Category: Stupid

Adventures in Journamalism

No Comments

The CJR discovers that the the news media repeatedly uncritically quote anti-worker lobbyists to demonstrate things like the fictitious worker shortage:

Two weeks ago The New York Times wheeled out that old chestnut of Great Recession-era economic reporting: Companies can’t find workers, despite high unemployment.

………

But what really sends the BS meter into the red zone is when you learn that the anecdotes are populated with business people with ties to lobbying groups that news organizations, for whatever reason, fail to disclose.

Take one of the Times’s main anecdotes, Drew Greenblatt, who owns a small manufacturing firm in Baltimore called Marlin Steel Wire and who gets his picture in the Times. This was his third NYT hit in three months. Here are Mr. Greenblatt’s other press hits in June: The NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour (twice), NPR’s Morning Edition, The Hamilton Spectator. So far this year he’s also been on CNN Newsroom and Fox Business (four times), and in the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press, plus a number of smaller publications. Two years ago, Greenblatt and his company were the focus of a flattering 2,300 word Atlantic profile and a couple of WaPo profiles in 2001 and 2007. This guy is like the Greg Packer of small manufacturers.

………

Undisclosed in any of these stories is the fact that Greenblatt is an executive-committee member of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, the powerful DC trade lobby. NAM not only pushes Congress for anti-labor policies (like banning picketing), it lobbies for government-funded workforce training programs (“to be led by the business community,” naturally).

………

A couple of weeks ago, blogger Steve M. at Balloon Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog caught NPR and NBC talking to the same small businessman, Joe Olivo, about how Obama’s health care law is keeping him from hiring for his printing business. Turns out Olivo’s quite the active member of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the big right-wing, pro-corporate lobbying group that was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case against Obamacare, which is called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. His NFIB connections, needless to say, weren’t disclosed by either broadcast. And Steve M. caught NPR going back to the well a week later, with yet another anti-Obamacare Olivo interview with no disclosure of his lobbying ties.

This is hardly the first time this has happened with Olivo.

………

Here’s how you should assume this works, because it’s how it very often does: A journalist is on deadline on a story and needs an anecdote to make it feel “real” with some color—preferably someone who will add balance and/or support the journalist’s thesis. A speed-dialed call is made to industry flacks to supply a quotable small-business person…and, voilà!

That’s the quick-and-easy way, which is how readers get political activists presented misleadingly as random businessmen.

Take incompetence, mix it with laziness, and a little nudge from their corporate task-masters, and it’s no wonder that I find that the best sources for news about America are foreign.

We Are Not Looking at the Collapse of the Euro Zone

No Comments

We are looking at a collapse of the whole European.

If the Euro goes titsup in Greece, UK Prime Minister David Cameron intends to ban Greek immigrants if the country leaves the Euro:

David Cameron is prepared to override Britain’s historic obligations under EU treaties and impose stringent border controls that would block Greek citizens from entering the United Kingdom, if Greece is forced out of the single currency.

The prime minister told MPs that ministers have examined legal powers that would allow Britain to deprive Greek citizens of their right to free movement across the EU, if the eurozone crisis leads to “stresses and strains”.

In an appearance before senior MPs on the cross-party House of Commons liaison committee, the prime minister confirmed that ministers have drawn up contingency plans for “all sorts of different eventualities”.

Angela Merkel is not just threatening the Euro, she is putting the whole European Experiment is at risk.

What, You Mean the Money Won’t Only Go to Jeebus?

1 Comment

Legislators in Louisiana have just realized that when they voted for Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program, that they voted to fund Muslim schools as well:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”

So I guess that she opposes giving vouchers to Yeshivas as well.

Also, this is a very, VERY stupid person.

H/T Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Did I Say $2 Billion? I Meant $9 Billion.

1 Comment

It looks like “the Whale” f%$#ed up even bigger than was previously reported:

Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation.

When Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, announced in May that the bank had lost $2 billion in a bet on credit derivatives, he estimated that losses could double within the next few quarters. But the red ink has been mounting in recent weeks, as the bank has been unwinding its positions, according to interviews with current and former traders and executives at the bank who asked not to be named because of investigations into the bank.

I’ll take the “over” on this latest estimate.

The USA Is Going to Invade Norway

2 Comments

The Chairman of the JCS has said that if the automatic budget cuts kick in for the pentagon,  we will see more war:

The nation’s top military officer warned Wednesday that automatic defense cuts agreed to in last year’s bipartisan debt limit deal could lead to more war.

