An Interesting Historical Data Point

When we look at the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, they all started with the troika of privatization, tax cuts for the rich and businesses, and shredding the social safety net.

This is quite literally the neoliberal consensus:

It's time to talk about the Banality of Evil. The Nazis didn't start with genocide. Heck, they didn't even start with the Nuremberg Laws. Our education system and popular media focus on the most horrific, the most dramatic, and the most apparent aspects of Fascism. However, Fascism begins in a much less dramatic fashion. In the beginning,Fascism is banal, and to many of us, it is oddly familiar.

Before the rise of Fascism, both Italy and Germany had a robust social safety net and public services. In Italy, the trains were nationalized, and they ran on time while serving rural villages in 1861. The telecom industry was nationalized in 1901. Phone lines and public telephone services were universally available. In 1908, the life insurance industry was nationalized. For the first time, even poor Italians could ensure that their family could be taken care of if they died a premature death.

Between 1919 and 1921, Italy went through a time of worker liberation that has been dubbed as Bienno Rosso. Italian workers had formed factory co-ops where they shared the profits. Large landlords were replaced by cooperative farming. Workers received many concessions: higher wages, fewer hours, and safer workplace conditions.

………

Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister in October 1922. Nazis rose to power in 1933 in Germany. Mussolini convened a meeting of his cabinet and immediately decided to privatize all the public enterprises. On December 3, 1922, they passed a law where they promised to reduce the size and function of the government, reform tax laws and also reduce spending. This was followed by mass privatization. He privatized the post office, railroads, telephone companies, and even the state life insurance companies. Afterward, the two firms that had lobbied the hardest: Assicurazioni Generali (AG) and Adriatica di Sicurtà (AS), became a de-facto oligopoly. They became for-profit enterprises. The premiums increased, and poor people had their coverage removed.

In January 1923, Mussolini eliminated rent-control laws. His reasoning ought to be familiar since that is the same reasoning used in many contemporary editorials against rent control laws. He claimed rent control laws prevent landlords from building new housing. When tenants protested, he eliminated tenants' unions. As a result, rent prices increased wildly in Rome, and many families became homeless. Some went to live in caves.


Once more, these policies allowed landlords to increase their profit and holdings while they severely hurt the poor.

………

Hitler's economic policy was Mussolini's policy on steroids. In the 1920s, the NSDAP was a minor party. In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party did not have an outright majority. According to the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, on January 4, 1933, bankers and industrialists had a secret backroom deal with with then Chancellor Hindenberg to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany in a coalition.

In 1934, Nazis outlined their plan to revitalize the German economy. It involved reprivatization of significant industries: railways, public works project, construction, steel, and banking. On top of that, Hitler guaranteed profits for the private sector, and so, many American industrialists and bankers gleefully flocked to Germany to invest.

The Nazis had a thorough plan for deregulation. The Nazi's economist, stated," The first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute legal security and must know that work and its return are guaranteed. The interferences In a business which occurred at first, perhaps as a result of too much zeal, have become intolerable."

………

Fascism isn't the merger of corporations and government that is too vague, and too easy to confuse. Fascism is government functions being replaced by private corporations. Fascism is when the public good is replaced by private profit.

(emphasis mine)

If you have ever wondered why the US foreign policy (and its proxies like the IMF) seems to favor entities who could be reasonably described as fascist, this provides some valuable context.

Signs that Your Investment Might be a Scam………

How about when investors are demanding an exhumation of the founder of the fund?

It does seem to me that this might be an indicator that there are significant irregularities:

Lawyers for customers of an insolvent cryptocurrency exchange have asked police to exhume the body of the company’s founder, amid efforts to recover about $190m in Bitcoin which were locked in an online black hole after his death.

………

Citing “decomposition concerns”, lawyers requested the exhumation be completed no later than spring 2020.

………

Soon after his death, however, reports surfaced that nearly 80,000 users of QuadrigaCX – at the time Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange – were unable to access funds totaling more $190m.

Cotten was the only one with access to necessary permissions. While Robertson has possession of the laptop containing the necessary passwords, she remains locked out.

………

Uncertainty about the missing funds has fueled speculation that Cotten may still be alive. In their letter to the RCMP the law firm underlined the “need for certainty around the question of whether Mr Cotten is in fact deceased”.

The accounting firm Ernst & Young, tasked with auditing the company as it undergoes bankruptcy proceedings, discovered numerous money-losing trades executed by Cotten, using customers’ funds.

They also found a substantial amount of money was used to fund a lavish lifestyle for the couple, including the use of private jets and luxury vehicles. Ernst & Young was able to recover $24m in cash and $9m in assets held by Robertson.

Both Canada’s tax authorities and the FBI are also investigating the company.

Anyone wanna guess the results of the exhumation?

I would not place bets on either side.

Bribery as a Political Strategy

I am referring, of course, to Mike Bloomberg, who has used significant payments and grants to secure endorsements for his Presidential campaign:\

Michael R. Bloomberg and Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton seemed like an improbable political duo on Wednesday as they heaped praise on each other. Mr. Tubbs, a 29-year-old liberal who is Stockton’s first black mayor, hailed Mr. Bloomberg as a leader “with the resources, with the record and with the relationships” to defeat President Trump in 2020. Mr. Bloomberg, a 77-year-old centrist billionaire, called the younger man “my kind of mayor.”

Mr. Tubbs had reason to feel kinship with Mr. Bloomberg. Last year, he graduated from a mayoral training program that Mr. Bloomberg sponsors at Harvard University. Mr. Tubbs had attended a conference co-sponsored by Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropic foundation in Paris in 2017, and was featured in its 2018 annual report. And this past June, Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation donated $500,000 to an education reform group based in Stockton, a struggling inland city in Northern California.

As Mr. Bloomberg traverses the country as a presidential candidate, he is drawing on a vast network of city leaders whom he has funded as a philanthropist or advised as an elder statesman of municipal politics. Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9 billion, has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million. Now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign: He has been endorsed so far by eight mayors — from larger cities like San Jose, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., and smaller ones like Gary, Ind., representing a total of more than 2.6 million Americans.

For all of those endorsers, Mr. Bloomberg has been an important benefactor. All have attended his prestigious boot camp at Harvard that gives the mayors access to ongoing strategic advice from Bloomberg-funded experts. More than half have received funding in the form of grants and other support packages from Mr. Bloomberg worth a total of nearly $10 million, according to a review of tax documents and interviews with all eight mayors.

The money he has given to cities underscores the extraordinary nature of Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy. More than any presidential candidate in recent history, Mr. Bloomberg has established himself — through philanthropic giving, political endorsements and campaign spending — as a singular ally for a large cross-section of American politicians, many of whom feel a deep sense of loyalty in return. And there is no group to whom he is more tightly bonded with than his fellow mayors.

………

“Lots of people have money,” Mr. Tubbs said. “But the way he uses his money speaks to how he’s someone who has a vision for this party.”

Mr. Tubbs and other mayors say they are endorsing Mr. Bloomberg because of his platform and ideas, not because of any pressure, but some acknowledged that his wealth and philanthropy were an unavoidable factor.

"An unavoidable factor," huh?

That's an awfully genteel way to say, "Thank you for the bribe."

Take away Mike Bloomberg's money, and all you have as a candidate is a short racist, his recent apology for stop and frisk notwithstanding.

