Well, here is the video.
We still don’t have a clue as to why the hell Christie aides, and possibly Christie himself, decided to make the George Washington Bridge the largest parking lot on the Hudson river, but what is presented here is certainly credible.
I really hope that someone rolls on their co-conspirators, because the justification for something this epically stupid will be fascinating.
I agree with New York Times reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, that the range for the baby boom generation, 1946 to 1964, covers two distinct generations:
There is no baby boom generation.
Oh, sure, there was a baby boom: a neatly defined, pig-in-the-python bulge from 1946 to 1964. But the kind of broadly shared cultural experiences that could bind together people across that whole span? That just didn’t happen.
This year the youngest of the baby boomers — the youngest, mind you — turn 50. I hit that milestone a few months back. But we aren’t what people usually have in mind when they talk about boomers. They mean the early boomers, the postwar cohort, most of them now in their 60s —not us later boomers, labeled “Generation Jones” by the writer Jonathan Pontell.
I never had to worry about being drafted and sent to Vietnam.
I wasn’t a part of the job market until after the post war economic dynamism, along with the great compression between rich and poor, had ended.
I do not remember the Kennedy assassination.
I do not remember when the Beatles came to the US.
I do not remember the civil rights protests.
When I entered college, it was Punk and New Wave, not folksong inspired protest songs.
I have never felt any kinship with the generational experiences of the early Boomers.
I would also note that my experience is somewhat atypical, I was born in 1962, and lived in Alaska from 1963-1969, so I missed the 60s even from the perspective as a child.
Alaska was much more isolated than it is now. It didn’t even get direct dialed long distance until after we left the state.
Going to North America. Hope I don’t get shot by George Zimmerman. Just kidding! I’m white.#HasJustineLandedYet
— Ellie Mac (@ellenmc) December 21, 2013
Background here.
First, we have the always amusing Charlie Pierce:
Back a few years, David Halberstam was supposed to speak at my son’s graduation from Brandeis, but Halberstam died a car wreck shortly before the ceremony so, scrambling, Brandeis went to the alumni bullpen and called in…Tom Friedman. This was the worst strategic move since Darrell Johnson brought in Burton for Willoughby in Game 7 of the 1975 Series. I don’t remember what Friedman said, but it was pretty damned banal. I have considered asking for all four years tuition back ever since.
While Pierce is good, Billmon wins the Internet today:
Friedman: “Reinventing the consignment shop on the web will save the U.S. economy. Also, PR pitches work with me.” http://t.co/9Nq06LLVhs
— billmon (@billmon1) December 22, 2013
One of these days, I hope to be able to write well enough to lampoon Tom Friedman on my own ……… Then again, if I were to lambaste what he writes, I would actually have to READ what he writes.
Maybe I’m lucky just to quote people trashing him.
Read this essay from a former head of security at Ben Gurion airport:
For a bunch of people in snappy uniforms patting down crotches, the TSA is remarkably unpopular. Nobody likes going through security at the airport, but you probably figured most of it had a point. All those hours spent in line with other shoeless travelers are a necessary precursor to safe flying. It’s annoying, but at least it wards off terrorism.
That’s all bullsh%$. The TSA couldn’t protect you from a 6-year-old with a water balloon. What are my qualifications for saying that? My name is Rafi Sela, and I was the head of security for the world’s safest airport. Here’s what your country does wrong.
He is clear, and concisely explains the systemic problems present in the agency.
This is the money quote:
Of course, after a little while it came out that these scanners were useless. I could strap a bomb capable of taking down a 747 to my body and walk right through a body scanner. Nobody would catch me. I’d rather not explain exactly how, but this German man was able to sneak a fake bomb through the same scanners without being caught. And he did it in Germany, a country where “airport security officer” isn’t a synonym for “failed Walmart cashier.”
His basic thesis is that the organization is fatally flawed because it is designed to regulate itself.
And here’s the thing: Republicans don’t want to help the unfortunate.
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.
