About F%$#ing Time

It appears that courts are increasingly rejecting the late Robert Bork's corrupt intellectual whoring for concentrated corporate power.

In the latest case, Federal Judge Florence Pan, of the the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has rejected the Penguin Random House bid to acquire Simon & Schuster.

This is a good thing for authors, book stores, and readers:

A federal judge blocked on Monday a bid by Penguin Random House, the biggest book publisher in the United States, to buy one of its main rivals, Simon & Schuster, in a significant victory for the Biden administration, which is trying to expand the boundaries of antitrust enforcement.

The judge, Florence Y. Pan, who heard the case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, said in an order that the Justice Department had demonstrated that the merger might “substantially” harm competition in the market for U.S. publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books.

………

The victory is a notable one for the Justice Department. Judges have ruled against several of its previous challenges to corporate deals, including UnitedHealth Group’s purchase of a technology company. In a statement on Monday, the Justice Department hailed the ruling as a win for authors and readers.

“The proposed merger would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth, and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the department’s antitrust division.

………

In seeking to block the merger, the government argued that the deal would leave authors with fewer options for getting their work published, lead to lower advances for writers and even cause a reduction in the number and diversity of titles published.

………

The Justice Department’s focus on author earnings, rather than harm to consumers, marked a shift in how the government applies antitrust law. Antitrust policy has largely been guided for decades by an effort to prevent large corporations from imposing higher costs on consumers, rather than focusing on the impact a monopoly might have on workers, suppliers or competitors. By zeroing in on the potential harm to authors, the Justice Department signaled that it’s taking a broader view of the possible impact of consolidation.

Time to let Robert Bork rot in his grave.

Snark of the Day

Let me know when they name Dr. Who Prime Minister

— From Keith Olbermann's podcast today (October 31, at 29:40 in the podcast.)

He declared current (at the time that I am typing this, anyway) UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who got excoriated by an octogenarian hospital patient when he visited an NHS facility.

That is gonna leave a mark.

Linkage

• Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part III (Age of Invention) A nice series on how various technical and societal factors led to the modern steam engine.
• Officials: Hadley woman uses bees to attack deputies during eviction (Western Mass News) Keeping the Pioneer Valley weird.
• Why Neoliberalism Needs Neofascists (Boston Review) Money quote, "The neofascist assault on democracy is a last-ditch effort on the part of neoliberal capitalism to rescue itself from crisis. The only solution is a decisive retreat from globalized finance."
• U.S. judge: Passengers in fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes are 'crime victims' (Reuters) This may have the effect of invalidating the sweetheart deal between the DoJ and Boeing.  (I Wish)
• Promoting Stability or Fueling Conflict? The Impact of U.S. Arms Sales on National and Global Security (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft) Short version, the US is not the arsenal of democracy, it's just an arsenal, and our arms sale policies are destructive both to world security and US interests.
• Penguin feathers may be secret to effective anti-icing technology (Phys.org) Nature is amazing.
• Tornado Cash Is Not Free Speech. It’s a Golem (Lawfare) Tornado Cash is a software moderated crypto exchange.  It's also a way for the operators to avoid any responsibility for illegal activities, "It's just the software," which is the real goal of such an operation.
• Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service (The Markup) Digital redlining, when black households get charged the same for much less bandwidth.
• Danny Masterson's Trial in One of Biggest in Scientology History (Insider) I have been following the Church of Scientology since the days of Alt.Religion.Scientology on Usenet.  Their official policy on dealing with critics and with celebrity resembles a protection racket.
• How To Get the Most Candy on Halloween (Without Resorting to Extortion) (Sci Tech Daily) Who says that science is too removed from our real needs?

I've always liked this tech, but was only saw service in aircraft in the 1930s:

Brazil Just Dodged a Bullet

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro in Brazilian Presidential elections.

Hopefully, Lula has learned from what happened last time, and realizes that the opposition will stop at nothing to destroy him. (Impeaching his successor on bogus charges, and engaging in a corrupt prosecution of Lula , with CIA assistance, etc.)

Lula needs to break the corrupt political elites, because otherwise, they will do this again.

It was closer than it should have been though:

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reclaimed the office Sunday on pledges to defend democracy, save the Amazon rainforest and bring social justice to Latin America’s largest nation, defeating Brazil’s Trumpian incumbent in a remarkable political comeback some three years after he walked out of a prison cell.

The victory for Lula, who served two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, returns a leftist titan of the Global South to the world stage, where his progressive voice will stand in sharp contrast to that of right-wing — and now one-term — President Jair Bolsonaro. For Latin America, Lula’s return to the Planalto Palace adds the regional giant to a streak of wins by the left: Lula joins a club of leaders who have now bested the political right in Colombia, Chile, Peru, Honduras, Argentina and Mexico.

His win, which followed a slugfest of a campaign in a deeply divided country awash in fake news and explosive rhetoric, came amid allegations of official suppression of the vote by Bolsonaro’s allies in the police. Overall, the race sounded strong echoes of the 2020 showdown in the United States between Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. It pitted Bolsonaro, 67, a staunch Trump ally, against Lula, 77, a stalwart of the traditional left who moved to the center during the campaign. Lula’s strength lay in female and low-income voters — particularly the Northeast, heavily populated by people of color — but also in social progressives and power brokers disturbed by Bolsonaro’s authoritarian bent.

Lula has pledged a unity government to work on mending the breaches in Brazilian society of the kind that, in an era of toxic politics, have taken root in democracies across the globe. The margin — Lula won by less than two percentage points — was the closest in Brazilian history. It was the first time an incumbent ran for a second term and lost.

It was 50.9% to 49.1%.

A unity government is a very bad idea.  Any members of the opposition he brings in will be dedicated to sabotaging his government.

The "conservatives" and the "center left" are two sides of the same coin, they just fight over whose turn it is, and both sides are terrified at the idea that government will work for people.

Still Cannot Make Planes, and They Don’t Want To

Boeing is considering cancelling its 737 MAX 7 & 10 because they do not want to pay to fix them properly.

Basically, in response to the 737 MAX crashes, the a law was passed to require improvement in cockpit displays, but there was a grandfather period that ends at the end of this year.

Boeing does not want to fix this, because it costs money, and because it might require more extensive pilot retraining, so they are considering throwing in the towel on these two models:

Boeing may terminate the 737 MAX 7 program if the deadline for a cockpit warning system is not extended, blocking certification.

CEO David Calhoun previously said the 737 MAX 10 program might be certified.

In a federal filing of the 10Q quarterly report today, Boeing added that the MAX 7’s future is in doubt.

“If the Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act (ACSAA) deadline is not amended [beyond Dec. 27 this year] and we otherwise fail to achieve certification, we might choose to discontinue the MAX 7 and/or MAX 10, resulting in future earnings charges and other financial impacts. We may be able to partially mitigate some of these financial impacts to the extent that customers exercise substitution rights into MAX 8 and/or MAX 9 aircraft,” Boeing wrote in its 10Q.

Certification targets

“The 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10 models are currently going through Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification activities. We are following the lead of the FAA as we work through the certification process, and currently expect the 737 MAX 7 to be certified in 2022 or 2023 and enter service in 2023, and the 737 MAX 10 to begin FAA certification flight testing in 2022 or 2023 and enter service in 2023 or 2024,” Boeing wrote.

