Hillaryous

So Karl Rove got caught with his tongue firmly up his ass cheek by one of his own media outlets and now he’s been forced to jog back some comments:

Last week, Karl Rove questioned her capacity for the White House and reportedly said she had brain damage.

The New York Post reported on Tuesday that Mr Rove, the strategist behind George W Bush's election to the White House, had told an audience in Los Angeles last week, "Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what's up with that."

In fact, Mrs Clinton was in hospital for three days after falling ill with a stomach bug in December 2012. After becoming severely dehydrated, Mrs Clinton fell at home and struck her head, suffering a concussion. While she was in hospital doctors diagnosed a blood clot.

Needless to say, when this became public, Rove was forced to eat his words.

"I didn't say she had brain damage. I said she had a serious health episode," he said on Fox News.

It’s incumbent of me to point out that FOX News and the NY Post are both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., so essentially, Rove is denying that Murdoch’s people can tell the truth.

And the delicious irony is that he used Murdoch’s outlets as his own personal PR machine for decades. The cherry on top? He worked for a man in George W Bush with enough emotional and mental instabilities to likely choke a horse. An unrecovering alcoholic, possible cocaine addict with delusions of godhood and perfection, yet Rove couldn’t quite bring his armchair medical insight to a real problem of a real person with the very real ability to screw us all up, but good. Which Bush managed to do.

Somehow, Rove missed all that.

He seems nice.

Your Basic Quagmire

The more I think about the Chelsea (fka Bradley) Manning situation, the shape it takes gets more and more bizarre:

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — The Pentagon is considering transferring Ptv.[sic] Chelsea Manning to a civilian prison where the soldier serving time for leaking classified documents could receive medical treatment for gender dysphoria, Defense officials said Wednesday.

That option is among several Army leaders are weighing as they wrestle with a dilemma that is likely to set precedent on a fraught issue for the Pentagon, which has come under increasing pressure to reexamine its prohibition on allowing transgender people to serve in uniform.

OK, before you jump ugly on me, I have no problem with what Chelsea did to get her sentence – in fact, I hold her in far higher regard than I do Edward Snowden, especially after Putin has all but discredited Snowden’s pure motives – and I don’t really have a problem with her desire to transform her body into a woman. Hear me out, though.

In the normal course of events, an active-duty Chelsea would have received a medical discharge and been forced to pay for her treatments on her own, which makes sense under the old guard rules where women’s roles in the armed forces were restricted – and I’m not defending those rules, just acknowledging they were a reality under which policies were developed like this.

Under the evolving rules of the military, women have a larger role in all areas of the forces, including combat. A born-male woman could conceivably still maintain whatever role she assumed in her male form with little to no real effect to her performance.

Here’s where things get interesting: as convicted, Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but military rules call for the expulsion of anyone who takes steps to treat her gender dysphoria, therefore Chelsea should be discharged. This is why one option the Pentagon is considering is a transfer to a Federal penitentiary, where she could receive the treatment she needs.

In fact, that has precedent in situations where there is a life-threatening illness that military medicine is ill-equipped to treat. This course of action is further bolstered by the recent decision in the First Circuit Court of Appeals that a transgendered individual who has received a bona fide treatment plan endorsed by physicians must be allowed treatment, that to deny this treatment is unconstitutional under the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. Chelsea would be entitled to treatment and the military could maintain its façade of “morality” as defined by the right wing yahoos (and avoid an awful lot of awkward publicity.)

So this seems a reasonable gesture for the Pentagon to take for Manning and all other transgender soldiers. Right?

OK, but the forensic auditor in me has a question, and when you consider it, you’ll see why my mind got blown:

What if this was Chelsea’s plan all along?  

Oh, This Isn't Good

Four foot sea level rise

Private Eyes Are Watching You

In all the uproar over government surveillance and the NSA wiretaps and what not, we seem to be ignoring a far greater invasion of our collective privacies:

Celebrities can take back exits and limos with tinted windows to dodge the paparazzi -- but a leaked video that purportedly shows Beyoncé’s sister beating up on Jay Z in the elevator of a swanky New York hotel is a reminder that there are still plenty of ways to be caught on candid camera.

The grainy footage obtained by entertainment website TMZ allegedly shows Solange Knowles roughing up the rapper, and was reportedly recorded by a surveillance camera on May 5 at The Standard hotel. While it’s unclear how the footage was leaked, multiple people could have accessed the archives, a security expert told NBC News.

"We are shocked and disappointed that there was a clear breach of our security system and the confidentiality that we count on providing our guests," The Standard told The Grio in an email. The company added it is "investigating with the utmost urgency."

To me, this is merely an extension of the paparazzi phenomenon of the 1970s and 80s: people in public places (and yes, a hotel elevator would be deemed a public place) caught on camera in what one might say are states of public solitude – underdressed, no makeup, engaged in private conversations, being naughty in some respect or other.