On a number of occasions, I have noted that it has been illegal to take out insurance on something in which one does not have an interest in its continued existence.
So, it’s illegal to take out a policy on your neighbor’s house, because otherwise, you would have an interested in burning it down.
This problem was first addressed, in the UK at least in the by the Marine Insurance Act of 1746.
The proximate cause was people who would buy insurance on a merchant ship, and then leak the manifests and schedules to the French, who were at war with the British at the time, and they would collect the insurance payouts.
It has been the law for longer then there has been the United States.
Only in the late 1990s, they decided that it did not apply to credit default swaps, and so the ripe-for-abuse “naked” CDS was born.
Well, the Daily Show found a story on Bloomberg about how the private equity firm Blackstone Group purchased a naked CDS on a 3rd party loan to the Spanish gaming company Codere.
Blackstone then made a loan to Codere that was conditional to their making their making a payment late on the aforementioned 3rd party loan, which was a “credit event” which netted the investment firm a $15,000,000.00 payout.
What I do not understand how this isn’t insurance fraud, except, of course, a CDS isn’t insurance, except, of course, that it is.
But besides the Bloomberg article there has been crickets from the financial press, which Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee discussed last night.
Brutal
Succinct and to the point.
The problem with gun nuts with vigilante fantasies is that they think that shooting an unarmed man is the pinnacle of bravery, when in fact they’re just extreme cowards.
Neither shooting a senile octogenarian on your porch, nor a kid in a hoodie wielding a bag of skittles are heroic, and the people who do it are not heros.
Ever,
This is an epic troll. I wish that it was my idea:
Krugman’s latest OP/ED calls for raising the minimum wage.
It’s well thought out, but the limited space of the Times OP/ED page has him leaving out an important point to make, that a low minimum wage is actually a taxpayer funded subsidy for bad employers, because many of these employees qualify for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, or the EITC.
Walmart and McDonalds actually have a policy to help their employees register for the public dole, because it is cheaper (for them) to dump it all off on the taxpayers.
Raising the minimum wage would tend to be stimulative, because poorer people spend a greater proportion of their income more quickly, and it would lower the deficit, by increasing tax revenues, and decreasing safety net programs.
Of course, the so-called “Deficit Hawks” don’t care, because they don’t really care about the deficit. They just want to punish the poors.
Ratf%$#s.
It’s, “Here’s why Wall Street has a hard time being ethical,” in the Guardian, and here is the money quote:
That’s the paradox at the core of the settlements we’re seeing: where is the real responsibility? Others were doing it, yes. Banks should be fined, yes. But somebody should be charged. Yet the people who really should be held accountable have not. They are the bosses, the managers and CEOs of the businesses. They set the standard, they shaped the culture. The Chuck Princes, Dick Fulds, and Fred Goodwins of the world. They happily shepherded and profited from a Wall Street that spun out of control.
A precedent needs to be set, to slow down Wall Street’s wild behavior. A reminder that rules are there to be followed, not exploited. The managers knew what was going on. Ask anyone who works at a bank and they will tell you that.
The excuse we have long accepted is ignorance: that these leaders couldn’t have known what was happening. That doesn’t suffice. If they didn’t know, it’s an even larger sin.
Go read the rest.
It’s not the French government, but it is as close as it can get without a governmental imprimatur:
Suddenly, there’s the next solution. This one is attractively presented with graphs and in simple economic terms that even a politician might understand. It’s seemingly well-reasoned and has no visible partisanship attached to it. And it came from one of the largest megabanks in France, Groupe BPCE, that hardly anyone knows.
It was established in 2009 through a government bailout and a near-simultaneous merger between the Caisse Nationale des Caisses d’Épargne and the Banque Fédérale des Banques Populaires. These vast cooperative bank networks continue to exist with their separate brands. And that’s what consumers see. BPCE has €1.15 trillion in assets and owns about 20% of the retail banking market. It’s huge.
