Category: Incompetence

Why Hasn’t This Been Done?

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The Biden administration has at this point failed to nominate a replacement for the relentlessy corrupt Ajit Pai as chairman. 

To quote the movie, Ocean’s Eleven, “You had ONE job.”

President Joe Biden’s failure to break the Federal Communications Commission’s 2-2 partisan deadlock is reaching a “critical point,” 57 advocacy groups wrote in a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Friday.

Nearly five months after his inauguration, Biden has not yet nominated a Democratic FCC commissioner to fill the empty fifth slot. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel has been leading the commission as acting chairwoman, but she lacks the majority needed to do anything opposed by the FCC’s two Republicans, such as reinstating net neutrality rules and reversing former Chairman Ajit Pai’s deregulation of the broadband industry. Even a step like raising the FCC’s broadband-speed standard—which hasn’t changed in over six years—will likely require a party-line vote because Republicans prefer a low speed standard for the FCC’s annual report on how many Americans lack modern broadband access.

In early April, over 100,000 people signed a petition urging Biden to quickly break the FCC deadlock. Advocacy groups are frustrated that they are still waiting. Why Biden is taking so long is unclear.

“Given the legislative calendar and the diminishing number of days for hearings and confirmation votes, we have reached a critical point to guarantee the agency charged with ensuring affordable communications access can do its work during your administration,” the groups wrote in their new letter.

This is an, “Own Goal,” and. to quote someone who is not named Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

We don’t want to wait until 2023, when, following 2 years of ineffectual action by Congressional Democrats leads to both the House and the Senate being flipped, when Mitch McConnell will dictate who can be put in that post.

Speaking of Delicate Snowflakes

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It should surprise no one that the Stanford chapter of the Federalist Society attempted to get a law student expelled for making fun of them.

I guess that in the Federalist Society, they only believe in the 1st Amendment if it applies to union busting businesses and themselves.

I’m pretty sure that the OED has “The Federalist Society” as an alternate definition of hypocrisy:

Facing forceful criticism and many questions, Stanford University moved Wednesday to allow a law-school student full graduation privileges after the student’s “satirical” letter, sent months ago, provoked the ire of a conservative student organization and a strong defense from a student-rights group.

Law student Nicholas Wallace was poised to graduate June 12, but his degree was held up while the school probed the missive, which took the form of a flyer advertising a made-up event titled “The Originalist Case for Insurrection,” supposedly sponsored by the campus chapter of the right-wing Federalist Society. According to the flyer, the “event” would include appearances by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “to discuss violent insurrection.” It added that “riot information” would be emailed the morning of the event.

“Violent insurrection, also known as doing a coup, is a classical system of installing a government,” the flyer said. “Although widely believed to conflict in every way with the rule of law, violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government.”

………

Despite Wallace’s flyer being sent January 25 and advertising an event to be held three weeks earlier, on January 6, Stanford put his upcoming degree on hold two weeks before he was to graduate, after Stanford Law’s student Federalist Society chapter complained about the flyer.

After a Slate report Wednesday on the school’s action went viral on social media, and this news organization asked the university to explain its actions, Stanford announced Wednesday that its investigation was done, the flyer was

………

The school’s Federalist Society chapter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Of course the, “school’s Federalist Society chapter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”  Bullies hate it when you fight back.

Also: Shame on Stanford University not laughing this out of the in-box.

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.

The Arizona “Vote Audit” Gets Even More F%$#ed Up

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It turns out that Maricopa County may have to trash all of its voting machines as a result of the Cyber Ninjas clown show.

There are requirements that voting authorities maintain control of their voting equipment, and this has been a fairly clear violation of these regulations.

Luckily for county authorities, the bill that passed the state house authorizing this bad guerilla theater vote audit puts the state on the hook for all the costs involved:

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told Maricopa County officials in a letter on Thursday that her office may not allow the county to reuse hundreds of vote-counting machines that the county gave the state Senate for its general election audit.

