Year: 2015

Cable Company F%$#ery, Fiber Edition

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Rather unsurprisingly, much like its cable competitors, Verizon* is steadfastly refusing to do infrastructure build-outs that in promised in exchange for its getting a cable franchise:

New York City officials today ordered Verizon to complete fiber builds that the company was supposed to finish a year ago. If Verizon doesn’t comply, the city can seek financial damages.

 “In a 2008 agreement with New York City, Verizon committed to extend its FiOS network to every household across the five boroughs by June 30, 2014,” said the announcement of an audit released today by the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT).

 Verizon’s FiOS fiber network delivers Internet, TV, and phone service to areas traditionally served by Verizon’s copper landlines and DSL Internet.

 “Through a thorough and comprehensive audit, we have determined that Verizon substantially failed to meet its commitment to the people of New York City,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “As I’ve said time and again, Verizon must deliver on its obligation to the City of New York and we will hold them accountable.”

 The agreement, which gave Verizon a cable television franchise, says NYC may “seek and/or pursue money damages” from Verizon if it fails to deliver on its promises.

 Verizon also failed to meet broadband promises in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but those states let the company off the hook.

 Verizon is disputing New York City’s findings. Verizon met the requirement to pass all households with fiber, though not all residents can actually buy fiber service, the company says. Verizon last year blamed landlords for delays. It also blamed Hurricane Sandy from October 2012, even though Verizon was still claiming to be “ahead of schedule” in April 2013.

………

 Verizon further said that “it is important to note that it’s not a mere coincidence that the report is made public today, and labor negotiations with our largest union begin on Monday. It’s well known the union has ties to the city administration, and things like this are a familiar union tactic we have seen before.” The Communications Workers of America union has blamed Verizon’s fiber shortcomings on job cuts.

 Verizon has also called complaints about its landline maintenance “meaningless rhetoric and hyperbole from the unions.”

 The city’s audit report said refusal of access by landlords cannot explain the full extent of Verizon’s failure to bring fiber to all residents. Property managers interviewed by the city said Verizon has refused to extend service to buildings unless the company was granted exclusive agreements that would shut out other providers.

If the contract allows for pulling the franchise, I would like to see that.

If it doesn’t, use eminent domain to purchase the fiber infrastructure, and get the money for it from Verizon’s fines.

In a perfect world, of course, Verizon executives would be invited (compelled) to participate on that classic game show, Ow! My Balls!, but I will take what I can get.

What the free market mousketeers refuse to understand about this crap is that companies make more money from maintaining a monopoly and shutting out other competitors, so the free market will not lead to competition and lower prices.

*Full disclosure, I am a relatively satisfied (monopoly rents make them too expensive) Verizon FIOS® customer.

Deep Thought

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Dylann Storm Roof is a 21 Year Old High School Dropout, he was born on April 3, 1994.

Zimbabwe replaced the apartheid Rhodesia in 1980.

In South Africa, the first elections with universal suffrage were held on April 27, 1994, ending the last vestiges of apartheid, and making the ANC the governing party in South Africa.

How does a 9th grade dropout know about this?

And yet there is the photo of Dylann Storm Roof, a 9th grade dropout who was less than a month old when Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, wearing the flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia on his jacket.

My guess is that he would not be able to find Rhodesia on a map. 

Hell, it’s likely that he couldn’t find Europe on a map.

But he knows about apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia well enough to have their flags on his jacket in a sort of perverted “lost cause” homage to their systems of racism and brutality.

People taught him this.  Like minded people.

Lone gunman, my ass.

The Middle East Is F%$#ed up and Sh%$

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A year after the war that devastated the Gaza Strip, Israel is apparently helping Qatar — which does not have official diplomatic relations with Israel — partner with the Islamist movement and longstanding enemy Hamas to rebuild the the territory.

“Life is full of contradictions and strange things,” Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of research for Israel’s military intelligence, told NPR when commenting on Israel’s recent move to allow Qatar to channel its reconstruction aid through Hamas, which is a US-designated terrorist group.

Israel has always tried to isolate Hamas and has accused Qatar of financing the Islamist movement. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, rejects all agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and calls for Israel’s violent destruction in its founding charter.

………

But there are other reasons why Israel is suddenly more open to cooperation with Qatar. Israel’s deputy minister for regional cooperation, Ayub Carra, mentioned that Qatar, along with other Gulf countries, shares Israel’s concerns about Iran, NPR reported. Kuperwasser also mentioned that Israel has long wanted improved relations with the region’s Sunni Muslim countries because of the threat the country faces from Shi’ite Iran and its various militant proxies.

“So we have a chance, now, to make the relationship better,” said Carra.

My head hurts.

Sanders Faces a Rat F%$#ing in the New York Primary

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Ballot access laws for candidates are among the most restrictive in the nation, and it appears that Bernie Sanders could be kept off the ballot in New York State:

Senator Bernie Sanders, who is challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, will face a significant legal barrier if he attempts to run in next year’s New York primary while remaining unaffiliated with a party.

A section of state election law commonly known as Wilson-Pakula prohibits candidates from appearing on the ballot in a party’s primary unless they are either enrolled members or receive the approval of the party’s committee.

