Not a Surprise

Eric Adams ran for Mayor of New York promising a return to police impunity and law breaking, particularly against minorities and the economically disadvantaged. 

It should come at no surprise then that, police are returning to their lawless racist ways.

A fish rots from the head:

The New York Police Department’s anti-crime units are still stopping, frisking and searching too many people unlawfully — almost all of them people of color — despite assurances from Mayor Eric Adams that new policies and training would end the practice, according to a new report by a court-appointed monitor.

The monitor, Mylan L. Denerstein, filed a report in federal court in Manhattan on Monday detailing what she described as unlawful policing. Ms. Denerstein, whose position was created in 2013 after a court ruled the Police Department’s use of stop and frisk was unconstitutional, is assigned to oversee the units, which have a history of targeting Black and Hispanic people.

Earlier versions of the units were responsible for a disproportionate number of police shootings, and they were disbanded in 2020. Mr. Adams reinstated and renamed them after he took office last year, but critics were skeptical that they could be run without racially profiling young men of color, as previous units had.

Almost all of the stops made by the rebranded “neighborhood safety teams” analyzed in the report — 97 percent — were of Black or Hispanic people, and 24 percent of the stops were unconstitutional. Of 230 car stops included in the sample, only two appear to have turned up weapons, the report said.

Better training for cops will not get us better cops, much like diversity training does not produce make workplaces less discriminatory.

CONSEQUENCES produce changes of organizational culture, by which I mean firings, demotions, and prosecutions.

Unless and until you convince the racists and bullies in your organization that they face a real danger of personal consequences, they will not make meaningful changes in their behavior.

Old School. Literally

It appears that the academy is so concerned about students using "Clippy on Steroids" that they are returning to oral exams.

Nice to see the hallowed halls of academia running scared:

When the pandemic closed classrooms in March of 2020 and forced remote teaching, a top engineering student at the University of California, San Diego, anxiously expressed concern to a professor that her classmates would cheat, bend the class curve and lower her grade.

Prof. Huihui Qi considered the dilemma and introduced a testing method with a 2,000-year-old record that is today largely ignored: oral exams.

“The students were nervous,” Qi said. “None of them had taken exams like this before.”

That initiative led to a three-year research experiment which has now stretched across 7,000 oral exams. It comes as a wave of professors around the world are experimenting with oral exams to improve teaching and learning and to discourage cheating.

Qi believes the exams can push students past rote memorization, prompt them to think on their feet and reveal a student’s conceptual understanding of the subject matter better than most written exams. They are also very hard to hack.

They have one downside though, they are much harder to fob off on graduate teaching assistants, so the professors have to work harder.

Seems like a win-win to me, though I am sure that Professors frantically looking to publish papers in order to preserve their careers might disagree.

That Rabbit's Got a Mean Streak a Mile Wide!

Killer Rabbits

So, a Medieval historian were looking threough a manuscript, and found a 440 year joke list among the text.

The humor was somewhat ribald (no big surprise), including things like incontinence (no big surprise), binge drinking (again, no big surprise), and killer rabbits. 

Killer Rabbits?  What in the name of Monty Python?

Were the members of Monty Python a part of some sort of secret comedy society that has existed in the shadows at at Oxbridge for over 500 years?

Seriously, this is the only explanation:

It’s around the year 1480, and a wandering English bard walks into a bar. What does he say to the crowd of drunken peasants gathered inside?

A series of irreverent jokes about incontinence, killer rabbits and binge drinking, according to new literary research. The study, published in the Review of English Studies on Wednesday, found that a medieval tome known as the Heege manuscript is no ordinary notebook, but actually includes the comedy script of an unnamed traveling entertainer, otherwise known as a minstrel. The revelation means the manuscript provides, perhaps for the first time, a direct glimpse into the long-forgotten oral tradition of English minstrel acts.

These comedy routines are the medieval equivalent of late-night talk shows, said James Wade, the Cambridge University expert behind the study. The manuscript was probably transcribed around 1480 in England’s Midlands region by Richard Heege, a family tutor; literary experts previously considered its contents to be of uncertain origin.

“It gives us a glimpse into live comedy and entertainment in the Middle Ages that would otherwise be lost,” Wade said, noting some of the similarities between the minstrel’s jokey style and comedy that remains popular today.

………

The performer’s jokes paint a lively picture of late-medieval English humor, inverting everyday scenes for comic effect and frequently showing peasants and kings being stung by their own stupidity or greed.

In one pamphlet, titled “The Hounding of the Hare,” dimwitted peasants set out to hunt rabbits. In the chaos and confusion of the chase, the hunters end up preying on each other instead. The scene is so topsy-turvy that one of the peasants becomes terrified that the rabbit will murder him, rather than the other way around.

At one point, the tale goes like this (all stories here translated by Wade from Middle English):

Jack Wade was never so sad as when the hare trod on his head in case she would have ripped out his throat.

(emphasis mine) 

This is F%$#ing spooky.

Linkage

• Health Insurance Claim Denied? See What Insurers Said Behind the Scenes (ProPublica) You are entitled to every message, email, etc.  Could be useful.
• Monopolizing turds (Cory Doctorow) How the FDA has granted exclusivity in the world of fecal transplants, raising prices.
• Mortality Among US Veterans Admitted to Community vs Veterans Health Administration Hospitals for COVID-19 (JAMA Network) Short version: privatized VA services are more likely to kill you.
• Supreme Court term: William Rehnquist's anti-integration legacy is about to get worse. (Slate) William Renquist was actively supporting segregation while on the court.  Not a surprise.
• Trump Is Bad Because He's Similar To Other US Presidents, Not Because He's Different (Caitlin Johnstone) There was a lot of continuity in terms of US policy, particularly foreign policy, that was profoundly destructive.
• US looking to Japan to buy TNT for Ukraine artillery: report (The Hill) The US is running out of TNT for artillery shells.  Perhaps a return to federal armories, which would provide surge capacity for things like bullets, artillery shells, etc. should be considered.  The current arrangement does not provide for the exigencies of near peer high intensity warfare.
  

America's finest news source:

And in a Spectacular Own Goal

One of the most decorated soldiers in Australian history, Ben Roberts-Smith, was accused of murder and other war crimes in a series of stories in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times, and filed a defamation suit against the papers and the reporters.

Given the state of Australian deformation laws, which hew fairly close to their English antecedents, tend to favor the the plaintiffs, but the corporal forgot the most important rule of defamation cases, don't be blatantly guilty of what you came is deformation:

A defamation case by war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith against three newspapers has been dismissed, after a judge found defences of substantial or contextual truth had been established over alleged unlawful killings and bullying.

The Victoria Cross recipient sued The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times and three journalists in the Federal Court over a series of stories published in 2018.

Mr Roberts-Smith said they contained false allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, bullying of his former Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) colleagues and domestic violence against a woman in a Canberra hotel room.

Publisher Nine Entertainment relied on a truth defence, and both sides called current and former SAS witnesses.

Justice Anthony Besanko on Thursday ruled the publisher had established the substantial truth of the imputations linked to allegations of unlawful killings in Afghanistan, and had established the contextual truth of imputations linked to allegations of bullying and domestic violence.

A second imputation of bullying was also found to be substantially true.

Oops.