Lately, it seems these incidents have become far more commonplace: the rash seems to have started with Congressman Vance McAllister and run through Donald Sterling to Jay-Z and his family. Security footage or other supposedly “private” recordings leaked to the press and published.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those caught (indeed, in Sterling’s case, it was his taping system that was used against him, much like Watergate and President Nixon). If you’re not at home, you should assume you’re on camera, particularly if you have any kind of public profile.

The Standard Hotel, in this instance, is likely going to be slapped with a civil suit by Jay-Z et al. And likely, the judge will laugh it out of court (or give some nominal judgment for the plaintiff). Obviously, Jay-Z couldn’t control the physicality of his sister-in-law, and it seems to me that he was aware there might be a camera since all his efforts appear to be put towards calming things down.

Or perhaps I’m being unfair, and he truly was interested in making peace in short order and had no suspicion of a camera. Altho in a New York City elevator…ANY elevator…you can expect you’re on someone’s monitor somewhere. Jay-Z probably knows this as well as I do.

The raft of criminal trials and civil suits from such things as assaults have forced this situation upon us: it’s not a matter of “he said, she said” (or “he said, he said” or “she said, she said”) if there’s a videotape to watch.

Many would argue that the fact that a camera exists is no reason for the tape to be released, but I’d argue that to expect all tapes to remain locked up is not a solution, either. There’s a gray line, a pretty thin one, between proving something did or did not happen, and leaking a private tape.

For instance, one could speculate that this tape of Jay-Z was released with the knowledge of one party or other, to help bolster their side of a different story, one we haven’t heard yet. In the case of Congressman McAllister (and to a degree, Donald Sterling), the tape reveals information about the subject that was not known publicly and would affect the decisions of people in their sphere of influence. The question then becomes, when is it enough?

And that’s the real argument to be had over this issue. To claim it was wrong to release any tape is to argue about the horse after the barn is empty.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross Is Rolling In Her Grave. Laughing.

Who would ever have thought that the five stages of grief could apply to politics? And yet, Nick Gillespie (!) and  The Daily Beast gives us the first hard evidence that the GOP has reached acceptance:

Last month, even as President Obama touted the “8 million people” who signed up for individual coverage under the Affordable Care Act, he granted that the program was far from perfect—or even complete. “There are going to be things that need to be improved,” he told the press, insisting that there wouldn’t be “any hesitation on our part to consider ideas that would actually improve the legislation.”

OK then. Even though I think Obamacare is a truly epic mistake (more on that later), here are three obvious ways to make the president’s signature legislative achievement better, cheaper, and more cost-effective.

The three ways?

Allowing people to purchase plain vanilla “catastrophic health insurance”: In other words, the same crap policies that insurance companies have been issuing for decades to people who don’t give a damn that they’d file bankruptcy and stick us with their medical bills.

Force insurers to compete across state lines: In other words, nationalized health coverage is an improvement over “states first”. Gillespie’s not wrong here, of course, but the reason it wasn’t included specifically is because idiots who like Gillespie’s way of “libertarian” thinking would have been all over socialized medicine like white on rice. So great idea, really rotten politics.

Grow the supply of medical care: In other words, the market should determine pricing and the best way to encourage the market to determine pricing is to increase supply and let microeconomics hold sway. In theory, it makes sense. In a MACROeconomic world, however, it’s not supply that’s going to determine how pricing is structured.

It’s demand. The only way Obamacare works is if more and younger people start engaging in preventive care. Indeed, Gillespie even accounts for as much when he notes that there are effective barriers to competition in many states under the current system. There was actually an oversupply of doctors and medical facilities, and those facilities were concerned about protecting their profits. If they were truly inundated with patients (and not artificially creating over-demand), they’d welcome clinics and offices to shunt off some of their diminished capacity.

A large part of the problem is introduced as far back as medical school admissions. Indeed, to become a doctor requires you already have financial resources beyond those of your patients. That is not conducive to a classical capitalist solution to the delivery of healthcare. If anything, it’s going to retard the growth of the medical industry as doctors will demand a certain level of comfort in their lifestyle, rather than accept the market for what it is (read that as income from practices).

Still, I should give kudos to Gillespie for finally admitting that Obamacare is not going to go away, even if somehow Marco Rubio manages to survive the primary and general elections and steal the White House back for the GOP.

It’s a start.

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) This is what freedom looks like. I keep in mind that a lot of this hearkens back to Hugo Chavez and how he tossed out candies of government patronage while keeping the food of freedom away from the table.

2) Solar now, solar forever.

3) Fairy cake not included.

4) Sanity may finally win out with voter ID laws.

5) I can understand South Dakota being number one. A lot of credit card companies have their “headquarters” there because there are no usury laws so they can charge whatever interest rate they damned well please, which means a lot of clerical workers are needed. New York being so low on the list is a bit of a surprise, tho.

