Month: July 2017

France is About to Get What it Voted For

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I admit that the French voters were caught between the Scylla and Charbdris in the second round of voting for President. 

While Emmanuel Macron was in a number of ways a better choice than Marine Le Pen, but both the self-absorbed banker and the polished bigot were a losing proposition for the French people.

Now they have Macron, and they know that in addition to having the values of a lifelong banker, he has the ego of one as well.

First, is is attempting to make Frances nearly dictatorial Presidency even more overbearing by aggressively issuing and changing regulation by decree.

In particular, he is fixated on gutting worker protections in France, because ……… Capitalism.

Second, Macron, someone for whom distancing France from the EU is unthinkable, is looking to shower tax cuts on bankers and the finance industry, because as a banker, he believes that whatever is good for the bankers is good for the country:

The French Prime Minister on Friday laid out a raft of measures aimed at boosting Paris’s attractiveness to high finance in order to cash in on Britain’s exit from the European Union, including cutting income tax for high earning bankers and opening international schools.

France continues to make eyes at London’s bankers and on Friday the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe laid out a raft of measures to attract financiers who may have to leave London when the UK leaves the EU.

Among them are scrapping a plan to widen a current 0.3 percent tax on financial transactions, eliminating the top income tax bracket for top earning bankers (those picking up over €150,000 a year), and keeping bonuses out of the calculation of severance pay for “risk-takers” such as stockbrokers in order to make redundancies less expensive.

Those measures might have been unthinkable in France under the previous government of former President François Hollande, who famously declared the world of finance was his “enemy”, but given the fight for the scraps from the Brexit fallout, France under former banker Emmanuel Macron seems prepared to do whatever it takes to fight off the competition.

This really isn’t about competing with Frankfurt or Brussels, they simply lack the living infrastructure to appeal to the banksters, the bankers who would want to move there already live in these (dull) cities or (even duller) Switzerland.

Places like Madrid and Rome are simply too unstable politically and socially to compete, given the secessionist movements (Spain) and a potential Greek style economic collapse (Italy).

I suppose that Amsterdam might be a possibility, but it’s rather eclectic nature (see their red light district, defacto legalization of pot, etc.) might require a significant change in the governance and culture of that city.

The real reason that he is making much of a competition for bankers. even though it’s pretty clear that they contribute to the overall well-being of society in the same manner that tapeworms contribute to the overall well-being of a dog, is because he wants to make nice with People Like Him.

It’s bankster tribalism, and the French people will suffer for it.

Thankfully, his latter effort might be blunted by EU budget rules, as it would open a gaping hole in the French budget, and the Germans won’t tolerate that, both because they fetishized balanced budgets, and because want the to draw as as much of the finance industry to Germany as possible.

Now We Know Why the Republicans Hate the CFPB

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has just issued a rule for banks that prohibits them from using arbitration agreements to ban class action suits:

In roughly 240 days from now, banks and other financial companies will no longer be allowed to prohibit customers from banding together in class-action lawsuits through the use of binding arbitration clauses, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today released a long-awaited finalized rule on arbitration.

The 775-page rule [PDF] doesn’t ban the use of forced arbitration clauses outright, but it dictates when financial institutions, lenders, and others can use the provisions and creates specific language to be included in consumer contracts. 

………

The most troubling aspect of arbitration clauses is the fact they almost universally contain bans on class actions. This means that if several customers are all wronged by a bank in the same way, they must each go through the arbitration process individually.

To make matters worse, arbitration rulings are final, even when the arbitrator made an error that would have changed the outcome. In some instances, the arbitrator doesn’t even give a reason for their decision — just a simple ruling in favor of one party.

………

Instead, affected companies can still use arbitration rules in their contracts with individual customers, but they can not use these clauses to stop consumers from being part of a group action.
The rule includes specific language that companies must use if they include an arbitration clause in a new contract.

The rule, which will take effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register and become enforceable after 241 days, does not apply to all consumer contracts. For instance, the CFPB notes that existing accounts are not subject to the arbitration ban.

………

In addition to prohibiting certain uses of forced arbitration, the CFPB’s rule aims to make the arbitration process more transparent.

