Researchers reverse cognitive impairments in mice with dementia Medical Xpress (CL).
Swiss Voters Strongly Reject Money Reform Proposal WSJ
MMT: economics for an economy focussed on meeting the needs of most people Tax Research UK
Top investment bank profits at pre-crisis levels FT
Germany’s Banking Turkeys Won’t Fly Anytime Soon Bloomberg
‘Bitcoin whales’ control third of market with $37.5bn holdings FT
The ‘Fiduciary Rule’ May Sound Boring, But Its Collapse Threatens Your Retirement Bloomberg
Silicon Valley scooter wars TechCrunch (KW).
The market for driverless cars will head towards monopoly Economist. “Convenient, safe AVs, which allow riders to nap rather than mind the wheel, should reduce the hassle of travelling by car.” Anything below Level 5 demands constant vigilance by the driver, which negates the convenience advantage.
The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair The Atlantic. “Instead of fixing the old trains, let’s rip out the tracks and fill the tunnels with fleets of autonomous vehicles running on pavement.”
North Korea
Trump-Kim summit: Everything you need to know Politico
A primer for the Trump–Kim summit The Interpreter
1 big thing: The intelligence file on Kim Jong-un Axios
How North Korea Can Strike It Rich Foreign Policy
China may take bigger role as ‘guarantor and mediator’ after Trump-Kim nuclear talks South China Morning Post
China?
Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment NYT
Foxconn says investigating labor conditions at China factory used for Amazon Reuters
Trade
Why Trump’s combative trade stance toward allies poses risks Associated Press
EU will act against U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum: Merkel Reuters
Trade-War Drums: Is Mexico Ready to Fire at the US Corn Belt? Wolf Street (EM).
Trump Tries to Destroy the West David Leonhardt, NYT
Will the World be Safer or More Dangerous Under a Trump Presidency? Global Guerillas. From 2017, still germane.
Syraqistan
Is Putin really ready to “ditch” Iran? The Vineyard of the Saker
Iraqi ballot box storage site catches fire in Baghdad Reuters
Brexit
Preparing Brexit: How ready is Whitehall? Institute for Government
British railways are reduced to chaos by a botched timetable change Economist. The trigger on the privatization side seems to be the Carillion crash; the trigger on the government side seems to be a centralizing the schedule function in the head office, eliminating local expertise.
Trump Transition
Net neutrality is really, officially dead on Monday. Now what? CNET
Meet the guys who tape Trump’s papers back together Politico
Democrats in Disarray
Democratic parties accused of funneling $84M into Clinton campaign NY Post. Getting a lot of play at the state level (here, here, here, here, and here) but little nationally. A shame this lawsuit is coming from conservatives and not the left.
Does Winning Affluent Districts Require Selling Out The Poor? Washington Monthly. “Cross-pressured affluent suburban Democrats.”
The 1st 2020 Race Is Underway: Scrambling for New York Donors NYT. “The lone Democratic outlier from the money chase is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who bypassed large contributors in his 2016 presidential bid and still raised about $230 million, almost entirely from a torrent of small online donations — a model that many Democrats are trying to emulate.” Many?
2018 Midterms
What to watch in Tuesday’s primary elections The Hill
GOP embraces single-payer healthcare attack in California The Hill
Facebook Fracas
British army used Facebook adverts to recruit ‘stressed’ teenagers on GCSE results day, charity claims Independent (KW).
Imperial Collapse Watch
America is already great:
Having now been in Beijing, Seoul and Singapore in the past six months, it is like peering into the future. Much of their infrastructure, compared to ours, is like the Jetsons compared to the Flintstones.
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) June 10, 2018
Having just come through JFK’s international terminal, followed by a ride up to Boston on Amtrak, I can only agree.
Guillotine Watch
Demographic Structural Theory: 25 Years On Cliodynamics (UserFriendly).
Class Warfare
Quantifying The Economic Toll Of Segregation Forbes
Inequality, Social Dysfunction and Misery Dandelion Salad (JB).
How LinkedIn turned this “Failmom” into a socialist Salon (UserFriendly). Yves: “This is fun in a jaded way.”
Women have $890 billion in student loan debt, the country’s biggest share CNBC. See also NC here.
Why the AARP is worried about student loans Politico
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
166 comments
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Drone killings under Trump are a growth industry, it seems. Even worse than Obama’s pretty indiscriminate “killing people:”
“The numbers are shocking — or at least they should be.
2017 was the deadliest year for civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, with as many as 6,000 people killed in strikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition, according to the watchdog group Airwars.
That is an increase of more than 200 percent over the previous year.
It is far more if you add in countries like Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia and many others.
But the subject, considered a stain on President Barack Obama’s legacy even by many of his supporters, has almost dropped off the map.
Obsessed with the seemingly daily updates in the Stormy Daniels story or the impeachment potential of the Russia investigation, the American media is paying even less attention now to a topic it never focused on with much zeal.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/middle-east-civilian-deaths-have-soared-under-trump-and-the-media-mostly-shrug/2018/03/16/fc344968-2932-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.03fb9a1a793f
What a wonderful world.
Between a drone killing spree and payoffs to a porn star, what will be more effective at convincing a Christian conservative to reconsider loyalty to a crooked real estate developer?
Plus a million!
Soaring hope for the lesser of two weevils is thus dashed. Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss. The only noticeable change in the white house now is decor.
“1 big thing: The intelligence file on Kim Jong-un”
“Gluttonous, prone to fits of anger and swaggering around his classmates.”
I’m sorry, but this is Kim’s file, is it?
Ha! A mixup at CIA/NSA? Trump’s Intel dossier is differentiated by its thickness when the classified blackmail appendix is attached.
Women crushed under $890 billion in “student loan” debt? Can’t probably be collected, won’t be collected, despite imposed pain and suffering.
#juststoppaying .
The “pathology of normalcy” is strikingly evident in stories like AARP’s concern about it’s member’s being ensnared by one of the evil demons of debt. Along with the other demon of healthcare cost, it is printed here and voiced elsewhere as another drip, drip, drip of news…the media and their owners will keep events like Korea, Russian and what ever the news story du jour is rolling so that “normal” people come to accept the absurdities and evils…
Yes juststoppaying if you can, and if you can’t now (sometimes you have to wait until your loved ones are safe) then do so at the first opportunity.
Just stop paying means garnished wages, black marks on your credit report, lost job opportunities as a result …and maybe even loss of employment. Certainly higher borrowing rates as a result of those black marks and garnishments…and the debt collectors of these student loans can go so far as to garnish your Social Security.
Just stop paying does not work. You would need a mass movement and the powers-that-be have taken great pains to make sure we are a fractured Society, unable to work together to bring about good or just conditions.