“However, Section 116 of the December 2020 ACSAA prohibits the FAA from issuing a type certificate to aircraft after December 27, 2022, unless the aircraft’s flight crew alerting system meets certain specifications. With safety as our primary focus, we continue to work to meet all current regulatory requirements to support certification and are also engaged in discussions with stakeholders concerning a possible extension to the ACSAA’s December 27, 2022, deadline.”

This is what happens when the finance types take over from engineers.

Boeing is in a McDonnell style death spiral.

Covid Update

I slept most of the day, and I still have a bit of a cough, but I am definitely on the mend.

I will probably return to the office on Tuesday.

So Much for the Deal

After a "Deal" was cut to stop a potential nationwide rail strike, we now have a second railroad union rejecting the contract.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a failure, in any case it means that any rail strike is pushed beyond the mid-terms, and the cynic in me believes that was the real goal of the Biden Administration's intervention in the strike:

A second railroad union voted on Wednesday against ratifying the tentative agreement brokered between the railroad managers, unions and members of President Joe Biden's administration. The move increases the possibility of a strike in November that would endanger the national supply chain if a deal is not reached.

The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, which represents over 6,000 workers in the United States, announced that its members voted to reject the tentative agreement, sending the union back to the bargaining table with management.

In a statement, union president Michael Baldwin notes that it's the first time the union has voted against ratifying an agreement.

Sick leave policies continue to be at the center of talks. Unions argue current policies don't allow workers to take personal or sick time off. While the presidential emergency board (PEB) appointed by President Biden negotiated increases in wages, it did not address the leave policies.

………

BRS, which represents workers who install and maintain signal systems, is not the only one. The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, the third largest railroad union, voted earlier this month to also reject the agreement. All 12 unions would need to independently accept a deal in order to avoid a potential strike.

The railroads will not negotiate in good faith unless Joe Biden explicitly states that he will veto any legislation, whether under Taft-Hartley or any other law, to force the railroad employees back to work. 

The Railroads, and the increased power that they wield through regional monopolies, are the source of this problem, and turning the antitrust cannon on them would help as well.

There Was a Little Girl, and She Had a Little Bird, and She Called It by the Pretty Name of Enza*

In addition to Covid, and the prospect of nuclear war, it now appears that this year's flu season is on a path to be the worst in over a decade.

Following two years of extraordinary mild Flu seasons, largely because of masking, even as half-assed as it has been in the United States, this winter promises to be relatively mask free, with a healthcare system that is running on fumes.

Between Covid and Influenza we are in for a rough ride:

Influenza is hitting the United States unusually early and hard, resulting in the most hospitalizations at this point in the season in more than a decade and underscoring the potential for a perilous winter of respiratory viruses, according to federal health data released Friday.

While flu season is usually between October and May, peaking in December and January, it’s arrived about six weeks earlier this year with uncharacteristically high illness. There have already been at least 880,000 cases of influenza illness, 6,900 hospitalizations and 360 flu-related deaths nationally, including one child, according to estimates released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not since the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic has there been such a high burden of flu, a metric the CDC uses to estimate a season’s severity based on laboratory-confirmed cases, doctor visits, hospitalizations and deaths.

Not good.

^*It's from a nursury rhyme circa 1918.
It concludes thusly:
But one day it flew away,
but it didn't go to stay,
For when she raised the window,
in-flu-Enza.

Not Good

It appears that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco home was targeted by a right wing terrorist, and her husband was severely injured in a hammer attack.

In the early hours of Friday morning, the intruder entered through a back door of the stately home in San Francisco’s upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood, yelling, “Where is Nancy?”

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, was thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., protected by her security detail, but her husband, 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, was home. By the time police officers arrived after being dispatched at 2:27 a.m., they found the assailant and Mr. Pelosi wrestling for control of a hammer. The intruder then pulled the hammer away and “violently attacked” Mr. Pelosi with it in front of the officers, said William Scott, San Francisco’s chief of police.

As leaders from across the political spectrum rushed to condemn the attack, Mr. Pelosi underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture and other injuries. He remained in a San Francisco hospital on Friday afternoon and was expected to make a full recovery, according to Speaker Pelosi’s office.

While the police said they were still investigating the motive and were questioning a suspect they had in custody, the incident heightened fears of political violence less than two weeks before the midterm elections. The assault came as threats and violence against political figures have surged in America, especially after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which brought the Democratic speaker, other lawmakers and the Republican vice president within feet of rioters threatening their lives.

“This was not a random act,” Chief Scott said. “This was intentional.”

This is stochastic terrorism.

Someone talks to their followers about how Nancy Pelosi is evil incarnate, and they know that among the thousands in their audience, there will be someone unbalanced enough, and radicalized enough to engage in violence.

It looks like a lone wolf attach, but it is the intent of the original speaker, whether it be the late and unlamented Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Glen Beck, etc.

Their goal is to foment violence against their opponents while keeping their own hands clean.

Law enforcement should be taking this much more seriously.

How Do You Make Elon Musk and Twitter Even Stupider?

This is an easy question.  The answer is that you try to use crypto/blockchain to solve the multitude of problems experienced by the platform.

If there is anything that is clear from the past 13 years, is that crypto, and blockchain, are not a solution for anything, unless your question is, "How do I steal from stupid people?"

Binance is creating an internal team to help Twitter fight bot accounts using blockchain and crypto, the exchange confirmed to Decrypt on Friday.

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange today announced itself as an equity investor in Twitter, pledging $500 million towards helping bridge social media and news to Web3.

Elon Musk on Thursday completed a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. The world’s richest man and CEO of electric car company Tesla has repeatedly complained about spam accounts on the social media platform.

Right now, it's not clear if Elon and Twitter are a part of this effort.  If they are, it looks like Twitter is gotten even more stupid with Musk's acquisition.

Racist Trolls Return to Twitter

It is rather unsurprising that with Musk's acquisition of Twitter, racists and bigots feel entitled to return their hatred and bile to the platform.

I cannot imagine why this scabrous lot hink that just because Elon Musk bought Twitter, that their vitriol will be tolerated?

Where do they think they are?  Tesla's assembly shop floor?*

This is not surprising.  The Apartheid era emerald mine heir™ has a long history of complete disinterest in issues relating to bias and bigotry:

An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over the social network, raising fears that his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate.

The flood of racist posts was among the most prominent signs of how Twitter had changed in the first hours of Musk’s ownership. But those who were expecting even bigger changes, such as the restoration of former president Donald Trump’s account and the layoff of hundreds if not thousands of Twitter employees, will have to wait longer.

Musk on Friday tweeted that he would make “no major content decisions or account reinstatements” until the convening of a new “moderation council.” He promised that the council would have “widely diverse viewpoints” but offered no other information about who would be on it, how its members would be selected, what authority it would have or whether its views would be binding on the company.

To quote drumming giant and Rush lyracist Neil Peart, "If you choose not to decide,  you still have made a choice."

Unfortunately for Twitter, their advertising clients understand this as well:

Twitter did hear from one major advertiser, however, the auto manufacturer General Motors, which told CNBC that it was temporarily suspending advertising on the platform until the direction of the company under Musk becomes clearer. On Thursday, Musk tried to assuage advertiser worries in a tweeted letter in which he promised that the site would not become a “hellscape” or a “free-for-all” and pledged that the app would remain “warm and welcoming to all.”