And now, its asset management and investment banking subsidiary, Natixis, released a zinger of a study designed to influence policy. It’s titled, “On a purely macroeconomic basis, Germany should leave the Eurozone.”
Germany should get out of the way so that the remaining countries can devalue in a big way what would remain of the euro. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, etc. have always done that, one way or the other, before the euro took that nifty tool of sudden money destruction away from them. It would be the ideal solution for France.
After conceding that there may be non-economic reasons to form a monetary union, the report lays out five reasons why Germany needs to exit. But it offers an alternate solution: if Germany wants to stay, it needs to pay.
- Asymmetries in the economic cycles.
- Weakening economic ties between Germany and the rest of the Eurozone.
- Structural asymmetries.
- Different needs in exchange rates.
- Incapacity in the rest of the Eurozone to impose “internal devaluation.”
Read the rest.
Copryight, patent, and Pirkei Avot? Really?
Yes, really.
Harold Feld, public interest telco lawyer, and apparently a decent Talmudic scholar writes a well documented explanation of why our current IP regime is actually immoral under Jewish norms.
A sample:
As I shall explain, many people think that the debate around intellectual property and public policy involves a conflict between the first type – hasheli sheli v’shelcha shelcha (what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours) – and the second type “sheli shelch v’shelcha sheli” (what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine). The media (which come down firmly on the side of their owners for expanding copyright) frame the debate as the well-meaning but foolish ‘Information wants to be free’ v. the more intuitively appealing respect for ‘intellectual property.’ Unworldly academics and idealistic young hackers, we are constantly told, simply don’t understand that without a way to control and make money from things like copyright, patent and trademark we would have no publishing industry, no movie industry, no medicines and technology and other inventions.
In reality, however, the modern debate over intellectual property policy in the last 30 years actually takes place solely in the context of the first sentence of the Mishna. The question is not whether we should have copyright or patent or trademark in an abstract sense. In light of our constant creation of new rights of enforcement and burdens placed on others for non-infringing uses, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its “anti-circumvention provision,” and our efforts to force these ever expanding policies on other countries through trade agreements negotiated in secret, such as the recently reported Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the question is whether we have departed from ethical laws and increasingly come to resemble the injustice and cruelty of Sodom.
As an FYI to the gentiles reading this, the idea that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for sexual improprieties is not a part of normative Jewish theology.
Rather, it was destroyed because of the greed of the people and the way that they treated foreigners.
Read the whole thing.
To the Jews among my readers, this would be an excellent d’var for Vayera.
Writing in Jacobin magazine, economist and blogger John Quiggen makes a cogent artument that, “Wall Street Isn’t Worth It.”
David Graeber’s denunciation of “bullshit jobs” resonated with many, producing a string of responses. Alex Tabarrok and Brad DeLong have suggested that the apparent inverse relationship between earnings and the social value of work done is simply an illustration of “diamond-water” paradox, that prices and wages are determined by marginal, rather than absolute values and that marginal values reflect scarcity as well as utility. Peter Frase refutes this claim in both empirical terms (noting for example the fact that the price of diamonds is set by the De Beers cartel rather than pure market forces) and as a resurrection of the discredited marginal productivity ethics of the 19th century.
I’d like to look at a specific question raised by the discussion of private returns and social value, namely: can Wall Street, in its present form, be justified? That is, does the share of income flowing to corporations and professional workers in the financial sector reflect their marginal contribution to the total value of social output, so that, if their work ceased to be done and their skills were allocated elsewhere, we would all be worse off?
I argue that society as a whole would be better off if the financial sector were smaller, and received much smaller returns. A political strategy based on cutting the financial sector down to size has more promise for the Left than any alternative approach now on offer, and is a necessary precondition for a broader attempt to make the distribution of wealth and power more equal.
Read the rest.
It’s a dense read, but I think that it makes the point quite well.
Go read.
