Author: Matthew G. Saroff

And In Gender Equity News

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A study has shown that weakening unions increases gender inequality:

Barbara Biasi, assistant professor of economics at the Yale School of Management, recently published a study that concluded that eliminating unions increases the gender gap in wages.

She looked at data from Wisconsin, before and after Scott Walker eliminated collective bargaining rights in 2011, in his Koch-funded effort to destroy unions. 

………

Barbara Biasi, an assistant professor of economics at Yale SOM, had an opportunity to examine this question when Wisconsin passed Act 10, legislation that essentially weakened the power of teachers’ unions. Afterward, schools had much more latitude in deciding how much to pay teachers.

Five years after union agreements expired, male teachers earned about 1% more per year than female colleagues with similar experience and skills, reported Biasi and her co-author, Heather Sarsons at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The gender gap was even higher among younger teachers.

The anti-union wing of the Democratic Party (the identity politic folks) has always dismissed unions as bastions of racism and sexism, and the history clearly shows that, but dismissing unions hurts the people that they claim to want to help.

Pass the damn Pro Act, and strengthen the rights of workers to organize.

For the Love of God, I Want to See Him Testify in Full Costume

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The Republicans will make sure that the Senate impeachment trial as lengthy and involved as possible, so you know that they will insist on a complete slate of witnesses and exhibits.

Well now, the Q-Anon Shaman guy is offering to testify against Trump.

If we were to put his testimony up on pay-per-view, we would pay off the federal debt:

Al Watkins, a lawyer for accused Capitol rioter Jacob Chansley, is offering his client as a witness in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. Chansley is better known in popular culture as the “QAnon Shaman” or, as Watkins called him, the “guy with the horns and the fur” who was photographed raiding the U.S. Capitol Complex on Jan. 6.

The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Watkins “said it’s important for senators to hear the voice of someone who was incited by Trump.”

………

When asked whether he was offering Chansley’s testimony against Trump in the Senate with hopes of leniency, Watkins told Law&Crime via email that the answer “is a loud ‘no.’”

………

In that appearance, Watkins said Trump’s “hyperbole” and “innuendo” resulted in the attack on the Capitol which left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer. Two other officers who were at the Capitol that day have since died by suicide.

………

Chansley stands indicted by a federal grand jury of six counts, namely: civil disorder; obstruction of an official proceeding; entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; violent entry and disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building. The FBI caught him after he was photographed in the Capitol and identified by the press.

Trump’s impeachment trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 8.

We know that there are not 13 Republicans who will vote to convict, so you want to be sure that as many people as possible watch them put their tongues up Trump’s ass.

Having this clown testify will be must see TV.

Make the Republicans defend the indefensible in front of millions of people.

Not Walking the Walk

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In response to years of poor decisions by upper management, they Ohio Democratic Party is laying off most of its employees and replacing them with temps, because the new management thinks that short term MBA style thinking and abusing your employees is a good look for the Democratic Party.

This is the single stupidest thing that I’ve ever heard of a member of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) doing who was not working on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign:

More than half of the permanent staffers at the Ohio Democratic Party have been let go under the leadership of the party’s new chairman, multiple Democratic sources have confirmed.

………

Earlier this month Democrats installed a new chairman, Liz Walters, an elected official from Summit County, to replace ex-chairman David Pepper, who decided to step down after the election.

Ms. Walters promised an overhaul of the party, which has struggled in recent statewide election cycles. Both parties are now looking ahead to a newly competitive U.S. Senate race with Rob Portman’s surprise retirement announcement and a gubernatorial race in 2022.

Sam Melendez, director of the party’s Main Street Initiative, said on Twitter on Friday that he was being let go. The program he headed was started in 2015 to recruit and train local candidates.

………

The party’s data department staffers are among those also let go, sources say.

Yeah, outsourcing your IT to high priced consultants always results in lower costs and more effective services, said no one ever.