6) Putin rubs Ukraine’s nose in it.

7) Mitt Romney backs a minimum wage hike. This is not an Onion article.

8) Simple answer, guys: Yes

9) How to make $5 into $100. No, this is not a work-at-home scam. Well, sort of. I mean, you can do it at home and there is work, and ultimately, you scam other people.

10) Creeping Sharia! And it’s shaved meat!

So....About That "Global Warming"...

You think maybe folks in west Texas are starting to take the hint?

Barham says residents (ed. Note: of Wichita Falls, Texas) have cut water use by more than a third, but water supplies are still expected to run out in two years.

So the city has built a 13-mile pipeline that connects its wastewater plant directly to the plant where water is purified for drinking. That means the waste that residents flush down their toilets will be part of what's cleaned up and sent back to them through the tap.

Drinking your own pee is pretty good indication that you might be in trouble.

I don’t mean to make light of a very serious situation, but it’s come down to that for many Texans. Amarillo is on course to become the largest American city to run out of water, a dubious distinction at best, and here’s the juice quote:

“We still have a generally warm Atlantic Ocean, and that tends to mean dry conditions,” [Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon] said.

Welcome to the 21^st century, Amarillo!

Although this is not the worst drought to affect the region (the 1930s Dust Bowl was), the increased population plus the additional food production in the region will make this by far the most devastating if this trend continues, which seems extremely likely.

As I write this, New York City is under a storm system that will see rain deep into the weekend.

The economic consequences for the west Texas region have only begun to seep in. After all, every dollar spent on bottled water is a dollar less for such luxuries as food, electricity, and fuel.

Yes, luxuries. You can live without fuel and electricity, and maybe for a while food, but water? In the heat of a Texas summer?

Is this the event I talked about a few days ago? That “what would it take?” that no climate-change denier has ever satisfactorily answered before they started to believe it’s real and it’s a problem?

I hope so. But I doubt it.

 

Why Now?

Monica Lewinsky has a column in this month’s Vanity Fair in which she opens up about The Affair.

I don’t really have to tell you which one, do I? Unless you are younger than 20, maybe 21, it would have been really hard not to be at least dimly aware of the incident that may have brought down a President.

This is a woman whose name will be forever linked to scandal. I can imagine it’s hard to live like that, particularly when your own involvement in the scandal was not illegal. I mean, she’s not Charles Manson or Sirhan Sirhan. About the closest parallel in our lifetime is Yoko Ono, and she got a lot more support from the man involved than Lewinsky did.

Lewinsky’s only “crime” was entrusting her secrets to a woman who thankfully slunk off into the hell of obscurity after betraying a naïf. I won’t mention her name. Google is your friend if you don’t recall.

Lewinsky turns 40 this year, and so I’m sure she saw an opportunity, indeed perhaps even a need, to get this off her chest. Kudos for her. And kudos more for finding a sweet spot in the political calendar to engage the country again.

In fact, it says a lot about Lewinsky that she doesn’t hold a grudge – much. In fact, she sympathizes with the other “other woman” in this mess, Hillary Clinton, and points out that her anger was not misplaced but perhaps misdirected. (Clinton, it was recently revealed, blamed Lewinsky and herself for the mess, claiming she was emotionally unavailable to Bill at that time, thus neatly deflecting blame from Bill Clinton himself.)

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time knows I believe Bill Clinton’s place in history as one of our greatest Presidents will become more and more apparent as time goes by. The tragedy of his administration was the energy and drive that Clinton showed publicly slopped over into his private life, or I think already his place in history would have been secured.

Nonetheless, by stepping forward now, Lewinsky does Hillary (and Bill) a favor: it’s far enough ahead of even the midterm elections to have minimal impact as a talking point – altho you can bet Republicans will try. And certainly by 2016, the nation will have digested, mocked, and finally accepted Lewinsky’s words for what they are.

An honest attempt to fix history. For that, I think we should thank her.

 

On Deaf Ears

The Obama administration has decided to move the national dialogue forward, to try to take a pro-active position on climate change:

Washington (CNN) -- Flooded rail lines. Bigger, more frequent droughts. A rash of wildfires.

Those are some of the alarming predictions in a White House climate change report released Tuesday, part of President Barack Obama's broader second-term effort to help the nation prepare for the effects of higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more erratic weather.

"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the National Climate Assessment says, adding that the evidence of man-made climate change "continues to strengthen" and that "impacts are increasing across the country."

We, of course, can anticipate absolutely no action will take place on this. When a significant number in even a dying political party do not believe in climate change – or worse, somehow conflate climate change with God’s will – nothing will happen.

Still, Obama is correct to make a go of it. After all, it’s a desperate enough situation that some kind of effort has to be made, even if it means hearing endless plaintive wails about the amount of money it’s going to cost us and the effect on a seedling economic recovery.

To do nothing is to drown that seedling.

