Year: 2019

I Felt a Little Bit Sickened When I Heard This

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I played Dungeons and Dragons in my teen years until my late 20s.

I remain kind of a purist: I tend to think that the pre-packaged adventures are somehow cheating.

So, when I found out that people are making a living selling their services as Dungeon Masters, I felt like throwing my radio out the window:

Dungeons & Dragons is not the same game it was 40 years ago. And not just because rule updates have made the game less fussy and easier to play. The game, which kicked off the role-playing genre in the 1970s, is actually popular.

Role-playing games like D&D are different from traditional board games. Instead of a fixed set of objectives, D&D is modular. It lets players create their own adventurers and solve quests created by another player — the dungeon master. That person is responsible for coming up with the story, acting out nonplayer characters and running behind-the-scenes mechanics. 

And with 40 million D&D players, there’s a growing need for dungeon masters, or DMs. Some voice actors and playwrights are turning to D&D as a source of income. High-end DMs charge up to $500 per session, according to Mary Pilon, who wrote about professional dungeon masters for Bloomberg Businessweek.

My childhood (OK, adolescence) is destroyed.

This is Literally the Least We Can Do as a Society

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You know, when people make their fortunes off the misery of the rest of society, we should be able to do more than just make it difficult for these malefactors to green-wash their names.

The fact that the Louvre has removed the Sackler family name from its Oriental Antiquities wing, and artists are withdrawing from the Whitney Art Museum’s biennial art show over a board member’s business supplying tear gas used on asylum seekers.

I am not enough of an optimist to think that this is the start of something.

Instead, I see this as a marker of our impotence as a society to deal with the immorality and misdeeds of our billionaire class. 

It’s their world, and we just live in in at their sufferance.

This is What Pay-Go is Supposed to Do

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Remember when Dems put PAYGO in the rules package and people like me (who raised hell) were told not to worry because it would be waived off as necessary to pass important legislation? https://t.co/Pd97gv8sqq

— Stephanie Kelton (@StephanieKelton) July 18, 2019

I’m always that Pelosi’s insistence on Pay-Go rules was profoundly self destructive.

I used to believe that this was a short-sighted policy driven by a need to appeal to the inside the Beltway pundits for whom deficits are important whenever Democrats take power.

I increasingly believe the affection of Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment for Pay-Go is more about having an excuse for not doing the right thing, because they don’t want to do the right thing.

Case in point, Democrats using Pay-Go to gut funding on community health centers:

Several Democratic lawmakers are accusing members of their own party of advancing a plan that would have the effect of cutting health care services for millions of Americans in poor and rural parts of the country — a charge fiercely denied by the package’s supporters.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is pushing a bipartisan plan that would provide flat levels of federal funding for hundreds of community health centers nationwide, at about $4 billion for the next four years. A similar plan is advancing in the Senate with the support of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.

Lawmakers face a September deadline for the community health centers, after which their funding would begin to expire, likely leading to steep cuts.

Pallone said the plan would provide the security of the longest guaranteed funding commitment ever secured by the clinics, averting the September cliff. But flat funding would not keep pace with medical inflation, likely forcing the community health centers to serve about 4 million fewer people annually by 2023 than they do now, said Leighton Ku, professor of health policy at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.

There is always money for a free for the next bloated defense program, but when you want to provide poor people with basic healthcare, we must be fiscally responsible.

The neoliberal consensus of the Democratic Party leadership is bad politics and bad policy.

This is China Paying for It

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Notwithstanding the claims of the free market mousketeers, China has always had more to lose in the event of a trade war.

Now, we are seeing the Chinese consequences of a trade war, where US firms are moving their supply chains from China.

It is neither trivial nor cheap to move a supply change, and once moved, it is neither trivial nor cheap to move a supply chain back, so any changes resulting from Trump’s tariffs are likely to be long term:

U.S. manufacturers are shifting production to countries outside of China as trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies stretch into a second year.

