Year: 2019

Making Boris F%$#ing Johnson look like Ernst F%$#ing Blofeld:

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I am referring, of course, to Theresa May, who didn’t just lose her Brexit vote, but did so by a margin greater than any in modern history, and it’s the first defeat of a treaty in Parliament since 1864.

Jeremy Corbyn is calling for a vote of confidence, as should be expected by the opposition in any Parliamentary Democracy:

British lawmakers defeated Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal by a crushing margin on Tuesday, triggering political chaos that could lead to a disorderly exit from the EU or even to a reversal of the 2016 decision to leave.

After parliament voted 432-202 against her deal, the worst defeat in modern British history, opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn promptly called a vote of no confidence in May’s government, to be held at 1900 GMT on Wednesday.

With the clock ticking down to March 29, the date set in law for Brexit, the United Kingdom is now ensnared in the deepest political crisis in half a century as it grapples with how, or even whether, to exit the European project that it joined in 1973.

………

More than 100 of May’s own Conservative lawmakers – both Brexit backers and supporters of EU membership – joined forces to vote down the deal. In doing so, they smashed the previous record defeat for a government, a 166-vote margin, set in 1924.

The humiliating loss, the first British parliamentary defeat of a treaty since 1864, appeared to catastrophically undermine May’s two-year strategy of forging an amicable divorce with close ties to the EU after the March 29 exit.

This is a complete clusterF%$#.

The only bright side for May is that she has left such a dogs breakfast of Brexit that none of the Tories want her job:

If there was any consolation for May, it was that her internal adversaries appeared set to fight off the attempt to topple her.

Seriously, she is making the Trump administration look like bloody geniuses.

Did Nazi That Coming

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There is no such thing as too racist for the GOP.
On the other hand, there is such a thing as too STUPIDLY racist for the GOP, and Iowa Representative Steve King has crossed that bridge:

House GOP leaders moved Monday to remove Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) from all of his committee assignments following a firestorm over remarks considered racist.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters after a meeting of the Republican Steering Committee that King would not receive any committee assignments for the new Congress.

King faced bipartisan criticism after telling The New York Times in an interview published last week, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

King had been a member of the House Judiciary, Agriculture and Small Business committees. He had also served as chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice in the last Congress, and could have stood to serve as its ranking member under the Democratic majority.

………

“We will not be seating Steve King on any committees in the 116th Congress,” McCarthy told reporters.

This is the first time that a Representative hasn’t had any committee assignments since Jim Traficant was expelled from the house in 2001 and 2002, and before that, it was more than 100 years.

The only question remaining is whether he will resign.

They are Not Shareholders, They are Unindicted Co-Conspirators

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It looks like PG&E is planning to declare bankruptcy.

Many people are concerned about the fate of the shareholders, but they, or their fund managers/hedge funds, knew that PG&E had a cavalier attitude toward safety and infrastructure, ans so those investors deserve to lose their investments:

Utilities have long been considered ultrasafe bets. But PG&E Corp.’s
announcement Monday that it will file for bankruptcy is teaching investors that isn’t always true.

The Baupost Group LLC, Viking Global Investors LP and BlueMountain Capital Management LLC were among the hedge funds that snapped up shares of PG&E Corp. during the third quarter of 2018, just before the deadliest wildfire in California history triggered an existential crisis for the state’s largest utility.

That crisis entered a new phase Monday when PG&E said that it intends to seek chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by the end of the month due to more than $30 billion it faces related to its role in sparking deadly California wildfires in 2017 and 2018. That sent its shares down 52%. Shares have now fallen 83% since the fire began on Nov. 8 and bonds are down 25%. The price of PG&E bonds due in 2034 fell about 8% Monday, according to MarketAxess.

You have to understand something here: People were not investing in PG&E IN SPITE OF their horrible safety record, they did so BECAUSE of their horrible safety record.

They looked at fires, and pipeline explosions, and pollution, and thought, “These are people truly committed to extracting the last possible penny out of any situation, no matter who they hurt or kill.”

The shareholders should be wiped out.

The bondholders should be wiped out.

The executives should be wiped out, and jailed in a SuperMax as a warning to others.

And then, it’s capital should become state owned.

100 Years Ago Today

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The Aftermath


The Headline

I am referring, of course to The Great Boston Molasses Flood:

For bystanders, the first clue something was wrong was a sound different from the usual thrum of the overhead train. The Boston Evening Transcript later described it as “a deep rumble.”

At around 1pm on 15 January 1919, a 50ft-tall steel holding tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End ruptured, sending 2.3m gallons of molasses pouring into the neighborhood.

Owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, the molasses had been brought to the city from the Caribbean, then piped from the harbor to the vat through 220ft of heated piping. The tank was built in 1915 to accommodate increased wartime demand. But from its inception, it leaked.

On 13 January, it had been filled almost to capacity. Two days later, parts of the metal tank ripped though trusses of the elevated train track, 20ft below. Horses and people were swept away.

………

A class action lawsuit arose from the flood, Dorr v United States Industrial Alcohol Company, with 119 plaintiffs including families of victims and injured parties. They argued that the tank was too thin and poorly built. The company argued that Italian anarchist groups blew up the tank.

The investigation lasted more than five years, with over a thousand witnesses testifying. In April 1925, a state auditor ruled that company’s negligence led to structural failure of the tank. Victims and their families were granted $628,000 in damages.

The first class action lawsuit against a major corporation, Dorr paved the way for modern regulation.

………

One local, Stephen Puleo, was working on a master’s thesis on Italian immigrants when he began to research the flood. The North End neighborhood was more than 90% Italian back then, a working class area. In 2003 Puleo published a book, Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.

Puleo told the Guardian: “The tank itself didn’t even require a permit to be built. I liked to tell people, the molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards across the country. You have these two disasters, and long-standing positive ramifications.”

Also the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

Why we need pesky bureaucrats.

Bird is not the Word

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In the world of DMCA take-down notices, the scooter rental service Bird has jumped the shark, issuing a notice to Cory Doctorow for the mere mention of the fact that there are kits that allow people to replace the circuit boards on seized scooters that are resold to the public.

First, this is completely bogus: Swapping the circuit board does not give unlicensed access to Bird’s software, it removes it, and second:

You Are Pulling This Crap on Cory Doctorow? Are You F%$#Ing Sh%$ting Me?

This has gotta be the stupidest take-down notice ever:

According to a new letter published Friday by an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, the scooter startup Bird significantly overstepped when it recently demanded that Boing Boing remove a post describing personal “conversion kits” that enable the removal of Bird’s proprietary hardware from a seized scooter.

The fracas began on December 8, 2018, when Cory Doctorow, the longtime Boing Boing writer and famed science fiction author, wrote a post entitled: “$30 plug-and-play kit converts a Bird scooter into a ‘personal scooter.’”

In it, Doctorow described the existence of kits that purport to allow someone to legally purchase an impounded Bird scooter and then alter it for personal use.

Bird did not take kindly to this post. On December 20, the company demanded that Boing Boing remove it. Bird’s lawyer, Linda Kwak, claimed that, simply by writing about the existence of these kits, Boing Boing violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

………

On Friday, EFF lawyer Kit Walsh, who represents Doctorow in this dustup, wrote to Kwak that Doctorow “has no obligation to, and will not, comply with your request to remove this article.”

………

It appears that the current exemption to the Section 1201 law that normally prohibits circumvention of digital locks is protected under the section that specifically allows for “Computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of a lawfully acquired motorized land vehicle… when circumvention is a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, repair, or lawful modification of a vehicle function.”

And also, Cory F%$#ing Doctorow?

This man is the EFF’s public face on fighting digital rights management, and has arguably been the most prominent opponent of DRM in the computer community world wide, and you serve up this sh%$ sandwich?

What the F%$# is wrong with you?

It’s On

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The teachers of the Los Angeles Unified School District have gone on strike, meaning that over 30,000 teachers will be on the picket lines, 500,000 students will be out, and 900 schools will be shuttered.

You will see a lot about pay and benefits, but this is really about the leadership of the LAUSD wanting to starve the public schools to feed the charter school industry:


More than 30,000 Los Angeles public-school teachers began the largest school strike in the country on Monday and the first in three decades in the district. Holding plastic-covered signs on rain-drenched picket lines across the city, they demanded higher pay, smaller classes and more support staff in schools.

The strike effectively shut down learning for roughly 500,000 students at 900 schools in the district, the second-largest public school system in the nation. The schools remained open, staffed by substitutes hired by the city, but many parents chose to keep their children at home, either out of support for the strike or because they did not want them inside schools with a skeletal staff.

With negotiations apparently at a standstill, the strike could last days or even weeks.

The decision to walk off the job came after months of negotiations between the teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although educators on all sides agree California should spend more money on education, the union and the district are locked in a bitter feud about how Los Angeles should use the money it already gets.

The above article only mentions charter schools by accident, but when you actually listen to the teachers, it is clears that looting by charter schools, and incessant high stakes testing, are the top of the list of grievances.