The reality of those worries became clear after Musk closed the $44 billion deal, however, becoming Twitter’s owner and firing the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief policy officer and general counsel.

Within hours, Musk’s portrayal of himself as a “free speech absolutist” and his fierce criticism of the company’s previous leaders as overly rigid and suppressive seemed to have encouraged a wide range of anonymous Twitter accounts to act as if his takeover meant the old rules against bigotry no longer applied.

“Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K---S AND N-----S,” said one account, using slurs for Jews and Black people. “I can freely express how much I hate n-----s … now, thank you elon,” another said.

The hellscape has become a little bit more hellish in the last day or so.

I expect this to continue for the immediate future, at least until Twitter's advertisers start following GM out the door en masse.

^*In response to repeated allegations of racism on the Tesla shop floor, Elon Musk suggested that employees needed to develop a thick skin.

And Another Clown Emerges from the Clown Car

I am referring, of course, to the Tory clown car, and their latest PM, Rishi Sunak, who become next British Prime Minister.

He appears to be a little bit less cartoonishly stupid than his two predecessors, but, notwithstanding his South Asian roots, he grew up Richie Rich wealthy, and I would not be surprised if he has never actually bought anything in a store.

It will be interesting to see how he tries, or eschews, any attempts to fake the common touch:

Rishi Sunak is about to become the UK’s first prime minister of colour and the first Hindu prime minister, both milestones in Britain’s evolution as a multicultural and multi-faith society.

Although there has been a marked increase in politicians of colour being appointed to senior cabinet roles, including the key posts of chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary, the UK has never had a black or brown prime minister before.

It was “an historic moment” that “simply would not have been possible even a decade or two ago,” said Sunder Katwala of the British Future thinktank, which focuses on identity and race.

“It shows that public service in the highest office in Britain can be open to those of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. This will be a source of pride to many British Asians – including many who do not share Rishi Sunak’s Conservative politics.”

Sunak is a practising Hindu, although he has rarely talked publicly about his faith. He was named as the UK’s next leader on Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world. It celebrates new beginnings and the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness.

Two years ago, when Sunak was chancellor, he lit candles to mark Diwali on the doorstep of No 11 Downing Street at a time when Covid restrictions remained in force.

There will be a lot of ink spilled on Sunak's color, but the only color (or colour) that really matters here is the color of money.

I expect him to last longer than Liz Truss, but even Mayflies are stunned at the shortness of her tenure.

Headline of the Day

Maybe If Alito Doesn't Want to Be Criticized for a Lack of Integrity, He Should Show Some

—Charles P. Pierce at Esquire

Samuel Alito is a whiny bitch.

Elon Owns Twitter

Never missed Tom from MySpace so much in my entire life… pic.twitter.com/1Bl2v985mt

— Stephen Karpeles (@stephenkarpeles) October 28, 2022

Full disclosure, I was never on MySpace

So, contractary to my predictions, it appears that Elon Musk has actually purchased Twitter.

He has started firing senior executives, including much in the way of the protection team. 

My condolences to anyone who works on Twitter, and if you don't and you rely on Twitter for your livelihood, find another platform:

After months of waffling, lawsuits, verbal mudslinging and the near miss of a full blown trial, Elon Musk now owns Twitter.

On Thursday night, Mr. Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy the social media service, said three people with knowledge of the situation. He also began cleaning house, with at least four top Twitter executives — including the chief executive and chief financial officer — getting fired on Thursday. Mr. Musk had arrived at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday and met with engineers and ad executives.

The closing of the deal, which followed months of drama and legal challenges as Mr. Musk changed his mind about buying the company, sets Twitter on an uncertain course. Mr. Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has said that he wants to make the social media platform a more freewheeling place for all types of commentary and that he would “reverse the permanent ban” of former President Donald J. Trump from the service.

I'm not sure how much letting Trump back on the platform will say about Twitter, but it will say a awful lot about the Apartheid Era Emerald Mine Heir.

………

The Twitter executives who were fired on Thursday include Parag Agrawal, the chief executive; Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, the top legal and policy executive; and Sean Edgett, the general counsel, said two people with knowledge of the matter. At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office, they said.

Also, this is kind of pathological:

………

Mr. Musk has set some ambitious goals for Twitter, which he has said he will transform into an “everything app” called X. In presentations to investors about the deal this spring, he said he anticipated that Twitter would reach annual revenue of $26.4 billion and have 931 million users by 2028. The company reported $5.08 billion in revenue last year and had more than 200 million users.

Elon Musk is still suffering butt-hurt when PayPal was chosen as the branding over X.com over 20 years ago. 

My prediction for Twitter?  

If he lets Trump back on the platform, it will be a bloodbath, with institutional knowledge fleeing, and probably monkey-wrenching the platform on the way out.

It will remain a nihilistic hellscape in the best case scenario.

It's Thursday, and

And we have initial unemployment claims rose slightly, up to 217,000 from 214,000, 3rd quarter GDP rose at a 2.6% annual rate, and home mortgages hit 7%, more than twice the rate was a year ago.

I'm certain that we are going to end up in a recession, if just because the psychopathic bankers at the Federal Reserve are determined to create a recession.

As to the timing and the depth of the recession?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Elections Have Consequences

There are few industries that are more abusive and more anti-competitive than the poultry industry.

Chicken farmers are about one step up from chattel slavery, and now Biden officials at the Justice Department have initiated an investigation of the poultry processors treatment of farmers.

This is both good policy and good politics:

The Justice Department is investigating how poultry companies pay their chicken farmers, the latest move by the government to clamp down on an industry payment system that has been criticized by some farmers.

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.  the second-largest U.S. poultry processor by sales volume, said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it learned earlier this month that the Justice Department had opened a civil probe into chicken-grower contracts and payment practices. The Colorado-based company said it would cooperate with the Justice Department.

The Justice Department has similarly notified other poultry companies, people familiar with the matter said.

………

Chicken farmers generally work under contracts in which poultry companies own the birds and feed, and instruct farmers how to grow the chicks. About two dozen farmers in a given region are typically compared against one another to determine their payment rates, using a sliding scale analyzing their chicken production, according to farmers and industry officials. It is an arrangement known in the industry as the tournament system.

Some chicken growers have complained that the many variables involved in chicken farming make it too difficult under the tournament system to gauge how much income they’ll be bringing in from flock to flock. Chicken companies have pushed back on the criticism, calling the system a performance-based structure that keeps prices down at supermarkets, incentivizes farmers to maximize efficiency and safeguards chickens’ health.

The method is used by many large U.S. chicken companies to pay growers and has drawn scrutiny from the Agriculture Department, which in May proposed new rules around the system that the agency said would increase transparency.

………

The probe into poultry farmers’ pay comes as the Biden administration has pushed to curb the power of large agriculture companies, accusing them of using their size to raise costs for consumers while underpaying farmers.

Unlike his two two Democratic predecessors, it appears that Joe Biden is actually interested in making government work for people.

This is a good thing.