Because companies claim that arbitration actually benefits consumers, these businesses will be required to provide information to the CFPB regarding the number of arbitration claims that are filed against it and details on the awards provided to consumers who arbitrate.

The information such as initial claims, counterclaims, answers to claims, and awards issued in arbitration must be submitted to the CFPB with customer information redacted. The Bureau intends to publish these redacted materials on its website beginning in July 2019.

By gathering this data the CFPB says it will be enabled to better understand and monitor arbitration, including whether the process itself is fair.

Of course, this is an anathema to Republicans:  They want to ensure that there is no accountability of big business ever, because they should be ordinary folks’ lord and master.

It’s a toxic mix of neo-feudalism, Objectivism, and class bigotry that drives Republicans, and it ain’t pretty.

Here is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s press release.

Linkage

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John Oliver on Sinclair Group and media consolidation in the local news sphere:

Not Enough Bullets

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Hedge fund workers in London, England, have been given a button on their desk to order Champagne:

Soho office workers will be able to order a glass of champagne for their desks at the touch of a button in a new £100 million “five-star” development.

The planned “at desk” champagne buttons will allow the hedge fund workers expected to be its occupants to order a celebratory drink after a “good day at the office”.

The buttons were inspired by one of Kylie Minogue and Tamara Ecclestone’s favourite restaurants, nearby Bob Bob Ricard, where every table has a “press for champagne” button.

Workers will be able to order cocktails or caviar, as well as bubbly, from the ground floor Sticks’n’Sushi restaurant. They will delivered to the relevant office floor by dumb waiterstyle lifts running through the building.

On the bright side, they can’t do any worse than they did sober.

Still, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Also, this is not The Onion.

Baltimore Just Got Smaller

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It’s alt-weekly, The Baltimore City Paper, will be closed down by the end of the year:

The Baltimore Sun Media Group plans to close City Paper later this year. No official end date has been announced for the alt-weekly, now in its 40th year.

“Like many alternative weeklies across the country, declining ad revenue at City Paper continues to be a challenge,” BSMG’s director of marketing, Renee Mutchnik, said in a statement. “It became clear to us this past fall that we would cease publishing City Paper sometime in 2017. Details about the closing date are still being discussed. This is a difficult decision and we are mindful of how it affects our employees, the readers and advertisers.”

Editorial staffers found out about the news in June during a meeting with senior vice president Tim Thomas, who cited declining ad revenues and future projections for those numbers as reasons for the closure.

City Paper editor Brandon Soderberg offered the following: “This is Brandon Soderberg, City Paper editor reporting live from the deck of the Titanic. Yes, we’re being closed by BSMG/Tronc/and so on. We were told this news last month and there isn’t a clear date but what we’ve been told is no later than the end of the year. We were trying to hold off announcing it because, well, it’s very sad, but also because I’m not sure about how this is all going to play out and I’m half-convinced this won’t be the end of the paper and someone will swoop in and buy us.”

The Sun bought the paper from Times-Shamrock Communications, which had owned the paper for more than two dozen years, in early 2014. In an announcement of the purchase, BSMG’s then-publisher, president, and CEO Tim Ryan praised City Paper’s independent streak. 

(emphasis mine)

That last bit, about The Sun is the most important bit: The fate of the City Paper was sealed when The Sun bought it.

As A. J. Liebling noted in his seminal book The Press, the only way to make money by buying a newspaper is to be a competitor in the market, and the profit comes from shutting it down, which allows the survivor to increase its own advertising revenue.

Even if only 10% of the ads in The City Paper go to The Sun, they will get a non trivial amount of revenue from this.

I think that Baltimore is too large and too dynamic not to have an alt-weekly.

I’m considering starting a crowd funding effort to buy them from the Tribune Company.

Any advice/aid would be appreciated.

For the Love of God, Please Make it Stop!!!!!

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Gaahhhhhh!

There I am, cruising down the information superhighway, and then this headline popped up in front of me, and I found myself in the ditch:

Hillary Clinton Looks for Her Role in Midterms.

You lost a Presidential election to an inverted traffic cone, and were it not for numerous self inflicted wounds, you would be in the White House now, bombing Syria and Iran and engaging in nuclear brinksmanship with Russia..