About Those Anti-Impeachment "Democrats"

Jeff Van Drew ("D"-NJ) is looking to become a Republican, because, even in New Jersey, the state Democratic Party establishment finds him too cynical and too hypocritical to support.

To refresh your memory, he was one of 2 Democrats in the House to vote against initiating the impeachment investigation in the first place, and he was the "Democrat" most likely to vote against impeachment.

Since that time, his support has cratered, so he's looking to switch party to save his ass.

This is actually a good thing, because it illuminates to other wavering "Democrats" the consequences of voting no.

The problem here is not one of values, it is one of integrity and guts, because, as the example that Jeff Van Drew shows, there is NO political upside for a Democrat to oppose impeachment:

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, the conservative South Jersey Democrat who has vocally opposed impeaching President Donald Trump, is expected to switch parties in the coming days, according to three New Jersey Democratic sources, leaving a party he has represented for more than 20 years.

Van Drew didn’t just oppose the impeachment effort. He repeatedly touted his position on Fox News, winning direct praise from Trump on Twitter. “Thank you,” the president wrote in one tweet in September.

In turn, Democrats saw his support implode in polling and party leaders began distancing themselves from the congressman. This week the Democratic chairman of Atlantic County warned in a public letter that Van Drew would infuriate Democratic voters and could cost the party down ballot next year if he opposed impeachment. State Senate President Steve Sweeney (D., Gloucester), a longtime Van Drew ally, pointedly refused to endorse the congressman.

"Jeff stabbed us in the back, certainly,” said a seething Michael Suleiman, the Atlantic County chairman. "It’s disgusting. It’s a disgrace. Good riddance.”

He added, “Maybe he’ll be the new ambassador to Ukraine.” 

Oh ……… Burn.

………

Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement Saturday that he and other top Democrats had made it clear to Van Drew that his impeachment stand meant he would no longer have Democratic support. “Despite knowing full well that the president has abused the powers of his office,” Murphy said, “Congressman Van Drew is now willing to enable Donald Trump just to try to salvage his own election.”

Van Drew in recent days asked party chairs to sign a pledge to support him, and they refused, according to Sulemain. Van Drew’s team also tried to persuade national Democratic staffers detailed to his race to continue to support him despite his switch to the GOP. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee staff balked and alerted South Jersey Democratic officials, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

(Emphasis mine)

So, not only is he switching parties, he attempted to poach DCCC staffers for his campaign as a Republican.

The technical term for this is Chutzpah.

………

Indeed, Van Drew voted with Trump only about 7% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, a data-focused news site. But the impeachment vote was a breaking point. Van Drew was one of two House Democrats to break ranks on opening the inquiry, and he has said he plans to vote against formal articles of impeachment against Trump next week.

These numbers does not matter.

There is a difference between a conservative Democrat and a disloyal Democrat, and Jeff Van Drew is clearly the latter.

If This Isn't a Sign of Empire Collapse………

It turns out that one of America's largest exports is our own blood.

We are quite literally selling ourselves, and it is horrifying:

America is one of the only developed countries in the world that pays people to donate blood, much of it sold abroad (70% of the world's plasma is of US origin), and as commercial blood donations have soared, blood now accounts for 2% of the country's exports -- more than corn or soya.

There's more growth ahead for blood products, expected to "grow radiantly" according to an analyst who was cheering 13% growth between 2016-17.

One study found that the typical blood-seller derives a third of their income from selling blood. Princeton's Kathryn Edin called the commercial blood industry "the lifeblood of the $2 a day poor."

Mintpress's interviews with blood-sellers reveal "a mix of disabled, working poor, homeless, single parents, and college students," who describe a system of arbitrary and predatory payments, which fluxuate wildly from day to day.

The horror.

A Feature, Not a Bug

A new report reports that charter schools are an orgy of self-delaing and corruption.

This is not a surprise. Whenever private forces take over a public asset, looting is the inevitable result:

Last March, the Network for Public Education released a report showing that the federal government has lost a billion dollars to charter school waste and fraud. But the organization had not stopped sifting through the data. Their follow-up report, “Still Asleep At The Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in as Pileup of Fraud ands Waste,” reveals that the situation is even worse than shown in the first report, while laying out more state by state details. Particularly striking—the vast amount of money that has been wasted on ghost schools that never served.

NPE is a group co-founded by Diane Ravitch, the Bush-era Assistant Secretary of Education who has since become an outspoken critic of education reform. The organization's executive director is Carol Burris, a former award-winning New York principal. Burris was the primary author of this report.

The reports examine what happened to money disbursed by the Federal Charter Fund, a charter grant source created in 1994 as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Since 1995, it has handed out almost $4 billion.

Some new findings in this follow-up report:

The original report underestimated the number of charters that had taken federal grant funds and then either closed or never opened at all. That report found 1,000 such charters; the number now appears to be closer to 1,800. That means the failure rate is close to 37% nationally. Michigan gave grants of at least $100,000 to 72 schools that never opened at all; California gave grants to 61 unopened schools. Those two states alone account for over $16 million dollars spent without educating a single child. A grand total of 537 schools never actually opened; tax dollars spent on literally nothing.

The charter school system is constructed for two purposes:  Breaking teachers' unions, and allowing finance types to loot taxpayer money.

Crap

The Tories have won big in today's election, having picked up about 60 seats and an absolute majority.

The SNP won big as well, gaining 12 seats, and how holding almost all the constituencies in Scotland

Labour lost about 40 seats, and the Lib-Dems lost about half of their seats (down to 8), including that of their party leader.

The singular issue for this election was Brexit, Labour tried to thread the needle on Brexit, calling for a second referendum, which was clearly a losing proposition, and the Liberal-Democrats were explicitly campaigning on not leaving the EU.

Both of these were clearly unwise politically.

Corbyn did not immediately resign, but he did announce that he would not be party leader for the next election, which provides a chance for a more orderly transition over the next few weeks.

The next few years in the OK are going to be a complete sh%$ show with the that blonde weasel Boris Johnson as PM:

Jeremy Corbyn has said he will remain in place as Labour leader while his party undertakes a “period of reflection” after suffering catastrophic election losses in its traditional heartlands.

Speaking at his own count in Islington North, Corbyn insisted Labour’s policies had proven popular with the electorate, and attacked the media’s portrayal of him and his party.

“I will not lead the party in any future general election campaign. I will discuss with our party to ensure there is a process now of reflection on this result and on the policies that the party will take going forward. And I will lead the party during that period to ensure that discussion takes place and we move on into the future,” he said.

I do hope that the party does not rush pell-mell back to Blairism, because BoJo will almost certainly try to destroy what remains of the modern British welfare state, including, despite his protestation, the National Health Service. (NHS)

Headline of the Day

Democrats Who Are Undecided on Impeachment Aren’t ‘Moderates’. They’re Political Hacks.

—Dan Froomkin

He's right.

I think that the impeachment is mismanaged, they are rushing the process and not exposing the full level of sleaze of the Trump administration, but there level of cowardice, even for Representatives in Republican leaning districts, is beneath contempt.

What's more, to quote (not) Tallyrand, it's worse than a crime, it's a mistake, because anyone who believes that the impeachment is some sort of deep state conspiracy will never ever vote for a Democrat:

What can we conclude about those few Democratic congressional representatives who claim they haven’t decided yet how to vote on impeachment?