The county broke the chain of custody, or the procedures for properly securing and tracking the machines, when it was required to give the machines to the state Senate under subpoenas, Hobbs wrote in a May 20 letter to the county’s Board of Supervisors, Recorder and Elections Department director.

Hobbs said she consulted with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who said the machines shouldn’t be used again because there is no way to fully determine whether the machines were tampered with while out of the county’s custody.

Hobbs wrote that if the county tries to use the machines again, even if it performs a full analysis in an attempt to determine whether the machines were still safe to use, her office would “consider decertification proceedings.” In Arizona, voting systems must be certified to be used in elections.

Replacing the machines would cost the county millions. But the Senate signed an agreement with the county that said the county is not liable for any damages to the equipment while in the Senate’s custody, so it’s unclear whether the county would be on the hook for the costs.

The county leases its voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems under a three-year, $6.1 million agreement that runs through December 2022.

Dump the old machines, and use hand marked publicly counted paper ballots.

It won’t cost you any money, it’s all on the state, and you will end up with a more secure system.

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.

Not Enough Bullets

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Emergent BioSolutions, whose cavalier and incompetent business practices contaminated millions of vaccine doses, still saw fit to give huge bonuses to its top executives.

I’m not sure what the executives did, beyond taking millions of dollars in government subsidies:

Emergent BioSolutions, the biotech company whose Baltimore plant ruined millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses to its top executives last year, and the company’s board praised its founder and chairman for “leveraging his critical relationships with key customers, Congress, and other stakeholders,” according to documents released Wednesday by a House subcommittee.

………

Production at the plant was halted a month ago after workers accidentally contaminated a batch of vaccine, forcing Emergent to discard the equivalent of up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine.

Records from an Emergent board of directors compensation meeting offer a rare glimpse inside a politically connected federal contractor whose business is built largely around a single customer: the United States government.

The documents reflect earlier reporting by The New York Times, including a series of confidential audits that highlighted repeated violations of manufacturing standards at the Baltimore plant, including failure to properly disinfect the plant and protect against contamination of vaccine batches. Another report in June 2020, by a top manufacturing expert for the federal government, warned that Emergent lacked trained staff and adequate systems for quality control.

………

The board lauded executives for their “exemplary overall 2020 corporate performance including significantly outperforming revenue and earnings targets.”

Since 2018, Mr. El-Hibri and his wife, Nancy, have donated at least $150,000 to groups affiliated with the top Republican on the panel, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, as well as Mr. Scalise’s campaigns. At least two other members of the subcommittee received donations during the 2020 election cycle from the company’s political action committee, which has given about $1.4 million over the past 10 years to members of both parties.

Mr. Kramer received a $1.2 million cash bonus, the records show; the board found that he had “significantly exceeded expectations.” Three of the company’s executive vice presidents received bonuses ranging from $445,000 to $462,000 each.

Sean Kirk, the executive responsible for overseeing development and manufacturing operations at all of Emergent’s manufacturing sites, received a special bonus of $100,000 last year, over and above his regular bonus of $320,611, in recognition of his “exceptional performance in 2020,” and for significantly expanding the company’s contract manufacturing capability to address Covid-19, the documents show. After the discovery that workers had accidentally contaminated a batch of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine with the virus used to produced another vaccine at the same plant, the company said Mr. Kirk had taken personal leave from his job.

………

The $628 million contract, awarded by the Trump administration nearly a year ago, was mostly to reserve space at Emergent’s Baltimore plant for vaccine manufacturing. The contract was approved by a former Trump administration official, Dr. Robert Kadlec, who previously consulted for Emergent.

………

Dr. Kadlec has said that while he did not negotiate the contract, he did sign off on it. The documents also show that last August he recommended that Emergent be given a “priority rating” so that suppliers would give preference to its requests.

These guys should be sharing cells with the Capitol Insurrectionists.

So much of our economy these days consists of little more than stealing from the general public, whether with taxpayer money, (these guys) monetizing the public commons (Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Lime, etc.), through indirect subsidies through IP provisions, (Media, Pharma, etc.) or the granting of special rights not held by ordinary people. (ISDS, TBTF, etc.)