Employees were laid off with no more than a week’s notice and no severance, sources say, and the staffers being let go are expected to be replaced with independent contractors in a bid to save money.

………

“I have a bunch of information to share with stakeholders before I comment to the press,” [Liz Walters] said.

………

In 2018 the Ohio Democratic Party became the first state party to recognize a chapter of the Campaign Workers Guild, which represented seasonal campaign organizers during the 2018 midterm election who sought better pay and working conditions.

Interesting factoid at the end, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe this is about taking out the union as well.

Outsource the seasonal campaign organizers to a Washington consultancy group, and let them treat your workers like shit, because this is what the Democratic Party is all about in Ohio, I guess.

Hypocrites and morons.

You Heard About that Insurrection?

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We are now seeing evidence that the conspirators began planning in November, which makes the whole “Seditious Conspiracy,” charges a lot easier to prove.

If they manage to flip some of these folks, I think that we are going to see the names from the Trump Administration or Trump Campaign to come up:

Three self-styled militia members charged in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol began soliciting recruits for potential violence within days of the 2020 presidential election, later training in Ohio and North Carolina and organizing travel to Washington with a busload of comrades and a truck of weapons, U.S. authorities alleged Wednesday.

A four-count indictment returned in D.C. laid out fresh details and allegations against Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50 — both of Woodstock, Ohio — and Thomas E. Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va. The three, all U.S. military veterans, are accused of conspiring to obstruct Congress and other counts, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

………

Real-time conversations recovered from a walkie-talkie-style app captured Watkins discussing a group of about 30 to 40 “sticking together and sticking to the plan” during the breach, according to court documents previously filed in the case.

In a 15-page indictment unsealed Wednesday, prosecutors revealed new allegations, accusing Watkins of contacting recruits on Nov. 9, six days after the election, for a “Basic Training” camp outside Columbus, Ohio, in early January so they would be “fighting fit by innaugeration.” Prosecutors also allege that Watkins participated in a “leadership only” conference call via an encrypted app, and that Caldwell arranged with another person bringing “at least one full bus 40+ people coming from N.C.” and weaponry ahead of Jan. 6.

………

In a phone interview last week, Rhodes said Caldwell helped “Stop the Steal” protesters navigate arriving in D.C. for a protest in November but that Caldwell is not a dues-paying member of Oath Keepers and does not hold any leadership position in the organization. Rhodes said he did not know Caldwell to be taking any action on Jan. 6 on behalf of Oath Keepers.

Rhodes said Watkins is a member in Oath Keepers.

In their planning, according to prosecutors, the group cited the perceived direction of President Donald Trump, embracing his false claims of election fraud and readying for a fight in apocalyptic terms.

“Trump wants all able-bodied Patriots to come” to the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, Watkins is quoted as saying on Dec. 29.

“If Trump activates the Insurrection Act, I’d hate to miss it,” she added, according to the indictment.

Asked earlier by a recruit what to prepare for, Watkins allegedly wrote in November that if Biden became president, “our way of life as we know it is over. Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty as AmericIans to fight, kill and die for our rights.”

I would be stunned if Trump associates (Roger Stone?) was not involved in this.

Initial Unemployment Claims and 2020 GDP Today

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Unemployment claims fell by 61,000 to a still horrifyingly high 847,000 and US GDP fell by 3.5% in 2020, the most since the 1946 demobilization.

This is with about $4 trillion in emergency stimulus legislation.

And now we are rushing way too fast to rolling back pandemic measures, which is going to lead another round of shutdowns as ICUs fill up.

We are fucked.

Sikorsky-Boeing Takes Wraps Off Defiant X Design For U.S. Army’s FLRAA | Aviation Week Network

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Much Smaller Footprint than a Tilt Rotor

After putting out a representative demonstrator, Sikorsky has revealed off of its Defiant-X helicopter for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program.