 

Not a Surprise

Argo AI, a joint venture of Ford and Volkswagen dedicated to developing self driving cars, is shutting down operations, because they have determined that self-driving is not technically feasible at this time.

This has been abundantly clear for a few decades that the claims of self-driving cars are so much humbug.

Much like fusion power, self driving has been a decade away for decades:

Argo AI, a self-driving vehicle group jointly backed by Ford and Volkswagen, is abruptly shutting down operations after six years of development.

Establishing fully driverless technology that is profitable and scalable would cost billions of dollars and take at least half a decade, John Lawler, chief financial officer at Ford, said as the company reported results on Wednesday.

“We’ve looked at this every way you can,” he said. “And we just see the profitability . . . a long way out.”

The shutdown follows years of consolidation as Uber, Lyft and others have thrown in the towel upon realising that the dream of robotaxis is more distant than the industry had envisioned five years ago, when big sums of money flowed to small start-ups, and major automakers feared that their business model was at risk.

………

Meanwhile, industry leaders Cruise, owned by GM, and Alphabet’s Waymo were last valued at $30bn and continue to expand efforts in multiple cities.

Yeah, valued at $30 billion the same way that WeWork was, with venture capital, particular Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Corp bidding up the value, and then getting out before the house or cards collapses.

Once again, we don't get self-driving cars, but the VC's make their vig, and the ordinary investor is left holding the bag.

Still a Few Bugs in the System

So, there I am looking at my web page, and what ad pops up?

Yep, you got it, an ad for Cardi B's fashion line.

First, this is arguably the blog least likely to give useful fashion advice to anyone.

Second, this is arguably the blog least likely to provide useful insight into Rap.  It's just not my thing.

Third, my reader(s) are unlikely to come here for items one or two.

Forth, I know nothing about Amish delicatessens. (She worked at one as a teen, I Wiki, after all)

There are some things that she and I share, like a fondness for Bernie Sanders' political agenda, but it's ludicrous that Google's algorithms to put up this ad on my blog targeting my readers. (Though, that is a rather fetching picture of her)

This is yet another example of how surveillance based advertising just does not work as promised.

It's still all just a crap shoot.

My standard disclaimer on any post about the the ads on my blog applies:

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

From the Department of About F%$#ing Time

People are finally beginning to question the wisdom of outsourcing the whole of monetary policy to a bunch of unelected bankers.

Even if said bankers are not corrupt (and a lot of them are very corrupt, see here, here, here, here, and here), they are bankers, which means that the preconceptions of big finance drive their decisions, which is detrimental to the economy and the vast bulk of the population.

We've had 50 years of central bankers as masters of the universe, and we have had falling wages, an economy increasingly divorced from actual productive works, rent-seeking, and corruption:

Three weeks ago, Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister, retweeted a link to an article by a Finnish academic together with the following quote: “There is something seriously wrong with the prevailing ideas of monetary policy when central banks protect their credibility by driving economies into recession.”

Defenders of those prevailing ideas predictably pushed back, warning against second-guessing independent central banks or not valuing their credibility. But defensiveness is the wrong response. Not just because Marin didn’t actually criticise any central bank actions. But, more profoundly, because avoiding a debate over whether our macroeconomic regime is fit for purpose is more perilous than having one.

Comparisons with the 1970s often fail to notice one important lesson of that decade: a macroeconomic regime that cannot justify itself will be toppled, first intellectually, then politically. It was from the ashes of 1970s monetary chaos that theories were born justifying independent central banks with a mandate to keep inflation low. Before the century was out, independent inflation-targeting was de rigueur in most advanced economies.

………

With cost of living crises biting and recessions looming in key advanced economies, what are the odds of avoiding a more profound reckoning for much longer? Marin is not the only national leader expressing unease about central banks. French president Emmanuel Macron recently worried aloud about “experts and European monetary policymakers telling us we must crush European demand to contain inflation better”.

Even with relatively few central banks that have dual charges, like the Federal Reserve which is charged to both maximize employment and minimize inflation, maximizing economic well being is defined as making sure that Wall Street and the City of London are insulated from the consequences of their actions.

One of the problems with government by experts is that these experts are often incapable seeing beyond people like themselves.

This is why politics needs to be a part of these sort of decision, because having an economy run by bankers for bankers does not work for anyone but bankers.

Covid Update

I have discovered something important.

Covid makes assembling Ikea even worse.

At least my work from home setup is complete.

Linkage

• Louisiana's Corporate Subsidy Reforms Worked, Pass It On (Boondoggle) The state is no longer able to sign away city and county (Parish) taxes in corporate incentives.
  
• America’s Lost Crops Rewrite the History of Farming (The Atlantic) Paleobotany at its finest
  
• June Homes 'Reinvents' Having a Roommate and It Sounds Less Than Ideal (Hell Gate) Yet another case where the app based economy is more about abusing would be customers.
  
• Softest Toilet Paper Will Be More Expensive With Ban on Russian Wood (Bloomberg) The cutoff of the Russian Birch supply gets us where we sit.
• How lawyers became sadists (Pluralistic) How our current system incentivizes psychopathic behavior.
  
• S. Korea “Sender Pays” Is a Warning, Not a Model, or Why (Almost) Everyone Keeps Telling the EU This Is a VERY Bad Idea. (Wetmachine) The constant lobbying of list mile servers to let them charge Netflix, etc.  Money quote, "S. Korea is not a model — either for the EU or the US or anywhere else. It is a warning. The fact that this powerful, real world example cannot kill the “sending party network pays/content provider pays/bandwidth hog/whatever you call it just give me the other guy’s money on top of my subscription fees” zombie is a true tribute to the power of carrier lobbyists and the magical thinking of certain policymakers." 
• Exclusive: Amazon’s attrition costs $8 billion annually according to leaked documents. And it gets worse. (Endgadget) Cruelty is not driven by profits, but by a philosophy that prizes cruelty over profit.
• Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows (The Guardian) Anthropogenic climate change or another pandemic?  Why not both?
  

This is the most cringe-worthy music video of all times: (Not responsible for negative health effects from viewing)

Not Enough Bullets

Now that the Federal Reserve is attempting to push the US economy into a recession, US companies are frantically redesigning their benefit plans for senior executives, because stock options suck when the stock price falls.

Nothing much to protect the the companies, or their normal employees, because senior executives have decided that senior executives ridiculous pay packages must be preserved, because ……… Capitalism!!!

There needs to be legislation to prevent this sort of routine looting of American businesses:

Executives at some of America’s publicly listed companies will earn millions of dollars in equity-based bonuses this year because sympathetic boards have reworked their incentive plans — even though stock market declines have wiped trillions of dollars off corporate valuations.

Companies adjusted bonus plans in 2020 to account for the coronavirus pandemic and have since revisited pay and eased performance assessments in response to inflation, energy crises and other macroeconomic problems, said Matteo Tonello, a managing director at the Conference Board, an economic research organisation.

Among them are hard drive manufacturer Western Digital, which this month said it paid chief executive David Goeckeler $32mn, up from $17mn in 2021, after scrapping performance goals tied to its share price. Western Digital’s shares are down more than 47 per cent in 2022, compared to about a loss of 22 per cent for the S&P 500 index.

Aircraft parts manufacturer AAR Corp said last month that chief John Holmes was awarded $7.3mn in stock to compensate him for pay lost due to bonus restrictions applied to companies that took Covid-19 relief funds from the government.