Getting politicians to change the law would work, but it was the politicians who created the condition in the first place. i.e. Mr. MBNA Joe Biden made sure student loans weren’t dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Of course the garnishment, bad credit, job loss and all the rest of what you name are happening to lots of honorable people who are struggling to pay, and pay, and pay.
And we mopes are constantly told all the reasons we have to just accept that resistance is futile, change for the better is impossible, and there is no alternative. I’m guilty myself.
But there are tipping points. And catalyzing moments and actions.
Like many things in life, it’s not black or white, one or zero, etc, but involves more nuanced cost-benefit trade-offs.
Short term pain vs. long term gain, for example.
Here, we look forward to tipping points, catalyzing moments and actions.
In a trade war, there are casualties.
“A shocking blow to the solar industry!!!!!!!!!”
In another age, reminded of a victory being declared after Dunkirk, someone might today say, in response to South China Morning Post’s ‘a trade war was over and the US was defeated: “We shall fight on the beaches littered with imported plastic beach umbrellas, we shall fight on laminated floors, maternity wards, absentee owner mansions, soybean fields, pig farms…we shall never surrender.
I’ve been in default with my loans for over a decade. My wages have been garnished once, which stopped after I was laid off. They haven’t come after me again. My remaining balance is under $10K and I’m sure I’m not worth the effort with the ballooning rate of defaults.
It doesn’t have to be a mass movement. There are never going to be enough debt collectors to collect all the debt.
I don’t care about my credit, ie my ability to take on more debt. I’m not foolish enough to believe in the long term stability of the USA or the planet for that matter. Back when I first stopped paying, I was just trying to not be hungry. I don’t work in an industry that is going to pore over my credit report, and when they ask to look, I’m upfront about my credit being shitty.
Your whole rant about this presupposes that people actually care about credit scores. The only people who care about credit scores are lenders. And with the re-current bouts of sub-prime lending, even that is questionable.
I’m not going to live my life to have the best credit score possible. That’s insane. To shape one’s life to get the best rate on debt is bollocks. It’s just one more iteration of social Puritanism that needs to die.
I’m also pretty good with my taxes so I don’t get refunds (which can be garnished and handed over to student loan companies) and generally only pay a little to nothing in taxes. As for SS, I have a feeling that student loan debt will be dischargeable by the time I’m collecting, not that I won’t be working anyways, if we haven’t lemminged ourselves into the sea as a species by then.
The problem is that the entire social and economic culture of the West today is tied to credit scores at many levels. Our son had to get a room mate, when he was single, with a decent credit score, to rent a ‘decent’ apartment. His credit score was non-existant.
Essentially, one must exit the ‘modern’ social system entirely to avoid credit scoring. a difficult process at best.
I expect to see the return of old fashioned anarchist “bomb throwers” sooner or later.
An old hunting trick is to leave a way out for the prey. Much safer that way. A cornered ‘prey beast’ is a very dangerous one. Anything else leads to Hubris and the intervention of Nemesis. Essentially, a bad time will be had by all.
One way out of the trap is likely to be “Assisted Suicide,” which of course is subject to being franchised and monetized as a growth industry. I think already there is a significant “market” for human organs and tissues. Not quite the “Soylent Green” loop, where human corpses go into the vats that grow the algae that er the sole remaining food source for the remaining humans (except the Elite, of course, who run the Soylent Corporation and live high on the last few hogs and steers and such.)
Or possibly that walk down the shadowed basement corridor, waiting for the small-caliber bullet to be fired into one’s brain stem…
Interesting that the Mopery has not produced many people so anomic that they are willing to do whatever, to decimate the Looter Elite — but maybe we mopes just are not allowed to hear about episodes of such behavior…
The crooked credit agencies usually store a lot of erroneous information. They created the credit score to sell their wares to companies providing credit who are mostly seedly and unethical. They “collect” information on you but they cannot keep that info from being hacked. I don’t know how we’ve let it get this far. Insurance companies are another set of crooks and want to find ways to make you pay more in premiums but are reluctant to pay any claims.
What you’re doing is one of the better ways to beat them at their own game. Any time you can work in the underground economy you can stay away from these bloodsuckers.
What you do is take a cash advance on credit cards and pay off your student loans and the default on the credit cards, if you so inclined.
That’s assuming that you have that large a line of credit. Wouldn’t the outstanding student loans diminish your credit line? (From someone who doesn’t use credit very much, if at all.)
Not really. The more loans and credit cards you have they more they’ll loan you, as long as you’re current on you payments. If you don’t have credit, they won’t give you any credit!
That’s a pretty good idea, actually.
I stopped paying around 2008 when my life sh!t the bed. Yes, there are repercussions.
At some point, we have to ask ourselves if we’re being good little consumers because it’s the moral and upstanding thing to do or because we’re afraid of not being good little consumers. I suspect that the mindset that makes us stuck in dealing with the debtor economy also makes us stuck in dealing with climate change, peak oil, extinction, etc. The future will not be painless. Have courage.
And may our Higher Power help us.
1) Self-Employed people (Uber/Lyft ?) cannot have their wages easily garnished.
2) Many student loan donkeys already have poor credit, and no savings, and won’t be buying cars or homes on credit soon anyway. “Cash Rules” baby.
3) Social security garnishment yes, but a 25 year-old anticipating the situation in 2058 is perhaps not so worried about that. Check your Accounting textbook on the the definition of “Present Value.”
They would just garnish your bank account.
I have a friend, a young woman in her mid-30s, who has somewhere north of $20k in student loan debt and who cannot find a decent job. At this point she will only take work that pays cash under-the-table, to avoid the garnishing of her pay. There must be millions like her.
Nah. You just go Income Based Repayment. If you’re making little to no money you pay nothing (basically the same as #justnotpaying). If you make enough, then you pay 12.5% of it or whatever it is. It’s doable, even reasonable almost and that’s my plan. Of course this does assume only federal loans and no private loans.
What if Student Loan defaulters had free “access” (one of those words) to financial consultants who could offshore all their wealth the same way they do for “high wealth individuals”? Just a thought.
It will be collected. They can garnish Social Security to pay off Federal student loan debts. Federal student loan debt is definitely something to pay off before retirement. https://www.bankrate.com/retirement/can-social-security-be-garnished/
These people won’t be at retirement age for another 30+ years. What do you think social security will look like by that time? And since there is so little work for many graduates in the first place, how big do you think their SS check will be?
Calif. demodogs just can’t let go of Russia did it. This model worked so well in 2016 or did it?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bob-mulholland-california-dnc-superdelegates-reform-putin-russia_us_5b1d636fe4b09d7a3d73e7bb
Yeah, I well remember Putin ramming the designated hitter rule rule down our thoats outlawing tasty trans-fats and forbidding white suits after communistic “Labor” Day.
