Month: February 2020

In Other Unsurprising News

No Comments
This has been known for over 80 years.  It’s why New York introduced the medallion system in 1937:

Five years ago, Travis Kalanick was so confident that Uber Technologies Inc.’s rides would prompt people to leave their cars at home that he told a tech conference: “If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic.”

Today, a mounting collection of studies shows the opposite: Far from easing traffic, Uber and its main rival Lyft Inc. are adding to congestion in numerous U.S. downtowns.

Officials in San Francisco, Chicago and New York have cited congestion as the main rationale for new fees they recently enacted on Lyft and Uber rides in each of the cities. Other regulators around the country are considering similar fees. Uber and Lyft no longer pledge ride-hailing will reduce traffic, acknowledging that they add to congestion, though they say some studies overstate their role in the problem.

The app makers initially thought their technology would create seamless trips, with four strangers forsaking their own cars for a shared ride. Cutting-edge algorithms, they believed, would steer behavior through pricing and route-matching, letting drivers spend little time between trips. Riders leaving their cars at home would then increasingly hop on buses, bikes or walk in a gridlock-easing ripple effect.

Seriously, the ability of charlatans to take a pile of crap and give it a shine by calling it disruption.

Unsurprising News Out of Germany

No Comments
And better yet, it does not involve the rise of fascism in the country.

A study in Germany has shown that the inclusion of a private option in parallel with public health insurance raises costs for everyone:

German residents would save an average of €145 ($157) per year on health insurance costs if the privately insured paid into one statutory health insurance system, according to a study published on Monday by the IGES Institut in Berlin.

Privately insured people living in Germany — top earners, public officials and high-income self-employed workers — earn on average 56% more than publicly insured people, the survey found. The study, commissioned by the German non-profit Bertelsmann Foundation, estimates that the public health insurance system would have between €8.7 billion and €10.6 billion of added revenue if the privately insured paid into it.

Even if the fee losses incurred by doctors as a result of the abolition of private health insurance were compensated, the study said, each insured German resident would save an average of €48 annually.

The study based its estimates on the 2016 data, the most recent data available, from an annual survey of around 12,000 households. In 2016, around 8.8 million German residents were privately insured, a similar total to now, while 70.4 million had the statutory health insurance system — that figure currently sits at 73.2 million.

Private for profit insurance makes healthcare better exactly never.

For the Love of God Why????

No Comments

This is what you think it is.


With ePaper on the back

Yes, someone has actually made a working open source rotary dial cell phone:

Why a rotary cellphone? Because in a finicky, annoying, touchscreen world of hyperconnected people using phones they have no control over or understanding of, I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile, while also giving me an excuse for not texting.

The point isn’t to be anachronistic. It’s to show that it’s possible to have a perfectly usable phone that goes as far from having a touchscreen as I can imagine, and which in some ways may actually be more functional. More functional how?

  • Real, removable antenna with an SMA connector. Receptions is excellent, and if I really want to I could always attach a directional antenna.
  • When I want a phone I don’t have to navigate through menus to get to the phone “application”. That’s bullsh%$.
  • If I want to call my husband, I can do so by pressing a single dedicated physical key which is dedicated to him. No menus. The point isn’t to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use. The people I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new number or do something like set the volume, then I can use the fun and satisfying-to-use rotary dial.
  • Nearly instantaneous, high resolution display of signal strength and battery level. No signal metering lag, and my LED bargraph gives 10 increments of resolution instead of just 4.
  • The ePaper display is bistatic, meaning it doesn’t take any energy to display a fixed message.
  • When I want to change something about the phone’s behavior, I just do it.
  • The power switch is an actual slide switch. No holding down a stupid button to make it turn off and not being sure it really is turning off or what.

So it’s not just a show-and-tell piece… My intent is to use it as my primary phone. It fits in a pocket; It’s reasonably compact; calling the people I most often call is faster than with my old phone, and the battery lasts almost 24 hours.

(%$ mine)

I’m not sure if this is brilliant, or demented, or both.

