Calling David Koch a philanthropist is like calling Hannibal Lecter a chef. https://t.co/TvjRUrJouL— Adam Best (@adamcbest) August 23, 2019
I really have nothing add to this.
Year: 2019
Sadism Works as an Explanation
This article makes a cogent argument that White Evangelical politics is not about fear, or biblical values, it is about sadism.
Specifically, they derive pleasure from the misery of “the other” that they have deemed unworthy:
I understand why it’s hard for normal people to believe that white evangelical Christians are sadists. Normal people have never been, as I was a long time ago, on the inside of that shadowy religious world. But the sooner they understand this, the sooner normal people will see that white evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump isn’t rooted in hypocrisy, contradiction or merely straying from the straight and narrow. The reason they support a fascist president is simple: They’re sadists.
The word “sadist” is off-putting. I get that. But if you’re thinking of sex, you’re thinking in the wrong way. If you’re thinking of “pleasure,” as in sexual pleasure, you’re thinking the wrong way. The pleasure white evangelical Christians derive from the suffering of human beings deemed less human than they are is not about sex. It’s about the pain, humiliation or even violence out-groups deserve by dint of being out-groups. Gay men, for instance, deserve their punishment because they are gay. Punishment for being gay is “divine justice.” From such “justice” comes pleasure—which is sadism.
I didn’t come up with the term. Richard Rorty did. I’m only pushing it as far to the fore as I can, because I don’t think normal people understand what they are facing, and if they don’t understand, they will keep treating sadists as if they have a legitimate place in a liberal democracy. Cruelty is the point, as Adam Serwer powerfully and famously put it in The Atlantic. But normal people must understand the animating force behind that cruelty. Sadists are sadistic not because they are cruel. It’s much simpler than that. They are cruel because being cruel to people deserving cruelty feels good.
I’m still considering the arguments, but the thesis is consistent with the actual observed events, and appears to have a significant predictive properties, which puts it a step above string theory.
Tweet of the Day
the implicit core belief of means-testing services is that we'd rather some people who could use them go without than some people who could pay for them on their own receive them and that's an idea worth challenging tbqh
— taber 🏳️🌈 (@taber) August 19, 2019
Means testing for basic safety net programs is morally and politically bankrupt.
Ban Antibiotic Use on Livestock
In news that should surprise no one, an explosion in antibiotic resistant salmonella has been linked to an increase in antibiotic use in cattle.
Meat without antibiotics is a bit more expensive, on the order of 5-10¢ a pound, (the Danes banned antibiotics, so we have good cost data( but that is a reasonable price to secure the public health:
A deadly outbreak of multi-drug resistant Salmonella that sickened 225 people across the US beginning in 2018 may have been spurred by a sharp rise in the use of certain antibiotics in cows a year earlier, infectious disease investigators reported this week.
From June 2018 to March of 2019, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified an outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype Newport. The strain was resistant to several antibiotics, most notably azithromycin—a recommended treatment for Salmonella enterica infections. Before the outbreak, azithromycin-resistance in this germ was exceedingly rare. In fact, it was only first seen in the US in 2016.
Yet in the 2018-2019 outbreak, it reached at least 225 people in 32 states. Of those sickened, at least 60 were hospitalized and two died. (Researchers didn’t have complete health data on everyone sickened in the outbreak.)
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The investigators suggest that the surge in macrolide use could have encouraged the rise and spread of the azithromycin-resistant Newport strain.
“Because use of antibiotics in livestock can cause selection of resistant strains, the reported 41% rise in macrolide use in US cattle from 2016 to 2017 might have accelerated carriage of the outbreak strain among US cattle,” they wrote.
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In recent years, around 70% of all medically important antibiotics in the US have been sold for use in animals. Public health advocates say agricultural use of antibiotics should be reduced significantly to preserve the effectiveness of the drugs.
It is completely insane to allow farmers to destroy our public health system for a few pennies.
The INF Treaty Was Already a Dead Letter
The real kicker here is the Mk-41 launcher.Russia has said for years that those deployed in Europe could launch Tomahawks, and therefore violate INF. US denied it.
16 days after the INF Treaty died, what does the US do?
Launch a Tomahawk from a ground-based Mk-41 launcher. https://t.co/7KAxO78hVD
— Matt Korda (@mattkorda) August 19, 2019
A week ago, the US test-launched a ground launched Tomahawk cruise missile.