We can conclude that they lack consistent principles.

We can conclude that, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they have chosen neither to accept it, like almost all the other members of their party, nor ignore it, like all the members of the other party.

We can therefore conclude that they are instead making up their mind based on something else entirely.

And we can easily conclude what that is: They are basing their votes on what they think they need to do to win reelection. They are not looking into their souls. They are sticking a finger up into the wind.

Republican members of Congress at least have an intellectually consistent reason to vote against impeachment: They have chosen to throw in their lot with Trump, quite literally no matter what.

But these Democrats are in a special category. You could call them political hacks. You could call them unprincipled, opportunistic, cowardly, spineless, vacillating, fainthearted, jittery, or dissolute.

Or, if you are a member of the elite political press, you could call them “moderates” and “centrists.”

There are areas where Democrats can disagree, but this is just careerism without a shred of values.

When push comes to shove, if they don't vote for impeachment, they should not be in office, and they should be primaried.

Pennsylvania Pushes Back Against Hedge Fund Looting

The State Treasurer has taken a look at the hedge funds, and the state are moving to simpler financial instruments, which have far lower fees, and actually perform at least as well.

Of course, low fee funds don't have the money to spend on political donations, so I do wonder how long it will be until the state legislature starts pushing back over this:

Pennsylvania Treasurer Joe Torsella last month told the world he’d pulled the state’s money — or at least the slice he oversees — “out of all so-called hedge-fund investments, resulting in [over] $14 million in annual fee saving.”

The claim sounded familiar. I looked it up, and sure enough Torsella had announced back in April 2017 that he was moving $2.4 billion in state funds away from private investment managers into a “passive investment strategy, saving an estimated $5 million per year in fees.”

The 2017 purge was against “actively managed” stock investors. This fall’s move, dumping nearly $500 million out of hedge funds, was “the next installment,” Torsella spokeswoman Ashley Matthews told me.

This was smaller than the stocks move (just one-fifth of the assets), but also bigger (almost three times the fee savings).

The move reflects Torsella’s long-held position to put more state pension money in low-cost index funds while avoiding high-fee hedge funds.

Through a company called Aksia, a “fund-of-funds" manager hired under Torsella’s predecessor Rob McCord, Pennsylvania employed more than 50 hedge funds — such big firms as BlackRock D.E. Shaw, and Philadelphia’s PFM, as well as more obscure investors in a web of hedging strategies — to invest a slice of Pennsylvania families’ Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) money.


What does the record show? Since 2013, Aksia and its funds were paid more than $100 million by the Pennsylvania treasury — $15 million a year — in fees and shared profits (“carried interest”), for managing that not-quite-$500 million.

How’d they do? According to Treasury data, after paying those fees, the hedge funds returned an average of less than 4 percent a year over those 6½ years. That is less than the college savings plans’ long-term target for all investments, which is 6 percent a year.

This is an unalloyed good.

First it means that the taxpayers of the state of Pennsylvania are no longer being ripped off, and second,  it represents a claw-back of power and money from Wall Street.

About the IG Report on the Russia Investigation

So the report is out, and the DoJ's Inspector General has testified, and there are two important takeaways:

1. There is no no conspiracy, just business as usual for the FBI.
2. Business as usual by the FBI is a complete sh%$ show with abuse of due process and of a complete disregard due diligence.

So the implication is that the FBI routinely plays fast and loose with our civil rights when they can operate in secret before a court that has largely captured by the state security apparatus:

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Wednesday that the FBI was justified in opening its 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign, but he told sharply divided lawmakers that he could not vindicate the bureau’s former leaders because of other major errors — effectively offering both political parties fresh ammunition in their feud over the Russia case.

………

Since his 434-page report was released Monday, Democrats have emphasized its conclusion that political bias did not drive the investigation into a possible conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia; Barr and fellow Republicans have said the report found so many flaws that the investigation should have never happened.

“Does your report vindicate Mr. Comey?” asked Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.).

“It doesn’t vindicate anyone at the FBI who touched this, including the leadership,” Horowitz responded. “Does it vindicate Mr. McCabe?” Kennedy asked, referring to Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe. “Same answer,” Horowitz responded.

The inspector general found 17 errors or omissions made by the FBI as it sought and received approvals to conduct surveillance on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Those applications were filed to the secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to oversee intelligence and terrorism cases.

In a perfect world, this report would lead to serious reform of the FISA court, which has routinely been used to undermine the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Of course, we do not live in perfect world, so I expect no reform.

What a F%$#ing Candy Ass

A journalist attempted to ask Boris Johnson some questions, and the Tory candidate for PM hid in a refrigerator to get away from him:

Boris Johnson retreated into a fridge as he sought to avoid a TV interview, amid rattled nerves at CCHQ over a narrowing in the opinion polls.

The prime minister was ambushed by the Good Morning Britain producer, Jonathan Swain, during a pre-dawn visit to Modern Milkman, a business in the Tory-held constituency of Pudsey, in Yorkshire.

When Swain first approached Johnson, he asked: “Morning prime minister, would you come on Good Morning Britain, prime minister?” Johnson’s aide can be heard mouthing “oh for f%$#’s sake” in response.

The show’s hosts, Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, appeared shocked by the aide’s reaction. Swain goes on to say: “I’ve just had a reaction from one of the minders. OK, no need to push, thank you very much,” with Reid exclaiming: “The look on his face, that minder.” The aide was then named on air as the PM’s press secretary, Rob Oxley.

When Swain presses the prime minister, stating he was live on the show, Johnson replied “I’ll be with you in a second” and walked off, before Piers exclaims “he’s gone into the fridge”. Johnson walks inside a fridge stacked with milk bottles with his aides. One person can be heard saying: “It’s a bunker.”

Conservative sources subsequently insisted that Johnson was “categorically not hiding” in the fridge, from which Johnson emerged carrying a crate of milk bottles – but instead his aides were taking a moment to prep the PM for a separate, pre-agreed interview.

………

Tory aides have closely controlled the PM’s appearances since a chaotic day on Monday. Johnson pocketed a journalist’s phone during a TV interview rather than look at a picture of a four-year-old boy asleep on the floor at a Leeds hospital.

I'm not a big fan of Winston Churchill, but I think that I can conclusively state that BoJo is the least Churchillian person in the whole of the UK, and I am including Gary Glitter in that set.

Tweet of the Day

From AJ Liebling's mouth to Jeremy Corbyn's ear:

We believe in a free press.

I just wish they would free themselves from the shackles of their billionaire owners.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 11, 2019

Tweet of the Day

see your local antifa dealer for attractive offers pic.twitter.com/MbRVMkhQNb

— 🌐IPM 🎄🎅🏿⛄️🎁🕎❄ (@IPM_HQ) December 4, 2019

I like this stocking stuffer.

Pelosi Backs Down

After ignoring progressive concerns over her drug price bill Pelosi has cut a deal with the Progressive Caucus to strengthen the bill.

I still do not think that the bill is strong enough, but it's good that progressives in Congress were sufficiently disciplined force the Speaker to do the right thing:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reached a deal with progressive leaders on Tuesday night to avert a showdown over her signature bill to lower drug prices.

The deal with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, will include two changes that progressives have been pushing for over the course of weeks.

Those changes are to increase the minimum number of drugs subject to negotiation under the bill from 35 to 50 and to restore the implementation of Jayapal’s amendment, which would extend protections against drug price spikes to people on employer-sponsored health insurance plans, not just those on Medicare.