It does not achieve the same speeds as the tilt-rotor competitor V-280 Valor from Bell, 280 kt (520 km/h) from the Bell offering as versus and 250 kt (465 km/h) for the coaxial compound helicopter, but its footprint on the ground and on takeoff and landing, and its agility during takeoff and landing should be significantly greater than the V-280.

Also, the helicopter should be significantly more agile during takeoff, landing, and autorotation, because of lower disk loading.

One lingering uncertainty surrounding the U.S. Army’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft has centered on the service’s ultimate requirements for the advanced rotorcraft that will replace its Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters.

When the Army launched the precursor Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration (JMR TD) program in 2013, it provided industry with a “model performance specification”—placeholder requirements that would allow them to begin designing an aircraft.

The result was a pair of 30,000-lb. gross-weight-class demonstrators—the 280-kt. Bell V-280 Valor tiltrotor and 250-kt. Sikorsky-Boeing SB-1 Defiant, a coaxial rigid-rotor compound helicopter—both substantially larger and faster than the 22,000-lb. gross-weight UH-60M they are designed to replace.

Now, almost halfway through the CDRR phase, the answer to that lingering question about the Army’s requirements may be becoming clearer. The Sikorsky-Boeing team has taken the wraps off its Defiant X offering for FLRAA, and the design differs only in detail externally from the SB-1 now in flight test.

In terms of overall size, the Defiant X has the same operational footprint as the demonstrator, says Jay Macklin, Sikorsky’s director of Future Vertical Lift business development. The Defiant X also fits within the operational footprint of the Black Hawk, which the FLRAA is intended to replace beginning in 2030.

The Defiant X design has been optimized to meet Army requirements for survivability, maneuverability and agility in the objective area, or “at the X,” says Macklin, so that troops can be landed and offloaded quickly and safely during an air assault.

I favor the coaxial helicopter over the tilt rotor.

It seems simpler and safer.

Destroying Wall Street for the Lulz

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If I was a Hedge Fund losing billions to Reddit shitposters, I would get a second job driving for Uber, cut out the Starbuck’s, and skip the avocado toast.

— Jean-Paul Blarte: Mall Cop (@OldPappyThomas) January 27, 2021

This is Beautiful


The Hedge Funds are Pissants

MaY NeEd tO gEt BaiLeD oUt pic.twitter.com/JrGW4hsxyI

— Aimee into the Sun🌹 (@AimeeDemaio) January 27, 2021

Too True


The inevitable sea shanty

to be clear. This has nothing to do with gamestop as a business. They are just a piece of rope being used in a tug of war between internet nerds and wall st suits.

the rally cry on r/wallstreet bets:

“we can remain retarded for longer than they can stay solvent!”

— Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) January 26, 2021

The real bottom line

It appears that a bunch of Redditors have taken down at least 2 hedge funds, and on one side are the titans of Wall Street saying something must be done to stop this, and on the other side is literally everyone else in the world, who are pointing and laughing:

GameStop’s stock price continued to soar in after-hours trading last night to over $300. While many are waiting for it to come crashing back down, it might be too late for some major hedge funds. With the stock still sitting at well over $250 a share (unthinkable just last year when it was trading at under $5) after the market reopened, Melvin Capital, one of the largest hedge funds betting against the company, is reportedly getting out of the game after suffering major losses, seemingly driven out by amateurs trading on their phones and joking on Reddit in what continues to be one of the most bizarre stories of 2021 so far.

“Melvin Capital closed out its short position in GameStop on Tuesday afternoon after taking a huge loss,” the fund’s manager told CNBC this morning.

The firm, which was worth about $12.5 billion before the battle between short sellers and Redditors began, bet big against GameStop and a number of other companies, only to see 30% of the fund disappear over the last few days. That prompted other billionaires to swoop in and lend Melvin $2.75 billion to help cover the losses. Andrew Left, a notorious short-seller activist, also announced in a new YouTube video today that his investment firm moved away from most of its bets against GameStop’s stock at “a loss of 100%.”