Ten years ago, we might have hoped that our children’s children’s children would curse us and our inertia on what will be the most critical issue of the 21^st century. That timetable has been moved up, alarmingly so. It will not be our great-grandchildren. It may not be our grandchildren. It may not even wait for our children, altho they will certainly suffer for our stupidity.

Our generation, us: we may be the victims of our own stupidity, greed, and fear.

I suppose there’s a poetic justice in this. All my life, I’ve tried to live by the credo that we only have one earth and it’s up to me to take care of the parts I live in. Even so, where possible, I’ve tried to expand that territory to shepherd what places I can. I’m not alone, but I’m far from a majority.

Nature is too complex a system for a minority to assist. Sadly, it’s also such a complex system that one person can destroy more than any given number can protect. A lit cigarette, a bottle of bleach down a storm drain, and yes, the proverbial butterfly wing flap, all can create entropy in place of consistency and predictability.

I keep asking my friends who don’t believe in global warming and the concurrent climate change what one event would change their minds? What would provide undeniable proof of the rightness of the science?

No one, not a single one of these friends, has ever provided an answer. This tells me that, deep in their hearts, they know the science is correct. And they’re scared, but not scared enough to let go of what they’ve been instructed to believe by people who are lining up to steal their money in the next disaster.

An event will happen, this much we can be sure of. By then it will be too late. It already is.

 

The End of the Teabaggers?

You may have blinked and missed it. At any rate, tomorrow will be a bellwether for this November, and 2016:

The race has been cast as yet another skirmish in the ongoing GOP civil war, pitting the establishment-backed Tillis against seven tea party challengers. It's true that Tillis has the support of prominent national Republicans -- including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- and the Chamber of Commerce.

But it would be too easy to frame a Tuesday victory for Tillis, if it happens, as a clean win for the newly emboldened Republican establishment. Tillis hasn't been forced to beat back a tea party challenge, because his opponents haven't put up much of a fight. They've also splintered conservative support.

He has two serious rivals for the nomination: Greg Brannon, a staunch libertarian tea party activist who wants to put U.S. currency back on the gold standard, and Mark Harris, a prominent Baptist pastor from Charlotte who spearheaded the 2012 passage of a constitutional amendment that strengthened the state's same-sex marriage ban. Like other insurgent Republican candidacies around the country this year, neither campaign has managed to stir the kind of grassroots passion that propelled so many tea party victories in 2010.

With memories of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock marked indelibly in the consciousness of the Republican party – along with the “what if?” of two winnable Senate seats thrown away – the GOP establishment must be taking comfort in the fact that they’ve managed to ostracize and minimize the Teabaggers on this go around.

The follow up question, then, is “Quo Vadis?” Where are they going? [ed. Note. I know, technically its “Quo eunt?” but…]

There’s no place in the Democratic party for them, and any third party bid will be doomed to irrelevance, as Duverger’s Law comes into play, even with Koch and Adelson shoveling money into a Tea Party engine, at least at the beginning. They’re businessmen. They’ll stop the minute it becomes unprofitable.

The Koch’s have already made some comments that seem to indicate their frustration with throwing good money after bad. You get the sense they will be ratcheting back, having caused enough damage already.

The real damage the Teabaggers have done is at the local level: co-opting state and local governments, even school boards, to advance an antediluvian political philosophy rooted in Cro-Magnon sentiments, with a hint of white supremacy. That disease, that decay, will take much longer to root out.

We’re starting to see it with issues like same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization. Those are the issues, I think, that may give the nation as a whole a second look at liberal political philosophies, and perhaps even force a rejection of conservatism, at least for the next generation or so.

I hope.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) It looks like civil war is about to break out in Ukraine. Again.

2) I’m liking my new mayor more and more.

3) The country added 288,000 jobs last month, blowing past expectations like an officer worker to the coffee cart.

4) You may recall the embarrassing revelation that Donald Sterling was going to receive a lifetime achievement award (his second) from the NAACP. Well, someone had to fall on his sword, and here’s the stooge.

5) Why do I fight so hard to make sure the poor are kept in the public eye? I don’t want Americans to have to resort to this to make ends meet.

6) Or, for that matter, to this.

7) The legal definition of “photocopier” is at issue.

8) How insane is the nation of North Korea? Let’s take a look!

9) You might want to read this list before you head out on the roads this weekend.

10) Finally, the hamburger shoe because, well, why not?

A Bit of an Eye-Opener

When you think “poverty in New York City,” what springs to mind? What stereotype has been so drilled into our heads from the newspapers, magazines and TV shows we all watch, like Law & Order or The Wanderers?

The very poorest among us in this city are Hispanics, perhaps African-Americans. Want to portray a neighborhood as poor in a TV show? Get a graffiti-coated wall, and stick a couple of Latinos playing handball against it.

Right? I mean, that’s the face of poverty in the Big Apple. Right?