Companies that make Crocs shoes, Yeti beer coolers, Roomba vacuums and GoPro cameras are producing goods in other countries to avoid U.S. tariffs of as much as 25% on some $250 billion of imports from China. Apple Inc. also is considering shifting final assembly of some of its devices out of China to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Furniture-maker Lovesac Co. is making about 60% of its furniture in China, down from 75% at the start of the year. “We have been shifting production to Vietnam very aggressively,” said Shawn Nelson, chief executive of the Stamford, Conn., company. Mr. Nelson said he plans to have no production in China by the end of next year.

………

“Once you move, you don’t go back,” Mr. Nelson said.

This is something that people miss:  China is far more dependent on existing supply chains than the US does.

Recognizing Reality

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The Code of Conduct for Federal Judges has been changed, and it appears that it will prohibit sitting judges from attending Federalist Society events:

………

For anyone concerned about the unseemly mingling of politics and the judiciary, a little-noticed formal ethics opinion issued in February by the committee responsible for the Code of Conduct for United States Judges may offer hope.

Judges are bound by the Code of Conduct, which comprises five canons and associated formal opinions issued by the committee, which provide ethical guidance. Substantial speech and associational restrictions are imposed on active judges to preserve the judiciary’s independence and integrity.

………

For many years, the Code of Conduct committee ducked the issue of judicial participation in the Federalist Society, in part, it seemed, because many powerful judges (see above) either have been or are associated with the organization.

The committee now appears to have drawn a line with its issuance of advisory opinion No. 116 expanding the scope of prohibited political activity. The Federalist Society is not mentioned by name, but the opinion is directed to the propriety of participation by judges in programs or membership in groups engaged in public-policy debates.

The prohibited political activities include those involving “hot-button issues in current political campaigns” or that are “politically-oriented” or have “political overtones.” Public perception also plays a vital role, as the opinion bars judges from participation that would “give rise to an appearance of engaging in political activity” or “would otherwise give the appearance of impropriety.”

The committee also warned judges that they should stay away from groups “where the funding sources are unknown or likely to be from sources engaged in litigation or political advocacy.” The New York Times noted of the Federalist Society’s 2015 annual report, the organization “discloses who contributes most of its money. But it also takes anonymous contributions, from players including the Mercer family, which was a major backer of Donald Trump.” The annual report listed 14 anonymous donors on the “platinum” level — those giving $100,000 or more.

………

The expanded definition of prohibited political activity does not endanger the Federalist Society , nor its ability to function as a conduit of conservative ideology for lawyers and academia. It simply makes the continued participation of judges in the organization indefensible.

Sitting judge’s hobnobbing with a partisan group like the Federalist Society has always been indefensible and corrupt.

Now it’s just official.

Airbus and Boeing Juxtaposed

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It turns out that much like its 737 MAX counterpart, the Airbus A321 NEO also has a pitch up issue.

There is an important difference though, Airbus actually spent the money to make sure that was well tested and thoroughly redundant, while Boeing did it on the cheap:

The European Aviation Safety Agency EASA has issued an Air Worthiness Directive (AD) to instruct operators of the Airbus A321neo of a Pitch instability issue.

EASA writes “excessive pitch attitude can occur in certain conditions and during specific manoeuvres. This condition, if not corrected, could result in reduced control of the aeroplane.”

We analyze how this is similar or different to the Boeing 737 MAX pitch instability issues.

………

As the AD does not apply to the in-service A320neo, the issue must not be connected to the pitch instability which comes as a natural consequence of mounting the larger neo engines on the A320 series. It can be restricted to how the A321neo version of the ELACs handles the aircraft’s controls in an excessive pitch up condition.

Since publishing the article Airbus has provided us the following information:

The issue is an A321neo landing configuration at extreme aft CG conditions and below 100ft only issue, discovered by Airbus and reported to AESA. Violent maneuvers in for instance a go-around in these conditions can cause a pitch up which the pilots can counteract using their side-sticks. No FBW nose downs or similar is commanded, it’s just the FBW doesn’t neutralize the pitch-up (like FBW using the Airbus style flight laws are supposed to do), the pilots have to do it. Airbus has assisted AESA in issuing the AD which restricts the aft CG used in operational landings until the ELAC software is updated.

