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They really should get their story straight

Monday, February 24, 2014







The New York Times expressed some reservations about the Comcast-Times Warner deal, which in any sane country would be illegal, and probably is, though no one will do anything about it. Among other things, the Times worried that Comcast might make use of its market position to extract money from services such as Netflix, destroying net neutrality in the bargain. But in a letter in today's Times, industry shill Chad Gutstein says not to worry:

Your concern that Comcast as an Internet provider will discriminate against unaffiliated content companies like Netflix now that the Federal Communications Commission’s “net neutrality” rules have been overturned is also misplaced. Comcast agreed to a version of those rules during federal review of its acquisition of NBC Universal and now stands as the only Internet service provider that must adhere to them — something the merger review could actually extend.

via New York Times

That was this morning. Today we learn that Comcast and Netflix have struck a deal. Netflix will pay extra to get its content streamed more quickly by Comcast. Well, there goes net neutrality. You can quibble about legal technicalities, but if this stands, that's the end of the open internet. The truly infuriating thing about this is that Netflix did it not because they necessarily wanted to one up the competition, but because Comcast's service sucks so bad that they needed to do something to satisfy their own customers, for you see, in this country we pay more and get less when in comes to internet speeds.

Netflix certainly has plenty of incentive to pony up. Comcast falls near the bottom of Netflix’s rankings for which ISPs deliver the best streaming experience to its subscribers, and less than a week ago, Netflix groused that streaming performance for its service on major ISP networks was getting worse.

via Techhive

One reason for the shitty service may be (why do I say "may") the lack of real regulation in this country. Why improve service when you can simply milk a monopoly? And why not take advantage of that monopoly to favor the big guys who can pay over the small guys who can't? The big guys don't really mind; in the end they just pass the costs along.

There's nothing new under the sun. Once again I'm reminded of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit, in which she describes the long and bitter fight to regulate the railways, who did exactly the same thing Comcast is doing today. The railroads made deals similar to the Netflix/Comcast deal with the big guys and charged prohibitive rates to their small competitors (if they were willing to transport their stuff at all). It helped that the same guys who controlled the railroads often controlled the companies whose products were being shipped, just as Comcast controls some content providers. It only stopped when the Federal government stepped in and imposed "railway neutrality", if I might coin a term. In a measure of how far we've come, while Roosevelt and Taft managed to get that reform through a recalcitrant Congress, it is impossible to even conceive of our Congress doing anything to protect us from the new monopolists.


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The greatest grifter of them all

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

It's been a while since the subject of grifting has come up on this blog, but the practice is still alive and well out there. And truly I say unto you, this may be the greatest grift of them all. Ken Ham, who just lost a science vs. creationism debate to Bill Nye, is building a new amusement park to compete with his already failing Creation Museum. This one will feature a full scale replica of Noah's Ark and a petting zoo, though apparently no attempt will be made to cram “two of every kind into the ark”. But this is a grift on a massive scale, for it requires a “boatload (or is that busload?) of faith to get by” Ham is trying to raise 55.5 million dollars for his fantasy park, and who knows how much of that money will find its way into his pockets. But to do it, he has to issue bonds, and to issue bonds, you have to make disclosures about risk, meaning you have to tell people the truth, more or less:

Underneath all of this Biblical interpretation, though, buying Ham’s Ark Encounter bonds is a high-risk proposition. The offering lists 39 potential risks to investors, including the possibility that animals in the petting zoo could contract infectious diseases, potential lawsuits by civil liberties and animal rights activists, and the fact that the bond relies almost completely on a competent, good-faith effort by Answers in Genesis. Ultimately, the park “may never achieve positive cash flow,” which the documents note could lead to a default on the bonds.

Most alarmingly, the bonds are not rated by a ratings agency—an indication that they are extremely risky. AiG has no obligation to pay the bonds, which means that the park will have to be up and running before investors see any returns. And if the project collapses, bond buyers risk losing their entire investment. 

via Motherboard

So, it's out there for anyone to see that this is a scam, but Ham is counting on the beliefs he shares with his marks that people can't evolve (and that their not likely to read the prospectus). Most of all, he's counting on good old religious and political bigotry, “to which he has never yet appealed in vain” to pull him through.