In doing so, they validated Russian claims that the US installation of BMD systems in Europe were actually in violation of the INF treaty:
Arms Control Twitter has been abuzz since yesterday’s announcement that the United States had conducted a surprise launch of a Tomahawk missile on Sunday afternoon.
This wasn’t just your regular missile launch, however. It was a Tomahawk cruise missile launched from a ground-based Mark-41 Vertical Launch System (VLS), traveling to a distance of “more than 500 kilometers,” according to the Department of Defense.
In other words: a violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty––if the treaty still existed. It officially died on August 2nd, six months after both the United States and Russia announced suspensions of their respective treaty obligations. But the launch is an important walk-back of US security policy which for 32 years sought to curtail such weapons and instead, as we have written for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, makes the United States needlessly complicit in the INF’s demise and frees Russia from both the responsibility and pressure to return to compliance.
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Why is everyone so worked up about the launcher?
This is where things get really interesting. The Mk-41 VLS launcher that was used to launch the Tomahawk is the same type of launcher that would be used to launch SM-3 interceptors from Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense stations in Romania and Poland, once the latter station is completed.
For years, Russia has said that the US deployment of these ground-based Mk-41 VLS launchers to Europe constitutes an INF violation, because they could theoretically be used to launch Tomahawks over 500 kilometers. Legally speaking, this doesn’t hold water––Article VII, paragraph 7 of the INF Treaty states that in order for a launcher to be considered in violation of the treaty, it must actually conduct a ground launch of a prohibited missile. Since this never happened while the INF Treaty was in force, the Mk-41 VLS launchers weren’t in violation.
What’s more, the United States has consistently stated that although Mk-41s can launch Tomahawks, the ones deployed in Romania and Poland cannot. In December 2017, the State Department announced that “The Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System does not have an offensive ground-launched ballistic or cruise missile capability. Specifically, the system lacks the software, fire control hardware, support equipment, and other infrastructure needed to launch offensive ballistic or cruise missiles such as the Tomahawk.”
Perhaps this is true, perhaps it isn’t. But absent some kind of US transparency measure that offers visibility into the Aegis Ashore systems, Russia is forced to rely solely on an American promise. And for Putin, that’s simply not going to cut it. That being said, it’s also possible that no amount of transparency would ever have satisfied Putin, as his primary concern over Aegis Ashore appears to be directed at the general deployment of missile defenses in Europe, rather than their offensive potential.
I actually did work involving these sorts of launchers on naval vessels, specifically on power supplies that could be controlled by software to allow for a wide variety of missile types.
The software could be contained on a memory stick, the hardware is basically a terminal (If that), and the logistical support for a GLCM, which is shipped and deployed as a “ready round”, is minimal.
Once the “Aegis Ashore” launcher is installed, a breakout from the INF treaty could be (and in fact was) executed in a matter of days.
Presidential Race Update
3 candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination have dropped out, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper, and Seth Moulton.
While Inslee actually ran on a substantive issue, he focused on anthropogenic climate change, Hickenlooper and Moulton pretty much ran against the Democratic Party, with Hickenlooper likening opposition to fracking to Stalinism, and Moulton engaging in jeremiads against the Democratic Party.
Good riddance to the last two, though Inslee, did manage to make addressing climate change s significant issue in the primary, which is a good thing.
Tweet of the Day
I really do think the NYPD needs to get drastically smaller.Thousands of officers now say they hate having a job where you can get fired for choking a Black man to death.
Move on. Retire. Transfer. Quit.
Bunch of bigoted assholes (Proof in story).https://t.co/qRMjWElI7J
— Shaun King (@shaunking) August 23, 2019
Pantaleo broke the law and killed a man in the process, and now the cops are threatening a slowdown because of their butthurt over the most meager accountability for their actions.
F%$# them and the horse that they rode in on..
1/2 of World’s Ayn Rand Worst Tribute Band Ever, the Koch Brothers, Dies
David Koch has died of complications of prostate cancer at age 79.
Their wealth came largely from their father selling technology to Josef Stalin, and he had been funding the right wing for years.
There is an argument that one should not speak ill of the dead, but David Koch was a public figure, and his fans will no doubt use this as an opportunity to shape his legacy, so I feel that speaking the truth is essential at this juncture in any public forum except for his funeral or wake.
In my case, I will start with a list of positive things about his positive contributions to the public discourse and public policy in his time in American politics:
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That is all.
What Do Brexit and the Black Death Have in Common?
Rising wages,* it appears.
