Why Yes, Academic Economists Are Corrupt

In fact, this is what the theories of most economists would predict.  They act in a manner which serves their own personal interest, which includes shilling for monopolists and other rich pigs.

After 40 years of rampant corporate crime, there's a new sheriff in town: Jonathan Kanter was appointed by Biden to run the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and he's overseen 170 "significant antitrust actions" in the past 2.5 years, culminating in a court case where Google was ruled to be an illegal monopolist:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Kanter's work is both extraordinary and par for the course. As Kanter said in a recent keynote for the Fordham Law Competition Law Institute’s 51st Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy, we're witnessing an epochal, global resurgence of antitrust:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-remarks-fordham-competition-law-0

Kanter's incredible enforcement track record isn't just part of a national trend – his colleagues in the FTC, CFPB and other agencies have also been pursuing an antitrust agenda not seen in generations – but also a worldwide trend. Antitrust enforcers in Canada, the UK, the EU, South Korea, Australia, Japan and even China are all taking aim at smashing corporate monopolies. Not only are they racking up impressive victories against these giant corporations, they're stealing the companies' swagger. After all, the point of enforcement isn't just to punish wrongdoing, but also to deter wrongdoing by others.

………

As welcome as this antitrust renaissance is, it prompts an important question: why didn't we enforce antitrust law for the 40 years between Reagan and Biden?

That's what Kanter addresses the majority of his keynote to. The short answer is: crooked academic economists took bribes from monopolists and would-be monopolists to falsify their research on the impacts of monopolists, and made millions (literally – one guy made over $100m at this) testifying that monopolies were good and efficient.

These were not bribes, they were economic incentives, exactly the sort of economic incentives that right wing economists are always crowing about.

………

This assault on reason itself is at the core of Kanter's critique. He starts off by listing three cases in which academic economists allowed themselves to be corrupted by the monopolies they studied:

i. George Mason University tricked an international antitrust enforcer into attending a training seminar that they believed to be affiliated with the US government. It was actually sponsored by the very companies that enforcer was scrutnizing, and featured a parade of "experts" who asserted that these companies were great, actually.

ii. An academic from GMU – which receives substantial tech industry funding – signed an amicus brief opposing an enforcement action against their funders. The academic also presented a defense of these funders to the OECD, all while posing as a neutral academic and not disclosing their funding sources.

iii. An ex-GMU economist, Joshua Wright, submitted a study defending Qualcomm against the FTC, without disclosing that he'd been paid to do so. Wright has elevated undisclosed conflicts of interest to an art form:

That's not a conflict of interest, it's a business model?  What are you, a communist?

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/google-lawyer-secret-weapon-joshua-wright-c98d5a31

Kanter is at pains to point out that these three examples aren't exceptional. The economics profession – whose core tenet is "incentives matter" – has made it standard practice for individual researchers and their academic institutions to take massive sums from giant corporations. Incredibly, they insist that this has nothing to do with their support of monopolies as "efficient."

Weep for the poor misunderstood corrupt economist. 

They must be crying all the way to the bank.

Headline of the Day

When Odious Foreign Policy Elites Rally Around Harris

— Responsible Statecraft

When Dick Cheney endorses you, you are doing something wrong.

Efforts to bolster the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris by the D.C. foreign policy establishment kicked into overdrive over the course of the past week with the near simultaneous release of two open letters signed by hundreds of former U.S. national security officials.

It is an accelerated version of previous campaigns in 2016 and 2020, where ex-officials and military officers on both sides of the aisle vocalizing major opposition to Trump offer to give national security cred to the Democratic candidate — in this case Harris. For their part, the candidate virtually ignores that many of these endorsements are in many cases coming from odious individuals, including architects of wars and interventions that Democrats have openly criticized as stains on recent American history.

………

Critics of course point out that many of these people are the same Washington creatures who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited from them for 20 years straight — and until this day support cruel, authoritarian dictators when convenient to U.S. policy. They are not wrong.

………

Yet for the most part, the letter carried with it the odor of the consensus minded War Party, if not 9/11-era neoconservatism. In the past this would have been a problem for traditionally liberal and progressive outlets, but Mother Jones and the New Republic were quick to applaud the letter as a “win” for the Harris campaign. Not surprisingly, only The Nation has called out their fellow liberals and progressives for making common cause with the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, both of whom have also endorsed Harris in recent days (except for columnist Joan Walsh, who found Liz Cheney's endorsement of Harris "strangely moving," writing, "Liz, I told you we could find common ground. Let’s have a cup of coffee. Or even a beer?"

………

The second letter, boasting 700 signers and released on September 22 by the group National Security Leaders 4 America, is a more serious effort if only because the caliber of people, whether you agree or disagree with them, is far higher.

………

While the signatories were mainly retired generals, flag officers, and diplomats, the letter boasted its own share of armchair militarists, very much including the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The inclusion of a number of the most reckless and irresponsible civilian national security leaders of our time only serves to dilute the seriousness of the message — any letter featuring John Brennan, Victoria Nuland, Michael McFaul and Leon Panetta is one that can and should be safely ignored.

 One hopes, in private at least, that Harris is embarrassed.

Newsom Sucks

It appears that the California Governor decided that campaign donations from agribusiness are more important than farm workers dying of heat stroke.

His decision is not surprising, given that he has a record of favoring the haves over the have nots.

Remember this when he wants to run for President in 2028 or 2032.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced today he has vetoed a bill to bolster farmworkers’ heat illness claims as they face the increasing dangers of extreme heat.

The unique proposal would have made it easier for farmworkers to get workers’ compensation when claiming they suffered heat illness on the job. Senate Bill 1299 was pitched by the United Farm Workers, which said it was needed to supplement weakened enforcement of the state’s workplace heat safety rules.

In his veto message, Newsom wrote the enforcement of heat safety rules should be done only by the state’s workplace safety agency, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) and not be determined by the workers’ compensation system.

The outdoor heat rules, in place for nearly 20 years, require employers to provide shade, water and rest breaks for outdoor workers and further monitor them for signs of heat illness in high-risk jobs like agriculture and construction. The state this year added similar rules for indoor workers.

But the understaffed Cal/OSHA has in recent years conducted 1,000 fewer heat inspections of worksites a year, and issued hundreds fewer violations, compared to pre-pandemic, CalMatters reported this summer. That’s despite heat waves in California growing longer and more intense.

The United Farm Workers said SB 1299 would have forced employers to comply with the heat rules, by more strictly tying them to liability for workers’ compensation claims. The bill would have required workers’ comp judges to presume farmworkers who claim heat illness developed it at work.

Keep Him Out of the Hall of Fame

Baseball superstar Pete Rose has has died at age 83.

While there is no denying that Rose was a generational talent, but he gambled on baseball games both as a player and as a coach, and he was banned from baseball, and as such is ineligible for the Hall of Fame.