Basically, Ham is hawking Creationist junk bonds—a fact that he has tried to mask with fire-and-brimstone evangelism and apocalyptic warnings about the “immense spiritual battle” for America. In a fundraising letter sent last month, Ham suggested that the project is being sabotaged by secularists and asked believers to “step out in faith” to support the project.

And step out they will, at least some of them. Whether he can soak another 29.5 million, the amount he needs to actually build the thing (does he really care about that) is another matter, but whether he reaches his goal or not, the amount he has raised so far is a tribute to the grifter profession.

And we non-crazies can take comfort from the fact that every dime he grifts is one less dime available for more nefarious and more effective political purposes. Bless you, grifters, bless you all.

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They really will never learn

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

I've made it clear that I'm not excited about the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. It's not at all clear the country can survive four to eight years of rule by Wall Street. Since, when all is said and done, the Street owns both parties, it might even be better for the country if a Republican won in 2016, so he (it won't be a she) can take the blame for the next crash. assuming it doesn't happen on Obama's watch.

Getting back to my point, (and I am getting there), I also believe Hillary is beatable, simply because there is a great chance that many people will feel that on the larger issues such as inequality, Wall Street kowtowing, etc.; she is no better than the alternative and they just might not vote.

All that being said, I'm a realist, and I personally will hold my nose and vote for her if vote I must. So assuming it is my possible fate to check her name on my ballot, it is good to see that the Republicans have apparently settled on an anti-Hillary strategy certain to blow up in their faces: attacking Bill Clinton and the “Clinton” brand; you know, that guy who got blow jobs in the White House.

This strategy is bound to fail for a couple of very good reasons. Living in a self created bubble as they do, Republicans are incapable of realizing that most people (justifiably or not, see repeal of Glass-Steagall) have good memories of the Clinton years. He is not perceived as a monster; if anything, he is the last president that presided over a sustained period of peace and prosperity (faux prosperity in some respects, but few people know that). Asking people if they want four more years of Clintons may not be such a good idea; given the alternatives, most people will say yes. There's another reason this won't work. The Republicans have taken their shots at the Clintons, and missed every time. The country as a whole has been inoculated against anti-Clinton rants. Those who are going to believe them are already convinced; everyone else merely shuts them out. It's a case of the party that cried wolf, over and over and over again. No one listens anymore. They got nowhere with Lewinsky; nowhere with Whitewater, nowhere with Benghazi. But just as they will never believe that people are signing up for Obamacare, they will never believe that people aren't outraged at the Clintons. They have bought into their own narrative, and are incapable of seeing that no one else has. It's one of HIllary's strenghs, actually. If someone new came along, the Republicans could define that person; but Hillary is proof against that.

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Billionaires at play.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Great read.

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More red state/blue state

Sunday, February 16, 2014

This is getting somewhat addictive. Yet another red state/blue state comparisons, with ever more predictable results. This, however, is what you might call the ur-text of these comparisons, the divergence among us from which all the others flow. Here, you see a map showing the geographical concentration of the percentage of people in the country who have a ninth grade education or less.

20140216-191136.jpg

Now, I was reluctant to print this picture, as I was unable to get to the underlying data, but I am doing to for two reasons. First, it is totally consistent with what one would expect. Second, the basic data is confirmed by no less an authority but Fox News, right here. Once again, New England places several (three) states in the top five.

Now, the fact is that, from the point of view of Southern politicans generally, and Republicans in particular, their poor performance is a feature and not a bug. It is only be keeping people uneducated, and therefore more susceptible to the classic arguments they've used to control rural whites, primarily racism (“you've got more than the whites, don't complain”), now spiced with homphobia. We in the North must therefore not be complacent. There is a concerted effort, in which our own governor is a participant, to eviscerate public education and hand it over to the corporations. As it is in their interest to keep the masses ignorant, we can look forwards to an educational system that increasingly teaches vocational skills (after all, we are going to need more domestic servants) at the expense of critical thinking, which means that someday, we may very well see these maps turn a uniform color.