His reputation has been destroyed, but on the basis of what has been shown, I think that the Australian military establishment should take a far closer look at the behavior of Roberts-Smith and his unit with an eye toward making the investigation a criminal one.

Nakedly Corrupt and Partisan

The Supreme Court in a nutshell.

The latest ruling, where the court ruled that an employer can sue a union for losses caused by a strike, (Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters) is yet another case of the conservative 6 on the Supreme court running roughshod over the law and precedent.

It should be noted that this case went 8-1, and that the ruling was by no means as expansive as it could have been, and how Alito and Thomas indicated it should have gone in their concurrences, but they are showing where this is eventually going:

Today’s US Supreme Court ruling in the Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters case was a blow to workers—but not quite the knockout punch hoped for by the Chamber of Commerce. Despite the court’s 8-1 decision favoring the employer, the justices made a relatively narrow ruling, rather than a broad one weakening the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) even further. In the future—the near future—labor will not be so lucky as to lose this lightly, and workers should get ready to fight what’s coming.

First, the good news, such as it is: Today’s decision leaves intact a long-held legal doctrine known as the Garmon preemption, and therefore keeps the NLRB as the decision-maker on what constitutes “reasonable precaution” in worker strikes. Cheerleaders for free enterprise were hoping to replace that long-established federal jurisdiction with state-level tort law. Those cheerleaders didn’t get all they wanted today.

The bad news—a harbinger of the future—is on full view in Justice Samuel Alito’s concurring opinion, where he makes clear that he is ready and willing to kill Garmon as soon as the court can get a better case with which to achieve this Chamber of Commerce objective. He’s joined by the other hard-core anti-labor ideologues on the court—Justices Thomas and Gorsuch—in a second concurring opinion, revealing their hands clearly so we can count: Three Justices are ready to totally eviscerate the NLRB as part of their determined campaign to gut the administrative state. Agency by agency, they’re progressing when they get the chance, as we saw this court do just last week to the Environmental Protection Agency, all but stripping it of any power at all to enforce the Clean Water Act.

This statement of motivations is incomplete, Alito and the rest of the conservatives on the court want to effectively outlaw labor unions in the United States.

………

Glacier has its origin in a 2017 contract dispute between Teamsters Local 174 and five cement companies in the Seattle area, led by Glacier Northwest. Drivers whose trucks still had concrete in them when a strike began took what they assert was “reasonable precaution,” notifying management that they had left the trucks running so the drums would continue rotating and the concrete would not harden and destroy the trucks. Because the company failed to make any contingency plans around the strike, however, the concrete had to be offloaded and left to harden rather than delivered to customers. That should have been the end of it. But, nearly four months later, Glacier sued Local 174 in state court—not at the NLRB—alleging tortious damages from the destruction of concrete during the strike.

On its face, Glacier is about whether the Teamsters Union owes money to a Washington concrete company. But the real purpose of pushing this case was to upend nearly 100 years of legal precedent and congressional intent by stripping power from the NLRB, the federal agency charged with protecting workers’ rights to collective action at work.

It's clear to me that the court is setting the table to eviscerate union rights in the United States.

It's that the court wants to return to the Lochner Era, where any ability of the government to provide for the public good is suborned to a made up "Freedom of Contract".

Much like Roosevelt in the 1930s, we need to slap down this legislation from the bench.

Good News

The EFF points us to the news that, for the first time ever, a judge has ruled that the border patrol cannot search cell phones without a warrant.

I don't know if this will survive the inevitable appeal, but, for as long as this remains in force it is a good thing:

With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other district courts have wanted to do so).

EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have been advocating for a warrant for border searches of electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade. If the case is appealed to the Second Circuit, we urge the appellate court to affirm this landmark decision.

The Border Search Exception as Applied to Physical Items Has a Long History

U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) asserts broad authority to conduct warrantless, and often suspicionless, device searches at the border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports, and seaports.

For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing not only warrantless but also often suspicionless searches of luggage and other items crossing the border.

The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2022, CBP conducted an all-time high of 45,499 device searches.

The Supreme Court has not yet considered the application of the border search exception to smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices that contain the equivalent of millions of pages of information detailing the most intimate details of our lives—even though we asked them to back in 2021.

I've always thought that a password escrow service that requires the assent of a lawyer would help, but a court ruling limiting the authority of CBP to do this is even better.

Support Your Local Police

A New York City police officer is suing, claiming that he was reprimanded and retaliated against for ignoring the "Get out of Jail Free" cards issued by the police union.

Of course he was.  Impunity is the goal of every police union, and many police officers:

An NYPD officer faced bullying and angry threats from his colleagues for ignoring police union "courtesy cards" used by family and friends of cops to skirt traffic tickets, according to a new lawsuit.

Officer Mathew Bianchi sued the city and a police captain last week in federal court, arguing that his superiors retaliated against him for his stance against the "corrupt" cards.

The NYPD's five unions pass out courtesy cards each year to members, who then give them to family and friends to use as what critics describe as a "get out of jail free" pass for minor infractions such as traffic tickets.

When cops such as Bianchi don't heed the cards, they can face angry calls — or worse — from their colleagues and superiors, the lawsuit contends. “This is not only corrupt but it’s a safety issue,” Bianchi wrote in a complaint quoted in the lawsuit.

………

At one point, Bianchi pulled over a woman who happened to be friends with the NYPD's Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, the lawsuit states. Afterward, Bianchi was removed from the traffic unit, passed over for a promotion and told his ticket "p----- off someone very high up," according to the complaint.

Bianchi contends that the courtesy cards are not only unfair and let unsafe to motorists repeatedly off the hook, but also lead to more traffic stops for New Yorkers who aren't white because cops in the traffic unit are expected to issue a certain number of tickets: a quota.

"As a result of the quota policy and the unwritten rule that you cannot write tickets to civilians with Courtesy Cards police officers are forced to disproportionately ticket minority drivers as they are less likely to possess the Courtesy Cards or have affiliations with law enforcement," the lawsuit states.

This is every police department in the nation, and it is wrong, and corrosive to to a civil society.

When people say it's just "A few bad apples," they forget the the rest of the saying, "Spoils the barrel."

For the Love of God, Let This be True

I'm not sure if this is a performance review or an exit interview. If it were the former, it probably became the latter.

Original TikTok video here, but they autoplay, so I'm doing it this way.

Needless to say, this is, to quote Dickens, this is, "True . . . as turnips is. It was as true . . . as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them."

If Sally Quinn Hates It, I Am for It

There are all sorts of asshole neighbors.

You have the ones who play their music too low, the ones who leave their trashcans on the curb, the ones whose lawns look crappy (like me), the ones who terrorize their neighbors with guns, etc.

On the other hand, I fully approve of the asshole neighbor in Georgetown in the District of Columbia who has, erected statues of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee on his front yard in the tony DC neighborhood:

The thing about putting a pair of 10-foot metal Transformers statues outside your townhouse in the most picturesque district of the nation’s capital is that the neighbors are going to have opinions.

And on Prospect Street in Georgetown, they were not pleased.

The statues — Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, two of the good guys from the long-running “Transformers” movie franchise — appeared in January 2021 outside the white-brick home of Newton Howard, a cognitive scientist and machine-learning expert with ties to the intelligence community.