Look Out Below

No Comments

Interesting charts from Morgan Stanley. Recent drop of air pollution in 4 major Chinese cities. 2 conclusions. #Corona does 10 x more than EU Green Deal to environment. The drop in Chinese manufacturing is unseen in history and should bring Q1 GDP of China in negative territory pic.twitter.com/DRfh2wl6J9

— Gino Landuyt (@GinoLanduyt) February 14, 2020

If the Chinese economy is headed for an actual recession, we are headed for profoundly interesting times.

Tweet of the Day

No Comments
“Only our racist billionaire can beat their racist billionaire.“ – some Democratic pollster somewhere shopping for a new boat https://t.co/bPS4QAe2Zo

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 15, 2020

This is what the Bloomberg candidacy is all about, Democratic Party consultants desperately trying to get a piece of the money he is throwing around the campaign right now.

Who Says that Irony is Dead?

No Comments

Lloyd Blankfein, the former head of Goldman Sachs, who during the financial crisis received tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars of direct and indirect bailouts from the taxpayers, is now whining that Bernie Sanders would ruin the economy if elected President.

This guy is literally the biggest welfare queen in history, and he’s lecturing us about how to save the economy?

You nearly blew up the world, and because of the corruption and cowardice of two administration, you personally walked away with billions in taxpayer money.

Shut the f%$# up, you leech.

Mike Bloomberg Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

No Comments

I am beginning to think that Michael Bloomberg is running for President to provide cover for the racist resort of Pete Buttigieg.

Unlike Buttigieg, whose hostility can only be divined from his actions as mayor, Bloomberg is on tape many times saying unbelievably racist bullsh%$:

While promoting a multi-million dollar initiative to “reduce disparities” as the mayor of New York City in 2011, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said “enormous cohorts” of young black and Latino men “don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”

Bloomberg made the remarks during an interview with PBS Newshour, as he promoted his Young Men’s Initiative, a $127 million, three-year program funded in part by Bloomberg’s charitable organization, financier George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the city of New York. “Blacks and Latinos score terribly in school testing compared to whites and Asians. If you look at our jails, it’s predominantly minorities,” Bloomberg said.

“If you look at where crime takes place, it’s in minority neighborhoods. If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it’s virtually all minorities,” Bloomberg continued. “This is something that has gone on for a long time, I assume it’s prevalent elsewhere but it’s certainly true in New York City.”

This guy has made racism a central part of his public personae, and when juxtaposed with scores of allegations of sexual harassment at his company, this guy should not be able to be elected dog catcher.

Burying the Lede

No Comments

In a report on the Syrian army pushing the Jihadist rebels out artillery range of Aleppo, the New York Times waits until paragraph to mention that the people or Aleppo were literally dancing in the streets over their new found safety:

Syrian President Bashar Assad congratulated his forces Monday for recent gains in northwestern Syria that led to his troops consolidating control over Aleppo province, pledging to press ahead with a military campaign to achieve complete victory “sooner or later.”

 ………

 In the past few weeks, government troops backed by Russian air power have captured more than 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) in the northwest, consolidating their hold over Aleppo province after capturing over 30 villages and hamlets in the western countryside in a single day Sunday. The advance secured the provincial capital that had for years remained within range of opposition fire.

 The new gains, along with securing a key highway through rebel territory, are set to better link northern and southern Syria, including the city of Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial center before the war. The highway, known as the M5, links the country’s four largest cities and population centers and is key to controlling Syria.

 The developments sparked late-night celebrations in the streets of Aleppo that continued through Monday, with state media showing residents waving flags and dancing in roads packed with vehicles.

“We should not rest, but continue to prepare for the coming battles, and therefore the battle of liberating Aleppo countryside and Idlib will continue, despite the empty noise that is coming from the north (Turkey),” Assad said.

The refugees Idlib are little more hostages to Erdogans delusion that he is the rebirth of the Ottoman caliphate.

It is profoundly depressing that the best alternative for Syria is Bashar al-Assad, but considering the people who conspired to foment civil war in Syria, Erdogan, the House of Saud, the regime change mousketeers of various western state security apparatuses, it is not a surprise.