Don’t forget “right-turn-on-Red,” the coup de grace on civility in America…
Shucks, ever notice how all STOP signs are RED?
https://restoreprivacy.com/google-alternatives/
…just like they are in RUSSIA! https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/48010/why-is-there-a-СТОП-stop-sign-along-with-priority-signs-on-traffic-lights-in-r Except different, of course. Why the Empire and global looters fear the Russian model…
Interesting — when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, the thundering phrase was “BETTER DEAD THAN RED!!!” Now, of course, the “conservatives” take Red as their banner and brand.
“Followed some clues from my detective bag
And discovered red stripes on the American flag
Betty Ross”
–Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues, Bob Dylan
Good one. Wish I’d thought of it!
Except in New York City………school of hard knocks.
What about ketchup ? .. it’s RED ! And it Kerrys the day in most Establishment ‘I’ll eat-your-lunch’ joints ..
speaking of john oliver
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jun/11/john-oliver-mueller-investigation-if-this-is-a-witch-hunt-witches-exist
Re: John Roberts
Welcome to planet earth. Better late than never I guess.
USA! USA! USA!
I have to admit I liked the Flintstones better than the Jetsons.
The latter just look like they’d have higher Social Credit scores.
Yeah, George Jetson was – or will be (the show’s set in the future, remember!) – definitely in the 10% class, constantly sucking up to that mean old 1%-er Mr. Spacely, while Fred Flintstone was working class all the way!
Or, as Bobby Deniro put it, so succinctly last night, “Yabba-dabba-DOO, ~¥¿¥£§#@!”
https://mobile.twitter.com/democracynow/status/1006157767466520576
Unexplained was how George Jetson still had a full-time “job” when it seemed reduced to the daily pushing of a single button. They automated everything else, but that was so vital the compensation sustained the Jetson clan?
i think the flintstones were loosely based on the honeymooners, and the jetsons on leave it to beaver.
But… much of the Jetsons humor (such as it was) was based on the technology failing or having unpleasant consequences whereas the Flinstones tech usually worked well and the humor (such as it was) was in its idiosyncratic design. I’m not sure the futuristic infrastructure was an improvement:-)
> “While rising credit helped sustain an impression of prosperity,”
Succinct and accurate. Thanks UserFriendly for the ‘Demographic Structural Theory” article.
“Does Winning Affluent Districts Require Selling Out The Poor?”
No, but for both Republicans and Democrats, that is the icing on the cake! Look, after reading this article as well as the New York Times article that it referenced, I think that I can square that circle for them. If they want both the Trump voters and the affluent suburban voters, go for single-payer healthcare for the US. Simple.
For Trump voters that means that they don’t have to die from some totally treatable condition and for the affluent suburban voters, it can be pointed out to them that they will no longer be one major illness away from being homeless and in poverty. It will cost a bit to set up but that will probably be cancelled out on the first year’s savings alone. Tell me that is not a vote winner. But it won’t happen because the Democrats work for their donors, not their voters.
A key factor in the sustainability of any attempt to create more equality is that if it is just aimed ‘at the poor’, it will always be vulnerable to attack in the next electoral round. Good support schemes must benefit the majority in material ways if it is to have deep political support. This is why universal healthcare of some type and free education at all levels must be at the core of any progressive movement. Likewise, direct welfare should focus on universal child benefits, free childcare, etc.
Amazing analysis, with a stark conclusion:
I’m not a believer in their being many ‘good guys’ against the ‘bad guys’ when it comes to geopolitical games, but its increasingly clear that whatever their many, many faults, the axis of Russia, Syria and Iran need to hold together and prevail if there is to be any hope of long term peace in the Middle East and across to central Asia. The mad mix of US/Anglo Neocons with SA and Israel seems hell bent on war, whatever the consequences. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a response to their perception that the growth of a multipolar world is an existential threat to their way of life, and even a nuclear war is worth it if it stops the process.
From Wikipedia, Neoconversatism:
It looks like they still have a lot of work to do.
Antidote: On the lookout for the ‘red misting wonton wastrel’ Trump boys….
Re The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair
Excellent article. For a moment I even thought it’s not a satire
In a few scenarios, the likely outcome is hat London, Shanghai and New York could all be underwater within decades.
The question is whether we should save that money and move people inland instead, in contrast with China’s doubling down on the Pearl of the Orient?
Why do you think we won’t be able to protect the key cities? A quarter of Netherlands is below sea level now
Some worry about a potential mega-tsunami from across the Atlantic that could hit New York, and other cities.
MLTPB,
What would cause a large tsunami heading from E to W across the Atlantic? Large tsunami are caused by large earthquakes, the kind that occur in subduction zones. The subduction zones in the Atlantic are on the W side, in the Windward Isles that bound the Caribbean on the E.
Is there a source for that worry? I’m curious.
From Megatsunami, Wikipedia, Canary Islands section:
If you google ‘megatsunami, New York,’ you will find articles from around end of 2016, early 2017, around the time Trump got elected (coincidental?)
MLTPB,
Thanks. I’d forgotten about the threat of island collapse in the Canaries. We have an example of that very thing in the Hawai’ian chain but the name of the island escapes me. The runout on the sea floor is tremendous and it may well have set off a tsunami.
Here is what a tsunami hitting the US east coast might look like though the cause here is a meteor strike, which, when you think about it, is not out of the question-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNtsVP42bOE
Cool. Giant meteor 2020 then?
Oh no you don’t! You don’t get out of the US 2020 Presidential elections that easily.
The upper end sea level rise scenarios posit a tens of metres rise in sea level within a century.
Historically, the sea level has had ‘pulses’ of extreme short term sea level rise within the last hundred thousand years. Thus, the sea level rise could outpace the available protection methods. World wide, the population dislocations attendant to sea level rise will overwhelm the available resources. Triage will become necessary.
Think of “The Pearl of the Orient” as a ‘sunk costs’ futures bet.
From Liangzhu Culture, Wikipedia:
The key word is ‘suddenly.’
Just how suddenly, the article doesn’t say.
Also interesting about the Austronesian homeland speculation, from about 4,000 years ago, versus the consensus of Taiwan being their homeland from about 3000 BC to 1500 BC (5,0000 years ago to 3,500 years ago, see Austronesian Peoples, Out of Taiwan Model section, Wikipedia).
Perhaps they will find beautiful ancient jades with similar motifs (which Liangzhu culture is famous for) in various Pacific islands (none, up to now, as far as I know).
I think that you would appreciate “Eden in the East” by Oppenheimer.
Read: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/books/eden_in_the_east.php
I have linked to this in the past. The idea of early cultures being centred in Sundaland and then flooded out, and having to flee to higher ground, is quite persuasive.
Sundaland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland
Oppenheimers look at the origins of rice cultivation is interesting.
No question is ‘one and done’ forever. Change is all.
I remember your linking in the past.
It sounds like the Atlantis of the Orient, and the ‘Express Train Out of Taiwan’ model is something out of the blue to me. What is that?
