Month: December 2013

Props to Krugman………

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A few days ago, Paul Krugman announced that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) was no big deal.

I think that he got this very wrong, because he viewed it through the lens of comparative advantage, which is, after all pretty much his specialty in economics.

It was a classic, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” error.

He misses the fact that the objections to the TPP have nothing to do with so-called free trade, and everything to do with it being structured to benefit the rent seekers in IP and finance by strengthening the regulations on IP, and by preventing meaningful regulation on finance and capital flows, in addition to the very basic infringements on sovereignty that the entire regime entails.

Well, Krugman has admitted that his initial comments were hasty and a bit ill considered:

Dean Baker takes me to task over the Trans Pacific trade deal, arguing that it’s not really about trade — that the important (and harmful) stuff involves regulation and intellectual property rights.

I’m sympathetic to this argument; this was true, for example, of DR-CAFTA, the free trade agreement with Central America, which ended up being largely about pharma patents. Is TPP equally bad? I’ll do some homework and get back to you.

This reflects well on him.

It’s an admission that he did not consider the issues as comprehensively as he should have, with a promise of further comments, without any excuses.

Now I Know Where Sharon* Gets It From….

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I’m at my mother-in-laws, tweaking her computer. (Right now, I am waiting for updates to install)

Additionally, there were some documents she could not find.

They were on her kitchen table, and now she cannot find them.

Well, she did find them.  It turned out that she had put them away, in the proper folder, in the proper drawer, in her filing cabinet.

If I had a dollar for each time that Sharon* did something list this, I’d be a part of the 1%.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, She Who Must Be Obeyed, my wife.

They Really do Loathe Women’s Sexuality

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Hatred and fear of women actually enjoying sex, so they must be punished, even if it is a rape:

The Republican-dominated Michigan state legislature pushed through a bill on Wednesday requiring women to purchase separate insurance policies if they want to have an abortion, the Detroit Free Press reported.

“I don’t think elective abortion should be a part of insurance,” state Rep. Nancy Jenkins (R) told the Free Press. “This doesn’t affect access to abortion. It will still be legal when this law takes effect. Who should be required to pay? Not Michigan taxpayers.”

However, the law, which takes effect in early 2014, will also ban women from purchasing the policy after becoming pregnant under any circumstances, including rape and incest, causing opponents to refer to it as a policy on “rape insurance.”

The bill passed by a 27-11 margin in the Senate, and a 62-47 vote in the House, mostly along party lines. According to the Associated Press, state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) said during the debate that she was raped 20 years ago.

“Thank God it didn’t result in a pregnancy because I can’t imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy from an attacker,” Whitmer was quoted as saying. “If this were law then and I had become pregnant, I would not be able to have coverage because of this. How extreme, how extreme does this measure need to be?”

What is wrong with these people?

This is not ignorance, it is raw hatred and evil.

This Would Be Followed by a Suspicious Small Plane Crash

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An NSA official has mooted the idea that Edward Snowden be granted amnesty in exchange for his giving back all the documents:

A National Security Agency official said in an interview released Friday that he would be open to cutting an amnesty deal with intelligence leaker Edward Snowden if he agreed to stop divulging secret documents.

Rick Ledgett, who heads the NSA’s task force investigating the damage from the Snowden leaks, told CBS television’s “60 Minutes” program that some but not all of his colleagues share his view.

“My personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about” a possible deal, said Ledgett, according to excerpts of the interview due to air Sunday.

But Snowden would have to provide firm assurances that the remaining documents would be secured.

“My bar for those assurances would be very high… more than just an assertion on his part,” said Ledgett.

And if Snowden were to accept this, and then return to the United States, they would find a way to imprison him or kill him anyway.

Omerta must be enforced.

You Know that Whole Inflation Running Wild Thing?

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Not so much:

Wholesale prices in the U.S. declined for a third month in November, reflecting lower costs for energy and cars.

The 0.1 percent drop in the producer-price index followed a 0.2 percent decrease the prior month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 77 economists called for no change. The so-called core measure, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.1 percent.

Prices of goods and materials used in the earlier stages of production fell for a second month as slow improvement in global markets limits demand. Scant signs of accelerating inflation indicate Federal Reserve policy makers meeting next week have more room to maintain their unprecedented $85 billion in monthly asset purchases in order to help spur the expansion.

“Inflation remains quite tame,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics Ltd. in Valhalla, New York, who correctly projected the drop in prices. “Over the course of the next year, the core numbers will drift up a little bit as the economy remains healthy and unemployment keeps falling.”

An important thing to note is that the inflation hawks have been wrong on everything this time around.

It Ain’t the F%$#-Up, It’s the Cover-Up

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 Remember yesterday, when I wrote about how a crony of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie closed entry lanes on the George Washington Bridge in what appeared to be retribution for the (Democratic) mayor of Fort Lee, NJ for not endorsing him?

Well, I figured that this was an instance of some underling deciding to take initiative, kind of like when Nixon was in the White House, when he would rant in private, and say something like, “Someone should shoot that SOB,” and aide Chuck Coleson would go and buy a gun.

It’s one of the problems that one can have with evil minions. Sometimes they are too enthusiastic.

Well, maybe not so much.  Because it has now been revealed that Governor Christie made a private call to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asking him to instruct the head of the Port Authority to quash the investigation:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week to complain about a Cuomo appointee’s handling of a growing controversy over traffic pattern changes on the George Washington Bridge, a person familiar with the matter said.

 Mr. Christie, a Republican, complained in a private phone call to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, that Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was pressing too hard to get to the bottom of why the number of toll lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. was cut from three to one in early September, according to this person. The lane closures occurred without notice to local authorities, officials have said, and snarled traffic for a week in the small borough on the Hudson River bluffs.

 Messrs. Cuomo and Christie share control of the Port Authority, which oversees Hudson River bridges and tunnels and the region’s airports and is rebuilding the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan.

 Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have accused Christie appointees of ordering the lane closures to punish Fort Lee’s mayor, Democrat Mark Sokolich, for not endorsing the governor’s re-election campaign. Mr. Christie’s campaign has denied that, and his Port Authority team has said the lanes were closed to study traffic on the bridge.

 A spokesman for Mr. Christie said the governor talks to Mr. Cuomo regularly “on any number of mutual-interest topics. Those conversations are private.”

 A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo declined to comment.

 The call between the governors was an illustration of how the controversy has mushroomed into a headache for Mr. Christie. One of his top representatives at the authority, David Wildstein, resigned last week, citing the bridge closures. Democratic calls for the resignation of another top authority aide, Bill Baroni, have escalated this week.

It wasn’t clear how Mr. Cuomo responded to Mr. Christie’s call or if it was the first time Mr. Christie had lodged a complaint.

 The exchange appears to stand in contrast to Mr. Christie’s public remarks on the bridge matter. At a briefing on Dec. 2, the governor mocked a legislative inquiry on the lane closures and joked that he himself had moved the traffic cones that winnowed local access to the bridge.

The perspective on this whole matter has just shifted.

Yesterday, the conventional wisdom was, “Why did Christie hire such a stupid motherF%$#er?”

Today, the question is, “What does Chris Christie have to hide?”

Tinfoil Hat Time

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Loretta Fuddy, the director of the Hawaii Department of Health, was killed in a plane crash.

Ms. Fuddy was the official who released Obama’s “Long Form” birth certificate.

Within minutes, “whacko, my parents are first cousins, X-Files wannabe, black helicopter, tinfoil hat wearing, stupid, dim-witted, thinks pro wrestling is real,”* lunatic teabaggers were already saying that she was murdered for knowing too much:

When President Obama marched into the White House briefing room with his Hawaiian birth certificate in April 2011, he said: “I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.”

How right he was. The release of his long-form birth certificate did not eliminate the “birther” movement, which wrongly contends that Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president. Although conspiracists had demanded its release, once he made public the document it merely shifted the debate. Some birthers accused Obama of forgery, while others turned their focus to his college transcripts in hopes of proving that he had applied for admission as a foreign student. (He had not.)

And this week, birthers seized on a plane crash off Hawaii that killed one person: state public health Director Loretta Fuddy, the woman who verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate.

Skeptics turned to social media Thursday to suggest that Obama had played some role in Fuddy’s death. Twitter posts included: “The WH tying up loose ends?” “What did she really know?” and “R.I.P. Loretta Fuddy — we’ll know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama, regardless.”

Donald Trump, a longtime doubter of Obama’s birthplace, also weighed in on Twitter: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

That reaction didn’t surprise those who study conspiracy theorists.

Wankers.