Office furniture company MillerKnoll, which makes Aeron chairs and Noguchi tables, paid its chief executive Andrea Owen $1mn this year after adjusting annual bonus criteria for all eligible employees to compensate for “ongoing supply chain constraints”. 

………

Medical products manufacturers Abiomed and Bio-Rad Laboratories dropped options as part of executive pay packages in favour of stock, establishing “a less risky mix of equity for executives”, according to VerityData.

Udemy, an education technology company that went public last year, this month said it cancelled a performance-based option grant given to president Gregory Brown and replaced it with stock to pay out as long as he stays with the company. Its share price is down 50 per cent since its initial public offering last year.

Senior executives are supposed to be rewarded for improving shareholder value, hence stock options, that only have value if the stock price rises.

Now that we are no longer in a bull market, the senior executives will be rewarded for ……… Heads I win, tails you lose economics.

The US business is a self serving rent-seeking morass of corruption.

Wingnut Welfare

After decades of dubious vote suppression efforts, a history of fraudulent business practices, and the wholehearted support of the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy", the law has finally caught up with serial con men Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.

Wohl was banned by the National Futures Association from trading for life before he was old enough to drink.

Both of them have been repeatedly implicated in political and financial fraud repeatedly:

Two right-wing operatives pleaded guilty on Monday in Cleveland to single felony counts of telecommunications fraud for having placed thousands of false robocalls in Ohio that told people they could be arrested or be forced to receive vaccinations based on information they submitted in votes by mail.

Jacob Wohl, 24, of Irvine, California, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Virginia, could each receive a year in prison when they are sentenced Nov. 29 in common pleas court. They were indicted in October 2020 on numerous counts of telecommunications fraud and bribery.

Wohl’s attorney, Mark Wieczorek, declined to comment about the his client’s plea. Burkman’s attorney, Brian Joslyn, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

The two men were accused of arranging for a voice broadcast service to make about 85,000 robocalls to predominantly Black neighborhoods in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois during the runup to the 2020 general election. Prosecutors said the pair were responsible for 3,500 calls to residents of Cleveland and East Cleveland.

I really hope that the plea deal includes a requirement to cooperate with further investigations, because someone has been knowingly funding their fraudulent activities.

There was a whole network behind their activities, and they knew Wohl's and Burkman's criminal methods, and they continued to support them in any number of ways.

That's a criminal conspiracy, and it should be pursued as far as the trail leads.

Daily Covid Update

Well, improvement continues, but I still do not feel up to the a long drive (more than about 10 miles).

The antivirals seem to be working for Charlie and Sharon.

Nakedly Corrupt

Even if Clarence Thomas consulted with his Supreme Court colleagues before issuing a stay against Lindsay Graham's being forced to comply with a subpoena that he testify before a Georgia grand jury regarding election interference, the decision is deeply corrupt.

Given that his wife is hip deep in this matter, the Code of Conduct for United States Judges explicitly states that a judge should recuse themselves in such matters when there is even the appearance of impropriety.

Of course, the Supreme Court, for reasons unclear to me, are not subject to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, but this is still a kick in the teeth at the idea of judicial probity:

Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday put a temporary hold on an order that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) appear before a Georgia grand jury investigating possible attempts by President Donald Trump and his allies to disrupt the state’s 2020 presidential election.

Thomas’s brief order appears to be an attempt to maintain the status quo as Graham’s petition to the Supreme Court advances. Prosecutors face a Thursday deadline for responding to Graham’s request, which usually means the full court will consider the issue.

Last week, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit turned down an attempt by Graham to block a subpoena from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D), in which the lawmaker claimed a sitting senator is shielded from testifying in such investigations.

………

Graham’s petition went to Thomas because he is the justice designated to hear emergency requests from the 11th Circuit. Democrats have demanded Thomas recuse himself from any cases related to the 2020 election because of the activities of his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who actively protested the outcome. But justices make their own recusal decisions.

………

The Atlanta grand jury investigating alleged 2020 presidential election interference has heard testimony from several Trump lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Boris Epshteyn. Willis also wants to question former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Graham would be asked to testify about calls he made to Georgia election officials soon after Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. Prosecutors say Graham has “unique knowledge” about the Trump campaign and the “multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results” of the election in Georgia and elsewhere.

But Graham has said his actions were legitimate legislative activity protected by the Constitution’s “speech or debate clause.” The senator’s lawyers have said that they have been informed that Graham is a witness in — and not a target of — the investigation.

Graham's argument is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag.

Unlike Parliamentary Immunity in many nations, which protects its subjects from pretty much all criminal prosecution, Congressional Immunity has been very limited.  It could be used, for example, to get out of a speeding ticket if the Congressman was on his way to a session, but not for driving drunk (Wilbur Mills) after hours.

There is also the case of William Proxmire, whose claims of Congressional Immunity were soundly denied in response to a defamation suit regarding his "Golden Fleece" press releases.

That Clarence Thomas issued the injunction, rather than recusing himself, is a very clear indication of his lack of character.

Another (Daily?) Covid Update

I think that I'm improving.

I have far less coughing, but I still feel like I've been mugged.

Not going into work tomorrow.

A Good Start

US government pressure on antitrust has led to resignations of board members because of antitrust concerns.

The term for this interlocking directorates, and the idea is that by sharing board members, competitors can more easily collude:

Seven directors on the boards of five companies have resigned because of the U.S. Justice Department's concerns over the directors holding similar board positions at rival companies, the department said on Wednesday.

Three directors resigned from the board of IT management software company SolarWinds Corp, one because the person was on the boards of both SolarWinds and rival Dynatrace  as a representative of the private equity company Thoma Bravo. Two others representing Thoma Bravo on the SolarWinds board also resigned, the department said.

SolarWinds said in a legal filing dated Oct. 14 that the three board members had decided to resign after receiving a letter from the Justice Department alleging that their board service broke antitrust law. The filing said that they "chose to resign rather than to contest the allegations."

………

The U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division said in a statement that it planned to reinvigorate enforcement of rules that do not allow people to serve on the boards of companies that compete against each other.

"Competitors sharing officers or directors further concentrates power and creates the opportunity to exchange competitively sensitive information and facilitate coordination – all to the detriment of the economy and the American public," said Jonathan Kanter, head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, in a statement.

This has been the law for nearly a century, and it's nice that it is being enforced again.

I'd like to see it enforced strongly enough private equity and similar organizations off of boards of directors.

A Useful Insight into the UK Clusterf%$#

A historic failure pic.twitter.com/wZiQKaf8MR

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) October 18, 2022

Liz Truss is literally the creation of a globe panning network of reactionary free-market fundamentalist lobbying groups (often masquerading as "Think" Tanks) who shepherded her throughout her career.

She's not a Tory politician, she is an artificial life form grown in a petri dish by these folks.

This also explains why she was a failure, free market fundamentalism always founders against the rocks or reality.

Even in Chile, where Milton Friedman's Chicago boys has a fascist totalitarian state in place to prevent abuses, had to backtrack in less than a year because of rampant looting.

Corruption Much?

Throughout the Covid pandemic, federal officials clearly traded on insider knowledge.