He had ordered them from a factory in Taiwan to the tune of more than $25,000 each. Where large brick planters had once blended in with the local aesthetic, there was now something akin to outsider art by way of an anonymous welder and Hollywood’s reinterpretation of 1980s toys.

Plenty of people love the statues, which resemble invaders from the future, in a neighborhood that does its best to hang on to its cobblestone past. Students at nearby Georgetown University can’t get enough. Neither can tourists: The Transformers statues have their own entry on Google Maps as a place of interest, with 4.9 stars. “The best part of visiting Georgetown,” one reviewer declared.

………

But some of his neighbors are less enthusiastic, and the critics of his notion of a Georgetown-appropriate sidewalk display have been trying to get rid of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime for more than two years.

………

A rich guy with loud cars is one thing, a known story. The Transformers were something else altogether. They quickly became a flashpoint in Georgetown, and on the internet, after the local news site DCist reported on the efforts of Dr. Howard’s neighbors to get the statues removed.

Sally Quinn, the author and longtime Georgetown resident, said she was firmly in the anti-Transformers camp. “I think they’re really ugly,” she said. “Some people may like them. You know, everybody’s taste in art is different. But that’s not the point.”

"Author and longtime Georgetown resident," huh?

More like former Washington Post society reporter, and widow of Ben Bradlee, who has described her dinner parties as a, "Form of sacrament."

She is literally the avatar of fake DC.  

There is a real DC you know, but it's never written about, because it's not rich, and it's not white, and it doesn't hold dinner parties like Sally Quinn.

The point, she continued, was historical preservation: “People come to Georgetown because it’s Georgetown. It’s a beautiful, quaint village.”

But the author Kitty Kelley, who said she has lived in the neighborhood for “two husbands,” or since 1977, sent Dr. Howard a handwritten card in support of his sidewalk flair.

One of these women has a sense of perspective and a sense of humor. 

I'm with Kitty Kelley, and I cannot f%$#ing believe that I just f%$#ing said that.

Good Question

Over at The Nation, they ask an important question, "If Ken Paxton’s Staff Can Do It, Why Can’t Dianne Feinstein’s?"

This is a legitimate question.  It is clear that Dianne Feinstein* is not (as) corrupt and evil like Ken Paxton, but Ken Paxton's staff was far more ethical and far more concerned with the needs of the constituents than any of Feinstein's staff.  (Except of course for the former staffer who filmed himself smoking a joint at Feinstein's desk as an exit interview)

I get it.  The staff is engaging in the worst cosplay of Weekend at Bernie's ever, but this is not a movie, this is the US Senate.

These folks should never get another job in politics, but they probably have had their prospects improved by their malfeasance:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been in office since 2015, and since 2015 he has been one of the most destructive forces in American law. He’s used his office as a Republican wish-fulfillment machine, trying to win through conservative courts the policies that Republicans cannot win at the ballot box. It was Paxton who organized a red-state challenge to the Affordable Care Act in 2018, trying to get Obamacare declared unconstitutional (he lost). Paxton also led the 2018 challenge to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and brought it all the way to the Supreme Court (he lost). And he challenged Obama’s Clean Power Plan in 2017 (he won). During the Trump administration, he turned his attention toward reproductive rights, and he’s been at the forefront of trying to implement Texas’s bounty-hunter law, which punishes anyone who tries to help pregnant people in Texas receive an abortion. So far, during the Biden administration, he’s sued the administration more than 50 times, mainly over Biden’s immigration policies and student debt-relief programs. For Paxton, there is simply no difference between the law and his conservative political agenda.

Paxton has also been one of the most corrupt public officials in America in recent years. He has been under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud. But he has managed to use his status as attorney general, and a number of procedural tricks, to evade facing trial on those charges. We’re talking about a man who once hopped into a getaway truck, driven by his wife, to avoid a subpoena compelling him to testify in an abortion case. His wife, by the way, is a state senator.

………

Given Paxton’s apparent popularity with Texas voters, I was surprised to see that the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to impeach him last week and put him on leave from his duties pending trial in the Texas Senate. The vote was 121-23. You don’t often see Republicans turn on one of their own like this.

The credit for this shocking turn of law before party has to go to Paxton’s staff. His own employees sounded the alarm on the misdeeds that led to his impeachment.

………

We members of the public tend to treat political staffers as nameless, faceless functionaries who exist only to serve their famous bosses. We don’t expect them to exercise their own moral judgment, and we often give them a pass when they silently and dutifully serve even the most evil and corrupt public officials. Sure, the president’s staffers often become famous, but most people cannot name a single person who works for Clarence Thomas or Josh Hawley or Ron DeSantis, and when those staffers pop up later in some other government role or run for office in their own right, most people don’t hold their prior service against them. We act like political staff cannot be held responsible for the decisions of their bosses.

In reality, the staff is complicit in the policies and decisions of the officeholder they serve, and they know what’s really going on long before the public or ProPublica do. And political staffers, collectively, have a whole lot of power. They are the people who have the option to speak truth to power—or to become mere cheerleaders for the worst instincts of their bosses.

Instead of being complicit in Paxton’s apparent corruption and abuse of power or silent witnesses to it, Paxton’s staff chose to speak out. That’s crucial. A person like Paxton cannot exist without the tacit consent and professional aid of many other people. And, too often, those people justify looking the other way either because of their personal careerist goals, or their supposed dedication to the larger political agenda of the people they work for.

To put it another way: We’re lucky that the people who worked for Paxton are not like the people who work for California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Her failing health prevents Feinstein from doing her job as a leader in a representative democracy. She is being propped up, literally, by her staff. Seeing her wheeled around like this, appearing barely cognizant of where she is or what she’s being asked to do, is tragic in a way that borders on farce.

For wildly different reasons, both Paxton and Feinstein are unfit for their elected offices. Paxton is unfit because he’s a corrupt-o-fascist who couldn’t even find a benefactor wealthy enough to own a superyacht. Feinstein is unfit because she’s not compos mentis—which I believe is Latin for “let’s just make sure she’s comfortable”—and has been unable to participate in basic Senate business for several months. To be clear, there’s no moral equivalency here: Feinstein is a dedicated public servant who got very old and very incapacitated; Paxton is a power-hungry repeat bad actor who got caught. But operationally, neither person should have the jobs that they do. Paxton’s staff knew it, and I promise you Feinstein’s staff knows it too.

………

The bottom line is that Ken Paxton would not have been impeached but for the willingness of people who worked for him to go public with the truth. Dianne Feinstein will not be replaced until the people who work for her are willing to do the same thing.

Feinstein's staff are an embarrassment to themselves, the Senate, and the Democratic Party.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

Not a Surprise

When the Pentagon selected Lockeed Martin to make the JSF, Lockheed Martin got them to make sure that the program that would be the Hotel California for support and logistics. (You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.)

It's no surprise that the Pentagon is looking to pay $½ Billion to get out of the logistics roach motel:

The F-35 program office wants $500 million so that it can harness technical data that will make it easier for the military services to manage F-35 spare parts instead of having to rely on prime contractor Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s F-35 program executive said today.

In order for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy to set up an organic supply chain, the services need “provisioning and cataloging data” associated with various parts, Lt. Gen. Eric Fick told lawmakers at a House Armed Services readiness subcommittee hearing.