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Romney Redux? Don’t count on it

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Mitt Romney's minions are pushing to get him nominated once again, apparently, with Mitt himself playing the no doubt calculated role of the reluctant bride. Apparently they think the guy who connected so well with the American people the last time will triumph in 2016, given a second chance to get people to vote in line with how the “unskewed” polls said they should.

In fact, there is good reason for the Republican Party to be turning to Mitt, though it is proof of the depth to which mainstream Republican thought has fallen from what is acceptable (when presented unvarnished) to the American people. The stable of “moderate” Republicans is virtually empty. In fact, it has been empty for a while; ;though our punditry would no doubt place Koch funded Scott Walker in a stall. It is a mark of Republican desperation that they may have nowhere else to turn but to the despised Mitt. Even before his fall, Christie was an unlikely savior; he is a thoroughly unpleasant man who is constitutionally incapable of projecting even the wooden soulessness that got Romney through the process in 2012.

But my advice to Mitt is that he stand by his protestations. Despite recent events (debt ceiling votes, etc.) the inmates are more fully in control of the asylum than they have ever been. 2016 will be their year; they will not settle for another moderate, Romney in particular. His foes in the primaries will eat him alive.

Which means we sane people have a lot to fear. It is by no means a sure thing that Hillary can beat Ted Cruz, or another of his ilk. The Democratic Party appears, at least at this point, to have accepted the inevitability of a Clinton candidacy, with all that implies: more Wall Street coddling, paying lip service and nothing more to any steps to actually reverse what truly is a road to serfdom.

In 2002 the Democrats did quite poorly in the mid terms. I would argue that was because they presented no alternative to Bush; in particular they failed to oppose his projected Iraq War, which was deeply unpopular with the Democratic base. Elections were lost not because our voters went with Republicans, but because they did not vote at all, and who could blame them. The same fate, I believe, awaits us in 2016. There is a pervasive belief in this country that something is deeply wrong. Republicans deal with these feelings by playing to resentments against the powerless. Cruz is quite capable of that. Democrats, to be successful, must appeal to resentments against the powerful while proposing ways to reduce that power. (There was this guy whose initials were “FDR”…what was that he said about “welcom[ing] their hatred”?) Clinton will run on warmed over Clintonomics. That's what got us here in the first place; people sense that and, for many, the choice between a Cruz and a Clinton will be best made by simply not voting. Cruz and his ilk, one of whom will be the candidate, may be so crazy that he will drive us to the polls holding our noses, or may lose despite reduced turnout, but we have much to fear.

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Friday Night Music, a Strange Double Header

Friday, February 14, 2014

We are currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the arrival on these shores of the greatest popular music group that ever existed. I hesitate to call them the greatest rock ‘n roll group, because their range was so much broader, so in that narrow category we will let the Stones reign supreme. But no one beats the Beatles for all around musical versatility. I’ve been listening to their entire catalog as I go back and forth to work. I created a playlist on my iPod and sorted the songs by length, so as I go the songs trend toward the later stuff, but lots of the early stuff pops up as well. It’s truly incredible. It’s all great, even the stuff you hardly ever hear.

Almost everyone alive back then remembers where they were a few months before, when JFK was killed. Those of us of a certain age also remember that first Ed Sullivan show, when the band that only recently hit the airwaves appeared live on television. I am ashamed to confess that I opposed watching the Beatles, not because I didn’t want to (I did), but because I wanted to torture my older sister. We insisted on watching Walt Disney, which, as I recall, was running what we would now call a miniseries about a character named the Scarecrow. Thankfully, I lost that argument. Unfortunately, there are no complete songs from the Sullivan show on youtube; no doubt because the Sulllivan franchise prefers to have us buy its DVDs.