We are referring to senior civil service members, not political appointees.

This is actually more concerning, because it reflects a corruption that permeates the senior ranks of the civil service, and not, for example, an artifact of the relative corruption of the specific administration:

Federal officials working on the government response to Covid-19 made well-timed financial trades when the pandemic began—both as the markets plunged and as they rallied—a Wall Street Journal investigation found.

In January 2020, the U.S. public was largely unaware of the threat posed by the virus spreading in China, but health officials were on high alert and girding for a crisis.

A deputy to top health official Anthony Fauci reported 10 sales of mutual funds and stocks totaling between $157,000 and $480,000 that month. Collectively, officials at another health agency, Health and Human Services, reported 60% more sales of stocks and funds in January than the average over the previous 12 months, driven by a handful of particularly active traders.

This is not to say that there was not corruption among political appointees, as the ever reliably corrupt Elaine Chao shows:

By March, agencies across the government were working on wide-reaching measures to prop the economy and markets. Then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao purchased more than $600,000 in two stock funds while her agency was involved in the pandemic response and her husband, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, was leading negotiations over a giant, market-boosting stimulus bill.

And as the government was devising a loan package aimed specifically at helping companies including Boeing Co. and General Electric Co., a Treasury Department official involved in administering the aid acquired shares of both companies.

………

On Jan. 24, four days after the CDC publicly reported the first confirmed U.S. Covid-19 infection, Hugh Auchincloss, principal deputy director at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, summed up the state of his agency in an email: “New coronavirus all the time.”

That same day, while the stock market remained lofty, Dr. Auchincloss reported selling $15,001 to $50,000 of a stock mutual fund. Days later he sold two more mutual funds and a stock, Chevron Corp., according to his financial disclosures, which give wide dollar ranges. That was just the beginning.

Dr. Auchincloss was invited to a Jan. 29 meeting of an NIH working group called the International Clinical Research Subcommittee. The top agenda item was “Wuhan coronavirus—plans for a response,” according to emails released in response to public-records requests.

………

Among officials involved in the CDC’s early pandemic response was Stephen Redd, a veteran epidemiologist serving as deputy director for Public Health Service and Implementation Science at the agency. His role involved collecting information about the state of the virus and the federal response in order to brief lawmakers.

The CDC had a clear view of the virus’s threat by the end of January, Dr. Redd later told a student interviewer in Atlanta. “It was easy to see it was going to be a really big problem,” he said.

Dr. Redd disclosed sales of between $95,004 and $250,000 in stocks and bonds in January. He reported the sale in February of $100,001 to $250,000 of bonds, along with purchases of between $2,002 and $30,000 of short-term bond funds, a low-risk investment.

Dr. Redd said he had no advance knowledge of these trades, which he said were in his wife’s retirement account and made by a financial adviser. He said he didn’t learn of them until that summer, although he was required by law to report any trades made in his or his wife’s accounts within 30 days.

Yeah, right. 

The article is a long read, and when one looks at all of these sales, which are all remarkably remunerative, and the suggestions that they had nothing to do with these decisions, that it was their brokers making these sale decisions.

Clearly their brokers are individuals whose knowledge of the market and the economy borders on the super-human, or the officials were trading on insider information.

I'm inclined to go with the the corrupt reality, and not the claims of broker omniscience.

Nothing will Fundamentally Change

In response to proposals by the SEC to make it more difficult for Wall Street firms to cheat their customers, a dozen Democratic Senators* wrote a letter to ask the any new regulations be slow-walked, because ……… I'm not sure, but given the amount of Wall Street money tha have funded these Senators' campaigns, I'll just call it corrupt hypocrisy.

Seruously, this is transparently obvious attempt to kill regulations because these Senators Wall Street masters have demanded it:

Senate Democrats are privately urging SEC Chair Gary Gensler to slow work and take more time for feedback on a slew of regulations rattling Wall Street, as tensions surrounding the agency’s Biden-era agenda reach a boiling point.

In a previously unreported letter, a dozen Democrats led by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana asked Gensler to give the public more time to weigh in on the raft of rules the agency is proposing. The SEC’s agenda includes a landmark climate risk disclosure rule for public companies, new transparency requirements for hedge funds and a revamp of the stock market’s plumbing.

The Democrats who signed the letter include: Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, Tom Carper and Chris Coons of Delaware, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Gary Peters of Michigan and John Hickenlooper of Colorado.

“It is critical that, as the SEC moves through the rulemaking processes, there is adequate time to evaluate each individual rule as well as how those rules interact with existing and other proposed rules,” the senators said, noting the “significant number of separate proposed rulemakings” on the SEC’s agenda.

………

The letter hits on what has become a growing sore point for corporate America: the length of comment periods in which the agency lets the public send feedback on proposed regulations.

Under Gensler, the SEC has been proposing more and more rules with what critics see as unnecessarily tight public comment windows, such as 30 or 45 days.

It's not enough time to ramp up the AstroTurf campaigns or to send lobbyists, checks in hand, to lobby members of Congress.

………

Gensler has pushed back on such concerns, saying that the law only requires the SEC to provide 30 days for comment. Even then, comment periods typically start when the proposal is published on the Federal Register, which is running on a lag of several weeks. In the meantime, comments can still be submitted to the SEC.

Gensler, and the Biden administration, should tell these Senators to go Cheney themselves.

The intent of the lobbyists is to push this beyond the mid-terms, when, if one of the houses flip Republican, the regulations will be extorted out of existence.

Crap like this is why people do not believe it when Democrats say that they are going to make things better.

^*Jon Tester (MT), Raphael Warnock (GA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ), Tom Carper (DE), Chris Coons (DE), Mark Warner (VA), Tim Kaine (VA), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jacky Rosen (NV), Gary Peters (MI), and John Hickenlooper (CO).

A Covid Update

Charlie and Sharon have gotten prescriptions for antivirals, I'm out of the window, so I just got a cough suppressant.

We all feel awful, as if we've been run over by a semi truck smuggling homicidal clowns to Fells Point.

Well, This Sucks Wet Farts From Dead Pigeons

Feeling awful enough that I took the day off from work.

Cough, sinus headache, body aches, generally feeling awful.

I went to urgent care, and tested positive for Covid.

It looks like the whole family has it, though Nat had not yet been tested.

It's been a week, so I past the window for the anti-viral.

Light posting for a while while I deal with a slightly less virulent version of the Andromeda Strain.  (Not really a joke.  Michael Crichton's pathogen attacked endothelial cells in the circulatory system as well.)

How to Make a John Waters Story Even More Epic

You just add Angela Lansbury and a notorious New York "dungeon like" sex club.

Much like all John Waters stories, this story is kind of sweet, very respectful, and profoundly weird.

Legendary filmmaker John Waters has claimed he once saw the late icon Angela Lansbury in a “dungeon-like sex club” in New York City.

Waters first revealed that he saw Lansbury, who tragically died at the age of 96 on 11 October, in the sex club Hellfire in the eighties in his 2019 book Mr Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder.

However he revealed to Page Six on Tuesday (18 October) that her presence in the club – which catered to “gay and straight perverts alike” – was not surprising, but “welcoming”.

The Pink Flamingos director told the outlet: “[Lansbury] was pure class even 40 years ago when these kind of clubs were all the rage.

