Quote of the Day

The politics of compensation is always subject to a problem that economists call “time inconsistency.” Before a new policy – say, a trade agreement – is adopted, beneficiaries have an incentive to promise compensation. Once the policy is in place, they have little interest in following through, either because reversal is costly all around or because the underlying balance of power shifts toward them.

—Dani Rodrik

It is a point that I have made many times: Promises to help people hurt by free trade deals are never fulfilled, because along with a loss of jobs and money, there is a loss of political power, and political losers almost never get the spoils.

On the Other Hand, Something Good is Happening in New York Too

Rather unsurprisingly, it does not come from the Governor, it comes from the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is going to require that Uber allow tipping:

New Yorkers have for years been able to tip a taxi driver by adding a few dollars to their bill before swiping a credit card. But they cannot add a tip when they use the popular ride-hailing app Uber.

Now officials in New York City are moving to require Uber to provide a tipping option in the app.

The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission announced a proposal on Monday requiring car services that accept only credit cards to allow passengers to tip the driver using their card.

“This rule proposal will be an important first step to improve earning potential in the for-hire vehicle industry, but it is just one piece of a more comprehensive effort to improve the economic well-being of drivers,” Meera Joshi, the city’s taxi commissioner, said in a statement.

The decision was prompted by a petition from the Independent Drivers Guild, a group representing Uber drivers in New York. The petition, which collected more than 11,000 signatures, argued that drivers were losing thousands of dollars without an easy tipping option. Passengers can tip an Uber driver using cash, but many do not carry cash or know whether they should feel obligated to provide a tip.

The lack of a tipping option in Uber’s app has been a sore point for drivers. If new rules are approved in New York, it would be a major change in how Uber runs its business in its largest United States market. Other cities could demand to have the same choice.

Uber has fought tipping tooth and nail, and I think that there are a number of reasons:

• Tipping makes the drivers seem more like employees, and Uber is all about extracting revenue while leaving the liabilities on the customers and drivers.
• It servers to disintermediate Uber, because passengers can simply provide a tip as a way to rate drivers, and drivers can consider tips when they rate passengers, which removes a level of control from Travis Cordell Kalanick and his Evil Minions.^™
• It is against the law for Uber to take a cut.
• It provides an alternative to Uber's policy of price gouging surge pricing.
• It's just dickish, and wherever possible, Uber chooses the dickish move.

In any case, I am amused.

Conservadem Policies in a Nutshell

Andrew Cuomo unveiled a "free" tuition program recently, and rather unsurprisingly, on closer examination, it turns out to be mindlessly punitive and difficult to use:

………

The Fine Print
Interestingly, coverage of Cuomo’s plan was by no means uncritical, suggesting that he may not get the tailwind for 2020 that he expects. (For early negative reactions, see here and here.) From my perspective, Cuomo’s plan has one critical flaw:

Cuomo’s “Tuition-Free College” Plan is not a universal benefit

That is, Excelsior is not a left program providing universal concrete material benefits to everyone, especially the working class. So it’s not a program from the left. Rather, it’s a typical liberal program, directed only at the “deserving,” hedged about with complexity, and targeting the (so-called) middle class, and not the working class. More specifically, Cuomo’s plan:

1. Is means-tested
2. Does not cover fees
3. Covers full-time students only
4. Has a residency requirement
5. Has clawbacks
6. Has a “crapshoot” clause

Let’s consider each of these points in turn.

Let's go through these one at a time:

1. Means testing creates a situation where popular support is limited, and allows for a the program to be killed by gradually tightening the clause.   Additionally, as Lamberth Strether notes, "Third, means-testing and gatekeeping generally are in essence a jobs guarantee for the professional class, and one can’t help but think that’s a key consideration for the Democrat establishment, since that’s their base."
2. Fees, not just room and board, and constitute as much as ⅔ of the cost of school, and as shown by a number of state schools, most notably my alma mater UMass, it drives schools to move costs from tuition and fees.  Additionally, this program applies to the last dollar, so a dollar in something like Pell grants must be applied to tuition, and not to fees or living expenses, or text books. (If you get a $1000 grant or scholarship, the amount that you get under the New York program is cut by $1000).
3. The full time requirement means that it's impossible for poor students to take advantage of the the program, since they need to pay something north of 20 grand in fees.
4. While handling tens of thousands of dollars in fees, you have to earn 15 credits a semester or pay the grant back, which makes it impossible to work your way through school.
5. The residency requirement is not one that people normally think of, which requires that you be a state resident to benefit (thought it does that too), but rather that if you live or work outside of the state for Five Years After Graduation you have to pay back the grant.
6. The crapshoot function says that the program shall be terminated if  the lotto under performs in any given year year, and schools are allowed to arbitrarily redefine the conditions to qualify.