Our comment: The Airbus information explains why the issue is limited to the A321neo. The A321 has a different flap configuration than the A320/A319, giving a more nose-down approach angle (a lift curve with a transposed AoA vs. lift range). It seems this difference can set the condition for the pitch-up which the FBW at this point does not compensate for. The Pilots have to do it. The FBW will take away this pitch-up in a FBW software release available 3Q2020.

………

Like the 737 MAX, the A319/320/321neos are affected by the mounting of larger engines with their larger nacelles ahead of the center of gravity, Figure 1.


Figure 1. A321 shown on top of A321neo. The larger engine nacelles are marked with a violet color. Source: Airbus and Leeham Co.

………

There are several takeaways from the above:

  • As we have written in the MAX articles, pitch instabilities in certain parts of an airliner’s wide flight envelope are common.
  • It comes down to how these are addressed to produce a safe aircraft. In the case of the MAX and A320, software-based control logic is used, controlling the movements of the horizontal stabilizer and elevator.
  • The key is how these controls are designed, tested and implemented.
  • The original MAX implementation was inacceptably badly done. It relied on a single sensor, commanded unnecessary repeated nose-down trim commands and didn’t have any global limitation on its authority.
  • The Airbus version for the A321neo has a solid implementation based on adequate hardware/software redundancy and relevant limitations on its authority. But it can be improved (see our Airbus update on cause and fix).

Similar problems, and in one case they aren’t killing people, because they aren’t letting finance and marketing drive basic engineering decisions.

This Is the Saddest Thing That I Have Read in a Very Long Time

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A Philadelphia man walked out of a would-be robbery after telling the cashier that the money in the till wouldn’t be enough to fund his daughter’s kidney transplant operation, according to police.

………

The store owner told police that the man waved his gun in the air and demanded cash, according to CBS 3. But after getting at least a couple hundred dollars, he changed his mind and gave the money back.

Clearly, our healthcare system is the best one in the world.

This is a Thing of Beauty

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I guarantee you that that Mr. Costa thought that he had a great “gotcha” question here, and Sanders owns his lame ass attempt to put half quotes in his mouth.

if you come at the king pic.twitter.com/uDaO0o02Lz

— Current Affairs (@curaffairs) July 16, 2019

An interviewer comes after Sanders with half a quote, and Sanders remembers the whole quote:

MR. COSTA: Let’s stick with that race point you just brought up. In 1974, you said that bussing policies were well meaning in theory but sometimes result in “racial hostility.”

 SEN. SANDERS: What else did I say in that?

 MR. COSTA: Tell me.

 SEN. SANDERS: No, you got it there. Read it. Read the whole quote.

 MR. COSTA: I don’t have the whole quote.

 [Laughter]

 SEN. SANDERS: The whole quote is the federal government doesn’t give a sh%$ about African Americans.

 MR. COSTA: Well, that is true. That’s why I didn’t include it.

 SEN. SANDERS: All right. Okay.

The point that Sanders was making, and the point that he remembered from 45 years ago, was that the Federal government was refusing to enforce fair housing laws.

Headline of the Day

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Moderate Democrats Warn That AOC Is Distracting From Their Nonexistent Message

—NY Magazine

The final paragraph pretty much says it all:

If your mission in politics is to cower from controversy — even on issues where your party has a clear advantage, and your constituents have a vital interest — then you shouldn’t be surprised when people aren’t interested in all of the nothing that you have to say.

About F%$#ing Time

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The House on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for failing to provide documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, escalating the fight between Democrats and the White House over congressional oversight.

………

After a string of legal defeats, Trump last week abruptly retreated from his efforts to add the question to the census, announcing that he will instead order federal agencies to provide the Commerce Department with records on the numbers of citizens and noncitizens in the country.

But lawmakers continue to demand answers about the motivations behind the administration’s 19-month effort to ask about citizenship status on the decennial survey. In May, new evidence emerged suggesting that the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. The Trump administration has said it needs the information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

………

The impact of the contempt vote is largely symbolic. Those found in criminal contempt are normally referred to the Justice Department for prosecution; in this instance, the Justice Department would not prosecute itself.

I’m not sure if it means much in the grand scheme of things, but I hope that it ends up more than an empty gesture.