………

Meanwhile, the ensuing chaos caused GameStop stock trading to be temporarily halted yet again this morning and caused outages on the trading app Robinhood. Other companies like Blackberry and AMC are also seeing smaller, though still dramatic stock climbs, as Reddit traders attempt to go boost other companies massively shorted by big hedge funds.

All of this is the culmination of a long game that’s been brewing on the WallStreetBets subreddit for a while now as amateur day traders decided to turn the misfortunes of a floundering brick-and-mortar game seller into their cause celebre for dunking on professional investment firms. In some ways it’s a very complicated story driven by the weird mechanics of Wall Street, but in other ways it’s a familiar tale of extremely online people trying to stick it to someone, in part to make a buck, but also for the “lulz.” Here’s a quick rundown of how things got here.

Short version:  A bunch or Redditors, seeing that the moribund console game store GameStop was the most shorted stock in America, decided to take down said short sellers by bidding up the price and creating a “Short Squeeze”.

The mechanism is such that the hedge funds are incredibly exposed to this, and at least one had to be bailed out by other Wall Street Parasites because it was essentially insolvent.

What’s more, it appears that the same thing is happening with AMC Theaters, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Blackberry as I am typing this. (Scroll down) 

One thing that is not clear at this point is whether some other hedge fund type entity might be involved in this on the other side, though even if they did, they have done nothing illegal, since the information, “Let’s do it for the lulz,” is both accurate and publicly available.

One thing that is clear at this point is that this entire affair is showing most of the short selling activity out there serves no useful purpose, and that the arguments in favor of it, basically that shorting stocks create a financial incentive aggressive due diligence of companies, are 6 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.

It is one step removed from the infamous Bucket Shops of the early 1900s.

Nope, No Conspiracy Here

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So, now we discover that the civilian administration of the Pentagon forbade the head of the Washington, DC National Guard for initiating any action in the event that the January 6 protests went pear shaped.

It sounds to me like the White House had a lot more foreknowledge of the Capitol Insurrection, and they the manipulated the instruments of the state for foment those actions.

I’m thinking that former Army Secretary McCarthy has got a lot of  ‘splainin’ to do:

The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher-level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.

Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.

But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said the Pentagon essentially took that power and other authorities away from him ahead of the short-lived insurrection on Jan. 6. That meant he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when he received a panicked phone call from the Capitol Police chief warning that rioters were about to enter the U.S. Capitol.

“All military commanders normally have immediate response authority to protect property, life, and in my case, federal functions — federal property and life,” Walker said in an interview. “But in this instance I did not have that authority.”

Walker and former Army secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, along with other top officials, briefed the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday behind closed doors about the events, the beginning of what is likely to become a robust congressional inquiry into the preparations for a rally that devolved into a riot at the Capitol, resulting in five people dead and representing a significant security failure.

………

But the restrictions the Pentagon placed on Walker also contributed to the delay. He needed to wait for approval from McCarthy and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller before dispatching troops, even though some 40 soldiers were on standby as a quick reaction force. That standby force had been assembled in case the few hundred Guard members deployed that day on the District’s streets to assist police with traffic control and crowd management needed help, Walker said.

………

McCarthy said he worked hard to ensure authority was pushed back down the chain of command to Walker ahead of the inauguration, during which Walker oversaw the 25,600 troops that came to the District. As for the preparations ahead of Jan. 6, McCarthy said, “It was everyone just being very careful. When you go back to times when we’ve done this, like June, we wanted to make sure we were very careful about the employment — careful about fragmentary orders.”

Had he not been restricted, Walker said he could have dispatched members of the D.C. Guard sooner. Asked how quickly troops could have reached the Capitol, which is two miles from the D.C. Guard headquarters at the Armory, Walker said, “With all deliberate speed — I mean, they’re right down the street.”

………

Walker recalled how Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who has since resigned, asked him on a call in the run-up to Jan. 6 to have National Guard troops at the ready.

