Month: April 2016

Useless Meatbag of the Day

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Former Senator Jim Webb, who seems to think that a little genocide is just a misunderstanding between friends:

Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) is not happy about former President Andrew Jackson being bumped from the front of the $20 bill.

Webb joined conservatives in blasting the Treasury Department’s decision to bump Jackson to the back of the bill in order to put legendary abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the front. He wrote Sunday in a Washington Post op-ed that the decision was “an indication of how far political correctness has invaded our educational system and skewed our national consciousness.”

“This dismissive characterization of one of our great presidents is not occurring in a vacuum,” he wrote. “Any white person whose ancestral relations trace to the American South now risks being characterized as having roots based on bigotry and undeserved privilege. Meanwhile, race relations are at their worst point in decades.”

This racist asshole argued that despite, “Jackson’s involvement in the events that led to the Trail of Tears, he argued that the former President was not genocidal because he raised an orphaned Native American baby as his son.”

Andrew Jackson ignored a Supreme Court ruling, and sent in troops to send the Cherokee on a death march to Oklahoma.

F%$# Webb, and f%$# his Neo-Confederate bullsh%$.

Linkage

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This episode of linkage has Hamaytz. Here is the Ramen Song, by my little girl:

Koch Brothers Want to Strip Mine the Grand Canyon ……… Literally

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And you have to figure that, staunch libertarians that they are, they will find a way to extract subsidies from the taxpayer to do this:

Amid rumors that Charles and David Koch will be withdrawing their presence at the Republican National Convention, it has been revealed the billionaires have been funneling money into an Arizona-based group fighting a plan to ban uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, which would also protect 1.7 million acres of land.

The proposal is supported by 80% of Arizona residents, environmental groups, and native tribes, the Guardian reports. Yet, Greg Zimmerman of the Center for Western Priorities has found that a non-profit group, the Prosper Foundation, is fighting to block the move. The group received 83% of their total budget, over $1.5 million, from an organization called American Encore.

Zimmerman, digging deeper, found that American Encore is run by one Sean Noble, a man with very close ties to the Koch brothers. A donor from a Koch brothers’ “dark money” funding network has also channeled cash to the group.

“Prosper, which was formed in 2013, covers nearly its entire budget with funds from Koch-backed American Encore—formerly known as the Center to Protect Patient Rights. According to tax filings, American Encore has funded 83 percent of Prosper Inc.’s total budget since its creation, donating over $1.5 million to the organization in 2013 and 2014,” Zimmerman wrote for ThinkProgress.

What a surprise.

I can think of no better reason for increasing the inheritance tax than these guys, who seem to think that they to deserve to run the world because they won the birth lottery.

I’m Not Sure that Hillary Wants this Endorsement………

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Charles Koch just said that Hillary Clinton might make a better President than the potential Republican nominees:

Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, a key source of financing for conservative Republican causes along with his brother, said Democrat Hillary Clinton might make a better president than the candidates in the Republican field.

Koch, in an interview to air on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” program, said that in some respects Bill Clinton had been a better president than George W. Bush, who Koch said had increased government spending. Then when asked if Hillary Clinton would be a better president than the Republicans currently running, he said, “It’s possible, it’s possible.”

Not a big surprise.

After all, Hillary is arguably the best Republican in the race.

Endorsements in the Maryland and Pennsylvania Senate Races

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In Maryland, I endorse Donna Edwards, because on every issue where they differ, she is right, and Chris Van Hollen is wrong.

While he now disavows this position, he has been receptive to cutting Social Security, which is reason to never support him in the primary.

In Pennsylvania, the Senate Primary race is between Joe Sestak and Katie McGinty.

Sestak would be a slam dunk in this campaign, except for the fact that he defeated Arlen Specter, who had switched parties to Democrat, in the 2010 primary, which has so enraged Chuck Schumer that he has dumped a ton (something around $2 million) of money on the non-entity (she came in a distant 4th in a 4 man race for Governor in 2014) Mcginty.

She’s never held elective office, so there’s not a whole bunch of record to go after, but she has taken a lot of energy money, including over $100,000.00 from fracking interests, and she’s trying to run as an environmentalist.

So, it’s clear that she thinks that you fool enough people for long enough to get into office, and her dismal performance in the gubernatorial primary 2 years ago does not bode well for her ability as a campaigner, so no, just no.

Please, make Chuck Schumer cry.

OBama Really Wants His Poodle to Stay in the EU

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Obama is now saying that if Britain votes to leave the EU, there won’t be a free trade deal with Britain for over 10 years.

This is, of course, a shameless attempt to threaten the British voters into staying in the EU, so that US influence on this body is not diminished.

The US (IMNSHO correctly) that the UK will blindly promulgate US policies and US interests within the European Union:

The UK could take up to 10 years to negotiate trade deals with the US if it leaves the EU, Barack Obama has said.