A link: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/game-changing-study-suggests-first-polynesians-voyaged-all-way-east-asia
The prevailing ‘official’ view is that the ancestors of the dwellers of the Pacific Islands came out of Asia in two waves. The East Asians and the Melanesians. The ‘Express Train’ model posits that the Polynesian ancestors spread from China to Taiwan and then by boat out to the Pacific, very quickly, in historical terms. Several hundred years tops. As you can see, the subject is contentious.
In the general model, the migrations are from west to East, in a sequential manner. Oppenheimers contention is that, if Sundaland was a cradle of human culture, when it flooded, which is geological fact, the denizens would have spread in all directions, not just in one. So, the Taiwan as source of Pacific culture story could be backward. Also of interest is that part of Sundaland comprised of the South China continental shelf. China could nave been settled by refugees from the Pacific, not the other way around.
The Atlantis myth covers a lot of territory, literally so if we accept the premise that early human cultures arose on what are now flooded territiries. Said territories comprising not only Sundaland, but also the Bay of Cambay off the coast of India, the Persian Gulf, Doggerland, the space between England and North Europe, and parts of the upper Gulf Coast. Very early human habitation sites have been found underwater off of the west coast of Florida.
This is a big world, and only fools claim to know everything there is to know about it. I’ll admit that I am a Fool, but I like to append the ‘e’.
Ambrit Ye Foole
Yes, it’s confusing to me.
They (some guys or gals who contribute to Wikipedia, specifically) say Polynesians sorts of just passed through Melanesia, picking up some of the genes (not that much).
ambrit,
Oppenheimer’s next two books, Out of Eden (UK, The Real Eve in the US), and The Origins of the British would interest you, I suspect.
I’ve known Oppenheimer as colleague and friend for a decade or more. He’s always worth listening to; I built a college course on The Real Eve, and it went very well.
The people of the Netherlands have been building their dikes for centuries. The people of the United States don’t seem able to build anything but F-37s and giant floating targets. I do worry that NYC will try to build up sea barriers and I don’t know what else — to hold back the sea and worry they will try to soak Upstate New York to do it. I also wonder how to reconcile the worst case predictions for sea-level rise in this century with the peak sea-levels reported for Paleoclimates which seem uncomfortably similar to the best case climates predicted for our future together with the evidence that rates of sea-level increase are accelerating.
In my part of the UK, Norfolk, a dike is a ditch, not a berm.
Synoia,
The two words illustrate the two main influences in early English, from the Saxon and the Norse.
“Dike” and “ditch” show the sound difference from the two: “dike” from the Norse and “ditch” from the Saxon. We see the same traces in the pairs “skirt” and “shirt”, and “kirk” and “church.” Each of the pairs shows terms related but not of quite the same meanings. “Drink” and “drench” might be another such pair.
question is, what does NY do between the time that one starts ripping out the subway and the time when the new system, whatever it may be, becomes operational?
Well, you must’ve missed BloomsburgAtlanticNYT GuardianPost’s brilliant, PROGRESSIVE solution of utilizing deplorable nere-do-well millenial basement dwellers to carry their betters across both rivers until the righteously smitten tunnels are repaired, or every somebody has silent, 45 mph Chinese made electronic autonomous scooters to zip along the sidewalks and clear away opoiod abusing Rooski paid jihadist riff-raff.
Well, you must’ve missed BloomsburgAtlanticNYT GuardianPost’s brilliant, PROGRESSIVE solution of utilizing deplorable nere-do-well millenial basement dwellers to schlep their betters across both rivers until the righteously smitten tunnels are repaired, or every somebody has silent, 45 mph Chinese made electronic autonomous scooters to zip along the sidewalks and clear away opoiod abusing Rooski paid jihadist riff-raff.
Sadly many upper middle class types likely share that sentiment for real.
I bet a lot of the so called professional class tend to look down on the working class. You can see that often with the Manhattan vs Upstate NY/Staten Island dynamic. I’m not saying that Upstaters are perfect, but the point is that they are looked upon with thinly disguised contempt by the wealthy.
Likewise, the well off types that backed Clinton and similar neoliberals didn’t care to much about the decline of young adults.
The sad part is that the author has not done the hard work on capacities, costs, etc.
It will never be able to replace the subway. Think how much square footage of the tunnel a person in a subway car occupies and compare that to a person on a scooter (with the emplty space around which we can’t do away with for safety reasons). Then the author himself acknowledges that these new units will be slower than current subway trains. I haven’t made calculations but my gut feeling is that the capacity will be several times less than that of the current subway.
So I hope it’s a clever satire at Silicon Valley-style transport projects. Actually it seems like a cross between Lime and Boring company
I’d been awaiting the trebuchet’s flinging “the help” across the East River as inner tubes were doled out, once NJT and AMTRAK’s archaic tunnel and swing bridge both succumb to smiting due to homersexu’l marriage, sharia law, or… Me, I’m just fine with astral projection?
I’d been awaiting the trebuchets flinging “the help” across the East River as inner tubes were doled out, once NJT and AMTRAK’s archaic tunnel and swing bridge both succumb to smiting due to homersexu’l marriage, sharia law, or… Me, I’m just fine with astral projection?
Yes the off-the-cuff math and rationale in this article is quite appalling.
How will it will only cost a mere 2 billion to pave and transform the tracks but a whole 19 billion to update it for existing trains???
Ahh here we are:
Estimate based on what? The cost of paving an above ground bike path? So the author just made up the 2 billion number?
Yeah, and the underground guidance system?
If, at one extreme, we consider bicycles, the entirety of the tunnel system will have to be lighted. Who can see in the dark, to steer or avoid feral caymans? And the rats. Watson would nave to write a new adventure, “The Giant Rat of Twenty Second Avenue.”
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/06/you-cant-fix-mass-transit-by-destroying-it/562574/?utm_source=feed
If you’re not serious about moving millions of people, every single day, you can tear out rails. Shit, America’s plutocrats did this in Los Angeles, forcing millions into lifelong debt peonage, who’d paid their fare and ridden streetcars to works, day and night for generations. Remember the original Watts riots? Remember all US cities running electric mass transit: effecient, equitable and utterly dependable? Remember scores of 120mph GG-1s pulling trains from the 1940s until the interstates ended high speed rail? Forcing workers into debt, spending a third of their income and a big chunk of their lives, sitting in gridlock, cursing taillights was a great idea. White flight, the concrete, the gas, the suburbs started global warming. And all the debt of buying, fueling, maintaining, parking and disposing of cars for all adult famly members… specifically designed to self-destruct… Hey, the Atlantic is libertarian claptrap, huh?
what does NY do
Follow Boston’s example of the big dig: Jacked tunnels – open heart surgery on Boston Alan Powderham
I lived in the area at the time with an SO who traversed the dig regularly, from Foxboro to Logan – routes could change over night.