“We have the rights to that data. It’s not a matter of data rights, it’s matter of data delivery — and being able to have that data delivered is going to cost money,” he said. “And that money is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of about half a billion dollars, divided amongst the services.”

………

The debate on F-35 technical data rights have been a sticking point in negotiations between the Pentagon and Lockheed in recent years, as the department has shifted its focus to lowering the sustainment cost of the aircraft. When the F-35 program was conceptualized more than two decades ago, it was structured under a “Total System Performance Responsibility” approach that gave Lockheed an unprecedented amount of power to manage the sustainment of the aircraft.

It should be noted that Israel demanded, and got, better access to this data than did the US military, because the Pentagon, and L-M were concerned that if Israel was not in early on acquiring the platform, it would adversely sales worldwide.

“As a result, the government did not procure technical data that the government could eventually use, as needed and depending upon the circumstances, to promote vendor competition and increase government control over specific elements of sustainment,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report on F-35 sustainment released today.

 ………

When it became clear that the TSPR [Total System Performance Responsibility] model was inflating costs, the Pentagon began shifting to a hybrid approach where the Defense Department took additional responsibility for sustainment functions like storing or transporting parts.

It was always going to inflate costs.

This is a redux of the Lead System Integrator acquisition model that was so disastrous that Congress actually banned the the process.

Something important to note here, this is not incompetence, it is corruption.  This result, excessive cost and lack of operational capability, was foreseeable, but it was equally foreseeable that generals would get cushy and remunerative sinecures after they retired, so they did what Lockheed-Martin wanted.

First Friday of the Month

Not bad


Still very low


The worst jobs got the biggest pay increase


Looks like IT is a bunch of lemings jumping off a cliff.*

So, we have the monthly jobs numbers, with non-farm payrolls increasing by 339,000, hourly wages increasing by 4.3% year over year, and the unemployment rate increasing by 0.3% to 3.7%, which is still pretty damn low:

Hiring surged this spring, the latest sign the U.S. economy maintains momentum in the face of rising interest rates and complicating the Federal Reserve’s decision over whether to pause rate increases this month.

U.S. employers added a seasonally adjusted 339,000 jobs in May and the prior two months’ payrolls were revised up by nearly 100,000, the Labor Department said Friday. Workers gained more than 1.5 million jobs in 2023, more evidence of economic vitality, including robust consumer spending and a stabilizing housing market.

I calling the, "Stabilizing housing market," a dead cat bounce. 

As the saying goes, "If dropped from a sufficient height, anything can bounce, even a dead cat."

………

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 3.7% in May, still near historic lows but an uptick from April’s 3.4%, the Labor Department said. Average hourly earnings grew a solid 4.3% in May over the prior year, similar to annual gains in March and April.

………

The average workweek fell to 34.3 hours, the lowest since April 2020 near the start of the pandemic. As a result of fewer hours worked, average weekly earnings advanced at a slower rate than hourly earnings, and gains have cooled since the start of the year.

Falling workweek is a pretty good indicator of a slowdown. 

The first thing that a business cuts when they see a downturn is hours.

The labor-force participation rate, the share of Americans who are working or actively seeking jobs, remained flat in May at 62.6% and below the February 2020 prepandemic level of 63.3%. That partly reflects the aging U.S. population. Among workers age 25 to 54, the participation rate rose to 83.4%, a level last touched in 2007.

Yes, it "Partly" reflects the aging workforce, and "Partly" reflects possibly tens of millions of people disabled by long Covid.

On the other hand, the fact that something over ½ million workers are out of the workforce because they areare dead pushes the participation number higher, because the denominator has gotten significantly smaller.

I expect the beatings from the Federal Reserve to continue, with 250 basis point (¼%) rate increases continuing through at most of next year.

^*Yes, I know, lemmings don't actually jump off of cliffs, in the Disney film White Wlderness, director James Algar literally threw the rodents off of a cliff for dramatic effect.

We Can Use My Dad's Barn and Put On a Musical!

After a couple of bigoted parents threatened the school board and administrators in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a high school canceled a play, Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood, a, "A gender-bending, patriarchy-smashing, hilarious new take on the classic tale, adapted for performance by teen actors for family audiences."

What could the kids do?

Well, they raised money, found a venue, and put on the play anyway.

It's the feel good story of the day, and yes, it does invoke some classic 1930s musicals starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland:

Sydney Knipp, 16, tiptoed to stage’s edge and peered around the black curtain at the nearly 1,500 people waiting for the play to start. It was the largest audience she had ever seen.

In a few minutes, Sydney was supposed to stride before them, braids streaming, to deliver the opening monologue as Alanna Dale in “Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood,” a gender-bending take on Sherwood Forest’s beloved bandit.

Dotted among the crowd, Sydney saw, were security personnel in bulletproof vests. At the entrance, theatergoers were submitting to bag checks and a metal detector wand. Behind Sydney stood Fia, her 14-year-old sister, costumed as Much the Miller’s son.

Sydney and Fia, and their characters, were the reason for the security — the reason this play was happening not at school but at an outdoor theater in the girls’ hometown. Alanna confesses her love for a woman in the 16th scene. Much declares they are nonbinary two scenes later. The LGBTQ storylines drew complaints from parents, spurring Carroll High School to cancel “Marian” in February out of concern for students’ safety.

Concerns for student's safety, my ass.  They were capitulating to terrorists.

But the cast of two dozen teenagers decided to put the play on anyway. Now, on a chilly evening in late May — after raising almost $84,000, booking Foellinger Theatre and whirling through 2½ weeks of late-night rehearsals squeezed between Advanced Placement exams and finals — it was opening night for a show adults had warned them not to do.

This is how you do this.

Never give in to terrorists.

Support Your Local Police

In Atlanta, SWAT raided the protest bail fund, arrested at least 3 people, and charged them with material support for terrorism.

This looks like something straight out of Jim Crow and the Red Scare:

On Wednesday morning, a heavily armed Atlanta Police Department SWAT team raided a house in Atlanta and arrested three of its residents. Their crime? Organizing legal support and bail funds for protesters and activists who have faced indiscriminate arrest and overreaching charges in the struggle to stop the construction of a vast police training facility — dubbed Cop City — atop a forest in Atlanta.

In a joint operation with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI, Atlanta cops charged Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean, and Savannah Patterson — all board members of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund — with “money laundering” and “charity fraud.”

The arrests are an unprecedented attack on bail funds and legal support organizations, a long-standing facet of social justice movements, according to Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

“This is the first bail fund to be attacked in this way,” Regan, whose organization has worked to ensure legal support for people resisting Cop City, told me. “And there is absolutely not a scintilla of fact or evidence that anything illegal has ever transpired with regard to Atlanta fundraising for bail support.”

While the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been a crucial resource for activists facing harsh repression for their involvement in Stop Cop City, the nonprofit predates the movement and has been providing bail funds, jail support, and assistance with legal representation for Atlanta activists since the 2020 Black liberation uprisings. 

………

A public statement from the GBI said that “[a]gents and officers executed a search warrant and found evidence linking the three suspects to the financial crimes.” The warrants for all three arrestees cite “records and reports of certain currency transactions” and “fraudulent, misrepresenting, or misleading activities regarding charitable solitations.” (“Solitations” is, of course, not a word, but the apparent misspelling of the word “solicitations” appears on all three arrestees’ warrants.)

