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.

He, 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.

 

Only the Good Die Young

Frequently, I’ve come to regret things I’ve said. This, from 2001, is not one of those times: pic.twitter.com/1NiHlupJkL

— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) February 5, 2018

Pretty Much

So, Henry Kissinger turns 100 today.

He remains one of the greatest war criminals in human history:

Henry Kissinger is turning 100 this week, and his centennial is prompting assorted hosannas about perhaps the most influential American foreign policymaker of the 20th century. The Economist observed that “his ideas have been circling back into relevancy for the last quarter century.” The Times of London ran an appreciation: “Henry Kissinger at 100: What He Can Tell Us About the World.” Policy shops and think tanks have held conferences to mark this milestone. CBS News aired a mostly fawning interview veteran journalist Ted Koppel conducted with Kissinger that included merely a glancing reference to the ignoble and bloody episodes of his career. Kissinger is indeed a monumental figure who shaped much of the past 50 years. He brokered the US opening to China and pursued detente with the Soviet Union during his stints as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state. Yet it is an insult to history that he is not equally known and regarded for his many acts of treachery—secret bombings, coup-plotting, supporting military juntas—that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands.

Kissinger’s diplomatic conniving led to or enabled slaughters around the globe. As he blows out all those candles, let’s call the roll.

Cambodia: In early 1969, shortly after Nixon moved into the White House and inherited the Vietnam War, he, Kissinger, and others cooked up a plan to secretly bomb Cambodia, in pursuit of enemy camps. With the perversely-named “Operation Breakfast” launched, White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman wrote in his diary, Kissinger and Nixon were “really excited.” The action, though, was of dubious legality; the United States was not at war with Cambodia and Congress had not authorized the carpet-bombing, which Nixon tried to keep a secret. The US military dropped 540,000 tons of bombs. They didn’t just hit enemy outposts. The estimates of Cambodian civilians killed range between 150,000 and 500,000.

By way of comparison, the US dropped about the same amount of bombs on Germany during World War II.

Also, he is directly involved with the slaughter in Bangladesh, the coup in Chile, the invasion and slaughter in East Timor, approved the dirty war in Argentina, and approved an assassination program by Latin American dictators that led to a terrorist attack in Washington DC, etc.

In a just world Henry Kissinger should be cooling his heels in The Hague, not having a birthday party.

When the Mask Slips

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

In internal email exchanges, members of the Brownstone Institute "Think" tank expressed nostalgia for child labor and child smoking.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know," were actually pining for the return of these poxes upon society.

I guess that I can understand their affection for child labor, it gives business the opportunity to have a compliant workforce that they can abuse, but wanting kids to smoke again?

That's just psychopathic:

The emails, which were obtained by Important Context, come from a Google email group and comprise a single conversation spanning two days—Wednesday, March 15, and Thursday, March 16. They contain several different threads and some content is missing. Additionally, different time zones make tracing through-lines somewhat challenging. Note: The email addresses of the individuals in this piece and potentially identifying information have been redacted.

What the emails do show, however, is Brownstone founder Jeffrey Tucker and several Brownstone contributors, including one of the institute’s 2023 fellows, discussing the merits of “the good old days” when children smoked tobacco and performed labor. The group lamented how young people today don’t share their values and are allegedly coddled and entitled.

In the course of the conversation, Tucker admitted to supporting “youth” cigarette smoking and labor. At one point, he confessed that he had even provided his high schooler son with cigarettes to get him away from marijuana. Later in the conversation, Tucker wrote that he would “fully [repeal] the 1936 ‘child labor’ law,” because “it is cruel and robs kids of a good life.” 

There is something seriously wrong with these assholes.

I mean in a clinical psychological sense, though obviously, I am an engineer, not a psychologist, dammit.*

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

The Headline is Very Revealing

There are now reports that Elon Musk's company Neuralink has been granted approval for clinical studies of its brain implants in human beings.

The interesting thing is that when I searched the news about this, all the headlines were the same.

Not one said that the FDA granted approval, they all said something like, "Neuralink claims," or "Neuralink says," that it has FDA approval for human trials.

This is an odd, and rather contrived, way of stating this.