Have a Nice Glass of Shut the F%$# Up, Alan

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After nearly blowing up the world 10 years ago, Alan Greenspan seems to think that there are still people who give a crap what he thinks:

Raising the marginal tax rate on the richest Americans to 70 percent would put a major dent in the economy, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday.

During an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed that such a levy be imposed to pay for what she calls a “Green New Deal” to slash carbon emissions and ultimately wean the U.S. off its reliance on fossil fuels.

The tax would apply to those earning more than $10 million a year, a group that currently pays the top marginal tax rate of 37 percent.

Without getting into the details, Greenspan said the move would have dire consequences.

………

When it comes to taxes, Greenspan said the measure passed in 2017 “was an excellent tax cut” though Congress failed to come up with a way to pay for it. He noted that the U.S. budget deficit for fiscal 2018 is likely to hit $1 trillion due in large part to entitlement burdens that lawmakers have not addressed.

It appears that Ayn Rand’s biggest fan doesn’t give a sh%$ about deficits unless there is a possibility that they might help poor people.

This is a man whose take on financial fraud was that the market would take of the problem.

Please, Alan Greenspan, shut the F%$# Up.

Linkage

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Big Brother, Schmig Brother, Facebook Edition:

Rats — Sinking Ship — PG&E

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I’m not sure if it’s an attempt to get the hell out of dodge, of if they decided that the woman made a good scapegoat, but t PG&E’s CEO Geisha Williams has left the building:

Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced the departure of its chief executive Sunday as it remained besieged by a financial crisis related to California’s historic wildfires.

PG&E said the company had initiated a search to replace the top official, Geisha Williams, who had led the utility since 2017. It said John Simon, the company’s general counsel, would serve as interim chief executive during the search.

………

PG&E, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, faces an estimated $30 billion exposure to liability for damages from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires that killed scores in Northern California. The sum would exceed its insurance and assets, raising concern in the state capital about the utility’s future.

The billions in potential costs have prompted a series of downgrades in PG&E’s ratings, including decisions last week by Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings to downgrade the utility’s bonds to junk.

………

Fire investigators determined that PG&E’s equipment was responsible for at least 18 of 21 major fires in 2017 as well as fires in 2018. Some of the fires have been attributed to power lines’ coming into contact with trees, which critics have said is a result of the utility’s failure to trim the trees. 

Last time around, with the support of then-governor Jerry Brown, the state legislature bailed them out.
I think that the political climate regarding the much-reviled utility are different now, and the new governor, Gavin Newsom, is far less of a corporate stooge than Jerry Brown is.
On the theory that a crisis is frequently also an opportunity, I would strongly suggest that someone looks a making significant portions of PG&E state owned.

Toyota Brings Back Tail Fins

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I have a 2004 Toyota Prius.

It’s my midlife crisis car, because I am the dullest motherf%$#er on the planet.

It’s not beautiful in the way that a Jaguar E-Type convertable is, but I rather like it’s jelly-bean like appearance:

It’s appearance is clear and unadorned and functional, which I like.

The new Priuses (Prii?) sport wonderful specifications, particularly the plug-in hybrid Prius Prime, but the styling is not to my taste.

I find it busy and distracting.

I was looking at the back, and I had this weird sense of deja vu, and then it hit me: Toyota has put tail fins on their cars.

Specifically, it’s a somewhat less ostentatious version of the tail fins from a 1959 Chevy Belair:

Please tell me that I am not the only one who sees this.

I Don’t Get It

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Citing numerous law enforcement sources, the New York Times is reporting that the FBI opened an investigation of whether Trump was working for Putin in response to James Comey’s firing, which has described as a “blockbuster”.

 First, why is no one looking into Trump being mobbed up. He has to be, he’s a developer in New York and northern New Jersey. (Also, why did no reporters look into it during the campaign) Second, the report does not mention any specific information.

I am not sure how this is a blockbuster.

Conducting a counterintelligence investigation in such a situation should be standard, just as the obstruction of justice investigation was.

If Trump fired Comey to cover his own ass (probably yes) then there are both criminal and intelligence effects, so an investigation of both would not only not be unusual, it would be almost routine.

Also, given the history of the FBI, it is hardly surprising that there would be leaks regarding such an investigation.

The investigation, in and of itself does not constitute a major story.

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

………

The F.B.I. conducts two types of inquiries, criminal and counterintelligence investigations. Unlike criminal investigations, which are typically aimed at solving a crime and can result in arrests and convictions, counterintelligence inquiries are generally fact-finding missions to understand what a foreign power is doing and to stop any anti-American activity, like thefts of United States government secrets or covert efforts to influence policy. In most cases, the investigations are carried out quietly, sometimes for years. Often, they result in no arrests.