Wrong:

Despite a rise in employment, nearly half of New York City's population is living near poverty levels -- a problem that is particularly striking in the city's Asian population, which has surpassed Hispanics as the city's poorest group, according to a new report conducted by the Center for Economic Opportunity.

The study revealed 45.6 percent of New Yorkers are barely making ends meet, even with more adults working full-time since the recession. A combination of low wages, rising rents, and a lack of benefits is largely to blame.

The dismal numbers, presented Tuesday to City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, follows a growing number of studies showing the harsh realities of income inequality in New York. Just last week, city comptroller Scott Stringer released a study showing just how unaffordable the city has become, with the median rent in New York City rising a staggering 75 percent from 2000 to 2012.

The annual study also showed significant shifts within racial and ethnic demographics. As the report indicates, the poverty rate of Asians and Hispanics were "statistically identical" in 2008, at 22.4 percent and 23.5 percent, respectively. But by 2012, the rate surged to 29 percent for Asians, more than 3 percent higher than Hispanics.

The Stringer study is of particular note, as the rules governing rent control and rent stabilization in NY were amended in the last twenty years  to allow landlords to force tenants above a certain income threshold to pay market rents. This effectively took a percentage of affordable housing off the market. An additional form of vacancy decontrol, as it’s known, is to vacate an apartment for a year, make renovations, then petition the city to remove the rent controls. The landlord is entitled to an immediate 20% rent increase, plus one-fortieth of the costs incurred in renovations (which means premium pricing on plumbing, HVAC, and so on).

Estimates range as high as 300,000 units of affordable housing being taken off the market in the past twenty years.

Now that the economic side of this story has been expanded, let’s take a look at the demographics of poverty in the city.

There has been an influx of Asians immigrants into the city in the past decade. Like every ethnic wave before them, Asians seek a better life than they had at home: in this case, the Koreas, China, and Southeast Asia. There, people were paid pennies for work that here pays dollars.

Like every ethnic group before them, Asians send money home to family and friends to invite them here to America, to get a piece of the American Dream (silly Asian! Don’t you know that’s been dead for thirty years?)

And yet, they come, because poverty here is better than poverty at home. That’s an undeniable fact, but that does not also mean we in the States get the opportunity to deny the poorest among us the help they need.

And yet, they’ll put up with the squalor and crowding and hard work of seven days a week, two shifts a day, simply to see themselves a little bit better, and their families a little bit stronger.

It doesn’t matter where they come from, what their skin color is, or what language is their mother tongue, they will continue to come, no matter how hard we try to stop them, because life gets its way.

The irony is, they become an integral part of the machine that grinds down every one who earns a wage, even as those who run the machine knot their panties over their arrival.

Happy May Day

Fatal Mess

I wish I could say Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin will lose sleep over this, but somehow I doubt it:

Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of three drugs in the state’s new lethal injection combination was administered. Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.

The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state’s top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings. Lockett died of a heart attack a short time later, the Department of Corrections said.

‘‘It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched,’’ said Lockett’s attorney, David Autry.

“Botched” is legalese for “full metal fuck up.”

You may recall a story from a few years back where certain drug manufacturers refused to sell combinations of medications to states that maintained the death penalty. Corporate conscience. Whoda thunk?

And whoda thunk corporations would have more soul than many governors in the South? They scurried to find new ways of killing inmates, and hit upon this combination.

Which has now failed at least twice this year alone.

We’ve turned our prisons into an industry: private corporations make profits off human beings when they are incarcerated, they make profits when inmates get sick, and they make profits when they are killed.

This is immoral. End of discussion.

 

Piketty Fence

So I’m back from vacation and I keep seeing this name on my Tweeter and FacePlace feeds: Thomas Piketty.

Sounds vaguely Dickensian.

From what I gathered, Piketty wrote a book which proposes a new economic theory that would put paid to many of the basic notions that support capitalism.

Let’s take a look:

Piketty's argument is that, in an economy where the rate of return on capital outstrips the rate of growth, inherited wealth will always grow faster than earned wealth. So the fact that rich kids can swan aimlessly from gap year to internship to a job at father's bank/ministry/TV network – while the poor kids sweat into their barista uniforms – is not an accident: it is the system working normally.

If you get slow growth alongside better financial returns, then inherited wealth will, on average, "dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime's labour by a wide margin", says Piketty. Wealth will concentrate to levels incompatible with democracy, let alone social justice. Capitalism, in short, automatically creates levels of inequality that are unsustainable. The rising wealth of the 1% is neither a blip, nor rhetoric.

To understand why the mainstream finds this proposition so annoying, you have to understand that "distribution" – the polite name for inequality – was thought to be a closed subject. Simon Kuznets, the Belarussian émigré who became a major figure in American economics, used the available data to show that, while societies become more unequal in the first stages of industrialisation, inequality subsides as they achieve maturity. This "Kuznets Curve" had been accepted by most parts of the economics profession until Piketty and his collaborators produced the evidence that it is false.