If we stop these folks from stealing from us, there is no reason that we cannot have a better and more just society.

How Badly Does Someone Have to F%$# Up for the DOD to Decide That They Won’t Hire Contractors to Do It?

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It appears that the Pentagon is looking at terminating its massive cloud computing project known as Jedi. 

Given that this massive contract has the potential for creating comfortable retirements for dozens of senior officers, I call it back-loaded bribery, something has to be seriously wrong.

It’s got to be worse than the F-35 clusterf%$#, and it doesn’t get much worse than that:

Pentagon officials are considering pulling the plug on the star-crossed JEDI cloud-computing project, which has been mired in litigation from Amazon.com Inc. and faces continuing criticism from lawmakers.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract was awarded to Microsoft Corp. in 2019 over Amazon, which has contested the award in court ever since.

A federal judge last month refused the Pentagon’s motion to dismiss much of Amazon’s case. A few days later, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said the department would review the project.

………

“The prospect of such a lengthy litigation process might bring the future of the JEDI Cloud procurement into question,” the Jan. 28 report said.

………

Some lawmakers and government-contracting experts say JEDI should be scuttled because its single-vendor, winner-take-all approach is inappropriate and outmoded for mammoth enterprises like the Department of Defense.

These people say the Pentagon should move to an increasingly popular approach to enterprise cloud-computing that includes multiple companies as participants. Spreading out the work also reduces the risk of legal challenges from excluded companies, they say.

Oh, I see now:  They want to spread the dollars around to get some of the usual suspects into the room, as opposed to Microsoft and Amazon, who have been playing the game far longer than either of them, and they have LOTS if executive vice president positions. 

If you split this up between Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, etc., think about all the retired officers that you can hire.

………

A Pentagon inspector general report last year determined that the Pentagon adviser didn’t violate any ethical obligations or give preferential treatment to Amazon.

Steven Schooner, a George Washington University law professor who specializes in government contracting, said early questions about the Pentagon’s underlying procurement strategy for JEDI have grown over time.

“And all of that is before this case became one of the most jaw-dropping, head-scratching collections of conflicts of interest imaginable,” he said.

The US defense procurement system is beyond dysfunctional..

The DoJ Weighs in About the Arizona Freak Show

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The Department of Justice wants to have a word with Cyber Ninjas’ and their audit of Maricopa County Presidential ballots.

Given the lax security, and the fact that this audit included what appeared to an attempt to intimidate voters, it comes as no surprise that the Feds were profoundly unamused:

The Arizona Senate will hold off on a plan to contact voters as part of a Republican-commissioned election recount that raised concerns from the Justice Department about voter intimidation, state Senate President Karen Fann said Friday.

The head of the department’s civil rights division, Pamela S. Karlan, wrote to Fann (R) on Wednesday suggesting that the recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots in the state’s largest county by a private contractor may not comply with federal law, leaving ballots at “risk of damage or loss.” She also raised questions about the contractor’s stated plans to “identify voter registrations that did not make sense” and interview voters via phone and “physical canvassing.”

The ongoing audit run by Florida-based Cyber Ninjas has been widely criticized as fueling wild theories that fraud and other electoral problems led President Donald Trump to lose the presidential race. Officials in Maricopa County, which went for Joe Biden in November, say the results have been validated repeatedly.

But Republicans have pressed ahead with a new, highly unusual inquiry that has ranged from scrutinizing ballots under UV lights to seeking traces of bamboo. With Cyber Ninjas, they hired a company whose chief has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims of problems with the 2020 election.

Looking for traces of what? 

Are they worried that some snacking Panda was messing with the ballots?

The senator laid out conditions for anyone contacting voters: Canvassers would convey that participation is voluntary; would not select people for characteristics such as race or party affiliation; would not carry a weapon; and would not wear or say something implying an affiliation with police, immigration, tax enforcement or the military, among other requirements.

Karlan, in her letter, raised particular worries about targeting by race. “Past experience with similar investigative efforts around the country has raised concerns that they can be directed at minority voters, which potentially can implicate the anti-intimidation prohibitions of the Voting Rights Act,” Karlan said.