In a BBC interview, the US president said: “It could be five years from now, 10 years from now before we were able to actually get something done.”

Britain would also have less influence globally if it left, he added.

His warning over trade has angered UK campaigners for leaving the EU – with UKIP leader Nigel Farage dismissing Mr Obama’s comments as “utter tosh”.

As much as it pains me to agree with him, Nigel Farage is right.

Linkage, Guaranteed Chomytz Free*

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Prince died on Thursday. An eclectic artist who played a plethora of instruments, produced music, and directed and acted in movies.

He also had the best cameo ever on Animaniacs, which says a lot: (Actual dialogue from the show)

H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

*Chomaytz is leavened bread, which is forbidden during the days of Pesach (Passover).

What Joe Biden Said

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In an interview with the New York Times, Biden makes a very trenchant point:

………

“I like the idea of saying, ‘We can do much more,’ because we can,” Mr. Biden said in an interview on the Washington-to-Wilmington, Del., Amtrak train he has ridden throughout four decades in national politics.

“I don’t think any Democrat’s ever won saying, ‘We can’t think that big — we ought to really downsize here because it’s not realistic,’ ” he said in a mocking tone. “C’mon man, this is the Democratic Party! I’m not part of the party that says, ‘Well, we can’t do it.’”

It puts something about Hillary’s campaign for President in perspective.

Much like a dog chasing a car, she has no idea what to do if she catches the Presidency.

I Like this Catch 22

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Uber and Lyft claim that their drivers are independent contractors, not employers.

Now San Francisco, accepting the Not-a-Taxi-is Really-a Taxi services argument, has has issued a notice that the drivers therefore require business licenses:

Uber and Lyft drivers have cruised the streets of San Francisco for years. But the city has now decided that drivers who work for more than seven days in a year need a business license.

Nearly 37,000 people have been identified by the city as drivers for either Uber or Lyft, according to a press release issued on Friday by city treasurer José Cisneros.

Cisneros did not say how the city came across a list of names, but the notice being sent to drivers comes from “two years of enforcement work, including multiple requests for information and subpoenas to get sufficient data about business operations” from companies like Lyft and Uber.

Knowing that both Lyft and Uber have both actively fought having information released, it’s likely the data wasn’t passed over voluntarily. San Francisco was not listed as a city that had requested data in Uber’s transparency report, although its airport has information about 44,000 drivers.

“Uber partners with entrepreneurial drivers and as independent contractors, they are responsible for following appropriate local requirements,” an Uber spokesperson said.

Lyft, on the other hand, was worried that forcing registration would compromise driver privacy.

………

Cisneros will start by sending out three batches of letters to the identified drivers over the coming days, according to the SF Chronicle. Each driver will need to register him or herself as a business within the next 30 days and pay a $91 annual registration fee and display the registration in the vehicle, or face additional fines. If each driver registers, that generates approximately an extra $3.37 million for the city’s coffers.

………

Now San Francisco is flipping the argument around on the ride-hailing companies arguing that if their drivers are truly independent contractors, then they need these business licenses to be able to operate in the city.

Sweet, sweet schadenfreude.

They Are Taking the Genocidal Maniac and Slave Owner off the Front of the $20 Bill

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And replacing him with abolitionist Harriet Tubman: (I love the irony)

Black abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman will appear on the front of the $20 bill, relocating the slaveholding former president Andrew Jackson to its rear, and founding father Alexander Hamilton will remain on the face of the $10 bill.

Now is time to start a campaign to get Jackson the architect of the Trail of Tears, completely off the $20 bill.

The man was ineluctably evil, and should not be celebrated.

Quote of the Day

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But first, what would motivate any young person today to pull the plug?

Well maybe they should consider this for a moment. Who most wants you to stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies – once they distrusted it, now they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your school. Advertisers.

Well, if you’re young and have an ounce of pride, doesn’t that list say it all? So f%$# you, I’m Going Off The Grid.

—Stephen Fry

(%$%# mine)

How Utterly Proper

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George Osborne, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, has decided to exempt people that he sees as significant from money laundering regulations:

………

George Osborne this afternoon accepted an amendment to the Financial Services Bill which will see some Politically Exposed Persons and their families exempted from these anti-money laundering rules. Ministers will now “exclude… specified categories of persons” from the list of so-called PEPs, as Osborne says it is “disproportionate” for banks to include MPs and relatives on the watch list. Mossack Fonseca will be able to whisk MPs and their families through the account opening process…

(emphasis original)

And once again, I have to note that this is not The Onion, it is reality ……… reality completely indistinguishable from the the pages of a parody magazine.

I am beginning to wish that Guy Fawkes had succeeded in the Gunpowder Plot.

H/t Naked Capitalism

F%$# Me, I Agree with Michael F%$#ing Kinsley

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Michael Kinsley is the epitome of a mindless contrarian.

I refer to this mindset as “Michael Kinsley Disease”.

