Beaufort, South Carolina's "Island Packet" is reporting Flo at 98 mph at this hour, just still barely a Cat 2.
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Habeas corpus: Puerto Rico study showing 2,975 deaths not "a traditional death-toll accounting"
Normally one counts up the bodies, makes a list and checks it twice. But nothing in Puerto Rico is normal.
Reported here:
Researchers at George Washington University determined last month that Hurricane Maria alone resulted in 2,975 'excess deaths' in Puerto Rico.
That finding wasn't the result of a traditional death-toll accounting, but a public health study that compared mortality in the six months following the storm with the number of deaths that would have been expected if it had not hit the island.
'The difference between those two numbers is the estimate of excess mortality due to the hurricane,' the scientists wrote.
G@@gl& scientist resigns due to company's compliance with China's censorship and surveillance demands
Quoted here in The Intercept:
“Due to my conviction that dissent is fundamental to functioning democracies, I am forced to resign in order to avoid contributing to, or profiting from, the erosion of protection for dissidents.”
“I view our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe,” he wrote, adding: “There is an all-too-real possibility that other nations will attempt to leverage our actions in China in order to demand our compliance with their security demands.” ...
[H]e is surprised more of the company’s employees have not quit over Dragonfly.
It's taken incompetent Puerto Rico eleven months to raise its official death toll from 64 to 2,975, just in time for the election
But in all that time incompetent Puerto Rico still hasn't made use of the millions of water bottles still sitting on a runway in Ceiba.
Puerto Rico's governor last month raised the U.S. territory's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm, which devastated the territory last September, is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.
Flashback to the story from 2 November 2017.
Bottled water can be hard to find and gets expensive, said her aunt, Maria Ortiz, 66. “If you are lucky to find some, a pack of 24 water bottles that used to be $3.99 now is about $7.50,” she said.
They can't count, and they can't even drink.
The Hill: "Puerto Rico's government raised its official death toll which previously sat at 64"
But the culture of complaint that is Puerto Rico wasn't satisfied with the low number, so they commissioned a study to add deaths six months out from the post-hurricane period:
[A] George Washington University study commissioned by Puerto Rico's governor examin[ed] the effects of Maria in the six months following landfall in September 2017.
The long time period was used to determine the hurricane's lingering effect on deaths on the island. It compared the death rates in the post-hurricane period to other periods not affected by natural disasters.
Only in the minds of lunatics is the number of deaths from Maria 1,175 worse than from Katrina (1,800 estimated total deaths). This new methodology of liberal math is just in time for the politics of the current hurricane season, and coincides with Obama's ridiculous claim that this economic recovery is his, not Trump's.
The story is here.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
David Dayen thinks Tim Geithner's disobedience of Obama's orders fed the anger at government Trump parlayed into the presidency
Of course, this begs the question whether Obama knew what he was doing, or even wanted to know.
Here in The New Republic:
Every action fit Geithner’s worldview: The financial system must be stabilized at all costs, as the only way to heal the economy so real people benefit. “We do not need to imagine that he was in the pocket of any one bank,” Adam Tooze wrote in the new book Crashed. “It was his commitment to the system that dictated that Citigroup should not be broken up.” ...
Today, some may welcome the internal dissension in the Trump administration. But Geithner’s actions to protect banks from the president he served, and the anger it bred at a “rigged” system, diminished the public’s faith in government intervention and helped install Trump in the White House.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Who ya gonna believe, the mayor or the cops?
Numerous people called police to report an exultant crowd on the roof of 2801 John F. Kennedy Blvd., a distinctive, five-story apartment building at the intersection of Sip Avenue, said retired officer Arthur Teeter, who worked in the radio room at police headquarters on Sept. 11. ... Teeter, the officer who worked in the radio room, said the address was one of several where 911 callers cited rooftop celebrations. "There were enough calls that it was disturbing," he said. "That's the only word I can use." ...
The officers, including a high-ranking official, said their reluctance to speak publicly also stemmed from concern they would run afoul of Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who has repeatedly said celebrations did not take place. "I saw it with my own eyes," the ranking officer said. "In the end, police officers are professionals, so we just observed that stuff and sucked it up."
The officers, including a high-ranking official, said their reluctance to speak publicly also stemmed from concern they would run afoul of Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who has repeatedly said celebrations did not take place. "I saw it with my own eyes," the ranking officer said. "In the end, police officers are professionals, so we just observed that stuff and sucked it up."
Seventeen years later America still has 8,475 soldiers in Afghanistan
And Afghanistan has a record 810,000 acres producing opium.
Oliver Bullough for The Grauniad blames all the wealth inequality today on an invention of a Jewish banker
Siegmund George Warburg, here, whose invention destroyed the Bretton Woods system.
Except Bullough never mentions he's the descendant of a long line of Jewish bankers who originated in Venice:
One banker in particular was not prepared to tolerate this: Siegmund Warburg. Warburg was an outsider in the cosy world of the City. For one thing, he was German. For another, he hadn’t given up on the idea that a City banker’s job was to hustle for business. In 1962, Warburg learned from a friend at the World Bank that some $3bn was circulating outside the US – sloshing around and ready to be put to use. Warburg had been a banker in Germany in the 1920s and remembered arranging bond deals in foreign currencies. Why couldn’t his bankers do something similar again?
Investors Business Daily thinks no one noticed Obama's recent public embrace of Bernie's radical socialism
Here.
We noticed. We just didn't mention it because we've been pointing out Obama's socialism for nine years already. Yawn.
But Obama was only a fair weather friend of socialism for most of that time because most of the Democrat Party remained neoliberal. Nothing points up his lackluster leadership and servile character throughout that time better than his constant fear of a backlash from the neoliberal wing of a party he supposedly led. Actually it led him. Obama was relieved to wash his hands of the economic crisis and delegated fixing it to Bill Clinton's neoliberal retreads. The guy couldn't even take the socialist baton of Pelosi's single payer plan for crying out loud, or embrace a Paul Krugman approved properly sized stimulus spending bill. And making the Bush tax cuts permanent? That was hardly the work of the leader (in his head) of world socialism.
Freed from the strictures of politics, Obama is now free to advance his fanciful sympathies without consequences, as long as the wind is blowing in that direction. My guess is the left wing of his party sees this as nothing more than his feeble attempt to be relevant again when to them he had already become an object of contempt by the end of 2009.
The author of Dreams from My Father is just dreamin', that's all. All he ever did.
Monday, September 10, 2018
Two months out Real Clear Politics has just nine Republican seats "likely" going Democrat: That's no blue wave
Democrats and liberals, however, want you to think it's already hopeless for Republicans. Like Al Hunt, who thinks Democrats will turn out because Trump is their great motivator to do so. Al, however, thinks the toss ups are already down to 20 to 25 seats. If it's true, as he thinks, that Republicans tend to reduce their polling deficits as the election nears, his already low estimation of the size of the field of prospects suggests this is a lot closer than he's willing to admit. The generic Congressional poll currently favors Democrats by +2 to +4 (Rasmussen). Remember Rasmussen had Hillary at +2. Al thinks the current math means Democrats need 23 seats to take the House. That means almost all of his toss ups have to flip.
Not likely!
USA Today had it right predicting Naomi Osaka's U.S. Open victory: Osaka had already whopped Serena back in March
Osaka already showed her hand. Back in March, she played Serena for the first time, showed no sense of nerves and rolled her 6-3, 6-2 in the first round in Miami. Now, that match doesn’t tell us much about how Osaka’s style will contrast with Serena’s in Saturday’s U.S. Open final, as the first match was just Serena’s fourth since returning from maternity leave and, as she’d later admit, she wasn’t in the right shape to be winning matches. Still, even with Serena playing at 40% of her capabilities, we saw how Osaka responded to seeing her across the net. There was no fear, no awe, no deference. Osaka says she often asks herself “what would Serena do?” And what Osaka did in that Miami match is exactly what a young Serena would have done to one of the stars of the game back in 1999. No fear. ... [I]n the past year, she’s defeated the world Nos. 1 and 2 in hard-court matches and took home the title at the prestigious Indian Wells tournament. ... PREDICTION: Naomi Osaka in straight sets.
Serena is an old cow (36) compared to Osaka (20). So is Roger Federer (37), who didn't lose recently just because it was hot and humid. Tiger Woods is 42 and hasn't won anything important in ten years but keeps trying. The old bulls fall to the young bucks, eventually, that's nature's way.
The old bulls just don't want to accept it sometimes, that's all. And then out come the excuses. Too bad for tennis that this time the excuses were political. But hey, Kaepernick paved the way. Expect more of the same.
Personally I can't wait for Osaka to cream Serena again.
Ari Fleischer to anonymous op-ed writer: Who the hell are you to decide what the right direction is?
"No White House staffer is above the will of the people, especially one whose name none of us know."
Counting illegal aliens as population in California unlawfully gives it 5 more seats in the US House than it should have
The State of Alabama and Mo Brooks are suing the federal government to stop the practice.
The story is here.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Ken Rogoff calls Adam Tooze's new book CRASHED an ambitious but flawed work
Rogoff takes Tooze to task for certain inaccuracies and omissions, including about Rogoff's own published work.
It's a longish read, but well worth it, here. And don't miss the second part, which reviews Sebastian Edwards' AMERICAN DEFAULT.