This is a classic Blue Dog/DLC/New Dem program:  It adds complexity, it does not provide the benefits promised, it contains an unneeded bureaucracy, adds a dose of humiliation, and sets up conditions that convince people who want the benefit that government does not work.

If it were any more half assed, you would think that it came from Bill Clinton's White House.

The primary purpose of this grant is to boost Andrew Cuomo's prospects for a 2020 Presidential run.

Headline of the Day

Andrew Sullivan Is Still Racist After All These Years

—Nathan Robinson in Current Affairs

The former editor of The New Republic, who devoted an issue to promoting Charles Murray's racist screed The Bell Curve, an act that was breath takingly racist even in comparison to the disgraceful history of that magazine under the ownership of bigot Marty Peretz.

Linkage

• Amid allegations of unpaid taxes, neo-Nazism, and sex offender, Denver furry convention canceled(Denver Channel) Goddamn furry Nazis!
• Being Anti-Trump Isn’t Enough (Jacobin) The subhead says it all, "Silvio Berlusconi’s tenure reminds us that the Left needs to attack the neoliberal center, not just the populist right.
• How Uber conquers a city in seven steps (The Guardian) It is important that NONE of these techniques actually translates into a profitable company unless you achieve monopoly status and then can gouge consumers.
• Legislation allowing warrantless student phone searches dies for now (Ars Technica) Legislation in California has been tabled, so it's not on the agenda ……… Live in obedient fear, citizen.
• Why Society’s Biggest Freeloaders Are at the Top (Evonomics) A nice survey of the rentier parasites sucking the marrow from society's bones.
• Pharmaceutical giant 'plotted to destroy cancer drugs to drive prices up 4,000%' (The Independent) They changed the names and destroyed existing stocks of the drugs so that could increase prices charged Britain's NHS. (See Rentier Parasite above)
• #BlackLivesMatter Introduces a New Visa Debit Card, and Revives the Toxic Old Myths of Black Capitalism (Black Agenda Report) We truly live in Bizarro world.
• Schumpeter: The University of Chicago worries about a lack of competition (The Economist) Yes, the f%$#ing Chicago School is calling for increased action against monopolies.  Cats sleeping with dogs, real end of the world stuff,

Monty Python revealed the 2016 Republican Party platform in 1974:

Pass the Popcorn

An "Alt-Right activist is threatening to out embarrassing details of leading Republicans personal lives if Steve Bannon gets canned:

A week after President Donald Trump began to publicly distance himself from White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, alt-right ringleader Mike Cernovich threatened to release a “motherlode” of stories that could “destroy marriages” if Bannon is formally let go from the administration.

Cernovich made the claims that he’d release a series of “scoops” if Bannon is officially pushed out of the White House on an eleven-minute, self-recorded Periscope Thursday night.

What would be uncovered?

“If they get rid of Bannon, you know what’s gonna happen? The motherlode. If Bannon is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mistresses, the sugar babies, the drugs, the pill popping, the orgies. I know everything,” said Cernovich.

“If they go after Bannon, the mother of all stories is gonna drop, and we’re just gonna destroy marriages, relationships—it’s gonna get personal.”I so hope that there is an actual dossier, and that it sees the light of day.

I am so looking forward to a blowup.