This ban should remain, not because he bet, but because he bet on baseball.

While there are many athletes who have done contemptible things, racism and bigotry, partner abuse, drug abuse, and murder, but these are crimes against the society as a whole, they are not crimes against the sport.

He keeps his record, the most hits of any ballplayer ever, but he should never be readmitted to baseball or installed to Cooperstown.

Linkage

• Opinion | Israel’s Pager Attacks Have Changed the World (New York Times) Bruce Schneier, makes the obvious observation, "Developed countries like the United States will be especially vulnerable, simply because of the sheer number of vulnerable devices we have."
• Delivery Robot Knocked Over Pedestrian, Company Offered ‘Promo Codes’ to Apologize (404 Media) This robot struck the pedestrian, repeatedly, and they are offering some coupons. We really need to start arresting Tech Bros.
• Linux boots in 4.76 days on the Intel 4004 (Ars Technica) The 4 bid Intel 4004 is generally thought to be the first microprocessor. (Processor on a single chip) It's not, that was actually the F-14 Central Air Data Computer, but it was the first commercial microprocessor.  In an extremely literal example of too much free time, someone booted Linux on the chip.  It took a while.
• The Enduring Influence of Marx’s Masterpiece (The Nation) Marx was wrong about a lot, but he completely changed how we approach economics, and how we run the world.
• EU state declares war on beavers (RT) Poland claiming that beavers are worsening flooding (Beavers in fact do the opposite) is doing this, which is a pity, a little beaver is good for everyone. 
• Progressives Sound Alarm as Harris Courts Crypto Industry (Common Dreams) Yeah, this is concerning.  Crypto a scam, its promoters are psychopaths, and this does not bode well for a future Harris administration.
• The Scourge of the Long Train (Pat Garofalo) Trains are now routinely longer than a mile, and can completely divide an area for hours at a time, and it is killing people, even when it does not result in accidents. Deregulation kills.

A well deserved take-down of tech bros claiming to invent sh%$ that already exists

Get the F%$#ing Vaccine

No, I am not referring to the Covid vaccine, I am referring to the HPV vaccine. 

A historic new study out of Scotland shows the real-world impact of vaccines against the human papillomavirus: The country has detected no cases of cervical cancer in women born between 1988-1996 who were fully vaccinated against HPV between the ages of 12 and 13.

Many previous studies have shown that HPV vaccines are extremely effective in preventing cervical cancer. But the study, published on Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the first to monitor a national cohort of women over such a long time period and find no occurrence of cervical cancer.

(Emphasis mine)

………

The authors of the Scotland study monitored the records of all women born between 1988 and 1996 who were eligible for cancer screening, about 450,000 women. Of that group, 40,000 were vaccinated between the ages of 12 and 13, and 124,000 received the vaccines at or after 14 years of age. The remaining women, nearly 300,000, were not vaccinated.

No cases of cervical cancer were found among the women who were vaccinated before they turned 14, even if they had only received one or two doses of the vaccine rather than the full, three-dose protocol. Also noteworthy is that women who received the three-dose protocol between the ages of 14 and 22 also benefited significantly. While some cases of cervical cancer were recorded in this group, the incidence (3.2 cases per 100,000 women) was two and a half times lower than among unvaccinated women (8.4 cases per 100,000 women).

………

The types of vaccine administered to the cohorts monitored in the study changed as newer ones became available, covering more types of HPV. Until 2012, the vaccine in use was the bivalent Cervarix, targeting HPV 16 and 18. Then the quadrivalent Gardasil was administered until 2023, when the nonavalent Gardasil 9 was introduced.

This is why it’s still possible that cervical cancers may still arise even in vaccinated women, caused by the HPV strains not targeted by the earlier vaccines. “There are obviously other HPV types that cause cancer,” Palmer said, noting that the current results don’t mean cases of cervical cancers, caused by less high-risk strains of HPV, won’t emerge in the analyzed cohort in the future.

It should be noted that boys as well as girls should get the vaccine for two reasons, first, it mitigates the spread of HPV, and second, HPV associated penile cancer is rather common.

It is never too late to get the shot, but the sweet spot is 9-14 years old.

Headline of the Day

A “Biosafety” Organization Partnering With Dr. Jay Bhattacharya To Guard Against Viruses Is Like A Zebra Teaming Up With A Lion To Promote Vegetarianism

—Science-Based Medicine

It should be understood that Jay Bhattachary is an antivax doctor, who has argued against vaccinating children and was a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, which suggested that no measures at all should be taken and that herd immunity would result in 3 months.

He continues to maintain this.

In a previous article, I discussed scientists who believe that allegedly leaking SARS-CoV-2 from a lab was one of the greatest crimes in human history, but that purposefully spreading it was merely a forgivable oopsie. Specifically, I discussed the partnership between Biosafety Now, an organization that purports to be dedicated to preventing a potential pandemic, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an anti-vaccine doctor who partnered with a pro-tobacco, child-labor advocate to deliberately spread SARS-CoV-2 during an actual pandemic. A “biosafety” organization partnering with Dr. Bhattacharya to guard against viruses is like a zebra teaming up with a lion to promote vegetarianism.

Dr. Bhattacharya, a member of the Board of Directors at Biosafety Now, identified two core problems with SARS-CoV-2: 

1. It likely came from a lab
2. Not enough unvaccinated people contracted it

………

Bhattacharya, Gupta, and Kulldorff are not merely wrong. They are charlatans and quacks who are dispensing deadly advice, and who need to be held accountable for their role in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.

This man is a dangerous quack.

Another Reason to Oppose the Death Penalty

The case of Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for 46 years based on fabricated evidence.

An 88-year-old man who is the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been acquitted by a Japanese court, after it found that evidence used against him was fabricated.

Iwao Hakamada, who was on death row for almost half a century, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.

He was recently granted a retrial amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction for quadruple murder.

The 46 years spent on death row has taken a heavy toll on Hakamada's mental health, though, meaning he was unfit to attend the hearing where his acquittal was finally handed down.

Hakamada's case is one of Japan's longest and most famous legal sagas, and has attracted widespread public interest, with some 500 people lining up for seats in the courtroom in Shizuoka on Thursday.

As the verdict was handed down, Hakamada’s supporters outside the court cheered “banzai" - a Japanese exclamation that means "hurray".

A note to the BBC editors, you do not need to tell people what, "Banzai," means.  We know.

………

A former professional boxer, Hakamada was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his employer, the man’s wife and two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Hakamada of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Hakamada initially denied having robbed and murdered the victims, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

This pattern of intimidation and violence by law enforcement is the rule rather than the exception in Japan, as Human Rights Watch has observed.  (HRW called it the, "Hostage justice system.")

Abuse of the law is unavoidable in law enforcement, adding to that the possibility of state sanctioned murder makes it worse.

Support Your Local Police

The Department of Justice has determined that police in Lexington, Mississippi systematically target black people for arrest and fines.