Certainly, you, and your campaign’s, foibles were not the only reason that you lost, but as close as it was, it’s clear that if there had been a meaningful attempt to address these problems, you would have won.

And now, you are trying to buy your way back to the cool kids table with your “Onward Together” PAC.

Please make it stop!!!!!!

Once again I feel compelled to murder the genius of Dr. Seuss for political commentary. (After the break)

“Hillary Rodham Clinton will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don’t care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Hillary Rodham Clinton
I don’t care how.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion’s tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Don’t you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!
Please Hillary C.!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon . . .
Or broomstick.
Or
You can go by camel
In a bureau drawer.
You can go by bumble-boat
. . . or jet.
I don’t care how you go.
Just get!
Hillary Rodham Clinton!
I don’t care how.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
I said
GO
And
GO
I meant . . .
The time had come
So . . .
Hillary WENT.”

OK, I Did Not Expect This

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In 2001, Barbara Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) following 9/11.

She found it over-broad, and has been trying to repeal it ever since.

History has proved her right, as it has authorized dozens of military actions, the majority having nothing to do with the original attack, since then.

Lee has been trying to roll it back ever since, and the House Approriations Committee has finally voted to add repeal of the AUMF it its latest appropriation bill:

In September 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) was the only member of Congress to object to an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a resolution in response to the terrorist attacks that paved the way for the war in Afghanistan.

In the 16 years since, the resolution has been used by President George W. Bush, President Obama and now President Trump as justification for more than 35 military actions in nearly 20 countries around the world — which means those presidents have not gone back to Congress for new permission to send troops into harm’s way.

On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee opened the door to ending that 2001 authorization when it added Lee’s amendment to a Defense Department measure. Congress would have 240 days to debate a new authorization. At the end of that time the 2001 authorization would be repealed.

Lee has lobbied hard just to get to this first step, which was approved by a voice vote in the Republican led committee.

“I’ve been working on this for years and years and years. I’m just really pleased that Republicans and Democrats today really understood what I’ve been saying and I’ve been explaining for the last 16 years, and that is, this resolution is a blank check for perpetual war,” Lee said.

I don’t expect this to make it through the House, and if it did I would not expect it to make it through the Senate,  and I would expect a veto threat from the White House, so I don’t expect this to make it into law, but it is a first step.

Boaty McBoatface Lives

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I still think that that the whole boat should have been so named, but I am still heartened by the maiden voyage of the remotely operated submersible:

A yellow submarine dubbed Boaty McBoatface has obtained “unprecedented data” from its first voyage exploring one of the deepest and coldest ocean regions on Earth, scientists have said.

The robotic submersible was given the name originally chosen for a new polar research ship by irreverent contestants in a public competition. Embarrassed officials decided to ignore the popular vote and instead named the vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough in honour of the veteran broadcaster. A storm of protest led to a compromise that allowed the name to live on.

The submarine plunged to depths as far as 4,000 metres to obtain information about temperature, water flow speed and turbulence from Orkney Passage, a region of the Southern Ocean about 500 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula.

 Huzza!

Reality 1 : Republican Dogma: 0

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In Illinois, with significant Republican support, the state legislature has overridden the Governor’s veto of the latest budget, which increases taxes:


After more than two years of political sparring, missed payments to creditors and plunging credit ratings, Illinois did on Thursday what most states do every year. It finished a budget.

Yet as some lawmakers and state officials cheered an end to the longest state budget impasse in the nation’s modern history, at least one prominent and unyielding critic remained. Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican who has clashed with the Democratic-held Legislature since the moment he took office, had vetoed the spending plan, which includes a tax increase.

The governor doubled down on his disgust even as at least 10 members of his own party joined Democrats to override his veto, ending the standoff.

“This is a two-by-four smacked across the foreheads of the people of Illinois,” he said this week, imploring fellow Republicans to stand by him. “This tax hike will solve none of our problems and in fact, long run, it’ll just make our problems worse.”

The narrow veto override in the state House, with exactly the 71 votes that were needed, ended a stalemate that had gone on so long that Illinois had fallen $15 billion behind on bills and been warned that its credit rating might fall to junk status, worse than any other state.

Rauner has been demanding a property tax freeze, term limits, worker’s comp reductions, restrictions on lawsuits, and a wide range of measures to cripple unions.

