Category: FAIL

So Not a Surprise

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Members of the National Endowment for Democracy were caught on tape claiming credit for the Belarus protests, which have generally been represented as internally driven.

So not a surprise.  The NED was created by William Casey to allow elements of the US State Security Apparatus to engege in regime change activities without supervision by civilian authorities.

Yes, I know, RT is the source, but they have it on tape:

A pair of notorious Russian pranksters posing as leading Belarusian opposition figures have duped the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into revealing the extent of US involvement in Eastern European political movements.

In a video call posted on the online channel of pranksters Vovan and Lexus, senior representatives of the American agency disclosed that they have actively financed and supported anti-government campaigns in the region. The officials from the NED, which is funded by Congress and describes its role as “supporting freedom around the world,” also revealed that they are coordinating efforts with prominent political activists in a range of countries, including Russia.

………

During the call, Nina Ognianova, who oversees the NED’s work with local groups in Belarus, outlined the wide-ranging programs the agency bankrolls in the country, insisting that “a lot of the people who have been trained by these hubs, who have been in touch with them and being educated, being involved in their work, have now taken the flag and started to lead in community organizing.”

Ognianova claimed that, through this work, the NED played a role in igniting the colossal street protests that rocked Belarus after long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko declared victory in the country’s presidential election last August. The opposition and many international observers say the vote was rigged in his favor, and tens of thousands took to the streets for demonstrations each weekend after the election.

………

The comments are likely to add fuel to Lukashenko’s previous controversial claims that the widespread domestic opposition to his government is being stoked from abroad.

Gee, you think? 

On a more serious note, allowing jokers from the CIA and other TLA acronym organizations to dictate US foreign policy without any civilian oversight is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

This Ain’t Rocket Science

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Specifically, supplying oxygen to fighter pilots has been a known quantity for well over 50 years, but somehow or other, Lockheed-Martin has been able unable to make this work on the F-35.

NASA has done a study, and found that the Joint Strike Fighter has problems not shared with other aircraft using onboard oxygen generate systems.

The F-35 office had declared this a tempest in a tea pot, which is typical for them:

Between 2011 and 2017, more than a dozen U.S. Air Force F-35 pilots reported experiencing oxygen-deprivation symptoms. NASA has obtained new information that may help solve the mystery behind these physiological episodes and wants to study the issue more deeply. But the F-35 Joint Program Office is disputing the findings.

The recently released—but not widely circulated—report from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) pinpoints a lag time between the pilot’s breathing pattern and the aircraft’s life-support system, due to differences between mask pressure and line pressure. It is the first independent review focused on the hypoxia-like episodes reported by pilots in the Lockheed Martin F-35 for more than a decade.

………

The NESC’s work builds on a 2017 report that assessed pilots’ physiological episodes in other fighter aircraft (AW&ST March 28-April 10, 2016, p. 23). That study was driven by a congressional mandate to the U.S. Navy to conduct an independent review of the episodes in Boeing F/A-18 and T-45 aircraft going back to 2009. But the mandate did not cover the F-35. The new report is part of a larger pilot-breathing assessment that includes F/A-18 and F-15D data using CRU-103 or CRU-60 breathing gear. 

………

But the F-35 data set, the first of its kind, was subsequently embargoed by the Air Force, and the NASA team had to wait about a year for the service to release pilot–breathing data for independent analysis. F-35 pilots admitted in interviews with the NESC that information about breathing problems had been suppressed over concerns about protecting the program.

Bottom line:  The Pentagon wants its over-priced and under-performing mistake jet, and if a few pilots have to experience suffocation, it’s a small price to pay.

Why Cap and Trade Sucks

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At the core of Cap and Trade carbon controls is trading of tax credits, and the creation and trading of tax credits is a function which actively encourages fraudulent behavior. 

Case in point is the Massachusetts Audubon Society, which announced its intention to log thousands of acres that it was preserving in western Massachusetts so that it could then sell credits for not chopping down the trees.

Of course, it never actually intended to chop down these cheese, this was just a way to create carbon credits that had no basis in reality, and then sell them to polluting business, with no actual reduction in emissions.

In addition to the Mass Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy is notorious for its sale of meaningless carbon offsets:

The Massachusetts Audubon Society has long managed its land in western Massachusetts as crucial wildlife habitat. Nature lovers flock to these forests to enjoy bird-watching and quiet hikes, with the occasional bobcat or moose sighting.

But in 2015, the conservation nonprofit presented California’s top climate regulator with a startling scenario: It could heavily log 9,700 acres of its preserved forests over the next few years.

The group raised the possibility of chopping down hundreds of thousands of trees as part of its application to take part in California’s forest offset program.

Spoiler, the never intended to log this land.  They are engaging in a humbug.

The environmental organization has become a bunch of snollygosters.

………

The Air Resources Board accepted Mass Audubon’s project into its program, requiring the nonprofit to preserve its forests over the next century instead of heavily logging them. The nonprofit received more than 600,000 credits in exchange for its promise. The vast majority were sold through intermediaries to oil and gas companies, records show. The group earned about $6 million from the sales, Mass Audubon regional scientist Tom Lautzenheiser said.