Basically, they were a heavily armed criminal enterprise running a shake-down racket:

A tiny police department in Lexington, Miss., whose chief was fired two years ago for using a racial epithet, has engaged in the systemic use of excessive force, jailed suspects improperly and targeted Black people, the Justice Department said in a report released Thursday.

The results of a nearly 11-month federal civil rights investigation found that the Lexington police force, which has fewer than 10 officers, pursued overly aggressive tactics in response to relatively minor infractions, in part as a strategy to drive up revenue through fines and processing fees.

During the past several years, the police department’s revenue grew sevenfold in a jurisdiction in one of the poorest counties in the nation, as officers routinely violated suspects’ civil rights, federal authorities said.

Among the findings of the federal probe was that the Lexington police jailed people who were unable to pay fines, conducted stops and searches without probable cause, and violated free speech rights of residents who criticized the police department.

………

“In America, being poor is not a crime, but in Lexington, their practices punish people for poverty,” [assistant attorney general for the civil rights division Kristen] Clarke said at a news conference. She added: “For too long, this department has been playing by its own rules and operating with impunity. It’s time for this to end.”

………

All told, fines and fees have supported more than one-quarter of the police department’s budget, amounting to an average of $1,400 for every one of the town’s 1,200 residents, federal officials said. There are a total of $1.7 million in outstanding fines that have yet to be paid.

The police “turned the jail into the kind of debtor’s prison that Charles Dickens wrote about in his novels written in the 1800s — only this happened in Mississippi in 2024,” [U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Todd] Gee said.

If this ends with nothing more than a requirement to, "Go forth and sin no more," then this will be a failure.

The officers must be tried as the criminals that they are.

They Are Pounding the Table

Does this show to you that it is easy not to use Google when buying or selling ads?There is an old saying in the law, "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table."

It appears that the lawyers representing Google in its monopoly trial over its advertising business realize that they have nothing.

Google wound down its defense in the US Department of Justice's ad tech monopoly trial this week, following a week of testimony from witnesses that experts said seemed to lack credibility.

The tech giant started its defense by showing a widely mocked chart that Google executive Scott Sheffer called a "spaghetti football," supposedly showing a fluid industry thriving thanks to Google's ad tech platform but mostly just "confusing" everyone and possibly even helping to debunk its case, Open Markets Institute policy analyst Karina Montoya reported.

"The effect of this image might have backfired as it also made it evident that Google is ubiquitous in digital advertising," Montoya reported. "During DOJ’s cross-examination, the spaghetti football was untangled to show only the ad tech products used specifically by publishers and advertisers on the open web."

One witness, Marco Hardie, Google's current head of industry, was even removed from the stand, his testimony deemed irrelevant by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, Big Tech On Trial reported. Another, Google executive Scott Sheffer, gave testimony Brinkema considered “tainted,” Montoya reported. But perhaps the most heated exchange about a witness' credibility came during the DOJ's cross-examination of Mark Israel, the key expert that Google is relying on to challenge the DOJ's market definition.

………

On cross-examination, [DoJ attorney Aaron] Teitelbaum called Israel out as a "serial 'expert' for companies facing antitrust challenges" who "always finds that the companies 'explained away' market definition," Big Tech on Trial posted on X. Teitelbaum even read out quotes from past cases "in which judges described" Israel's "expert testimony as 'not credible' and having 'misunderstood antitrust law.'"

………

Perhaps most damaging, Teitelbaum asked Israel to confirm that "80 percent of his income comes from doing this sort of expert testimony," suggesting that Israel seemingly depended on being paid by companies like Jet Blue and Kroger-Albertsons—and even previously by Google during the search monopoly trial—to muddy the waters on market definition. Lee Hepner, an antitrust lawyer with the American Economic Liberties Project, posted on X that the DOJ's antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, has grown wary of serial experts supposedly sowing distrust in the court system. 

I think that I need to be clear that I am not a disinterested observer.

I want Google to get taken down, not just broken up, but I want Google executives to be charged criminally for conspiracy.

I want to see Google crushed and driven before the DoJ and hear the lamentations of their women.

 

They Got Him

The toll so farYesterday, I heard that Israel had launched an airstrike at Hezbollah headquarters in an attempt to kill its leader Hassam Nasrallah.

Today, at synagogue, our rabbi announced that the strike had been successful, and he was dead.

Thankfully, I had enough self-possession not to pump my fist in the air as a celebratory gesture, which says something about my state of mind.

That being said, I think that it is highly likely that Hezbollah's ability to prosecute this conflict will be constrained for the short term, but not in the long term.

In the long term, any effects on Hezbollah and its conflict with Israel will be a function of what policies are adopted by new leadership of the party.

That last bit, "The party," is an important part of any calculus.

Hezbollah is not a militia, it is a polity that operates a militia, and as such, the militia is a tool of the party. (It is a fact of life in Lebanon that political parties need to have an armed wing)

As to what the policies of Hezbollah under new leadership will be, damned if I know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As to Iran's relationship to, and support of Hezbollah, is likely to be largely unchanged.

Iran's primary justification for supporting Hezbollah is not as a part of making war on Israel, but rather that it sees itself as a defender of Shia Muslim communities across the world.

As such, Iran will likely to provide similar levels of support.

I should note here that this sort of imperative is not unique to Iran.

In France, for example, there is broad consensus across their polity that France has a moral obligation to support the French language and French culture in its former colonial possessions.

In the United States, there is a similar consensus that it must be the indispensable nation, which has led America into many self-destructive and expensive adventures.

In the long run, I expect the conflict to continue, and I expect that Benjamin Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) to continue to be the greatest threat that Israel faces for its continued survival.

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Hezbollah and one of Israel's most formidable enemies, was killed on Friday in a massive Israeli airstrike on Beirut. Israel confirmed his death on Saturday morning.

………

Nasrallah, 64, led Hezbollah for 32 years, since Israel assassinated his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, in 1992. His charismatic leadership and political savvy made him one of the most influential figures in Lebanon and the wider Middle East.

The Israeli strike on Hezbollah's headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut also killed the commander of the organization's southern front, Ali Karaki, as well as the commander of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, Abbas Nilforushan.

According to estimates by Israeli defense officials, about 300 people were killed in the air force strike. Some of the victims were in nearby buildings. IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the facility that was targeted is located underneath residential buildings. 

Nice to See When Someone is Dragged Kicking and Screaming Into Doing the Right Thing

In this case, it is the game distribution service Steam, which has removed its requirement for arbitration from its subscriber agreement.

This was not out of the goodness of its heart, it is that a number of law firms have been recruiting thousands of plaintiffs for file arbitration through them, at a cost of $3,000.00 per filer to stream.

All the law firm does is get the people to take them on as counsel, and then they do bulk arbitration requests, at a cost to the company of $3 million per thousand users.