T. A. Frank tries to dial down the hysteria a notch or two: This still isn’t the behavior of a dictator, the press is doing just fine
T. A. Frank for Vanity Fair, here:
Finally, this still isn’t the behavior of a dictator. As much as Trump blusters about libel laws and maligns journalists, the press is doing just fine. A truly dangerous president would cloak his aims in high principles and ask Congress to pass new laws. He would ignore someone like Woodward and say quietly, to henchmen behind the scenes, “Who will rid me of that meddlesome journalist?” He wouldn’t pick up the phone and have a fumbling phone call with Woodward asking if the book was going to be bad, before concluding, glumly, “I assume that means it’s going to be a negative book. But you know, I’m sort of 50 percent used to that. That’s all right. Some are good and some are bad. Sounds like this is going to be a bad one.”
But all of this is, again, one more confirmation of what we already knew: Trump talks tougher than he acts. He also struggles to get his way, everywhere. ... Trump knows how to stoke his base, and he has started to reshape the G.O.P., but he has had a hell of a time implementing his campaign promises. He lacks the self-discipline and intuition.
And the best lines of all:
Why campaign like Pat Buchanan if you staff up like Jeb Bush? ... The man who insulted Goldman Sachs and Saudi princes and promised infrastructure and walls instead hired Goldman Sachs, did the bidding of Saudi princes, and stuck to tax cuts.
Can't very well become Donaldus Magnus if you won't appoint people to fight for and implement your agenda.
Federal employment is down 7,000 since Trump's election 22 months ago, he promised cuts of tens of thousands
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, released early Thursday, could lead to between 100,000 and 200,000 cuts to federal civilian jobs, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune.
Serena Williams: She aint got no alibi, she UGLY
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| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6146903/Im-not-cheater-Serena-Williams-argues-umpire-U-S-Open-womens-final.html |
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Dear Ann Coulter: "The Left" is already a collective noun, to speak of its "collective mind" is redundant
It's well past time that we declared "collective" a cant word, which is what it has become on the right.
My latest utility bill: "We are pleased to pass along the savings from federal tax reform"
$4.99-
What oh what will I do with this unexpected windfall?
The percentage of the population working plunged under Obama: If it's a boom under Trump why isn't it recovering?
From 1984 through 2008 the average percentage of the population working had been 62.6%. In August it was only 60.3%. The difference between the two is 6 million jobs.
If this a boom, an economy "on fire", where the hell are they?
We have not recovered from the disaster under Obama, not by a long shot.
Sorry Charlie: Jeff Cox of CNBC wildly exaggerates wages under Trump, "the last missing piece of the economic recovery"
Here in "Trump has set economic growth on fire":
Friday brought another round of good news: Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, the last missing piece of the economic recovery, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009. That made it the best gain since the recession ended in June 2009. ... Indeed, the economy does seem to be on fire, and it's fairly easy to draw a straight line from Trump's policies to the current trends.
The wage series used by Cox for all workers differs little in August 2018 from the series for the 80% of workers who are production and nonsupervisory, except that the latter goes back much farther than 2006, giving a truer picture of where we are at. And where we are at is slightly better off than under Obama, but that's about it. It's still not as good as under George W. Bush, for crying out loud. And it's certainly not "on fire".
This is not an economic boom for most working people.
Friday, September 7, 2018
China's richest man, Jack Ma, suddenly retires at age 54
The story here makes it sound like he wanted to retire to pursue a life of philanthropy and education.
Sure he did. Rather later than sooner.
"For Chinese tycoons to step aside in their 50s is rare; they usually remain at the top of their organizations for many years."
Mark Meadows is a libertarian open borders fanatic posing as a Trump supporter when he's really supporting his GOPe
From the story here:
Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina has argued that entering into a spending battle that could shutter the government in October would be unwise without a cohesive plan, appearing to side with GOP leaders who fear a shutdown before midterms would upend their House majority. ... “I don’t see a deliberate plan on how we secure our border happening by the end of September, and so having that debate over the next three months is probably more prudent than trying to have it in the next week and a half,” Meadows said.
Rush Limbaugh's "eating but not working" hits an all time high 96.29 million in August
Rush is eating but not working this week, too.
Ebola spreads, kills one in urban center in Congo, WHO official very worried for the world
“When you have an Ebola case confirmed in a city with one million people, no one should be sleeping well tonight around the world.” ... Saturday marked a month since the start of the latest outbreak, with 122 cases of Ebola reported so far. Of the cases, the WHO said nearly 70 percent of patients died despite health officials rolling out treatment drugs.
Farmers and Republicans are thick as thieves with illegal aliens and sanctuary cities
It ain't just San Fran Freako, folks.
Illegal alien Cristhian Bahena-Rivera, a 24-year-old from Mexico, has been charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ death after police say he admitted to confronting and chasing down the young woman. The illegal alien lived in a region of Iowa that was surrounded by sanctuary cities, as Breitbart News noted, and an initial autopsy report revealed that Bahena-Rivera allegedly stabbed Tibbetts to death. ...
That dairy farm where Bahena-Rivera worked, Yarrabee Farms, owns the property and trailer where the illegal alien had been living and which, allegedly, many Mexican nationals frequented, as Breitbart News reported.
Eric Lang, one of the chief executives of Yarrabee Farms, is the brother of Craig Lang, who was the president of the Iowa Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau has chapters all over the United States, with the goal of increasing the number of low-skilled foreign workers, specifically those on H-2A visas, who are allowed to enter the country every year.
As Breitbart News reported, Eric Lang is also married to Nicole Schlinger, who runs the GOP fundraising firm Campaign Headquarters in Brooklyn, Iowa.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Democrats were always John McCain's kind of people
John McCain’s former chief of staff said Wednesday that he is considering running for the Senate as a Democrat as he grapples with President Trump’s policies and the late Arizona senator’s death.
Grant Woods, who is also a former Arizona attorney general, said in an interview that he has spoken to several Democratic senators about the idea, including Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).
Woods supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and said he has been troubled by Trump in recent years. McCain’s death has led him to consider “whether I need to step up at this point in time,” he said.
The New Yorker ignores how wildfires contribute gargantuan quantities of emissions compared with power plants
Compared with the Clean Power Plan, [the EPA's new Affordable Clean Energy rules] could, over the next few decades, allow hundreds of millions of tons of additional carbon emissions.
Hundreds of millions of tons over decades, eh?
How about gigatons from wildfires in just one year?
In 1997, a fire consumed 8,000 square kilometers of mostly peatland in Borneo. Researchers estimated 0.2 Gt of carbon were released in this one area that year, and that carbon emissions from fires across Indonesia in 1997 emitted between 0.8 and 2.5 Gt — or “13 to 40%” of the size of global human fossil fuel emissions. ...
Other researchers, der Werf et al 2004, looked at fires around the world during the El Nino year and estimated that 2.1 Gt of carbon was released — which explained 66% ± 24% of the extra CO2 emitted globally that year. Bowman et al estimate fires produced emissions around 50% of the size of human emissions. ...
California, Nevada and Colorado could impact climate far more deeply, cheaply and effectively RIGHT NOW by preventing and containing the wildfires which are making moot the comparatively puny plans of the EPA.
Average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2018 through August has been about 38% warmer than the mean
Months in 2018 ranked for highest average monthly temperature in 127 years (since 1892):
Jan: 54th
Feb: 21st
Mar: 56th
Apr: 123rd (4th lowest average temperature on record for April)
May: 4th highest average temperature on record for May
Jun: 29th
Jul: 21st
Aug: 11th
Average for 2018 to date: about 40th (mean is about 64th; six years numbered 62-67 populate the mean annual average temperature record of 48.2).
So overall to date conditions have been about 38% warmer than the mean in Grand Rapids (2400/64), which is the same result obtained from analysis of the Cooling Degree Day data.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Trump evidently has a John McCain mole in his administration
The mole writes an anonymous op-ed here.
The op-ed simply rehashes all the complaints of NeverTrump.
She's oh so precious boys and girls, keeping the Never Ending Funeral going.
If only the American people had elected John McCain!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
South Africa racks up two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth under land-grabber Cyril Ramaphosa, new president since February
Ramaphosa's domestic policy is centered around "land reform", i.e. seizing land without compensation. Apparently production is already suffering because farmers are convinced there's no point to going on any longer.
A RECORD number of white South African farmers have put their land up for sale amid fears the ruling party is considering confiscating properties bigger than 25,000 acres.
By SIMON OSBORNE
PUBLISHED: 07:03, Mon, Aug 20, 2018
UPDATED: 07:26, Mon, Aug 20, 2018
Omri van Zyl, head of the Agri SA union, which represents mainly white commercial farmers, said: “The mood among our members is very solemn. They are confused about the lack of any apparent strategy from the government and many are panicking. So many farms are up for sale, more than we’ve ever had, but no one is buying.” ... Agri SA said about 20 per cent of South Africa’s farms produce 80 per cent of the food that feeds millions of people in southern Africa, and many of those properties would be affected by a 25,000-acre cap.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Yahoo/AFP story features Jean-Claude Trichet trying to rewrite financial crisis history and rescue his reputation
In the story here, Trichet portrays himself as seeing everything coming in August 2007 and acting accordingly through the end of his tenure as head of the ECB in 2011.
Unfortunately for Trichet, who saw nothing coming, the record of his interest rate hikes in the summer of 2008 (!) in the teeth of the crisis and repeated in the spring of 2011 cannot be erased!
Of course, he doesn't mention those.
Mario Draghi immediately reversed Trichet's course, nine days after assuming the leadership of the ECB.
Josh Brown thinks you're an Unreachable if you think staging a week long funeral to bash the president is in bad taste
Here, where he amusingly warns about joining a tribe, a tribe! without even realizing it:
Ask yourself whether or not you [yes, YOU] might be an Unreachable in some regard. Are there some beliefs you’ve taken on because they’re of use to you in some social setting or circumstance – beliefs that may not be completely grounded in fact? Are you, in your own way, an Unreachable in the eyes of someone else? Have you affiliated with a tribe of your own, whether out of convenience or for professional purposes, without even having realized it?
The word 'worker' has been surrounded by a halo since 1848
"The working class does not exist in the economic structure of a single nation. ... What have miners, sailors, tailors' apprentices, metalworkers, waiters, bank officials, ploughmen, and scavengers in common with one another?"
-- Oswald Spengler
Monday, September 3, 2018
Like just about everyone else on the left, Joel Kotkin continues to twist himself in pretzels to avoid calling our system what it already is
State capitalism.
It is the socialism of the right, despite what names people may give it. The fascist model in which business and government cooperate now more, now less was not defeated in World War II. The superior American version simply defeated the German one, and eventually also the left's inherently weaker version in Russia.
It has triumphed globally, brought to the fore in America by the libertarian resurgence under Ronald Reagan, imitated by the jealous Euro project, and notably exported to China, where it was eagerly embraced as no threat to Marxism. To the genuine Marxist, remember, free-trade is welcome because it hastens the global revolution. Belt and Road participants, take note.
The experiential groundwork for global state capitalism was laid long ago by the King and Bank of England in their joint enterprise known as the Thirteen Colonies. Everyone imitates this now in principle if not always in particulars. But everywhere it flourishes it is facilitated by the same thing, the central banking systems which coordinate their activities through rules administered under Basel III. The contemporary exemplars of state capitalism fancy that they are substantively a world away from Hitler's Germany, because, well, the Jews. We don't kill Jews, insist these experts at mass abortion and Uyghur mass re-education.
It's the historical resonances which bother the left in using the phrase, but the underlying facts aren't different in substance. Materialism today means not having to say you're sorry for treating people like depreciated or unappreciated assets. Older workers in the West are routinely tossed aside for being too costly. Potential younger competitors are hamstrung by a culture of costly credentialing prerequisites. When such people become worthless enough, it isn't unlikely that in some places they could stop being considered people altogether (typically where atheism reigns) so that they could be slaughtered wholesale with the same relative efficiency already applied to the unborn. The tech already exists to do this. The only question is when will the people exist who are possessed of enough nerve.
Here's Kotkin on this so-called "new, innovative approach" which looks like nothing so much as the old Soviet Union, with its hostility centered on the middle class, its dreary blocks of drab apartment buildings, the dim pall of surveillance and conformity lurking everywhere, complete with its own privileged new class in service to the party .01 percent:
Oligarchal socialism allows for the current, ever-growing concentration of wealth and power in a few hands — notably tech and financial moguls — while seeking ways to ameliorate the reality of growing poverty, slowing social mobility and indebtedness. This will be achieved not by breaking up or targeting the oligarchs, which they would fight to the bitter end, but through the massive increase in state taxpayer support. ... [T]he tech oligarchy — the people who run the five most capitalized firms on Wall Street — have [sic] a far less egalitarian vision. ... [T]hey see government spending as a means of keeping the populist pitchforks away. ... Handouts, including housing subsidies, could guarantee for the next generation a future not of owned houses, but rented small, modest apartments. ... They appeal to progressives by advocating politically correct views . . .. Faced with limited future prospects, more millennials already prefer socialism to capitalism and generally renounce constitutionally sanctioned free speech . . .. [I]ncreased income guarantees, nationalized health care, housing subsidies, rent control and free education could also help firms maintain a gig-oriented [slave] economy since these employers do not provide the basic benefits often offered by more traditional “evil” corporations . . .. [T]he oligarchy, representing basically the top .01 percent of the population, are primarily interested not in lower taxes but in protecting their market shares and capital. ... The losers here will be our once-protean middle class. Unlike the owners of corporations in the past, oligarchs have no interest in their workers become homeowners or moving up the class ladder. Their agenda instead is forever-denser, super-expensive rental housing for their primarily young, and often short-term, employees. ... The tech moguls get to remain wealthy beyond the most extreme dreams of avarice, while their allies in progressive circles and the media, which they increasingly own, continue to hector everyone else about giving up their own aspirations. All the middle and upwardly mobile working class gets is the right to pay ever more taxes, while they watch many of their children devolve into serfs, dependent on alms and subsidies for their survival.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for August 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Climate Update for August 2018
Max temp 91, Mean Max temp 92
Min temp 52, Mean Min temp 47
Av temp 73.5, Mean Av temp 70.2
Av temp to date 51.5, Mean Av temp to date 49.6 (actual is elevated 3.8%)
Precip 6.61, Mean precip 3.07
Total precip to date 28.11, Mean total precip to date 22.77 (actual ahead by 23%)
Cooling Degree Days 271, Mean CDD 189, Season to date 848, Mean Season to date 614
The cooling season to date as measured by CDD is now 38% warmer than the mean, up just a little from last month.