Linkage

• The Gig Economy’s False Promise (New York Times) Significant, because this is from their editorial board.
• Migrants from west Africa being ‘sold in Libyan slave markets’ (Guardian) We make a desert and call it peace.
• A multi-level analysis of the US cruise missile attack on Syria and its consequences |  (The Vineyard of the Saker) Interesting and coherent analysis.  Note though that Saker is a Russian nationalist site.
• GETTING REAL: the raging fire in the hold of SS Eutanic (The Slog) Equates the EU and the Titanic.  Interesting.
• Symantec attributes 40 cyber attacks to CIA-linked hacking tools (Reuters) This doesn't mean that it was the CIA, just that someone used the tools.  Anyone could once they were released into the wild.
• DNAinfo reporters join Writers Guild of America-East union (Crain's New York Business) This needs to happen more often.  Nice to see employees of internet companies starting to see that they are being abused.
• War on Surveillance Camera: Bosnian Man used Bazooka on Police Camera (Slavorum) Lucky bastard, I've always wanted to do this.

I've always wondered about this:

Cold War: The Sequal

We now have credible reports that Russia is relaunching production of its Tu-160 Strategic Bomber:

The serial production of the upgraded Tupolev Tu-160M2 (NATO reporting name: Blackjack) strategic bomber will begin in 2020, a source in Russia’s defense and industrial sector told TASS.

There are plans to produce two or three Tu-160M2 planes annually, the source added.

“Work to manufacture the plane has begun. Under the contract signed between the United Aircraft Corporation and the Defense Ministry, the Tu-160M2 plane is expected to perform the first flight in 2018,” the source said.

“The Gorbunov Aircraft Plant in Kazan [an affiliate of the Tupolev Company] is expected to launch the serial production of the plane in 2020. It will produce two or three strategic bombers for the Aerospace Force annually,” the source added.

According to the source, it will be an absolutely new plane.

“The upgraded Tu-160M2 plane will retain only the airframe of the baseline model, which meets all modern standards. The plane’s equipment, including its avionics, electronics, cockpit, communications and control systems and a number of weapons, will be replaced. This will considerably improve the plane’s operational capabilities, in particular, the thrust of the NK-32 engines and the unrefueled range,” the source added.

What a waste, and our response will be more waste.

To quote Ike,  "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Stating the Obvious

In the Guardian, Jamie Peck, a columnists for the online publication Death and Taxes, observes that the Democratic party establishment finds it more important for real Democrats to lose than for the Democratic Party to win:

Since losing the presidency to a Cheeto-hued reality TV host, the Democratic party’s leadership has made it clear that it would rather keep losing than entertain even the slightest whiff of New Deal style social democracy.

The Bernie Sanders wing might bring grassroots energy and – if the polls are to be believed – popular ideas, but their redistributive policies pose too much of a threat to the party’s big donors to ever be allowed on the agenda.

Even a symbolic victory cedes too much to those youthful, unwashed hordes who believe healthcare and education are human rights and not extravagant luxuries, as we saw when the Democratic establishment recruited Tom Perez to defeat the electorate-backed progressive Keith Ellison for DNC chair.

The Democrats demonstrated this once more this week when, in a special election triggered by Trump’s tapping of Mike Pompeo for CIA director, a Berniecrat named James Thompson came painfully close to winning a Kansas Congressional seat that had been red for over two decades, and his party didn’t even try to help him.

………

After beating an establishment Democrat in the primary, Thompson promised to take on Trump and the Republicans, as well as the state’s unpopular Republican governor Sam Brownback and Kansas-headquartered oligarchs the Koch brothers.

………

Given our current political climate, you’d think the Democrats would have jumped at the chance to take back a Congressional seat and demonstrate opposition to Trump, but you’d be wrong. While Thompson managed to raise $292,000 without his party’s help, 95% of which came from individuals, neither the DNC, DCCC, nor even the Kansas Democratic Party would help him grow that total in any substantial way. His campaign requested $20,000 from the state Democratic Party and was denied.

They later relented and gave him $3,000. (According to the FEC, the Party had about $145,000 on hand.) The national Democratic Party gave him nothing until the day before the election, when it graced him with some live calls and robo-calls. He lost by seven percentage points.

………

In defending their decision, party mouthpieces have taken the absurd line that giving Thompson money would have actually hurt his chances of winning, because then everyone would have known he’s a Democrat, and Kansans hate Democrats. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate these are the same people who keep saying the party doesn’t need a new direction.)

