrupt gatekeepers we have had in the past. But we ought to be aware, too, that this cultural, economic, and political shift is profound.
We are handing the controls of important parts of our public and private lives to a very small number of people, who are unelected and unaccountable.
“Fixing Twitter” [Fortune]. This is interesting and appears to be not entirely stenography/hagiography.
“The current generation of young physicists was not even born when particle accelerators produced their last genuinely surprising results” [Nature]. But there might be a new particle! “[T]he possibility of an electrically neutral particle that is four times heavier than the top quark — the current heaviest — and that could decay into pairs of photons has apparently never crossed anybody’s mind.”
“A breakdown of everything in the ‘Game of Thrones’ season 6 trailer” [Business Insider]
And just in time for spring training!
This graphic of all the information passed during a baseball game by Megan Jaegerman (via @EdwardTufte) is amazing. pic.twitter.com/WWdskzxjal
— Gray Kimbrough (@graykimbrough) March 8, 2016
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 (Jason Gordon):
From Florida, not Maine. At least not yet!
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118 comments
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A humble suggestion – in addition the “Fear & Greed” index we could have a “Trump schadenfreude” index.
I’d rate this morning about a solid 80/100. To make it go much higher, we’d need to see neo-cons heads exploding on Fox news, in the style of the 80’s schlock movie “Scanners.”
Trump sounded clam last night on radio.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
Trump sounded clam last night on radio.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
Probably depends on whether the result was pearls of wisdom issuing from his lips, lol.
I loved scanners. I wish I could scannerize people.
Wonder what happens to the funding sources for the Clinton Foundation if she is not the nominee?
Poof.
I’ll also be curious what her ‘ask’ will be for speeches as well once she is hopefully told to retire by the voters.
Motivational speeches in cellblock D.
:D
May it be so!
–Gaianne
What I am seriously wondering about is what became of that espionage investigation into former Clinton appointee and former CIA analyst, Robin Raphel?
Has the FBI buried that investigation, like they have buried so many other real investigations in the past?
Dunno. Wonder if the Sanders oppo organization, if any, did any data mining of WikiPedia?
Not that I’m trustful of the FBI….
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-republicans-sue-state-department-for-clinton-emails-2016-3
Apparently the RNC is not happy with the response time from their December FOIA request. I didn’t realize that they had requested all the texts from the government phones as well (that is courtesy of Yahoo’s article on this).
Oh, what the hell:
http://news.yahoo.com/republicans-sue-state-department-clinton-emails-154248813.html
It Took a FOIA Lawsuit to Uncover How the Obama Administration Killed FOIA Reform [Jason Leopold,Vice]
Joseph Heller would be proud.
I know law enforcement and regulation aren’t precisely equivalent, but letting fraud go unpunished created a rot at the heart of our democracy, and made any claim about deterrents to another meltdown suspicious
They aren’t supposed to be equivalent
Regulations are the Rules of the Game, law enforcement is (supposed to be) the mechanism to a codified remedy when regulations are not observed.
The more you know.
Like, and um..
I loved this bit dramatically and negatively impact access to affordable medicines in the United States and elsewhere if it is ratified in the story on TTIP. I guess the concept of irony is lacking somewhere.
Things can always get worse!
Meet the new boss.
Same as the old boss.
But thank heavens we are getting all the “olds” out of our lives amiright?
Without those ‘technically able’ billionaires, today’s young voters would have been still brainwashed by the old media.
Who knew we owe so much to them…
i’m guessing we’re living in a narrow historical window in which news on social media has not yet been consolidated in the hands of the few. enjoy it while it lasts.
I thought that Marcy Wheeler, on her Emptywheel blog, gave an excellent breakdown of what happened in Michigan yesterday; however, neither Marcy nor commenters seemed to know whether the increased turnout was enough to set a record. Marcy did mention one interesting point that I haven’t seen elsewhere: southwestern MI has both a large number of independents and an increasing population of progressives. That area has historically been a stronghold for the right wing religious; and if you look at yesterday’s Repub voting, those were the counties that voted for Cruz rather than Trump. Marcy thinks that because of the somewhat surreptitious change in that region, pollsters may have been unable to poll accurately among the cell phone crowd.
Which, unfortnately, suggests that the huge poll/election discrepancy in Michigan is probably not repeatable in future states. Buzzkill. :(
Still, I’m sure they wanted Bernie to go away before the free trade issue drew too much attention,
I wonder how many of those SW Michigan progressives are well-paid Greater Chicagolandians coming to gentrify SW Michigan.
Re Southwestern MI: Refugees from Rahmistan?
If evil old Pharoah Rhamsees is chasing those refugees, who will part the waters of the Strait of Mackinac to let the ‘chosen ones’ escape? Besides, America has been wandering in the wilderness nearly forty years now. Where’s the Promised Land we were led to expect?
“When Sanders finally criticizes Obama, this is the point he should make. It’s the unspoken truth everybody knows…” And Liz Warren should back him up since this is in her wheelhouse.
And when Sanders explains MMT to America, that there is money being hidden, withheld from the citizens of this great nation, that will put him over the top.