In fact, the curve goes in exactly the opposite direction: capitalism started out unequal, flattened inequality for much of the 20th century, but is now headed back towards Dickensian levels of inequality worldwide.

Well, at least now I know why his name sounded Dickensian..

A cursory examination of the history of the American economy…indeed, any Western economy after the 1700s…would support Piketty’s theory. There are numerous instances where income inequality expands, and then contracts after an economic bubble bursts. This is usually because the investor class – you know, the 1% -- milks the excess cash and assets out of an economic entity, then walks away to leave it unbalanced and unstable.

The markets crash, and the paper wealth of that 1% drops precipitously since the investor class is outsizedly affected by investment classes (kind of obvious, but it needed to be said). But, and this is Piketty’s point, income inequality never quite achieves the level it had after the last crash, but less an income parity at any point.

The long term curve mimics the short term curve: it points skyward. What does, in fact, bring it back down to more moderate levels is the introduction of what many would call “socialist programs”: the notion that the poor and middle classes do all the work for the investor class, and as such need to be protected from the vagaries of the market swings.

So we have unemployment insurance, and Social Security, and welfare, and any number of jobs programs. All to keep the supply of economic fodder alive long enough, just long enough, to perform economically valuable work.

Of course, to afford these programs, government either need to borrow (and defer tax increases) or raise taxes. Either way, the investor class gives back some of that income inequality in the form of what conservatives would call “handouts,” but in truth are lifelines for the working classes.

And we’re supposed to be grateful.

In short, you and I spend our entire lives making other people rich so they can hand off their money to their dilettante heirs.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Administrative note: I’ll be traveling next week, so blogging will likely be very sparse. I’ll try to keep you posted as I can.

2) Not too hot, not too cold, just right.

3) Oh myyyyyyyyy…

4) The right wing has been trying to stir up trouble for America, and possibly get innocent people killed, by fostering rumours that the Ukrainian government has been distributing flyers telling Jews to register. It seems pretty clear that Putin’s hand is behind that printing press.

5) Jay Carney speaks truth; FOX News gets pissed.

6) Speaking of the administration, President Obama can officially start the end zone dance: Obamacare enrollment is up to 8 million.

7) I look forward to seeing these on the streets of New York (specifically, the park drives) and that the horses they’ll replace will survive long enough to retire.

8) Y’know, time was when an avalanche thundered down Everest, and only a couple of goats (and maybe a yeti) were the casualties. However, enough rich morons and yahoos have turned Everest into Disneyland…except Disneyland is cleaner.

9) “Double Secret Probation, Mister!”

Schadenfreude

Edward Snowden got tired of the lack of attention and decided to shove his foot deeper in his throat:

NSA leaker Edward Snowden put a direct question to Vladimir Putin during a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, asking Russia's president about Moscow's use of mass surveillance on its citizens.

Speaking via a video link, Snowden asked: "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance, so I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?"

Needless to say, this entire episode appears to have been orchestrated by Vladdy:

"Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law so...you have to get a court permission to stalk that particular person.

"We don't have as much money as they have in the States and we don't have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by society and the law and regulated by the law."

Excuse me a sec. I feel a sneeze coming on…..AhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhBULLSHI!

There, that’s better.

Putin’s former employer, the KGB, practically invented the surveillance state and made it an art form. Who the hell does he think he’s kidding?

Watching Edward Snowden genuflect to a world leader is, however, a very tasty morsel of vengeance, to be sure. Any credibility he may have had in the debate over surveillance and domestic intelligence has likely been spent.

Look, there is no doubt that the Snowden story was the story of 2013. Even the Pulitzer Committee has admitted as much. It finally got people, both in and out of power, to focus on what we on the far left have been complaining about for ten years: that privacy isn’t a gift, that we have to maintain vigilance, and that the contract between government and the governed is a fragile thing when we abdicate our responsibility to pay attention.

That it took a vole-ish little wisp of a man to focus lights on the problem speaks poorly about our democracy. That he now defends Vladimir Putin speaks poorly of him.

In A Shock To No One...

…Joe Biden got out in front of the White House and shamed them into a policy change:

Vice President Joe Biden really did get ahead of President Barack Obama on accepting gay marriage in 2012 — and the White House really wasn’t happy about it, despite their many attempts to claim otherwise.

That’s the story laid out in Jo Becker’s new book, “Forcing the Spring,” which documents the past few years of successful efforts to expand the legalization of gay marriage, according to an advance copy obtained by POLITICO.

Speculation that Biden’s comments on “Meet the Press” in May 2012 were meant as a trial balloon, Becker writes, came from people “not privy to the chaos that erupted inside the West Wing after an emailed transcript of the interview landed in the inbox of the White House press team.” A furious Valerie Jarrett, Becker adds, accused Biden of “downright disloyalty.”