The deal prevents a showdown on Thursday when the bill will come to the floor for a vote. Progressive leaders had been contemplating a rare full-scale rebellion against Pelosi, thinking of blocking a vote on the drug pricing bill by trying to vote down a procedural motion.

Not Impressed

Jerry Nadler just announced 2 articles of impeachment.

Unfortunately, as BMaz notes at Emptywheel, "Pelosi and Nadler have turned impeachment into such a craven sh%$ and clown show that it is unbearable." (%$ mine)

It's pretty clear that, unlike Adam Schiff, both Nadler and Pelosi don't want to do this, and want this over, and down the memory hole, before years end.

It is an exercise in cowardice and politically stupid, as it will energize the Maga types for a long time while putting the party activists back in the proverbial "Veal Pen".

You need to uncover the totality of Trump's corruption and general sleaze, like Sam Ervin did with the Watergate committee.

House Democrats unveiled two narrowly drawn articles of impeachment against President Trump on Tuesday, saying he had abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress in its investigation of his conduct regarding Ukraine.

“We must be clear: No one, not even the president, is above the law,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference where he was flanked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other House leaders.

At the heart of the Democrats’ case is the allegation that Trump tried to leverage a White House meeting and military aid, sought by Ukraine to combat Russian military aggression, to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as a probe of an unfounded theory that Kyiv conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Oh Snap

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and most of the House Progressive Caucus are trying to replace Nancy Pelosi's phony baloney prescription drug price bill with something useful.

There is no downside to this effort, except that Nancy Pelosi might lose some street cred with her lobbyist buddies.

Mitch McConnell won't allow a vote on any version of this bill in the Senate:

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have taken the side of the Congressional Progressive Caucus against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a dramatic fight over the details of a drug pricing bill that has been a source of intra-caucus sparring all year.

Pelosi is hoping to move quickly to a floor vote to satisfy a major 2018 campaign pledge that Democrats would work to lower drug prices. Progressives, led by Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan, who are advocating for changes to the legislation, are pushing back, arguing the bill is far too modest and would do little if enacted—which, given the makeup of the Senate, it won’t be.

………

The Warren-Sanders effort has already gained one new ally: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), whose spokesperson Corbin Trent ripped the bill put together by Pelosi and her staff. “They stripped out everything that looked like progress,” Corbin said.

The bill, HR 3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, will not become law, whether Pelosi’s version passes or whether the stronger elements preferred by the Progressive Caucus are included. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bury it with the other 400-odd pieces of legislation in his graveyard. But the importance of this House Democratic squabble goes well beyond a single bill. It will indicate whether the 98-member Progressive Caucus, which grew in size this year, is willing and able to fight for policies it believes in. How hard progressives push back against Pelosi will determine whether she will continue to ignore progressives as she pursues her policy framework, or whether she’ll have to respect and include them.

………

The Rules Committee is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon, which would then allow it to move to the House floor for a vote. The Progressive Caucus has been surveying members the past several days, encouraging them to vote against the rule for the bill, which would block it from coming to the floor and send it back to the legislative drawing board. A source involved with the whip operation said that so far “the count is excellent,” expressing confidence that enough members of the caucus would stick together. (Before the House votes on a bill, it first votes to approve or reject the “rule” under which it would be considered. Taking down the rule is a way to block the underlying bill from a vote.)

………

The relative weakness of the bill coming to the House floor makes a mockery of the health care debate unfolding on the presidential campaign trail. While 2020 Democratic hopefuls debate a sweeping, comprehensive reform of the healthcare system, Democrats in the House are having trouble giving authority to the government to negotiate lower prices for more than a mere 25 drugs. The gap between the two debates could hardly be greater, even though Democrats in the House have a free hand policy-wise: After all, the bill has little chance of passing the Senate and becoming law, so it’s largely a messaging exercise.

………

AS THE PROSPECT documented last Friday, Pelosi and her staff, led by top health policy aide Wendell Primus, have frozen out progressives from deliberations over the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, exercising extreme control over the process. They bypassed legislation written by Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), which, thanks to progressive organizing, had the support of a majority of the caucus. Instead, Pelosi and Primus sought to find a compromise with the Trump White House, only to see Trump savage the bill on Twitter, indicating that it didn’t have his support. Despite that reversal, all the provisions weakened or watered down to gain Trump’s support remain in the bill, leaving open large gaps in who will benefit from the effects.

………

In addition, the uninsured will not see any benefits from the price negotiations, and will be forced to pay whatever price drug companies can command. Nicole Smith-Holt, the mother of a diabetic who died because he had to go off her insurance at age 26 and could no longer afford insulin, explained to the Prospect last week that “People like my son Alec wouldn’t have benefited. It wouldn’t have saved his life. And a lot of other lives would be at risk too.”

………

After being shut out of a high-priority legislative action—drug prices were one of the top issues in the 2018 midterms—and having the improvements they did get in whittled down to nothing, the Progressive Caucus, co-chaired by Jayapal and Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI), decided to rebel. On Friday afternoon, they began whipping Progressive Caucus member offices on whether they would be willing to vote against the rule for the Lower Drug Costs Now Act.

A Democratic source confirmed that “a substantial number of progressives” would vote against the rule if certain priorities—restoring the Jayapal amendment, increasing the minimum drugs negotiated, striking the non-interference clause, and making sure the uninsured benefit—were not included in the final text.

Pelosi’s team seemed unmoved by this threat, with an aide telling The Hill, “Representatives Pocan and Jayapal are gravely misreading the situation if they try to stand in the way of the overwhelming hunger for HR3 within the House Democratic Caucus and among progressive Members … The Lower Drug Costs Now Act will pass next week.”

………

Pelosi appears to be banking on progressives’ past failures to follow through on their threats and defy leadership. But with Sanders and Warren siding with Jayapal and the CPC over the weekend, the progressive caucus may finally have the impetus to block the bill in its current form. The senators’ statements also mean that Pelosi now must contend not only with the left-wing elements of her caucus, but the two presidential candidates commanding a substantial chunk of the primary electorate. On the other hand, passing a messaging bill on drug pricing is a high priority for Democrats up for reelection in tight races, no matter the details, and progressive will be under intense pressure to go along on their behalf.

XTC Snowman

Once again, we see that Nancy Pelosi sees Republicans as the opposition, and progressives as the enemy.

Until and unless Pelosi gets handed a loss, she will continue to ignore progressive priorities, because, to quote XTC, "People will always be tempted to wipe their feet, On anything with 'welcome' written on it."

I Long for the Relative Legal Integrity of John Mitchell

The DoJ Inspector General's report on the FBI investigation has been released, and it unequivocally refuted any allegations of bias on the part of the FBI, so William Barr immediately responded by completely mischaracterizing the report's contents.

At the end of all this, not only should Barr not be Attorney General, he should not have a license to practise law:

The Justice Department’s inspector general has released his long-awaited report on the FBI investigation of Russia’s 2016 effort to help elect Donald Trump president. Though it identifies serious errors and omissions in the FBI’s work — many related to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil Carter Page, an informal Trump campaign adviser — the report torpedoes the endless claim by Trump and his propagandists that the entire Russia investigation was a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.”