On paper, the deal was a success. The fossil fuel companies were able to emit more CO2 while abiding by California’s climate laws. Mass Audubon earned enough money to acquire additional land for preservation, and to hire new staff working on climate change.

But it didn’t work out as well for the climate, unless Mass Audubon actually intended to start acting more like a timber company. The project wouldn’t achieve anywhere near the claimed levels of reduced carbon emissions if the nonprofit was getting credits for forests that were never in danger of aggressive logging. And every time a polluter uses a credit that didn’t actually save a ton of carbon, net emissions go up, undermining the point of the program.

………

New research by the San Francisco nonprofit CarbonPlan provides evidence that this is occurring: It shows that landowners in the program routinely maximize the number of trees they assert they could chop down if they weren’t given carbon credits, even if they have little history of logging or have mission statements in sharp opposition to such practices.

The research suggests the program could be significantly exaggerating the amount of carbon savings achieved.

“The nearly universal pattern we see in the data,” said Danny Cullenward, policy director at CarbonPlan and a coauthor of the study, corroborates concerns that “those projects are not delivering real climate benefits.”

(emphasis mine)

If you have direct tax on carbon, you eliminate this sort of fraud, what’s more you can treat the carbon tax in the same way that a value added tax is, and refund upon export, and charge upon import, so as to make sure that bad actors on global warming don’t get an effective subsidy for that bad behavior.

The Colonial Pipeline Was Unaffected by the Ransomeware Attack

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It turns out that the systems controlling the pipeline continued to function as intended, it was only the billing systems were hit, which means that the decision to shut down the pipeline, which threw much of the East Coast of the US into a panic, was not about safety, and critical infrastructure was not impacted, it was just that collecting payments from customers became more inconvenient.

The technical term for what Colonial did was irresponsible, and possibly negligent.

Why am I not surprised that Koch Industries, aka, the Koch Brothers, are a major shareholder?

This, “F%$# you, pay me,” attitude is integral to their warped souls:

The cyber attack that shutdown the Colonial pipeline causing a gas panic and stoking fears of gasoline shortages, didn’t actually shut down the pipeline. It impacted the billing system at the Colonial Pipeline Co., which shut it down because they were worried about how they’d collect payments. 

Yes, the fuel-carrying pipeline was shut down last week in order to prevent a company that is entrusted with what should be a public utility from enduring an accounting headache.

I really hope that someone, I’m looking at you Katie Porter, to whip out the old white board, and cut the executives running a new asshole at hearings.

For the problem described, they could have set up a paper system, and faxes, (or scanners and Gmail) to handle billing temporarily in perhaps 48 hours.

Boeing Still Can’t Build Planes, Part 4⁹

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In 2019, a sweeping transformation of Boeing’s quality system deliberately eliminated thousands of quality checks during production and cut 100s of quality inspector jobs.

Ernesto Gonzalez-Beltran, the architect of that shift, left the company in Decemberhttps://t.co/SbcHIzcnFp

— Dominic Gates (@dominicgates) May 18, 2021

Roll Tape!

Boeing has finally been forced to accept the fact that axing hundreds quality inspectors in order to bust the union did now work, and now they are rehiring the inspectors that they laid off, and they canned the architect of the failed program:

The Boeing Co. has quietly recalled at least some of as many as 900 quality control inspectors who were laid off in 2019 as part of a drive to adopt car-industry manufacturing processes in aerospace manufacturing.

The move comes after the union for the inspectors – Machinists District Lodge 751 – pushed the company to prove that getting rid of inspectors could be done without risking quality issues and would actually improve production times.

“Our union’s goal is to save Boeing from making decisions that could be detrimental to (its) future and ours,” union leaders said in its monthly AeroMechanic newsletter. “A second set of eyes is a critical component of building Boeing airplanes and necessary for the long-term success of the company.”

A union spokeswoman said she was unable to say precisely how many of the inspectors were initially laid off, and how many have been brought back since the recalls started. Boeing’s media relations team did not respond to a written list of questions on the topic.

………

In theory, if you eliminate the downtime and the inspections a few thousand times on each plane, that adds up to substantial savings in production time without any investment in people or tools.

IAM 751 appealed to the Federal Aviation Administration to look into Boeing’s plan and made rumblings about getting its supporters in Congress to intervene. Congress is now preparing an investigation into quality lapses at Boeing.

But the deciding factor, in this case, seems to have been the union’s demand to enter into what’s called effects bargaining. Since Boeing was eliminating 900 jobs, the union claimed the right to negotiate over the impact of those changes on its members.

As a result of these talks, Boeing and the union agreed that a team of union-appointed experts would begin reviewing data in areas where inspections were ending, with the ability to propose reinstating inspections when warranted, using Boeing’s own risk assessment criteria and FAA regulations as guidelines.

No Efficiency Gains

What the experts found was that eliminating inspections did not lead to a more efficient production process, the union said.