It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Barack Obama, already four tempestuous years into an administration boxed in by Republicans from committing to any legislative achievements, and his staff spent many long nights arguing back and forth about this particular issue, engaged in a deep political calculus of offending moderates while shoring up his liberal wing.

It’s also not hard to imagine Joe Biden becoming frustrated at the inaction and taking a “shit or get off the pot” position with the President.

It’s also not hard to imagine President Obama giving him the ok to go ahead and take the lead on the issue. Valerie Jarrett may simply have been kept in the dark in order to make the kabuki more believable.

We on the far left can argue endlessly about how this was an issue of “do the right thing” and shouldn’t even have been a question of if, but of when. But we on the far left also have to admit there are some things the nation is ready for (same sex marriage) and some things it is not (single payer healthcare) and that there’s a lot of work we have left to do to move the nation into a position more accepting of our sensible policies.

So…let’s get to it.

The Purple Wedding of Geo-Politics

Sorry if you don’t watch Game of Thrones on Sunday nights, you might not get the title reference. Suffice it to say, without giving a spoiler alert, that there’s vengeance and there’s payback.

Vengeance is when someone who has harmed you gets his or her comeuppance, and while you get to sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude, you really don’t get to revel in it. Payback is when you get to plot and plan the comeuppance, and you can fully indulge your enjoyment. The Purple Wedding was a case of vengeance, in which most of the audience (both in the TeeVeeland and at the wedding of King Joffrey) were simultaneously horrified and gratified by the events.

Likewise, the Purple Wedding of Geopolitics is unwinding in front of our eyes. It explains precisely why President Obama doesn’t have to lift a finger (and why every President after Kennedy could have truly ignored the Soviet threat).

It’s called “economics”:

Russia is at increasing risk of a full-blown financial crisis as the West tightens sanctions and Russian meddling in Ukraine pushes the region towards conflagration.

The country’s private companies have been shut out of global capital markets almost entirely since the crisis erupted, causing a serious credit crunch and raising concerns that firms may not be able to refinace debt without Russian state support.

“No Eurobonds have been rolled over for six weeks. This cannot continue for long and is becoming a massive issue,” said an official from a major Russian bank. “Companies have to roll over $10bn a month and nothing is moving. The markets have been remarkably relaxed about this, given how dangerous it is. Russia’s greatest vulnerability is the bond market,” he said.

The Russian economy is, for all intents and purposes, a one-trick pony: oil and gas control economic growth. When prices are high, Russia is powerful. When prices drop, Russia is hobbled.

This is partly why President Obama has been carefully dancing around the Keystone XL pipeline. An increased flow of US and Canadian oil would defang Putin long-term. (For the record, I oppose XL, always will, because I think a short-term justification like this is not worth the price)

The Ukraine crisis is also tied into the Russian economy – as all aggression is – since Ukraine has ports.

This is also why President Obama put in place sanctions that the EU has little choice but to emulate. Among those sanctions was a cut-off of the assets of Bank Rossiya, which is deeply involved in the Russian oil industry.

In effect, Obama has choked off Russia’s economy just as it needs a long draught from her chalice.

 

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Y’know that post I made earlier this week about “freedoooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmm”? Not so fasty. I’ve decided to accept an offer to extend my tenure in the salt mines. The only condition placed on me was to swallow my pride and shut my mouth. The carrot dangling before me was too irresistible.

2) Moving on, apparently Obamacare has death paneled Kathleen Sebelius’ Cabinet position

3) Scott Brown will announce his candidacy for the New Hampshire senate seat. His carpetbag is woven from the finest chest-hairs and staples shut.

4) Yes, it’s official: “Truthiness” is a promotion strategy.

5) Here’s the thing: If you’re a married Congressman going to bang a married staffer (and major campaign contributor), get a motel room.

6) Inflation is back. Annualize that, and it’s 6%

7) This is good news for the sex toy industry!

8) I’ve avoided commenting on the Oscar Pistorius trial because, well, it’s a tragedy no matter what happened. But it seems more and more likely that he murdered her, as opposed to accidentally killing her. It’s just a matter of whether he planned it or not. I think not.

9) I have to wonder if the past year of revelations of Pope Francis’ modern attitudes towards the church was all a planned dance leading to this.

10) Finally, Four Blood Moons. This is supposed to portend the Apocalypse.

Imagine If He Had a Gun

That stabber yesterday in Pennsylvania

After a 16-year-old allegedly went on a 5-minute stabbing spree at a Pennsylvia[sic] high school, hurting nearly two dozen people, stories of heroism amid the chaos are coming to light.

The school’s assistant principal is credited with tackling the attacker, ending the bloody Wednesday morning rampage at Franklin Regional Senior High School in Murrsyville [sic], Penn., about 18 miles west of Pittsburgh.