Why the Hell Elect Democrats?

No Comments
The Democrats turned Virginia blue in 2019 by running in favor of common sense gun control, but Democrats in the state senate just killed the gun control legislation this year because they are such profound cowards that they will piss this opportunity away for a generation:

Democrats who won control of Virginia’s legislature on the promise of sweeping gun control lost a battle over assault-style weapons on Monday, handing Gov. Ralph Northam a big defeat and giving a rare win to Second Amendment activists in a newly blue Capitol.

A Virginia Senate committee killed a bill that would have banned the sale of assault-style weapons and possession of high-capacity magazines. It had been a top priority for Northam (D), a former Army doctor who served in Operation Desert Storm and often remarks that he has “seen firsthand what weapons of war do to human beings.”

The bill was part of a package of eight gun-control measures Northam advanced after a shooter killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building on May 31. Republicans’ refusal to act on those bills last summer, in a special session they gaveled out in 90 minutes, became a rallying cry for Democrats in November elections. They flipped the state House and Senate blue for the first time in a generation.

The House has passed all eight of Northam’s bills, but a handful of Democrats in the less liberal Senate have quashed three of them amid fears that the newly empowered party might overplay its hand. The same tension has been playing out on other fronts, with the Senate taking a more cautious approach on issues such as the minimum wage, collective bargaining and state budgeting.

While the general public supports what could be called the Democratic Party agenda, they do not believe that when push comes to shove, they will muster the intestinal fortitude to actually get their policies implemented.

Voters hate cowards.

Linkage

No Comments

Australian 1960s SF show.  Note the accents, they are all speaking “Beeb” more than an what is thought of as an Australian accent today.   It’s reminiscent of the original Dark Shadows:

Fired for Noting the Obvious

No Comments

World Bank Chief Economist Pinelopi (Penny) Goldberg has left after the organization killed a report that showed that at least 5% of aid from the organization went into overseas accounts:

When autocratic, oil-rich nations enjoy a windfall from higher crude prices, where does the money go? One place to look is Swiss bank accounts. Sure enough, an increase in oil prices is followed by a spike in deposits held by these countries in financial havens, according to a 2017 paper by Jorgen Juel Andersen of BI Norwegian Business School, Niels Johannesen of the University of Copenhagen and their co-authors.

When Mr Johannesen presented this result at the World Bank in 2015, the audience included Bob Rijkers, a member of the bank’s research group. The two of them joined forces with Mr Andersen to investigate if something similar happened after another kind of windfall: infusions of aid from foreign donors. Their conclusion was dispiriting. World Bank payouts to 22 aid-dependent countries during 1990-2010 were followed by a jump in their deposits in foreign financial havens. The leaks averaged about 5% of the bank’s aid to these countries.

Mr Rijkers is part of a unit that reports to the bank’s chief economist, Pinelopi (Penny) Goldberg. The team publishes working papers on the understanding that their views do not represent the bank’s. But Mr Rijkers’s collaborative effort, which was leaked to The Economist, is not yet among them. It passed an exacting internal review by other researchers in November. But, according to informed sources, publication was blocked by higher officials. They may have been worried about how it would look if the bank’s own researchers said that a chunk of its aid ended up in Swiss bank accounts and the like.

The bank insists a final decision on publication has not been made and that it still has legitimate concerns about the paper. A correlation between aid disbursements and offshore deposits is not proof of causation. And the 5% of “leaks” might include some innocent money, earned by aid contractors who just happen to prefer offshore havens to other financial centres. But the paper had already answered similar objections in the review process.

The recycling of foreign into western banks through corruption is a feature, not a bug.

Corrupt officials are bribable, and if they store their money in western institutions, they are far more likely to buy into the neoliberal consensus favored by the west.

I’ve Heard of Fighting Fire with Fire, but This Is Ridiculous

No Comments
But running a sexually harassing mayor against a sexually harassing President seems to be to be an exercise in stupidity.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party establishment seems to think that Michael Bloomberg’s checkbook is the last firewall against a Bernie Sanders success:

As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him.