They f%$#ed up their quality processes for nothing more than the hope that they could fire some union members, and they failed.

If you fired Boeing’s entire C-Suite and replaced them with dirnking bird toys, you would increase productiveity and product quality.

An Onanistic Abomination

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I am referring, of course, to architect Frank Gehry’s latest building, the LUMA tower in Arles.

Arles is a Unesco world heritage site for its classic architecture, including a Roman Coliseum, a cathedral dating back to the 1200s, and a city center comprised mainly of 17th century townhouses.

This is hideous, even by the standards of Gehry’s normal exercises in excess, but it is to be expected from a man who created a building, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, that literally fried its neighbors.

The culture and aesthetics of high end architecture is truly broken:

Over its 3,000 years, the city of Arles, France, has seen a lot. The Provençal town, once home to the Celts and later the Greeks and Romans, has played host over the centuries to a varied cast of characters that includes Roman emperors and Pablo Picasso. But it is perhaps best known as a pilgrimage site for devotees of Vincent van Gogh, who spent one of his most prolific years in Arles shortly before his death. The city’s lengthy and varied history has also made it a draw for architecture buffs: Its 12th-century Romanesque cathedral and ancient Roman amphitheater helped earn Arles one of France’s earliest Unesco World Heritage designations in 1981.

Sometime in the 17th century, a series of bourgeois townhouses were constructed in the village center. Since then, very little in Arles has changed. The city looks much the same as it did when Van Gogh sat at a sidewalk table and sketched the street scene that would become his famed Café Terrace at Night, and visitors can wander down the Place du Forum to dine at the same café the artist painted in 1888. Until recently, it would have been possible to walk across town and replicate the experience with Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône—to stand on the banks of the river and gaze out at the same vista that met the artist’s eye over 130 years ago. For the first time in many years, Arles’ skyline is changing, with the addition of an ambitious new cultural complex called LUMA Arles.

Standing 184 feet tall, LUMA Arles towers over the city—the next tallest building is the 12th-century Cathedral of St. Trophime at about 138 feet tall. It is the centerpiece of the LUMA Foundation’s 27-acre campus, which the arts philanthropic organization has situated in a former railyard turned park. It’s also the culmination of over a decade of work spearheaded by LUMA founder and billionaire Maja Hoffmann (the foundation’s name is a portmanteau of the first part of her children’s names Lucas and Marina). The tower, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, seems to climb upward, twisting and turning as it stretches toward the sky. The building’s 11,000 reflective stainless steel panels spectacularly transform the building over the course of a day: It blends into a bright blue sky at noontime, gilds itself in the late afternoon, and twinkles as the sun sets. The style is unmistakably Gehry, with the sweeping, brushstroke-like lines and playful design cues that have become a hallmark of the dean of contemporary architecture.

The building has its detractors—Gehry’s initial plans were rejected as “threats” to the city’s archaeological sites, and some Arlesians have complained that the imposition of the angular, metallic tower is an affront to the stucco-and-stone charm of the village below. In a report from Vanity Fair’s French edition, a local townsperson said, roughly translated, “Those who are annoyed by this arrogance dub it ‘the beer can.’” But according to the 92-year-old architect, the design is intended to “evoke the local”: Its rippling exterior draws on Van Gogh’s Starry Night, while the tower’s central atrium pays homage to Arles’ Roman amphitheater. Local officials hope that Arles will see a “Bilbao effect,” and be rejuvenated like that Spanish city was after the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum opened there in 1997.

There is good architecture out there, Louis Sullivan’s incorporation of the steel structure into skyscrapers comes to mind, but has technology has loosened constraints on buildings, some in the profession have gone off the deep end.

If I am in Arles, I’ll probably have lunch in the building, but only because it is the only place in the city where you cannot see this monstrosity.

Punk’D

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Remember that unhinged letter signed by 100 retired US military retired general officers? It included the signature of one, “Rear Admiral Jack Meehoff.”

The MAGAts are really, really stupid people:

A group of more than 100 retired generals and admirals who have accused President Joe Biden of being a communist have been pranked by a faux flag officer going by the nom de guerre “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff.”

If you don’t get the joke, just say the name “Jack Meehoff” aloud. That’s right. You understand now.

Earlier this month, the group Flag Officers 4 America posted an open letter that repeated lies spread by former President Donald Trump and the elected leaders who support his claims that the FBI and Supreme Court ignored “election irregularities” in 2020.

………

In their letter, the retired generals and admirals – most of whom have been out of uniform for several years – claim the Biden administration has “launched a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights in a dictatorial manner” by passing executive orders. They also claim the administration is damaging the military’s ability to fight wars through an “infusion of Political Correctness.” And they raise doubts about Biden’s ability to serve as commander in chief by claiming: “The mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief cannot be ignored.”

“Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration, our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic,” reads the heavily capitalized letter. “The survival of our Nation and its cherished freedoms, liberty, and historic values are at stake.”

Enter “Jack Meehoff.”