In five minutes, he went running down the halls, stabbing at random, and injured 20 people – but didn’t kill a single one. Because the assailant had only a knife, rather than cower behind barricades or behind doors, another student, along with the assistant principal (who likely would have chased a gunman down as well because, you know, it’s sadly part of his job), grabbed the attacker and quickly disarmed and immobilized him for the police.

Quick, over, and while too many people got hurt, many of those likely were hurt in the mass confusion trying to flee the scene, rather than by actual stab wounds (official estimates have not been made, but the fact that four students were critically injured and one might still die, we can assume at least that many stabbing victims.)

It would be irresponsible to speculate on the whys and wherefores here, altho a picture is being drawn of a student who was victimized by bullies, and who may have had some emotional problems to begin with.

Of course, “irresponsible” is the middle name of conservatives…

 

 

The Password for Today Is....

FREEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!


I gave notice at my job this morning.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) So George Bush has stopped painting selfies…note to Dumbya – use a phone, it's faster…and is unveiling an "art" exhibit for his Presidentin' Liberry. "I see the spirit of hope," my ass!

2) By the way, I was going to post a Top Ten list of Bush's worst paintings and my impression of them, but I was short-circuited by David Letterman

3) There's a deep-water ocean on Enceladus. Unlike other bodies of fluids on other moons, this one may actually be composed of some liquid water.

4) I love Johnny Depp. You never know what to expect when he does the traditional.

5) I blame Obama.

6) This is a tragic loss for journalism. Niedringhaus had an unique style that told a story quickly and compactly, and yet rarely was there wasted space in her photos.

7) I didn't get the chance to fully comment on this, but I actually like this idea. Pity it didn't pan out properly.

8) ♫ I want to tell her that I love her a lot
    But I gotta get a belly full of wine
    Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
    Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh yeah,
    Someday I'm going to make her mine. ♪

9) If you're wondering why, after six years, Teabaggers are still mad as hell and trying to undermine the President, here's why.

10) Finally, this week in poop

Never In Doubt

President Barack Obama took a victory lap around the Rose Garden yesterday, as the Affordable Care Act hit the point of no return:

WASHINGTON — The sharp partisan debate over the merits of President Obama's signature health care law isn't about to end.

But with the president's announcement on Tuesday that more than 7.1 million Americans have signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, he has managed a remarkable comeback that not so long ago looked implausible.

In the process, he may also have stiffened the resolve of fellow Democrats up for re-election who have been continuously battered by Republicans over the law's implementation.

Kudos to the President for dragging the nation, parts kicking and screaming, into the mid-20^th Century. That many employers are falling all over themselves in support of this action, including many very large health insurance companies, speaks to the wisdom of doing anything to improve the old system. After all, what good is a health insurance plan that has major disincentives to sign up?

It’s not perfect, but it’s the best first step we could rationally expect to take given the idiotic intransigence of those among us who hate poor people and blame them for being poor.

For my part, I always assumed cooler heads would prevail and people would realize what a great deal it is to have health insurance. If anything, I felt 7 million might be shooting too low, not taking into account the massive opposition to the plan from morons and 26 Republican governors who really really hate that they have poor people inside their borders.

This is why I’m not President, however: I’m not cynical enough.

It’s interesting to note that progressive action, like Social Security and Medicare, or the War on Poverty, will meet with intense resistance but reactionary crap like tax cuts and defense spending – while protested strongly – always seem to get a pass in this country. I dream of a day when the opposite will be true, and people start taking responsibility for being a community, and not taking immunity.

Finally!

The day has arrived when Obamacare comes out of rehearsals and goes fully live, and guess what? It’s already outperformed expectations:

The first yearly sign-up period for Obamacare closes today, with early returns suggesting the administration may near a projection of 7 million enrollees made before the U.S. health exchange struggled at its startup.

The rollout has been under constant attack from Republican foes and faced a key U.S. Supreme Court (1000L:US) decision that allowed states to limit the Medicaid expansion that was an important part of the plan. It also suffered from myriad technical flaws in the website that made it unusable for more than a month.

The government last week said 6 million Americans had enrolled by March 27 and about 1 million people a day were visiting healthcare.gov. The sign-ups met a mark set by the Congressional Budget Office in February that was reduced from an initial 7 million estimate after the law’s troubled start in October. Republicans questioned the credibility of the numbers.

So not only has it outperformed the reduced expectations of the bipartisan controlled Congressional Budget Office, it has likely exceeded even the original estimates which were pegged as “too high” and too difficult to achieve!

Well, alright now!

To be sure, it’s far from perfect. Hell, it’s far from excellent, but it’s a start down the right path and will now become a permanent fixture in the American economic landscape.

And mind you, the plan has successfully rolled out despite the obstructionism of Congress in funding it and the various legal challenges thrown up as roadblocks and why?

Because it’s a good idea, has merit and can work, but Republicans would prefer to get the credit for it, despite the fact that President Obama has been forthright in saying that the ideas came from Republican proposals, including the plan implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachussetts.