Happy next year! pic.twitter.com/QTCGv7yF6R
— Pekka Mäkinen (@PekkaTMakinen) December 21, 2020
Remember, when I said that Russian humor appeals to my soul?
I’m thinking that it might be places with long, cold winters generally, because the author of this cartoon is a Finn. 
Mark Rober is at again, with “The World’s Largest Devil’s Toothpaste Explosion”
It appears that Trump is cutting off military support to CIA death squads: (Details on the whole child murdering death squads are here)
Years from now, we will forgive historians who, when documenting the Donald Trump presidency — its cold indifference to hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths, its pandemic denialism, its migrant family separations, its use of the Justice Department as a political cudgel and the attorney general as a Mafia lawyer, the president’s genuine attempt to subvert the 2020 election results, and his impeachment — fail to note a bureaucratic dust-up between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon in the waning days of the administration.
Last week, news broke that Trump’s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, sent a letter to the CIA notifying the agency that the Pentagon would review the terms of its military support to CIA operations. News reports suggested that the Pentagon was planning to strip the CIA of its support for counterterrorism missions around the world almost immediately. Drones, elite soldiers, fuel, and medical evacuation of casualties, for example, would disappear almost overnight. CNN reported that the Pentagon was “planning to withdraw most support for CIA counter-terror missions by the beginning of next year.” The New York Times suggested that the purpose was to “make it difficult” for the CIA to conduct its covert war in Afghanistan as Trump reduces the number of U.S. troops there. ABC News described the decision as “unprecedented.” The cuts would leave CIA paramilitary officers to die should they suffer casualties, former officers told the press.
But interviews with six current and former national security officials, including some directly involved in the Pentagon’s review, suggest it is neither immediate nor controversial. Instead, the review serves as a coda for the Trump administration’s chaos — and as an unintentional gift to the incoming Biden administration.
Miller’s letter to CIA Director Gina Haspel informed her that the Pentagon would update a classified 2005 memorandum of understanding outlining the terms of Defense Department support to CIA missions. The Donald Rumsfeld-led Pentagon wrote the memo in the early years of what the George W. Bush administration called the global war on terror. In the immediate weeks and months after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon discovered that it had neither the intelligence capability nor the nimbleness that the CIA showed in their quick deployment to Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda conceived of and trained for the attacks; the CIA needed special operations forces to buttress their tiny paramilitary division.
As an aside, United States Special Operations Command (USSICOM) was established in 1987, so it appears that the need to use CIA paramilitaries, particularly given its extensive expansion over the intervening 33 years, is to ensure that those operations are not subject to the purview of any potential war crimes investigations.
………
Fast forward to Donald Trump. He campaigned in 2016 on pulling out U.S. troops from the wars which began after 9/11 and later, as president, declared victory over the Islamic State. In 2018, the Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary James Mattis, published a new national defense strategy as a blueprint for a new era. Counterterrorism was no longer the country’s “primary concern.” The new strategy called long-term strategic competition with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran the top priorities.
………
Trump reportedly tried several times to pull troops out of Afghanistan but was said to have been blocked or slow-rolled by the national security establishment. After he lost the November election, Trump fired Esper because he was said to have resisted the move. As a result, Miller replaced Esper and quickly went about announcing that troops were indeed coming home. As almost an afterthought, Miller and the acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, also pushed to update the 2005 sharing agreement to fall in line with the change in national security policy, several defense officials told The Intercept. They said that fears of resource cuts to the CIA are unfounded overall.
………
A secondary justification for rewriting the agreement is to allow the Pentagon to answer a simple question that has plagued military officials for years: How much support do we provide to the CIA, and how is it used?
………
For military officials, the support to the CIA has become just like any other part of the Pentagon’s self-licking ice cream cone: one with no end. The agreement has persisted for 15 years, even as national security priorities have changed. Two military officials who spoke with The Intercept said the Pentagon couldn’t answer congressional committees’ questions about how the CIA used the Pentagon’s resources. As a result, the new memo will insist that the CIA provide more information to the Pentagon on where and how their support, including forces, is used.
………
According to the senior Pentagon official involved in the review, the Pentagon is asking the CIA to use military support in the so-called great nation competition and use fewer resources in their counterterrorism efforts. It is all part of a more considerable effort to move the military’s resources away from hunting suspected Islamic militants worldwide and toward the now two-year-old focus on other global powers. The military is letting the CIA know that they are ending its forever wars in a strategic sense.
“[Director Haspel] wants out of the war on terror,” the senior Pentagon official continued. “She thinks that takes the CIA away from its core mission of going after Russia and China. And it’s 20 years later, and we had to do [that] at the time, it’s 20 years now, and a shift has to be made.”
So Haspel is a moron who has never left the Cold War.
And people wonder why the Russians think that the war against them by the US never ended.
………
CIA counterterrorism veterans believe the review stems from Trump making a last-minute effort to punish the CIA for various offenses, but mostly because the agency concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him become president. A retired senior intelligence official told The Intercept that a senior congressional aide on an intelligence committee asked the White House last week to explain Miller’s letter to the CIA. The retired official said the aide was told, “It’s because the president’s followers believe the agency played a role” in Trump’s election loss last month. The retired official said the White House acknowledged that the claim of CIA involvement in Trump’s election loss was unfounded, but the facts didn’t matter. The message from the White House, according to the retired official, was that “it matters what Trump’s supporters think, and they think that’s the case.”
Given Trump’s pettiness and thin-skinned demeanor, it may very well be that Trump ordered the Pentagon to take its toys away from the CIA, but it also doesn’t matter.
………
But it does provide Biden with an unintentional gift. By forcing the incoming administration to respond to the review shortly after taking power, Trump’s team provides Biden with an opportunity to quickly take stock of 20 years of lethal operations, both in direct view and secret — and make a decision to end an unwinnable war.
………
A lame-duck president agitating for a useful bureaucratic change as a parting shot at the deep state is the same delusional logic that came with much of Trump’s four years: occasionally doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
Given the nature of CIA paramilitaries, their primary benefits appear to be evading the laws of war, and to maintain a military presence in an area in defiance of civilian leadership (Syria most recently), reducing this capability is an unalloyed good, regardless of the motivations.
Mike Pence has announced a name for members of the US Space Force, Guardians. (Yes, I am linking to The Guardian for this story, because ……… Guardian)
Let the mockery begin:
Members of the new US space force will be known as “guardians”, Vice-President Mike Pence announced on Friday, at a ceremony to mark the first birthday of the newest branch of the US armed forces, one of Donald Trump’s signature policy initiatives.
“It is my honour,” Pence said, “on behalf of the president of the United States, to announce that henceforth the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as guardians.
“Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and guardians will be defending our nation for generations to come.”
On Twitter, the space force said: “The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility. Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, ‘Guardians of the High Frontier.’
………
Nonetheless, Pence’s announcement prompted familiar mirth on social media. As Military.com put it: “Space enthusiasts and military members were quick to point out the name Guardians evokes the Marvel Comics’ Guardians of the Galaxy film franchise, about a motley crew of superheroes in space.”
With the Trump administration on its way out of power, the future of the space force seems uncertain. On Saturday, the president tweeted that the “authorisation and start up of the SPACE FORCE” would be seen as “one of the Trump administration’s great achievements”.
But as the Associated Press put it, delicately: “President-elect Joe Biden has yet to reveal his plans for the space force in the next administration.”
My suggestion for the Biden administration: Shut down the, “Space Force,” and take all the people who are not actually doing real work, generals, middle managers, etc. and muster them out of the service, because if they have been assigned to the service in that capacity, they don’t have productive purpose.
Tax cuts for the rich do not boost the economy.
That money goes into speculative and parasitic activities:
You don’t have to be a scholar to understand why it’s absurd to suggest that reducing the tax burden for rich people isn’t likely to be a particularly effective strategy when it comes to juicing economic activity.
………
Let’s be honest: Very few rational people believe in trickle-down economics. That’s not to say no rational people promote it. It’s just to say that the rational people who do, almost always have ulterior motives, usually involving the preservation of their own wealth.