Voter intimidation is the goal here.

Responding to the Justice Department’s security concerns, Fann said that “not a single ballot or other official election document has been destroyed, defaced, lost, or adulterated.” Ballots must be securely maintained for 22 months following a federal election.

Shining bright UV lights on ballots in an attempt to find signs of Panda infiltration cause the ballots to fade.

Their Panda hunt will deface the ballots.  It’s basic physics.

………

Former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, the audit’s spokesman, previously told The Washington Post that Cyber Ninjas had not begun interviewing voters and said the company has pledged to do nothing that would constitute intimidation.

The owner of Cyber Ninjas, an enterprise with no prior experience with vote tabulation or canvassing, has already prejudged the outcome.  Expecting them to follow the law is a fiction.

This is a clearly an attempt to intimidate voters and to manufacture uncertainty on an already twice audited vote tabulation process.

Why do Republicans hate America?

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.

Failure is VERY Profitable

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Following her 9 point drubbing by Susan Collins, Democrat Sara Gideon still has $11,000,000.00 left in her campaign accounts.

By way of context, the population of Maine is 1.35 million.

Collins raised about $30 million, and Gideon raised about $75 million.  (And the loser spent only about 85% of that, because there is only so much media in Maine)

This is addition to at least $70,000,000.00 in “independent” PAC spending.

This from a campaign that was literally sending out frantic funding requests emails the day before the election.

The reason that they spent so much money was that for every media buy, the consultants associates with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) got a percentage.

The same thing happened in Kentucky, where Mitch McConnell destroyed the hapless Amy McGrath by almost 20 points.

In both cases, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) chose to run a largely content free campaign and a largely content free candidate, and the only winners on the Den side were the consultants.

The same could be said from North Carolina, where 3rd party expenditures, and hence commissions, dwarfed spending be l by both campaigns.

All of these races were seen as winnable, and all of these races were not even close, despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

By comparison, Democrats won both (still hugely expensive) races in Georgia, largely on the get out the vote efforts of Stacy Abrams, which were a TINY fraction of total spending.  (I still don’t trust her though, because of her choices in literature)

For to many in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), the strategies never change, because they make money from these failed strategies.  Lots and lots of money, something like 20% on media buys, and 10% on fundraising.

My advice is the same as always tell the DCCC, DSCC, and the DNC to pound sand, never respond to online or phone solicitations for funds, and chose your candidates yourself.

Act Blue is good, but going through a candidate’s web site is better, and you can get links to their web sites through Act Blue.

Until the plague of consultants, who I liken to a plague of locusts, are ejected from the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), it’s all you can do.

H/t Atrios

—
Posted via mobile. 

Yes

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Over at The American Prospect, they ask, “Are Endowments Damaging Colleges and Universities?“

That sounds nonsensical, but that is because the real question that they are asking is, “Is the path chosen by universities and colleges to rely on risky and extremely high fee strategies run by Wall Street big shots to increase returns on their endowments damaging colleges and universities?”

That answer is unequivocally yes, even if you are not as incompetent a steward of your college’s money as Larry Summers was at Harvard. 

The goal of the Wall Street big shots is to maximize their own personal gain, and by promising big and providing almost Byzantine complexity that shields them from oversight, they make bank, and the colleges get f%$#ed:

These are perilous times for private, nonprofit, independent higher education, and not just because of changing demographics, ever-climbing tuitions, and pandemic shutdowns. For years, education researchers have charged that institutions are unable to control costs effectively, especially their operating costs. In public discourse, colleges and universities are often characterized as reckless spenders. So when they slash academic budgets or cut staff, nearly everyone shrugs. Higher education has gradually accommodated itself to austerity thinking. But as any critic of neoliberalism can tell you, austerity is really just another way that money and resources are redistributed upward, and outward.