This is precisely what the experts said would not happen:
No, really? Yes, really, via Reuters:
Major British employers gave average pay rises of 2.6% to staff in the three months to July, the highest pace of increase in more than 10 years, data from industry consultants XpertHR showed on Thursday.
Annual pay settlements in Britain began to rise roughly a year ago as the lowest unemployment rate since the mid-1970s put pressure on employers to retain staff, but deals had been stuck at around 2.5% in recent months.And more:
In sharp contrast to the broader economic slowdown that has taken Britain to the brink of recession, the Office for National Statistics said annual average pay – excluding bonuses – rose by 3.9% in the three months to June, the highest rate since June 2008.
The ONS said about 115,000 more people found a job between April and June, when Theresa May extended the Brexit deadline until October, pushing up the number of people in work to a record of just over 32.8 million.
I’m not sure that the whole “Black Death” thing is particularly reassuring though.
H/t Naked Capitalism.
*For those of you who are not up on your labor history, after about half of Europe died of the plague, peasant wages jumped as a result of labor shortages.
The Pooch Has Been Thoroughly Screwed
I’ve always felt that Benyamin Netanyahu has been clear and present danger to the state of Israel, but I never imagined that he would do something so bone-headed that AIPAC would condemn his actions:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Thursday broke with Israel’s decision to bar Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) from visiting the country, saying “every member of Congress should be able to visit.”
“We disagree with Reps. Omar and Tlaib’s support for the anti-Israel and anti-peace BDS movement, along with Rep. Tlaib’s calls for a one-state solution. We also believe every member of Congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand,” AIPAC tweeted Thursday.
Well, that’s what he gets for listening to Donald Trump.
Still Contemptible Bastards
It’s been almost a month since DoorDash, the leading food delivery app in the US, finally caved to public pressure and announced it would stop pocketing its workers’ tips.
At the time, CEO Tony Xu announced in a series of tweets that DoorDash would institute a new model to ensure workers’ earnings would “increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order.” Xu promised to provide “specific details in the coming days.” The next day, Xu sent out a note to DoorDash workers, broadly outlining changes and letting them know “what to expect in the days ahead.”
But 27 days later, current DoorDash workers tell Recode that the company’s pay and tipping policies have stayed the same. The company has not made any public statements about its worker pay and how it plans to institute the changes, nor has it offered a specific date when it will fulfill its promise.
A spokesperson declined to comment about the company’s plans to change its tipping policy.
They are not figuring out how to implement a fair tipping policy, they are trying to figure out how to best weasel out of their commitment.
The final word on DoorDash is this: If they treat their employees like sh%$, how do you think that they will treat you as a customer?
This is Market Manipulation, not a “Pillar of Stock Market”
It appears that the stock market is running out of steam because companies are reducing their stock buybacks.
As I have noted before, until SEC Rule 10b-18 was adopted in 1983, stock buybacks were considered illegal market manipulation.
It’s why the stock markets is showing insane PE ratios.
Senior executives buy back stock, boosting their own stock options, instead of investing in improvements in the business:
Corporate capital expenditures have slowed this year, adding to worries that economic growth is fading. Many executives have said the lingering trade tensions with China are giving them pause. The latest data from S&P Dow Jones Indices indicate capital expenditures picked up in the second quarter, improving 5.2% from the first three months of the year but still 7.8% below the boom seen at the end of last year.
The willingness among companies to buy back their shares has been among the biggest driving forces of the decadelong bull market. Since 2013, U.S. companies have poured $4.2 trillion into stock buybacks, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Investors, though, haven’t shown the same enthusiasm for stocks. Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds tracking U.S. equities have posted $84 billion in outflows over the same period, according to the bank’s analysis of EPFR Global data.
Corporate buybacks boomed after the U.S. tax overhaul in December 2017, with every quarter in 2018 marking a new high for share repurchases. The recent easing in activity has some analysts and investors questioning whether the shift marks a return to the norm, or if companies are pulling back the reins for other reasons.
This is not market fundamentals, this is corruption.
Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen
Scottsdale, Arizona police officers shot a disabled man in the back, making him drop the child he was carrying, who fractgured their skull.
The city then lost a $10,000,000.00 court case, so the officers were promoted.
The full saying is, “A few bad apples SPOILS THE BARREL.
I do not think that these results will lead to good policing in the Phoenix suburb:
On Monday, NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill fired officer Daniel Pantaleo, five years after he choked Eric Garner to death. Garner’s death — and the city’s refusal to discipline the officer who killed him — ignited nationwide protests against police brutality and the lack of accountability for police officers who use lethal force. Pantaleo’s termination was seen by many as long overdue.