I Wonder if He Will Flip Now

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Accused pedophile, and pimp to the Davos set, Jeffrey Epstein has been denied bail.

This is not surprising.

When they raided his house, prosecutors found thousands of dollars in cash, diamonds, and a fake passport with his picture on it, which fairly screams, “Flight Risk”:


A federal judge on Thursday denied bail for Jeffrey Epstein, the financier facing sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan, rejecting his request to await trial under home detention at his Upper East Side mansion.

The judge, Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court, said Mr. Epstein’s “past sexual conduct is not likely to have abated,” and he was concerned that if Mr. Epstein were released, he would continue to abuse teenage girls.

“Mr. Epstein’s alleged excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls — which is said to include his soliciting and receiving massages from young girls and young women perhaps as many as four times a day — appears likely to be uncontrollable,” Judge Berman wrote in a bail decision.

The judge said he had taken into account the statements of two of Mr. Epstein’s accusers — Annie Farmer and Courtney Wild — who he said had “movingly testified” in a hearing earlier in the week that they feared for their safety and the safety of others if Mr. Epstein were to be released.

A federal indictment has charged that between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Epstein and his employees paid dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts with him at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla.

The indictment also accused Mr. Epstein of using some of his victims to recruit additional girls, paying his “victim-recruiters” hundreds of dollars for each girl they brought to him.

Ever since his July 6 arrest at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after a flight from Paris, Mr. Epstein, 66, has been detained at the highly secure Metropolitan Correctional Center. His lawyers had proposed allowing him to post a substantial bond and remain in his mansion guarded by 24-hour security guards, at his expense.

I’m hoping that he breaks in the New York MCC, and flips on his clients, but I’m not holding my breath.

Who Not to Vote For

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Find out who Obama and Clinton’s bundlers favor the most, and vote for someone else.

Hell, vote for anyone else:

Big-money Democratic donors have jumped off the sidelines of the presidential race, and three candidates are the clear winners of their support: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris.

The bundlers are the a part of the class who wrecked the country, and they have no interest in fixing this, because it would cost them money and power.

Whoever they support should be viewed with a profoundly jaundiced eye.

Tweet(s) of the Day

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12. We laugh about all the right-wing welfare publications, but the whole Democratic party is welfare for Ivy-League mediocrities.

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) November 13, 2016

It’s not a unique point, not even on Twitter, but it the most evocative expression of this sentiment that I have found:

The Democratic Party is less a political party in pursuit of particular policy goals than a professional association organized to defend and advance the careers of its most valued members.

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) July 13, 2019

If Speaker Pelosi Does Not Want to Use the Congress, I Would like to Borrow It for a Time

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In a talk to the Congressional Progressional Caucus, Chuck Schumer revealed that he completely was blindsided by Nancy Pelosi’s capitulation on the immigration bill.

He expected the Speaker to but forward a better bill, and make a reasonable compromise in conference committee, not complete capitulation:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ventured across the Capitol complex on Tuesday afternoon to meet privately with House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Schumer’s attendance at a House meeting was unusual, and a handful of CPC members, including Reps. Jared Huffman and Barbara Lee of California, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, took the opportunity to press Schumer on the Senate’s performance during the fight late last month over an emergency spending bill related to the border crisis.

House Democrats broadly considered the Senate bill to be far too weak, handing President Donald Trump billions of dollars with no real requirements that the federal government improve conditions at the camps where migrants are concentrated. Many House Democrats worried that, under the Senate bill, Trump would be able to siphon money away from humanitarian relief toward policing migrants. The House, in response, passed an alternative bill that mandated that contractors improve conditions or lose contracts. The Senate took up a vote on the House bill and rejected it, instead sending its own version over to the House.

………

Schumer, in response to questions, told the Progressive Caucus members that the Senate had always expected the House to pass a stronger bill, after which the two chambers would negotiate a compromise — either informally or through a conference committee. Instead, House leaders simply waved through the Senate bill without letting him know they planned to cave. Schumer “truly didn’t expect the House to pass the Senate bill unamended,” said one person in the room — a recollection that was confirmed by multiple others.