“All he said was, ‘If I call you, will you be able to help?’ ” Walker said. “And I said, ‘Yes, but I need permission. So send a formal request,’ and I never got it, until after the fact.”

The request came, but only at 1:49 p.m. the day of the attempted insurrection. Sund called Walker to say rioters were about to breach the building and the Capitol Police would soon request urgent backup.

“I told him I had to get permission from the secretary of the Army and I would send him all available guardsmen but as soon as I got permission to do so,” Walker said. “I sent a message to the leadership of the Army, letting them know the request that I had received from Chief Sund.”

Permission from the Pentagon to activate the full D.C. Guard wouldn’t come for another hour and fifteen minutes, according to a Defense Department timeline of events, as members of Congress barricaded themselves in their offices and hid from a marauding horde trying to undo the results of the Nov. 3 election. It would take nearly three hours before Miller authorized the D.C. Guard to “re-mission” and help the Capitol Police establish a perimeter around the Capitol.

………

In an interview with The Post, Sund recalled Army staff director, Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, saying, “I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing a police line with the Capitol in the background.”

Piatt, in a statement, initially saidhe didn’t make those remarks or any comments similar to them. Later, he backtracked, saying he didn’t recall citing such concerns but note-takers in the room told him he may have said that. Piatt, who wasn’t in the chain of command, was leading the call while waiting for the Army secretary to receive approval for the full activation of the D.C. Guard from Miller.

………

Memos obtained by The Post show how tightly the Pentagon restricted Walker ahead of the events.

In a Jan. 5 memo, the Army secretary, who is Walker’s direct superior in the chain of command, prohibited him from deploying the quick reaction force composed of 40 soldiers on his own and said any rollout of that standby group would first require a “concept of operation,” an exceptional requirement given that the force is supposed to respond to emergencies.

McCarthy was also restricted by his superior, Miller. In a Jan. 4 memo, McCarthy was prohibited from deploying D.C. Guard members with weapons, helmets, body armor or riot control agents without defense secretary approval. McCarthy retained the power to deploy the quick reaction force “only as a last resort.”

It’s patently clear that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, and possibly elements of the uniformed services, intended to hamstring an effective response against a a violent protest against the electoral vote certification.

What needs to be known now is how the White House passed these directives down the chain of command.

It’s important for the impeachment.

I, for One, Welcome Our New Inflatable Rat Overlords

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Now that Joe Biden has fired corrupt National Labor Relations Board general counsel Peter Robb, it appears that Scabby the Rat is safe for now.

Robb, a former union busting lawyer, has been on a jihad against the union mascot Scabby the Rate, First Amendment be damned.

Hopefully, the new NLRB council won’t be such a corrupt unethical bastard:

The fate of Scabby the Rat is up in the air after President Joe Biden forced out National Labor Relations Board general counsel Peter Robb, who had made it one of his top priorities to deflate the union protest symbol, and tapped a new acting general counsel on Monday.

In one of his first actsafter taking office Jan. 20, Biden sent the Trump-appointed Robb and deputy NLRB general counsel Alice Stock packing. On Monday, Biden tapped NLRB Chicago regional director Peter Sung Ohrto be acting general counsel.

Legal experts say those shake-ups could mean the end of Robb’s attempt to muzzle the ratbased on a legal theorythat unions violate the National Labor Relations Act when they deploy the fanged, red-eyed rodent in so-called secondary boycotts.

………

And the general counsel has the authority to decide which cases can continue to proceed before the board, said Alyssa Busse, a union-side attorney at Allison Slutsky & Kennedy PC, which could mean the end of cases that seek to upend precedent protecting the inflatable pest.

“Even though the general counsel is separate from the board, the general counsel still has significant influence on which cases are brought before the board,” Busse said.