But it is not unusual for police officers involved in high-profile use-of-force incidents to face no consequences.
In a 2008 case that made headlines at the time, Scottsdale police sergeants James Dorer and Rich Slavin shot a mentally ill man in the back, paralyzing him and causing him to drop his baby and fracture her skull, which sparked a lawsuit against the city by the man’s parents.
Neither Slavin nor Dorer were ever disciplined for their actions, Scottsdale police confirmed last week. Yet those actions led to a $10 million out-of-court settlement, which was previously reported by the Scottsdale Independent.
The settlement received no attention by other media outlets, and the Independent said the officers involved were no longer with the department. But as Phoenix New Times has learned, the multimillion-dollar payout in the case didn’t set anyone’s career back. Slavin rose through the ranks, and was promoted to assistant chief of Scottsdale police in 2018. Dorer retired from the force of his own accord, and is now the chief security officer for the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD), where he has worked since at least 2012.
That barrel is spoiled, and reeking of putrescence.
Can We Gofundme This?
The Youngstown Vindicator will be shutting down at the end of August, making the Ohio town the largest in the US without a newspaper:
It was in the late 1920s that the Ku Klux Klan regularly began gathering outside the home of William F Maag Jr in Youngstown. Maag owned the Vindicator newspaper, which unlike others in this once prosperous part of Ohio, had been willing to criticize the racist Klansmen.
Men on horseback, clad in white robes and hoods, would burn crosses and flaunt rifles and shotguns, in an attempt at intimidation. It didn’t work. The men of the Maag family would stand outside their home, themselves armed, refusing to be cowed, as the Vindicator continued to expose government officials who were part of the Klan.
That defiance set the tone for decades of investigative, combative reporting from the Vindicator. The daily newspaper relentlessly reported on the mafia, the government, big business and even its own advertisers.
But no more. Soon after celebrating 150 years since its first edition came news that was devastating to many in Youngstown and the wider Mahoning valley. The Vindicator was shutting down at the end of August. For good.
The Vindicator’s closure means Youngstown will soon be the largest city in the US without a major newspaper, and is the latest blow to an ailing American news industry. According to the University of North Carolina, more than 2,000 US newspapers have closed since 2004, and at least 1,300 communities have completely lost news coverage in the past 15 years. In July a Pew Research Center study reported that the number of journalists in the US declined 47% between 2008 and 2018.
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The Vindicator became known for tackling the mafia and corrupt officials. The work of De Souza and other reporters in the late 1980s contributed to almost 70 elected officials, mafia members and businesspeople being convicted of criminal acts.
Despite the quality of the coverage, sales have declined over the past four decades. From selling 100,000 copies in the late 1970s – 160,000 on Sundays – the Vindicator is now down to 25,000 editions daily, and 32,000 on Sunday. The paper has lost money for 20 of the last 22 years, Brown said, with a family fund covering the losses. Brown hoped to ultimately sell the Vindicator, but no buyers were forthcoming. He explored a paywall, but the numbers didn’t work. Neither did making the Vindicator online-only.
Well, this sucks.
Not Feeling the Pain Here, Peter Parker is Free Now
As you may, or may not, be aware, Spider-Man’s movie rights are owned by Sony, while much of the rest of the Marvel universe is owned by the Rodent Borg, aka Disney.
There has been some coordination between the two studios to sync the characters to fit into the Marvel universe, but now, some sort of corporate dispute will cleave the two apart.
Some people are losing their sh%$, but I think that this would be a good thing.
Spider-Man has always been one of the most solitary of super-heroes out of marvel, and unlike the normal run of Marvel spandex clad warriors, more of a working-class bloke from Queens.
The occasional cross over is one thing, but his playing Skywalker to Tony Stark’s Yoda has never rung true to me.
I really do like Tom Holland’s Spider-Man’s interpretation of the role too:
Interviews with the filmmakers behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost always get around to what seems to be the studio’s core creative ethos: paint yourself into a corner, then find a creative way to get out of it. That mission statement inspired the snap in Avengers: Infinity War and the big secret-identity reveal that ends Spider-Man: Far From Home. And while creative inspiration probably wasn’t at the top of anyone’s mind during the business impasse that reportedly dissolved the partnership between Sony (which owns the current film rights to Spider-Man and his rogues’ gallery) and the Disney-owned Marvel Studios, that unexpected split could inadvertently inspire Sony to adopt exactly the sort of creative problem-solving that has fueled some of the MCU’s greatest moments.