To stay cool, I've averaged 1074 kWh a month in June, July and August running the air conditioning versus 701 a month on average in the previous eight months, 53% more but for only three months. Every kWh above 600 in the summer months is billed at a rate almost 35% higher than for the first 600, but it really doesn't amount to much of a penalty. In August, for example, the kWh above 600 cost me a penalty surcharge of less than $15.00.
Overall, the price of staying cool in my case (74 degrees F) means operating anyway in the higher rate category. Even without running the AC I'm in it because I average 701 a month, 101 a month more than the arbitrary 600 ceiling. I'd pay the higher rate like it or not simply by running floor fans and ceiling fans. Running the toaster in summer makes breakfast slightly more expensive. This summer the extra 1119 kWh I've used above my non-summer average, due mostly to running the AC, have run me a relatively low additional $142.49 total, or $47.50 a month, all paid at the penalty rate.
A small price to pay to sleep well and remain fully functional, productive and healthy under somewhat less than ideal conditions in the summer of 2018.
Sunday, September 2, 2018
As long as South Africa legalizes theft of farm land owned by whites, the IMF and the UK's Theresa May are all for it
Reuters reports here.
South Africa was ruled by Britain for a hundred years between 1806 and 1910. White Europeans swelled population through immigration, peaking above 5 million in the mid 1990s. They carved civilization out of a savage environment, for which they get no thanks now because savagery is all the fashion again.
Legalized theft takes different forms in different places at different times, for example through government exercise of eminent domain, or through imposition of an income tax.
In South Africa the plan is to take without compensation, but perhaps with murder thrown in for good measure if Julius Malema gets his way.
Historian Bradley Birzer of Hillsdale College appears not to know much about Western history
In "Immigration and Citizenship: Ancient Lessons for the American People", E. Christian Kopff marshals at least six arguments from history which show that Birzer's belief that “the best of our ancestors believed in the free movement of peoples” is a canard.
You should read it, here.
China's Belt and Road initiative involves some partners in debt distress
China's massive and expanding "Belt and Road" trade infrastructure project is running into speed bumps as some countries begin to grumble about being buried under Chinese debt. First announced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, the initiative also known as the "new Silk Road" envisions the construction of railways, roads and ports across the globe, with Beijing providing billions of dollars in loans to many countries.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Tucker Carlson says there's nothing free about this market, falls short of calling it an expression of global fascism
But who knows, maybe his forthcoming book connects the dots between the multinational corporations and their revolving door governments, and the central banking system which mediates the operation.
Here:
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS:
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is worth about $150 billion. That’s enough to make him the richest man in the world, by far, and possibly the richest person in human history. It’s certainly enough to pay his employees well. But he doesn’t. A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. According to data from the nonprofit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Bezos, make sure he says thank you.
Same with the Waltons. The Walton family founded Walmart. Collectively they’re worth about $175 billion. That’s more than the entire gross domestic product of Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf state. The Waltons could certainly afford to be generous with their workers. Instead, they count on you to take up the slack. In 2013, taxpayers sent more than $6 billion to Walmart’s workers, for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.
And if you think that’s shocking, meet Travis Kalanick. He’s the youthful founder of Uber. His personal fortune is close to $5 billion. His drivers, by contrast, often make less than minimum wage. One recent study showed that many Uber drivers lose money working for the company. That’s not a sustainable business model. The only reason it continues is because of your generosity. Because you’re paying the welfare benefits for Uber’s impoverished drivers, child billionaires like Travis get to keep buying bigger houses and more airplanes. He’s someone else who definitely owes you a thank you note.