After Christopher Mathias of the Huffington Post wrote a May 12 story about the letter, he received an email the following day from someone showing how he had managed to get the apocryphal “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff” added to the list of signatories.

………

On Monday, Task & Purpose spoke to “Jack Meehoff” – not his real name – who said he was prompted to prank the cabal of McCarthyites because he felt their open letter was “f—ing absurd”, especially in the context of the Jan. 6 riots.

The man – who declined to provide his real name or a copy of his DD-214 [military discharge documents] – claimed to be a former enlisted submariner. He said Flag Officers 4 America removed “Rear Adm. Jack Meehoff” from the letter on Saturday after Mathias tweeted about how they had fallen for his ruse.

………

Among its other more well-known signatories are retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, a U.S. Senate candidate in New Hampshire; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a virulent anti-Muslim bigot who now heads up the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, best known for being convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair as national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan.

One way to fix the problem is to understand that we have too many general officers in the US military.

In World War II, there were 16 million men in service, and about 2000 GOFOs, and now with 1.3 million men (and women) under arms, there are 900 general/flag officers.

Additionally, the ratio of officers to enlisted men has gone from the traditional ratio of about 10:1 then to about 5:1 now.

Tighter standards for officers, they reducing the size of the officer corps would go a long way toward reducing the total numbers blithering idiots in the higher ranks of US military.

$5 Million, Nothing to See Here

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That’s what “Ratfaced Andy” Coumo got as a $5 million book deal for self absorbed account of his “Heroic” fight against the Corona virus.

Later, more recent, accounts of his behavior, including things like covering up nursing home deaths indicate that he got about 100000% more than it warranted.

More patterns of corrupt behavior from His Excellency:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s publisher is scheduled to pay him more than $5 million for the book he authored last year on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to newly released tax returns and ethics documents.

The documents released Monday ended a months-long mystery over the size of the Cuomo’s book deal with The Crown Publishing Group, which issued Cuomo’s best-selling book, American Crisis, in October as the state stared down a second wave of coronavirus infections.

For nine months, Cuomo had repeatedly refused to reveal the details of his book deal, noting it would be revealed on his taxes at a later date. That came Monday, when both his state-mandated disclosure form and his taxes were due and released.

The form showed Cuomo’s book deal is set to pay him more than $5.1 million total. Cuomo’s tax return showed Crown paid him $3.12 million in 2020; He’s due another $2.05 million to $2.15 million, according to a separate financial disclosure form, which his office said will be paid out over the next two years.

………

The book deal has been referred to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation into whether Cuomo improperly used state resources for the project.

………

American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic was published in October at a time when Cuomo’s national profile had grown to new heights, in large part because of well-received, daily news conferences in the early days of the coronavirus crisis.

The book has been at the center of controversy ever since because members of Cuomo’s government staff assisted in the project, though the governor insists they volunteered their time for the project.

………

In April, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli referred the book matter to state Attorney General Letitia James, asking her to investigate whether state resources were used for personal purposes.

BTW, Cuomo this guy is corrupt as hell, even if he did not actually break the law.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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The Washington State legislature passed two different bills repealing the states ban on municipal broadband.  One is expansive (H.B. 1336), and the other is more limited in scope (S.B. 5383), authorizing municipal broadband only in areas that are underserved. 

There was a rush to pass a bill to break the incumbent provider’s monopoly, and when presented with two conflicting bills, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed both bills simultaneously, which means that neither bill has precedence.

By simultaneously, I mean that the Governor claims that he signed a bill with each hand at the same time.

First, much criticisms to the State House and Senate for passing two conflicting bills.

Second, I can see no explanation for the Governor’s actions unless he wants to keep this all snarled in litigation for the next few years as a way to suck up to Comcast and it’s Evil Minions™, who will try to extract every penny from their monopoly rents int he interim:

Washington state went all in on expanding public broadband this year. So much so, that the Legislature passed two different bills aimed at extending high-speed internet to people in rural areas.

It’s possible, however, that two bills aren’t better than one. And they may partly cancel each other out.

Now that Gov. Jay Inslee has signed both measures into law, confusion is mounting about whether the two laws can co-exist.

And that debate may end up in court.

Both House Bill 1336 and Senate Bill 5383 give public utility districts and ports new authority to offer broadband internet. The idea behind both bills is to have those public entities offer broadband in remote areas where private companies don’t operate because it’s not cost effective.

But the authority granted under HB 1336 is broader, said state Sen, Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island. Rather than requiring PUDs and ports to focus on offering broadband to people who lack any internet service, the House bill allows the public entities to serve all customers, including people who can already access the internet through a private company, such as CenturyLink or Comcast.

………

Inslee’s office hasn’t done much to clarify matters. In an unusual move on Thursday, the governor signed both bills at the same time, one with his right hand and the other with his left. While most bill signings occur in public and are broadcast on video, Inslee signed these two bills off camera. His office didn’t explain why.

If the bills do conflict with one another, the order in which they were signed into law becomes of paramount importance. In theory, the last bill signed would take precedence over the other. If it was Hansen’s bill, Wellman said she believes her bill’s focus on expanding public broadband in remote, unserved areas would be stripped out.