………

The general counsel’s office is challenging an NLRB administrative judge’s ruling that the display, which shamed Lippert “for harboring rat contractors,” may have embarrassed company officials but did not block customers or workers. Robb wanted the board to consider doing away with two Obama era decisions that gave workers the right to use banners and Scabby during secondary protests as long as they were not confrontational or disruptive.

In October, the NLRB sought public inputon whether it “should alter its standard” and limit workers’ rights to display the rat and banners during secondary protests.

Those comments, now submitted to the board, put the case even closer to a decision that could upend the current law, clarify it or leave it untouched.

………

But a more likely path is that the acting general counsel will drop the case against Lippert Components, according to Andrew D. Midgen, an attorney at labor-side firm Pitta LLP.

“Even though the [Lippert] case is fully briefed, the acting GC has the authority to withdraw the complaint. There are good grounds within the NLRA and Supreme Court precedent that decides prosecutorial and adjudicatory decision-making within the agency,” Midgen said. “As long as it’s a prosecutorial decision, then the final authority rests within the acting GC. The decision as to whether to pursue a complaint is a prosecutorial decision.”

Whether the board issues a decision on the Lippert case, or another case pending at the board over Scabby, Ohr could also change the guidance to NLRB regional offices on how to handle relevant cases and what legal theories they must pursue, experts said.

Robb’s office issued multiple memos in recent years ordering regional offices to pursue cases in which unions allegedly violated the NLRA by using the rat and other long-recognized symbols of labor protests that often pop up during union demonstrations.

Here’s hoping that this is the beginning of a trend.

One of the worst things that Obama did when he got into office was to knife labor in the back by abandoning the  the Employee Free Choice Act.

It was horrible policy, and worse politics.

Holy Shit! He’s Launching the Orbital Laser Satellites!

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I am referring to Elon Musk, who is in the process of adding lasers to his massive StarLink internet satellite constellation.

I understand thatthe official line is that this a technology that involves communications capability, and no ability to do damage, but he would say that, wouldn’t he

Let’s look at the check list:

  • Trace of a vaguely German accent
  • Eccentric megalomaniac
  • Massive wealth
  • Space lasers
  • Expensive cars
  • Legions of fanatical followers
  • White Persian cat

For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hide the Persian Cats!!!!

Of course, I know that the added lasers are to facilitate satellite to satellite communications, and that they are not a part of any weapons system ……… Yet.

But you have to admit that the Bond Villain aspects of Musk’s life are striking.

Bill Gates is now a Mass Murderer

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Oxford promised to make their vaccine open source, and then Bill Gates strong-armed them into selling exclusive rights to AstraZeneca, because Bill Gates is philosophically opposed to the free exchange of information.

There will be tens of thousands of people will die of Covid-19, particularly in poor countries, because open source gives him butt-hurt.

Next time you see Bill Gates, ask him why he decided to kill thousands.

More chilling is that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is dedicated to promulgating his twisted view of public health on the rest of the world:

In a business driven by profit, vaccines have a problem. They’re not very profitable — at least not without government subsidies. Pharma companies favor expensive medicines that must be taken repeatedly and generate revenue for years or decades. Vaccines are often given only once or twice. In many parts of the world, established vaccines cost a few dollars per dose or less.

Last year only four companies were making vaccines for the U.S. market, down from more than 20 in the 1970s. As recently as Feb. 11, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, complained that no major drug company had committed to “step up” to make a coronavirus vaccine, calling the situation “very difficult and frustrating.”

Oxford University surprised and pleased advocates of overhauling the vaccine business in April by promising to donate the rights to its promising coronavirus vaccine to any drugmaker.

………

A few weeks later, Oxford—urged on by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—reversed course. It signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices—with the less-publicized potential for Oxford to eventually make millions from the deal and win plenty of prestige.

………

Even as governments shower money on an industry that has not made vaccines a priority in the past, critics say, failure to alter the basic model means drug industry executives and their shareholders will get rich with no assurance that future vaccines will be inexpensively available to all.