*Sorry, I think that I just channeled the comedian Denis Leary.

European Parliament Just Sent a Big “F%$# You” to the US State Security Apparatus

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The European Parliament has voted to invite NSA Leaker Edward Snowden to testify:

The European parliament has voted to formally invite Edward Snowden to give testimony on NSA spying, despite opposition from conservative MEPs. If the US whistleblower provides answers to the questions compiled by parliamentarians in time, a hearing via video link could take place in early January.

It had looked on Wednesday as if European conservatives were trying to kick the hearing into the long grass. The European People’s party (EPP), the alliance of centre-right parties, had raised a number of concerns about inviting Snowden for a hearing, noting that it could endanger the transatlantic trade agreement with the US.

But on Thursday morning, the leaders of the main political groupings in the European parliament voted to invite Snowden. In the coming weeks, questions will be compiled and then forwarded to the former NSA contractor’s lawyer, with roughly two questions coming from each political group.

Labour MEP Claude Moraes, the lead rapporteur for the European parliament inquiry on the mass surveillance of EU citizens, welcomed the outcome of the vote and promised that questioning would be “rigorous and fair”.

This is a huge diss to both the United States and its poodles in the UK.

I think that Bush damaged the stand of the United States in the world, because much of the world, particularly in Europe, realized that the country was being run by disingenuous belligerent nut-jobs.

What Obama further diminished the standing of the US because, as he has embraced and extended Bush era policies, that Bush was not an outlier, but rather very much in line with the consensus in Washington, DC.

It’s that moment when saying, “If only the Czar knew,” for years, you realize that the Czar does know, and has always know.

H/t Ole Texan.

Supreme Court Considers the Death of the 5thAmendment

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One of the foundations of our civil rights is that you have the right not to testify against yourself, and that asserting this right cannot be used against you.

In other words, not testifying cannot be used against you, whether in the trial or in the sentencing, except it appears in the punishment phase of a death penalty case:

As in many recent cases applying limits on relief contained in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s text (AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(1)), Wednesday’s argument in White v. Woodall involved mind-numbing hairsplitting. On the state’s side, Susan Lenz, an attorney in the office of Kentucky’s attorney general, sought to explain why Woodall’s entitlement to a “no-adverse-inference” instruction at the punishment phase of his capital trial was not “clearly established” at the time the Kentucky courts rejected his constitutional claim. Yes, the Supreme Court had held that the Fifth Amendment entitles a defendant to a no-adverse-inference instruction at trial (Carter v. Kentucky). Yes, the Court had announced that the right against self-incrimination applies in punishment as well as trial proceedings (Estelle v. Smith). And, yes, the Court had reversed a sentence where a trial court had actually made an adverse inference regarding a contested fact based on a defendant’s silence at sentencing (Mitchell v. United States). But here, Lenz argued, the defendant sought a no-adverse-inference instruction when he had conceded all of the facts concerning his death eligibility. Because the state had already satisfied its burden of proof, the defendant’s silence would not be used to make the state’s case.

Kentucky is arguing that a refusal to testify can be used as affirmative evidence of lack of remorse, and hence used to sentence him to death.

Delightful.

Here’s hoping that the Supreme Court makes the right decision, but I doubt it.

I Don’t Mean to Belabor the Obvious, but Raul Castro is Not Adolph Hilter

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Jon Stewart again, observing that shaking the hands of another world leader with whom we have poor relations at a funeral for a man who invited his own jailer to his inauguration is not Munich.

I am waiting for a politician to realize that the pandering to the delusional demands of the right wing of the Cuban-American is neither good policy nor good politics, and to tell them to go pound sand.

It’s been 55 years since Castro took over Cuba, get over it.

Remember the Satanists Who Wanted a Monument at the Oklahoma Capitol?

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While the committee who makes the decision in Oklahoma could (but shouldn’t) argue that Satanism is not a “real” religion, or too
on the “fringe”, neither of these arguments would apply to Hindus, who have somewhere around 1 Billion adherents world wide, and so the request by the Universal Society of Hinduism place a statue of Lord Hanuman: (shown)

A week after the Satanic Temple said they wanted to put up a monument outside the Oklahoma Capitol building (in response to a Ten Commandments monument already on the grounds), a Hindu group is following in their footsteps.