“It’s such drama, I’m telling you,” said Wellman, the sponsor of SB 5383. “I’ve never been in this situation before and I don’t want to ever be again.”

………

“We are planning to seek clarification from Thurston County Superior Court on how to proceed, as this is unchartered territory,” [Secretary of State Spokesperson Kylee] Zabel wrote in an email Friday.

………

The Washington State Broadband Office is set to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal money to expand broadband internet access across the state. Under either of the bills that passed the Legislature, public utility districts and ports would be in a better position to take advantage of that influx of new money.

………

However, the dispute over how the two bills interact could complicate public utility districts’ plans to jump into the retail broadband business, he [Russ Elliott, the director of the broadband office] said.

“I think there are a lot of people right now worried whether, if someone implements something in the vein of this legislation, are they subjecting themselves to some sort of a legal battle?” Elliott said Friday. “Unfortunately that may be the way this gets played out — someone challenges what happens under these bills. I would hate to see that.”

The legal battle is the goal.  The longer that Comcast, CenturyLink, and Frontier can string this along, the more money they can rake in.

This Will Not End Well

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Between sucking up to the Petty Persian Gulf Potentiates, outing a sexual harassment victim in her own organization, assaulting an employee, running a generally abusive workplace, having no experience with budgeting, and writing mean tweets about Republicans, Neera Tanden was deemed unacceptable by the Senate to head the White House Office of Management and Budget.  (Rather depressingly, it was the tweets that were the primary concern of the Senate)

But you know how it is with Washington, D.C. insiders: No matter how badly you f%$# up, and no matter how profoundly unsuited you are to a position of influence, you get another bite at the apple, so Neera Tanden gets a gig as Senior Advisor at the White House, a position that does not require Senate confirmation:

A contentious nomination process kept Neera Tanden out of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, but she still landed in the White House.

The White House confirmed on Friday that Biden had appointed Tanden to be a senior adviser. She will start on Monday. 

………

Tanden will hold various duties in the White House but her focus will be handling any potential fallout from Republican lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court. Tanden will also be tasked with reviewing the United States Digital Service, a program that aims to make government accessible online.

This from someone who has never worked as a lawyer (she does have a J.D. from Yale), was a model of opacity at CAP, and has no background in IT.

Lovely choice.

Except for her tweets excoriating Republicans, which I wholeheartedly approve, her entire career has been as a crass political hack and an awful human being.

More importantly, the people around her hate her enough that anywhere she works leaks like a sieve, which is rather a contrast to her mentor, Hillary Clinton.  (Say what you will about Hillary, but anyone reasonably close to her could have written a tell-all book for a 7 figure advance, and no one has.)

Much like Rahm Emanuel, we will now have another member of the Biden administration inside the tent pissing in.

For F%$#’s Sake, Why?

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Why the hell does Joe Biden want to appoint Rahm Emanuel ambassador to Japan?

Rahm has a serious claim to be the most overrated man in Politics, he does not speak Japanese, and he is a loud obnoxious bully, which does not play well with Japanese social norms.

Anyone this side of the “My Pillow” guy would have been a better selection.

The man is a cancer on the body politic:

Joe Biden has picked the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to be his ambassador to Japan.

………

Some progressives view Emanuel as a major antagonist within the party. He is often criticized among liberals, for example, for his handling of a shooting of an African American teenager during his time in Chicago.

He covered up the shooting, and kept the shooter on the force until the courts forced the release of the video.

I get that political supporters get assignments like this, but why the f%$# do you have to appoint someone so completely ill-suited to the position.

Not this Sh%$ Again!

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The stupid people in economics have been bleating about inflation since, well, forever, and last month’s CIP numbers will only elicit more wankerhood from the pundits:

US consumer prices soared in April as post-lockdown demand and shortages drove up the cost of a wide range of goods, from used cars and home furnishings to airline tickets.

The news triggered a further slide in markets unsettled this week by the threat of rising prices, which could force central banks to abandon zero0-interest rate policies that have helped stoke share prices. The Dow Jones index fell 1.3% in early trading and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 2.5%.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) climbed 4.2% during the month from a year earlier, the labor department said, the biggest 12-month increase since September 2008, the height of the financial crisis. The figure was significantly higher than economists had predicted.

CPI measures the prices consumers pay for goods and services, including clothes, groceries, restaurant meals, recreational activities and vehicles. This month’s rise saw increases across the board and was driven by many factors.

The Biden administration’s economic stimulus package has pumped money into the economy just as it reopens from coronavirus lockdown measures. Fresh demand for goods and services has also outpaced supply, which is still recovering from the lockdowns at the start of the pandemic, leading to shortages for a broad range of goods from lumber and steel to ketchup.

Speaking of wankers, the Sultan of Schmuck, the Patron of Pissants, the Don of Dickheads, the ……… Never mind, enough alliteration, Lawrence “Larry” Summers has weighted in:

Others are more concerned. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers has warned the US could face a period of high inflation unseen since the 1970s. Talking to Bloomberg TV he said it was “plain wrong” to suggest that inflation cannot surge unexpectedly.