Jarrett Walker must be laughing at that fool. (http://humantransit.org/) As he never tires of pointing out, urban transportation is a question of geometry, and the most efficient geometry is the most liberating.
Here is to the go-to blog on the New York subway, which has actual information on the state of the subway system, as opposed to wtf was in that Atlantic article:
http://secondavenuesagas.com/
Commentator Larry Littlefield, who has his own blog, is good on the budget issues.
To summarize, and the New York Times had an extensive series of articles recently reporting this, the MTA was used as a piggy bank by NY pols for various Tammany style projects, with money being diverted from normal maintenance such as replacing obsolete signal systems. It has nothing to do with rail being obsolete. The solution is the boring solution of “fix the signal system”, though you probably want to do a complete replacement of the MTA management as well.
If it ain’t really broken why fix it. From your comment it sounds like the subways are doing their job as long as NYC can keep raising the rates and diverting the money from maintenance to other purposes. What NYC needs is a new project to justify an increase in city taxes and get more money from the State and maybe Federal coffers. Think what a “Big Dig” project to build highways for self-driving cars might do for NYC and many deserving others.\s
The best parts of the article. 1) The careful attention to current numbers of riders and the space differential between large cars and the numbers of smaller, individual cars that would ostensibly replace them. 2) Its excess concentration on the eternal question: “What could go wrong?”
Meticulous concentration on logistics is plainly the article’s strong suit.
The Atlantic is plainly transitioning to a science fiction publication.
It sounded like the plot of a Black Mirror episode to me.
It doesn’t just appeal to Millennials, I also listen to Chapo Trap House pretty regularly (How LinkedIn turned this “Failmom” into a socialist) after living almost 1.5 years in the ranks of the unemployed during the early 2000’s. It was a very frightening experience and most definitely solidified my present political outlook on the U.S. It led to the sort of attitude that justified writing in Alfred E. Nueman for President in the 2016 Presidential Election.
If I was the religious type, I’d be praying daily for the swift end of our late-stage Capitalist society.
i think i’ll write in the roadrunner next election, for showing us how to defeat the acme corporation and its running coyote tools.
I cast my vote in the 2016 Presidential Election for Wink Martindale, my reasoning being if a game show host is what’s needed for a leader in our country, why not a good one?
I say we all visualize the reincarnation of Groucho Marx. We will recognize him when he appears before us with a black moustache. His eyes will have a hypnotic gleam and he will declare that its time to save the nation from liars, cheats, charlatans, scoundrels, hypocrites, and false prophets.
Groucho! Groucho! GROUCHO!
groucho-duck 2020
I suggest Benny Hill. Hey, he’s less of a sexual predator than Trump or Bill Clinton!
Certainly is today. He’s dead. (21 January 1924 – 20 April 1992)
Benny Hill. Rude, crude, vulgar and totally politically incorrect. Sadly missed by his fans, including myself-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epKqu_VHbQU
During Obama’s presidency, I went from being successful in business to living in poverty. The root cause was austerity, which was heavily promoted by dear, sweet 44.
Thanks, Obama.
Lord O didn’t help small businesses ’cause they don’t make enough campaign contributions. However, there’s no politician who misses the opportunity to hail how small businesses are the backbone of the country. Kinda like “support the troops” but let’s not support the VA.
Every time you hear a politician say that small business is the lifeblood of America, pat your pocket to make sure that your wallet is still there.
Better to check your neck for punctures.
Good little back-and-forth from Frances Coppola and Martin Sandbu on the full-reserve banking referendum:
https://twitter.com/Frances_Coppola/status/1006166582987513858
Frances is, of course, correct…imnsho.
As a 60yo unemployed woman who relocated in 2016 due to my 88yo mother’s decline, had two total knee replacements 6 mos apart in 2017, and am now looking for an LCSW position in unfamiliar territory, the Salon article doesn’t seem fun at all.
It is terrifying.
We empathize. I had to opt for early Social Security, no one wanting to hire a sixty-something infrastructure worker.
Don’t give up. Your mental health is very important. (But you knew that!)
It is terrifying but, there is always the option of ‘outsourcing’ some of that terror.
I have a friend who’s about 55, just laid off when his company got bought out. A highly experienced electrical engineer, very competent with both code and hardware, fantastic work ethic and attitude and really easy to get along with. When he was laid off from SGI years ago it took him nearly two years to get work again. This time seems to be shaping up to be even worse. As for myself, I just turned 48 and if it wasn’t for the success of the business my family owned until about 2010 I would probably be dead in a ditch somewhere. My multiple attempts at training for a new career have so far all led to the resume black hole game. I’ve never so much as received an answer from anyone I’ve applied to – and this includes low paying “entry level” positions. No matter what the employment stats say or what the industry PR spouts it’s a tough job market out there.
Thx for your understanding…and yeah, I used to interview well but I’m so angry about for-profit health care (affecting me as a patient, practitioner, and employee) as well as so much else, dunno how I’ll come off. Wouldn’t want to outsource to a potential employer who could give me relief from these $1300/mo ACA premiums!
There is something the matter when experience is overemphasized for young people (this internship, that summer job), yet so denigrated for older workers. What a mess!
I’ve found, from conversing with friends and strangers, that many of these ‘intern’ jobs are ways for the employer to get work done for free. Several people over the last few years commented something to the effect that: “I got no training, no hints, no teachable moments while I was there.”
As far as my experiences with retail go, I’ve discovered that now, it isn’t what you know. Due to the overwhelming pressure put on middle management to ‘meet the metrics’ the main, indeed, only thing that matters is how good a salesperson you are. What would be funny if it were not so obviously dysfunctional, is that the categories measured the most in the retail metrics, at least on the salesroom floor, are the obviously b— s— ones. Those that return the least value to the customer: extended warranties, store branded credit cards, upgrades to basic items, etc.
So much for the bright future we were promised back in the day.
I know what you mean about interviewing.
When I finally came to terms with the built in biases of the ‘interview’ game, I decided to stop pretending. I don’t wear my Marx and Engels tee shirt to interviews, but, if asked a ‘hard’ question now, I tell my version of the truth. Such as, when one HR woman asked me; “And exactly why did you leave that job?” I told her about the toxic mess that retail establishment had become. I figured that I was a goner when that question came up. Most places I’ve interviewed at in the past asked about my qualifications, and not much else. When a place starts in on your social chameleon index, it is a sign of Dominionist Business Ethics in control.
That the ACA demands that amount of money from you in a state such as Carolina is a very bad sign.
Perhaps you could help start an “Intervention Service” dedicated to helping free people from the Cult of the DNC, and other socio-political mind control programs. I’m sure that parents and significant others will pay to free their nearest and dearest from the morning chants of “Yes we can!” and “She’s the one!”
Be strong!