A more detailed arrest warrant for Patterson notes that the alleged “money laundering” charge relates to reimbursements made from the nonprofit to Patterson’s personal PayPal account for minor expenses including “gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses.” Targeting the organizers with a militarized SWAT raid based on such expenditures only clarifies the desperation of law enforcement agencies in going after the movement.

………

Kautz, one of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers arrested on Wednesday, had previously shared numerous reflections with The Intercept on the Atlanta cops’ extreme repressive tactics. He noted that the indiscriminate arrests and use of state domestic terrorism charges against protesters represented “an unprecedented level of repression” and a “strategy of blatant malicious prosecution.”

………

Organizing bail funds and legal support for protesters facing charges, however serious, is a decades-old social justice movement practice. As the Atlanta Community Press Collective noted on Twitter, “When Dr. King was held in Birmingham Jail, churches and community groups including the NAACP came together to fund his $4000 bail – the equivalent of $39,000 today.” 

This is deeply corrupt and repugnant on so many levels.

It also seems to be based, at least in part, on a lie: (sorry for the Reason link)

………

The warrants hang on the contention that Defend the Atlanta Forest is "a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists." Law enforcement has used this claim for months, charging 19 protesters in February with domestic terrorism charges even though nine were only accused of misdemeanor trespassing. According to Grist, "a DHS spokesperson denied that the federal agency classifies any specific groups with this term."

But the warrants justify the arrests based on this supposed classification, apparently deeming any payments or reimbursements as material support for terrorism. In one example, Maclean was reimbursed $228.29 to "move the jail support hotline to a new plan" and add "two (2) phone lines." In another, "Patterson was reimbursed via her personal PayPal account" $6,657.59 in 26 payments over nearly two years. "These payments were for various expenses such as gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, covid rapid tests, media, yard signs and other miscellaneous expenses." 

This is nakedly corrupt, but given the Supreme Court's affection for qualified immunity, I don't expect to see any prosecutions for law enforcement misconduct.

It's Thursday

Initial claims rose by 2,000 to 232,000 for the week ending May 27, and the 4 week moving average fell to 229,500, and continuing claims were steady at 1.8 million.

No clue as to what this means.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Thanks, Keith, for the Heads Up

I am referring, of course to allegations that Trump was caught on tape discussing non-imminent US plans to invade Iran.

Apparently, he was having a conversation with some ghost writers, probably for Mark Meadows.

Claiming that he had the document, where then Chairman of the JCS Mark Milly had given him a document of the plans to invade Iran.

Apparently, it was a massive affair involving huge numbers of troops.

It is reported that Trump bragged about how secret the documents were, and he may have waved the papers in front of his face.

Technically, even the existence of such a document is a serious state secret.

In reality, that there is an office in the Pentagon that plans, and routinely updates, plans to invade Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela, and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick is known.

If the description of the tape is real, it does show that Trump knew that he was handling classified documents, which goes to prove intent, but I still don't think that it's enough for the DoJ to invoke the Espionage Act.

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.

CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.

………

Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

If this happened at Bedminster, I would suggest that they pick up the phone and talk to Niitek in Dulles, Virginia.

They have some remarkably advanced ground penetrating radars.  Just the thing to scan Ivana Trump's grave.  (Also, who the f%$# buries their ex wife on a golf course unless the coffin includes incriminating evidence)

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told.

I get it.  If Trump were just some schmoe, he'd already be sitting in a SuperMax cell awaiting trial.

But we are dealing with a DoJ, and an administration, who are obsessed with a return to normalcy and the, "Norms," so I do not expect to see him in the dock for the foreseeable future.

I would be delighted to be wrong, but I think that the powers that be are too invested in the precedent of Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon to allow this to happen.

Not All Deep Fakes Are Evil

YO... who did this?!

The 2024 memes are going to be next level 😂😂😂pic.twitter.com/Kg6xqQ4Nu0

— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) May 26, 2023

This is brilliant.

Replacing Steve Carell's face with Ron Desantis in this episode of The Office, where Michael Scott accidentally cross-dresses, is not evil, it is pure genius.

As Anna Russel Would Say, “I’m Not Making This Up, You Know.”

Michael Flynn, the QAnon ex-general, is now selling Covid unvaccinated sperm, among other bodily fluids.

This is not The Onion, or Private Eye, it's real, God help us:

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security adviser who pled guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017, is launching an online community dedicated to people who have not been vaccinated for COVID-19.

The community is called 4thePURE, and members can connect with blood donors, sperm donors, breastmilk donors, surrogates, and unvaccinated singles, according to the website. It will also have a directory of "COVID-19 unvaccinated patriot businesses."

Studies have shown the vaccine doesn't have "deleterious effects" on semen, nor is it unsafe to donate blood or breastmilk if a donor is vaccinated.

In an advertisement on the site, Flyyn said 4thePURE's purpose is to"connect liked-minded individuals who courageously stood against the COVID-19 jab."

"Our programs will be used for news updates, friendships, dating, and business networking," Flynn, who is described as the founder of 4thePURE, said in the ad.

………

Since then, Flynn re-emerged into the spotlight to embrace QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory, and other falsities about COVID-19. Last year, he went on Alex Jones's Infowars show to say that the coronavirus was created by billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates as well Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum.

We live in Bizarro World, and it turns out that Bizarro World is a very place to live.

How is Ron Desantis Like a Goya Painting?

This is Ron Desantis.


This is Francisco Goya's Saturno Devorando a Su Hijo.
(Saturn Devouring His Son)

Any questions?

Yeah, I know, nightmare fuel, but we are talking about Ron Desantis.

Shocking!

Not the DFL

The Democratic Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota is on a serious tear.

Having control of the Governor's manshuion and both state houses, they have passed a plethora of progressive legislation, most notably major pro labor legislation:

Minnesota Democrats say a sweeping labor bill they passed on Tuesday could be the most significant worker protection bill in state history.

“This bill is a big damn deal,” said Sen. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, during a news conference.

The labor bill (SF3035) includes a Democratic wish list years in the making that will affect virtually every worker in the state. The bill mandates paid sick days, bans noncompete agreements, boosts funding for workplace safety inspectors and increases protections for workers in nursing homes, Amazon warehouses, meatpacking plants, construction sites, hospitals and public schools.

Democrats are also advancing a host of other labor bills that will create a statewide paid family and medical leave program, expand unemployment eligibility for hourly school workers and give hospital nurses a greater say in staffing levels.

Here are nine major labor changes in the labor bill passed by the Legislature, which the governor’s office says he’ll sign.

………

Unionized teachers will be able to negotiate over adult-to-student ratios in classrooms and student-to-personnel ratios, which could include school psychologists, custodians, or other staff. They will also be able to negotiate over student testing beyond what the state mandates.

The new rule won’t guarantee that schools will have smaller class sizes. Rather, teachers may now bargain over these provisions in labor contract negotiations with school districts.
New board will set industry-wide pay and benefits at nursing homes

Minnesota will create a first-in-the-nation board with the power to set minimum pay and benefits for workers at all nursing homes across the state. The Nursing Home Workforce Standards Board comes close to the sector-wide bargaining — common in Europe — in which labor groups negotiate pay and benefits for an entire industry rather than with individual employers.