At a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon has gone along with recent targeted cuts to limited targeted cuts, but argued that the the sweeping across-the-board cuts in the so-called sequestration would weaken the country’s ability to deter adversaries and therefore lead to more war.

“Sequestration is absolutely certain to upend this balance. It would lead to further end-strength reductions, the potential cancellation of major weapons systems and the disruption of global operations,” Dempsey said. “We can’t yet say precisely how bad the damage would be, but it is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation. We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visible globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries, and that would translate into a different deterrent calculus, and potentially, therefore, increase the likelihood of conflict.”

Who the hell are we going to war with?

We have troops and/or mercenaries in:

  • Afghanistan.
  • Iraq.
  • Iran (if it’s Thursday, but it’s a secret)
  • Bosnia
  • Kosovo
  • Germany
  • The UK
  • Poland
  • Korea
  • Japan
  • Kazakhstan
  • Pakistan
  • Belgium
  • Italy
  • Panama
  • Kuwait
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Bahrain
  • San Diego
  • etc.

Seriously, there isn’t anyone left for us to invade who has any oil but the Norwegians.

Mikel Kinzly disseze Ezruh Kleyn Haz It

No Comments

Michael Kinsley has made a career of intellectually bankrupt and mindless contrarianism.

Basically, you come up with an indefensible and silly argument, and through rhetorical tricks, you make it sound reasonable. Stupid people read it, and think that you are wise.

Well, Ezra Klein at the Washington Post has signed on to this bit of professional hypocrisy. (No link, he is clearly click whoring, and I won’t reward it)   He is now arguing that the Mitt Romney winning the election might be better for the economy because Republicans won’t try to block everything:

Even if you disagree with every one of Mitt Romney’s policies, there’s a chance he’s still the best candidate to lift the economy in 2013.

That’s not because he has business experience. For all his bluster about the lessons taught by the private sector, his agenda is indistinguishable from that of career politician Paul Ryan. Nor is it because he’s demonstrated some special knowledge of what it takes to create jobs. Job growth in Massachusetts was notably slow under Romney’s tenure. It’s because if Romney is elected, Republicans won’t choose to crash the economy in 2013.

This ignores the recent history, which is that Republicans crashed the economy through their attempts to implement their ideology from 2001-2007.

Note that the above argument ignores the fact that he is essentially advocating giving into terrorists.

This is pathetic.

H/t Unfogged.

Why Democrats Lose Elections

No Comments

Because our so-called leaders are cowardly incompetents:

The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee said Friday that if Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) doesn’t prevail over Gov. Scott Walker (R) in next month’s Wisconsin recall election, there won’t be any ramifications for Democrats nationally.

“I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a broad-ranging interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers.”

“It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin. It’s an election that I think is important nationally because Scott Walker is an example of how extreme the tea party has been when it comes to the policies that they have pushed the Republicans to adopt,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But I think it’ll be, at the end of the day, a Wisconsin-based election, and like I said, across the rest of the country and including in Wisconsin, President Obama is ahead.”

Timidity to the point of paralysis.

You have a major election, near on a make or break issue, for organized labor, and the DNC is afraid to expend any resources, because it’s not a slam dunk.

It is no wonder that George “If you not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time” McClellan was a Democratic presidential nominee.

Yes, the folks that they are disappointing won’t vote for Mitt, but I think that they won’t canvass or stuff envelopes for you either.

The National Review: America’s Source for Crappy Journalism

No Comments

They had a scoop that Elizabeth Warren, founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Senate Candidate had plagiarized another book.

The problem was that they missed the fact that Warren’s book was published first:

The National Review says Elizabeth Warren is guilty of the gravest crime a writer can commit: Plagiarism. Katrina Trinko compares passages from “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Money Lifetime Plan,” Warren’s book with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, with passages from “Getting on the Money Track,” a book by Rob Black. The passages line up perfectly. The wording and even the punctuation are identical. It’s plagiarism all right. Except it looks very much like Warren is actually the victim.

The National Review headline says “Plagiarism in Elizabeth Warren’s 2006 book.” The body refers to Warren publishing the book “in 2006″ and Black’s book coming out in 2005. That’s true! Except that in 2006 the paperback of Warren’s book was published. The hardcover came out in March of 2005. Black’s book seems to have come out, if Amazon is correct, October 14 2005. (Or, according to Barnes and Noble, July 2005?) Months after Warren’s book. Unless there was an earlier published hardcover version that I can’t find on Amazon, it seems like Black most likely plagiarized Warren.

The National review has since retracted the story.

They Own Us

No Comments

Too hot for TED

When someone gives a TED talk suggesting that lower taxes on the very wealthy actually makes out economy worse off, because the middle class is the real engine of job growth.

The response of TED was to refuse to release the video of the talk:

TED, the nonprofit organization that organizes and promotes wonky web videos on varying issues known as “TED talks,” has reportedly decided not to publish a video on income inequality in which venture capitalist Nick Hanauer declares, “Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs.” TED organizers deemed the talk too “politically controversial,” and in an email obtained by the National Journal, TED curator Chris Anderson told Hanauer that “we couldn’t release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out and out political. We’re in the middle of an election year in the US. Your argument comes down firmly on the side of one party.

It’s the super-rich’s world, they just allow us to rent a space in their attic.

BTW, the “Curator” of TED posted his his response online. The phrase, “Whiner” comes to mind. (Be sure to read the comments, they realy cut him a new one)

Basically, this was cut because the thesis makes the moneybags who back TED feel bad. The “Masters of the Universe” really think that they are different and special.

Thus they cannot abide being described as an effect rather than a cause.

Something We Can All Agree on Regarding Israel

No Comments

That Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA) should have nothing to do with any initiative involving Israel, nor, for that matter, should he be allowed to cut his own meat:

It seems that Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA) is a tad out of the loop on matters of Middle East peace. If it were up to him, Israelis and Palestinians would restart peace talks under the guidance of their respective leaders, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat.

His advice does not seem to take into account the fact that Arafat died in 2004 and Sharon has been in a coma since 2006.

“With the global war against terrorism, it is now incumbent on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat to clamp down on Palestinian extremists that have perpetuated violence and to restart a peace process that has collapsed,” wrote Pitts in a recent, rather outdated response letter to a constituent.

Perhaps Pitts should try to address some other burning issues from the 1990s, like making Newt Gingrich shut the f%$# up.

Hmmmm …… Things haven’t changed as much over the past 15 years as I’ve thought.

Why Not to Give to the Democratic Establishment

No Comments

The biggest political contest in the United States in the next month is the Scott Walker recall, and the Democratic National Committee is refusing to supply resources for the all critical GOTV effort:

Top Wisconsin Democrats are furious with the national party — and the Democratic National Committee in particular — for refusing their request for a major investment in the battle to recall Scott Walker, I’m told

The failure to put up the money Wisconsin Dems need to execute their recall plan comes at a time when the national Republican Party is sinking big money into defending Walker, raising fears that the DNC’s reluctance could help tip the race his way.

………

According to the Wisconsin Dem, the party has asked the DNC for $500,000 to help with its massive field operation. While the DNC has made generally supportive noises, the money has not been forthcoming, the official says — with less than a month until the June 5th recall election. The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

………

“Scott Walker has made this a national election,” the Wisconsin Dem tells me. “If he wins, he will turn his victory into a national referendum on his ideas about the middle class. It will hurt Democrats nationally. The fact that [national Dems] are sitting on their hands now is so frustrating. The whole ticket stands to lose

******************************************

UPDATE: Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Mike Tate goes on record about the dispute in a statement:

“Having received absolute support from the Democratic Governors Association, we also are in conversation with the Democratic National Committee to help in this battle against Scott Walker, a right-wing diva who has the full backing of the national corporate Tea Party movement.”

UPDATE II: Wisconsin Dems say the problem isn’t with the Democratic Governors Association, which has already committed more to the recall fight than they’ve ever committed to a Wisconsin gubernatorial election in recent history. Still no comment from the DNC.

I’m thinking that the DNC is having a hissy fit because labor is not interested in funding their national convention in a right-to-work state, but stupidity and evil are nearly as valid explanations.

JP Morgan Chase Goes Wile E. Coyote

No Comments

So, JP Morgan Chase just lost at least $2 billion in ill conceived derivatives trades:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said the firm suffered a $2 billion trading loss after an “egregious” failure in a unit managing risks, jeopardizing Wall Street banks’ efforts to loosen a federal ban on bets with their own money.