………
There’s little utility in rehashing this further. I’m preaching to the choir. But I bring it up Friday because I’m running through the “checklist” of stories I keep on a yellow legal pad next to my second monitor. I try to get through that checklist each week. Sometimes, Friday is a “catch up” day. One of the stories I wanted to highlight this week, but didn’t get around to mentioning, is a new working paper by David Hope, of the London School of Economics, and Julian Limberg, of King’s College London, both PhDs.
The paper “utilizes data from 18 OECD countries over the last five decades to estimate the causal effect of major tax cuts for the rich on income inequality, economic growth, and unemployment.”
You’ll never guess what Hope and Limberg found.
I’m just kidding. Their findings are entirely predictable. Here are the main points:
- The results suggest that tax reforms do not lead to higher economic growth. The effect size of major tax cuts for the rich on real GDP per capita is close to zero and statistically insignificant. The findings are very similar when matching upon pre-treatment covariate trajectories. Major tax cuts for the rich do not lead to higher growth in either the short or medium run.
- Although the results show very slight indications of a flash in the pan effect of tax cuts for the rich on unemployment, these findings are neither statistically significant nor robust.
- The results show that major tax cuts lead to a significant increase in inequality and that this effect becomes stronger with time. Three years after the reform, the top 1% income share increases by almost 0.6 percentage points in countries with a major tax cut. Over five years, tax reforms increase the top 1% share of pre-tax national income by more than 0.8 percentage points. This effect is highly statistically significant, with P<0.0001.
So not surprised.
Trickle down has never been about improving the public welfare, it’s been about the powerful preserving their power.
At least, that’s what the Bolsheviks at the London School of Economics say.
Now it appears that Boeing pressured FAA test pilots during the review of the 737 MAX fixes.
Now is not the time for more rigorous regulatory action.
Now is the time for criminal prosecutions, and perp walks for senior Boeing executives:
Senate investigators concluded that Boeing “inappropriately coached” Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) pilots for a simulator test last year conducted during the effort to test and recertify the company’s 737 MAX as safe to fly again after two deadly crashes.
The conclusion is contained in a report issued Friday by the Republican majority in the Senate Commerce Committee on an investigation that was launched after the two MAX crashes but that ultimately broadened to unearth numerous safety problems across the FAA.
A whistleblower who served as an FAA aviation safety inspector told Senate investigators that Boeing officials prompted the FAA test pilots before the test, which was designed to test pilot reactions to an emergency, to be ready to respond.
The FAA inspector alleged the Boeing official told the pilots, “Remember, get right on that pickle switch” — meaning an electrical thumb switch on the control column used to pitch up the jet’s nose.
Even with that prompt, one of the pilots took 16 seconds to respond, four times longer than Boeing and the FAA had assumed.
According to the report, the investigators asked to interview that pilot, but a Transportation department lawyer prohibited the pilot from answering questions about the incident.
Senior members of the FAA need to be brought into court in handcuffs as well.
Don’t worry though, it violates no standards, because it is a naked B-52H Stratofortress.
The bomber, 60-034, also known as, “Wise Guy,” had to be stripped down and rebuilt after being returned to service after storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, AKA the “boneyard”:
As already reported in detail in this previous article, “Wise Guy” is the nickname of the B-52H Stratofortress bomber tail number 60-0034, that is being prepared to return to service with the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, by the Tinker Air Force Base’s Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex.
The aircraft has arrived at Tinker AFB, on Apr. 1, 2020, to undergo PDM (Programmed Depot Maintenance), the final part of a three-phase process to resurrect the aircraft, that had been retired after logging more than 17,000 flight hours at the 309th AMARG (Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group) at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, in 2008.
The Federal Reserve has allowed banks to start issuing dividends and make stock buybacks again, because, after all, how can our financial system work without the masters of capitalism that we just bailed out (AGAIN!) having their damn stock options vest.
Financial stability is secondary to making sure that Wall Street CEOs get the obscene bonuses:
The Federal Reserve has given America’s most profitable banks the green light to resume share buybacks for the first quarter of next year, even though it found that the country’s biggest lenders could face pandemic-related loan losses of more than $600bn.
The US central bank’s decision to lift a six-month ban on buybacks followed months of public protests by profitable lenders, including Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, several of whom immediately signalled their intention to restart purchases.
Many analysts and investors expected the Fed to hold firm to its restrictions, as the US continues to suffer record coronavirus cases and deaths and lawmakers struggle to agree stimulus measures to boost the economy through another round of shutdowns.