Said law firm then suggests that perhaps settling for only $2500.00 or $2,800.00 might be a good path. 

Valve Corporation, tired of paying arbitration fees, has removed a mandatory arbitration clause from Steam's subscriber agreement. Valve told gamers in yesterday's update that they must sue the company in order to resolve disputes.

The subscriber agreement includes "changes to how disputes and claims between you and Valve are resolved," Steam wrote in an email to users. "The updated dispute resolution provisions are in Section 10 and require all claims and disputes to proceed in court and not in arbitration. We've also removed the class action waiver and cost and fee-shifting provisions."

The Steam agreement previously said that "you and Valve agree to resolve all disputes and claims between us in individual binding arbitration." Now, it says that any claims "shall be commenced and maintained exclusively in any state or federal court located in King County, Washington, having subject matter jurisdiction."

………

One likely factor in Valve's decision to abandon arbitration is mentioned in a pending class-action lawsuit over game prices that was filed last month in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The Steam users who filed the suit previously "mounted a sustained and ultimately successful challenge to the enforceability of Valve's arbitration provision," their lawsuit said. "Specifically, the named Plaintiffs won binding decisions from arbitrators rendering Valve's arbitration provision unenforceable for both lack of notice and because it impermissibly seeks to bar public injunctive relief."

Mandatory arbitration clauses are generally seen as bad for consumers, who are deprived of the ability to seek compensation through individual or class-action lawsuits. But many Steam users were able to easily get money from Valve through arbitration, according to law firms that filed the arbitration cases over allegedly inflated game prices.

………

Valve used to prefer arbitration because few consumers brought claims and the process kept the company's legal costs low. But in October 2023, Valve sued a law firm in an attempt to stop it from submitting loads of arbitration claims on behalf of gamers.

Valve's suit complained that "unscrupulous lawyers" at law firm Zaiger, LLC presented a plan to a potential funder "to recruit 75,000 clients and threaten Valve with arbitration on behalf of those clients, thus exposing Valve to potentially millions of dollars of arbitration fees alone: 75,000 potential arbitrations times $3,000 in fees per arbitration is two hundred and twenty-five million dollars."

(Emphasis original)

Nice to see that this tactic is working.

Now let's see the class action suits.

I Expect Nothing Less from ASSLaw

Ilya Somin, a right-wing professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, (It was originally called the Antonin Scalia School of Law, but the changed the name when they realized what it spelled) has released a paper titled, "The Presumptive Case for Organ Markets," where he argues that people should be allowed to sell their organs, most notably kidneys.

Among his arguments is that laws against selling organs are an affront to the concept of bodily autonomy.

Yeah, this guy is spouting off about bodily autonomy when he was defending the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.

F%$# him with Cheney's Dick.

I Believe that is Legalese for, "You Can Try, You Pathetic C%$#s"

As you may be away, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith filed a briefdescribing the evidence evidence related to the Donald Trump sedition case yesterday.

He asked for, and got, permission to file a brief that is far longer than is customary, as much as 180 pages as opposed to the normal 45 page brief.

One of the questions is whether this brief will be released to the public in whole or in part, and now federal Judge Tanya Chutkan has given the Trump lawyers until Tuesday to offer an argument to keep the information under seal.

Let's see ……… 180 page brief ……… 2½ working days or 4½ calendar days to make an argument to keep this information out of the public eye.

I'm an engineer, and not a lawyer, dammit,* but it does seem to me that Chutkin is disinclined to take any arguments made by the Trump legal team seriously.

This is not a sign of bias, but rather an argument that the Trump legal team has not made any arguments that have come even close to being serious:

A federal judge on Friday gave lawyers for Donald Trump four days to challenge the partial public release of a nearly 200-page special counsel filing on why the former president can be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In an order posted on the public docket of Trump’s criminal case in Washington, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan gave Trump until noon Tuesday to dispute the government proposals on what to disclose and keep secret in its massive filing, and until Oct. 10 to object to similar proposed redactions in four attached documentary exhibits. The filing is a key part of the criminal case alleging Trump illegally attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory, and it was expected to reveal new details of the evidence investigators had gathered.

Prosecutors said the main filing could include roughly 90 pages of new and previously disclosed facts explaining why Trump should still face trial after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in July that gave presidents broad immunity from prosecution for their official actions.

Chutkan also made public a request by prosecutors to keep certain sensitive information secret in its opening immunity briefing filed Thursday. That sensitive information includes the names of witnesses other than those already identified in Trump’s 36-page indictment — such as former vice president Mike Pence — grand jury testimony, materials obtained through sealed search warrants, transcripts and reports of witness interviews, and materials obtained from other governmental entities, prosecutors wrote. 

I think that Chutkan is likely to approve a motion keeping things like witness names secret, because Trump and his attorneys have already engaged in stochastic terrorist threats against witnesses when their names were revealed, as well as prosecutors, Judge Chutkan, other judges, the families of judges and prosecutors, and employees of the various courts.

This certainly won't result in a trial before the election, but I'd love to see the redacted version of the filing in the next few weeks.

Linkage

• Banana wine: Malawi's growing industry to beat climate change (BBC) I am definitely going to have to try this.  They make the wine because the bananas are rpiening too early.
• Reassessing William the Conqueror (History Today) Much like Richard III, he probably got a bum wrap.
• Paul Graham and the Cult of the Founder (Dave Karpf ) Money quote, "Graham’s cultural influence has been elevating and exalting “founders” as a unique and special boys. And the broader tech industry is worse off as a result."
• The Worst Magazine In America (Current Affairs) The Atlantic, of course.  Because they pretend to have ideas when it is all just click bait and mindless contrarianism.
• How Elon Musk’s Security Detail Has Grown Following Death Threats and Stalkers (New York Times) It is not that there are not real threats, but Musk's detail has grown largely grown with his increasing paranoia and his self importance.
• We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI (watchTowr Labs) To quote the case Pillars v. R.J.Reynolds, "Someone has been very careless."
• How to kill your tech company (Elon Musk edition) (The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places) I love this bit, "No, it's much bigger than that. It's the equivalent of the Coca Cola Company inventing New Coke, then marketing it with the idea what if we put pictures of brutally murdered children on every can."
• Tiny Hippos And Elephants Once Roamed Cyprus, Until Humans Arrived (ScienceAlert) Now I want a Shetland Elephant.
• What Happened to Easter Island? New Research Refutes Best-Selling Population Collapse Theory 
•  (Sci Tech Daily) Genetic analysis shows that there was no population collapse, at least not before the European colonizers arrived.
• Cat Missing in Yellowstone Returns Home to California After an 800-Mile Journey (New York Times) Your feel good story of the day.

Something from the TV Series Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman Season.  Not great TV, but fun, if a bit contrived:

Well, Now We Have the Indictment

The details have been released, and he is a corrupt sanctimonious rat-f%$#.