Sanders, of Vermont, is an independent and so would need the approval of the state’s Democrats to get his name on the ballot. But the state’s two major parties have historically granted Wilson-Pakulas only in rare circumstances. Several longtime political observers contacted by Capital could not recall a single instance in which either party has granted one to a candidate in a statewide race. Clinton’s deep political connections to New York make the likelihood of them doing so even less.

“Hadn’t thought about it, but my initial answer would be no,” Assemblyman Keith Wright said when asked if he thought Sanders should be allowed on the ballot for New York’s Democratic primary.

Let’s be clear here.  This is a classical rat f%$#ing, to paraphrase former Nixon dirty trickster Roger Stone. though it is not one directly tied to the 2016 campaign.

New York has been rat f%$#ing the electoral process with Wilson-Pakula for almost 70 years.

It was intended to keep communists and socialists off the ballot, and was a product of red scare hysteria.

In South Carolina, the Judges Have Sympathy for the Families of Terrorists ……… If They are White

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At a bail bond hearing for Dylann Roof (no bail for murder, but $1 million for weapons charges), the families of the victims gave statements, as is common in South Carolina, the judge, who (unsurprisingly) has a history of racially insensitive comments, took pains to remind everyone that the family that raised a racist terrorists are victims in all this too:

………

The judge began the hearing with a statement of sympathy for those slain — as well as for Roof’s family.

“We have victims, nine of them, but we also have victims on the other side,” Gosnell said. “There are victims on the other side, this young man’s family. No one would ever have thrown them into the whirlwind they have been thrown into.”

In a statement later, the Roof family extended its “deepest sympathies and condolences” to the families of the victims. “Words cannot express our shock, grief, and disbelief as to what happened that night. We are devastated and saddened by what occurred,” they said, asking for privacy.

As Michael Daly pithily observed:

………

Charleston County Magistrate James B. Gosnell began Friday’s bond hearing for mass-murderer Dylann Roof by declaring that the killer’s family members were victims as well.

At least he did not repeat an opinion that he offered in another proceeding a dozen years ago.

“There are four kinds of people in this world—black people, white people, red necks, and n—rs,” Gosnell advised a black defendant in a November 6, 2003 bond reduction hearing.

The comment led to a judicial disciplinary proceeding and a 2005 determination by the state Supreme Court. The court’s written finding reports Gosnell’s lame defense.

………

Ah ……… South Carolina.

Rather unsurprisingly, the accused is completely unrepentant over his acts:

………

More evidence also emerged that Roof, a high school dropout with a criminal record that began this year, may have been motivated by racial hatred. Law enforcement officials said he had confessed, and that during the confession, expressed strong anti-black views. Officials characterized him as unrepentant and unashamed.

Roof told officers that he wanted word of his actions to spread, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Ah ……… South Carolina.

And the cherry on this sh%$ sandwich is the fact that while that state and US flags were flown at half staff, the Confederate flag flying nearby has been kept at full staff, because the law drafted by South Carolina bigots forbids flying the flag at half staff:

After Dylann Storm Roof allegedly shot up an AME church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people, two flags were lowered more than 100 miles away in Columbia, the state’s capital. Atop the South Carolina State House, the U.S. flag and South Carolina’s palmetto flag flew at half-staff as the manhunt for Roof ended with his capture in North Carolina and prayer vigils were planned. The show of respect would have been appropriate even if one of the state legislature’s own — state senator Clementa C. Pinckney — had not died in the attack.

But a third flag within view of the State House — a Confederate one — flew as high and as proud as ever, flapping in the breeze on a sunny day.

This looked bad.

But, it seemed, no one — particularly not South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) — could do anything about it. This was a matter of law.

“In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,” a Haley spokesman told ABC on Thursday. “Only the General Assembly can do that.”

………

The law that moved the flag was quite detailed: The flag could not fly from the capitol dome, but had to appear at a memorial near the dome and could appear in legislators’ offices. Legislators even specified the type of flag, its placement, and the dimensions of its display.

It ain’t all bad though, a Republican legislator in South Carolina has mooted a bill to take down that symbol of treason and racism:

In the wake of the shooting in Charleston that took the lives of nine African Americans in a historically black church by a shooter with apparent white supremist sympathies, a State Representative from South Carolina announced plans Friday to introduce legislation that would remove the Confederate flag from the state capital.

In an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Norman “Doug” Brannon said the motive behind the planned bill wasn’t politics, but instead the loss of a friend. Specifically, Brannon spoke of Democratic State Senator Clementa Pinckney, a pastor at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the victims of the fatal shooting.

“I had a friend die Wednesday night for no reason other than he was a black man,” Brannon, a Republican who is white, told Hayes.

 Small steps, I guess.

I expect Brannon to be turfed out in the next election, and it is likely that he thinks that this is the case as well.

Shoot Me, I Agree with the Republicans

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Republicans in the House want to repeal the ethanol mandate for gasoline:

A new Republican bill introduced Tuesday would completely repeal the federal mandate to blend ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply.

Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) legislation would completely do away with the renewable fuel standard, which first took effect in 2005 and now requires increasing levels of ethanol and biodiesel to be put into traditional fossil fuels.

The mandate invites frequent criticism from Republicans, the oil industry and sectors that complain the demand it creates for corn ethanol increases agricultural prices.

“Workers, refiners, producers, farmers and ranchers across the country are affected by the renewable fuel standard,” Cassidy said in a statement. “More mandates mean less jobs. It means families are paying more for gas and groceries.”

Cassidy represents Louisiana, one of the largest states in terms of fuel refining capacity. Refiners say that buying ethanol or fuel credits increases their prices, and they must pass those costs onto consumers.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had trouble keeping up with the annual volume mandates amid a decrease in fuel use. The agency proposed mandate levels for 2014 through 2016 last month.

The proposal would increase ethanol levels, though not to the goals set out in the law, leading to criticisms from both supporters and opponents of the mandate.

Republicans want this for a different reason than I do, though.

They object, because they believe that any imposition on the big oil is a crime against God, while I believe that ethanol, at least corn based ethanol as generated in the United States, makes little to no savings in CO2 emissions when all inputs are considered, and serves primarily as a way for Presidential candidates to pander to Iowa farmers so as to improve their performance in the Iowa caucuses.

Biodiesel is another matter, and unlike Cassidy, other proposals to eliminate the ethanol mandate do not eliminate a biodiesel mandate, which is the path that I favor.

Domestic Terrorism in Charleston, South Carolina

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Those patches are the Apartheid era Rhodesian and South African Flags, a staple among white supremacists

Last night, a white supremacist opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, killing people including the pastor:

The Facebook profile picture chosen by Dylann Storm Roof in May is thick with symbolism. It shows Mr. Roof, a scowling young white man, wearing a black jacket adorned with two flags — one from apartheid-era South Africa, the other from white-ruled Rhodesia — that have been adopted as emblems by modern-day white supremacists.

Mr. Roof, 21, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina after law enforcement officers identified him as the suspect in the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday night. The shooting left nine dead, including the pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney.

Officials said the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime. Although it was not clear if Mr. Roof had actually joined any organized white supremacist groups, people who knew him said that in recent months, a young man they described as extremely shy had begun to harbor racist views and make increasingly violent statements about attacking black people.

Joseph Meek, 20, a childhood friend who reconnected with Mr. Roof this year, said Mr. Roof had changed, spewing racist ideas and talking about wanting “to hurt a whole bunch of people.”

………

Now Mr. Meek and his girlfriend, Lindsey Fry, both of whom are white, say they feel guilt about the shooting. “I feel we could have done something and prevented this whole thing,” Ms. Fry said.

Asked why Mr. Roof picked that particular church, Mr. Meek replied, “Because it was a black church.”

Another friend, Dalton Tyler, said that Mr. Roof had begun talking about wanting “to start a civil war.” But like Mr. Meek, he did not always take Mr. Roof seriously.

Mr. Tyler said on another occasion, the two were driving to a strip club by the zoo when Mr. Roof saw a black woman, used a racist word and said, “I’ll shoot your ass.”

“I was just like, ‘You’re stupid,’ ” Mr. Tyler said. “He was a racist; but I don’t judge people.”

Fox, of course, is claiming that it’s a war on Christianity, but the gunman’s own words put the lie to that:

………

They said that almost an hour after he arrived, the gunman suddenly stood and pulled a gun, and Ms. Washington’s cousin Tywanza Sanders, 26, known as the peacemaker of the family, tried to calmly talk the man out of violence.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told the gunman, Ms. Washington recounted.

The gunman replied, “Yes. You are raping our women and taking over the country.”

The gunman took aim at the oldest person present, Susie Jackson, 87, Mr. Sanders’s aunt, Ms. Washington said. Mr. Sanders told the man to point the gun at him instead, she said, but the man said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to shoot all of you.”

………

In a photo on his Facebook page, a glowering Mr. Roof wears symbols of two former white supremacist governments — the flags of apartheid-era South Africa, and of Rhodesia, the nation that became Zimbabwe. Other photos, posted by a Facebook friend of his and widely circulated online, show Mr. Roof leaning against a car with a license plate that reads, Confederate States of America.

BTW, not only the is characterization of this as accurate, the characterization of this as terrorism is literally in accordance with the oldest anti-terrorism laws in the United States:

………

Making the choice to call this a terrorist act is a way of recognizing the long history of anti-black terrorism in America. For most of American history, the word “terrorism” has referred to acts committed by white people against black people.

In fact, anti-black terrorism perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan was the reason for the first federal anti-terrorism law the US ever passed.

Making the choice to call this a terrorist act is a way of recognizing the long history of anti-black terrorism in America. For most of American history, the word “terrorism” has referred to acts committed by white people against black people.