………



One person the party does not think will be hurt by their help is Jon Ossoff, who is running in a similarly red, but much wealthier, district in Georgia. To date, the DNC has raised some $8.3m for him and has committed to sending nine field staffers to organize on-the-ground efforts.

Although he is young, he’s an acolyte of the Democratic establishment, having worked for Representatives John Lewis and Hank Johnson, and he endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primary. He went to Georgetown followed by the London School of Economics and speaks fluent French. He has the support of several Hollywood celebrities.

Democrats think Ossoff is just the guy to bring his affluent suburban district back into the fold. (Clearly, losing a national election was not enough to reverse course on that most doomed of 2016 strategies: trading blue collar whites for wealthy, suburban ones.)

………

By refusing to fund the campaigns of anyone but centrist, establishment shills, the Democratic Party aims to make the Berniecrats’ lack of political viability a self-fulfilling prophecy: starve their campaigns of resources so they can’t win, then point to said losses as examples of why they can’t win.

It's very simple.  Refer to the Iron Rule of Institutions:

The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

These guys need to be taken down.  They are a cancer on the body politic.

This is an Interesting Way to Deal with Anti-Vaxxers

Michigan, which is a hotbed of anti-vaxx sentiment has boosted vaccination rates through the simple expedient of making getting a waiver slightly less convenient:

No amount of objective discussion or scientific data may ever be enough to convince some people that vaccines are indeed safe and effective at wiping out a slew of hellish and deadly diseases. But what does seem to work at convincing people to vaccinate their children? Bureaucratic hassle.

By adding an extra, in-person step to the process of obtaining a vaccination waiver (which allowed a child to forego the necessary vaccinations), Michigan quickly and significantly boosted its vaccination rate, as Kaiser Health News reports.

In the 2013-2014 school year, the state had the fourth highest rate in the country of children entering kindergarten with a vaccine waiver. But just one year after the extended waiver application process went into effect in 2015, the number of waivers issued dropped by 35 percent statewide. Vaccination rates rose accordingly.

………

“The idea was to make the process more burdensome,” Michigan State University health policy specialist Mark Largent, who has written extensively about vaccines, told KHN. “Research has shown that if you make it more inconvenient to apply for a waiver, fewer people get them.”

………

State legislators added the inconvenience factor after outbreaks of whooping cough and measles hit Michigan children. At the time, parents who didn’t want to vaccinate their kids could easily apply for a waiver over the Internet, by mailing in a form, or even via phone call in some places. But in a quiet, unfussy ruling in December of 2014, the state’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules changed the waiver application process to require that parents consult in person with a county health educator before a waiver would be granted. 

It used to be easy for politicians to pander to anti-vaxxers, but since outbreaks in California and other states, the general public has become aware that they are a menace, and politicians have been less accomodating.

This is a very good thing.

Tweet of the Day

It's true. pic.twitter.com/D0oocPcR4i

— PORP (@TheOfficialPORP) April 9, 2017

I know that the original tweet is about a year old, but it is brilliant.

This is as true ... as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.

Facebook Post of the Day

Mitchell Robinson

April 11 at 11:33pm · Okemos, MI ·

The best argument yet for public schools...

Donald Trump, Kew-Forest School and New York Military Academy, private

Betsy DeVos, Holland Christian Schools, religious

Sean Spicer, Portsmouth Abbey School, private

Steven Mnuchin, Riverdale Country School, private

Mick Mulvaney, Charlotte Catholic High School, religious

Wilbur Ross, Xavier Prep High School, private

Alex Acosta, Gulliver Schools, private

Jared Kushner, Frisch School, religious

Ivanka Trump, Chapin School, private

H/t Diane Ravitch.

OK, this is a Big F%$#ing Deal

Recently revealed tape recordings indicate that the Bank of England actually ordered some of the illegal manipulation of the LIBOR rates:

A secret recording that implicates the Bank of England in Libor rigging has been uncovered by BBC Panorama.

The 2008 recording adds to evidence the central bank repeatedly pressured commercial banks during the financial crisis to push their Libor rates down.