It’s important to reiterate right up front the actual argument that Trump World made for literally years. Not just that mistakes were made in the launching of the investigation. Not just that applications for this or that wiretapping warrant were mishandled.

No, the Trump argument has been that the entire investigation was built on top of deeply nefarious motives — that is, that the “deep state" was corruptly conspiring to prevent Trump from being elected president — and that it all was illegitimate. This was the argument of the president of the United States: that a law enforcement investigation into a foreign attack on our democracy was a “hoax" and a “witch hunt.”

………

The inspector general report just wrecked numerous claims that Trump and his propagandists have made to justify that narrative.

Perhaps this is why Attorney General William P. Barr, who has been himself working to invalidate that investigation, rushed to Trump’s rescue. He released a statement that said this:

The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.

But that’s not at all what the IG’s report makes clear.

Let’s begin with the origin of the investigation, referred to as “Crossfire Hurricane.” It was triggered when the Australian government contacted U.S. government officials to alert them that a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had bragged to an Australian official that the campaign was in contact with the Russian government, which had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The report from the Australian government, the inspector general writes, “was sufficient to predicate the investigation. This information provided the FBI with an articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring.”

………

The inspector general also completely knocks down the constant claims from Republicans that the entire investigation, which was authorized by then-Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director Bill Priestap, was the product of an anti-Trump conspiracy:

We concluded that Priestap’s exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision.

How about the claim Barr has made that the bureau was “spying” on the Trump campaign? The inspector general writes:

We found no evidence that the FBI placed any CHSs [confidential sources] or UCEs [undercover agents] within the Trump campaign or tasked any CHSs or UCEs to report on the Trump campaign. Finally, we also found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivations influenced the FBI’s decision to use CHSs or UCEs to interact with Trump campaign officials in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

………

Barr is in the process of completing his own “review” of the investigation, and it’s plainly obvious that he is going to try to use it to cast doubt on these inspector general conclusions. Let’s remember that Barr put out a profoundly dishonestly summary of the special counsel’s report, one clearly designed to game media coverage of it in advance.

There is no need to grant Barr even the slightest presumption of good faith this time around. It isn’t just that history on the special counsel’s report; it’s that he already told us what his intention is, by implying at the outset with his “spying” comment that there just might be something to that “deep state” plot, and, now, by telling us exactly how he’s going to try to dispute the inspector general’s findings, as well.

Barr has been mischaracterizing legal reports lying under the color of law for political advantage since Iran-Contra.

Why he has never been subject to discipline from the DC Bar is completely beyond me.

Hearts and Minds

The Washington Post has gotten its hands on internal documents that show that the US state security apparatus has been lying about progress in Afghanistan for most of the war.

Gee, that does not sound like the Vietnam war at all.

We are doing the same thing that we did in Vietnam because we learned the wrong lesson from Vietnam.

The lesson that was "learned" was that we "lost" because the American public stopped supporting the war, which makes counter-insurgency primarily an exercise in PR.

It's a convenient explanation, because it means that there is no accountability for Pentagon officials or members of the military, the American public failed them.

It's also complete bullsh%$.

The war was lost because the NLF (Viet Cong) and the the NVA beat the US military.

They defined the terms of engagement, and in so doing, they played to their strengths and our weaknesses, just like the Taliban is now.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.

The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials.

The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.

In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare.

With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints, frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.

To quote (not) Tallyrand, "They have forgotten nothing, and they have learned nothing."

There needs to be a thorough and independent investigation of how we were defeated in Vietnam Afghanistan, and those who made a dogs breakfast of it need to be called out.

It's called accountability, and it is all too rare for general officers in the US military.

Watch What They Do

Under Pete Buttigieg's administration, racial disparities in marijuana arrests are among the highest in the nation:

………

It’s a theme Buttigieg returns to often. In July, at an event in Iowa, he shot down a racist question from an audience member by responding, “The fact that a black person is four times as likely as a white person to be incarcerated for the exact same crime is evidence of systemic racism.” When pressed by fact-checkers on his claim, he said that he was referring to the racial disparity in marijuana arrests nationwide, citing an American Civil Liberties Union study that found black people were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for pot than whites.

………

The disparity in South Bend, Indiana, however, has been significantly worse than that under Buttigieg’s leadership.

Since Buttigieg became mayor in January 2012, taking charge of the South Bend Police Department, the city’s black residents have been far more likely to be arrested for marijuana offenses than its white residents. That disparity in South Bend under Buttigieg, in fact, is worse than in the rest of the country, or even the rest of Indiana.

………
South Bend has a black population of roughly 27,000 and a white population of around 64,000, and local police have made 1,256 arrests for pot possession since 2012. Of those, 805 were black, while just 449 were white. Nationally, the rate of marijuana use is roughly equal for blacks and whites. The disparity in South Bend policing extends into other crimes: In 2018, 22 black people were arrested for selling weed in South Bend, while just 4 white people were taken in.

In 2018, 714 people were arrested for all drug-related offenses. Despite making up just a quarter of the population, more than half of those, 384, were black. While overall, South Bend was worse than both Indiana and the country as a whole, there were some individual years during which arrest rates for black people in South Bend were lower than the statewide average.

………

Before Buttigieg entered office, according to testimony from a former city official, a small group of white police officers conspired to push the city’s black police chief, Darryl Boykins, out of his job, hoping to use donors to persuade Buttigieg to make the move. “It is going to be a fun time when all white people are in charge,” one officer reportedly said.

Buttigieg, amid a controversy over police recordings, did fire Boykins, but after protests from the black community, rescinded the firing and demoted him instead. Though the parties deny any involvement, the affair, Buttigieg later wrote in his memoir, “affected my relationship with the African-American community in particular for years to come.”

Henry Davis Jr., who was recently elected to a third term to the city council, told The Intercept he was unsurprised to hear the significant disparity in arrests. “It’s bad as hell here,” said Davis. “The numbers for African American police officers have dropped to historic lows.” He also said that Buttigieg has yet to make a human connection with the South Bend black community. “He feels like it’s an open book test: If I do these things, then I win,” he said. “He’s discounting the fact that he’s dealing with human beings.”

………

Jorden Giger, a 28-year-old South Bend activist with Black Lives Matter, agrees with the prominent criticism that Buttigieg ignores the concerns of black people in South Bend. “Mayor Pete is like, you know, he’s very calculating,” Giger said.

………

Buttigieg often touts the Board of Public Safety, Giger said, which oversees disciplinary actions for police and firefighters, and which includes three black men. (Indeed, after publication, a campaign spokesperson noted that the mayor-appointed board is majority-minority.)

………

“Citizens had asked for a citizens’ review board, and for him to say now we have one, in fact it’s the same thing we’ve always had, that was really disingenuous,” Preston told the Times. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“They’re political appointments,” Giger said of the Board of Public Safety. Giger said activists have asked him remove and replace several members, but the mayor hasn’t. “He’s not using any of his political capital to address these issues here locally. I think he just wants to get away from South Bend as quickly as he can.”

………

Giger said he was unimpressed by the Buttigieg campaign’s explanation for his lack of black support, namely that black voters simply aren’t familiar with the candidate yet. “It’s very difficult to convince white moderates or white liberals to really get it,” Giger said.

There are other candidates with racially problematic histories (***cough** Joe Biden ***cough**), but not with a record as aggressively hostile to the minority community as Pete Buttigieg.