Digby explains how allowing torturers and over-aggressive prosecutors and cops to walk away from their crimes corrupts our entire society:
I think the rationale for this is the same one they use for failing to punish the CIA torturers — if we prosecute them they will be unwilling to take chances in the future and then criminals/terrorists will kill us all in our beds. This has always struck me as a fairly insulting indictment of public servants who take oaths to our constitution. It implies that unless they are given immunity in advance from any accountability they will refuse to do their job to protect and serve. And frankly, I don’t think that’s fair to them. Indeed, what’s happened is the opposite: there’s no advantage to being a straight arrow and following the rules so the incentives go the other way.
This is a sickness throughout our culture. Government authorities at all levels, from the cops who overuse the taser because they know there will be no ramifications if their torture leaves no mark to the top Justice Department torture advocates who are now feted as “experts” and heroes, there is little accountability. And it tars all the ones who do follow the rules of the constitution and just plain human decency with the same taint.
Read the whole thing.
So I am amused that AT&T might be liable for violation of telemarketing rules over its data sharing with the CIA:
It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The CIA and AT&T figured out how to get around legal restrictions on giving the CIA access to domestic phone call information, but in doing so they violated a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that protects you against telemarketing.
According to this story in the New York Times, the CIA paid AT&T to provide them with information on calls passing through its international telephone system. Because federal law prevents the CIA from spying inside the United States, the CIA could not legally get info on calls terminating in the U.S. But, of course, calls from suspected foreign terrorists (aka “anyone outside the United States”) that terminate in the United States are the most interesting to the CIA.
So what’cha gonna do if you’re a poor spy agency or a patriotic mega-corp who understand that sometimes you have to break few privacy eggs to make a freedom omelet? According to the article, when a call originated or terminated in the United States, AT&T would “mask” the person’s identity by revealing only some of the digits of their phone number. The CIA could then refer this information to the FBI, which can get a court order and require AT&T to provide the rest of the phone number and all other relevant identifying information. Then the FBI can kick that information back to the CIA.
Unfortunately for the CIA and AT&T, while this might work to get around the limits Congress imposed on the CIA, it looks like it violates the law requiring phone companies like AT&T to protect your privacy. Section 222 of the Communications Act, also known as the rule on “customer proprietary network information” (CPNI), prohibits AT&T from selling anyone information on who you call or who calls you without your consent. Nor does this contract with the CIA fit into any of the law’s exemptions for information sharing. This is a private contract, just the same as if AT&T had contracted with Blue Cross to let them know if anyone Blue Cross insured sent out too many times for pizza and other unhealthy food.
The fact that AT&T did not fully disclose the full phone number or the name of the subscriber associated with the call does not make it any less of a violation. Under the law, AT&T violates the CPNI rules just by looking at any records associated with the phone number for any purpose other than actually providing service, billing, 9-1-1, or other exemptions found in the statute. The phone company doesn’t even have to disclose the information to anyone else (which, of course, it did, and which, of course, is also illegal) to violate the law.
If you have AT&T, you might want to call them and opt out of this program, which is your right under federal regulations.
Better yet, get a lawyer, and get a class action on.
Let us be plain. Ralph Reed is a con-man who would sell his gray-haired granny to the Somali pirates for fifty cents worth of consulting fees. He has nothing worth contributing to the national dialogue. This should be plain by now to all but the deliberately dim. The people who put this mess together every morning are not as embarrassing as the allegedly important people who appear on it, and nowhere near as embarrassing as the people who take it seriously, some of whom rule us.
Always a pleasure to read.
He covers the recent JP Morgan settlement with the department of justice, and absolutely demolishes all the sycophantic business “journalists” who blather about how they see it as tantamount to extortion.
In the space of about 5 minutes, he explains the principles involved, and just how full of sh%$ the cheerleaders for the banksters are.
A business school professor at Wharton has found that not only are economists more selfish and more likely to cheat, but that even just the study of economics and business has a criminogenic effect.
The quick bullet points are:
He wonders if there is a problem with how we teach economics.
Gee, you think?
Go read the rest.
H/t Salon.