In fact, anti-black terrorism perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan was the reason for the first federal anti-terrorism law the US ever passed. From a report in the Journal of Negro History based on testimony about the Klan:

The Reverend A. W. Cummings, a Northerner who had been president of the Spartanburg Female College, compiled a list of 227 persons whom he claimed were abused by masked men in that country between the October election of 1870 and the following July 15. He asserted that some two hundred of this number had been beaten, seven wounded by gun fire and four killed. Squire P. Quinn Camp, a white office-holder, claimed that between September 2 and July 15 in the township of Limestone no less than 118 had been abused by the Klan in some fashion, of which four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had their ears cropped…So extensive was the fear engendered that whole sections of the rural Negro population slept in the woods for several months during the winter.

The federal government, led by President Ulysses S. Grant, decided it needed to step in to protect order in the South — and keep the political system from being overwhelmed by terrorist intimidation. So it passed a series of laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act, which made it a federal offense to conspire to threaten elected officials and voters to deprive them of equal protection.

The Grant administration enforced the Klan Act aggressively, using federal militias and charging Klan members in federal court. The law is generally given credit for destroying the Klan in its first iteration as a national terrorist group (it resurfaced during the 20th century).

In the 21st century, terrorism is typically associated with Muslim extremism; when white people commit mass shootings, their ideology isn’t as often brought to the fore. But because of the history of terrorism in the South, for many, labeling the Charleston church shooting terrorism is a way to recognize that black lives matter.

This is terrorism, and it should be prosecuted as such, and it should be called as such.

He intentionally went to a black church to kill black people. He assassinated a state senator. He intended to terrorize the black community.

Prosecute this as terrorism.

As an aside, in a bit or journalistic irony, 1day before the shootings, the New York Times reported on the growing threat of right wing terrorism:

This month, the headlines were about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month, two Muslims attacked an anti-Islamic conference in Garland, Tex. The month before, a Muslim man was charged with plotting to drive a truck bomb onto a military installation in Kansas. If you keep up with the news, you know that a small but steady stream of American Muslims, radicalized by overseas extremists, are engaging in violence here in the United States.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism.

The FBI recognized this over 6 years ago, but withdrew a report about the problem under pressure from right wing Republicans.

We need to treat right wing militias, the Klan, Operation Rescue, and their ilk as terrorist organizations, and to subject them to the full scrutiny of the law.

Light is a Disinfectant

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A few weeks back, the New York Times reported on how Disney was laying off IT workers, and forcing them to train their H-1B (Gastarbeiter) replacements.

Now that this has come to light, and generated a sh%$ storm of condemnation,. Disney has decided not to lay off its workers:

In late May, about 35 technology employees at Disney/ABC Television in New York and Burbank, Calif., received jarring news. Managers told them that they would all be laid off, and that during their final weeks they would have to train immigrants brought in by an outsourcing company to do their jobs.

The training began, but after a few days it was suspended with no explanation. In New York, the immigrants suddenly stopped coming to the offices. Then on June 11, managers summoned the Disney employees with different news: Their layoffs had been canceled.

“We were read a precisely worded statement,” said one of the employees, who was relieved but reluctant to be named because he remains at the company. “We were told our jobs were continuing and we should consider it as if nothing had happened until further notice.”

Although the number of layoffs planned was small, the cancellation, which was first reported by Computerworld, a website covering the technology business, set off a hopeful buzz among tech employees in Disney’s empire. It came in the midst of a furor over layoffs in January of 250 tech workers at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. People who lost jobs there said they had to sit with immigrants from India, some on temporary work visas known as H-1B, and teach them to perform their jobs as a condition for receiving severance.

 Let’s be clear on this:  If you have to train your replacements, and your replacements are brought in under H-1B (or the related L-1) visa, and you have to train them, then you are violating the law.

It is required that the visa recipients have, “highly specialized knowledge,” and if they need months of training, as is reported in the Disney World stories, they clearly do not have this knowledge.

It’s not about, “highly specialized knowledge,” it is about getting cheaper and more docile (they have to leave the country if they leave the job) workers, and about depressing wages in the field.

Many people suggest that the solution is aggressive enforcement, but I disagree.

The solution is to ensure that the cost of an H-1B visa is always more than that of hiring a citizen or Green Card holder.

You can either do this through setting the fees high, or conduct monthly auctions for the right to make applications (I favor the latter because it fits into the “free market” ethos that seems to dominate national political discourse).

If tech companies have to pay a guest worker significantly of what they would pay an American, the number of visa applications would fall,and tech workers’ salaries would rise.

Your Uber Update

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Wow, it’s the sharing economy, everything is new and different. Hey, they don’t have to pay the fees that those stupid old taxi companies do, because you order them on the Internet.

Sorry to be a bit negative early on a Monday morning, but I was just reading in the Washington Post that Uber is arguing that it should not have to pay the same fees as traditional taxi companies to pick people up at airports. Uber says the fees are too high.

I have no strong opinion about the size of these fees, which are effectively a tax on taxi travel that is used to support the operation of the airport. However, there is no basis for Uber paying lower fees than their competitors in traditional taxi companies, even if it is cooler.

So not surprised.  Of course they want a government handout, because ……… Free Market.

On the other hand, the apparent behavior of Uber in China, which has taken to disciplining drivers who drive too close to political protests:

The next day, Uber told its drivers to keep away from such protests. The Financial Times reports that Uber drivers in Hangzhou received a message imploring them: “Please don’t wreck the good urban environment you have all worked so hard to help build… If you are at the scene, leave immediately.”