While he is probably not PERSONALLY racist, it is clear that, as mayor at least, he has hitched his political wagon to the racists in his community and in his police department.

It's clear that black and hispanic voters are not going to vote for Donald Trump, but if Buttigieg is in the race, there is a pretty good chance that they will not vote at all.

That is, after all, what happened in 2016.

Don't Shop Amazon

A deep dive reveals that Amazon’s on-site clinics actively harm their employees as a matter of policy in order to depress their reportable injury numbers:

Earlier this year, a falling object struck a worker’s head at an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey. The worker visited Amcare, the company’s on-site medical unit, and told the emergency medical technicians on staff there that they had a headache and blurred vision — classic symptoms of a concussion. According to company protocol, Amazon’s medical staff should have sent the worker to a hospital or doctor’s office for further evaluation, or at least called a physician for advice. They did neither.

………

In various instances, OSHA investigators found that Amcare medical staff decided to treat the employees in-house, rather than referring them to doctors or hospitals — decisions that potentially violated New Jersey state law and federal regulations, such as OSHA’s “general duty” clause requiring employers to maintain workplaces free of hazards that put workers in danger.

This wasn’t the first time OSHA had investigated Amcare, nor was it the first time the agency alerted Amazon to problems at the clinics. “The current OSHA inspection again revealed instances indicating that the EMTs and Athletic Trainers (ATs) at AMCARE are working outside their scope of practice, without proper supervision,” regulators wrote in a warning letter to Amazon, reported here for the first time. “New Jersey state laws do not allow EMTs and ATs to practice medicine independently; a physician must supervise their work.”

An investigation by The Intercept and Type Investigations — drawing on previously unreported documents, an interview with a former OSHA medical expert, and interviews with 15 current and former Amcare employees — found multiple instances in which clinic staffers violated Amazon’s own rules as well as government regulations. The investigation found that Amcare employees nationwide were pressured to sweep injuries and medical issues under the rug at the expense of employee health.

………

The strenuous nature of the work at Amazon’s warehouses can take its toll on the human body: As Reveal and The Atlantic reported last week, the rates of serious injury at 23 fulfillment centers from which data could be obtained were more than double the industry average in 2018. The company’s Amcare clinics are intended to address the many minor aches and pains workers experience on the job. The company claims that this care falls under the category of “first aid,” which, according to an OSHA letter to Amazon, is defined as “emergency care provided for injury or sudden illness before emergency medical treatment is available.” These clinics operate in most, if not all, of the company’s warehouses, and they are staffed by EMTs and supervised by safety managers. According to a former OSHA medical officer and multiple former Amazon employees interviewed for this story, safety managers are not required to have extensive medical training. (Amazon declined to answer specific questions about its safety managers’ training as well as other details reported in this story.)

………

Since 2015, Amazon workers have filed at least 10 complaints about problems at Amcare — all of which OSHA deemed “valid” — according to previously unreported documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. These 10 complaints represent a small fraction of the hundreds of general health and safety complaints filed by Amazon workers in the last seven years. The complaints alleged that employees were being sent back to work with no medical care after requesting treatment, that injured employees were being told they must wait two weeks to see if their conditions worsened before being seen by doctors, and that Amcare staffers were not adequately trained. One complaint, made by phone in December 2017 from Tracy, California, alleged that Amcare simply refused to treat an injury. Though the complaints were determined to be valid, the agency did not follow up with an inspection in every case; OSHA is a small agency that employs about one inspector for every 59,000 U.S. workers.

Still, in response to these complaints and others, OSHA has investigated Amcare clinics at least three times: beginning from summer 2015 at an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey; from fall 2017 to spring 2018 at a fulfillment center in Florence, New Jersey; and again at the Robbinsville warehouse in an investigation that concluded in September 2019. Each time, the federal agency found that EMTs were providing care beyond first aid. Twice, OSHA recommended that they be supervised by on-site physicians. Twice, in Florence and during the first Robbinsville investigation, the agency also found evidence that Amazon was underreporting injuries on federally mandated logs. The results of the Florence investigation and the 2019 Robbinsville investigation are being reported here for the first time.

Accounts from Amcare employees across the country reveal that problems identified by OSHA are likely not confined to the warehouses it inspected. In interviews with The Intercept and Type Investigations, 15 current and former on-site medical representatives — Amazon’s term for the EMTs who staff Amcare — from fulfillment centers in 11 states bolster OSHA’s findings. Ten of the medical technicians said their bosses pressured them to send injured employees back to the warehouse floor when they likely needed additional medical attention. Eight felt like there was a conflict of interest between their manager’s priorities and their duties as medical professionals. Four said they were pressured to underreport or misclassify injuries. Some Amcare staff members described a positive experience with Amazon; even so, they expressed concerns about tensions between the company’s bottom line and injured employees’ best interests.

Were it not for salutary neglect of safety and health regulations, Amazon would not be able to function.

Their business is literally built on the broken bodies of their "associates."

Clearly, the Solution is Stronger and Longer Patents

It looks like Gilead Sciences delayed the introduction of safer HIV medications because they want to extend the monopoly rents on older drugs.

What's the destruction of some patients' bone marrow and kidneys against more profits? Priorities man:

In 2005, Gilead Sciences notified federal regulators that it was suspending development of a potentially safer, more potent HIV-fighting drug than the one on the market. The company did not restart its Food and Drug Administration application until 2010. Now the five-year delay of a promising drug is at the core of accusations by advocates that Gilead improperly exploited the patent system at the expense of patient health.

An HIV-prevention group called PrEP4All Collaboration filed a petition Wednesday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office contending Gilead knew its new, improved drug — approved in 2015 and now part of Gilead’s combination therapies Genvoya and Descovy — was safer. But it alleged Gilead postponed development so it could continue to gain monopoly profits from its older combination HIV drugs, including Viread and Truvada, for a longer period,before those drugs went off patent and faced generic competition.

Gilead used the delaying tactic even though the older drugs posed more risks to bone and kidney health, PrEP4All alleged.

This is some seriously evil sh%$:

The group is asking the Patent and Trademark Office to reject Gilead’s request for three extra years of patent life on the newer drug, called tenofovir alafenamide, or TAF. Odds of success are steep because the patent office will review such third-party petitions only in “extraordinary’’ circumstances, according to its rules.

“Gilead has not only intentionally delayed clinical development of a drug to artificially manipulate its eligibility for a patent-term extension, but it has done so despite the apparent harm to patients,’’ said Christopher Morten, who is supervising attorney at New York University’s Technology Policy and Law Clinic, who filed the petition on behalf of PrEP4All.

Indeed.

One of the main drivers of inequality in our society is sh%$ like this.

It is a tax on the rest of us that goes into the pockets of companies that would never even consider the public good in their decisions.

I'm not sure that we can thow these guys in jail, but we can fix the system that they exploit to do this.

What a Surprise

Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.

Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families. https://t.co/BbqhXbB9MM

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 6, 2019

Well, what do you know, after Amazon's subsidies were threatened, and the company took its marbles and went home, Amazon just brought its marbles back:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested the Trump administration "focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families" after news broke Friday that Amazon was expanding its presence in New York City without the state giving the company billions in tax incentives.