“It may be that a way will be found to bring it under control,” he said. “But as I look at $3tn of stimulus, $2tn of savings overhang, a major acceleration coming from Covid in the rear-view mirror, rates expected by the Federal Reserve to be at zero for three years even in a booming economy, record growth this year, major expansion of the Fed balance sheet, and much new fiscal stimulus to come – I’m worried.”

It’s nice that you are worried, Larry, but you have been wrong about everything since  ……… Well ……… Forever, so how about a nice hot cup of shut the f%$# up!

But now we will hear the wankers wanking about inflation for at least 18 months, and they will be on you teevee and your editorial pages.

About Bloody Time

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The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has finally bowed to reality and admitted that it can be transmitted as an aerosol, as opposed to just the larger droplets.

This has been obvious for months, but public health authorities have been steadfast in their opposition to this mode of transmission since the beginning of the pandemic.

It makes dealing effectively with the virus more difficult, but more effective than ignoring reality:

Federal health officials on Friday updated public guidance about how the coronavirus spreads, emphasizing that transmission occurs by inhaling very fine respiratory droplets and aerosolized particles, as well as through contact with sprayed droplets or touching contaminated hands to one’s mouth, nose or eyes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now states explicitly — in large, bold lettering — that airborne virus can be inhaled even when one is more than six feet away from an infected individual. The new language, posted online, is a change from the agency’s previous position that most infections were acquired through “close contact, not airborne transmission.”

As the pandemic unfolded last year, infectious disease experts warned for months that both the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization were overlooking research that strongly suggested the coronavirus traveled aloft in small, airborne particles. Several scientists on Friday welcomed the agency’s scrapping of the term “close contact,” which they criticized as vague and said did not necessarily capture the nuances of aerosol transmission.

………

The new focus underscores the need for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue standards for employers to address potential hazards in the workplace, some experts said.

This is probably one reason that both WHO and the CDC have been loath to support airborne transmission: It requires more extensive, and more costly measures to deal with the problem.

………

The new information has significant implications for indoor environments, and workplaces in particular, Dr. Michaels said. Virus-laden particles “maintain their airborne properties for hours, and they accumulate in a room that doesn’t have good ventilation.”

Yet more cost and disruption, particularly for things like reopening schools.

Aggressive action, and not reopening too soon, are required to deal with this even with vaccine rates well above 50%, and it’s going to be inconvenient as hell.

Imagine That

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The department of Justice has condemned the Portland Police Bureau’s response to Black Lives Matter Protests.

This is not a surprise.  The police were rioting:

The Department of Justice has delivered a striking rebuke of the Portland Police Bureau for its brutal policing of last year’s racial justice protests, calling out the police for violations of bureau policy and the U.S. constitution, while criticizing a leadership structure that “lacks critical self-assessment” and broadly views “all force as justified.”

In the aftermath of the George Floyd murderer by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin last May, Portland erupted in a months-long streak of nightly protest demanding racial justice and police accountability. (Portland protests also made national news after President Trump deployed federal officers, who clashed with protesters and swept suspects off the streets in unmarked vans.) The city’s activists recently got a shout out from Floyds’ younger brother Rodney after Chauvin was found guilty. “I’d like to thank the people that stayed in the streets marching night and day — the people of Portland stayed in the streets for 83 days,” he said, “making a statement with us, encouraging us on our dark days.”

In real time, the protests against police violence were met with brutality from the Portland Police Bureau, whose commissioner is also the city’s mayor, Ted Wheeler. The Police used force against protesters more than 6,000 times, ranging from firing less-than-lethal munitions, to launching tear gas, to individual beatings delivered with batons. (Rolling Stone explored the contradiction of this progressive city’s violent cops in a dispatch last summer.)

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The new letter from DOJ is dated May 5th and was published by The Oregonian. It is the federal government’s response to a PPB self-assessment of its work policing the nightly protests. In that assessment, the police appeared not to understand the public anger directed at the bureau, blaming the protests on shiftless youth, writing: “many younger people, lacking entertainment and work, often attended the protests, with some gathering regularly to socialize and drink and a portion of those then engaging in criminal activity.” Independent contractors, hired by the city to offer oversight, had earlier slammed PPB’s assessment as “tone deaf.“

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The Department of Justice found much to criticize in PPB’s “abnormally high” use of force. And it calls out PPB leadership for its inability or unwillingness to impose restraint, writing, “PPB command broadly portrays all force as justified.”

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Public anger at the police bureau runs deep. Racial disparities in arrests in Portland are the fifth worst in the nation. This year the city paid out a $2 million settlement to the family of Quanice Hayes, a Black teenager who was killed while on his knees in 2017 by a PPB officer with an AR-15. Last month, the police killed a man experiencing homelessness, Robert Delgado, who appeared to be in mental distress. As seen in video of the incident, the officer shot Delgado with an AR-15 from long distance while taking cover behind a large tree trunk. (The shooting is under state and county investigation.)