“It may have been the only night she was ever there, but just her presence made Hellfire a little more welcoming.”

He added that it was not uncommon to see “lots of celebrities” at clubs like Hellfire, explaining that he had also seen Andy Warhol and Truman Capote at the sex club.

“Everybody went. She wasn’t doing anything,” Waters added.

John Waters is the Patron Saint of Baltimore.

It's Thursday, So

We have the latest unemployment numbers, and initial unemployment claims fell by 12,000 to 214,000, while continuing claims rose to 1.39 million from 1.36 million. 

I still think that we are heading toward a recession, particularly since the Federal Reserve has announced its intention to keep raising rates:

U.S. worker filings for jobless benefits fell last week, a sign layoffs remain low in a tight labor market.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, decreased to a seasonally adjusted 214,000 last week from 226,000 the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims are up from earlier this year but remain near their prepandemic 2019 weekly average of 218,000, when the labor market was also historically strong.

The four-week moving average for jobless claims, which smooths out weekly volatility, rose slightly to 212,250 last week.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people seeking ongoing unemployment benefits, increased to 1.39 million in the week ended Oct. 8 from 1.36 million a week earlier. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.

The overall U.S. jobs market remains on strong footing, but has cooled in recent months. Employers added 263,000 jobs in September, a slowdown from earlier in the year, while the share of people working or looking for a job fell. Job openings declined in August to their lowest level since summer of 2021. But many businesses have continued to hire, citing struggles with staffing shortages.

House building and house sales are falling off of a cliff, and there are a whole bunch of derivatives at the Wall Street Casino that are likely to do so as well.

Holiday sales should be a tell.

 

The RMS Titanic Could Have Told You, the Icebert (lettuce) Always Wins

The Daily Star lettuce has come out victorious in the battle of the year - to see whether it could outlast Prime Minister Liz Truss in #LizVsLettuce

[THREAD] pic.twitter.com/sP7QDgqcfr

— Daily Star (@dailystar) October 20, 2022

Harsh

So, Liz Truss has tendered her resignation to King Charles after showing herself to be even more hapless than Boris Johnson, who is considering another run at being Prime Minister:

A wilting 60p iceberg lettuce from Tesco in a blond wig has been crowned the winner of a bizarre competition after outlasting Liz Truss’s tenuous grip on power.

Seven days ago the Daily Star set up a webcam on the lettuce to see if it would have a longer shelf-life than the prime minister. To add to Truss’s humiliating resignation, the lettuce won.

As Truss made her resignation statement, those viewing the video on YouTube soared to more than 20,000.

When the prime minister confirmed her departure on Thursday lunchtime, a plastic gold crown was placed on the now browning leafy vegetable. The caption changed from “Day Seven: Will Liz Truss outlast his lettuce?” to “The Lettuce Outlasted Liz Truss”. The national anthem was played to mark the lettuce’s triumph, and champagne was poured.

The lettuce was inundated with messages of congratulations, in a chat box beside the video. They included: “Lettuce Rejoice”, “Lettuce being having you”, “Lettuce for PM”, “Lettuce 1 Truss 0”, “Truss sunk by an iceberg”.

When I joked that the Tories had replaced Boris Johnson with something even more bizarrely inexplicable, my intent was to make a joke, not to engage in prophecy. 

Just call me nostra-dumbass.

Some Good News from a Shameful Episode

After literally years in detention as a result of a private prosecution by Chevron, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Department of Justice must tell Steven Donziger why they authorized an unprecedented private prosecution.

About f%$#ing time:

The US Supreme Court – whose conservative justices I've criticized as of late – has ordered President Biden's Department of Justice to explain why it allowed an oil company (Chevron) to prosecute and detain me in the first and only private prosecution in US history. This is a good news for our campaign to hold Chevron accountable for its mass industrial poisoning of Ecuador’s Amazon and for the legal effort to enforce the $9.5 billion pollution judgement against the company won by Indigenous peoples whom I helped represent.

Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland for almost two years have ignored repeated requests from my lawyers to take back my private prosecution from Chevron and uphold the decision by the federal prosecutor in Manhattan not to pursue Judge Kaplan's unfounded contempt charges against me. The inaction of Garland and Biden in my view led to a farcical trial in May of 2021 where Judge Loretta Preska (a leader of the Chevron-funded Federalist Society) denied me a jury, read the newspaper during witness testimony, let a Chevron lawyer prosecute me, allowed Chevron lawyers to testify against me, refused to allow me to mount a defense, and ultimately “convicted” me and sentenced me to the maximum term of 6 months in prison on top of the 26 months she already had detained me at home as a supposed risk of flight. Understand that I served 993 days detained in total for an offense where the longest previous sentence ever imposed was 90 days of home confinement (and that lawyer was actually guilty).

My unprecedented corporate prosecution undermines the rule of law, Free Speech, and the climate movement. It also has caused great pain and suffering to the affected Amazon communities in Ecuador who had their lands poisoned by Chevron — not to mention the enormous pain it has caused and continues to cause to me and my family here in New York. I am a human rights lawyer who just spent almost three years in detention in a case that appears under the US Constitution to be totally illegal. (Already five jurists from the United Nations ruled that my pre-trial detention violated multiple provisions of international law while a separate group of prominent trial observers from the US and Canada found that my trial presided over by Preska fell below minimal standards of due process).

For weeks, President Biden's DOJ tried to ignore my recent petition to the Supreme Court to nullify my non-jury contempt conviction. The DOJ clearly hoped the Court would ignore it as well and not take the case up for review. So the order that the DOJ submit a brief is a good sign that the Court is taking the issue seriously. After the DOJ submits a legal brief on November 16, the justices will meet in conference to decide whether they will take my case up on appeal. Given that the Court only takes about one out of every 100 cases submitted, this is hardly a slam dunk. But it is possible they will take this case given the unusual nature of the issue and how offensive it is to the rule of law, regardless of where one might fall on the political spectrum.

The issue of a private corporate prosecution orchestrated by a judge without any involvement by the executive branch (which prosecutes all crime under our Constitutional system of government) is so much bigger than just me. As my lawyers wrote, Judges Kaplan and Preska engaged in a “judicial seizure of power” at the expense of the executive branch, thus violating the Separation of Powers doctrine. That’s the technical argument. The practical reality is that anyone who watched the trial saw that it was morally, ethically, and legally bankrupt from beginning to end and an exercise in corporate retaliation with the complicity of two federal judges. It was depressing to watch even though ultimately we used it as a tool of empowerment.

………

The DOJ, President Biden, and Attorney General Garland now have some serious explaining to do. They are under order from the highest court in the country to deal with this critical issue. I look forward to seeing whether they try to justify what is clearly an outrageous corporate and judicial attack on our democracy.

It should be noted here that neither Biden nor Garland are actually responsible for Donziger's prosecution, the prosecutions started under the Trump, but he stayed in detention until earlier this year, and that was under both of them.

It stinks to high heaven, and rocks needs to be turned over to see what is underneath.

Why am I Not Surprised

A study shows that regardless of the choices and preferences of its users, YouTube's algorithms direct users toward right wing content.