This happened in Kansas too.

Republicans have been selecting for insanity level extremism for decades, and now it appear that they have achieved it.

Luckily for the rest of us, it appears that not everyone in the GOP is along with for the ride.

Yes

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The Guardian asks, “Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?“

Why yes, yes it is.

With reasonable regulation and antitrust enforcement, parasites like Elsevier have plundered publicly funded knowledge.

The end of this business model has been predicted for years, but with great profits comes the resources to engage aggressive rent seeking, which mitigates against this.

I don’t think that we will see any change in this until the government mandates another model for research that it funds.

Meanwhile in Oregon*………

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Oregon has passed passed “Fair Work Week” Legislation, which requires a week’s notice of employee schedules and a 10 break between shifts:

Oregon is set to become the first U.S. state requiring certain businesses to furnish workers with a week’s notice of their job schedules and a minimum of 10 hours rest between daily shifts under a bill that won final legislative approval on Thursday.

The bill, dubbed the “fair work week” act by supporters, is aimed at giving greater predictability to low-wage employees whose hours tend vary widely from day to day or week to week. Democratic Governor Kate Brown is expected to sign the bill into law.

The measure would go into effect next year and apply to Oregon workers on the payrolls of retail, food service and hospitality companies with at least 500 employees worldwide.

Under the bill, those companies must provide employees in Oregon, starting on July 18, with written estimates of their work schedules seven days in advance, with the required scheduling notice increased to two weeks beginning in July 2020.

Workers also would be entitled to a break of at least 10 hours between work shifts from one day to the next, and to receive extra pay if they agreed to a shorter rest interval – typically between closing hours at night and opening hours the next morning.

Moreover, the bill protects employees from workplace retaliation for merely expressing a scheduling preference to their bosses.

Work schedule predictability has emerged as a major issue causing growing anxiety in the American labor force even as the U.S. jobless rate has fallen to below-average levels.

My daughter works in a restaurant, and their weekly schedules frequently come out less than 24 hours before the new week.

It’s lazy management, and it they do it because they can.

Putting a cost of laziness on the employer is a very good thing.

*If I had said “Texas” or “Florida” instead of “Oregon”, you know that it would be a clusterf%$#, but in most other states, you have to read the article to figure out which way it goes.

Why J-School Sucks

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In the old days, someone would become a journalist by working as a copy boy or a cub reporter and working their way up, and they saw themselves as tradesmen.

Now, they get a Bachelors in Journalism, and they fancy themselves professionals, and the contrast is both striking and depressing:

I was talking to this person whom I’d just met. They told me about their job and where they worked. They asked me about mine. I told them I’d worked in public media in Alaska before moving to the Lower 48. I was a couple of months from wrapping up my time as a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford. They asked about what I worked on and I explained my research around collaboration in journalism and that I intended to continue working in this space after the fellowship ended.

“Well, what does your husband do?”

“He’s a truck driver and a mechanic.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah, right now he drives for a trash company.”

“That must be…an interesting perspective to have around.”

While they didn’t explicitly say it, the person was very much thrown off by the nature of my husband’s work. I was left with a very strong feeling they were expecting a more middle-class answer than a garbage worker. Their facial reaction has been stuck in my head for a while now. Surprise. A little confusion. And just enough distaste to notice. Obviously, this one instance isn’t representative of an entire industry. But it is a symptom.

The last two ‘graphs say it all:

If that conference interaction is how a journalist responds to my husband’s job while idly chatting, how do they cover the sanitation worker that ends up in a story they are working on? If talking about someone to that person’s spouse isn’t enough to cause one to mask aversion, how do they talk about people to whom they feel even more distance from? What does this mean for our audience’s ability to trust us?

 Our industry needs to think hard about the worlds we’re living in, the kinds we’re building with each hire we make and ones that we want to reach with our reporting.

It’s natural for professors to see themselves as professionals, but by inculcating their students in this mindset, they have created a generation of journalists who afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.

This is not a recipe for good or responsible journalism.

Normally, I Would Condemn Anything That a Eurocrat Says, but I Can’t This Time

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‘Tis but a scratch

The reason that I endorse his statement is because one of my hard and fast rules in rhetorical technique, if you invoke Monty Python, you win.