So, I think these videos represent the next best thing; a couple of videos from a Beatles concert in DC in 1964.

Their own songs were great, and if they covered a song, it was always better than the original.

Now for the strange part. Shirley Temple was by no means a musician,but I feel I must pause to pay tribute. Her movies were played repeatedly on television in those more innocent years way back even before the Beatles. I saw them all, I’m sure. Back then I would have impatiently sat through dance scenes like the following (I would want to get back to the story), in which she takes a turn with Bill Bojangles Robinson (Mr. Bojangles, himself)who appeared with her in quite a few flicks. Apparently, poor Mr. Robinson had most often to play addle brained characters, as was only fitting for a black man, but I understand Ms. Temple herself was genuinely fond of him as a human being. She herself was certainly flawed, inasmuch as she grew up to be a Republican, but we must remember she did so when one did not have to be certifiably crazy to make that choice. And, give her credit, given the weird life she lived as a child, she grew up to be a pretty sane individual. Anyway, here she is dancing with Mr. Bojangles.

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Once again, New England Rules

Friday, February 14, 2014







Yet another national map plotting out the stupid versus the…well…not so stupid. This one maps out the rate at which people have signed up for insurance since Obamacare went into effect. This map does not fit comfortably within the typical pattern, mostly due to the fact that some of the Northern states have right wing governors (think Wisconsin and poor Maine, which suffered again from its propensity to vote for independents). But the pattern is nonetheless broadly consistent, with three New England states (including Connecticut) in the top five. Massachusetts was excluded from the sweepstakes, because Romneycare has been in effect there for years, so people were already signed up.

One surprise, the state of Kentucky, which led the league in one area of stupid (smoking), scores in the top five. Again, this has to do with the governor involved, because the people of Kentucy had the (for them) unusual good sense to elect a Democratic governor, who has enthusiastically embraced the law and signed up massive numbers of people. By the way, this means that McConnell must navigate his way through a right wing anti-Obamacare minefield in order to get renominated, and then, if the Democrats have any sense, a barrage of commercials featuring Kentuckians complaining that McConnell wants to take away their health care.

On a slightly different note, but still on the subject of right wing stupid, Paul Krugman notes that the same math whizzes that brought us the Romney presidential victory are proving mathematically that people are not signing up for Obamacare. With enemies like them, who needs friends?

Caveat: All of this does not mean I think that Obamacare is a good system. It is better than what we had, but it is yet another example of taking a Rube Goldberg approach to solving our problems, always with the unspoken objective of shoving money toward the 1%. No that's not fair to .99 percent of us. Make that shoving money toward the .01%.


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Billionaire derangement syndrome

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Maybe Jeff Bezos made a mistake buying the Washington Post. It's entirely possible he could have spread his particular brand of propaganda far more cheaply by buying airtime on PBS. That's what a billionaire who made his money scamming people at Enron has done:

On December 18th, the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station WNET issued a press release announcing the launch of a new two-year news series entitled “Pension Peril.” The series, promoting cuts to public employee pensions, is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation. It has been presented as objective news on  major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour.

However, neither the WNET press release nor the broadcasted segments explicitly disclosed who is financing the series. Pando has exclusively confirmed that “Pension Peril” is secretly funded by former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering.

In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.

Despite Arnold’s pension-slashing activism and his foundation’s ties to partisan politics, Leila Walsh, a spokesperson for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), told Pando that PBS officials were not hesitant to work with them, even though PBS’s own very clear rules prohibit such blatant conflicts. (note: the term “PBS officials” refers interchangeably to both PBS officials and officials from PBS flagship affiliate WNET who were acting on behalf of the entire PBS system).