Libor is the rate at which banks lend to each other, setting a benchmark for mortgages and loans for ordinary customers.

………

The recording calls into question evidence given in 2012 to the Treasury select committee by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker, the man who went on to become the deputy governor of the Bank of England.

………

In the recording, a senior Barclays manager, Mark Dearlove, instructs Libor submitter Peter Johnson, to lower his Libor rates.

He tells him: "The bottom line is you're going to absolutely hate this... but we've had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower."

Mr Johnson objects, saying that this would mean breaking the rules for setting Libor, which required him to put in rates based only on the cost of borrowing cash.

Mr Johnson says: "So I'll push them below a realistic level of where I think I can get money?"

His boss Mr Dearlove replies: "The fact of the matter is we've got the Bank of England, all sorts of people involved in the whole thing... I am as reluctant as you are... these guys have just turned around and said just do it."

………

Banks have been fined more than £6bn for allowing submitters to be influenced by requests from traders or bosses to take into account the bank's commercial interests, such as trading positions.

Central bank independence, and central bank secrecy have led to corruption, as evidenced by the this incident, as well as the resignation of the resignation of Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker for leaking insider information to Medley Advisors,  a so-called "Expert Network".  (An expert network is basically a cut out to supply inside information to speculators, most notoriously by Steve Cohen).

It is the inevitable result of how this organizations are structured:  When you combine extreme power with a complete lack of accountability, corruption follows.

Pull All of His Security Detail, and Let Market Forces Rule

Scott Pruit, environment hating wingnut and current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is requesting a round the clock security detail in his next budget.

It appears that in addition to being a corrupt stooge of the energy industry, he's also an abject coward:

The administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, historically, has had some measure of government-funded personal security detail. Agents routinely picked Gina McCarthy from the airport, for example, or accompanied her on site visits during her time as EPA administrator from July 2013 to Jan 2017. But Scott Pruitt, the new EPA chief, wishes to be guarded 24/7.

………

The Times calls it a first for an EPA chief, and notes that the 10 additional agents would more than double the agency’s current security staff, which has hovered between six and eight agents in recent years. Similarly, security detail for education secretary Betsy DeVos has reached unprecedented levels: Typically, the secretary of education is guarded by about six agents from within the Department of Education. Since her contentious confirmation, DeVos has been under the protection of the US Marshals Service, costing $8 million over eight months.

What security menace is Pruitt guarding against? According to Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s EPA transition team but is no longer employed by the administration, Pruitt is at risk from his own employees—and “the left.”

Seriously, the wingnuts spend their days soiling their pants in abject terror.

Tweet of the Day

Pepsi: That was the biggest PR blunder of the week, year maybe.

United: Hold my beer.

Sean Spicer: LEEEEEEEEEERROOOOOOOY JEEEENNNNNNKINS!

— Lance Bradley (@Lance_Bradley) April 11, 2017

Another bloke who owes me a screen wipe.

This is Brilliant

Over at Pando, they have a positively brilliant take-down of Rachel Whetstone's exit from Uber.

The short form is that the senior vice-president of communications and public policy for Uber is a rat, and knows when a ship is sinking, and this is brilliantly brutal:

Okey dokey.

As regular Pando readers will know, the idea that Whetstone would leave Uber to avoid drama is so far beyond laughable that it has travelled the entire circumference of the globe and returned back to laughable again. Rachel Whetstone started out in Westminster -- where she and her husband Steve “I support Donald Trump” Hilton helped reinvent the UK’s “nasty” conservative party as the friendly, lovable, electable party that regained power and brought the world… Brexit.

Having left London, for a variety of dramatic reasons, she then headed to Google where she is most famous for picking a very public and highly dramatic fight with (her old pal) Rupert Murdoch. Finally she ended up at Uber where she immediately began bringing even more drama to the already dramatic company, starting with the infamous dinner at which Emil Michael pledged to spend a million dramatic dollars dramatically smearing Pando’s own Sarah Lacy.

Simply put, Rachel Whetstone hates drama like David Mamet hates drama, like Shakespeare hates drama, like Ru Paul performing Tom Stoppard at Devin Nunes High School For Thirteen-Year-Old Girls hates drama.