Does winning affluent districts require selling out the poor?
1 Off their meds Clinton true believers overrepresented on yet another comment thread. Problem is clearly racist Berniebros not clapping harder.
2 Democrats have always carried a significant number of affluent, or as Mrs c would say, “forward looking” districts, so the answer would seem to be either
A. No, or
B. We’ve always done that.
3 Do poor and affluent as categories cover the entire polity? What about that huge number who are by no means affluent, but haven’t yet been pushed downhill far enough to join the literal poor in the means-tested and constantly intruded upon basement? Are they irrelevant or just irredeemablY selfish for presuming to have interests of their own? Or is the problem that they still have enough voice and remnants of power that it’s harder to just appoint yourself their guardian than to do so for something called “the poor? “
I’m looking at new, cheap Android phones and ZTE phones get decent reviews. But they’re now blacklisted by carriers, a fact sadly not mentioned in reviews I’ve seen. If you buy one now, it won’t work on any network in the US apparently. This is about as close to seeing fallout from China policy as I’ve gotten in my life.
I too was looking at phones and noticed ZTE currently being sold to work with at least one pre-paid carrier. Are you sure about that?
I don’t know about the carrier sold phones, but at least for the unlocked ZTE Blade sold on Amazon, several reviews, including one this month, state that the buyer couldn’t activate the unlocked phone on any carrier in the US. Also, it can’t get OS updates.
Since I’m looking for an unlocked phone, this seems like a poor buy.
I’ll probably have to buy a Motorola or Nokia I guess. Several are in the $250-range.
I had Motorolas for years, from my first flip phone to the first Droid, then the Droid Bionic, and finally the Droid Turbo for the larger screen. Never had a single problem with the earlier phones even though I usually kept them longer than whenever I was entitled to an upgrade. I see no damn reason to get the latest phone every two years.
Well, I am on my third Droid Turbo–it has been a nightmare. The first one started bleeding under the screen about six months after I got it and at the VZ store we just barely got my stuff off before it was completely inaccessible. The replacement had some kind of issues I can’t remember about 9 mos later and again I had to get a new one, with much hassle over trying to save my stuff for the transfer.
Now, a year later the screen becomes unresponsive, the phone turns itself off, phone won’t give me access to dial pad for calls requiring number entry, camera and maps work sporadically, frequently giving error messages and shutting themselves down.
What a nightmare! I have spent hours on multiple days with tech support, after trying everything else they finally did a factory reboot, and it’s still not right.
So after the first melt-down I got warranty coverage. Turns out this only entitles me to a RECONDITIONED phone, plus by now this model is “old”.
All I can think is that Motorolas are now crapified. I am going to take the replacement when it arrives into the store and trade it in for another brand–and a one of their latest models: they really FORCE their planned obsolescence on you by not passing on upgrades and patches to older models, really pisses me off.
I hate to spring for a Samsung. Can anybody confirm Motorolas have gone downhill and/or point me to a reliable alternative?
Thanks in advance.
If I find something that works, I keep it for as long as possible. I had a Samsung flip phone for 7 years and, because I like the utility of the touch screen, I got a Motorola Android that’s now 3 years old. I , have a 20 year old car, a 15 year old motorcycle, and a 14 year old Airedale Terrier. And then there’s me, a good deal older than all of them combined. ; )
My family was on Moto G’s until they got so old that even McDonald’s app refuses to work on it. We switched to Xiaomi’s mid tier phones at just under USD $200 shipped when mailordered from China. We are very happy with them. They come unlocked and works on the AT&T network (and other companies that piggy back on it) if you are careful to order the “global version”. Easily the match for the name brand phones that the carriers sell for twice the price. They even have a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Xioami also just booked a quarterly net loss of USD $1.1 billion but are about to IPO. Will be interesting to see if they can ride the bubble up or crash and burn.
I bought an unlocked LG G6, my very first “smart” phone, about a year ago. They have unlocked Verizon and AT&T models and I’ve been pretty happy with it. A little expensive, relative to the inexpensive simpler phones, but nowhere near a Samsung or Apple or Motorola and it takes great pics so I killed two birds with one stone.
You can try a Sonim XP7 if a phone that is just OK with regards to glitzy features but is damn near indestructible and has a battery life measured in days instead of hours appeals. It’s a bit thick and heavy and the black/yellow rubber armor makes it look alike a DeWalt product which may or may not appeal. I use mine pretty much exclusively as a phone (GPS, wifi, location services etc. are all turned off) and I don’t talk that much on it, probably no more than an hour of speech and some texting, and the battery is usually still at 50%+ after more than a week – battery life is the main selling point for me. It’s certainly been sturdy and reliable too, if a bit expensive to buy outright.
We’d actually kinda joked about this glass coated aluminum HTC monstrosity at the NYC get together… so of course, it seems to be posting everything twice, somehow. But my beloved ancient LG got the boot-loops and the 1.55um 12MP Sony camera makes it worth $300, but paying ANYTHING more for backdoor rootkits seems just plain silly?
Yes, Motorola has gone downhill. They are built by Lenovo now. I gave up on them when my new Android (motoX gen 2) was missing calls, and I asked a Lenovo engineer I know about it. His answer “who makes voice calls anymore?”.
Stan
Thanks all. The LG G6 might be an option, I do care about the camera. JCC, Motorolas are much less than Samsungs or Apple phones. But thanks Duke for confirming they aren’t what they used to be.
So far in my research I have discovered one arresting fact: all Apple phones and phones made and sold by Google (Pixel, Nexus) receive updates and security patches direct from the manufacturer, timely. Carriers are inconsistent about providing updates and protection for known threats to their customers.
I am thinking the Pixel 2, for the security and a good camera.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-kaweah-river-death-20180610-story.html
Drowning deaths in Sequoia NP tend to involve Hispanic visitors, and a friend was the wildlife biologist there for many years, and oftentimes, NPS employees wear a number of hats, and she was fluent in Spanish, so she became the family liaison for the National Patk, comforting people she only just met, that lost somebody due to drowning.
I’ve wondered at that.
Out of all the Mexican Americans I know(married in to a large bunch), maybe 3 of them ever learned how to swim.
All of them have gone to the river all their lives.(it’s free)
I’m unable to determine causation.
Wife thinks it has to do with La Llorona.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/jeff-sessions-will-separate-immigrant-families-and-endure-trumps-abuse-to-deter-immigration.html
Not a source of pride for Sessions and whoever he deems included as “we”:
US Constitution – Amendment XIV:
… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
If someone is willing to hide for days in tunnels, ‘safe houses’, and/or pick up trucks and also walk miles through the desert is ‘deterrence’ via threatening the separation from the kids really logical?
Why not just go for the whole enchilada and waterboard all involved when caught? After all…..DETERRENCE!!!!