The Costs of a Military Establishment

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Costa Rica abolished its military in 1949.

A major has now shown that this is associated with a 0.8% annual increase in per capita GDP:

This article estimates the causal long-term developmental effects of Costa Rica’s constitutional abolishment of its army in 1949 after the 1948 civil war.

This is done by performing synthetic control estimates and analyzing the political history of Costa Rica in the 1940s and 1950s. We find that upon the abolishment of the army, Costa Rica’s annual average per capita GDP growth increased from 1.42% to 2.28% in the 1950-2010 period relative to a counterfactual Costa Rica that did not abolish its army. This implies that Costa Rica doubled its per capita GDP every 30 years rather than every 49. These estimates are robust to different model specifications and we show that this shock is exclusive to Costa Rica in Latin America. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the positive effects associated with this increase in the per capita GDP growth rates have endured over time; namely because the abolition of the army granted a political and institutional context that allowed the country to devote more resources to public spending, which in turn contributed to its long run development. Our case study findings are evidence that committing to peace and democracy pays off in the long run.

Running the numbers, this means that Costa Rica’s per capita GDP is 75% larger than what it would have been with a military.

Obviously a part of this difference is because the resources of Costa Rica have not been diverted from other purposes.

To quote Dwight Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Another reason for this is that the presence of a military in Latin America has led to repeated coups against military governments, and repeated insurgencies as a result, which are likely even more disruptive to the well-being of the nation.  (Google the School of the Americas to better understand how this was largely an artifact of US Policy)

Freedom of the Press: 1 — Iowa Farmers: 0

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Iowa’s “Ag Gag” law was just ruled unconstitutional:

A federal judge has ruled that Iowa’s “ag gag” law is unconstitutional, saying the industry-backed statute violates the First Amendment’s free-speech protections.

Senior Judge James Gritzner granted summary judgment Wednesday to a group that sued over the law.

“Today’s decision is an important victory for free speech in Iowa,” said Rita Bettis Austen, ACLU of Iowa legal director.

………

The ACLU challenged the law, along with Bailing Out Benji, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, the national Animal Legal Defense Fund and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, among others.

………

The 2012 Agricultural Production Facility Fraud law made it a crime for journalists and advocacy groups to go undercover at meatpacking plants, livestock confinements, puppy mills and other ag-related operations to investigate working conditions, animal welfare, food safety and environmental hazards, among other practices.

………

Federal courts have struck down similar laws in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Litigation is ongoing in North Carolina.

Corporate interests are to free speech as Ebola is to French Kissing, and politicians are too busy taking campaign donations to give a sh%$ about free speech.

Interesting Data Point

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(Click for larger image)


These graphs include banks and S&Ls, not credit unions

There were no bank failures in 2018, which is the first time that this has happened in 12 years, and only the third time that this has happened since the founding of the FDIC:

In 2018, no FDIC insured banks failed. This was down from 8 in 2017. This is only the third time since the FDIC was founded in 1933 that there were no bank failures in a calendar year.

For the life of me, I have no clue as to why credit union failures have outpaced those of commercial banks for the past two years.

Any suggestions as to why this has happened?

At the peak of the crisis bank failures were outpacing credit union failures by about 9 to 1, so this flip is rather perplexing.

What Fresh Hell is This?

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In response to repeated news about how they are contemptible liars, Facebook has adopted a new strategy, they are cutting details with phone manufacturers to install their app and make it unremovable:

Sorry #DeleteFacebook, you never stood a chance.

Yesterday Bloomberg reported that the scandal-beset social media behemoth has inked an unknown number of agreements with Android smartphone makers, mobile carriers and OSes around the world to not only pre-load Facebook’s eponymous app on hardware but render the software undeleteable; a permanent feature of your device, whether you like how the company’s app can track your every move and digital action or not.

Bloomberg spoke to a U.S. owner of a Samsung Galaxy S8 who, after reading forum discussions about Samsung devices, found his own pre-loaded Facebook app could not be removed. It could only be “disabled,” with no explanation available to him as to what exactly that meant.

It means that your privacy is toast.

A Facebook spokesperson told Bloomberg that a disabled permanent app doesn’t continue collecting data or sending information back to the company, but declined to specify exactly how many such pre-install deals Facebook has globally.

How many times has Facebook promised this, and has been found to be lying through teeth?

OK, too tough.  You run out of fingers, and toes.

How many times has Facebook promised this, and has been found to be lying through teeth ……… THIS YEAR?

Seriously, I highly recommend rooting your phone.