It's almost as if no one believes a word that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ says.

It's not like he did any of the following:

• Falsified self driving demonstrations.
• Falsified solar shingles.
• Misstated sales and production number of Tesla cars.
• Resold returned lemons.
• Lied about recalls to customers.
• Lied about a battery swap program.
• Required customers with defective cars to sign non-disclosure agreements in order to get service.
• Lied about accident rates at the factories.
• Overstated Starlink speed and latency.
• Overstated Starlink coverage.
• Claimed regulatory approval for an east coast hyperlink loop.
• Lied about his dad having an ownership interest in an emerald mine, after telling the truth about it 5 years earlier.

Oh, wait, he DID do all of those things.

Maybe Elon is just a lying sack of sh%$.

These Kids Today Have it So Easy

In my day, there was no internet*, if we wanted to prank a school, it was hours with many cases of toilet paper, or even longer disassembling the principal's car and reassembling it on the roof.

These days, with just a few keystrokes, you can list your high school for on Zillow for only $42,069.00.

School officials think that it is a senior prank? I don't know, 420 and 69? Whatever would make you think that some smart-ass high school student who did this?

As housing prices continue to increase, maybe consider buying a high school for the low, low price of $42,069.

No, Meade High School is not really for sale, but the senior joke still landed with Anne Arundel County school officials. The listing surfaced on Zillow earlier this week but has since been deleted by the property listing website.

The school, on the Fort George G. Meade military base in northwestern Anne Arundel County, was listed as a 20-bedroom, 15-bathroom single-family home complete with sewage issues, rodents and insects and “complementary trash-scented air freshener and water issues!”

In what appears to be a senior prank, someone has posted Meade High School on Zillow for the bargain price of $42,069. https://t.co/eyGQwzdisC pic.twitter.com/TXQuXtmgDu

— Brooks DuBose (@b3dubose) May 24, 2023

………

Students at Broadneck High School pulled a similar senior prank in May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of listing the property online, the students created a giant “FOR SALE” banner from a blue tarp and tape.

The Broadneck guys went old school.  I approve

These Meade guys scored a primo prank, and they probably did not even break a sweat.

I am jealous.

^*OK, technically, there WAS an internet, the first two ARPANet nodes were created in 29 October 1969, but there was no access for ordinary folks outside of rather restrictive academic settings, and TCP/IP was not standardized until 1982, 2 years after I graduated from high school.  We didn't even have FidoNet until 1984.

It's Cows

Over ¾ of all water user


Sorry for using a strip from the racist asshole,
but it was too on point.

So we now have some numbers, and a neat graphic, on who is using the Colorado River water that is now in such short supply in the west.

It's the cows, and I mean that literally.

79% of the use of the river is agricultural, and over half is livestock feed.

It seems to me that the policy of growing crops that need a lot of water that is normally arid, and appears to be becoming even more arid thanks to anthropogenic climate change.

This is not a sustainable agricultural model.

It is made worse by the doctrine of prior appropriation of water rights, which gives eternal rights to water of the first users, so long as they continue to use the water.  (Talk about screwed up incentives)

Moving to lower water crops, and lower water livestock, in addition to water right reform, would go a long way to fixing the problem:

The water supply that 40 million Americans rely on has been pushed to its limit. Reservoirs and wells are running low. This week, the states that rely on water from the Colorado River reached a temporary deal with the Biden administration on sharing what’s left.

What’s using all that water?

The majority of the water in the Colorado River basin — more than one trillion gallons — is used to grow feed for livestock, connecting the region’s water crisis to how much dairy and meat we eat.

The crops grown for humans to eat directly, like vegetables, use up less than a quarter of the amount of water that livestock feed does, according to estimates from a 2020 study published in Nature Sustainability. And residential consumption, like watering your lawn and taking showers, uses a fifth of what livestock feed does.

………

Water footprint estimates can vary widely depending on the conditions that the livestock are raised in, or the farming practices and technology used. But, in general, beef and dairy are some of the most water-intensive foods we consume. Raising cattle also contributes relatively more greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane, than most other food. 

There are low water crops and livestock out there, figs, okra, rhubarb, goats, legumes, chard, cucumbers, peppers, regular and sweet potatoes, grapes, some cows (NOT Angus), etc.