“If there were ever an opportunity” to change the economics of vaccine development, “this would have been it,” said Ameet Sarpatwari, an epidemiologist and lawyer at Harvard Medical School who studies drug-pricing regulation. Instead, “it is business as usual, where the manufacturers are getting exclusive rights and we are hoping on the basis of public sentiment that they will price their products responsibly.”

………

Oxford backed off from its open-license pledge after the Gates Foundation urged it to find a big-company partner to get its vaccine to market.

“We went to Oxford and said, Hey, you’re doing brilliant work,” Bill Gates told reporters on June 3, a transcript shows. “But … you really need to team up.” The comments were first reported by Bloomberg.

AstraZeneca, one of the U.K.’s two major pharma companies, may have demanded an exclusive license in return for doing a deal, said Ken Shadlen, a professor at the London School of Economics and an authority on pharma patents—a theory supported by comments from CEO Soriot.

“I think IP [intellectual property, or exclusive patents] is a fundamental part of our industry and if you don’t protect IP, then essentially there is no incentive for anybody to innovate,” Soriot told the newspaper The Telegraphin May.

Some see the Gates Foundation, a heavy funder of Gavi, CEPI and many other vaccine projects, as supporting traditional patent rights for pharma companies.

“[Bill] Gates has staked out this outsized role in the vaccine world,” Love said. “He has an ideological belief that the intellectual property system is a wonderful mechanism that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.”

In just the next year, it is clear Bill Gates will ultimately be responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden was on 9/11.

Tweet of the Day

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Larry Hogan is still Governor of Maryland, but TBF Covid is blocking Tom’s primary source of information – a humble taxi driver with sharp geopolitical insights. pic.twitter.com/URQgqNx0OV

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) January 25, 2021

Just so you know, as New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and columnist Tom Friedman does not, Larry Hogan is still governor of Maryland, where Friedman lives.

Seriously, Tom “The Mustache of Inanity” Friedman has finally exceeded the capacity for others to mock him.

Maybe he should get a Pulitzer for self-mockery.

Impeach ……… Again

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Let’s be clear, inciting sedition, even if it might be protected by the 1st amendment, and I am not sure, I am an engineer, not a lawyer dammit,* but it can still be a legitimate charge for an impeachment.

So I do approve of the new impeachment charges that the House just delivered to the Senate.

If he is convicted, he loses his pension, and his secret service protection, and it would likely result in his being forbidden from holding office ever again.

I will note that impeachment is, and has always been intended to be, a political process in addition to being a quasi-judicial process, and the Democrats must jam up the Republicans as much as is humanly possible.

Make them pay for their obsequious prevarication with regard to Trump:

Nine House managers walked across the Capitol to inform the Senate that they were ready to prosecute the former president for “incitement of insurrection.” And the Justice Department opens inquiry into an “improper attempt” by officials to overturn the presidential election.

At this point, even many members of the “Q Collective” have realized that Trump screwed them, and in the still quite spaces the Republican establishment wants him gone too.

Making this establishment go to the mat for an inverted traffic cone is just desserts.

 *I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!†
†Yes, I know, it’s kind of a stretch, but I cannot resist going all Dr. McCoy.

Linkage

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What crimes were committed when the Capitol was stormed?  A lawyer has the answers:

Today in Schadenfreude

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The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Alex Jones can be sued for libel by parents of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims.  (Also various other sundry people that he accused of being false flag actors)

It was enough of a slam dunk that they did not even bother to write an opinion:

An empire built on conjecture, conspiracy and a series of fake homeopathic cures for various ailments stands to be sued into oblivion after a Friday ruling by the Supreme Court of Texas.