It is rarely, if ever, discussed how endowment fund management is an integral part of the budget problem. As the tax filings of virtually every private college or university show, enormous investment management fees are pouring out of nearly every substantial endowment and into the pockets of fund managers. Most of these fund managers are not university employees, but rather work for industries such as private equity, hedge funds, and other so-called “alternative” investments. According to its tax filings, Oberlin College (my alma mater) paid out a total of $14,872,522 in investment management fees between 2013 and 2017, averaging around $3 million per year. During that same period, Amherst College paid out $186,601,258. At both colleges, investment management fees actually exceeded reported profits from investments several times. Excluding Harvard (which manages its roughly $41 billion endowment internally and has also faced criticism for immensely high overheads), the remaining Ivy League colleges reported paying out $241,653,279 in fees in 2017 alone. That same year, Stanford University paid out $47,901,005, and Johns Hopkins $28,112,000. The list goes on and on.

………

But we can say that the pattern reflects a widespread institutional practice with endowments, tax-free investments held by nonprofit institutions that provide education as a public good. Increasingly, endowments are invested in expensive, secretive, unregulated, illiquid, risky, and hard-to-value financial instruments—the strategy laid out by David Swensen in his book Pioneering Portfolio Management and nicknamed the “Yale Model.” While acknowledging the greater risks involved, Swensen credits Yale’s returns to this strategy, noting that “developing partnerships with extraordinary people” is the single most important element for its success. What makes these people extraordinary is not specified, but the enormous amounts of money they are paid does fit that description.

Nontraditional asset class investing has become so widely fashionable among university endowments that it has taken the form of ideology. Very few institutions seem to balk at putting alumni and other donations into risky, illiquid investments, something that would have been regarded as foolish and dangerous only a few decades ago.

 As I have said here many times, “There is nothing that the finance industry cannot ruin.”

Politics Tweet of the Day

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A 15 dollar min wage won 60% of vote in Florida in 2020. A political reporter thinking this some kind of risky vote is equivalent of doctor recommending you balance your humors. https://t.co/eqtuFPX6ib

— Alex Hazanov. (@alexhazanov) February 26, 2021

It really is remarkable just how dedicated the socalled “moderates” in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are to opposing policies that would get them massive support.

Today in Evil

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After discovering that municipal broadband is better and cheaper than what you can get from the incumbent carriers, House Republicans introduce legislation banning the practice, because there is not enough opportunity for graft campaign donations the private sector when the government does the job better and cheaper.

Everyone hates their private ISP, the Dems should run on this, but the moderates want to continue to extract protection money campaign donations from the Baby Bells as well:

House Republicans this week proposed legislation that would ban the creation of municipal broadband networks at a federal level, and shutter networks in areas where some private competition exists – purportedly to improve internet access across the US.

Dubbed the CONNECT Act (Communities Overregulating Networks Need Economic Competition Today), the bill [PDF] says: “A State or political subdivision thereof may not provide or offer for sale to the public, a telecommunications provider, or to a commercial provider of broadband internet access service, retail or wholesale broadband internet access service.”

The CONNECT Act would also ban states from operating municipal broadband networks in areas where two or more private operators exist. The language here is fairly vague, and it doesn’t state how affected operators should dispose of their existing infrastructure. It’s also fairly limited about what constitutes a “private operator”, deferring only to the barebones definition in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).

………

Twenty-two states have passed laws that either prohibit municipal broadband entirely, or impose restrictions that make municipal broadband projects significantly harder to launch and operate. Minnesota, for example, requires municipalities to obtain a supermajority (65 per cent) of voters in a referendum before providing telecommunications services. Montana and Pennsylvania only permit projects if there is no private competition. Texas and Missouri have outright bans on municipal broadband.

The Democratic response should be to pass legislation preempting the state bans and offering subsidies (which would be smaller than those given to the likes of AT&T and Verizon) for the establishment of municipal broadband.

They should, but they won’t.