More damningly, the message added that there would be consequences for those who didn’t follow instructions, and that Uber would track drivers’ GPS devices (i.e., personal phones) to make sure they comply. These measures, reports the WSJ, are intended to “maintain social order.” Not something you want to hear from an employer.

An Uber spokesperson in Beijing told Quartz that “we firmly oppose any form of gathering or protest, and we encourage a more rational form of communication for solving problems.”

It makes sense for Uber to tread lightly in China, where it is reportedly planning a rapid expansion, with a price tag of more than one billion dollars. Maybe Uber should spend some of that money figuring out how to deal with its (many) privacy issues, first.

Indeed.

It should be noted that there is some good Uber news though, even if the news is not good for Uber, The California Labor Commission has ruled that Uber drivers are employees of the firm:

In a ruling that fuels a long-simmering debate over some of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing technology companies and the work they are creating, the California Labor Commissioner’s Office said that a driver for the ride-hailing service Uber should be classified as an employee, not an independent contractor.

The ruling ordered Uber to reimburse Barbara Ann Berwick $4,152.20 in expenses and other costs for the roughly eight weeks she worked as an Uber driver last year. While Uber has long positioned itself as merely an app that connects drivers and passengers — with no control over the hours its drivers work — the labor office cited many instances in which it said Uber acted more like an employer. Uber is appealing the decision.

The ruling does not apply beyond Ms. Berwick and could be altered if Uber’s appeal succeeds. Uber has also prevailed in at least five other states in keeping its definition of drivers as independent contractors. Yet the California ruling stands out because officials formally laid out their arguments for why Uber drivers are employees. That could bolster class-action lawsuits against the company in the state. California law expressly requires employers to reimburse employees for business expenses and several suits proceeding against Uber are based on that state law.

………

“For anybody who has to pay the bills and has a family, having no labor protections and no job security is at best a mixed blessing,” said Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “At worst, it is a nightmare. Obviously some workers prefer to be independent contractors — but mostly they take these jobs because they cannot find better ones.”

The California ruling, which was made June 3 and came to light after Uber filed an appeal Tuesday evening, noted that the company provided drivers with phones and had a policy of deactivating its app if drivers were inactive for 180 days.

“Defendants hold themselves out as nothing more than a neutral technological platform, designed simply to enable drivers and passengers to transact the business of transportation,” the Labor Commissioner’s Office wrote about Uber. “The reality, however, is that defendants are involved in every aspect of the operation.”

In a statement, Uber said the decision was “nonbinding and applies to a single driver.” The company said individual cases about worker classification in at least five other states, including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas, have resulted in rulings that categorize drivers as contractors.

………

Other Uber drivers may also be inspired to follow Ms. Berwick’s example, given that filing a claim with the California labor office is a relatively simple process.

Here is hoping that this sticks.

Uber is not about innovation, it is about regulatory arbitrage.

If they are allowed to ignore labor law, taxi regulations, licensing requirements, they are effectively being subsidized by the rest of us.

And from the Socialist Paradise of Montana ……… Wait? What? Montana?!?!?! ……… Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

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The city of Missoula, Montana has apparently had enough of mismanagement of their water infrastructure by its Carlyle Group owned private water company, Mountain Water Company, along with the normal private equity hijinks, so they tried to buy it.

The Carlyle Group refused, and so the city condemned the company, and seized it by eminent domain, and now Missoula has won a court victory confirming their right to seize the utility:

Missoula won its legal fight to take ownership of Mountain Water Co. and the city’s drinking water system Monday.

 In a 68-page decision, Missoula District Court Judge Karen Townsend said the city “carried its burden of proof” and showed that “its contemplated use of the water system as a municipally owned water system is more necessary than the current use as a privately owned for-profit enterprise.”

 “Based on credible evidence at trial, the Court concludes that the object of this condemnation proceeding, the use of the water system, is a public use for which the right of eminent domain may properly be exercised” under Montana law, Townsend said.

 The judge said she “considered the broad range of circumstances,” and weighed “the benefits to be derived from the proposed public use against the impairments to the existing use.”

 Her conclusion: “The proposed public use is more reasonable” and “proper.”

 The city made its case, she continued, and proved that “the taking is a more necessary public use.”

 The city did try to purchase Mountain Water Co. from its owner, global equity firm The Carlyle Group, Townsend said, “and the final written offer was rejected.” It is now, she said, Missoula’s “right to acquire” the water system by exercising its power of eminent domain.

Basically, Mountain Water Company is not performing timely maintenance on the infrastructure (after all, some resources have to go toward paying inflated private equity “Management Fees”):

………

 The water system pumps groundwater from the Missoula aquifer through 37 wells and 327 miles of water main. The system serves 23,500 customers, with 1,500 of them outside the city limits. The city of Missoula estimates that an investment of $66 million to $95 million is needed to bring the system to industry standards.