“He said he was surprised the House didn’t ask for a conference committee. It could have,” said another member in the room. “But he also gave a somewhat lame answer on Senate Dems actions.”

……….

The House bill, which was strengthened after negotiations with the CPC, required detention center contractors to meet certain humane conditions or have their contracts revoked, among other mandates. That bill passed the House but failed in the Senate, and House leaders have blamed the lopsided Senate vote against the House version as forcing their hand.

The House still had the opportunity to move to conference, but elected not to do so. Schumer’s analysis maps with that of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who made a similar point at the Netroots Nation conference last week. “The complete assumption on the Senate side was that Speaker Pelosi would take it to conference, and she didn’t,” said Merkley.

Seriously, Pelosi is not even trying any more.

Clapping ironically and hippie punching does not make a political leader.


A Term I Avoid Using

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Over at the Black Agenda Report, there is a must read examination of the term, “Black Misleadership Class.”

I have concerns about the current political leadership in the Democratic Party generally, where it seems that geriatric careerism trumps (pun not intended) helping real people.

To the degree that black members of the Democratic Party follow this model, the only cause for additional opprobrium is that the needs of their community is more acute.

That being said, I am profoundly uncomfortable with the term, alternatively feeling that it should be reserved for people of color to use about other POCs.

In any case, it’s worth a read.

Boeing is Not Having a Good Year

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Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX planes are unlikely to be ready to carry passengers again until 2020 because of the time it will take to fix flight-control software and complete other steps, an increasing number of government and industry officials say, even as the company strives to get its jet back into service this year.

The situation remains fluid, no firm timeline has been established and Boeing still has to satisfy U.S. regulators that it has answered all outstanding safety questions. But under the latest scenario, the global MAX fleet is now anticipated to return to the air in January 2020, a full 12 months after the plane maker proposed its initial replacement of software eventually implicated in a pair of fatal crashes—one in October and one in March—according to some Federal Aviation Administration officials and pilot-union leaders.

The process of developing and certifying revised software and pilot-training changes has been repeatedly delayed, with airlines scrambling to cope with slips month after month.

 When this is juxtaposed with what appears evidence that Boeing will be forced to rename the airliner:

A Boeing 737 Max due to be delivered to Ryanair has had the name Max dropped from the livery, further fuelling speculation that the manufacturer and airlines will seek to rebrand the troubled plane once it is given the all clear to fly again.

Photos have emerged of a 737 Max in Ryanair colours outside Boeing’s manufacturing hub, with the designation 737-8200 – instead of 737 Max – on the nose. The 737-8200 is a type name for the aircraft that is used by aviation agencies.

It needs to be noted that these problems are absolutely self-generated by Boeing.

If Boeing hadn’t spent most of its money on stock buybacks, it would have money for a full development program for a successor to the 737.

I Expect to See Chinese Tanks in Hong Kong

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While Beijing may be loath to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but there is one thing that will make the PRC crack down on Hong Kong, and that is if it results in fallout with Taiwan.
It now appears that the Hong Kong protests are now stoking the fires in Taiwan, and while the Chinese do not currently have the resources to enforce their will across the Taiwan Straight, they do .

Basically, anything indicating a move toward a Taiwanese declaration of sovereignty, and the People’s Republic will completely lose their sh%$, and if they tie this to Hong Kong protests, I would expect a military intervention there:

The protests in Hong Kong which have reverberated around the world have had more impact on Taiwan than anywhere else.

The anxieties they triggered about Beijing’s intentions toward Taiwan came to the boil in demonstrations in Taipei. On Sunday June 23, for example, a rally by around 5,000 mostly young people against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill was followed by a much larger protest involving hundreds of thousands criticizing Chinese influence on Taiwan’s media.

They urged the government to take action against the so-called “Red Media,” a reference to local outlets purchased by business people with interests in China.

While the Red Media are at the front of the Taiwanese protesters’ complaints, the extradition law is clearly not far behind. The fear that Beijing is tightening its grip on the former British colony exacerbates Taiwanese people’s fears about their own futures — and brings Taiwanese and Hong Kongers closer together.

I have a bad feeling about this.