I don’t think making the case to average Americans for MMT is an easy thing to do. I don’t think it’s really necessary, either. In the long run, it’d be better for society, but it’s a risk (assuming he himself buys into MMT, he’s got one advisor who’s familiar with it, right?).
I think he just has to know, on some level, like Bush II and Reagan, that deficits “don’t matter” like Cheney famously said (I think).
He should just push for important spending projects like infrastructure, energy efficiency, health care, education, and others and let the budget work itself out. If inflation actually rises, don’t immediately jack interest rates, figure out how to fix what’s causing it.
I think an important move he could and should make would be to bring the Federal Reserve back under the arm of the Treasury Dept. Independent Central Banks have mostly proven to be a failed experiment, in my view.
The persuasive power of the “independent” central bank fetish is puzzling. I mean, why stop there? Why not have an independent military? An independent Justice Dept? What’s the point of having a government that is (purportedly) responsive to the wishes of its citizens?
Maybe we should just dispense with the charade, and have an “independent” government that is only responsive to a vetted board of elites? Oh, that’s we already have? Nevermind.
They have started privatizing a LOT of military functions. They’re called Blackwater/XE, CACI, Titan, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed and so on.
After all, why pay a private to clean the mess (at no additional cost) when you can pay a corporation who subcontracts out some of their Philipino slaves to do it? That way, you can free up the time for the private to bring “democracy” to places like Iraq and Libya.
I think the EU wins the award for “independence”. Which, of course, means independent from voters and accountability.
That’s the mystery – does he buy it or not?
While admitting I have no real clue, I suspect he gets it ‘enough’. He’s not pushing some line that he’s going to “reduce the deficit over so many years”. Curiously, none of the candidates are really promising to reduce debt/deficits from what I’ve heard. I think I heard Kasich moaning about it, Trump sure doesn’t.
If you want a reason why Trump has had a POSITIVE influence on the debate, perhaps he deserves some credit for getting rid of debt/deficit talk as a serious policy conversation? I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this?
I think Trump DEFINITELY deserves credit for bringing tariffs back as a serious policy option. NO ONE was talking about tariffs before Trump showed up.
Trump is also talking about H1 B workers, not just raising their wages.
JohnnyGL
March 9, 2016 at 4:03 pm
Cheney did say deficits don’t matter.
“You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.
Remarks on Paul O’Neill (January 9, 2004)”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Of course, Cheney thought deficits should be used ONLY for more military spending and tax cuts for rich, rich, RICH people who had “invested” in more more war machinery….
FYI, Bernie appeared on Thom Hartmann’s radio show, and given the opportunity to pull out his MMT chops, declined (“You make a good point,” he said to the deficit hawk caller, “But now is not the time to be concerned about national ‘debt'” … quotes around “debt” are my addition)
That said, he’s employing MMT leading light Stephanie Kelton as an advisor to the minority on the Senate budget committee.
Maybe it’s just a bridge too far to persuade the public that MMT is true. It obviously is, but so is a heliocentric solar system, and that was by no means obvious centuries ago. Galileo spent some time under house arrest for contradicting the prevailing notion that the sun was a planet.
…or…(quoting Max Planck) “The truth never triumphs. Its opponents simply die out. Science advances one funeral at a time.”
Apologies if this is a double post…
“But none of the major cable news networks carried [Clinton’s concession speech]”
Can someone provide a link to Clinton’s concession speech from last night? I haven’t been able to find one. Did she make one???
MSNBC carried Clinton’s speech, which came on shortly after Trump (I would say about 9 central) and well before the results in Michigan were known. I didn’t watch most of it but it most definitely was not a concession speech. I think she still thought (as did MSNBC) that she was going to pull it out in the end.
She probably was busy hiring new pollsters.
To concede would be a sign of weakness on her part. She has to act like the winner or else people will question her nomination and underlying support.
That’s my $0.02.
The only way for Clinton to make a victory speech for sure was by making after MS and before MI, and it was funny how Brian Williams solved the problem of why Trump’s hour long infomercial was run uninterrupted (and not in a split screen window for viewers to ignore like some of Sanders’ victory speeches have been run). He said they had decided to air Hillary’s victory speech, just on tape delay.
My bad on the wording. Sorry.
Lambert, that wasn’t an attempted slam on my part.
Instead, this seems a great example of media whitewashing. I spent some time yesterday searching for any speech she made on the evening of 3/8 and could not find one. Seems like Fox would be interested in pushing it. Har!
If she really thought she was going to win, she would have waited for those results. The reason she went on early is because she was very much not sure she was going to win. And she was the one who chose to speak while Trump was already speaking.
– The apps are not bound by HIPAA — the federal privacy law that governs doctors and insurance plans.
Well, there’s an assumption smashed. I wonder if medical privacy restrictions extend to people with medical power of attorney. There are a lot more of those as the population ages.
Also, the ‘Dangerous Man’ –
“he knows, and will unfailingly take, all the short cuts, because why do more and because running a little risk makes life interesting.”
Huh. Gonna mull that one over.
I think Bernie is looking very good in Wisconsin. Recent polls are tied but the average Dem voter in Wisco has already been radicalized by events of the past few years. And the college kids will be in school.