And after nearly 4 decades of being shallow, and facile, and wrong, he finally gets one right when he calls out the foreign policy establishment in Washington, DC as immoral and incompetent:

Can our nation survive without taking advantage of the wisdom of self-described “foreign policy elites”? That is the question posed on Page 1 of The Post’s print edition on Saturday, under the headline “Foreign policy elites indecisive on Trump.” The Post’s Karen DeYoung reports that 121 Republican national security experts have signed a petition saying they would not serve in a Donald Trump administration, should democracy serve them up such an opportunity. Actually, in their eyes, it is less an opportunity than a possible obligation. We all have to decide whether to vote for Trump, which is a pretty easy decision for most people I know. But “foreign policy elites” have the further obligation of deciding whether to work in a Trump administration. This, apparently, is not an easy decision at all.

………

If you ask me (which no one is doing), I think our country might survive quite well without the advice of “foreign policy elites” — or without the guidance of retired generals such as David Petraeus. A Post columnist last week recommended retired generals in general, and Petraeus in particular, as a good source of presidents. This is a brilliant idea. Petraeus had to resign as director of the CIA after he got caught in a scandal involving both sex and classified information, so he covers all the bases in competing with the Clinton machine. And he certainly qualifies as a member of the foreign policy elite.

What, after all, have foreign policy elites of either party done for us lately? Paying attention to “foreign policy elites” has given us nothing but heartbreak in the past three and a half decades. That’s right, three and a half decades, or a third of a century if you prefer. That’s how long we’ve been mired in the Middle East. At first it was considered gauche and naïve to use the Vietnam-era term “quagmire” to describe the United States’ situation in the Middle East. No one objects to calling it a quagmire anymore.

………

Perhaps what’s so remarkable about this terrible recent history is how many countries we have managed to screw up without affecting our own very much. That’s what allows us to give ourselves credit for good intentions, without the need for any beneficial result. Or perhaps what’s so remarkable is that we’re still paying the slightest attention to foreign policy elites.

 I will put this down to a stopped clock being right twice a day.

Good Point, But Wrong

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Over at The New Republic, David Dayen observes that observes that that transcripts from Hillary Clinton’s speeches to the Vampire Squid are irrelevant, because she has always been in Wall Street’s pocket anyway:

I don’t want to see the transcripts from Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches.

 ………

 The actual transcript is unnecessary because we already have enough in the public domain to know the real issue with these speeches: the rapport and camaraderie between political leaders and financial institutions, which results in a frame of mind that accepts their arguments and privileges their views. In fact, the best example of this comes from a speech that Clinton habitually touts as an example of her get-tough approach to Wall Street.

 On the stump and in debates, including last week’s in Brooklyn, Clinton highlights a speech she made at Nasdaq in December 2007, in the thick of the foreclosure crisis. “When I was serving as the senator from New York, I did stand up to the banks,” Clinton said last week. “I did make it clear that their behavior would not be excused.”

 In the speech, available here, she castigated Wall Street for “playing a significant role in the current problems,” for fueling irresponsible mortgage lending through securitization, and for having “shifted risk away from people who knew what was going on onto the people who did not.” Clinton has been criticized for this speech, however, because of a few lines where she said “there’s plenty of blame to go around” for the housing bubble, and that “homebuyers who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known they were getting in over their heads.”

 You can read this as a throwaway nod to personal responsibility, a typical politician’s remark, when the thrust of the speech indicts Wall Street. I would argue that spreading around responsibility for something that was a demonstrably criminal action by lenders fits with Wall Street’s moralizing about deadbeat borrowers who should have known the risks. It’s a form of public shaming. And it arguably led to the lack of accountability we saw for the financial crisis—after all, if everybody is responsible, then ultimately nobody is responsible

 ………

 When something could have been done to pressure mortgage servicers, Hillary Clinton, like many politicians, adopted their argument that they were prevented from helping homeowners. She believed their claims that they were hamstrung, when they weren’t. And I have to believe that’s attributable to proximity, access, and whose arguments get priority of place.

 Wall Street purchases that priority of place simply by donating to campaigns, bringing politicians in for chats, marinating them in its worldview. Finance executives can make very compelling arguments about the complex intricacies of the financial system. They can sound charming and smart and logical. And in a moment of truth, they can get the payoff, when a powerful politician like Hillary Clinton makes a reasonable-sounding statement about mortgage servicers needing legal immunity.

On a strictly factual level, DDay is right:  We do not have to read her transcripts in order to know that she is, always has been, and likely always will be be Wall Street’s stooge.

The only question is whether Hillary and her Evil Minions™ or not she will be a bigger stooge than Barack and his Evil Minions™.

Needless to say, this sucks like 1000 Hoovers all going at once.

That being said, her the fact that she is a suck up to Wall Street means nothing without sound bites for the press to make it a real issue for most of the voting public.

That is the reality of our culture, media, and political system,