I don't think that this is the result of some sort of nefarious political agenda, but rather that cruelty, hate, and selfishness tend to drive engagement, so it trends right:

YouTube's recommendation algorithm not only gently traps viewers in mild echo chambers, it is more likely to suggest conservative-leaning videos regardless of your political alignment.

That's according to a study out of New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMP) that was highlighted this month by Brookings.

Social networks live and die by their recommendation algorithms: they're designed to keep visitors on the sites and apps by feeding them content that keeps them hooked, and if that drives up engagement – sharing links with others, commenting, subscribing, upvoting, etc – all the better. Controversial or mind-blowing material is perfect for this, as it's likely to spark more shares and comments, and thus keep more people addicted.

To clarify, because the good folks at The Register are too delicate to say it, they find profit in creating unhappiness and mental illness. 

Karl Marx would have predicted this, if he had ever dropped acid.

"We found that YouTube's recommendation algorithm does not lead the vast majority of users down extremist rabbit holes, although it does push users into increasingly narrow ideological ranges of content in what we might call evidence of a (very) mild ideological echo chamber," the academics disclosed in a report for the Brookings Institution.

"We also find that, on average, the YouTube recommendation algorithm pulls users slightly to the right of the political spectrum, which we believe is a novel finding."

The abstract of their paper makes clear that this bump to the right happens "regardless of the ideology" of YouTube viewers.

………

What is more interesting, perhaps, is that YouTube seems to overall lean toward recommending moderately conservative content to users regardless of their political orientation, at least according to the NYU center.

Like I said, the algos generate profit off of misery, so they are tuned to create misery.

This is not something that will be fixed through the profit motive.

Headline of the Day

Quantifying Britain’s moron risk premium

—Financial Times

This is, of course, about British PM Liz Truss, who is doing her level best to replace Boris Johnson with something even more bizarrely inexplicable.

Money quote:

Not a whole lot of value has emerged from the past month’s omnishambles, but one valuable development is the coining of “moron risk premium” — in short, the extra money the UK is paying to borrow because its leaders are a few sandwiches short of a tea party.

The Tories might want to replace her with someone better suited to leadership, like Larry, #10's official cat, officially the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.

Headline of the Day

Florida clown murder trial postponed after discovery of ‘clown sighting file’

—The Guardian

Florida, man?

Actually, the story is rather more serious than your regular "Florida Man" story.

A woman is accused of shooting her lover's wife while dressed as a clown, and her trial has been delayed after it was discovered that the prosecution was concealing potentially exculpatory information.  (A Brady violation)

The trial of a Florida woman accused of dressing up as clown in 1990 and fatally shooting the wife of a man she later married has been postponed, following the disclosure of a law enforcement file containing information about other clown-sighting leads at the time.

Prosecutors informed defense attorneys for Sheila Keen Warren last Thursday that they had found a “clown sighting file” which defense attorneys had been demanding but prosecutors had been saying they didn’t have, according to a court filing by defense attorneys in the Palm Beach county case.

Defense attorneys asked for a delay in the first-degree murder trial which was scheduled to start the next week. The jury trial was canceled on Friday.

Defense attorneys also are seeking sanctions against prosecutors for what they say are instances of failing to disclose evidence to the defendant and are asking that Keen Warren be allowed pre-trial release from jail.

The 25-page “clown sighting file” has the names, addresses or phone numbers of 40 credible leads, according to the court filing from defense attorneys.

The least surprising part, and honestly the most horrifying part, is the gross misconduct of the prosecutors, which is a sad commentary on the criminal justice system.

Gee, What a Surprise

It appears that dozens, if not hundreds of general officers in the US military retired and then took jobs as consultants for some of the most corrupt and unsavory governments on earth, most notably, though not limited to, Prince Mohammad bin Bonsaw defacto ruler of the House of Saud, and the Pentagon did its level best to keep this information covered up.

That is not a surprise.  The payoff for senior military officers after their (pretty generous) retirement are lucrative sinecures with defense contractors, the news media, and now we know, despots with a hankering for US military hardware:

DoD tried to keep this a secret, which is concerning, because this constitutes a form of back-loaded bribery, where if you play ball, you get rewarded when you retire:

More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, who U.S. intelligence agencies say approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, as part of a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Saudi Arabia’s paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Others who have worked as consultants for the Saudis since Khashoggi’s murder include a retired four-star Air Force general and a former commanding general of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Most of the retired U.S. personnel have worked as civilian contractors for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Persian Gulf monarchies, playing a critical, though largely invisible, role in upgrading their militaries. 

Also, no doubt, working as unregistered lobbyists to help them get military hardware.

………

Foreign governments have long advanced their interests in Washington by paying Americans as lobbyists, lawyers, political consultants, think tank analysts and public relations advisers. But the hiring of retired U.S. military personnel for their expertise and political clout has accelerated over the past decade as oil-rich gulf monarchies have splurged on defense spending and strengthened their security partnerships with the Pentagon.

Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.

That's because the people who could release the information were next in line for the corrupt gravy train.

The Post had to sue to get the information.

BTW, you have heard the technical constitutional term for these sorts of payments, "foreign emoluments," and former military personnel are required to get permission to do this, but the reviews are perfunctory at best.

Once again, what is shocking is not that what has been done is against the law, what is shocking is that this is all perfectly legal.

This Makes it Simple

Over at his podcast, Keith Olbermann, at around the 20:00 mark, he pithily explains how to show that taxpayer funded stadium deals are always a loser:

I once asked a sports economist to explain why all that is always true, and he could show me all kinds of complicated formulas, but there was something simpler, "If a new stadium actually made a profit, the owners would build all the new stadiums themselves with private money and keep all the profits.  That's what owners do."

This is all you really need to know about stadium deals.  If they made money, the owners would build their own f%$3ing stadiums.

Not a Whole Bunch of “There” There

And we have the latest swing and miss for special council John Durham, whose prosecution of Igor Danchenko for lying to federal agents regarding the origins of the Steele dossier has resulted in acquittal.

It's clear that the Steele dossier was unreliable and highly suspect, but charging someone for lying to a federal agent on the basis of the recollections of a causal discussion different federal agent is awfully thin gruel.

From the get-go, this was an attempt to criminalize what is the rough and tumble of opposition research.

It does not make the Steele dossier true, but it similarly does not make the actions surrounding it criminal, except potentially if law enforcement officials leaked grand jury proceedings, which is a crime:

A jury on Tuesday found Igor Danchenko — a private researcher who was a primary source for a 2016 dossier of allegations about former president Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — not guilty of lying to the FBI about where he got his information.

The verdict in federal court in Alexandria, Va., is another blow for special counsel John Durham, who has now lost both cases that have gone to trial as part of his nearly 3½-year investigation. Durham, who was asked by Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to review the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016, is sure to face renewed pressure to wrap up his work following the verdict.

Trump predicted Durham would uncover “the crime of the century” inside the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies that investigated his campaign’s links to Russia. But so far, no one charged by the special counsel has gone to prison, and only one government employee has pleaded guilty to a criminal offense. In both trials this year, Durham argued that people deceived FBI agents, not that investigators corruptly targeted Trump.

The Durham investigation has always been political theater.

It should be noted that this theater, was enthusiastically endorsed by former US Attorney General Bill Barr, who, as I have said before, makes former US Attorney General John Mitchell look like Perry Mason in comparison.