Unfortunately, what we here is a lot about taking shorter showers and the like, because entrenched interests don't want their role in this closely examined.

Not Long Enough

"Only 18" is trending, but not because Matt Gaetz is dating again.

It's because Oathkeeper leader Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years for his 1/6 sedition.

To Mark Meadows and TFG, who think they can't do 18 years in the pen: Just do your best. 😉 pic.twitter.com/wa9f0A2cKC

— Dean Gloster (@deangloster) May 25, 2023

This Wins the Internet

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other crimes.

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison, after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress.

Prosecutors sought a 25-year term. Lawyers for Rhodes said he should be sentenced to time served, since his arrest in January 2022.

Before handing down the sentence, the US district judge, Amit Mehta, told a defiant Rhodes he posed a continued threat to the US government, saying it was clear he “wants democracy in this country to devolve into violence”.

“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta said.

………

Prosecutors successfully made the case that Rhodes and his group prepared an armed rebellion, including stashing arms at a Virginia hotel, meant for quick transfer to Washington DC.

………

In a first for a January 6 case, Judge Mehta agreed with prosecutors to apply enhanced penalties for “terrorism” under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion”.

I'm sure that Rhodes will do fine in prison.  In fact, he might even do better.

Prisons are full of Nazi gangs.

A Correction

In yesterday's post lambasting the Presidential Campaign announcement by Desantis made in a meeting with the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, I said that the Florida, "Resign to Run," bill would require him to leave office.

I was wrong.

First, it's not clear about the applicability of the law, and second, just hours before his disastrous campaign rollout, DeSantis signed s bill exempting Presidential and VP candidates from the bill:

In another incremental step in his bid for the White House, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a bill clarifying that Florida elected officials can remain in office while running for president.

He did so just hours after officially filing paperwork to join the 2024 presidential race, and about two hours ahead of an expected announcement of his presidential run on Twitter with Elon Musk.

The bill, SB 7050, makes a number of sweeping election changes. One clause is the much-watched exemption to the state’s resign-to-run law for presidential and vice presidential candidates, which lawmakers had hinted at last year with DeSantis’ political ambitions in mind.

 Also included in the bill were more voter suppression measures.

That is all.

So, About that Twitter Announcement………

Did you know that Ron Desantis went on Twitter Meetings with Elon Musk to announce his candidacy for President?

It did not go well, either for Ronda or for Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™:

The screen kept saying “Preparing to launch”. But this wasn’t one of Elon Musk’s space rockets that soars through the stratosphere and settles into a comfortable orbit. This was one that blew up on the pad in a dazzling ball of flame.

The eccentric billionaire had invited Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, to the somewhat niche Twitter Spaces – a dedicated audio streaming feature on the social media platform – to announce his run for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

For Musk it looked like an easy win in his effort to make Twitter the public square, especially one that attracts rightwing blowhards and steal a march on Fox News. For DeSantis it seemed like a chance to make a bit of political history, show off his tech savvy and poke his rival Donald Trump, once the undisputed world tweeting champion.

Even better, DeSantis could hold court in an audio only format without having to meet and greet real people, famously not his strength. But what liberals may have feared as the ultimate alliance of two anti-woke supervillains proved to carry all the menace of a damp dishcloth.

………

Once people had got beyond the “What is Twitter Spaces?” stage, they were greeted with blank windows, broken snatches of conversation and other technical glitches.

………

The debacle was a fresh blow to the credibility of Musk, whose Tesla brand has lost its shine of late and who, having laid off dozens [Actually, he's gotten rid of 6,500 employees] of Twitter staff, seemed to be on the end of divine retribution from the tech gods.

………

It was an even bigger political disaster for DeSantis, who has built the entire theory of his candidacy around the idea that he is an efficient chief executive of Florida who pays attention to detail. Even Trump used to be able to put out 280 characters on Twitter, admittedly often in a seemingly random order.

The sorry experience did little to suggest that Musk knows how to run a social media platform or that DeSantis is capable of governing a global superpower armed with nuclear weapons.

Seriously, neither of them could organize a 2 car funeral.

I am very amused.