First things first: No, this doesn’t mean we’re in for another Spider-Man reboot. According to current reports, Sony is planning to make more Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland, with conflicting reports saying that he’s currently contracted for either one or two more solo films. The only difference is that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige won’t produce those films. The deal will also likely prevent Holland’s Spider-Man from appearing in future MCU movies, although that aspect seems to be slightly more in flux. (It’s also possible this whole deal could change, especially as both companies examine the public reaction to their confrontation. Entertainment Weekly reports that negotiations are still ongoing.)
I’m for letting the high-schooler from Queens stay a high-schooler from Queens.
Why Defined Contribution Plans Do Not Work
Because there is extreme information asymmetry in favor of the financial industry, there is an opportunity for fraud, and as I’ve noted before, (today) If fraud can occur, fraud will occur.
Case in point, Fidelity bribing MIT to allow the financial firm overcharge the school’s employees for their retirement plan:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, stands accused of hurting workers in the company’s retirement plan by engaging in an improper relationship with the financial firm Fidelity.
A lawsuit headed to trial in September alleges that MIT ignored the advice of its own consultants and allowed Fidelity to pack the university’s retirement plan with high-fee investment funds that ended up costing employees tens of millions of dollars. In return, the lawsuit said, MIT leveraged millions of dollars in donations from Fidelity.
MIT and Fidelity say the allegations have no merit.
The same as any employer that offers workers a retirement plan, MIT is required by law to set up investment options that are in the best interest of its employees and retirees.………
Twenty years ago, MIT hired Fidelity to help manage its 401(k) plan. But the lawsuit alleges that MIT then let Fidelity include dozens of Fidelity funds with high fees — and that some charged fees more than 100 times higher than other funds that MIT could have chosen. [Plaintiff’s Attorney Jerry] Schlichter said MIT’s own outside consultants recommended shifting to a plan with lower-cost investment options, but “that advice was ignored for years.”
Meanwhile, Schlichter’s lawsuit says, MIT benefited from the excessive fees that the workers’ retirement plan paid Fidelity. Court documents allege: “In return, MIT leveraged Fidelity’s revenue stream from the Plan to secure numerous donations (over $23 million since Fidelity became the recordkeeper).”
In 2015, when the university considered other options, an MIT dean emailed the head of an MIT committee overseeing the plan: “if we’re not switching to Vanguard or TIAA Cref, I am going to expect something big and good coming to MIT,” according to the court records.
Schlichter said that soon after that exchange, “Fidelity donated $5 million to MIT.”
Seriously, we need to cap fees on tax deferred accounts.
While there may be a societal value to retirement savings accounts, there is no such value to reckless seeking alpha, nor is there a societal value to rip off retirees.
It will hit Wall Street in the pocket book, but f%$# Wall Street.
Quote of the Day
Central to this narrative is the presentation of the difference between Trump and Obama as akin to the difference between Hitler and Gandhi. A better analogy – especially when it comes to foreign policy – would be the difference between John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who was known for dressing up as a clown at public events, and Ted Bundy, the tall, handsome serial killer who enticed his victims into his car with his charm and good looks.
—Peter Bolton at Counter Punch
He’s writing about how Joe Biden has stapled himself to Barack Obama’s increasingly dubious legacy.
It’s a wonderfully evocative turn of phrase.
H/t Naked Capitalism.
Consider the Source
Given the latest news of the aggressive self dealing that National Rifle Association Chief Executive and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has been engaging in, it’s normally not newsworthy when someone calls him an, “Odious Little Grifter,” but this time it’s Fox News that is calling him that.
Stick a fork in his corrupt white flabby ass, he’s done:
Fox News appears to have abandoned Wayne LaPierre, but not the NRA. Conservative weekend host Steve Hilton ripped LaPierre to shreds, calling him an “odious little grifter” before calling for his ouster.
“Wayne has a big, important job,” Hilton said. “If you want to buy a big house, good luck to him. Except it was not him buying the house. It was you.”
The plot, Hilton explained, was for NRA advertising contractor Ackerman McQueen to create a new corporate entity, which the NRA would then fund for over $6 million, guaranteeing them 99 percent ownership. The new corporation would then buy the property for the benefit of LaPierre. Clearly there are not enough regulations on the relationships between nonprofits and corporate entities.