The Portland Police Bureau, as well as the Portland’s city council structure, whose commission based structure is antithetical to good government.

The case of Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, where he has strongly endorsed police brutality, and implied support for violence against protesters, is just one data point showing that this system does not work.

Of Course they Are Blaming Corbyn

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There were by-elections in the UK yesterday, and labour completely screwed the pooch, loosing a seat that they have held since its founding 62 years ago.

Jeremy Corbyn is being blamed, because ……… Blairite Labour is sees Boris Johnson and the Tories as the opposition, and people who actually support progressive policies as the enemy.

It is not 1995.  It’s not even 2008.

The great recession changed things, and you are going to get more Boris Johnsons and more Donald Trumps until they stop sucking up to predatory capital as a campaign strategy:

Keir Starmer is facing immediate pressure from the left of Labour to change course after losing the Hartlepool byelection and a string of council seats to the Conservatives.

It came as Boris Johnson, visiting Hartlepool after the Conservatives took the seat for the first time in its 47-year history, said the result – which turned a Labour majority of 3,600 into a Tory win by nearly 7,000 votes, a 16-point swing – was “a mandate” for the government to press on.

………

While Labour had accepted the early results were likely to be among the worst of the series of votes across England, Scotland and Wales, the immediate message from Starmer and his allies was to push for a more rapid move away from the Jeremy Corbyn era.

Corbyn out-performed expectations in 3 of 4 elections with the party infrastructure actively sabotaging him.

You followed that up with party purges against him and his supporters.

If you think that the problem is that you are not moving fast enough away from Corbyn, you are delusional.

………

Diane Abbott, who was shadow home secretary under Corbyn, tweeted: “Keir Starmer must think again about his strategy.” She added: “Crushing defeat for Labour in Hartlepool. Not possible to blame Jeremy Corbyn for this result. Labour won the seat twice under his leadership.”

Richard Burgon, the Leeds East MP who was shadow justice secretary under Corbyn, said Starmer’s team “needs to urgently change direction”. He tweeted: “It should start by championing the popular policies in our recent manifestos – backed by a large majority of voters.”

A spokesman for Momentum, the Corbyn-allied Labour group, said: “The leadership are reacting to this disaster by promising ‘more change’ – but over the last year we’ve gone backwards. It’s time to change direction, not double down on a failed strategy.”

They are going to double down on a failed strategy, because playing to win means that they lose power within the party. 

One of Tony Blair’s “innovations” for Labour was the imposition of a top-down process in selecting MPs in many seats, and if the left takes power, and has the guts to deal with members more interested in power IN the party than the power OF the party, their positions will be far less secure.

Fragility Has Its Costs

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It looks like manufacturers in general and the automobile industry in particular, are taking a few steps back from just-in-time manufacturing.  It appears that they have discovered that the system where they accumulate little or no inventory may save a few bucks, but when it breaks, it gets ugly fast:

Toyota Motor Corp. is stockpiling up to four months of some parts. Volkswagen AG is building six factories so it can get its own batteries. And, in shades of Henry Ford, Tesla Inc. is trying to lock up access to raw materials.

The hyperefficient auto supply chain symbolized by the words “just in time” is undergoing its biggest transformation in more than half a century, accelerated by the troubles car makers have suffered during the pandemic. After sudden swings in demand, freak weather and a series of accidents, they are reassessing their basic assumption that they could always get the parts they needed when they needed them.

“The just-in-time model is designed for supply-chain efficiencies and economies of scale,” said Ashwani Gupta, Nissan Motor Co.’s chief operating officer. “The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid highlight the fragility of our supply-chain model.”

………

The basic idea of just in time is avoiding waste. By having suppliers deliver parts to the assembly line a few hours or days before they go into a vehicle, auto makers don’t pay for what they don’t use. They save on warehouses and the people to manage them.

But as supply chains get more global and car makers increasingly rely on single suppliers, the system has grown brittle. The crises are more frequent.

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A freak snowstorm in Texas in mid-February shut down a refinery that feeds production of 85% of resins produced in the U.S. Those resins go into components from car bumpers to steering wheels. They’re some of the least expensive raw materials in a car, but they go into seat foam, and dealers can’t sell a car without seats.

At the end of March, Toyota shut down production at several U.S. plants due to the shortage, according to a schedule seen by The Wall Street Journal, hitting production of some of its bestsellers, including the RAV4 sport-utility vehicle. 

Obviously, excessive inventory can be as much of a problem as not enough, but when you have inventory levels that are measured in hours, as opposed to weeks, when something goes wrong, you are completely f%$#ed.

Frau Merkel (Horses Whinny) Is at It Again

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The day after the Biden Administration said that it supported suspending IP rights on the Covid Vaccine, Angela Merkel comes out against this.

I think that her motivation is pretty simple:  Covid response is going pear-shaped in Germany, with Covid cases spiking, and by ginning up a controversy, she can avoid scrutiny of her handling of the pandemic.