You could justify shooting every 100th migrant that’s caught because playing Russian roulette is a deterrent.
Here’s an idea….you can cut the unnecessary cruelty and increase the effectiveness…..maybe just cut the number of travel, student and H1-b visas issued each year. Way less cruel, and way more effective. Maybe lay off the coups, drug war military aid and other ‘regime change’ gigs would help reduce the supply side of migrants?
But, as with all things Trump….it’s all about the spectacle and there’s barely any substance at all.
Isn’t walking miles through a desert with children child-endangerment?
There’s a very good book, written by a local author by the name of Margaret Regan, called The Death of Josseline. She was a 14-year-old Salvadorean girl who fell ill on a mountain trail, and then she was left to die.
Depends what you’re walking away from, I guess
Depends on where you’re walking from.
That calls for investigation by the government.
You could send ’em for screening and body search at the local airport, compliments of the TSA. They’d never want to be in the USA again! /s
Translated from official bigot-speak:
“[T]he United States
can’t be ais total guarantor that everyparentslave who comes to the country unlawfully with a child is guaranteed that they won’t be,is guaranteed that they will beable to have their hand on that child theentire timeagain. That’s justnotthe way it works.”The coyotes don’t care whether a child can make the journey or not.
I assume that’s how they ended up in the desert.
Supreme Court rules in favor of Ohio ‘voter purge’ [The Hill]
The Roberts Court – calling balls and strikes since 2005. Balls on the right and strikes on the left.
Read all of the lengthy article on Demographic Structural Theory with enjoyment. Although the author shares some of the prejudices of his class (thought Obama and Clinton were just great, talks about his own career and name drops far more than necessary) the ultimate conclusion that increasing population levels are the driver for a large variety of anti-working class policies (and that ultimately the post-war Baby Boom is responsible for the immiseration we’ve been seeing from the 80’s on) is novel but plausible, and the prescription that elites need to aggressively reverse these policies and purge their ranks of corruption or face increasing political turmoil is certainly something I broadly agree with. I’m not sure I buy his blithe faith in the strength of our democratic procedures saving us from an actual civil war by buying time until the baby boomers die off and (he argues) the instability factors will recede by themselves. Seems like climate change/resource exhaustion/etc. could add in additional stresses he’s not accounting for.
The Cowardice Of The Political Class
Gee, an article about how Social Security and Medicare are draining the national budget. Funny, I’ve paid into those programs my whole working life, but I never paid for war, 14 trillion, bailing out banks, 4 trillion (who knows how much), and I never asked my Washington representatives to pass tax cuts for billionaires.
Yep. Just another maneuver in the campaign to enact the “Grand Bargain” to gut the Social Safety Nets.
In case you missed the link, the current hand-wringing about Social Security and Medicare is apparently part of the ongoing progression to privatizing it: https://fair.org/home/media-treat-trump-administrations-partisan-fear-mongering-as-objective-government-report/
It’s a good time to be a mouse.
We’ve got some rodents hereabouts that routinely get the bait from traps without getting caught. I’m beginning to suspect they benefit from increased cognitive capabilities derived from interbreeding with genetically enhanced rodent escapees from one or more of the many scientific labs around here.
Stamp those traps with the word ‘ALGERON’ on them, and be patient ..
The next step is rats. Consequently the treatment will never have enough vaccine to be used outside DC.
Supreme Court gives Ohio right to purge thousands of voters from its rolls
Self Driving cars
Anything below Level 5 traps the driver into inattention, making the “convenience” lethal.
Here, most commuters spend most of their driving time in stop-and-go traffic. An automatic driving feature that would allow one to read, snooze or whatever during slow bumper to bumper traffic would be the safest, easiest and cheapest, and most desirable option. But nooooo, Sillycon Valley wants to sell us wants to sell us dubious complexity when all we need is simple.
Better:
The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair The Atlantic. “Instead of fixing the old trains, let’s rip out the tracks and fill the tunnels with fleets of BICYCLES running on pavement.”
Taking Lambert’s four step model for privatization from the recent VA article and applying it to the Atlantic NYC Public Subway hit piece:
[1] Defund [or sabotage]: “… and it’s going to cost billions to keep the old trains running: $19 billion, at least according to one estimate from city planners.”
[2] claim crisis: “But the system is also falling apart.“
[3] call for privatization: ”Just a collection of competing fleets, centrally orchestrated and offering different levels of service to different groups at different prices.”
[4] Profit! [ka-ching]. “People would pay to reserve a slice of the pavement at a particular time.”
Thank you for the privatization model. Makes it quite seamless to break down these attack on public service articles in about 2.5 seconds.
Re How LinkedIn turned this “Failmom” into a socialist Salon
Yet another reminder that along with apparently no teeth (or a total lack of attorneys willing to take cases on) in any age or gender discrimination laws, insanely only two states – New Jersey and Oregon – along with the District of Columbia and New York City, have laws surrounding the refusal to hire the unemployed.
Connected, regarding the unemployed, there appear to be no major Tax Incentives and Tax Penalties with teeth for hiring local first, and providing further training once on the job, something that used to be the norm. Entire communities in some areas are being repopulated with under 35, predominantly male and way overrated Ivy Leaguers, along with under 35, predominantly male H-1B visas while decades long residents increasingly flounder, flee, or possibly become homeless.
US policies and lack of policies have created an increasingly propertyless and transient population. It’s no small wonder that recent CDC Suicide Report was bleak, it’s going to get far bleaker as more and more under retirement age boomers (most particularly those who rent apartments, which figures are conveniently never discussed [1] because it would destroy the ugly Boomer Myth the Media and powers that be love to take advantage of) can’t afford the basics.
It’s venal that Congress hasn’t publically spoken to this – as there’s no way they aren’t aware of it – particularly millionaire members of Congress (the majority being over retirement age themselves!) legislating for states which have horrific: unemployed; age; race; class: gender; and wage discrimination reputations, such as California.
[1] Some August 2017 ‘Boomer’ renter statistics:
Further down in the piece:
But, but, but… I read on Reddit practically every day a thread that devolves into “Boomers are all rich, evil and responsible for all of the worlds problems”.
A huge embrace to you, honey.
It’s been over two hours now since I posted the following comment, which has yet to show up, I believe it’s very important but by tomorrow: barely anyone, if anyone, will be checking this ‘page’ to see it, so I’m reposting it now, versus waiting 24 hours, my apologies:
Very sorry, for those incredibly stressed (actually I’m one of them) to bring up that Current Suicide Report. The thing is, if any of the economically suicidal thought the US Government was doing anything to alleviate those economic suicides, the suicides would be decreasing, not exponentially rising – as they have – for over a decade.