The board is a leap forward for unions like SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, which represent about a quarter of nursing home workers in the state. Having minimum standards removes an incentive for nursing homes to fight union efforts, and raises the floor against which unionized workers bargain for better treatment.

………

The bill also bans no-poach agreements, which operate as shadow noncompete agreements. Franchise owners within the same franchise — such as McDonald’s or Sbarro — agree not to hire from each other, which labor experts say suppresses wages.

………

General construction contractors will be liable for wage theft by their subcontractors and will have to make workers whole if they aren’t paid all that they’re owed.

Construction projects are often completed through a byzantine hierarchy, with general contractors hiring subcontractors who themselves may hire subcontractors. Sometimes even individual workers are treated as subcontractors, which means they don’t receive overtime pay, Social Security benefits or workers’ compensation insurance.

………

Currently, workers who have their wages stolen must hire an attorney or report it to government authorities. Such cases often take months or even years to be resolved.

………

Companies that operate warehouse distribution centers like Amazon will have to tell workers what work quotas they’re held to and provide workers with their individual productivity data.

………

The bill also directs state labor officials to investigate companies if injury rates are 30% higher than the average rate for comparable workplaces.

………

Employers won’t be allowed to require workers to attend anti-union presentations or any other meetings to hear about the employer’s religious or political views.

The so-called captive audience meetings are often the primary way employers discourage their employees from unionizing and can be highly effective. Union organizers argue the meetings give employers an unfair advantage and violate people’s rights to organize free from interference or coercion.

It produces some real and universal benefits, and it provides some real incentives for unionization.

In most states, and certainly in the US Congress, the so-called moderates would have been busy knifing their fellow Democrats in the back.

I am not sure how the DFL managed this, but bravo.

Of Course They Did

It turns out that before the SPAC mania went bust, as is to be expected for a financial instrument whose primary purpose is to avoid regulatory scrutiny, insiders sold out for huge profits.

To paraphrase Marvin the Martian, "I’m not angry. Just terribly, terribly disappointed."

The SPAC boom cost investors billions. Insiders in the companies that went public were on the other side of the trade.

Executives and early investors in companies that went public via special-purpose acquisition companies sold shares worth $22 billion through well-timed trades, profiting before share prices collapsed.

Some of the biggest winners were Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores’s investment firm Platinum Equity, British billionaire Richard Branson and convicted Nikola founder Trevor Milton. They were among many insiders who got shares on the cheap and sold them as they rose in value, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of insider-trading disclosures associated with more than 200 companies that did SPAC deals.

Companies that went public this way have lost more than $100 billion in market value. At least 12 have filed for bankruptcy and more than 100 are running low on cash, battered by higher interest rates and rising costs.

Many executives claimed during the boom that SPAC mergers were a better way for companies to go public than traditional initial public offerings. “It’s easy to understand why executives at the companies went with this option,” said New York University Law School professor Michael Ohlrogge, who studies SPACs. “It wasn’t because it was a better financial technology—it was because it was just better for them.”

Literally, the only benefit to SPACs was that you did not have to go through due diligence for an IPO.

Why regulators allowed this is beyond me, and that there are not criminal prosecutions is a travesty.

She’ll Be Out in Less than 18 Months

 

Elizabeth Holmes has finally reported to prison.

She is to serve an 11 year (135 month) sentence, and with changes in US incarceration policies, she could theoretically be out of Prison in 5-6 years.

My guess is that there will be lobbying from many people to get her some sort of clemency, because:

• Her actions are not materially different from those of most Silly Con Valley entrepreneurs, and they want the precedent reversed.
• She is very good at presenting herself as a sympathetic figure, witness Amy Chozick's so bad it should be a fireable offense fawning profile of Elizabeth Warren in the New York Times.
  
• Being in prison, she is already 60% of the way toward our national obsession about missing blond women.

I could be wrong about my estimate as to her actual time in prison, but I my pessimism is complete on this one.

The clamor for her early release will be like a telethon for overprivileged youth.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison on Tuesday to start her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors, marking a closing chapter in the downfall of one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent entrepreneurs after revelations about the company’s unreliable blood-testing technology.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Holmes arrived at the Bryan facility Tuesday afternoon local time.

………

Since The Wall Street Journal began publishing its findings about Theranos in 2015, Holmes has been convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court and settled separate civil securities-fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of the settlement, she paid a $500,000 fine and was banned from being an officer or director of any public company for 10 years.

When You Are in a Hole, Stop Digging

After over two decades of US regime change operations against Venezuela, it looks like Brazil is distancing itself from the United States on this issue, and reestablishing full diplomatic relations with Caracas.

You have to feel sorry for the Venezuelan people, they know that  Maduro government talks about the virtues of their regime, they are lying, but when they talk about the vices of the opposition, they are telling the truth.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has held talks with his Venezuelan counterpart, as Nicolas Maduro made his first visit to Brazil in years in a sign of warming ties between the two South American nations.

Maduro was welcomed by an honour guard at the Brazilian presidential palace in the capital Brasilia on Monday, when Lula greeted him with a hug and a backslap.

The two left-wing leaders were expected to sign various agreements in a push to strengthen ties after a period of hostility during the tenure of Lula’s right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who banned Maduro from entering Brazil in 2019.

………

After his talks with Lula, the Venezuelan leader said he would propose that South America as a region asks the United States to lift its sanctions against the country.

Maduro also said his nation wants to be part of the BRICS group of leading emerging nations, with Lula saying he would personally favour a bid from Venezuela to join it.

Lula is the latest left-wing leader in the region to restore relations with the Maduro government, which faced a period of international isolation amid accusations it had cracked down on political opposition and civil liberties in Venezuela.

Relations between Colombia and Venezuela recently improved as left-wing Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who took office in August 2022, departed from the more confrontational path of his conservative predecessor Ivan Duque.

The two countries have re-established diplomatic ties and taken a series of steps to expand relations, such as easing travel restrictions on their shared border. Petro and Maduro held a bilateral meeting in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in November.

I'm inclined to believe that US support for the Bolivian coup, as well as the involvement by the US State Security Apparatus in the "Lawfare" against Lula, Latin American nations that are run by anyone who wants to chart an independent course from the United States have realized that it is not in their best interest to blindly support US policy.

To put it more simply, these nations, at least the part that the CIA and FBI are enlisted to overthrow, realize that the relationship with the USA is very much like that of an abusive partner, and they are trying to get out.

Well, This Sucks

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has defeated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the presidential runoff in Turkey.

There are no indications of any sort of fraud in the collection of ballots, but obviously the paucity of independent domestic media sources in Turkey hamstrung the opposition.

So did the selection of Kılıçdaroğlu, who also went hardcore nationalist during the runoff campaign, and was perceived as a weak and uninspiring candidate in some quarters. 

Finally, and I've not seen coverage of this, I think that anti-American sentiment in Turkey may have provided some of the margin of victory, Erdoğan has been aggressively pursuing a resolutely neutral position with regard to Russia and the United States and Chins.  (You may recall the freakout among the US foreign policy establishment [really the military industrial complex] over the purchase of the Russian S-400 SAM system)

That being said, it was not particularly close, 52.14%  — 47.86%, a 4.18% margin. 