Look at the key states in November: Florida, Ohio, Pa, Virginia, etc. Can Hillary win any of them?
Virginia is purple. It’s entirely possible that a Democrat could win here. As a matter of fact the governor here is Clinton family buddy Terry Mac.
Not to mention the Democratic Establishment did squat for them when they were fighting Walker.
It doesn’t hurt Bernie that Feingold is stumping so hard on his issues. Feingold is one of the few people running for office this year who is speaking about the TPP at all. I’m in Illinois but I’m following him on social media because I’m an old fan. I wish he was running instead of Bernie, but it’s hard to run for president when you just lost your senate seat.
Aaargh! My comment was swallowed up again. *sigh*
Know the feeling. Happened twice last night, and finally gave up. I’m starting to think I should compose longer stuff in my email client first so I have a html compliant back-up.
using the back button can work, and if the comment hasn’t made it into the matrix, can be cut and pasted anew, but don’t try too hard or the mechanics will think you’re spamming, i think it works better on reply’s than on comments…also sometimes comments that seem lost show up later, and seems to happen more on popular threads because as comments are overlain they can’t be edited and i think this is where some disappear…my big mistake is closing windows while edit phase is still open, or hitting enter when i mean to click on post comment
Always have a backup. The Internet is a hostile computing environment.
This is also (unfortunately) completely out of the control of Naked Capitalism. The site host sets up difference caches in different geographies (us in the UK and probably northern Europe too get our pages served via Cloudflare’s London datacentre https://www.uk2.net/web-hosting/cloudflare/ ) which while it promises automatic static content caching, it does on occasions throw a wobbly and if you post your comment when the London secondary server decides to poll the US master (primary) server and do a refresh, your comment can disappear in a blaze of database resynchronisations.
That, I’m afraid, is the nature of load balancing. At my Too Big To Fail, we operate across two geographically diverse datacentres and split the load in a similar fashion. Sometimes, everyone once in a while, the internet channel gets an issue with the routing of packets and a user or two has to resubmit their transactions or gets chucked out of their session and has to log in again. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it. It’s just the way it works. And the TBTF has a budget of hundreds of millions — it’s not a question of throwing money at the problem. Even if it were, Naked Capitalism operates on, erm, somewhat lesser resources.
So if you’re commenting more than a few lines, save it in Notepad or something.
You’ve got to love the ivory tower economics on display in that New York Times article. Someone should have tossed that column in the shredder before it ever got published. They have the gall to claim that they’re “shocked” that voters would support someone acting in the best interest of the American citizen? The globalist claim that “a rising tide lifts all boats” rings quite hollow when you compare the wage average to inflation…
They are probably shocked, too, that the American citizens should be the owners of any money created in the name of the People.
It’s the old aggregate problem plus at least one level too many of abstraction. In principle, yes, freeing up trade reduces costs. But the question immediately becomes, who benefits from those falling costs, and what are the concomitant issues that come with those reduced costs. So long as the Economists buy the totally doctored unemployment numbers, and refuse to acknowledge that who captures the benefits is a question of political and economic power, not utility available equally to all, they will keep spouting the Ricardo dogma of free trade and comparative advantage.
But the real issue isn’t the international trade stuff. It’s the stuff in our domestic economy that people really can’t afford, like decent housing, quality healthcare, and higher education.
At least part of the reason people can’t afford that stuff is because the economy has been gutted of jobs with reasonable wages for a large percentage of the population.
How does job gutting cause prices for housing, healthcare, higher education, and healthy food to go up?
That’s the disconnect here. We’re talking about prices going up.
They’re all pretty tight cartels. I believe Elizabeth Warren had a video from years ago describing how discretionary costs were stable (or falling) yet the costs for necessary items (health care, education, housing) have exploded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
The system is designed to suck wealth upwards. Go to the supermarket. Buy a major appliance. Select a telecoms service.
That was also the point of a book she co-authored, called “The Two-Income Trap”. It’s the reason that even when nominally adjusted for inflation, a minimum wage today doesn’t get you what it did 40 years. Back then it could pay for a room of your own. Now it gets you a flat-screen TV in your parents’ basement (if they still have one).
It causes wages not to keep up with prices, because of a weak labor market (ok so does the lack of unions). Although some of those markets are so manipulated that it’s hard to say. But food, food has not increased more than inflation, the same with people’s wages keeping up with rent, if wages had gone up people could afford the rent. Even non-rental housing hasn’t necessarily gone up that much except in bubbly regions. But elsewhere the problem is stagnating or declining wages. And even sometimes in bubbly regions the problem is international trade, ie millions in foreign money competing for the housing stock, to speak nothing of illegal money. Even with higher education it’s the fierce competition for any job at all that makes it so necessary to go into debt and that was all made possible by globalization.
Ah, but *why* would prices need to be caught up with in the first place? If wages aren’t growing, why are prices? That indicts the whole economic profession, both orthodox and heterodox, that claim that wages drive prices.
Depends on how one defines ‘food’ :-) But even junk/fast/GMO food has increased in price a fair amount over the past couple decades.