The decision by the online giant to lease 335,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan and employee 1,500 employees in the consumer and advertising departments was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The announcement came roughly 10 months after Amazon announced it was ditching its widely condemned plan to locate a second headquarters site in Long Island City, Queens—a plan for which New York state would have given the online giant nearly $3 billion in tax incentives.

Ocasio-Cortez was among that plan's most vocal critics, asking at the time, "Why should corporations that contribute nothing to the pot be in a position to take billions from the public?"

In a Twitter thread Saturday morning, the New York Democrat said that Amazon would now be "bringing work without the welfare." Ocasio-Cortez also countered the Republican talking point that the city was losing out on thousands of jobs.

What a surprise.  Subsidies don't make a difference.

And Amazon dot com is the biggest welfare cheat in the nation

Mom, They Are Being Evil Again!!!

On the heels of Google deciding to cripple ad blockers in their Chrome browser now that they have achieved a monopoly, now Google is rolling out a programming interface that will allow websites to see what programs are installed on your machine, which, among other things, deanonymize users, and possibly reveal a host of other personal data.

But Google wants to accommodate its advertisers, so f%$# the rest of us:

A nascent web API called getInstalledRelatedApps offers a glimpse of why online privacy remains such an uncertain proposition.

In development since 2015, Google has been experimenting with the API since the release of Chrome 59 in 2017. As its name suggests, it is designed to let web apps and sites determine whether a corresponding native app is installed on a user's device.

The purpose of the API, as described in the proposed specification, sounds laudable. More and more, the docs state, users will have web apps and natives apps from the same source installed on the same device and as the apps' feature sets converge and overlap, it will become important to be able to distinguish between the two, so users don't receive two sets of notifications, for example.

But as spec editor and Google engineer Rayan Kanso observed in a discussion of the proposed browser plumbing, the initiative isn't really about users so much as web and app publishers.

Late last month, after Kanso published notice of Google's intent to officially support the API in a future version of Chrome, Daniel Bratell, a developer for the Opera browser, asked how this will help users.

"The mobile web already suffers from heavy handed attempts at getting web users to replace web sites with native apps and this mostly looks useful for funneling users from the open web to closed ecosystems," Bratell said in a developer forum post.

Kanso made clear the primary focus of the proposal isn't Chrome users.

"Although this isn't an API that would directly benefit users, it indirectly benefits them through improved web experiences," Kanso wrote. "We received very positive OT [off-topic] feedback from partners using this API, and the alternative is them using hacks to figure whether their native app is installed."

………

That's not say privacy concerns are ignored. On Wednesday, Google engineer Yoav Weiss joined the discussion to express concern about the API's privacy implications.

"Knowing that specific apps were installed can contain valuable and potentially sensitive information about the user: income level, relationship status, sexual orientation, etc," Weiss wrote, adding, "The collection of bits of answers to 'Is app X installed?' can be a powerful fingerprinting vector."

………

And in a separate discussion Henri Sivonen, a Mozilla engineer, worried that the API might lead to more attempts to steer users away from the web and toward a native app, something websites like Reddit already try to do.

Google users are not the customer, they are product to be monetized.

Break them up.

Racists are Such Delicate Snowflakes

In North Carolina, racists are cancelling Chirstmas parades because they are concerned about people protesting the Confederate flag waving "heritage groups" who have routinely marched in their parades.

Let me be the fist to say, "Go f%$# yourselves, you racist dirt-bags."

Visions of sugar plums were not dancing in the heads of officials in Wake Forest, N.C. Instead, they saw protesters violently clashing with members of a local Confederate group who were set to march in the town’s 72nd annual Christmas parade later this month.

So to be safe, the town canceled it.

In a Wednesday night video message, Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones announced that the town’s downtown board of directors voted to cancel the Dec. 14 Christmas parade out of concern that “outside agitators” would show up to protest or defend the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who planned to march in the event.

The decision in Wake Forest, located less than 20 miles outside Raleigh, comes almost a week after another nearby town, Garner, N.C., announced it was canceling its Christmas parade over possible protests of a float sponsored by a local Confederate group, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

The problem is that you have allowed racist organizations to march.

If someone is celebrating the a racist attempt to overthrow the United States of America, maybe you should tell them that they are not welcome.

Consider the Poor Citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire

It appears that voters are losing their patience with Tom Steyer's ad blitz.

I would assume that Bloomberg's massive ad buy is being similarly greeted:

Maggie and Libby knew Tom Steyer’s ad by heart: "I'm going to say two words that will make Washington insiders very uncomfortable: Term limits!" they recently chirped in unison at the dinner table.

Unfortunately for Steyer, their votes can’t be bought — they’re 10 and 13.

“It was like a comedy act,” the children’s father, Loren Foxx, said. “His ads are on constantly."

Some Granite staters said they’re seeing Steyer’s ads dozens of times a day — and it’s become more grating than ingratiating. A POLITICO reporter who watched YouTube music videos this week by Pentatonix, a popular a capella group, endured 17 Steyer ads in just over an hour.

Even some of Steyer’s local staff privately acknowledge the volume of ads has gone overboard.

Steyer has massively outspent other Democratic candidates on social media in an effort to gain traction in polls and ensure he makes the debate stage. But the recoiling of some New Hampshire voters suggests there are limits to the strategy — Michael Bloomberg beware. Indeed, some residents feel like they can't touch a piece of technology without seeing his face.

“There is a point of no return in terms of visibility," said Scott Spradling, a New Hampshire media analyst. "At some point, you become the uninvited guest. He uniquely is becoming dangerously close."

………

Steyer was asked directly in a recent radio interview whether he’s passed the point of saturation to annoyance.

“I hear a lot of complaints about your social media ads blocking their YouTube videos,” the host told the candidate, referring to her teenagers. “You apparently got the high-end ones that you have to watch.”

“If people actually hear my message, they do respond,” Steyer replied. “I’m ... someone who people don’t know anything about and trying to make a very specific point and introduce myself.”

Billionaires seem to think that money can buy everything.

Thankfully, in Steyer's case at least, it appears to be wrong.

Trump Abides

Is anyone the least bit surprised that Donald Trump is looting his own campaign through dodgy real estate deals?

This is like the least surprising thing ever:

The Trump campaign is spending big money at the president’s properties, according to a review of Federal Election Commission data. Yet the records show that Donald Trump still has not donated any of his own funds to the campaign. That means America’s billionaire-in-chief has shifted $1.7 million from campaign donors into his private business.

Forbes first reported on this arrangement one year ago, when documents showed that Trump’s companies had taken in $1.1 million of campaign-donor money. By the end of 2018, that figure had climbed to $1.3 million. Subsequent disclosures show that more than $450,000 flowed into the Trump empire from January to September of this year.

The biggest beneficiary has been Trump Tower Commercial LLC, which controls the president’s famous Manhattan skyscraper. Trump still owns the entity, which has accepted $1.2 million in rent from the reelection effort and another $225,000 from the Republican National Committee. Since Trump became president, an estimated 1.6% of the tower’s revenue has come from either the RNC or the reelection campaign. The majority of Trump Tower’s income comes from Gucci, which leases 49,000 square feet of prime retail space on Fifth Avenue for roughly $21 million a year.

In the basement of Trump Tower, a much smaller space now serves as an official campaign store, selling hats, T-shirts, signs and other memorabilia. The rent payments for that space could be flowing through an entity called Trump Restaurants LLC, which has taken in $87,000 of rent since Trump became president. On a price-per-square-foot basis, the campaign may be paying more for that basement space than Gucci is paying for its street-level location upstairs. Smaller spaces tend to command higher rates, but the payments have nonetheless raised eyebrows.