  • Nearly 50 percent of the mains are more than 45 years old. Twenty percent of the mains have exceeded their useful life.
  • While 81 percent of the system is metered, only 40 percent of the water is measured through meters. The average age of the meters is 20 years and will require $16 million to $20 million to achieve industry standards.
  • Nearly 75 percent of the service lines are galvanized steel and have exceeded their useful life. The cost to bring the lines up to industry standards is roughly $25 million.
  • Rattlesnake Dam and the intake dam have not been maintained and show problems with erosion, slope and stability, requiring $3 million in repairs.
  • The water system leaks at a rate of 50 percent. An estimated 8,000 gallons leak every minute, well above the national Infrastructure Leakage Index.

A 50% leakage rate?  Seriously?  In a locality that is already abnormally dry, and in a world that is drawing down its aquifers at an alarming rate?

And the Carlyle Group thinks that this is all hunky dory?

And then there is the attempt by the Carlyle Group to represent the purchase of a $945.00 coffee maker as a capital expenditure.

Clearly, the private sector is not working the way that all those free market mousketeers would lead us to believe.

Full disclosure:  I worked for a few years at United Defense, which was owned by the Carlyle Group, before it was sold to BAE Systems.

H/T Naked Capitalism.

Pope Frank Pisses off Conservatives Again………

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The Pope, and one would assume the Pope’s Peeps, are working on an encyclical about the economy and the environment, and it has gotten leaked.

Has come out strongly in favor or accepting the science of global warming, as well as condemning shot sighted politicians:

Pope Francis has endorsed the science behind global warming and denounced the world’s political leaders for putting national self-interest ahead of action. Now, Catholic priests are gearing up to spread the word.

The 192-page leaked draft of a papal encyclical, published Monday by the Italian magazine L’Espresso, is an attempt to influence the debate before United Nations climate talks scheduled for the end of the year in Paris. Father Federico Lombardi, the pope’s spokesman, said the text was not the final one, which will be officially released midday local time Thursday by the Vatican.

The encyclical, entitled “Laudato si (Praised Be) on the care of our common home,” is a call to action in the form of a letter to the church’s bishops. With fossil-fuel emissions and temperatures at record levels, the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics is adding his voice to calls to rein in greenhouse gases.

“International negotiations cannot progress in a significant way because of the positions of the countries which privilege their own national interests rather than the global common good,” the pope wrote. “Those who will suffer the consequences which we are trying to hide will remember this lack of conscience and responsibility.”

Francis squarely put the blame on humans, writing that many scientific studies show “the greater part of global warming in the last decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) emitted above all due to human activity.”

Reducing emissions, he wrote, demands “honesty, courage and responsibility, above all by the most powerful and most polluting countries.”

In the U.S., where public opinion has been split on climate change, the Conference of Catholic Bishops has been holding workshops to discuss the encyclical with its members. A coalition of church groups, the Catholic Climate Covenant, will provide inserts on Francis’ message to go in church bulletins around the U.S. and is e-mailing suggested homilies to priests.

Additionally, this document will a call for independent and rigorous studies of pesticides and GMOs:

On the subject of GMOs Pope Francis states; “It is difficult to give an overall judgment on the development of genetically modified organisms (GMO), plant or animal, for medical purposes or in agriculture, since they can be very different and require different considerations.”

He continues; “Although we do not have definitive evidence about the damage that transgenic cereals could cause to humans, and in some regions their use has produced economic growth that has helped solve some problems, there are significant problems that should not be minimized. In many areas, following the introduction of these crops, there has been a concentration of productive land in the hands of the few, due to the gradual disappearance of small producers, who, as a consequence of the loss of cultivated land, have been forced to retreat from direct production.

“The most fragile among them become temporary workers and many farm workers migrate to end up in miserable urban settlements. The spread of these (GM) crops destroys the complex web of ecosystems, decreases diversity in production and affects the present and the future of regional economies. In several countries there is a trend in the development of oligopolies in the production of seeds and other products needed for cultivation, and the dependence deepens when you consider the production of sterile seeds, which end up forcing farmers to buy (seeds) from producers.”

“No doubt there is a need for constant attention…to consider all ethical aspects involved. To this end it is necessary to ensure a scientific and social debate that is responsible and large, able to consider all the information available and to call things by their names.

“GMOs is an issue which is complex, it must be approached with a sympathetic look at all its aspects, and this requires at least one more effort to finance several lines of independent and interdisciplinary research… as we have seen in this chapter, the technique is unlikely to be able to …self-limit its power.”

To my mind, what is most significant here is that he is clearly laying the groundwork for aggressive push-back against Big Ag, Monsanto and their ilk, as being harmful both to the environment, and to most economically disadvantaged.

I hear wing-nut heads exploding, and it pleases me.

Nope, No Corruption Here………

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It is not surprising that Obama wants to move a portion of military pension to defined contribution (401(k) type) plan, because, after all, Obama has been all about allowing Wall Street to loot, but it is a bit unseemly for the White House to direct most of the business a longtime political supporter, Blackrock:

American service members are confronting a potential haircut. Under a proposal the Pentagon outlined last week, new members of the armed forces would see their guaranteed retirement benefits cut by one-fifth if Congress approves the plan.

But if future veterans are being asked to make do with less, one key constituency stands to capture more: Wall Street.