It’s Like Having Your Mother-in-Law Drive off a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

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So, the worst “Democrat” in the Senate, Joe Manchin, has come out against Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden, the worst think tank drone ever to come out of the Clinton machine, to head of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

What’s more, he has done so for the worst possible reason, because Tanden is mean to Republicans sometimes. (Her venom toward Republicans is her ONLY redeeming feature)

The awfulness of the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia is self evident, but I’ll list a bill of particulars on Tanden: (It’s an updatepast from an old post if it sounds familiar)

I am hoping for a way that they can both lose, because neither of them deserve a win ever: 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Friday that he would oppose Neera Tanden‘s nomination to head the White House budget office, potentially sinking her Senate confirmation.

Manchin cited Tanden’s harsh tweets about Republicans as the reason for his opposition.

“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”>br>
………

“Neera Tanden is an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent Budget Director and we look forward to the committee votes next week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties,” Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement distributed to reporters in response to Manchin’s remarks.

No, she’s a vacuous party hack, not that there’s anything wrong with that. 

The problem is that cannot keep good staff, has never had an original idea in her life, and has an affection for bad policy and bad politics that rivles that of her old boss, Hillary Clinton.

In a CNN interview Friday afternoon, Sanders was non-committal about supporting Tanden’s nomination, saying that he would speak to her next week about “what she wants to do.” Sanders reiterated that he was less concerned with her previous rhetoric than her future actions.

And Bernie Sanders is the only person in this entire sordid affair who is behaving like a mensch, probably because he is the only one in this entire sordid affair who values anything beyond his own career.

Worse Response to a Bad Idea

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The Australian government is in the process of passing a law that requires payment for linking to news sites, which to my mind is a horrible idea, and Mark Zuckerberg’s response to all of this is to have Facebook ban all Australian news content from their platform. 

Granted, Australia is not a huge market, at 25 million people, it’s only about 5 million more people than the New York City metropolitan area, but this ham-fisted response is going to do a lot of damage to Facebook while mildly inconveniencing the people of Australia.

I don’t expect Zuckerberg to cave, and in that case, I see Australia generally moving to some other source of rumors, genocidal racists, fascism, and cat pix.

The Australians are a hardy and inventive people:

Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code.

The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director, Will Easton, said this would block links to Australian publishers from being posted, while no Australian users would be able to share or see content from any news outlets, both Australian and international.

“The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” he said in a blog post published on Thursday morning. “It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia.

“With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”

………

Users on Thursday reported seeing a pop-up error window when they attempted to post links to news, stating these cannot be posted in response to the news media code.

………

Facebook’s move is in contrast to the approach from the other major platform subject to the code, Google.

Although Google had threatened to withdraw its search engine from Australia if the code went ahead, in the past week, Google has signed agreements with some of Australia’s biggest publishers, including News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media, for payment for its News Showcase product. The Nine deal is reportedly worth $30m a year.

As several people have pointed out to me, Facebook blocked itself. pic.twitter.com/LVhyJMAHfp

— Josh Taylor (@joshgnosis) February 17, 2021

Yes, Facebook banned Facebook, I think that the Aussies would call this an “Own Goal”

It gets even worse, because Facebook f%$#ed up the rollout of the ban, shutting down non-profits and government agencies as well:

The Bureau of Meteorology, state health departments, the Western Australian opposition leader, charities and Facebook itself are among those to have been hit by Facebook’s ban on news in Australia.

On Thursday morning Facebook began preventing Australian news sites from posting, while also stopping Australian users from sharing or viewing content from any news outlets, both Australian and international.

The social media giant said it made the decision in response to the news media bargaining code currently before the Senate, which would force Facebook and Google to negotiate with news companies for payment for content.

………

As Australia prepares to begin the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, state health departments, including SA Health and Queensland Health, were unable to post.

St Vincent’s Health in Melbourne said it was “extremely concerning”its Facebook page had been blocked “during a pandemic and on the eve of crucial Covid vaccine distribution”.

Facebook is claiming that this was a “Mistake.”

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Melbourne made completely of Koala poop to sell you.

Can We Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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Wind turbines in, you guessed it, Antarctica

Snow and cold weather has hit Texas hard, and because of what can only be called high Texas idiocy, the power grid has collapsed.

So, the answer to the question, “Has privatization failed Texas utility customers?,” is F%$# yes.