The win is double plus good if invoke Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

The first vice-president of the European Commission has mocked the UK’s post-Brexit trade ambitions by comparing a Ukip MEP to a comically over-confident character from a Monty Python film.

Frans Timmermans likened Eurosceptic politician Ray Finch to the Black Night in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a hopelessly optimistic character who refuses to concede a fight even after all his limbs are severed.

Mr Finch had told the Strasbourg assembly the EU would suffer while Britain was negotiating new trade agreements with countries outside the bloc.
 ………

 “Mr Finch really reminds me of a character created by John Cleese in Monty Python’s the Holy Grail, the Black Knight, who after being defeated terribly and having all his limbs cut off says to his opponent ‘let’s call it a draw’,” he continued.

I have no choice but to congratulate Mr. Timmermans for the proper and appropriate use of Monty Python.

Well played, sir.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!

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Because of a slightly confusing site, I missed am about 2 weeks late on some credit union closings:

  1. LOMTO Federal Credit Union, Woodside, NY
  2. Citizens Community Credit Union , Devils Lake, ND
  3. Riverdale Credit Union , ​Selma, AL

Here is the Full NCUA list.

So, once again there are more credit union failures than there are commercial bank failures.

I still don’t know why this is so, but it is profoundly odd to me.

Snark of the Day

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A bunch of privileged white boy dotcommers have decided that, because they got lucky, they should determine the future of the Democratic Party.

They call their nascent movement “Win the Future”, yes, it has the initials “WTF”, and it has debuted to much derision.

They are referring to themselves as a “Virtual Party”, and their most substantive policy proposal appears to be pushing Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins as a political party.

In any case, this characterization of  the founders is prize:

Mark Pincus is the co-founder of Zynga, your grandmother’s favorite video game publisher. Reid Hoffman is co-founder of LinkedIn, a networking website that’s harder to escape than a Scientology outpost buried underneath a gulag. These tech visionaries decided they’d had enough of business as usual in politics, put their brains together, and created an exciting new group called Win The Future. Its mission is to influence the Democratic party platform and assist the #Resistance. If you’re skeptical of this project, keep these facts in mind: People in tech are smarter than you are; disruption makes everything better; everybody loves winning; the internet is the future; and the group is called Win the Future. Enough said.

(emphasis mine)

Is it just me, or does Silicon Valley increasingly seem to be a charity to support the lifestyles of over privileged youth?

Headline of the Day

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Corbyn’s Earned the Right to Do What He Pleases – and He’s Decided to Leave Mewling Self-Entitled Blairites out in the Cold

—The Independent

I wholeheartedly approve of this.

Blair’s political innovation was finding a way to suck up to media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and all it cost was the Labour Party’s soul, and he was the only Labour candidate to win using that formula.

“New Labour”, much like the “New Left” and the “New Democrats”, have proven disastrous for both their own movements and for their countries.

It really is time for Labour to clean house.

This is Not an Accident

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Does anyone believe that Uber made an honest mistake in tax calculations when it took hundreds of millions of dollars from its drivers?

I certainly don’t:

Amid the turmoil at Uber that resulted in Travis Kalanick’s stepping down as chief executive, the company announced a series of changes in late June aimed at improving its drivers’ work experience, including a new tipping option in its passenger app.

But even as Uber makes a concerted effort to win over drivers, it has not acknowledged all the ways it may have squeezed them in New York State.

 In May, Uber admitted to taking excessive commissions out of the fares of its New York drivers, who are independent contractors, and promised to make amends. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that the company may have shortchanged the drivers by far greater sums than it acknowledged.

 The following are signs that the ride-hailing service improperly deducted what could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars from drivers’ earnings to pay taxes that, under New York State law, are technically due from passengers:

  • Uber receipts from other states reflect a tax accounting at odds with the company’s justification for deducting sales tax from the fares received by its New York drivers.
  • Language from Uber’s recent contracts indicates that the company should not have taken the taxes from those fares.


Uber has insisted there was nothing improper in its handling of the taxes. Here is a look at the law and the evidence on the question — including the way a major competitor, Lyft, deals with the same issue.

If anyone believes that Uber was acting in good faith, they haven’t been following the news lately.