If you can think of a less fair system than that, send us an email. We’d love to hear it. It’s indefensible. Yet almost nobody ever complains about it. How come? Conservatives, like us, support the free market, and for good reason. Free markets work. But there’s nothing free about this market. A lot of these companies operate as monopolies. They hate markets. They use government regulation to crush competition. There’s nothing conservative about that, just as there’s nothing conservative about most big corporations. Just the opposite. They’re the backbone of the left. Pick a leftwing cause that you think is hurting the country. Check the donor list, and you’ll find the name of some corporation. Often many corporations. Corporate America enables the progressive lunacy you see every night on this show. They’re funding the revolution now in progress.
That’s why liberals say nothing as oligarchs amass billions by soaking the middle class. Because they’ve been paid off. For example, you probably assumed the people who founded Walmart were conservative. Most of their customers certainly are. Yet the bulk of the Walton family backed Hillary Clinton in the last election. They gave the Democratic Party more than $700,000 during the 2016 cycle. Almost every billionaire in Silicon Valley did the same. In return, they got immunity from criticism, and you got to keep paying their employees. Not a bad deal for them.
There is one person in Washington who’s offended by this arrangement, and we’re sorry to say he’s wrong on pretty much everything else. But this is a weird moment, so you take allies where you can find them. Bernie Sanders, of all people, is trying to get your money back from Jeff Bezos. This is especially amazing since Bezos is on Bernie’s side on most things. They’re both leftwing activists. But on this question, Bernie’s right. He’s planning legislation that would force big corporations to return the taxpayer-funded welfare benefits you’ve paid to their workers. It’s not a perfect solution, and it probably won’t pass. No matter what they claim in public, liberals in Congress would never support something like that. Their loyalty isn’t to you. It’s to Uber and Jeff Bezos. But at the very least it might awaken a sleepy population to the new reality of activist corporate America. And that’s a good thing.
America has changed enormously in the last 20 years. A lot of people you thought were your allies are in fact working against your interests. They have contempt for you and your family, your customs and your faith. Included in this group, I’m sorry to say, are a lot of big corporations. They have no use for you or the country you grew up in. Stand in their way, and they’ll crush you. It’s all shocking enough that I recently wrote a book about it. It’s called “Ship of Fools,” and it explains what happened and who did it. The book is out in a month, the first week of October, but you can preorder a copy now, and I hope you will.
Andrew Yarrow: Over 20 million men are not employed, five times the official 4 million
Excerpted from his book Man Out, here:
We’re left with the reality that the percentage of men not employed today is about three times what it was during the Truman and Eisenhower eras: well over 20 million men. Not the four million officially deemed to be unemployed.
The unemployment level for men averaged 4.18 million in 2016 and 3.73 million in 2017.
Noah Smith embraces the Trump narrative: "There’s no doubt that the U.S. economy is in a boom"
Here for Bloomberg.
After examining several indicators, which, however, are not unequivocal for their interpretation despite saying "no doubt", Noah Smith comes down on the side of improved sentiment as the cause of the current "boom".
On that we agree. There's a boom in sentiment.
The problem is, too many people are importing that improved sentiment into their reading of the data, and into their choice of the data.
For example, Smith focuses on job openings to unemployed, which is a tiny measure (6.66 million in June) of what's really going on in the labor market. But the broadest measures of unemployment still show 15.9 million unemployed, underemployed, and no longer counted in the labor force. There is still huge slack in the labor market, which is one reason why wages for the vast majority of workers are not rising like they would in a real economic boom (2.7% y/y in July vs. in the 4s in 2006/7).
Similarly Smith discusses the percent of population employed aged 25-54, but clearly misses that it's most definitely not "back to 2006 levels" as he claims (H1 2018 is at 79.2%, still below the 2006 average of 79.8% and also below the average of either half of 2006). The broadest measure of the percent employed, on the other hand, still shows a huge gap between now and the pre-Great Recession average when over 6 million more were employed than are at present (60.5% now vs. 62.9% then, on average).
The case is similar with domestic investment.
Smith chooses to highlight "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment: Fixed investment: Nonresidential (A008RE1Q156NBEA)" to show that "investment as a percentage of the economy is at about the level of the mid-2000s boom". But the current level in H1 2018 at 13.7% is also identical to H2 2014. Was that indicative of a boom? Did we blink and miss it? How about in H1 2008 when it was again at 13.7%? Was that indicative of a boom? If so, why did the economy then promptly crash in H2 2008?
A broader measure of domestic investment, however, "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment (A006RE1Q156NBEA)", shows us well off the 2006 peak and even the more recent 2015 level. Whatever we call what we have right now, the current 17.7% is still far below the 19.8% level of H1 2006, which itself failed to equal the boom level of the year 2000 (19.9%).
With all that cash unleashed by the tax reforms and sloshing around in the economy, one would think things would look a lot better than this, which simply shows that most of that money indeed went elsewhere.