A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, “Do you want to f—? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f—– a lot, too!” Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers “will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”

………

Several lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging that women were discriminated against at Bloomberg’s business-information company, including a case brought by a federal agency and one filed by a former employee, who blamed Bloomberg for creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation.

The most high-profile case was from a former saleswoman. She sued Bloomberg personally as well as his company, alleging workplace discrimination. She alleged Bloomberg told her to “kill it” when he learned she was pregnant. Bloomberg has denied her allegation under oath, and he reached a confidential settlement with the saleswoman.

The Washington Post interviewed a former Bloomberg employee, David Zielenziger, who said he witnessed the conversation with the saleswoman. Zielenziger, who said he had not previously spoken publicly about the matter, said Bloomberg’s behavior toward the woman was “outrageous. I understood why she took offense.”

………

A number of the cases have either been settled, dismissed in Bloomberg’s favor or closed because of a failure of the plaintiff to meet filing deadlines. The cases do not involve accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct; the allegations have centered around what Bloomberg has said and about the workplace culture he fostered.

Now, as Bloomberg is increasingly viewed as a viable Democratic candidate for president and the #MeToo era has raised the profile of workplace harassment, he is finding that his efforts to prevent disclosure are clashing against demands that he release former employees and complainants from their nondisclosure agreements.

Why anyone thinks that he could defeat Donald Trump is completely beyond me.

The Media May Be More F%$#ed up Than the Trump Administration

No Comments

This is some more commentary regarding L’affaire Roger Stone, specifically, Donald Trump’s tweet criticizing the sentence that the prosecutors recommended, the subsequent amended (reduced) sentencing recommendation that came straight from Barr’s office, and the withdrawal of the entire prosecution team in protest.

William Barr actually gave an interview stating that Trump’s tweets make it difficult for him to do his job.

In what is a profoundly depressing, is that the mainstream press has presented this as an example of the integrity of the Attorney General, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Even right wing knuckle dragger Laura Ingraham understood what was being said, “Barr was basically telling Trump, ‘don’t worry, I got this’.”

Barr is telling Trump to shut the f%$# up while he finishes the coverup.

This is not occurring in isolation, Barr is looking to sabotage the case against Michael Flynn in the sane way.

William Barr is not, and has never, functioned as an Attorney General.

He is Donald Trump’s consigliere, just as he was George H.W. Bush’s consigliere and covered up Bush’s role in Iran Contra.

I do not believe that William Barr needs to resign as AG, I believe that he needs to be frog-marched out of the Department of Justice in handcuffs.

Same Old Same Old

No Comments

Following a SEC inquiry of Tesla being closed, the SEC opens up another inquiry, because stock fraud is kind of Tesla’s thing:

Tesla Inc. isn’t yet in the clear with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Dec. 4, the same day the agency closed its second investigation into the electric-car maker in as many years, the SEC sent a subpoena seeking information on a fresh set of matters, Tesla disclosed in a regulatory filing Thursday. The regulator is looking into “certain financial data and contracts including Tesla’s regular financing arrangements,” according to the company.

The investigation the SEC closed in December related to projections and public statements regarding Model 3 production rates. Earlier in 2019, the agency went to court with Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk over tweets he sent about how many cars the company would build for the year. A judge forced the two sides to shore up a settlement reached in 2018 over claims Musk made during his short-lived efforts to take Tesla private.

If we actually enforces securities law in the United States, half of the Silicon Valley masters of the universe would have gone to jail.

No, This is Not Matt Taibbi

No Comments

I saw that it was Rolling Stone, and I saw the first paragraph of this article about Roger Stone’s legal problems, and I said that this HAD to be Matt Taibbi.

It isn’t, though it is a wonderful bit of prose:

It’s not every day that a degenerate former swinger and serial scumbag who built a career based on a single line of bullshit and self-fellation so constant and vigorous that it is practically a yogic art form stands before the bar of justice, but here we are. Roger Stone is, as he loves to be, in the center of a national political scandal, and with his sentencing approaching in just days, Stone hoped the Trump “Justice” Department would save him from a well-deserved sentence of seven to nine years in prison.

