Year: 2019

Not Impressed

No Comments

Jerry Nadler just announced 2 articles of impeachment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh Snap

No Comments

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

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

………

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

………

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

………

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

………

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

………

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

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

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

………

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


XTC Snowman

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

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

I Long for the Relative Legal Integrity of John Mitchell

No Comments
The DoJ Inspector General’s report on the FBI investigation has been released, and it unequivocally refuted any allegations of bias on the part of the FBI, so William Barr immediately responded by completely mischaracterizing the report’s contents.

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

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

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

Hearts and Minds

No Comments

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

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

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

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

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

It’s also complete bullsh%$.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch What They Do

No Comments

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

………

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

………

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

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

………

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

………

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

………

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

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

………

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

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

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

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

That is, after all, what happened in 2016.

Don’t Shop Amazon

No Comments

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

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

………

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

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

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

………

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

………

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

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

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

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

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

Clearly, the Solution is Stronger and Longer Patents

No Comments

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

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

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

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

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

This is some seriously evil sh%$:

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

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

Indeed.

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

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

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

What a Surprise

No Comments
Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway – *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom, They Are Being Evil Again!!!

No Comments
On the heels of Google deciding to cripple ad blockers in their Chrome browser now that they have achieved a monopoly, now Google is rolling out a programming interface that will allow websites to see what programs are installed on your machine, which, among other things, deanonymize users, and possibly reveal a host of other personal data.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

………

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

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

Break them up.

Racists are Such Delicate Snowflakes

No Comments

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

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

So to be safe, the town canceled it.

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

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

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

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

Consider the Poor Citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire

No Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

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

Billionaires seem to think that money can buy everything.

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

Trump Abides

No Comments

This is like the least surprising thing ever:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tweet of the Day

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

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 6, 2019

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

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

Keynes Noted This 80 Years Ago

No Comments

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

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

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

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

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

………

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

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

………

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

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

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

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

No Comments
Even by the standards of for profit utilities, PG&E has an egregiously horrible safety and maintenance record.

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


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

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

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

………

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

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

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

Stupid and Short-Sighted

2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

This is both bad politics and bad policy.

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

They Write OP/EDs

No Comments
This might be the best business meme of 2019 so far. pic.twitter.com/hTXul3Muy3

— ArtkoCapital (@ArtkoCapital) March 5, 2019

A Pretty Good Summary of McKinsey

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

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

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

………

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

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

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

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

………

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

……….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About F%$#ing Time

No Comments
After years of corruption, brutality, and abuse, a movement to ban private prisons is growing:

Alex Friedmann, 50, was transferred to a Tennessee public prison in 1998 after having spent the previous six years incarcerated in a private facility. Everything was different: There were more blankets, the toilet paper wasn’t as cheap, and correctional officers were everywhere.

“First thing I noticed was there’s a heck of a lot more staff or boots on the ground in the public prisons,” he told Vox. “There was not such an emphasis on cutting costs.”

After being released in 1999, Friedmann — now the associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center — began fighting for the abolishment of private prisons, and has spent the past two decades doing so. The arguments against them, according to Friedmann, are clear: Their for-profit model encourages the business to cut corners, affecting inmates’ safety and quality of living.

Increasingly, these criticisms of private, for-profit facilities have been reflected in policy and spending. Fueled in part by opposition from their constituents, lawmakers of states like California and Nevada have banned private prisons from operating. Businesses are also increasingly cutting ties with the industry following pushback from their customers.

The number of inmates in these facilities are also seeing a downward trend: In comparison to its peak in 2012 of about 136,220 people, the private prison population has decreased about 12 percent in the past five years as more facilities are closing. Given private prisons rely on facilities being full to remain economically viable, there is concern among executives that these falling numbers could eventually drive these businesses to their demise.

It cannot happen fast enough.

These ghouls are a plague on the entire justice system.

Preach It Brother!

No Comments

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) has said that he wants the clear evidence of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report included in the impeachment charges:

The third most senior House Democrat wants a vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump — and the charges against him to include obstruction of justice related to the findings of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

That controversial strategic position, laid out by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., in a brief interview with McClatchy on Tuesday evening, is the strongest and most decisive statement yet by a member of the House Democratic leadership team.

It also comes amid a hushed internal debate over how best to proceed.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top lieutenants have, until this point, been circumspect about their intentions, even as the party’s impeachment inquiry heads into its final stages. And many members of the House Democratic Caucus have been operating on an assumption the California Democrat could deny efforts to incorporate the Mueller report into impeachment articles.

………

Clyburn’s comments were also significant in that they signaled an interest in expanding the scope of potential impeachment articles beyond the investigation into whether Trump worked to withhold assistance from Ukraine unless the foreign government agreed to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 rival.

“Obstruction of justice, I think, is too clear not to include” in impeachment articles, Clyburn said.

The so-called “pragmatic” democrats, Pelosi and her Evil Minions™, want the impeachment to be narrowly focused on Trump’s behavior with regard to the Ukraine.

This is wrong and stupid.

First, it is clear that there will only be one chance to pass articles of impeachment, and second, by confining the impeachment investigation to Trumps attempts to capitalize on Hunter Biden’s sleazy, though legal, behavior, it reduces the legitimacy of the charges.

US Attorney General Tells Uppity N-Words to Shut Up

No Comments

It should surprise no one that William Barr is now saying that engaging in constitutionally protected protest means that police should not protect those people.

It is literally fascist and racist to suggest that any request for accountability and competence is a reason for law enforcement to retaliate.

It is the very definition of a police state:

Speaking to a roomful of police officers and prosecutors on Tuesday, Attorney General William P. Barr drew a parallel between protests against soldiers during the Vietnam War and demonstrations against law enforcement today.

 But this time, he suggested, those who don’t show “respect” to authority could lose access to police services.

 ………
Barr added that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.

 Although Barr didn’t specify what “communities” he was referencing, activists decried his speech as a clear attack on minorities who have protested police brutality and other racially skewed law enforcement abuses.

 “Barr’s words are as revealing as they are disturbing ― flagrantly dismissive of the rights of Americans of color, disrespectful to countless law enforcement officers who work hard to serve their communities, and full of a continuing disregard for the rule of law,” Jeb Fain, a spokesperson for liberal super PAC American Bridge, told HuffPost, which first reported on the comments.

 As attorney general, Barr has attacked liberal district attorneys who have pushed for police accountability in cities like Philadelphia and St. Louis and suggested that there should be “zero tolerance for resisting police.”

 ………

 “In the Vietnam era, our country learned a lesson. I remember that our brave troops who served in that conflict weren’t treated very well in many cases when they came home, and sometimes they bore the brunt of people who were opposed to the war,” he said. “The respect and gratitude owed to them was not given. And it took decades for the American people finally to realize that.”

It should be noted that Barr never served, because he was too busy going to grad school.

“US Attorney General fails to understand police are not a protection racket,” tweeted Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director for Human Rights Watch. “(And no points for guessing which ‘communities’ he means).”

Indeed.

Barr is the most corrupt US Attorney General in US history, and I am including Jeff Sessions and John Mitchell in this calculation.

Why does this man still have his law license?