GDP has been temporarily goosed by the tax reforms in concert with a fresh gusher of federal deficit spending. But those are one-offs. They will not, and cannot, be repeated over and over again in short succession.
We know what comes next.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Democrats want you to know House candidate Abigail Spanberger was just monkeying around teaching at an Islamic school in DC
Democratic House candidate Abigail Spanberger suffers the kind of election year smear John McCain would recognize [thanks to a Postal Service error divulging the information]:
The Republican firm says it got the form by mistake from the Postal Service, where Spanberger once worked as a postal inspector. The Postal Service on Thursday apologized for its "human error."
That doesn't explain how a mistake of that magnitude occurred so rapidly. Spanberger requested her own personnel records months ago and hasn't received them. ...
Outraged Democrats, fearing other candidates remain at risk, have demanded a federal investigation. Without elaboration, the Postal Service says "a small number of additional requests for information from personnel files were improperly processed."
Ah, you can't get your own mail but somebody else can! The incompetent big government wanted by most Democrats, and too many Republicans, just keeps on giving.
Hm, the famous Chuck Berry wrote and recorded his fifth single "Too Much Monkey Business" in 1956
"Too Much Monkey Business" is a song written and recorded by Chuck Berry, released by Chess Records in September 1956 as his fifth single. It was also released as the third track on his first solo LP, After School Session, in May 1957; and as an EP. The single reached number four on Billboard magazine's Most Played In Juke Boxes chart, number 11 on the Most Played by Jockeys chart and number seven on the Top Sellers in Stores chart in 1956. -- Wikipedia
Listen to it here.
At the end of 2017 we still had 14 million more on food stamps than at the pre-Great Recession average
16.5% of the U.S. population was on food stamps on average in 2017, versus 11% on average from 1973-2008.
In 2017 over 42 million received food help from the program, but only 28 million would have had the average receiving help returned to 11%.
In the first five months of 2018 the percentage receiving help has fallen to 15.4% on average, implying a smaller gap of about 11.6 million.
The trend is in the right direction, but we are hardly back to normal.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Hopeless Arizonans choose another immigration squish, A-10 pilot Martha McSally, to run for resigning Flake's US Senate seat
Republican McSally (AZ-2), who could be a man masquerading as a woman for all we know and appears to have been flying solo since the annulment of her marriage in 1999, faces openly bisexual Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-9) for the Senate seat in November.
As in many other states, independents may vote in Republican Party primaries in Arizona.
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Steep, sustained increases in new STD infections in the last five years, not seen for twenty
Reported here:
[N]early 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were diagnosed in the U.S. in 2017, surpassing the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000, CDC scientists reported Tuesday. ... CDC researchers found that gonorrhea diagnoses increased by 67 percent — from 333,004 to 555,608 — in just five years. ... Syphilis diagnoses, which rose by 76 percent, from 17,357 to 30,644, were mostly in men. ... The chlamydia rate held relatively steady with more than 1.7 million cases diagnosed in 2017, just a few percentage points above where it was in 2013.
Honest liberal Glenn Greenwald reminds the world about the media's chronic, systematic, reckless reporting of fake news
Including about CNN's latest lies about what Cohen's got on Trump, here in The Intercept:
When reporting on that story, I detailed just some of the similarly significant and false stories major outlets have published on this story over the last eighteen months, notably always in the same direction, pushing the same narrative interests:
- Russia hacked into the U.S. electric grid to deprive Americans of heat during winter (Wash Post)
- An anonymous group (PropOrNot) documented how major U.S. political sites are Kremlin agents (Wash Post)
- WikiLeaks has a long, documented relationship with Putin (Guardian)
- A secret server between Trump and a Russian bank has been discovered (Slate)
- RT hacked C-SPAN and caused disruption in its broadcast (Fortune)
- Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app (Crowdstrike)
- Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states (multiple news outlets, echoing Homeland Security)
- Links have been found between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund under investigation (CNN)
Whatever words one wishes to use to defend the U.S. media’s conduct here, “rare” and “isolated” are not among those that can be credibly invoked. Far more accurate are “chronic,” “systematic” and “reckless.”
Agent admits FBI leaks info to get it into the news, reports about which are then used by FBI to get FISA warrants
The practice is similar to the FBI's common practice of identifying potential "terrorists" whom FBI agents then suborn to commit criminal acts by posing as terrorists themselves.
From the story here:
A top FBI special agent admitted to House committees last week that bureau officials were known to leak information to the press and then use the resulting articles to help obtain surveillance warrants.
Special Agent Jonathan Moffa, who worked with controversial former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, testified last Friday behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee.
A source with knowledge of his testimony confirmed to Fox News that Moffa said FBI personnel would use media reports based on information they leaked to justify applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.
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