Without comment, the Lone Star State’s highest civil court found that America’s foremost conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and his flagship media outlet, InfoWars, are subject to liability in four separate defamation lawsuits filed over the past two-plus years. Those lawsuits were filed by parents of children who were killed during the Sandy Hook massacre and by a man Jones and his network falsely identified as the perpetrator of the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

………

Immediately after the 2012 shooting that left 20 children and six teachers dead in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones used his by-then vast platform to spread the idea that the murders were part of a “false flag” operation meant to scare the population into giving up their guns and Second Amendment rights. Jones also smeared the parents of the dead children, calling them “crisis actors.” None of those claims were true but the pernicious ideas gained traction among the easily-influenced.

………

“Our clients have been tormented for five years by Mr. Jones’ ghoulish accusations that they are actors who faked their children’s deaths as part of a fraud on the American people,” Bankston said in a statement at the time, “Enough is enough.”

………

Marcel Fontane, a Massachusetts resident who has never been to Florida, also sued Jones and InfoWars during the spring of 2018 after being singled out by Jones and InfoWars reporter Kit Daniels–falsely accusing him of being the Parkland shooter in a vain attempt to link the massacre to the political far-left. The outlet also published a photograph of Fontaine wearing a satirical t-shirt depicting several former Communist historical figures.

Here’s hoping that they take him for all he has.

To quote Billie Ray Velentine from the movie Trading Places, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way to hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.”

H/t Ecop at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Fuck Me, I Agree With Pat Buchanan’s Rag

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At the American Conservative, they write, “Don’t Let the Riots Legitimize Facial Recognition Tech,” and they are correct.

Law enforcement has an endless appetite for expansion of their powers, and will always do so.

Letting the Capitol insurrection to give additional powers to the US State Security Apparatus is a bad idea, particularly given the predilection of law enforcement to ignore right wing terrorists to go after left wing protesters.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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In response to the Supreme Court ruling Carpenter v. United States in 2018, whcih stated that law enforcement had to get a warrant to track people via their cell phones, elements of the US State Security Apparatus are purchasing exactly the same data from commercial suppliers without a warrant.

We need to make it illegal for US law enforcement to get private data from commercial suppliers that would otherwise require a warrant, if just because it would knock the pins out from underneath literal vampire* capitalist Peter Thiel’s business plan for Palantir.

Purchasing commercial information should not be allowed to be an excuse for using commercial vendor as a cut-out to the 4th amendment:

A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times.

Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years, agency officials disclosed in a memo they wrote for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

The disclosure sheds light on an emerging loophole in privacy law during the digital age: In a landmark 2018 ruling known as the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the government to obtain a warrant to compel phone companies to turn over location data about their customers. But the government can instead buy similar data from a broker — and does not believe it needs a warrant to do so.

“D.I.A. does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency memo said.

Mr. Wyden has made clear that he intends to propose legislation to add safeguards for Americans’ privacy in connection with commercially available location data. In a Senate speech this week, he denounced circumstances “in which the government, instead of getting an order, just goes out and purchases the private records of Americans from these sleazy and unregulated commercial data brokers who are simply above the law.”

………

It has been known that the government sometimes uses such data for law enforcement purposes on domestic soil.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year about law enforcement agencies using such data. In particular, it found, two agencies in the Department of Homeland Security — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection — have used the data in patrolling the border and investigating immigrants who were later arrested.

………

The military has also been known to sometimes use location data for intelligence purposes.

In November, Vice’s Motherboard tech blog reported that Muslim Pro, a Muslim prayer and Quran app, had sent its users’ location data to a broker called X-Mode that in turn sold it to defense contractors and the U.S. military. Muslim Pro then said it would stop sharing data with X-Mode, and Apple and Google said they would ban apps that use the company’s tracking software from phones running their mobile operating systems.

………

Mr. Wyden’s coming legislation on the topic appears likely to be swept into a larger surveillance debate that flared in Congress last year before it temporarily ran aground after erratic statements by President Donald J. Trump, as he stoked his grievances over the Russia investigation, threatening to veto the bill and not making clear what would satisfy him.

The the 4th amendment should never be for sale.

*I do mean this characterization of Thiel literally.  He is literally a vampire who wants to use the blood of the young to extend his lifespan.