In order to evade federal regulation the Texas electricity grid is largely separate from the rest of the country, and because it is Texas, suppliers of both natural gas, used to make electricity, and the electricity generators, make more profit from shutting down their plants to spike the prices.

This is what caused the California energy crisis in 2000 and 2001, deregulatory mania leading to market manipulation:

Privatizers use the one-size-fits-all economic theory of “retail choice-free market competition” to promote the deregulation of Texas electric utilities. Privatizers promise that lower electricity prices and higher system reliability will follow electric utility deregulation. Privatizers’ sloganeering convinces on-the-take politicians and the unsuspecting electorate to approve their lobbyist-written deregulation rules and laws.

Privatizers say the deregulation of Texas electric utilities is successful and other states should follow suit. This is misinformation. Relative electricity prices have increased dramatically, and dangerously lower electrical system reliability is the result of Texas electric utility deregulation in 2002.

But Texans, and Trotskyites, are never ones to let facts get in the way of their free market mousketeer theories, so Texas Governor Greg Abbot is claiming that the problem has come from renewables like wind and solar being disproportionately impacted by the weather.

It is a nice theory.  The problem is that it is complete bunk:

Frozen wind turbines in Texas caused some conservative state politicians to declare Tuesday that the state was relying too much on renewable energy. But in reality, the wind power was expected to make up only a fraction of what the state had planned for during the winter.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected that 80% of the grid’s winter capacity, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power.

An official with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said Tuesday afternoon that 16 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, mostly wind generation, were offline. Nearly double that, 30 gigawatts, had been lost from thermal sources, which includes gas, coal and nuclear energy.

By Wednesday, those numbers had changed as more operators struggled to operate in the cold: 45 gigawatts total were offline, with 28 gigawats from thermal sources and 18 gigawatts from renewable sources, ERCOT officials said.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

While Webber said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry is most notably producing significantly less power than normal.

“Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,” Webber said.

………

He went on to note the shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Bay City because of the cold and finally got to what energy experts say is the biggest culprit, writing, “Low Supply of Natural Gas: ERCOT planned on 67GW from natural gas/coal, but could only get 43GW of it online. We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation —so things were freezing.”

This was compounded by looting from the various energy suppliers. 

It actually pays for them to have a significant amount of their generation capacity go offline, as shown by this anecdote:

As a historic winter storm raged across Texas over the weekend, Akilah Scott-Amos received an alarming message from her power company: Please switch services because “prices are about to explode.”

The 43-year-old owner of an organic skincare and apothecary shop was initially confused by the message from Griddy, which sells wholesale power for a monthly membership, but she began to look for other providers.

Then she checked her bill.

“I paid $450 for one day. I was in shock,” Scott-Amos told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “It made no sense because we have a gas heater, a gas fireplace, and we have been keeping the temperature around the house at 65 degrees. With that amount of money, and the labeled amount of usage Griddy said was used—we would have to be lighting up the whole neighborhood.”

The nightmare only got worse on Monday, when she realized her bill had increased by another $2,500. In comparison, Scott-Amos paid $33.93 last year for the entire month of February. 

The cost per kWh went from a bit more than 2¢ to more than $2.

………

But data from ERCOT suggests the price of getting the lights back on might be too steep for some Texans. As first reported by Reuters, the market prices on the power grid spiked more than 10,000 percent on Monday in the aftermath of the deep freeze. Prices skyrocketed to more than $9,000 per megawatt-hour—compared to the pre-storm prices of less than $50 per hour.

The amped-up wattage costs have affected Griddy customers in particular because of the company’s distinctive business model. In Texas’ hypercharged market for electricity, Griddy makes money by debiting its subscribers a flat $9.99 monthly fee—and then selling them raw power at its going wholesale value, effectively stripping out any insulation between consumers and the oscillations in supply and demand.

New business models and cute names translating into ripping off consumers, yeppers, there’s a deregulated market.

It’s just another excuse to pick your pocket.

It ain’t the weather, it’s the corruption.

Just the Time to Fire Up the Grill

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It was a nice pan

Not!!!