Also, the law has not changed in Florida yet, so doesn't the announcement mean that Desantis has to resign as Florida Governor?

Has anyone filed suit yet?

1 First St NE, Washington, DC 20543

Here's how you get from the DoJ to the Supreme Court.
Now go and frog-march Clarence Thomas out of the Supreme Court in Handcuffs

Chief Justice John Roberts says that, "The Supreme Court will address ethics issues."

We already know the address of the ethics issues, it's up there, see? ↗

John Roberts is not going to do anything meaningful, that much was clear when he completely blew off Congressional oversight:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Tuesday night that he was “confident” the Supreme Court will convince the public that it “adheres to the highest standards of conduct.”

Accepting an award at the American Law Institute, Roberts did not directly comment on the controversies that have surrounded the court’s members and their financial disclosures or the mounting congressional pressure for a specific code of conduct for the Supreme Court.

But he said that disturbances outside the court have not affected the nine justices: “Inside the court, there is cause for optimism,” he said.

Then he added:

“I want to assure people that I’m committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct. We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment. And I am confident that there are ways to do that consistent with our status as an independent branch of government and the Constitution’s separation of powers.”

The translation of that statement is, "We don't care, we don't have to, we are the Supreme Court, bitches."

Nothing is going to change until there is an independent reckoning for the blatant corruption at the Court.

Corrupt as F%$#

Joe Manchin again:

After killing Joe Biden’s audacious Build Back Better legislation in 2021 and emerging as a constant roadblock to Democrats’ sweeping climate agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin’s sprawling coal empire became the focus of intense scrutiny for its impact on the citizens and ecosystem of northern West Virginia. What went unnoticed at the time was another company the senator is quietly profiting off of, housed in the very same building where his coal company Enersystems is headquartered, with an even greater reach.

Manchin has said in recent weeks that he won’t rule out running to replace Biden in the 2024 presidential election. He maintains a cozy relationship with the moderate political nonprofit No Labels, which has raised tens of millions of dollars to run a third-party presidential ticket in 2024, and he himself has raised millions from special interest groups cheering on his intransigence. But while Manchin has long cultivated the image of a liberty-loving champion, his financial ties to a biometric surveillance company draw a sharp contrast.

For decades, Manchin has been the landlord of the lucrative biometric surveillance firm co-founded in 1991 by his then-23-year-old daughter Heather Bresch, along with her late husband Jack Kirby and Manchin’s brother-in-law, Manuel Llaneza.

Bresch, as I have observed before, was Mylan Pharmaceuticals, and she engaged in egregious price gouging after she achieved a monopoly in Epinephrine pens.

The Manchin crime family™ appears to be very busy.

………

The firm received large contracts from the West Virginia state government in the years that Manchin served as secretary of state and then as governor. In more recent years, Tygart has secured tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts from law enforcement and defense agencies to supply biometric data collection services to intelligence operations in West Virginia and across the country.

Bresch has held no financial interests in the company since her divorce from Kirby in 1999, according to reporting from the Charleston Gazette, but she is still registered as an agent for the company, according to West Virginia Secretary of State records. Kirby died in 2019, but Tygart’s new president also has ties to the senator. John Waugaman served on Manchin’s transition team for governor, according to the company’s website, and has donated some $12,000 to Manchin in the past decade. Neither a spokesperson for Manchin nor Tygart Technology responded to The Intercept’s questions.

………

Tygart received its first contract from West Virginia in 2000, eventually billing the state for more than $6 million, including web service subcontracts worth tens of thousands of dollars. In 2006, the state auditor launched an investigation into the company as part of a larger audit request by then-Secretary of State Betty Ireland, embroiling Manchin, then governor, in a no-bid contract scandal for services rendered by Tygart Technology.

The obnoxious radical centrists on the national scene, Manchin, Sinema, Gottheimer, etc. seem to be even more corrupt than the Republicans.

I guess that if you are in politics, and you believe in nothing, then it's all about getting power and money.

Perhaps some effort should be made by the local law enforcement to do a deep dive on all 535 members of Congress.

It appears to be a target rich environment.