A lot of this comes down to issues between secular Kemalists and Islamists in Turkish society, as well as an urban rural divide, and unlike his predecessors, Erdoğan did actually apply state resources to traditionally backward parts of Turkey.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has extended his two decades in power, securing victory over his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu after an unprecedented presidential runoff election, in a vote that reflected Turkey’s stark and persistent political polarisation.

With 99.43% of the vote counted, Turkey’s supreme election authority announced late on Sunday that Erdoğan had won 52.14% of the votes, while Kılıçdaroğlu received 47.86%. With a gap of more than 2m votes between candidates, the votes yet to be counted would not change the result, said Ahmet Yener, the head of the election board.

………

While the opposition holds mayorships in Turkey’s six largest cities, Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign appeared to run aground outside his party’s traditional enclaves on the Aegean coast and in metropolitan centres. In the Turkish provinces where Erdoğan’s rule previously catapulted many into the middle class, voters said they were unconvinced by the opposition’s campaign. 

It appears that the opposition is already blaming the Kurds for their loss.(At least on Twitter, for what it's worth.)

About the only policy suggestion that I have for the United States would be to get the nuclear bombs out of Incirlik, sooner rather than later.

What Is Best in Life?

Take left over roast beef.

Mix mayonnaise and horse radish and spread it on bread.

Place slices of the roast beef on the bread.

Devour.

That is good.

(This should be said in the same affect as Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first Conan movie)

Linkage

• This Dye Could Save People Who Eat Death Caps (Field and Stream) There is currently no treatment for death cap mushroom poisoning.
• Five Times Pinky and the Brain Almost Actually Did Take Over the World (Cracked) Cracked magazine, asking the tough questions.
• Nonprofits are sapping the progressive project (Noah Smith) Non profits divert time and energy from the core functions of government.
• Clarence Thomas Ethics Review Queried by US Court Leader in 2012 (Bloomberg) It appears that his corruption has been an open secret for over a decade.
• What the Hell Is Going On at the Sierra Club? (The New Republic) Poorly planned layoffs with very little notice as well as a unionization effort that has been dealt with by scorched earth policies.  If a charity does not do right by its staff, it will not do right by you.  Don't give to the Sierra Club.
• Economists Hate Rent Control. Here’s Why They’re Wrong. (The American Prospect) It is an article of faith that rent control suppresses housing construction and creates housing shortages.  Real world numbers show that this is completely wrong. 
• Hugely Profitable And Consolidated Streaming Platforms Suddenly Too Cheap To Pay Residuals And Writers, Or Keep Niche Shows Online (Techdirt) How monopolies are ensh%$tifying streaming services. 
• The Jock/Creep Theory of Fascism - by John Ganz The author suggests that, "The difference between Italian Fascism and German Nazism was that Italian Fascism essentially had “Jock-Douche” vibes while Nazism had “Creep-Loser” vibes."  (FWIW, Republicans appear to be dominated by the "Creep-Loser" Vibe)

A Guy Strapped a Camera to His Cat and It’s the Best Thing We’ve Ever Seen:

Memorial Day Barbecue Pr0n

Roast + my special rub + smoke + time.

Headline of the Day

U.S. Is Unhappy Mexico Is Spending Money on Its Own Citizens

—The Intercept

The story is pretty straightforward, the US, at least from the perspective of the DNI, is that Mexico a colony of the United States.

The U.S. government is frustrated that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is prioritizing social spending for the benefit of his people over addressing matters that are important to the U.S., according to an excerpt of a leaked top-secret intelligence document. Part of a cache of classified intelligence records that were leaked on the platform Discord earlier this year, the document highlights the growing discontent by U.S. officials toward Mexico’s president, who has significantly limited U.S. law enforcement agencies’ role in the war on drugs, as fentanyl trafficked by Mexican criminal groups has worsened the overdose crisis in the U.S. and violence in Mexico.

“President Lopez Obrador’s federal budget for 2023 gives priority to social spending and signature infrastructure projects, rather than the investments needed to address bilateral issues with the US such as migration, security, and trade,” reads the document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “Lopez Obrador’s meager investment in migration, security, and trade-related organizations will probably undermine Mexico’s ability to follow through on commitments to stem the flow of irregular migrants and fentanyl to the US and boost economic competitiveness in North America.”

López Obrador’s 2023 federal budget, presented to the Mexican Congress last fall, does increase funding for social programs, including a significant raise for the pension provided to older Mexicans. It also prioritizes large infrastructure projects, which are mostly concentrated in southern states of the country.

“The crisis of fentanyl is due to the negligence of pharmaceuticals in the U.S.,” said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City. “I don’t know what [the Director of National Intelligence] thinks the alternative is. Do they expect us to end our social spending and infrastructure policy to tend to a problem that belongs to the U.S.?”

Yes, they do expect you to, "End [y]our social spending and infrastructure policy to tend to a problem that belongs to the U.S."

This has always been the case.

Support Your Local Police

It turns out that some Baltimore City judges have had enough with officers lying kin their courts:

Baltimore Police Detective Alexandros Haziminas testified in a case that a judge threw out after raising questions about his credibility.

Hours later, Haziminas was back on duty. He was operating a CitiWatch camera at the intersection of North Howard and West Fayette streets and reported information that led police to arrest a man on a charge of possession with intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance.

And less than two weeks after that happened, the Board of Estimates approved a $250,000 settlement in an unrelated federal lawsuit against Haziminas that alleged he assaulted a man and then taunted him in the hospital.

According to the Maryland Judiciary Case Search, Haziminas is listed as a participant in eight additional cases that are pending in Baltimore Circuit Court. His situation reflects an ongoing debate about when questions surrounding the past of a police officer should affect him or her in the future.

Defense attorneys have pushed for transparency about potentially relevant information that can be used to impeach the credibility of law enforcement in court. The Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office has also maintained a list of police officers it will not call as witnesses because of past misconduct or other credibility issues.

Defense attorneys should get this information routinely.

They should get this list on a monthly basis, and they should get updates when an officer is to testify in one of their cases.

Putting on Your Democratic Party Rally Hat

Just the thing for caving

I haven't had a lot to say about the debt ceiling negotiations.

I really have only one thing to say, "Mint the f%$#ing coin."

Needless to say, in an effort to appease the "Norms Fairy", Biden is negotiating the debt limit.

We are in a situation where they are largely capitulating to 'Phant demands, but it is likely that any bill to raise the debt ceiling will require at least as many Democrats as Republicans.

Here is advice to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, don't be any of those legislators.  Let the Blue Dogs and New Dems take the heat.

Do the 14th amendment, do the coin, it does not matter, but capitulating to terrorists is always a bad idea

Nope, No Anthropogenic Climate Change Here

The Panama Canal has imposed shipping restrictions on shipping in response to an unprecedented drought.

A major artery of world trade, it carries about ½ of the trade between Asia and the Eastern US, is at risk of a long-term collapse in capacity:

A severe drought affecting the Panama Canal is forcing container vessels to lighten their loads and pay higher fees, with further increases in the cost of shipping cargo through the canal expected this summer.
The largest vessels will have to reduce their drafts — how low they sit in the water — by carrying less or cutting the weight of their cargoes as of May 24, followed by another decrease that kicks in on May 29. Some major ocean carriers have also announced new fees for goods shipped on the route as of June 1 in response to the canal restrictions.