This is the main problem. Housing happens entirely within the domestic economy. If trade policy was the problem, then rent shouldn’t be going up with job losses. It should be going down.
What is your standard for ‘not much’? Huge numbers of Americans live involuntarily with relatives or in substandard housing because decent housing is unaffordable. This is a problem across the country, not unique to Manhattan and San Francisco and Honolulu.
I agree median wage stagnation (or more generally, inequality) is the fundamental issue of our time. But how does that relate to international trade policies? Income inequality is driven through domestic public policy choices. Plus, even if job gutting was the cause of wage stagnation, that doesn’t explain why price increases happen.
I don’t see the link to job gutting here, either? Foreigners buying housing in the US is simply the other end of a transaction of a US person buying something from abroad with dollars. How that US person got dollars in the first place is, again, an issue of domestic public policy.
Agreed, the illicit drug trade alone I think is the third or fourth largest industry in the world. But that, by definition, happens outside the scope of the formal economy regulated by international trade pacts. And like legal dollars abroad, illegal dollars abroad ultimately came from the US. In aggregate, net net, on balance, looking at the big picture, the problem is in the US. The transit of dollars overseas and back isn’t what caused the problem.
The vast majority of college graduates work in the domestic economy. Furthermore, you just described the actual problem – debt. That’s why prices have been going up. It’s not because of job gutting. It’s because domestic public policy has been driving up the prices of specific things (like college) by flooding what are hypothetically ‘markets’ with government encouraged (and sometimes even government guaranteed) debt.
The neoliberals want to blame globalization to deflect criticism from domestic policy choices made about how we allocate resources in society. There is absolutely nothing about globalization that forces economists to make more money than day care workers. That is a choice made by people in positions of power.
I can only speak of New York where I lived for many years, and higher education, which I taught in for many years: the 7-10% of the population whose incomes are staying ahead of inflation bid up the costs of everything they touch, especially housing and education. Everyone wants their kid to grow up in a “safe” neighborhood with schools that send most of their grads to good colleges, and everyone in that upper middle class wants their kid to go to a first-rate university. The market responds by jacking up the prices of housing in areas with good public schools, jacking up the cost of private primary and secondary schools, and sending college costs through the roof. The well-to-do will pay (as they will pay for health care) whatever it takes to get what they want. This sends shockwaves through the system, boosting prices down the line. Prices are thus driven up by the rich and by the extension of credit to the middle class, which will go heavily into debt to get decent housing, education, and healthcare.
Trickle down economics! It is real!
1) Neither mainstream economics nor any of the other schools I’m familiar with literally claim that wages are the only factor driving prices. Though a great deal of propaganda does try to create that impression. Since profits, wages and rents all equally need to be covered by the product price, any of those has an equal claim to be driving inflation in a given area.
2) In fields characterized by shared monopoly (which would be almost every mature field in the country), price is generally abandoned as a tool of competition.
3) If there is the famous “inelastic demand” for your product its vastly easier to continue raising prices up to the point where your customers start to be literally UNABLE to pay. And things like housing and healthcare tend to fall into that area.
I think you’re missing part of the point about what gets very fuzzily referred to as globalization. The present preferred framework of globalization (which is hardly the only imaginable way of doing it) makes wage levels and regulatory costs THE ultimate determinants of where production will be located. About three quarters of the purpose of an actual trade policy is to ensure that access to your home market is restricted to those who follow similar rules.
The key purpose of the present preferred framework is to keep the market (without tariff penalties) to products of command economies where labor lives under dictatorial conditions.
I’m inclined to see debt as having been initially a solution. The explosion and encouragement of that was a response to the fact that real wages (and for that matter) the real economy were ALREADY declining.
For what its worth, I also see the assumption that international transactions net out mechanically in an even fashion to be very problematic, but that would require much more time than I have to throw at this at the moment.
As job gutting lowers the wages people get . . . if they still get any wages at all . . . . those people get more resistant to paying property or other state-level taxes to support such things as state subsidy and support to state colleges and universities. Those state colleges and universities have to make up the missing money by raising tuition directly to in-state students. That would explain how Free Trade jobicide forces up the price-to-the-student of state colleges and universities.
I don’t know how it would cause the prices of those other things to go up. But is the price of healthy food really going up?
Or was healthy food always more expensive than unhealthy food?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++!
to be clear, that is for
James Levy
March 9, 2016 at 4:43 pm
Again, the useless eaters are drawing a blank.
“It’s not clear what public policy can do for someone who was expecting his income to grow from $50,000 to $80,000 but instead saw it stagnate at $50,000,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist.
Public policy, cheered on by the economists sitting on their thrones at the policy table is the root cause of this globalization disaster.
They ignore a basic rule, that of supply and demand. When the supply of cheap ” we exploit them for their own good” third world labor is practically infinite, the price approaches zero.
This pain is absorbed by Trump and Sander’s supporters. Economists never feel that pain.
I’m with Jim Haygood. Cover Harvaaaard in 3 feet of hog slop.
Please don’t bury Michael Sandel when you do it. There are a few decent souls at Harvard. However in general it’s true the indoctrination they provide, in the very kind of environment Sandel rages against (he’s not popular at Harvard) is a big part of the problem known as Market Capitalism.
Sandel is a philosopher of ethics (read his Justice for an interesting look at the field). He also has a video of his (well-attended) class that’s available in our public library.
They think that because 50 million people get cheaper TVs that more than makes up for the 500,000 people who lost high paying jobs making TVs in the 1950s and 1960s. What they ignore is the ripple effect here at home of those 500,000 people’s loss of purchasing power, which has a very different impact on families and communities than the falling price of TVs for the 50 million buyers. But that would mean they would have to look not at aggregates but at families and communities, and as Margaret Hilda Thatcher told us all, under neoliberalism there are no communities, their are only individuals.
“Antiwar Democrats”
Bwaaahaha. *wipes tear*
Democrats only have themselves to blame for that.
“Fool me once…”
WaPo has a sense of shame, perhaps?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/09/now-the-washington-post-ran-16-positive-stories-on-bernie-sanders-in-16-hours
A pigeon speaks: “We’re not ‘rats with wings.’ We’re dinosaurs with wings. You’re rats with messenger bags” [Medium].
…My ancestors were ferocious predators bigger than your two-thousand-dollar-a-month SoMa studio while yours were scurrying through the underbrush eating beetle larvae. We’re not “rats with wings.” We’re dinosaurs with wings. You’re rats with messenger bags….
In response to the Pigeon
Although we Humans may indeed be the true decedents of rodents, we at least did have the evolutionary patience to uniquely evolve opposable thumbs which allows us to grasp feathered dinosaurs, pluck them, season lightly, optionally stuff with rice, gently roast and recycle into fertilizer….
More near term, lest this West Coast Pigeon forget, his ancestors were brought to NYC from Europe for one reason, and it was of a purely culinary theme.
Although there exists recently a fragile truce between us Human rodents and the urban Pigeon dinosaurs, depending on how our economic prospects unfold, our relatively recent past relationship may yet again be popularly revisited. Unfortunately my feathered dinosaur friend —you still taste good.
The bread crumbs we now benevolently scatter on our urban sidewalks for your benefit may instead be reserved to stuff you in a dramatically less altruistic manner.
Unfortunately for the Pigeons, they could easily be rebranded as a ” healthy alternative organic protein source”, and that will have more fidelity to the truth than the notion of ketchup being a vegetable/fruit (I date myself).
considering we killed all the passenger pigeons, you would think they would keep a low profile…
Your comment reminds me of my time in S. Korea back in the mid-eighties.
A N. Korean Air Force pilot caused quite a stir when he defected over the border in his plane ( very risky for him, obviously, but the US and S Korea offered a $1Mil Bounty at that time to pilots w/planes).
Anyway, after a few days he was paraded around downtown Seoul with a reporter live on TV and the reporter asked him, “So what amazes you the most, all the privately owned cars, all the goods available in the stores, the freedom of the people to go wherever they want? What?”
And he answered, “None of those. What amazes me most is that there are hundreds of pigeons everywhere I go!. Back home in Pyongyang, we ate them all.”
I have wondered how whacked out their food chain is in N Korea. Presumably anything that moves is eaten.. Even the occasional neighbor.
Akin to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
End of IBT article on Michigan: the last graf with the comments of Clinton shill Tim Ryan of Youngstown (Youngstown!) are a marvel of weasel:
“There were a lot of people that go back and forth on some of these trade agreements but what I want is someone who is going to look at them as they are written, as they are negotiated, like she has done with TPP and basically said if this is not going to create jobs, if this is not going increase wages, if this is not going to protect our national security then she is not going to support them,” he said. “We need to focus on what’s happening now and what’s going to happen in the future and I’m very secure with the fact that she is going to be with us on these key issues.”
Free Translation: “Yes, she wrecked your town to please her corporate buddies, but if you just vote for her once more, maybe she’ll leave a tree standing.”
“…. but what I want is someone who is going to look at them as they are written, as they are negotiated, like she has done with TPP and basically said if this is not going to create jobs, if this is not going increase wages, if this is not going to protect our national security then she is not going to support them,”
I would just add one caveat – for people in the 90% – – there is always some smart as*ed economist who will come up with some model that it will increase GDP, and ipso facto – WE are richer!
uh, GDP for who?????
As Tonto used to say, “Who is this “we” kemosabe????”
Has anybody noticed how CNN has been desperate to push the bombing ISIS/chemical weapons/detainee info story through this same time period as the Sanders win in MIchigan?
It’s fascinating how they are demonstrating everything wrong with warmongering right as the warmongering wing of the party suffers a historically large collapse. They pushed a story on my mobile last night about ISIS when I was trying to check poll results, and right now, the headline on the website is literally “ISIS detainee talks, U.S. strikes”. Sanders’ name isn’t even mentioned under Top Stories.
But hey, a reporter was almost crushed on live TV. Clearly that is breaking news.
I look back now that I am older and much less stupid at the “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad and CNN’s “coverage”
I certainly don’t believe anymore that the press is a check on the government or that it “comforts the afflicted or afflicts the comfortable”
I believe that Nam was the last American war without mandatory “embedding” of journalists inside military units. The Pentagon did learn something from the Indochina experience.