The Glory That Is the Free Market

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As you are no doubt aware, Apple has locked down its iPhone platform something fierce.

Among other things, it makes security research much more difficult, which makes bugs a rare commodity in the Apple security community.

Of course, under the laws of supply and demand, it means that the price of the bugs would increase, which means that Apples iPhone bug bounty program has no takers, because it’s not enough money:

For now, security researchers who have been invited by Apple to submit high-value bugs through the program prefer to keep the bugs for themselves.

In August 2016, Apple’s head of security Ivan Krstic stole the show at one of the biggest security conferences in the world with an unexpected announcement.

“I wanna share some news with you,” Krstic said at the Black Hat conference, before announcing that Apple was finally launching a bug bounty program to reward friendly hackers who report bugs to the company.

The crowd erupted in enthusiastic applause. But almost a year later, the long-awaited program appears to be struggling to take off, with no public evidence that hackers have claimed any bug bounties.
 The iPhone’s security is so tight that it’s hard to find any flaws at all, which leads to sky-high prices for bugs on the grey market. Researchers I spoke to are reluctant to report bugs both because they are so valuable and because reporting some bugs may actually prevent them from doing more research.

“People can get more cash if they sell their bugs to others,” said Nikias Bassen, a security researcher for the company Zimperium, and who joined Apple’s program last year. “If you’re just doing it for the money, you’re not going to give [bugs] to Apple directly.”

Patrick Wardle, a former NSA hacker and researcher at Synack who now specializes in MacOS research and was invited to the Apple bug bounty program, agreed. He said that iOS bugs are “too valuable to report to Apple.”

………

But it’s not just about the immediate reward. iOS is such a complex, locked-down, and secure operating system that simply to inspect and do research on it, one needs multiple, unpatched, zero-day bugs, perhaps even a full-fledged jailbreak, according to researchers. In other words, you need unknown bugs just to find bugs in other parts of the operating system that might be otherwise locked.

That’s why some prefer to keep their bugs and continue doing research rather than handicapping themselves for a reward of few thousand dollars.

“Nobody is going to kill bugs unless they’re fucking dumb,” Luca Todesco, a well-known iPhone jailbreaker, told me a few months ago. “Just because they will kill their own future […] If I kill my own bugs then I’m not able to do my own research.”

………

While the researchers were visiting Cupertino, they asked Apple’s security team for special iPhones that don’t have certain restrictions so it’s easier to hack them, according to multiple people who attended the meeting. These devices would have some security features, such as sandboxing, disabled in order to allow the researchers to continue doing their work. One researcher described them as “developer devices.”

But Apple, for now, isn’t willing to provide those special devices, according to three researchers who recounted the exchange.

These bugs actually have a legal market, helping law enforcement breaking into phones, as well as firms that sell jailbreak (which is legal) software to end users, which allows end users to evade Apple’s frequently arbitrary rules on how a user might choose to use their own phones.

In any case, Apple’s opacity has raised the cost of bugs to more than Apple is willing to pay.

As to whether this is a good or a bad thing, I will leave that to the reader.

These Are the Most Overpaid People in the World

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Not exactly the most inspiring political slogan, @dccc: pic.twitter.com/oIE9bTBHa0

— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) July 5, 2017

Yes, this is real.

“Arby’s: Cause, you know, Jared”

— Richard T. (@Miceelf88) July 6, 2017

The best tweet in response

I am, of course, referring to the political consultants for the Democratic Party.

Case in point, the geniuses at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), who have a proposed, “Have You Seen the Other Guys?“

No, this is not satire.

The campaign arm for House Democrats on Wednesday tried out a new slogan: “I mean, have you seen the other guys?”

The sticker slogan, one of several floated as part of a fundraising effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), caused a stir on social media, where many wondered why the party would try out such a self-deprecating campaign line.

Why would they do this?

Because they are incompetents who are unqualified to work at a fast food joint?

Seriously donors, this is what your money is paying for.

If you don’t start demanding accountability, by which I mean firing their hapless flabby asses.

Also, keeping the DCCC, DSCC, and DNC from fobbing off their incompetent brothers-in-law on state and local campaigns and party committees would be a good thing too.

H/t Lawyers, Guns & Money.