Activist Rajan Zed put out a press release today saying that his group, the Universal Society of Hinduism, would be applying for a monument of their own outside the Capitol building, this one honoring Lord Hanuman:

One depiction of Lord Hanuman

[Zed] said that if the Oklahoma State Capitol was open to different monuments, we would love to have a statue of Lord Hanuman, who was greatly revered and worshipped and known for incredible strength and was perfect grammarian.

…

Rajan Zed stated that he had written to Oklahoma State Capitol Preservation Commission Chair Trait Thompson and others for detailed procedure, required forms, conditions to be met for approval, size and dimensions of the statue, etc., for permission to erect the Lord Hanuman statue, which they planned to make big and weather-proof.


If the Commission votes yes on the proposal, conservatives will flip out.

If they vote no, they’re just inviting a lawsuit.

I have no sympathies for the Talibaptist Neanderthals in Oklahoma who wanted to inflict their religion on the society at large.

They made their bed, let them lie in it.

As an aside, I think that the various American Indian tribes in Oklahoma should apply as well.  They are very much a part of Oklahoma’s heritage.

Vacation in Uruguay

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The final legislative hurdle has been cleared, and Uruguay legalized growing and selling marijuana:

The world’s most far-reaching cannabis law has been passed by the Uruguayan parliament, opening the way for the state to regulate the production, distribution, sale and consumption of the planet’s favourite illegal drug.

The law, effective from next year, will: allow registered users to buy up to 40g of marijuana a month from a chemist’s; registered growers to keep up to six plants; and cannabis clubs to have up to 45 members and cultivate as many as 99 plants.

A government-run cannabis institute will set the price – initially likely to be close to the current black market rate of $1 a gramme – and monitor the impact of the programme, which aims to bring the industry under state control and push illegal traffickers out of business.

Julio Bango, one of the politicians who helped draft the bill, said it would probably be four months until the first harvest of legal cannabis, by which time the government would have a licensing system in place. “We know this has generated an international debate and we hope it brings another element to discussions about a model [the war on drugs] that has totally failed and that has generated the opposite results from what it set out to achieve.”

I think that I’m getting old though, because if I went to Uruguay, I’d be excited about visiting the wreck of the Graf Spee.

Major Supreme Court Not-Ruling on Labor Organizing

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After giving cert (accepting) the case, the Supreme Court has dismissed the case, essentially saying, “Oops, my bad.”

Unions dodged a bullet today when the Supreme Court took the unusual step of dismissing the strange and possibly disastrous case of Mulhall v. Unite Here Local 355 as “improvidently granted.”

Though the dismissal leaves some bad law in place in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Florida, Alabama and Georgia, labor should nonetheless breathe a sigh of relief.

In Mulhall, a Florida casino employee backed by the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW) argued that neutrality agreements violate an anti-bribery provision in the Taft Hartley Act of 1947 and therefore constitute a federal crime.

Making neutrality agreements a crime would have struck at the heart of organizing as it is practiced today. The neutrality approach—in which the employer agrees not to oppose an organizing campaign—has been the mode of choice in most union drives since the ‘90s. The employer usually further promises to “card check,” which means that it will recognize the union if a majority of the employees sign cards stating their desire for union representation.

………

Although this was a bad ruling, letting it stand would have been less dangerous than the approach Unite Here took—appealing it to the Supreme Court and giving them the chance to invalidate neutrality agreements entirely. Though incorrectly reasoned, the 11th Circuit decision did not end neutrality agreements as we know them. The precedent may have caused some problems for unions in the 11th Circuit by scaring some potentially cooperative employers into demanding NLRB elections, by inviting additional lawsuits from the NRTW (which uses “strategic litigation” to “eliminate coercive union power and compulsory unionism abuses”), or by posing a possible danger in the hands of a future, zealous Republican U.S. Attorney in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. However, the case did not pose an immediate threat that warranted bringing this case before the Supreme Court—a court that has been found to be the most pro-business Supreme Court since World War II.

I’m not sure of his analysis, but the dismissal is profoundly odd.

  • They accepted the case.
  • They had oral arguments.
  • Then they dismissed the case.

My guess right now is that the Supreme Court has 5 justices more or less inclined to rule that neutrality agreements are bribery (WTF?!?!?!), but one, or two, of the 5 decided that they needed some less expansive cases to build a foundation to justify to their partisan goal of gutting organized labor.

If you want to look at the legal minutae here, try SCOTUS blog.