I was listening to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show earlier today; he had a woman pundit from “Roll Call” on to analyse the primary results. Re Sanders and MI, she said something like:
We thought the Flint water problem would be a big issue, but it turned out people were worried about their jobs. We weren’t expecting that.
Not a direct quote, mind you, but it was something along those lines. These pundits and “political analysts” are surprised when people are concerned about their jobs — unemployment or underemployment? They might in fact care more about that than the Flint water (shocking and horrific though it might be).
I’ve been reading today the MSM saying, Well, maybe people actually DO care about “trade”. Goddamn right they do. I’m old enough to remember watching Ross Perot and his famous “giant sucking sound” quote regarding jobs going to Mexico if NAFTA passed. Let’s hope this obvious voter anger wakes up the pro-TPP crowd.
That Hillary quote about TPP being “the gold standard” is going to come back and bite her!
We dems screwed up employment over the last 50 years, we screw up the water in Flint, and we dems think we should remain in power! Bizarre that the voters expect more – who would have thunk it???
Dems screwed up water in flint? Snyder is not dem. Thought it was his appionted emergency manager?
EPA pulled the case manager off, check the aclu video yves posted earlier…ad in the attacks on whistleblowers by the current administation and the FOIA stonewalling by the same and they’re right there in the “we do whatever we want to” with the repubs, the duality is no longer operational
Privatization, austerity and corruption resulted in the use of Flint River as potable water.
Corporate sponsored Democrats (Hillary Clinton) are just as responsible as Republicans for the loss of jobs and the economic decline that financially decimated Michigan. Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his appointed emergency manager are directly responsible for the deaths from legionnaires disease and the lead poisoning caused by the switch in water suppliers.
TPP: Obama committed to Pacific trade deal, even as opposition spreads [Reuters]
` … not …fully absorbed …’
Contempt, much?
allan
March 9, 2016 at 5:22 pm
“[T]he real reason people are disinclined to believe that Obama made financial regulation stronger is that they never saw a banker in handcuffs headed to jail. I know law enforcement and regulation aren’t precisely equivalent, but letting fraud go unpunished created a rot at the heart of our democracy, and made any claim about deterrents to another meltdown suspicious” [David Dayen, The New Republic]. Dayen is absolutely correct, and this disinclination applies across the political spectrum, left to right. When Sanders finally criticizes Obama, this is the point he should make. It’s the unspoken truth everybody knows, exactly like Trump on Iraq in South Carolina.
“In interviews with International Business Times, two former Democratic senators took issue with the notion promoted by the former secretary of state that their vote to block Wall Street bailout money somehow put them at odds with the auto industry. Another Democratic senator’s office told IBT that the vote was about reining in the financial industry — not about opposing help for autoworkers” [International Business Times]. Yes, Clinton struck a “false note” there.
===================================================
I don’t think the dems have reached the point of the repubs “tear it all down” – – Bernie is still in the phase the repubs were in before Trump that “Bush kept us safe” – – Bernie can’t say the obvious truth that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and Bush. Of course, Obama propagates indispensable nation bullsh*t, diminishes constitutional protections, enriches wall street, screws the 99% – – but all the while in a mellifluous voice using Washington speak that turns “I’m gonna f*ck you in the ass with a concertina wire wrapped condom” into “Oh baby I love you so much!!!”
soft words – so effective
Strange that it would be National Security Adviser Susan Rice saying that. What’s the message there? Creepy, the are.
And Ash Carter’s previous remarks about TPP being as good as an aircraft carrier to him.
Actually, the problem he faces is that the nature of these things HAS begun to be “absorbed.”
(That, and the fact that the duopoly’s strategy of keeping trade a non-issue in election years seems to be breaking down this year.)
While I agree with the sentiment expressed in embedded Tweet, it’s still hilarious to see 4chan’s word “cuck” make it to the post on this blog.
Why is this website comfortable with embedding tweets from white nationalists? Is this now a white nationalist friendly website? I don’t understand.
Take a deep breath. The NC commentariat is comprised of sophisticated readers who don’t need to be protected, like little children, from the horrors you would rather they not see. A general Republican base revolt against the establishment is a central feature of this election. Is your idea that I should allude to this phenomenon rather than give evidence for it? Or is your idea that I should wait for a “nice” Republican to use the same trope and then quote that? Or should I spell it out, and say “Retweets do not mean endorsment?” Of course, by your standard, no English Department in the world would ever be able to quote notorious St Louis anti-semite T.S. Eliot.
My yellow waders are proof against this stuff. If yours aren’t, get better ones.
NOTE Nice use of petitio elenchi on “comfortable.” Well played, sir.
I don’t need to be protected from “bad” tweets, or explained to that quoting or retweeting something does not mean full endorsement. My post was not meant as condemnation, just a reflection on how quickly memes spread on the internet nowadays – a few years ago “cuck” was contained to 4chan, now it’s widely recognized as part of far-right vocabulary and can be found in serious left-wing political commentary, in another few years maybe it could be a common expression in real life and its white supremacist roots would be all but forgotten.