………
Lael Brainard was the only one of the Fed’s five-person board of governors to vote against freeing banks up to return more to shareholders.
“Today’s action nearly doubles the amount of capital permitted to be paid out relative to last quarter,” she said in a statement. “Prudence would call for more modest payouts to preserve lending to households and borrowers during an exceptionally challenging winter.”
Just a small reminder: The Federal Reserve does not work for the American people, or even for the benefit of the financial system. It works for the bankers.
We are going to buy out these rat-f%$#s again sooner rather than later.
He’s been called worse. pic.twitter.com/MRnEPadI16
— Brendon Hope (@BrendonHope) December 19, 2020
This is an unfortunate, or perhaps supremely fortunate, that the headline appears to describe British PM as a “Surging Mutant Virus”.
In any case, I find this quite amusing.
Dean Baquet is one of the biggest threats to journalism right now, but everyone in a position to report on him wants a job from him. https://t.co/JsgUd30IlS
— Tentin Quarantino (@agraybee) December 19, 2020
Dean Banquet said the following about being taken in by a transparent fraud by a phony “Isis executioner“.
We fell in love with the fact that we had gotten a member of ISIS who would describe his life in the caliphate and would describe his crimes ……… I think we were so in love with it that when we saw evidence that maybe he was a fabulist, when we saw evidence that he was making some of it up, we didn’t listen hard enough.
In essence, Dean Banquet was quoting the Mason Williams song The Exciting Accident, which states, “This is not a true tale, but who needs truth if it’s dull.”
While this is fine for Williams, song writer, comedian, photographer, poet, and photographer to do in a song, it is not the proper attitude for the editor in chief of the what is arguably most prestigious newspaper in the United States. (Though each year that Banquet is there this status seems increasingly precarious)
It appears that there is a charity auction for the rights to hit the button to initiate the controlled implosion of the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City on January 19.
Bidding appears to be north of $50K right now, and I also want to raise money to commission Banksey to put a mural on the side before that date.
I think that he might appreciate the whole scene.
Proceeds go to charity.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bid on the right to push the button to implode Trump Plaza, Atlantic City, NJ. As you may or may not know, the Trump Plaza has been scheduled demolition and leveled off the boardwalk of Atlantic City. For several years it has been sitting empty and now is the time to end an era and replace it with something new. We are selling the experience to push the button to implode Trump Plaza. This will be done remotely and can be done anywhere in the world as well as close to the Plaza as we can safely get you there! All Proceeds of this auction will benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City, NJ. Ever since the start of this pandemic they have seen an increase of young children and adolescents benefit from the services of The Boys & Girl Club and are in need of all the assistance they can get for the community. This will be a live broadcasted sale so we hope to see you on sale day and start the year with a Bang!
So, should I go with Banksey, or a local street artist?
*No, I’m not actually going to open up a Go Fund Me for this. I like to blow sh%$ up, but I do not want to be associated with anything with the Trump name on it.
I have decided on a title for my memoir, Gassy Come Home.
I’m not sure when I will start writing this.
That is Former US Representative Duncan Hunter, who now faces almost a year in jail. Not that other Hunter.
Former Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., was sentenced to 11 months in prison Tuesday for misusing campaign funds.
Hunter pleaded guilty in December to a corruption charge after prosecutors said he and his wife “converted and stole” more than a quarter million dollars in campaign funds for their own use over a period of several years.
When initially charged, Hunter tried to throw his wife under the bus.
Republican family values.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is doing his best to kill payouts to ordinary Americans in the next Covid relief bill, while in the past he has been pushing big tax breaks for himself.
Republican values, neh?
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Friday moved to block emergency survival checks to millions of Americans, citing concerns about the federal deficit. Johnson’s move not only follows his vote for a massive $500 billion corporate slush fund — it also follows his successful effort to enrich himself with a giant tax cut that expanded the deficit.
Johnson, who is worth an estimated $39 million, led the fight in 2017 to create special tax breaks for so-called “pass-through” businesses, or real estate shell companies. Johnson was one of several Republican senators who backed the last-minute provisions inserted in the bill — and who listed income from those pass-through entities on their federal financial disclosure forms.