Hilton also went over the other LaPierre grifts, like the request for nearly $14,000 to rent an apartment for a summer intern, spending hundreds of thousands on clothing, flights, and luxury hotel stays.
“A new report revealed that tens of thousands of dollars of NRA donor funds were used on flights and luxury hotel stays for hair and makeup artists for Wayne’s wife and they traveled with her for events because apparently those are the only two stylists in the whole country capable of doing the job,” Hilton said.
And it wasn’t limited to travel in the United States, either, noting that thousands of dollars had been spent on overseas travel. “There are other countries and other hotels you can stay at if you want to protect the Second Amendment,” Hilton sneered. “Try the Hyatt in Washington D.C. It’s a short walk to places like the United States Congress and Supreme Court where American gun rights are actually decided, not Budapest or even Lake Como.”
He wrapped it up with a snappy conclusion: “For years Wayne has taken NRA members’ money to live the life of a king but he’s not a king. He’s the head of a nonprofit trusted by millions to use its funds to secure constitutional rights. He’s an odious little grifter and it’s time for him to go.”
Fox News has turned on him.
I am amused.
Whatever This Says about Our Society, It’s Profoundly Depressing
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has accumulated an exhaustive database of academic citations, and found what appears to be a whole lot of self dealing and corruption:
The world’s most-cited researchers, according to newly released data, are a curiously eclectic bunch. Nobel laureates and eminent polymaths rub shoulders with less familiar names, such as Sundarapandian Vaidyanathan from Chennai in India. What leaps out about Vaidyanathan and hundreds of other researchers is that many of the citations to their work come from their own papers, or from those of their co-authors.
Vaidyanathan, a computer scientist at the Vel Tech R&D Institute of Technology, a privately run institute, is an extreme example: he has received 94% of his citations from himself or his co-authors up to 2017, according to a study in PLoS Biology this month1. He is not alone. The data set, which lists around 100,000 researchers, shows that at least 250 scientists have amassed more than 50% of their citations from themselves or their co-authors, while the median self-citation rate is 12.7%.
The study could help to flag potential extreme self-promoters, and possibly ‘citation farms’, in which clusters of scientists massively cite each other, say the researchers. “I think that self-citation farms are far more common than we believe,” says John Ioannidis, a physician at Stanford University in California who specializes in meta-science — the study of how science is done — and who led the work. “Those with greater than 25% self-citation are not necessarily engaging in unethical behaviour, but closer scrutiny may be needed,” he says.
The data are by far the largest collection of self-citation metrics ever published. And they arrive at a time when funding agencies, journals and others are focusing more on the potential problems caused by excessive self-citation. In July, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a publisher-advisory body in London, highlighted extreme self-citation as one of the main forms of citation manipulation. This issue fits into broader concerns about an over-reliance on citation metrics for making decisions about hiring, promotions and research funding.
This is not a surprise.
If fraud can occur, fraud will occur.
Patent Troll, Patent Troll, Patent Troll, Patent Troll, Nathan Myhrvold
Good news everyone, calling someone a “Patent Troll” is a constitutionally protected opinion, and as such, patent trolls, like Nathan Myhrvold, (He’s not a party to this case) cannot sue you for calling them a patent troll:
Free speech in the patent world saw a big win on Friday, when the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that calling someone a “patent troll” doesn’t constitute defamation. The court’s opinion [PDF] is good news for critics of abusive patent litigation, and anyone who values robust public debate around patent policy. The opinion represents a loss for Automated Transactions, LLC (ATL), a patent assertion entity that sued [PDF] more than a dozen people and trade groups claiming it was defamed.
EFF worked together with the ACLU of New Hampshire to file an amicus brief [PDF] in this case, explaining that the lower court judge got this case right when he ruled against ATL. That decision gave wide latitude for public debate about important policy issues—even when the debate veers into harsh language. We’re glad the New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed.
Last week’s ruling court notes that “patent troll” is a phrase used to describe “a class of patent owners who do not provide end products or services themselves, but who do demand royalties as a price for authorizing the work of others.” However, the justices note that “patent troll” has no clear settled definition. For instance, some observers of the patent world would exclude particular entities, like individual inventors or universities, from the moniker “patent troll.”
Because of this, when ATL’s many critics call it a “patent troll,” they are expressing their subjective opinions. Differences of opinion about many things—including patent lawsuits—cannot and should not be settled with a defamation lawsuit.
Personally, I would call ATL a bunch of pig felching patent trolling rat bastards, which I think is protected too.