Personally, I think “cuck” is repellent; but if we are ever to quote right-wing discourse, then some repellent words are going to appear (unless we redact them, of course.)
My response was not to you, but Jonathan.
Lambert
I could take the same idea and apply it to democrats…
I wish you would.
And other lists…
Like non-progressive things Obama did and did not do that is exactly what Cheney would or would not have done… Just Thinking out loud…
Punish whistleblowers
Stonewall Foia requests
Appoint bankers
Refuse to nominate warren.
Appoint AG that point blank refuses to prosecute banker fraud because ‘that would sully the reputation of the bank’.
Push stinking Tpp.
Everything secret…
I think it would break the internet…
Hysteresis: “Why is U.S. labor market fluidity drying up?” [Washington Center for Equitable Growth]. “The U.S. labor market is a far less dynamic place than it was 30 years ago. Workers today are less likely to get a job while unemployed, move into unemployment, switch jobs, or move across state lines. You’d think just the opposite would be true given some of the discussion about our rapidly changing digital economy, but the data show what the data show. Even still, the reason—or reasons—for the decline in fluidity aren’t known.” My guess is that it’s so bad out there that people don’t want to take the risk of a change.
============================================
When I retired and moved back to CA, after having been a homeowner for near 25 years, I decided I would just rent an apartment until I decided where I really wanted to settle. What 30 years had done to the apartment renting experience, was something I had no idea.
Now, I have WONDERFUL credit. No criminal record. But they wanted 1st month, last month, and a security deposit. (by the way, I didn’t get my security deposit back although I left the apartment in better shape than I found it when I finally bought a house. I moved to another city and I just wasn’t in the mood to hire an attorney and make a 150 drive – one way- several times to resolve the matter).
And the application form was more extensive than the background check the air force/NSA did on me, wanting to know my actual account numbers, which I thought was overdoing it.
Its just a more locked down society – doing anything requires a lot of money to wait out all the time that has to be spent before you can do anything…I had enough money to stay in a motel for a month – but how many unemployed people do?
Agreed. The cost of mobility is higher, and in case the authors hadn’t heard many people are still underwater with their homes, or lost their homes (which was the only asset they had to trade on in order to raise the stake they needed to move somewhere else).
Big blufyr health apz…me thinks the article may have misqouted prof. Rothstein…not that it really matters…hipaa is an empty threat…no private right of action…you get to waste time asking HHS OCR (office of corporate ReignDear) to look into it…typical govt whip do be used only against the unwashed or unapproved nor authorized opposition…and even if one looked to the red flags rule for id theft prevention…same non barking dog…no private right of action…
But the article is wrong…covered entities include health care clearing houses and value added networks…if an employer or health provider can use data to alter or deny benefits…its a covered entity…also prof rothstein looks like last year he took the opposite position in a ssrn downloadable…”ethical issues in big data health research”…although i disagree where he claims there are no ethical issues if big data uses what it claims is publicly available sources…defeats the purported protections against reverse ip data reengineering…
Schmit Lipped: Both Google News and Bing News have been nearly as bad as the Washington Post, not just the search voodoo that ranks the order, but in how the blurbs/bubbles that accompany minimize showing Sanders. Normally both sites offer up bias confirming searches, but in this case it’s so much the reverse it’s just plain obvious to anyone with a modicum of self-awareness. Google certainly must be aware it shows too, but probably hopes an addiction to use will depress any Sanderista user, and motivate any Hill-Billy. Lambert put out a post or link about Google’ efforts a week or two earlier, but I can’t find the link. This pattern however shows that Google is even willing to junkify/further crappify the family jewel, their search engine algorithm, to game the election.
Labour Market Fluidity: Few corporations are willing to spend to really train new employees, beyond a few vapid video indoctrination at the HR department, the employee handbook (often in unreadable, un-thumbable pdf file) and a handshake. The Hong Kong Government, hardly a bastion of liberalism, sets aside two weeks of job counseling and the equivalent of US$4000 for retraining benefits. Singapore offers similar treatment, and I’ve heard so do the Nordic Countries. In today’s economy the idea that a just laid off employee, outside some basic retail and service industries, is going to have hire-able skills is the real unicorn. After all, why did they get laid off? Their company management stuck to a broken business model and taught to the employees, ala Dilbert. I doubt the USA has anything equivalent, other than a few competent local/state governments,
”Young? Yes, Stupid? Maybe. Slaves? Never”: That’s what they think… who isn’t these days?
This pattern however shows that Google is even willing to junkify/further crappify the family jewel, their search engine algorithm, to game the election.
They have a monopoly. What would people use other than Google? Does Yahoo exist still? Isnt Bing just an even crappier google? They can crappify Google all they want now and wont lose many users.
Yes, Yahoo still exists. And it seems to have taken over something called AllTheWeb that used to be based in Norway. Now when I type in the URL
http://www.alltheweb.com I get Yahoo. I do it every time to at least deny Google the use of my eyeballs for the little blogreading and stuff that I do.