These measures are likely to result in delays and higher costs for goods that are shipped through the canal, which typically sees 5% of annual global maritime trade pass through its locks.

………

Water levels in Lake Gatun, the largest of two lakes that feed the canal, are projected to hit historic lows by July, restricting ships’ drafts and how much cargo they can carry.


Starting May 24, Neo-Panamax vessels — the largest ships that transit the waterway — will be allowed drafts of up to 44.5 feet (13.56 meters), down from an already restricted 45 feet, according to canal spokesman Octavio Colindres.

The draft limit will decline again to 44 feet on May 30. While that seems like a minor change, it could translate to 40% less cargo on some containerships. A 50-foot draft is considered normal. During the droughts of 2019 and 2016, the draft limit went as low as 43 feet.

 We are completely unprepared for the consequences of global warming.

A Petri Dish for Sociopaths

I am referring, of course, to the Ivy League, which creates folks like Emily Oster (graduated from Harvard, faculty at Brown).

She caught a lot of flack, first for suggesting that we should not sent anti-retroviral drugs to treat AIDS in Africa because it was not economically while cherry-picking data to justify this, and her creation of a whole apparatus to get kids back to school because, "Kids don't get Covid," ignoring dead teachers, and when it proved that Covid kills kids too, she moved to social and educational consequences.

To the degree that she has contributed to an environment where the, "Everyone should get Covid," nuts have prevailed in the public discourse, she bears a direct responsibility for more than a million excess deaths in the United States, and more than 20 million deaths worldwide, she should be criticized for her sacrifice of those people on the alter of expedience.

Well, it would be, except for the fact that she comes from the right family, which means that criticism of her is worse than anything, as exemplified by an article titled, "Might “Vitriolic Attacks” Against Emily Oster Rival COVID’s Carnage?."

So, basically, any sort of criticism, or even worse consequences, for the elites is worse than the Holocaust.

Ignore the deaths, or the evidence that Covid causes long term health problems and cognitive deficits in both children and adults, the real injustice here is people calling Emily Oster out on various social media.

Don't worry about Ms. Oster in any case, she is doing fine, and selling all natural drinks for kids with Michelle Obama.

And It Is On

After years of Republicans in Texas looking the other way when they saw clear and convincing evidence of criminality and corruption by Texas Attorney General, it appears that paying out $3,300,000.00 in state funds to former staffers who accused him of corruption was a bridge too far.

The Texas state house has voted 121-23 to impeach Paxton.

In a monumental decision that threatens to divide the powerful Texas Republican Party, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton on Saturday after a scandal-plagued decade in which he has been accused in multiple investigations of misusing his office and of retaliating against those who've exposed his misdeeds.

Paxton's impeachment, triggered by a 121-23 vote with overwhelming Republican support, removes the 60-year-old attorney general from office pending a trial in the Senate. An interim replacement must be named by Gov. Greg Abbott.

The impeachment, just the third in Texas history and the first in nearly 50 years, punctuates a whirlwind week in the House that began with the three-term attorney general accusing House Speaker Dade Phelan of being intoxicated on the job and continued with a bombshell revelation that Paxton was the unidentified subject of a House investigation that began in March. 

This turd has been under indictment for securities fraud for 8 years, and nothing happened.

Even now, he is threatening legislators with political consequences.

Why this guy survived and thrived all these years is a mark of profound dysfunction in Texas politics.

Then again, Texas politics is notorious for its dysfunctionality.

This is a Nice Start

I have noted on a number of occasions that the western United States' first use policies on water rights are dysfunctional, and lead to corruption and perverse incentives.

It appears that California may be looking at fixing it, around the edges at least, by banning financial institutions from buying and selling water rights for a profit.

If this makes its way to the governor's desk and is signed into law, this would be a very good thing™.

California lawmakers advanced a bill that would prohibit hedge funds and other institutional investors from buying and selling agricultural water resources for financial gain.

Under the measure, which passed the State Assembly by a 46 to 17 vote on Monday afternoon, speculation or profiteering by investment funds in the sale, transfer or lease of water rights on agricultural land would be considered a waste or unreasonable use of water.

………

Western Growers Association and other agricultural trade groups opposed the bill, saying that it would “prohibit a potential solution afforded by private capital invested in developing reliable supplies,” the bill analysis said. The measure still needs to be passed by the California Senate and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom before it becomes law.  

By, "Potential solution[s] afforded by private capital invested in developing reliable supplies," they mean that there are farmers out there who want to make bank from private equity and hedge funds because it's all about the Benjamins.

As I have noted on multiple occasions, "There is no human activity that private equity cannot ruin."

Occasionally, There Is Justice

So Envision Healthcare, which has gained notoriety for buying up hospital emergency room practices, and then cheating patients through balance billing, forcing doctors to upcode, and firing doctors who complained about their fraud, has had to file for bankruptcy:

Physician staffing firm Envision Healthcare has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing its $7.7 billion in debt obligations, declining patient volumes, “flawed” implementation of the No Surprises Act and exclusionary health insurers as reasons for its financial decline in a restructuring announcement on Monday.

The bankruptcy wipes out private equity firm KKR’s investment in Envision. In 2018, the PE firm shelled out over $5 billion in 2018 to take Envision private, in a deal valued at $9.9 billion including debt. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that an Envision bankruptcy filing would be one of the steepest losses in KKR’s history.

The physician staffing firm suffered from declining profits amid hurdles from the COVID-19 pandemic and prolonged legal battles with health insurer UnitedHealthcare over payment to Envision clinicians, which caused Envision to lose its in-network status with the insurer in early 2021.

………

UnitedHealthcare sued the staffing firm in September, alleging that it overpaid Envision after it exaggerated the complexity of care provided by its clinicians. In April, Envision announced that it was awarded $91 million from an arbitration panel for payment disputes in 2017 and 2018. At the time, Envision CEO Jim Rechtin said it had three outstanding lawsuits against UnitedHealthcare that would take “several more years” to resolve.

Envision also targeted recent regulatory efforts to stop surprise out-of-network bills for patients in its bankruptcy announcement, saying that implementation of the No Surprises Act caused the company to lose “hundreds of millions of dollars” in delayed or reduced payments from insurers.

So a a healthcare operation whose business model was predecated on fraud is in bankruptcy, and the PE firm which created the firm in its current form lost billions.

I call that a good start.

My guess is that the lawsuit by physicians groups claiming that they were using shell companies to illegally acquire corporate control of doctor's practices had something to do with this: (Ownership of medical practices by non-doctors is illegal in most states)

Physicians and consumer advocates are monitoring a California lawsuit against Envision Healthcare, which alleges that Envision uses shell business structures to retain de facto ownership of emergency room staffing groups and asks the court to declare these structures illegal, Kaiser Health News reported Dec. 22.

Milwaukee-based American Academy of Emergency Medicine Physician Group, the plaintiff in the case set to start in January 2024, said a victory would result in prohibition of the practice across California in emergency rooms as well as anesthesiology and hospital medicine.

I agree with LA Times writer Michael Hiltzik, this is, "A rare victory for patients in the healthcare business." 

For profit enterprises, particularly those pump and dump artists in private equity, are completely incompatible with public health.