And to think, just a few months ago, the chattering classes were calling him the future of the Democratic Party, because 

Mayor Eric Adams is accused of trading his power for international flights, luxurious hotel stays and illegal campaign contributions in a 57-page federal indictment unsealed on Thursday morning.

A federal grand jury indicted him on five counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and bribery. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York is prosecuting the case.

The charging papers are peppered with text messages between Adams, a staffer, a member of his campaign, Turkish nationals and others who prosecutors say attempted to circumvent campaign finance laws and hide misconduct.

In one case, the indictment describes a 2021 exchange between a staffer who was trying to book a last-minute flight to Istanbul for the mayor, and a Turkish airline manager who offered to charge the mayor just $50 for tickets worth about $15,000.

………

Prosecutors allege Adams sought and accepted illegal contributions from foreign nationals dating back to 2016, when he was Brooklyn borough president; that he used the illegal contributions to leverage millions of dollars in public matching funds; and that he continued the scheme after he was elected mayor and into his re-election campaign. The charging papers also chronicle extensive efforts prosecutors say Adams and others undertook to hide the pay-for-play scheme. 

………

The lengthy indictment tells a sweeping tale about a politician who for years has accepted lavish gifts from Turkish nationals who expected — and sometimes demanded — that he use his influence to their benefit. The U.S. attorney’s office accuses Adams of taking business-class plane tickets worth tens of thousands of dollars, expensive meals and illegal donations, among other bribes. Prosecutors also allege that Adams omitted the gifts from financial disclosure forms and created fake paper trails to hide them.

………

The indictment also accuses Adams of accepting straw donations from a construction businessman described as a prominent member of a different ethnic community. Prosecutors say he sought help arranging national heritage events and resolving issues with the city's Department of Buildings.

………

Throughout the indictment, prosecutors accuse Adams and his circle of trying to conceal what they were doing. Many of the allegations are accompanied by text messages between Adams, a staffer, a fundraiser and those attempting to curry his favor.

………

Prosecutors say Adams answered “no” when asked if he had received gifts worth $50 or more from anyone who had business with New York City, even though he allegedly accepted far more from people seeking his political sway.

The indictment also describes a panic when federal agents executed search warrants and seized electronic devices last fall. The U.S. attorney’s office says Adams campaign fundraiser Brianna Suggs called the mayor five times while FBI agents knocked on her door, and that the mayor rushed back from a trip to D.C. Prosecutors say she also refused to tell law enforcement who paid for a 2021 trip to Turkey.

When agents interviewed one of Adams’ staffers, according to the indictment, she excused herself to the bathroom and deleted encrypted messaging apps she had used to communicate with Adams and Turkish nationals. Agents also struggled to get information from Adams’ phone when they confronted the mayor near NYU’s campus and seized his electronic devices days after raiding the fundraiser’s home, the indictment says.

Adams told the FBI that he had just changed the password on his phone and extended it from four digits to six, but he couldn’t remember his new code, according to the indictment.

Yeah, this isn't an oops, or something that started when he was running, this is a years long pattern of corruption and coverups.

Quote of the Day

If there's any merit to the concept of "broken windows" policing, it certainly should apply to this practice by the cops themselves.  Free parking sounds like a small thing, but it's created a class of cop and cop-adjacent people who think they can do whatever the f%$# they want in the city.

—Eschaton

(%$# mine)

Duncan Black is talking about the fact that cops, and their families, and their friends, routinely use "Official" placards to park wherever they want without fear of being ticketed or towed.

New York City is notorious for this.

It's small corruption, but it is corruption nonetheless, and it poisons the whole institution.

Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, a week after the Fed FINALLY cut rates, we get the news that initial unemployment claims fell by 4,000 to 218,000, beating the consensus forecast of an increase of 3,000 to 225,000.

On the other hand, continuing claims rose by 13,000 to 1.834.

Yeah, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits dropped to a four-month low last week, suggesting that the labor market remained fairly healthy.

The upbeat outlook on the economy was underscored by other data on Thursday showing corporate profits increased at a more robust pace than initially thought in the second quarter.

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 4,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 218,000 for the week ended Sept. 21, the lowest level since mid-May, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims. Unadjusted claims decreased 5,957 to 180,878 last week.

Though the labor market has lost momentum amid declining job openings and a step-down in hiring, layoffs have remained low.

………

The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.834 million during the week ending Sept. 14, the claims report showed.

The so-called continuing claims have dropped from more than 2-1/2-year highs touched in July, attributed to policy changes in Minnesota that allowed non-teaching staff to file for unemployment aid during the summer school holidays.

The other economic news released today was generally positive, with increases in durable goods orders and a favorable revision to GDP:

………

Separate data published simultaneously on Thursday showed monthly durable goods orders were stronger than expected, and gross domestic product grew faster in 2022 and 2023 than previously reported. US Treasury yields rose after the releases while S&P 500 futures and the dollar were little changed.

I have no clue as to what is going on here.

Watching YouTube

Why are ⅔ of the ads that I am seeing on the video sharing coming from Donald Trump's campaign?

I thought that Google was spying on me to make sure that they would deliver things that would interest me, but, much like it was 13 years ago, when this blog was inundated with John McCain Presidential campaign ads.

At the time, I was calling him a pathetic corrupt hypocrite, and every time that I did, they served ads on this blog.

You would think that they would have revised and unproved their ad targeting some in the intervening years, since it's clear that they have stopped even pretending about giving a f%$# about the quality of their search.

Well, I would have thought that, but I would have been wrong.

Once again, I'm beginning to think that online advertising is more than just an exercise in monopolistic rent extraction, that it's actually fraud in the strict definition of the term.

At least, I'm not seeing Trump ads on the blog though.

He Who Hesitates is Lost

Hello FBI you may also want to look into why this fire chief was driving a lambo around Chelsea last week https://t.co/9FZ4XDhHb0 pic.twitter.com/EWBbR5dZq7

— Huge Ma (@turbovax) September 16, 2024

Hmmm...

Over the past few weeks, I have been following the developments in the corruption investigations of the administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

It's been a slow drip, drip, drip, and I have been saving links for a future post where I run down what is actually happening.

Well, I now have 22 links that I am still going  through, and it's f%$#ing exhausting.

OK, I have 23 links now, because Eric Adams has been indicted.

I f%$#ed up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No details on the indictment yet, but it appears to be related to (at least) campaign finance shenanigans.  I'm not surprised.  I have been describing Hizzoner as a delusional and sanctimonious snollygoster for some time.  After all, he has literally suggested that it is God's will that he is Mayor.  

Unless you are Jake or Elwood Blues, such an assertion is an indication of some sort of personality disorder.

What's more, it appears that the almost all of entire senior cadres in New York City's first responders are corrupt, the above mentioned fire chief being an example.

Of course, the fire chief could have bought the Lamborgini in the non-illegal way, by massively abusing overtime. but it is still as corrupt as f%$#.