And if you want to look at a bunch of images of something, Yahoo handles those images/pictures better than Google does. Google gives you crappy little pictures which remain crappy and little if you click on them. And you have to unclick from each crappy little picture to then click on the next one. Whereas Yahoo lets you click on a little image and you see that image way bigger, and it has forward-backward arrows so you can go right to the next image. I don’t know if serious researches would care about that. But a mere recreational user like me really enjoys Yahoo’s better presentation of “whatever images”.
Duck Duck Go
CalPers settlement with Moody’s over 2009 rating lawsuit. 130 million.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-calpers-moodys-settlement-20160309-story.html
“Beyond the farm gate, any consumer that cares about where their food comes from should be concerned with the TPP. This is an issue that affects all Americans alike. I continue to urge Congress to give thoughtful consideration to opposing the TPP.”
Right on! I sure do appreciate the strong words from the National Farmers Union’s President Roger Johnson. Thanks for corralling that, Lambert. It’s good to know we useless eaters have allies in the producers of our food ;-)
You can get inflation without rising wages.
For one thing, as James Levy mentioned, rich people distort markets simply by existing and wanting things.
But the main answer would be “Loose Money and Easy Credit.” People substitute debt for income, and make purchases that way.
Now the next question would be, “why the hell would anybody lend increasing amounts of money to people with stagnant wages, or to students who have no money?”
Answer: central authorities lend for free, and also backstop and/or bail out the lenders.
Though I’m an anarchist socialist, syndicalist whatever, I do appreciate the breakdown of the elite hating Sanders. I also want him to win. There is a global crash coming, and he is the only person that could stave off some of the horrible devastation. And though he is still a hawk in many ways, he obviously has life long history of pulling back. He is so less likely to start a fucking world war than Clinton. And my hate for Clinton is pure.
That said, I do want to take issue with mixing this up with actual ‘revolution’. that Corey thing you quoted is so outta line. …especially when he quotes some un named ‘syndicalists’ as the militant minority. No syndicalist said that meaning to align with the bourgeois capitalist parties. Please. There is also so elitist stuff in there that the’left’ is meeting in academic areas doing study sessions. For 30 years I’ve had no contact as a worker leftist in any academic setting. This is the R. Solnit trope. That working class people of all colors have no (yes small) hard line left groupings in all cities. That it comes from some academic , or back room shit by well off ‘anarchist middle class’ typing on key boards. Hardly. ‘We’ did seattle 99 (not me but my friends). Not you university professors. ‘We’ did occupy, and we did the one day strike in Oakland. Just because we didn’t change the world for all of you, doesn’t mean our bottom up ideas are wrong. ‘We’ are also organizing. Just not in strength that you can see now. Sorry, we aren’t doing everything for the keyboard typer-s at home right now, but you might want to join us in face to face meetings and create non party, but left wing anti capitalist organizations. We are all over the cities, in every color now. The only change, for 200 years, the drastic change we need now, has only come from non partisan militant left organizations. At the least, it pulls the ‘liberals’ to offer crumbs. To suggest such will come from a Bernie win, is absurd. Lets please stop debasing the word ‘revolution’, as well as uprising. It’s neo liberal politics to think, you can ‘overthrow’ a death machine, by voting within it. It’s the base farce of alienated ‘individualism’, that hilariously ‘anarchists’ are so often accused of. Any individual can not change the system by voting. Please vote. But please realize the depths of danger we are in. Only complete systemic change can save us and the planet. Power only responds to power.
Excellent comment!!
The other day I remarked to a friend that even if Bernie were to win the presidency, there are very severe limits on how much he could do, within the system, to confront the myriad threats facing humanity. The best we could hope for is that he could slow down, and perhaps divert, some of the more repressive authoritarian forces, while we mobilize outside the system for more comprehensive, systemic change.
Re: the National Farmers Union’s opposition to the TPP — Yay! In 2015, the Ohio Farmers Union endorsed the Move to Amend, supporting HJR 48, the proposed 28th amendment that would proclaim that only human beings, and not corporate entities, are entitled to constitutional rights, and money is not equivalent to speech. Here is the OFU endorsement:
“Special Order of Business 2015-09
A Move to Amend the US Constitution
The Board of Directors of the Ohio Farmers Union has voted to endorse the public policy
platform of the organization Move to Amend.
Members of the Ohio Farmers Union believe that corporate and special interest money
has a huge and ultimately corrupting influence in America.
Members of the Ohio Farmers Union believe that too much economic and political power
is being concentrated among too few huge corporations and wealthy interests.
Members of the Ohio Farmers Union are dismayed by U.S. Supreme Court rulings in
cases such as Citizens United that interpret the U.S. Constitution in a manner that
equates political donations with free speech and treats corporations as having the same
rights as human beings.
We hereby affirm our endorsement of Move to Amend’s stated goal to amend the U.S.
Constitution to clearly state that money is not speech and corporations are not
people.
We declare 2015 to be a year for Ohio Farmers Union member education on these matters and to
pursue actions in concert with Move to Amend.”
That’s great, Carla! Thanks for the update. Here’s to the OFU and anyone else who supports Move to Amend. (I keep meaning to email you).
Did anyone watch the Univision debate? I googled it and the only thing I could find was a youtube video with about 700 views.
That’s pretty weird considering how many Sander supporters are out there.