To the contrary, the Arnold Foundation spokesperson tells Pando that it was PBS officials who first initiated contact with Arnold in the Spring of 2013. She says those officials actively solicited Arnold to finance the broadcaster’s proposal for a new pension-focused series. According to the spokesperson, they solicited Arnold’s support based specifically on their knowledge of his push to slash pension benefits for public employees.

via Pandodaily to which I was directed by Firedoglake

I'll leave it to David Sirota at Pandodaily and the good folks at Firedoglake to lambaste PBS. I want to return to a theme that has been well worn in this blog. This is yet another example of something I've noted before. Mr. Arnold's fortune is not threatened by public employee pensions, just as Pete Peterson will remain rich whether or not he is successful at destroying social security. Yet another example that to many billionaires, it “is not enough that [they] succeed, everyone else must fail”. There is probably a category in the DSM that applies, but if you're rich enough its okay to be a sociopath.

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Brooks: All you need is to believe.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

I have made a number of sacrifices for the sake of this blog, but today I perhaps Above and beyond; I read a David Brooks column. Yes, I know somewhere there's probably a blog that offers to read David Brooks so I don't have to, much like the folks at Newshounds masochistically watch Fox for my benefit. Nonetheless, today I read Brooks myself, since the teaser on the Times website was so tempting that I overcame my aversion and dismissed the certainty that the process would be more painful than the results would warrant.

Actually, the teaser led me to conclude that Brooks thesis of the week is that upward mobility is a thing of the past because we no longer believe in the American Dream. But no, it's not quite as bad as that, though my guess is that Brooks would endorse that premise too. Rather, Brooks advances the notion that the decline in geographical mobility is caused by a lack of faith in the American Dream; i.e., young men are no longer “going West” for opportunity, because they (and young women too) no longer believe that opportunity beckons from other quarters.

It never occurs to Brooks that there may be no opportunity beckoning, and one by one he dismisses such trivialities as the facts that homeowners are stuck with underwater mortgages and labor markets have become, as he puts it “homogenous”. Nor does he mention the fact that the job market sucks everywhere, unless you count Texas, which claims its economy isn't doing so bad, since they have managed to reduce nearly everyone to the minimum wage. (Oh, on second look it's doing terribly, but it is chock-a-block full of minimum wage jobs that I'm sure Brooks feels should make any red blooded American not named Brooks ready to pull up stakes and migrate to the land of crazy.)

Brooks will have none of these liberally biased facts:

No, a big factor here is a loss in self-confidence. It takes faith to move. You are putting yourself through temporary expense and hardship because you have faith that over the long run you will slingshot forward. Many highly educated people, who are still moving in high numbers, have that long-term faith. Less-educated people often do not.

via The New York Times

Brooks is befuddled. He can't seem to understand how things could come to this sorry pass:

Thirty years ago, a vast majority of Americans identified as members of the middle class. But since 1988, the percentage of Americans who call themselves members of the “have-nots” has doubled. Today’s young people are more likely to believe success is a matter of luck, not effort, than earlier generations.

Whatever could have induced those young people to come to the conclusion that success in this country is a matter of luck. Oh, right, because it is. But don't confuse Brooks with the facts, much less expect him to inquire into said facts. If there is any empirical evidence that effort in this economy leads to success then maybe Brooks should cite us to it, rather than assert it as dogma. As one small but incredibly important example of where luck plays a part, consider the difference it makes, effort or not, if a person can emerge from our educational system unburdened by mountains of student loans. That is a matter of luck, in that it is almost solely a function of the parents one happens to have. Brooks, in his pseudo-Burkean way, is just joining in the usual Republican game of blaming the victims.

When I first saw the above noted teaser the first thing that came to mind was Peter Pan (the play, not the cartoon or book). In one scene poor Tinkerbell is dying, and the only way for her to survive is for the audience to join Peter in affirming an absolute belief in fairies. Brooks is asking the young people of America to do precisely the same thing. The American Dream, if it was ever a reality, has been destroyed by the people for whom Brooks carries water twice a week. You might as well believe in fairies. At least in the play Tinkerbell survived, but it's really unlikely that the upcoming generation in this country will live in a nation where they are better off than their parents or grandparents, no matter how hard they try. Brooks and his ilk have taken care of that.

Update: As Dean Baker documents here, there is ample reason for both those with only high school degrees and those with college degrees to be pessimistic.

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