It is essential that the President and Congress discuss the fact that a frightening percentage of US citizens are killing themselves because they can’t afford to live in any manner that is not inhumane and horridly punitive. Millions are being forced to flee, repeatedly, in a state of permanent transience – those just under retirement age are being forced to seek highly punitive and barely regulated [1] 62yrs + Senior Housing, while the very young can no longer hope to own a home unless they went to Sidling, etcetera – which transience I suspect has a whole lot do with why people ended up on FaceFiend, et al: they are no longer capable of settling down anywhere; their ‘local communities’ have been robbed from them by a hideous and deliberate Technocratic Disruption.
[1] As in, for just a very small sampling: must get rid of your vehicle, despite horrid/no transit; and $200 per person Mandatory Meals™ Fees (continental breakfast and dinner, no stove or full size refrigerator in the 300 square feet Studio Apartment you and your significant other have been forced into); must pay 30% of one’s income, no matter what the circumstances are, on top of the potential, per person Mandatory Meals™ Fees. No CAP on that 30%, the way it’s deliberately been finagled is that two people at 62 or over can conceivably pay $2,000 a month, or more, for a 300 square foot Kitchenless Studio Apartment, and a forced continental breakfast (no lunch provided) and dinner (if you’re a few minutes late, no continental breakfast or din din for you!).
To get on a senior housing entity’s waiting list (all of which tell you it’s up to a five year wait for an apartment to open up) for such hideous treatment, one must wait months checking to see if a waiting list has finally opened and then fill in an application (which they are offered no copy of to prove they provided very personal identifying information to that potentially predatory Senior Housing Entity; isn’t that illegal to not provide a copy of a legal document, apparently HUD doesn’t think so) and provide social security numbers, etcetera, to possible predators and then physically compete with other desperate souls, many of whom are terminally ill – as the first ones who finish the applications are allowed to hand them in well before the first ones in line to get on the waiting list, which aren’t noted at all, it’s up to those desperate applicants to agree and make a list of who was there first.
(This is my first hand experience in the California Bay Area, where the vast predominance (around 97% if one included the newish Lexus driving male who got away with double parking and tried to cut the line in front of the solely women who had been waiting in the cold since before the sun rose) of the applicants were single females (duh, a generally worse age discrimination then males suffer, and a lifelong wage gap, despite far less ethics violations, which admittedly may have to do with men’s forced shame at ‘not providing for the family’) and only one black person, because California has always had a minimal population of blacks due to well documented, and historic racism. The hoping to get on the waiting list applicants started arriving around 5:00 AM, my sweety and I got up before 4:00 AM to make it there. Shame on the US ‘Government’ and California, etcetera.)
WTF? https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/supreme-court-greenlights-ohio-voter-purges-in-husted-v-rando
And then there is this: http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2018/06/gillibrand-endorses-crowley/
So now there is smoke coming out of my ears….
Remember, as dear Madeleine said, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support the women us alpha women tell you to support“.
At least that’s how I remember it. Even at that, the first “the women” is probably a mistake, she really just meant “vote for who we tell you to vote for… reserve your so-called independent minds for things like choosing pussy hat colors…”
I thought that those hats only came in two colours: red and pink. I wonder if they turn a nice tan shade as they age.
I just read the second link. Oh boy. I think that Gillibrand just “Jumped the Shark.”
Now I’m hoping that the feisty Latina wins.
Interesting. In the 2016 Maryland US Senate primary (which in heavily Dem MD is tantamount to the general election), with very similar candidates (Chris van Hollen = white male fundraising powerhouse and
Donna Edwards = woman of color progressive), Gillibrand endorsed Edwards,
who went on to lose the primary.
Translation: Gillibrand is running and wants Crowley’s Rolodex.
>The alliance between the United States and Western Europe has accomplished great things. It won two world wars in the first half of the 20th century.
Wait, what? Am I misremembering, were these wars against invading Aliens from Jupiter? I thought the main antagonist in both cases was Germany, which last I looked was part of and has always been part of “Western Europe”. Especially for the WWI, the only reason it was a “world” war was that The West had colonial-ized* everything.
*colonized is way too pleasant a word…
Lordy I missed the next sentence even:
>Then it expanded to include its former enemies
No, we turned the USSR, our ally in the war, into a pariah state. Those who don’t understand history are bound to repeat it. Those who blissfully misreport history are bound to become NYT columnists, though.
I’m sure what I’m about to say is quoting someone though for the life of me I can’t remember where I read it, but with regards to that NYT writer: “Really, such folly smacks of genius. A lesser mind would not be capable of it.”
>Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment
Of course, if a parallel situation came up today in the US, our financial masters would patiently explain that we should simply “buy Sputniks from Russia”. Of course since it wouldn’t be obviously a Sputnik and it wouldn’t come from Russia all the courtiers would nod their heads vigorously.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/a-senior-white-house-official-defines-the-trump-doctrine-were-america-bitch/562511/
The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking. I was talking to this person several weeks ago, and I said, by way of introduction, that I thought it might perhaps be too early to discern a definitive Trump Doctrine.
“No,” the official said. “There’s definitely a Trump Doctrine.”
“What is it?” I asked. Here is the answer I received:
“The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”
==========================================
I would rephrase that:
“The Trump Doctrine is ‘I’m America, Bitch – and what’s mine is mine and what’s yours will be mine as soon as me and my friends grift it out of you.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine
That sounds like what the global reserve fiat (no cost to print) currency is for.
The late great “Superwoman” Margot Kidder was on to money laundering scheme of the Hilary Victory Fund. Couldn’t get straight answers from out Democratic State Committee officials. I wish Margot was still alive to pursue this. Shouldn’t be swept under the rug. Clinton bought loyalty of 33 state democratic parties
If Elizabeth Holmes can line up enough financing to buy a box of Cracker Jacks, then I think the next bear market is going to be a doozy as even having a proven bezzle is unable to dissuade investors. The private equity side will likely be ugly then as well.
Why is she able to spend time lining up financing for a new company instead of spending all her time with lawyers preparing her defense in a criminal fraud trial?
http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-founder-elizabeth-holmes-new-startup-report-2018-6
“Bolthole on a budget: What you can buy for £500,000 FT” – Echoing Lambert’s “Go Die” rule #2 of neoliberalism, for the economic victims of the bolthole a-hole class, the FT should run a parallel “Bullethole on a budget” article.
“Bullethole on a budget” is more of a Daily Mail piece.
The subway article is either very bad or very funny, depending on whether the obvious stupidity is intentional.
Autonomous vehicles are the new privatization scam. At best they will provide transportation of elderly elite who are the only ones who can afford it. At worst, they will kill off distracted drivers. If the nation’s capital can’t afford and is incapable of getting its subway’s automatic control system working after killing nine customers, the scheme for a city full of tunnels of self-driving taxis is impossible and terminally stupid.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/can-metro-trains-return-to-automation-its-a-1-million-question/2018/06/09/500cb40a-68ec-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html?utm_term=.bf1fc511fa34