 

Headline of the Day

The Debt-Ceiling Crisis Is Christmas Morning for Ratfckers

—Charlie Pierce

(%$# mine)

The always readable Charlie Pierce has a way with words. 

Biden is, unfortunately, going to negotiate with the terrorists.

What he should do, to quote the late Alan Rickman, is, "Cut [their] heart out with a spoon."

Linkage

• Companies Are Pushing Back Harder on Union Efforts, Workers Say (New York Times) This will continue until we arrest executives who break the law in antiunion efforts.
• How elite psychological biases can explain a civilisation in free fall (¡Do Not Panic!) Money quote, "We cannot hope to break the cognitive biases of political and business elites. ……… Any change will have to come from the outside."
• Collections: On the Reign of Cleopatra (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry) A very interesting deep dive on Queen Cleopatra (technically Cleopatra VII Philopator).  Doesn't really talk the Netflix documentary, but he clearly decided to do the deep dive as a result of that documentary.  One of the interesting things is the paucity of historical sources.
• Communications Intelligence and Charges of U.S. Germ Warfare during the Korean War(Jeffrey Kaye) The allegations of the US use of biological warfare in the Korean War are not proved, but this deep dive (from 2020) shows them to be credible.
• FDIC Seizure of Foreign Deposits at SVB Opens Pandora’s Box at JPMorgan Chase and Citi – Which Hold a Combined $1 Trillion in Foreign Deposits with No FDIC Insurance (Wall Street on Parade) Foreign held deposits of Silicon Valley Bank have been seized by the FDIC, because they are forbidden from insuring foreign accounts.  The same thing could happen to even larger banks.
• Harvard Law School Professor Wants 'State Power' To Exact 'Sting Of Political Enmity' On Baseball Team Over Pride Night (Above the Law) HLS prof Adrian Vermeule, who pays for a Twitter blue check-mark, is calling for organizations that have pride nights being persecuted by the state.  He is a part of the long and undistinguished tradition of Catholic Fascism.

Kitties, big f%$#ing kitties:

Always Been a Scam

Preach it John Oliver!

As I have noted on multiple occasions, carbon offsets are a scam. 

They are a way for non-profits, and brokers, to get money for things like protecting forests from logging that will never be logged, or, in more extreme cases, forests that have never existed.

David Antonioli, the CEO of Verra, which is responsible for the vast bulk of the certifications of these instruments after revelations that more than 90% of the offsets that it certified are fraudulent.

The process of buying and selling carbon credits is inherently criminogenic, kind of like cryptocurrency.

That fraud has taken over is a shame, but not a surprise:

The head of the world’s leading carbon credit certifier has announced he will step down as CEO next month.

It comes amid concerns that Verra, a Washington-based nonprofit, approved tens of millions of worthless offsets that are used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments, according to a joint Guardian investigation earlier this year.

In a statement on LinkedIn on Monday, Verra’s CEO, David Antonioli, said he would leave his role after 15 years leading the organisation that dominates the $2bn voluntary carbon market, which has certified more than 1bn credits through its verified carbon standard (VCS).

………

The announcement follows a difficult period for Verra, which has seen the environmental integrity of their carbon standard satirised by the comedian John Oliver and journalistic exposés about the integrity of their carbon credit certification process. [The vid is above]

In January, a nine-month investigation by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and the investigative group SourceMaterial found Verra rainforest credits used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations were largely worthless, often based on stopping the destruction of rainforests that were not threatened, according to independent studies. It also found evidence of forced evictions at a flagship scheme co-operated by Conservation International in Peru.

Antonioli strongly rejected the findings of the investigation and defended Verra’s impact on the conservation of rainforests. The organisation is in the process of introducing new rules for generating rainforest carbon credits, with all projects set to be using the new system by mid-2025.

Translation, "We are doing nothing wrong, and we promise never to do it again." 

I know that I say this way too often, but the people who are engaged in these frauds should be frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

Carbon taxes are cheaper to administer and far less vulnerable to fraud, and the enforcement on transnational trade can follow the same model used for a value added tax.

The only advantage to cap and trade, and this applies only if you are a corrupt sociopath, is that you and your fellow Wall Street or City of London friends can make back sitting astride the transactions and extracting a toll.