Under the details of the Pentagon plan, the federal government would divert 3 percent of service members’ pay into a 401(k)-style plan that would be managed largely by BlackRock, a financial firm whose executives helped bankroll President Barack Obama’s election campaigns.

The change could wind up transferring as much as $50 billion from military paychecks to BlackRock, generating tens of millions of dollars in fees for the Wall Street giant. BlackRock employees have donated over $90,000 to Obama’s campaigns directly, and nearly $75,000 to the Democratic National Committee during the course of Obama’s two presidential campaigns, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink was also a prominent supporter of Obama’s election campaigns, and the company in 2013 named Hillary Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff to its board of directors.

Gee, what a surprise.

Well, I guess that funding for the Barack Obama Presidential library, and 6-7 figure speaker fees don’t generate themselves.

I Just Had an Epiphany

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I was talking with my wife, and she asked how many people were running for the Republican Presidential nomination, so we went to the Wiki, and we came up with a count, 16, possibly as many as 19. (List with status key after the break)

She then asked how many Democrats are running, and I said 3, Clinton, Sanders, and O’Malley.

She jokingly suggested that I change parties to Republican, because I had more charges, and I replied, “Nope.  I want to vote against Hillary Clinton. ……… No, that’s not actually true. I want to vote for Bernie Sanders.”

And then it hit me:  I actually want to vote for Bernie Sanders.

This is the first time that I’ve actually wanted to vote for a Presidential candidate in at least a dozen years.

It’s a strange feeling. ……… It’s a good feeling, but it’s a strange feeling.

List of ‘Phant candidates.

  1. Jeb Bush*
  2. Ben Carson*
  3. Ted Cruz*
  4. Carly Fiorina*
  5. Lindsey Graham*
  6. Mike Huckabee*
  7. George Pataki*
  8. Rand Paul*
  9. Rick Perry*
  10. Marco Rubio*
  11. Rick Santorum*
  12. Donald Trump*
  13. Bobby Jindal†
  14. Scott Walker†
  15. Chris Christie‡
  16. John Kasich‡
  17. Bob “Badhair” Ehrlich€
  18. Jim Gilmore€
  19. Peter King€

* = Officially running
† = To make it official shortly.
‡ = Formed a PAC or a 529, so basically running, if not for President, then for Veep.
€ = Made noises, but nothing official.

This is Not as Impressive as it looks

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Boeing has released a video of the Paris Air Show routine intended for its 787-9.  (Facebook followers, click through to see it)

It is pretty impressive, but it is not as impressive as it appears:

First, it’s not climbing vertically. That is a function of camera angle and a long lens which creates a forced perspective that makes it look that way.

Also, the pilot is keeping the aircraft on the runway longer than is normal for the pull-up.

First, some facts:

  • The 787-9 has an MTOW of 557,000 lb, and a operating empty weight of about 304,000 pounds. (Probably less, because they probably haven’t installed the passenger seats, etc. to make the aircraft handle more spiritedly.)
  • It has about 142,000 lbs of installed thrust, and at sea level and the engines specific fuel consumption is somewhere in the 0.3 lbs fuel/hr-lbs thrust.

For the airshow display, the aircraft will have 2-4 crewmen and perhaps about an hour’s worth of fuel, which means that it has a weight of about 350,000 lbs, and a thrust to weight ratio of 0.4:1, which is similar to that of a fully loaded F-4 Phantom on taking off.

I would also note that for this flight, the fuel is almost certainly not in the wing tanks, to keep down the rotational inertia so that it can roll more aggressively.

Still, I wish I were in Paris to see it.

Hell, I wish that I was in Paris right now.

H/T Firedoglake.

Another Clown Exits the Republican Presidential Primary Car

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I am referring, of course, to John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, who has finally made his run for the Presidency official.

While many in the Republican Party see him as a potential respite from the clown car, the fact that his staff is suggesting that they should go all “Pickett’s Charge” on his opponents, which I guess means slowly marching ¾ of a mile against an entrenched opponent backed up by artillery that is both copious and highly competent:

………

Mr. Diaz, who seared John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2007 with charges of flip-flopping on issues, and other Bush aides are determined to develop new lines of attack against Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, the two Republicans who represent the greatest threats to Mr. Bush’s nomination, according to his advisers and allies.

The Bush campaign sees Mr. Rubio as vulnerable on his Senate record, which is short on legislative success and includes shifts on immigration, and on his history of managing his finances. And they regard Mr. Walker, too, as susceptible to attack on issues on which he has changed his positions, according to the advisers. By hiring Mr. Diaz, Mr. Bush wanted to send a clear signal that “the culture of the Bush operation will now be a Pickett’s Charge engagement campaign with his main opponents,” according to one Bush ally.

(emphasis mine)

So, yeah, they are clown car too, though what is likely the biggest clown in the 2016 Republican Presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, looks to be announcing his candidacy tomorrow.

I cannot believe that we will have a more absurd candidate than “The Donald”, but if one turns up, I will be there, staring at the spectacle with a stunned look on my face that will resemble that of a cow that has just stepped on its own udder.