Stone earned the recommended sentence not because he is a Trump ally, but because he threatened witnesses, lied to the court and to the House of Representatives, and got caught. Worst of all, he threatened Judge Amy Berman-Jackson online, defied various gag orders, and engaged in his usual rat-fuckery. He made the mistake of thinking that Judge Berman-Jackson is as gullible as the claque of hangers-on, wanna-be catamites, and scumbag errand boys with whom Stone usually surrounds himself.

………

Stone deserved everything in the first sentencing memo. Every minute. He deserves to be dragged from the courtroom in shackles and issued his itchy, federal-prison poly-cotton orange scrubs. Karmically, he deserves it because he was one of Trump’s lifelong enablers, and because once Trump was elected, Stone trafficked in the most lunatic and corrosive conspiracy theories under the sun. Stone’s gift for sleaze-bag political tactics was always that — tactical. He was great at piling on a wounded victim (see Elliot Spitzer), but it was Trump who kept Stone afloat for decades.

It is a wonderfully savage account of Roger Stone, and his current conviction for lying to Congress.

Read the whole thing.

The Germans Have Learned Nothing and Forgotten Nothing*

No Comments

In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany because the mainstream parties were unwilling to make common cause with the left.

Now discover that the German Christian Democrats are cutting deals with the Fascist AfD because they are unwilling to make common cause with the left, specifically die Linke:

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats have prided themselves on the strict cordon sanitaire they built around the far-right Alternative for Germany — ruling out any co-operation or contact. Many now wonder whether it is time for the barrier to come down.

Events of the past week, where a local row over dealings with the AfD culminated in national leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer deciding to quit, have shown just how consequential the CDU’s attitude to the far-right has become.

………

This month’s upheaval was sparked in Thuringia, where the CDU sided with the AfD in the eastern state’s parliament to elect a little-known politician as prime minister. He was the first regional leader in post-war German history brought to power with the support of the populist right.

 It was also a startling rebuff to Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer, who had warned the Thuringian branch of the party not to vote alongside the AfD. Her authority in tatters, she announced on Monday that she would step down as CDU chairwoman and abandon her campaign to succeed Ms Merkel as chancellor.

Since then more CDU politicians have come forward to criticise the party’s anti-AfD fatwa. Raymond Walk, secretary-general of the CDU in Thuringia, described it as a “straitjacket” and demanded a rethink.

………

In Germany, the issue is even more emotional. Any discussion of a possible tie-up between CDU and AfD is overlaid with memories of the Nazi era and of how mainstream conservative parties facilitated Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

………

The AfD itself, which is the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, with 89 seats, has strongly criticised the CDU’s cordon sanitaire. Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD group in the German parliament, has called such “rejectionism” “foolish and deeply undemocratic”.

But for most in the CDU, the AfD, with its stridently anti-Islam and anti-immigration tone and its revisionist views of Germany’s 20th century history, is beyond the pale. Its Thuringian branch, led by the right-wing radical Björn Höcke, presents a particular problem: a court in the state ruled last year that Mr Höcke could legally be termed a “fascist”, saying such a designation “rests on verifiable fact”.

The CDU’s problems are compounded by the equally strict firewall it has constructed around another radical party — the hard-left Die Linke, which has its roots in the East German communist party.

………

Ms Prien pointed to the CDU’s refusal to back Thuringia’s previous prime minister, Bodo Ramelow, a relatively moderate trade unionist from Die Linke. By boycotting him, the party had in effect equated him with Mr Höcke.

Ms Prien insisted she was a “committed anti-Communist”, but to put “a respectable prime minister like Bodo Ramelow on a par with someone like Mr Höcke is a political and historical distortion”.

Germany in general, and the CDU in particular, seem determined to recreate the conditions which led to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, whether it is its insistence on austerity, or its refusal to deal with the non-racist left.

This will not end well.

*Once again, though this quote is frequently attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, but he almost certainly did not create the quote.