So, the oven has finally broken, and the chicken that I made, with a mustard and vinegar marinade, could not be cooked.

I figured, “What the F%$#?  I can just fire up the grill and put the pan in there.”

It was a Glass Pan.

The chicken was salvageable, the pan was not, so a 27 year old pan that Sharon* and I got it when we went on a date to the Corning Museum in Corning, NY is now shards.

Sharon took it all in stride.  

As I’ve told her many times, “It’s like ‘The Chicken” said, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

People Are No Longer Afraid of Rat-Faced Andy

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Democratic members of the New York House and Senate are considering rescinding the Covid powers that they granted Andrew Cuomo in the budget bill following credible allegations that he and his administration covered up nursing home deaths for political advantage.

The fact that they are considering this at all is significant, Cuomo is known for his vindictive nature, and the fact that they are considering going against him means that they think that the time is right to do this.

It may be better to be feared than liked, but at some point, if the fear goes away, and everyone hates you, things can get unpleasant: 

Some Democrats in Albany have floated the legally dubious idea of threatening to rescind Gov. Cuomo’s pandemic powers and issue subpoenas as leverage in upcoming budget negotiations.

Over the weekend, the governor’s fellow Democrats, who control both houses in the Legislature, continued to hold discussions about scaling back Cuomo’s sweeping pandemic powers after a top aide admitted the state paused the release of nursing home death data over concerns it would be politicized by the Trump administration.

Senate Dems met virtually Sunday to consider rescinding the governor’s executive authority or potentially creating a commission that could outright reject executive orders, similar to a 10-member panel used in Connecticut, sources said.

The Legislature already has the ability to overturn any COVID-related executive order via a majority vote.

On Friday, 14 Democratic state senators, including a handful from the city, joined Republicans in backing the idea of taking away Cuomo’s emergency powers before they expire in April.

………

But threatening such actions, especially subpoenas, without intent to follow through in order to influence fiscal talks could backfire big time, insiders said. “It could legally be seen as extortion,” a source said.

Yeah, much in the same way that Marty Walsh’s insisting on a concert promoter using competent workers in Boston could be legally seen as extortion? (see prior post)

………

Barclay and others have spent months demanding subpoenas, hearings or a federal probe into the state’s nursing home policies amid the pandemic.

The Cuomo administration came under renewed fire last week, facing accusations of a coverup and mounting backlash over its failure to release a full count of nursing home deaths for nearly six months.

In a call meant to bridge a growing divide with fellow Dems, the governor’s most trusted confidant, Melissa DeRosa, told lawmakers that officials “froze” last year when the Department of Justice made an inquiry into elder care facilities.

DeRosa said the administration postponed responding to legislative requests and failed to include nursing home residents who died in hospitals in publicly available data because President Trump had turned the matter “into a giant political football.”

The call came two weeks after a report from Attorney General Letitia James estimated that the state was under-counting deaths of nursing home residents by as much as 50%.

Cuomo was not concerned about Trump, he delighted in fighting with him.

This was about his attempting to cast his incompetent and corrupt management of the Covid-19 crisis (It only looked good in comparison to Donald Trump) as a triumph rather than a disaster.

New York State needs to raise taxes on the wealthy, and to end the corrupt environment that Cuomo thrives in.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!? Trillions of Dollars?

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An auditor has found that the US Army has engaged in trillions of dollars in dodgy spending:

The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.

As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”

………

The new report focused on the Army’s General Fund, the bigger of its two main accounts, with assets of $282.6 billion in 2015. The Army lost or didn’t keep required data, and much of the data it had was inaccurate, the IG said.

“Where is the money going? Nobody knows,” said Franklin Spinney, a retired military analyst for the Pentagon and critic of Defense Department planning.

The significance of the accounting problem goes beyond mere concern for balancing books, Spinney said. Both presidential candidates have called for increasing defense spending amid current global tension.

I’m beginning to think that we will need to experience something akin to the sinking of the Vasa in 1628 (which led to the creation of the progenitor of the Swedish defense procurement agency, the FMV) before we end up with a defense procurement system that actually works.