Based on those federal filings, Johnson stood to personally reap up to $205,000 from the tax cut provisions he championed.
………
On Friday, Johnson moved to block a bipartisan proposal, from Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to give Americans emergency $1,200 checks, amid a sudden increase in poverty and mass starvation across the country.
Johnson argued that the direct payment proposal would be “mortgaging our children’s future” — an argument that he did not make when he led the fight to personally enrich himself with a massive tax cut only three years ago.
Mr. Johnson, go Cheney yourself.
It turns out that Jared Kushner skimmed campaign funds which went to insiders.
I rather expect to see Trump pardon him, and Ivanka, and Don, Jr., and Eric, on his way out of the door.
In fact, my guess is that Melania and Baron will be the only ones not getting pardons:
President Donald Trump’s most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent almost half of the campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.
The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump’s top advisors and family members, while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.
When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign Chief Financial Officer Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations about the shell company.
………
The shell company — incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corp. and American Made Media Consultants LLC — allowed Trump’s campaign to skirt federally mandated disclosures. The tactic could attract scrutiny from federal election regulators.
Campaign-finance records showed Trump’s reelection effort and its affiliated committee with the Republican National Committee spent more than $600 million through American Made Consultants since its formation.
………
From January 2019 through the middle of November, the Trump campaign and an affiliated political committee together spent $617 million through American Made Media Consultants.
It was almost half of everything they spent in the failed effort to reelect Trump, according to an Insider review of Federal Election Commission records and analysis provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
………
Campaign-law experts have long accused the Trump team of using a corporate pass-through to hide payments.
………
If the federal government suspects a “knowing and willful” violation of election law has occurred, the Department of Justice has the power to open a criminal investigation into a political actor.
While such investigations are relatively uncommon, several former Justice Department and FEC officials previously told Insider that Justice Department officials may already be discreetly investigating Trump’s reelection activity.
Some of Trump’s campaign leaders even seemed stumped by the AMMC arrangement. Generally, they knew that AMMC was being used to buy pro-Trump TV, radio, and digital advertising and pay for other media.
But they couldn’t discern precisely how much each AMMC vendor was keeping for itself.
The person familiar with AMMC said the rates its vendors charged the Trump campaign were often cheaper than what an outside political firm would have demanded. Using the shell company also allowed Parscale to keep Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle [As an interesting aside, Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, and got fired from Fox for sexual harassment] — the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. — on his payroll, the person familiar said.
………
“Nothing was done without Jared’s approval,” the former Trump campaign advisor said. “What [Trump campaign manager Stephen] Stepien doesn’t know is because Jared doesn’t want him to know.”
Something clearly corrupt was going on here, but Trump cheating his investors/campaign/contractors/wives/etc is pretty much par for the course.
That being said, I would expect an investigation, which is why I also expect a very broadly worded pardon before January 20.
The Thursday initial unemployment claims are even worse than last week, with unemployment claims rising to 885,000 from 853,000. (actually that number was revised up by 9,000 to 862,000)
The increase in unemployment is not a blip any more.
The trend is definitely going in the wrong way:
The number of workers seeking unemployment benefits increased to a three-month high, another sign the economy is entering a winter slowdown as coronavirus cases rise and trigger new business restrictions.
Unemployment claims rose for the second straight week to 885,000 in the week ended Dec. 12, the Labor Department said Thursday. Last week marked the highest level for claims since September, when 893,000 workers applied for jobless benefits.
More broadly, claims are down sharply from a peak of nearly 7 million in March, but the four-week moving average, which smooths out weekly volatility, is increasing after trending downward since the spring. The weekly figures can be volatile around the holidays due to seasonal-adjustment issues.
………
Economic data broadly point to a slowdown. Retail sales dropped 1.1% in November from a month earlier, according to a Commerce Department report Wednesday. Overall consumer spending, which includes retail and services consumption, has continued to increase, but more slowly than over the summer.
………
Job growth cooled in November as many workers gave up looking for jobs. Robust job gains in the late spring and early summer largely reflected businesses adding back staff after lockdowns were lifted. But the recovery is far from complete, and many businesses continue to operate below capacity. Some state and local governments implemented new restrictions as coronavirus cases surged this fall.