The firm’s chief investment office, run by Ina Drew, 55, took flawed positions on synthetic credit securities that remain volatile and may cost an additional $1 billion this quarter or next, Dimon told analysts yesterday. Losses mounted as JPMorgan tried to mitigate transactions designed to hedge credit exposure.

“There were many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment,” Dimon said as the company’s stock fell in extended trading. “These were egregious mistakes, they were self-inflicted.”

The chief investment office was thrust into the debate over U.S. efforts to ban proprietary trading when Bloomberg News reported last month that the unit had taken bets so big that JPMorgan, the largest and most profitable U.S. bank, probably couldn’t unwind them without losing money or roiling financial markets. Dimon, 56, had transformed the unit in recent years to make bigger and riskier speculative trades with the bank’s money, five former employees said.

Just so you know, the “Synthetic credit securities” mentioned means that this is basically pure gambling.  There is no ownership or insurance interest in the underlying investment.

It’s not surprising that the SEC has decided to look at this.

As a result of this blowup, Fitch’s and S&P have downgraded the bank.

Henry Blodgett accurately obaserves that, “It’s Just Kids Playing With Dynamite“.

Rather unsurprisingly, advocates of more regulation of the financial industry, are calling for an aggressive implimentation of the Volker rule.

Of course, Jamie Dimon does not think that this shows a need for more regulations, because, “Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

No, actually,  you’re all stupid f%$3s, and you blew up our economy 4 years ago, and the taxpayer dumped more money into you keeping you afloat than we spent on the WW II.

Why no senior banksters have been indicted is beyond me.

MoD Goes Back To Jump Jet

No Comments

About a year ago, the British decided to switch from the STOVL F-35B to the catapult and arrestor hook F-35C.

They were building two carriers, but they would only equip one with the necessary equipment to launch and land the aircraft, leaving the remaining carrier as the world’s most expensive helicopter carrier.

Well, they are back to the B model: (Paid subscription required)

In the depths of the crisis about 18 months ago surrounding the Stovl model, the U.K. walked away from the F-35B, saying it would instead buy the F-35C and denigrating the jump-jet version as an inferior aircraft. But since the F-35B gained the Pentagon’s blessing as having its Stovl-unique questions resolved, London is now embracing the variant it abandoned, in part citing the development progress. “The Stovl aircraft has made significant progress since the SDSR was published over 18 months ago,” the Defense Ministry says.

The back-and-forth is not just about semantics. The U.K. decision during the 2010 Strategic Defense and Security Review to opt for the F-35C added weight to those hoping to cancel the F-35B, irking U.S. Marine Corps officials who were eager to see the version survive.

U.K. Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, in announcing the move to Parliament, still defends the 2010 ruling. He says the decision on carriers “was right at the time, but the facts have changed and therefore so, too, must our approach. This government will not blindly pursue projects and ignore cost growth and delays.”

The U.K. expects to take delivery of its first Lockheed MartinF-35B Joint Strike Fighter in July. Credit: Lockheed Martin

In the end, it was cost that brought the U.K. back to the F-35B. The price to fit HMS Prince of Wales—the second Queen Elizabeth-class carrier—with catapult launch and arrestor gear doubled to £2 billion ($3.2 billion) since the initial estimates were made going into the 2010 review , Hammond asserts. Moreover, U.K. planners were increasingly concerned about higher manpower costs associated with operating such an aircraft carrier. The decision is a setback for General Atomics, which hoped to sell its electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) to the U.K.

Hammond also says the conversion would have delayed the restoration of the U.K.’s carrier strike capability by three years to 2023. The current plans call for HMS Queen Elizabeth to begin sea trials in 2017, with aircraft to fly from the deck in 2018 in preparation for an operational capability around 2020.

Understand that the Brit carriers are gas turbine powered, and so could not be retrofitted with steam catapults, and EMALS is still showing problems, and the cost is increasing.

Also, the MoD was committed to building both ships (the cancellation clauses are pricey) but only had money to convert to CTOL, which meant that when it was in retrofit, they would have no carrier capabilities.

It is yet another testament to David Cameron’s “genius” at governance:

For the government, the about-face on JSF is domestically embarrassing. While vowing to fix the lax acquisition practices that it blamed on the Labour administration, it is now reversing course on the first major item in its procurement agenda.

Yeah, like that competence is fairly oozing from the Tories.  (Not)