Normally, I'm not inclined to prejudge someone simply on the basis of a warrant or an indictment,* but it's pretty clear that Eric Adams has been corrupt, even if it turns out not to be technically criminal.

I'm going to enjoy following this, but right now I have to do a deep dive on 23 24 25 articles that I have been sitting on.

^*OK, you got me. In fact I am extremely inclined to prejudge people when they are this f%$#ing guilty. This is Max Bialystock levels of guilt.

Well, This is Revolting

In Alabama, jailed inmates are being forced to work at fast food franchises.

I do understand that the 13th amendment has a carve-out for, "Punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," but renting out prisoners to fast food joints, a purely private endeavor is truly awful.

It might be a good idea for federal authorities to do a complete audit of the finances and of the behavior of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

I can say with almost complete certainty that if they are doing this, then there is other shady sh%$ going on:

“Walk into a McDonald’s in Alabama, and the worker flipping your McDouble could be an incarcerated person,” warns a recent video from the digital news outlet More Perfect Union.

The idea that an inmate in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) might be working the kitchen at a fast-food restaurant is shocking, even to seasoned observers of the fast-food industry and the American prison system. Yet as two lawsuits filed in federal court in the last year attest, the practice is so pervasive that it’s become a reliable source of income for the state.

According to the first suit, filed by the legal nonprofit Justice Catalyst on behalf of inmates last September, ADOC transports dozens of incarcerated people per day to jobs at government agencies and private businesses around Alabama, including KFC, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s franchises. ADOC also delivers inmates to meatpacking plants run by companies like Koch Foods and Gemstone Foods. At each of their jobsites, inmates do the same work as any employee, sometimes for twelve hours or more per day. From 2018 until the suit was filed last September, one McDonald’s franchisee alone put an estimated 122 ADOC inmates to work in its restaurants.

………

As both suits allege, inmates who refuse to work on a given day can face consequences, including revocation of privileges (like time on the phone with family members), stints in solitary confinement, lengthening of sentences, or transfer to one of Alabama’s medium- or high-security prisons — some of the most violent prisons in the country. 

………

In their suits, CCR and Justice Catalyst cite a 2022 amendment in the Alabama constitution that prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude in all circumstances. This standard goes beyond the Thirteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which permits slavery “as punishment for a crime.” An Alabama judge recently dismissed CCR’s suit on jurisdictional grounds, though Jessica Vosburgh, a Birmingham-based lawyer for the organization, told Jacobin it is currently weighing options for an appeal. The Justice Catalyst case is ongoing. In the meantime, Vosburgh says, ADOC continues to transport workers to private businesses around the state, including fast-food restaurants, just as before.

The FBI and the DoJ should be on the ADOC like white on rice, and when corruption is found, these guys need to be prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law, and then sent to those prisons that they used to run, the maximum security ones.

Here's Johnny!

No, Johnny Carson is still dead, though it appears that dotard Donald Trump is not aware of this, seeing as how he wants Carson, who has been dead for almost 20 years, to replace Jimmy Kimmel on the Jimmy Kimmel Live!

So, he wants a dead man to replace a late night host, and he got the show wrong.  Carson was the host of The Tonight Show, currently hosted by Jimmy Fallon, and this is on a completely different network.

For all the talk about Joe Biden's neurological state, it's pretty clear that something is very wrong with Trump's brain, and it has gotten a lot worse recently:

Donald Trump is still sore at late night host Jimmy Kimmel for making him the laughingstock of the 2024 Academy Awards ("Isn't it past your jail time?") back in March. So much so that he thinks Johnny Carson should take over the show and make late night great again.

Trump told his worshipers at a Pennsylvania rally that the jokes Kimmel and Colbert tell aren't funny. "It's supposed to be comedy," he rued. "It's hatred."

"Where's Johnny Carson?" a dazed Trump queried the crowd. "Bring back Johnny."

No one in the bleachers had the heart to tell their leader — who is starting to look and behave like the embunkered Hitler in Downfall — that Carson retired from the show in 1992 and died in 2005. Or it just could be that his followers believe Trump has the power to raise Carson from the dead and put him back at his desk to interview fresh young talent like Angie Dickinson and Joey Bishop.

Even before the cognitive decline, Donald Trump was not right in the head.  This is not a surprise, he was the child of an abusive alcoholic father.

But his brain is beginning to resemble a slice of Swiss Cheese, or perhaps Stinking Bishop.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Kevin Robert the architect of the right wing's plans to destroy America, aka Project 2025,  has been revealed to have beaten a neighbor's dog to death because its barking annoyed him.  He also considered beating to death his neighbor's puppies.

So, he's a f%$#ing psychopath.  Hoocoodanode?

The man behind Project 2025, the rightwing policy manifesto that includes calls for a sharp increase in immigrant deportations if Donald Trump is elected, told university colleagues about two decades ago that he had killed a neighborhood dog with a shovel because it was barking and disturbing his family, according to former colleagues who spoke to the Guardian.

Kevin Roberts, now the president of the Heritage Foundation, is alleged to have told colleagues and dinner guests that he killed a neighbor’s pit bull around 2004 while he was working as a still relatively unknown history professor at New Mexico State University.

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was chair of the university’s history department at the time.

Two other people – a professor and her spouse - recall hearing a similar account directly from Roberts at a dinner at his home. Three other professors also said they heard the account at that time from the colleagues who said they had heard it directly from Roberts.

None recall Roberts – who worked at the university as an assistant professor from 2003 to 2005 – ever saying that the dog he allegedly said he killed was actively threatening him or his family.

………

Project 2025, which was written by the Heritage Foundation under Roberts’s watch, has become a focal point of the 2024 presidential election as Democrats warn that its radical policy prescriptions – such as the eradication of the Department of Education and imposing further restrictions on abortion – will serve as a blueprint for Trump’s administration if he is elected. Both Trump and Vance have sought to distance themselves from the 900-page report, with Trump claiming he had not read it. But in a foreword to Roberts’s book written by Vance, the vice-presidential nominee praises Roberts’s “depth and stature within the American Right” and says that, “in the fights that [lie] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon”.

Roberts is one of the most prominent rightwing voices in Washington. He has close ties to Opus Dei, the Catholic group, and has spoken openly about how he considers the outlawing of birth control to be one of the “hardest” political battles facing conservatives in the future.

………

Marsha Weisiger, a colleague of Roberts at the time who is now an environmental history professor at the University of Oregon, recalled being invited to dinner at Roberts’s home with her husband, and Roberts telling both of them the story about how he had hit a neighbor’s pit bull with a shovel and killed it.

“My husband and I were stunned. First of all, that he would do such a thing. And second of all, that he would tell us about it. If I did something horrific, I would not be telling my colleagues about it,” she said.