While I expect any recovery to be faster than the debt-overhang of the great recession, it is not going to be fast, and it’s coming from a much lower place.
This will not end well.
Just watch what they are going to do to kill the unionization drive in Alabama.
This is going to make WalMart look like John L. Lewis:
Amazon.com Inc. workers at an Alabama warehouse received approval to hold a unionization vote, the first such election since 2014 at the nation’s second-largest employer, testing the potential for additional labor organizing at the retailing giant.
The National Labor Relations Board Tuesday ruled that employees at Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse can decide whether to create a bargaining unit within the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, according to an NLRB official. The date of the election and other terms have yet to be determined. A hearing about the vote is scheduled for Friday.
A majority of the workers would have to choose unionization for the employees to gain representation. The Alabama warehouse has about 1,500 full- and part-time employees, according to the union, although Amazon has said the total is higher.
Though many hurdles remain, labor experts say a successful campaign by workers could inspire similar efforts at other Amazon warehouses. The company has more than 800,000 U.S. employees, second only to Walmart Inc. in the country, as well as more than 760 facilities in its fulfillment network, according to logistics consultant MWPVL International.
………
Hourly Amazon workers have never previously formed or joined a union in the U.S. The same is true at Walmart Inc., which has about 1.5 million U.S. employees.
This is untrue. Wal-Mart had its butchers in one store unionize, and Wal-Mart fired all of its butchers in all of its stores in response, so for about a week, Wal-Mart was unionized.
The retailer has seen its toughest labor battles in Europe, where union participation is common in some countries and government authorities have been quicker to confront the company. A French court in the spring ordered Amazon to stop selling nonessential items while the company addressed coronavirus- safety measures, prompting Amazon to temporarily close its French warehouses.
While Alabama typically hasn’t been known for unionizing efforts, RWDSU represents workers across the poultry and healthcare industries in the state.
I’d say expect every dirty trick in the book to be deployed by Amazon, but the reality is that Amazon is going to go way past the book here.
Expect to see a level of evil heretofore unseen.
My boyfriend got his covid vaccine yesterday and I can tell you the most prominent side effect is the inability to shut up about getting the covid vaccine
— Emaperidol (@Emaperidol) December 16, 2020
As amusing as this is, it is made perfect by this response:
Vegans, cross fitters, and now vaccine recipients 🤦🏼 we will never hear the end of it.
— Mistah Mugatu (@j_melancon) December 17, 2020
This is truer than taxes.
You know the type, plays at being progressive, but is a tool of the FIRE (Finance Insurance and Real Estate) sector.
They have been exhorting the citizens of their state/city/county to stay home, and not go out, and then they get caught unmasked on a night on the town.
You saw it with Cuomo, Newsome, Sisolak, and now the darling of the hedge funds, Gina Raimondo.
Honestly, I’m less concerned about her going to a wine bar than I am with her cutting (outrageously high fee) deals with private equity firms, including her own firm.
Have you noticed that this always happens to a certain type of Democrat?
You know the type, the polite term for them is hypocritical corrupt mother-f%$#ers. (The impolite term is, “Pig felchers.”*)
*If you don’t know what that means, for the love of God, DON’T GOOGLE IT.
Once again, we find that Boeing’s aggressive move of manufacturing to South Carolina has resulted in poorly assembled airliners.
What can I say, the unions won’t rat-f%$# themselves:
Boeing engineers previously determined that when the defects involving skin smoothness and shim size both occur in the same location, the result can be tiny imperfections creating a potential hazard such as a cracking in the fuselage under extreme flying conditions. Boeing in August took the unusual step of voluntarily grounding eight aircraft in airlines’ fleets for immediate repairs.
Those earlier problems prompted the FAA to start reviewing quality-control lapses in Boeing’s 787 production stretching back almost a decade.
Boeing also previously identified a third quality-control lapse affecting the horizontal stabilizer, a movable, winglike panel in the tail.
Boeing moved to South Carolina to ditch their unions in Seattle.
In the process, they ditched a talented workforce, and treated the new workforce like crap, because ……… South Carolina, and so the workforce there is demoralized as well.
MBA thinking does not produce good aircraft.