(H/T Paul Krugman for that quote.)

Blue Dog Democrat Comes Home

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Former Democratic Congressman Joe Baca has become a Republican:

Joe Baca, a longtime Democrat who represented San Bernardino County citizens for more than 30 years as a trustee for the San Bernardino Community College District, an assemblyman, state senator and congressman, is now a registered Republican.

Baca, 68, of Fontana, changed his party affiliation on June 2, said Melissa Eickman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Elections Office.

Prior to making the switch, Baca had been a registered Democrat in San Bernardino County since January 1976, Eickman said.

Baca said Friday he and his wife thought long and hard about the decision, which he said reflects his “core Christian values” and his pro-growth, pro-business philosophy.

As a legislator, Baca said he often voted conservatively on many issues. He said he secured funding for transportation and infrastructure projects in his district, and fought to delist from the endangered species list the kangaroo rat, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly and the Santa Ana sucker fish, all of which he said were hindering commercial development and growth in his district.

“I’ve always been very conservative in nature,” Baca said, adding that in the House of Representatives he was often accused of being a Republican and asked why he didn’t change his political party.

Baca is a former member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a congressional caucus of moderate and conservative Democrats whose members are referred to as “Blue Dogs.”

Baca said he was a Blue Dog during his entire seven-term stint as a ongressman.

Good.

The ‘Phants can keep him.

H/T, Down with Tyranny.

Even the Hawks in the US Congress Are Concerned about the Ukrainian Nazis

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The flag flown by the Azov Battalion


Actual iconography on Azov Battalion helmets

It appears that the behavior of the Ukraine’s far right militias that Congress has explicitly forbidden giving them funding:

It’s easy to see why Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, would have a problem with the military unit commanded by Ukrainian legislator Andriy Biletsky: Conyers is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Biletsky is a white supremacist.

The House of Representatives has unanimously approved an amendment to the U.S. military budget, proposed by Conyers and Florida Republican Ted Yoho, banning support and training for “the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia ‘Azov Battalion.'” Azov was set up in May 2014 to fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Here’s how the group’s Facebook page describes the circumstances:

In the first weeks after the Putin invasion of Donbass began, the authorities and law enforcers were confused and demoralized. Nationalists had to take initiative. The Patriot of Ukraine organization and allied unofficial groups of right-wing youth rallied around Andriy Biletsky and challenged the separatists.

By now, though, the Azov Battalion has become a regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard and enjoys the enthusiastic support of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

Biletsky had run Patriot of Ukraine since 2005. In a 2010 interview he described the organization as nationalist “storm troops” with its biggest unit in Kharkov, Biletsky’s native city in eastern Ukraine. The group’s ideology was “social nationalism” — a term Biletsky, a historian, knew would deceive no one.

………

The war in the east gave Biletsky’s storm troopers a chance at a higher status than they could ever have hoped to achieve. They fought fiercely, and last fall, the 400-strong Azov Battalion became part of the National Guard, receiving permission to expand to 2,000 fighters and gaining access to heavy weaponry. So what if some of its members had Nazi symbols tattooed on their bodies and the unit’s banner bore the Wolfsangel, used widely by the Nazis during World War II? In an interview with Ukraine’s Focus magazine last September, Avakov, responsible for the National Guard, was protective of his heroes. He said of the Wolfsangel:

In many European cities it is part of the city emblem. Yes, most of the guys who assembled in Azov have a particular worldview. But who told you you could judge them? Don’t forget what the Azov Battalion did for the country. Remember the liberation of Mariupol, the fighting at Ilovaysk, the latest attacks near the Sea of Azov. May God allow anyone who criticizes them to do 10 percent of what they’ve done. And anyone who’s going to tell me that these guys preach Nazi views, wear the swastika and so on, are bare-faced liars and fools.


………

Now, Conyers and Yoho have almost succeeded in making Azov ineligible for any form of U.S. assistance. “These groups run counter to American values,” Conyers told Congress. “And once the fighting ends, they pose a significant threat to the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. As we’ve seen many times, most notably within the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, these groups will not lay down their arms once the conflict is over.”

As Robert Parry, who was given the Polk award for his work on Iran-Contra observed:


………

The conservative London Telegraph offered more details about the Azov battalion in an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.

“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the reality of the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.

Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population – and officials in Kiev knew what they were doing. The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

But a rebel counteroffensive led by ethnic Russians last August reversed many of Kiev’s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy’s reporter Alec Luhn also encountered the Nazis. He wrote:

“Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol’s burned-out city administration building and at military checkpoints around the city, but at a sport school near a huge metallurgical plant, another symbol is just as prominent: the wolfsangel (‘wolf trap’) symbol that was widely used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups. …

“Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and ‘fascists’ in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.”

You can find Conyers’ statement on his amendments banning any aid the Azov battallion, as well as prohibiting the transfer of shoulder launched SAMs (Manpads) to anyone in the Ukraine, here.

I think that the prohibition against the missiles is particularly significant, because it not just a measure of concern about neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian establishment, it is a vote of no-confidence in their entire military establishment, and arguably the entire government, with regard to securing portable SAMs.