To make matters worse, she recalled Roberts saying that the neighbor in question also had puppies and that he had considered killing them, too. Weisiger’s husband, who asked not to be named, recalled Roberts saying he had complained about the dog to the police, who were not responsive, and that the dog sometimes got into his yard.

(Emphasis Mine)

This is a deeply, deeply evil man.

Missouri Governor Mark Parson Just Lynched a Black Man

Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams has been executed in Missouri, despite requests from prosecutors and the family that he was innocent.

The Governor, as well as state AG Andrew Bailey, did not care.  They know that their political base likes lynching, and so they gave them a lynching:

Missouri executed a man on death row on Tuesday, despite objections from prosecutors who sought to have his conviction overturned and have supported his claims of innocence.

Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, 55, was killed by lethal injection, ending a legal battle that has sparked widespread outrage as the office that originally tried the case suggested he was wrongfully convicted.

In an extraordinary move condemned by civil rights advocates and lawmakers across the US, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, pushed forward with the execution against the wishes of the St Louis county prosecuting attorney’s office.

Williams was convicted of the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. He was accused of breaking into Gayle’s home, stabbing her to death and stealing several of her belongings.

But no forensic evidence linked Williams to the murder weapon or crime scene, and as local prosecutors have renounced his conviction, the victim’s family and several trial jurors also said they opposed his execution.

………

Williams, who served as the imam in his prison and dedicated his time to poetry, twice had his execution halted at the last minute. He was days away from execution in January 2015 when the Missouri state supreme court granted his attorneys more time for DNA testing. In August 2017, Eric Greitens, the Republican governor at the time, granted a reprieve hours before the scheduled execution, citing DNA testing on the knife, which showed no trace of Williams’s DNA.

Greitens set up a panel to review the case but when Mike Parson, the current Republican governor, took over, he disbanded that board and pushed for the execution to proceed.

Just a note here, if your behavior looks callous and stupid when compared to the actions of rapist former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, you are wrong.

There is a special place in hell for these folks.

Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

It appears that many of the hyper-wealthy residents of London are considering leaving in response to potential tax increases.

Let them go.

They drive up costs for ordinary folks, they cheat on their taxes, and they generally make London unlivable: 

In Mayfair’s financial enclave and the sleek offices of advisers to the ultra-rich, the talk is getting louder: everyone knows someone who's thinking about their exit strategy — or already gone.

Moves that were once confined to whispers and rumors have burst into the open since the Labour Party came into power with promises to clamp down even further on preferential tax treatment for well-heeled foreign residents, known as non-doms, as well as private equity investments and private school fees.

Some are simply cashing in UK investments, but others — from scions of mega-rich families to City of London bosses — have mapped out or already executed departure plans, according to about three dozen wealth advisers and high-net-worth individuals interviewed by Bloomberg, who mostly asked not to be named.

………

For the wealthiest, the UK’s most contentious plans include 40% inheritance tax on offshore wealth, and having carried interest — a portion of investment returns, shared between fund managers — taxed at a rate as high as 45%, rather than 28% currently.

If they are willing to ditch the UK because they don't want to pay their taxes, you don't want them in the UK at all.

Just make sure that you ding them for money on the way out.

South Carolina Bans Bible

It appears that in an attempt to ban work and sexually explicit books, the state schoolboard has banned the bible and Shakespaere.

It was only a matter of time, and I thought that it would be Texas or Florida that went first, but it's the birthplace of Stephen Colbert:

We’ve mostly steered clear of S.C. Education Superintendent Ellen Weaver’s effort to take over decisions about what books can and can’t be available in public schools, because we agree that schools shouldn’t offer books that are essentially how-to manuals for having sex.

And yes, a few such books actually have showed up in our schools — although schools generally have removed them as soon as they were made aware of them.

But as complaints have mounted about what critics call an unclear new regulation, and as state officials have refused to clarify any of the text, we’ve looked more closely at the rules that took effect Aug. 1 — and we’ve become concerned. Our concern isn’t that the regulation is unclear. It’s that at least parts of it are quite clear — and quite broad.

What’s unclear is whether the Board of Education intends to enforce its regulation as written, or if it will treat it as though it means what most people would assume it means if they read only the regulation — and not the sweeping definition in state law that it incorporates by reference but doesn't quote.

Teachers have been asking what seem like ridiculous questions designed simply to make a point: Can they still teach the works of William Shakespeare, or even include them in their libraries? What about the Bible? Can it be available in the library?

By our reading, the answers to those questions would be no. And that’s ridiculous.

As the Japanese say, "バカにつける薬はない".

You Know that AI Has Jumped the Shark When

Microsoft proposes restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to power their LLM efforts.

Truth be told, this is more like jumping C. megaladon.*

Are these people even listening themselves? 

What's next? Restarting Chernobyl or using Fukushima for cooling water?

The idle Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant may soon be coming back online in Pennsylvania, thanks to a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) between Microsoft and Constellation Energy, which owns the shuttered facility.

TMI Unit 1, which was retired for economic reasons in 2019, is slated for a potential revival as the Crane Clean Energy Center (CCEC), according to Constellation's announcement of a new PPA with the IT giant.

While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, reopening the facility will require approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, though that might not be a hard sell.

It SHOULD be a hard sell.  It should be a f%$#ing hard sell.

Constellation noted that Unit 1 will need "significant investments" to restore the plant, with work needed on the turbine, generator, main power transformer, and cooling and control systems.

So basically, they have to replace or refurbish or refuel everything?  That's reassuring.

Lest you think this is the same Three Mile Island facility that had a partial meltdown in 1979, described as the worst commercial nuclear accident in US history, it's not: That happened at TMI Unit 2, located next door.

By next door, they mean in the same facility, and designed by the same firm, with slight differences in size and power output.

Unit 1, on the other hand, "operated at industry-leading levels of safety and reliability for decades before being shut down for economic reasons," according to Constellation. The facility was shut down after it failed to get a needed subsidy renewed that the company said was key to competing with cheaper fossil fuels.

Yeah, that's kind of like saying, "Yeah, what happened at Grenfell Tower was bad, but look at all the other buildings with aluminum faced polyisocyanurate panels.  None of them have burnt down.

^*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever. 

Normally, When You Say That a Newsie Is in Bed With Their Sources………

It is not meant literally, but it appears that Olivia Nuzzi (Pronounced, "Newsie," As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know.") has been suspended from New York Magazine for sexting RFK, Jr.

No seriously.  Don't make me quote Anna Russel again:

New York magazine on Thursday said its Washington correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, is on leave after learning the star journalist had allegedly engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a reporting subject. That person is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to people familiar with the matter.

"Recently our Washington Correspondent Olivia Nuzzi acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures," a spokesperson for New York magazine said in a statement in response to questions from Status.

"Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign," the spokesperson added. "An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers’ trust." 

 In her own statement, provided to Status after this story initially published, Nuzzi confirmed that “earlier this year, the nature of some communication” between herself “and a former reporting subject turned personal.”