This is not the first time that she has done this, it’s behind the whole policy of “othering” southern Europeans and spreading misery throughout the EU during and after the financial crisis.

She knows that if she’s seen as doing something, anything, with the argument that she is protecting Germans from the undeserving “other” she, and her CDU Party, can benefit, even if it provides no benefit to Germans, and may kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Merkel is despicable:

The US and Germany are at odds on the issue of waivers for patents on Covid-19 vaccines, as Berlin argued that a waiver would not increase production and would inhibit future private sector research.

The disagreement is the first major rift between the two economic powers since Joe Biden took office, and threatens to deadlock discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sour relations within the G7 group of major industrialised democracies.

Any WTO decision on a waiver would have to be by consensus, so Germany opposition is a major obstacle to intellectual property rights on vaccines being suspended.

The Biden government’s announcement on Wednesday that it would back a waiver on vaccine patents was welcomed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a step towards greater global equity at a time when poor countries have little access to vaccines and south Asia has been hit by a devastating outbreak. India accounted for 46% of the new Covid-19 cases recorded around the world over the past week, and there are signs the wave is spreading to Nepal, Sri Lanka and other neighbouring states.

But Angela Merkel’s government came out against a waiver on Thursday.

“The US suggestion for the lifting of patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines has significant implications for vaccine production as a whole,” a government spokeswoman said.

“The limiting factors in the production of vaccines are the production capacities and the high-quality standards and not patents,” she added, arguing that the companies were already working with partners to boost manufacturing capacity.

This argument about the difficulty of vaccines is patently false, as I noted yesterday. 

You can mass produce mRNA viruses in a space smaller than the file room necessary to store the quality control documents, and Angela Merkel knows this; she got her PhD in Quantum Chemistry.

Unfortunately, there is no one in politics in Germany who is willing to call her out on her lies.

Good Riddance, You Incompetent Prat

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DCCC chair in the last election cycle, who has seen her chances to advance in House leadership as a result, will not be running for reelection in 2022.

In a just world, she would be run out of town on a rail.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos of Moline announced Friday she would not seek reelection next year after serving since 2013 in a northwest and west-central Illinois district that has trended increasingly Republican.

She does not know how her district will change in redistricting.

………

At one time, Bustos had been viewed as a rising star among House Democrats, demonstrating an ability to win in largely Republican territory.

No, she managed to get mentored by Nancy Pelosi, which is why she got, and mismanaged her time as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, most egregiously when she explicitly stated that consultants working on primary challenges would be blacklisted by the organization.

It’s called saying the quiet part out loud, and it is very very stupid.

I’m not sure if Pelosi is just a bad judge of people, in the early 2000s, she pushed Anthony Weiner and Deborah Wasserman Schultz who were similarly disastrous in their own special ways, or if she decided that the best way for her to remain speaker was to support flawed individuals as a part of the next generation.

I think that she may be following the advice of Lord Julius, “When you’re running a bureaucracy the best way to safeguard your job is to make sure you’re the only one who knows how the whole thing works.” (Pelosi might also be following he advice of Weisshaupt, but that is enough of a deep dive into Cerebus quotes)

Her path up the Democratic Congressional leadership is done for a very long time, and she knows it, so she’s looking to cash in as a lobbyist or a pundit.

Boeing Still Can’t Make Planes

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The FAA will audit Boeing following the discovery of a serious manufacturing flaw.

The short version of this is that Boeing has systematically dismantled procedures to allow employees to report safety issues on the shop floor to senior management, because the management fetishist MBA culture that was imported from McDonnell Douglas when they acquired the firm.

Since McDonnell took over Boeing with Boeing’s money, they have systematically dismantled every advantage that Boeing once they came on board:

Boeing Co. is facing an audit to determine why changes in its manufacturing practices on the 737 Max led to a hazard that went unnoticed for almost two years.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees Boeing and has meted out multiple civil penalties against the planemaker in recent years, said in a statement Thursday that it is also investigating the origin of the manufacturing flaw.

“These initiatives are part of our commitment to continually evaluating and improving our oversight of all aspects of aviation safety, recognizing that catching errors at the earliest possible point enhances what is already the world’s safest form of transportation,” the agency said.

………

The flaws in the electrical components raise new questions about Boeing’s ability to monitor safety issues within the company. The lack of a robust internal safety review and oversight system was cited repeatedly by multiple reviews of the 737 Max crashes.

Until recent months, Boeing didn’t have what is known as a Safety Management System, which requires an organization to conduct more robust risk analyses of design features, open channels for employees to raise concerns and involve senior management.

………

The changes to how certain electrical components were installed on the 737 Max occurred in 2019. At the time, Boeing concluded it was such a minor change that it didn’t require FAA approval, the agency said in a statement. Similarly, Boeing employees who are deputized to act on behalf of the federal regulator also didn’t approve of the changes.

………

The electrical problem was deemed serious enough that the agency said it was waiving the normal period for public comment and would require the repairs as soon as Boeing completes a bulletin detailing them.

Boeing is being run by finance guys, and their business model is tor burn the the company down for the insurance money.