This is why the impeachment investigation needs to go a lot deeper than it has.

There is way too much sleaze to uncover in just a few weeks of hearings.

Tweet of the Day

Yes, shooting people is barbaric. The civilized thing is to use a bone saw pic.twitter.com/R4uT3c31ux

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 6, 2019

Paul Krugman unloads a nearly toxic level snark on both Donald Trump and the House of Saud, in response the former's obsequious Tweet about the Pensacola shooter, who was a Saudi.

The thing is, this was not some random Saudi tourist, it was a member of their military getting pilot training, so clearly someone in Riyadh seriously screwed the pooch with this guy.

Keynes Noted This 80 Years Ago

John Maynard Keynes wrote about the dangers of destructive speculative capital flows, and now even the IMF is beginning to warm to capital controls:

Advanced economies have delivered a decade of woeful economic growth since the global financial crisis. The last thing the world needs is for emerging economies to be dragged down, too.

Such thinking is taking hold in some parts of Washington, where the IMF is rethinking the once rigidly “neoliberal” advice — stressing open markets and free-floating currencies — that it doles out to economies great and small.

David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the IMF, says one of its primary concerns is that low inflation in the developed world may, through capital flows, be “spreading in an undesirable way to emerging countries and causing them to stagnate”.

“Many of these countries are concerned about how spillovers from advanced world policies cause them to lose some degree of control over their domestic economies.” He questioned whether policies such as currency intervention could be used to “offset this transmission mechanism”.

………

Developing countries run the risk of becoming overindebted as a result of capital inflows reducing borrowing costs. For some such countries, she said, the IMF’s preliminary modelling suggested “capital controls are the appropriate instrument to tackle this overborrowing problem, and they should be imposed as prudential policy in normal times before debt limit shocks strike”.

The use of the phrase “in normal times” suggests that, for some countries at least, the IMF is moving towards endorsing capital controls on a semi-permanent basis, not just in an emergency.

………

One EM economist at a leading bank, who backs the rethink but asked for anonymity given the sensitivity around the subject, said that for decades the IMF “has been guilty of capital account fundamentalism”.

It only took them 74 years for them to get a clue about this sh%$.

One wonders just how many people died before they got a smidgen of a clue.

There Is Bad, and There Is Stupid, and Then There Is Pacific Gas & Electric

Even by the standards of for profit utilities, PG&E has an egregiously horrible safety and maintenance record.

Maybe it's time to consider nationalizing the grid, because PG&E clearly has no interest in doing anything with an even remotely related to maintaining their infrastructure:

PG&E Corp. failed to adequately inspect and maintain its transmission lines for years before a faulty line started the deadliest fire in California history, a state investigation has found.

In a 700-page report detailing the problems that led the Caribou-Palermo transmission line to malfunction on Nov. 8, 2018, sparking the Camp Fire, investigators with the California Public Utilities Commission said they found systemic problems with how the company oversaw the safety of its oldest lines.

State fire investigators had previously determined that PG&E equipment started the Camp Fire, which killed 85 people, and the company hasn’t disputed the findings. But the new report goes well beyond earlier findings, alleging numerous serious violations of state rules for maintaining electric lines and specific problems with upkeep of the transmission line that started the fire.

………

“The identified shortcomings in PG&E’s inspection and maintenance of the incident tower were not isolated, but rather indicative of an overall pattern of inadequate inspection and maintenance of PG&E’s transmission facilities,” the report by the commission’s safety and enforcement division found.

Investigators also found that PG&E crews hadn’t climbed the tower that malfunctioned and sparked the Camp Fire since at least 2001, a violation of company policy requiring such inspections on towers that have recurring problems.

The whole f%$#ing company needs to be condemned as a public nuisance.

Stupid and Short-Sighted

It looks like Pelosi is trying to have an impeachment vote before year's end, which means that the credible investigations of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report, and efforts to get testimony from John Bolton and Don McGahn are not being undertaken.

Seriously, you are only going to get one shot at this.

You want everything that is an impeachable offense in the articles of impeachment, and you want them exposed to the public.

Nancy Pelosi wants to show that Democrats want to get thing done by ……… wait for it ……… passing an update on NAFTA, the USMCA, because it worked so well for the Democrats in 1994. (Hint, it DIDN'T)

I get that Nancy Pelosi is eager to sell out the American worker to trans-national corporations because she, and the Blue Dog and New Democratic caucuses, will find it easier to fund raise that way, but the last time the Democrats did this, they lost the house and the Senate.

This is both bad politics and bad policy.

Impeachment is about turning over rocks to see what is underneath, and you are not done yet.

They Write OP/EDs

This might be the best business meme of 2019 so far. pic.twitter.com/hTXul3Muy3

— ArtkoCapital (@ArtkoCapital) March 5, 2019

A Pretty Good Summary of McKinsey

Pete "Sentient Mayonnaise" Buttigieg has just got admonished by the New York Times editorial board for his obfuscation of his time working for the notorious consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
Maybe now we'll actually get some answers.

We need to get the answer now, because it WILL come out in the general:

Pete Buttigieg worked nearly three years for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, and he has presented that experience as a kind of capitalist credential — distinguishing him from some rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, and inoculating him against Republican attacks.

………

The thing is, Mr. Buttigieg has said precious little about his time at McKinsey. He has not named the clients for whom he worked, nor said much about what he did. He says his lips are sealed by a nondisclosure agreement he signed when he left the firm in 2010 and that he has asked the company to release him from the agreement. It has not yet agreed to do so.

This is not a tenable situation. Mr. Buttigieg owes voters a more complete account of his time at the company. Voters seeking an alternative to Mr. Trump should demand that candidates not only reject Mr. Trump’s positions, but also his behavior — including his refusal to share information about his health and his business dealings. This standard requires Mr. Buttigieg to talk about his time at McKinsey. It similarly requires Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders to stop dragging their feet and release their health records to the public.

In Mr. Buttigieg’s case, the most straightforward solution is for McKinsey to release him from his vows of silence — or at least to substitute a significantly more permissive agreement.

The obligation to provide more information, however, ultimately falls on Mr. Buttigieg. He must find a way to give voters a more complete accounting of his time at the company.

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He has not offered the kind of details necessary to take the measure of that account.

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And working at McKinsey is not quite the résumé booster it used to be.

The Times reported this week that the consulting firm has advised the Trump administration on the logistics of its cruel crackdown on immigration. McKinsey also has offered its services as a consultant to brutal and corrupt governments and state-owned enterprises in other countries, including China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Buttigieg has criticized the company, and cast the troubles as largely postdating his tenure. “As somebody who left the firm a decade ago, seeing what certain people in that firm have decided to do is extremely frustrating and extremely disappointing,” he told CNN.

But that’s an incomplete answer. Mr. Buttigieg needs to explain what he did at McKinsey.

This is significant because it's clear that Buttigieg, and McKinsey, have tried very, very hard to conceal whatever Mayor Pete was involved with during this time.

Whatever the reality is, you can be sure that it's juicy, or at least sleazy, because Sleazy is how McKinsey rolls.

In any case, if it were something good, Mayor Mayo and McKinsey would be shouting it from the heavens.