“During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source,” Nuzzi added. “The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.” 

Two interesting things, first, it appears that Ryan Lizza is now her EX fiancee, and the fact that Ryan Lizza is the less hackish journalist in a journalism power couple is kind of mind blowing.

Second, it appears that this story broke because RFK, Jr. was bragging about it to his friends.

Mr. Kennedy, that is JD Vance f%$#ing a couch creepy.

Linkage

• In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention (Futurism) We really need to prosecute those rat-f%$#s.
• Microsoft Bing Copilot blames reporter for crimes he covered (The Register) Yes, that singularity is coming any day now.
• Embedded Bias: How cardiologists addressed bias in a clinical algorithm (Stat News) It turns out that zipcode works better than race.
• Arrhenius 1896: First Calculation of Global Warming (Protons for Breakfast) We've known about anthropogenic climate change for 128 years.
• The Cell Phone and Its Double (The Anarchist Library) How to use burner and other phones to maximize your privacy.
• Don’t Take Advice From a Habsburg (The Dial) Eduard Habsburg has advice for all of us on how to make the world a better place.  It has been a bad idea to take advice from a Habsburg for over 1,000 years.
• He Worked for a Law Firm Consulting on an Anti-Trans Supreme Court Case. Then We Asked About These Racist Posts  (WIRED) Gee a lawyer forking for bigots is a bigot, hoocoodanode? (H/t Atrios)
• Our values: killing pensioners to save money (Alex Krainer's TrendCompass) Keir Starmer wants the poor elderly in the UK to freeze this winter.
• Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type (WIRED) Tech bros are not your allies, ever.
• CFPB Bans Navient from Federal Student Loan Servicing and Orders the Company to Pay $120 Million for Wide-Ranging Student Lending Failures (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) This is the former Sallie Mae, who used to be THE student loan servicer in the nation.  Big deal this.
  

The Z-80 chip has finally ended production.  The end of an era:

I Can Haz Prro

So, now we know that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was the one that altered the mortality data from New York nursing homes.

I don't mean that he directed it, I mean that he was the one who changed the numbers himself. 

If this is not a crime, then the law needs to be changed.

Actually, it is against the law, because he lied under oath to Congress about it, but that law only applies to little people, and not "Rat-Faced Andy" Cuomo:

Earlier this summer, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo squared off for a closed-door interview with seven members of a Republican-led congressional subcommittee investigating how New York handled the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Cuomo was asked repeatedly about a State Health Department report that deflected blame for the thousands of people who died of Covid at nursing homes in early 2020. Mr. Cuomo stood by the report and said he certainly did not review it and insisted he had no memory of seeing it before its release.

But a review of emails and congressional documents appears to show how Mr. Cuomo not only saw the report, but personally wrote parts of early drafts.

………

Mr. Cuomo apparently inserted language to underscore how “community spread among employees or possibly visitation by family and friends were relevant factors” that contributed to nursing home deaths.

“The larger text,” Ms. Kennedy noted, “is what he added.”

The email exchange among Mr. Cuomo’s aides, which was reviewed by The New York Times, was one of many sought by the Justice Department and a law firm retained by the State Assembly as it prepared to impeach Mr. Cuomo in 2021.

In another example cited in congressional documents, one of Mr. Cuomo’s top aides wrote an email on June 29, 2020, asking for someone to “please print two copies and drop at mansion,” referring to the State Health Department report and Mr. Cuomo’s Albany residence. A week later, the report was released with some of Mr. Cuomo’s revisions included.

Mr. Cuomo’s handling of the early stages of the pandemic initially brought him national attention and widespread praise, and became fodder for his memoir, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the Covid-19 Pandemic.”

Now there is a book that has not aged well.

But as months passed, the state’s response began to draw critical scrutiny, with the more than 15,000 Covid-related deaths among nursing home residents emerging as a focal point. The Times reported in 2021 how top aides to Mr. Cuomo pushed to hide the number of deaths in state nursing homes during the early days of the pandemic.

………

The renewed focus on the state’s pandemic response comes at what may be a politically sensitive moment for Mr. Cuomo, who is said by some to be weighing a run for mayor of New York City next year.

Those rumors have intensified as controversies have surrounded the current mayor, Eric Adams. Last week, the city’s police commissioner, Edward Caban, and Mr. Adams’s counsel, Lisa Zornberg, both quit after federal investigators sought information from or searched the homes of several top officials and seized their phones, including Mr. Caban’s.

As an aside, I have been following the whole Adams corruption investigations, keeping track of the various reports, and this has begun to resemble Fibber McGee's closet.

Rat Faced Andy may be the only person looking at a Mayoral run who is worse than Eric Adams, and Eric Adams may the most corrupt Mayor in New York history.

Andrew Mark Cuomo, would you please go now?

This is Called a Democracy Deficit

I think that this was the inevitable result of the imperial Presidency set up by Charles de Gaulle, it just had to wait for someone more arrogant and conceited than de Gaulle, which as mind-boggling as it sounds, applies to Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron.

His undemocratic selection for Prime Minister just announced a cabinet containing no members of the two parties that got the most votes in the last election.

I'm thinking that Macron is well on his way to ending up like Benito Mussolini.

French Prime Minister Michel Barnier unveiled the country’s new government Saturday, seeking to end months of political uncertainty, if not the accompanying acrimony.

Barnier’s newly named cabinet marks a tilt to the right and will need to maintain enough support across France’s National Assembly to avoid being dissolved with a no-confidence vote. Members of the left-wing alliance that won the most seats in July’s legislative elections — and led the effort to keep the far right out of power — objected that the slate of ministers was undemocratic, representing the election’s losers.

Like Macron, or Barnier for that matter, give a flying f%$# in a rolling doughnut about all of this.

They represent the real France, the urban wealthy bankers and suchlike. 

This sort of, "Let them eat brioche," attitude (that's the real quote), does not have a happy history in France.

………

Two weeks of talks with the various blocs have resulted in the naming of 39 ministers. At the core are 17 senior cabinet members, who together form a predominantly center-right government: Seven cabinet ministers are from Macron’s centrist movement, which finished second in the election, and three are from Barnier’s right-wing Republicans, which finished a distant fourth.

None of the ministers represent Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, which placed third. But also excluded are representatives of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front, which placed first.

………

Barnier could get by without the support of lawmakers on the left. He has backing from the centrist and conservative camps. But to make the math work, and avoid a censure vote that would topple the government before it even got started, Barnier needed at least the tacit approval of National Rally.

Why on earth would the Fascists in the RN want to do that?

Being complicit in an establishment government, when their entire electoral strategy is based on condemning establishment politics and establishment parties, should be a complete non-starter.

If there is anything to be learned from the fates of anti-establishment parties like M5S in Italy, is that cooperating with the establishment for a few crumbs ends up destroying the party and its associated movement.

Macron, l'état ce n'est pas vous.