No, Rachel Whetstone didn’t leave Uber because she hates drama.

For Rachel Whetstone to leave Uber there can only be one reason: Uber is totally, irreversibly f%$#ed. So irreversibly f%$#ed that anyone left behind when the other shoe drops will be so irreparably damaged by association that THE PERSON WHO MADE THE TORIES ELECTABLE AGAIN doesn’t want the karma.

(%$# mine)

Paul Bradley Carr owes me a screen wipe.

Linkage

• Unpaywall: The Browser Add-on That Finds (Legal) Free Copies Of Academic Papers You See As You Browse The Web (Techdirt) Bookmark this.
• 10+ Pics Proving That Cats Are Actually Demons (Bored Panda) Strangely enough, this is why we love them.
• I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government (Washington Post) A very polite beat down.
• See Vantablack 2.0, the New Black So Black It Eats Lasers (artnet News) Sounds like a monster from a bad Sci-Fi flick.
• Monopolization and Labour Exploitation (The Bullet) Nice to see someone besides me recognizing the fact that our markets, and our trade policy, are increasingly monopolistic.
• Highest Minimum-Wage State Washington Beats U.S. in Job Creation (Bloomberg) So not a surprise, except to mainstream economists and neoliberal politicians.
• Messages show New York police surveillance of Black Lives Matter (Reuters) Live in obedient fear, citizen
• Australian scientists studying humpback whales believe they breach to be heard over long distances and noise (Quartz) Basically cetacean shouting.
• Don't let establishment opportunists ruin the resistance movement (The Guardian) Thomas Frank raises the alarm at the fact that Hillary Clinton and Evil Minions^™ are tryng to exploit the movement to create a new power base for the Clinton political machine/Democratic Party establishment.

Cats and leashes, not an optimal juxtaposition:

Quote of the Day

And so, contrary to Hayek’s expectations, financial globalisation has proved that it is market fundamentalism, and not the regulatory state that is leading the world into an era of authoritarianism and totalitarianism – in the US, Eastern Europe, India and China.

—Ann Pettifor

This is not surprising the relentless concentration of power by monopolists has always had this effect. 

As an aside, Hayek in fact loved authoritarianism and totalitarianism, as shown by his full-throated support of the brutal Pinochet regime in Chile, and his only slightly more muted defense of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

So not a Surprise

Tesla is facing a unionization effort from employees who say that their manufacturing facility is abusive and dangerous:

Along Silicon Valley’s interlocking freeways, low-slung tech offices with obscure names like Way.com or Oorja are populated by fresh-faced technologists in badges and pleated slacks, striving to create the next great app. But off the I-880 in Fremont, a white colossus rises from the landscape, a 5.3-million-square-foot monster that stretches across two interchanges. The gray lettering is a full story high: TESLA.

Here, the company makes high-end, zero-emission vehicles, luxury cruisers for a climate emergency. Chief executive officer Elon Musk has cultivated a reputation as an economic visionary and has been hailed for solving the world’s great challenges with panache. Tesla’s Fremont factory brought hope to a blue-collar, racially diverse town with a manufacturing tradition. And this week, after reports of a 69 percent increase in first-quarter sales, the automaker passed Ford in market value. But though its products epitomize the future, workers like Richard Ortiz say Tesla’s labor conditions are mired in the past. Ortiz is a production associate in the closures department, assembling hoods, doors—“anything that opens or closes”—on Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. Though videos of the Tesla factory emphasize robotic automation, over 6,000 workers engage in intense manual labor to build the cars.

“I have an eight-pound rivnut gun,” Ortiz said, referring to a tool that installs rivet nuts. “I’m doing that all day long. I’m to the point where, if I pick something up with any weight, within 30 seconds I have to drop it. That scares me; I want to be able to use my arm when I retire.”

Tesla workers say circumstances like Ortiz’s are commonplace at a factory that prioritizes production goals over health and safety. Now they’re fighting back against low pay, hazardous conditions, and a culture of intimidation, seeking to unionize through the United Auto Workers. Tesla is the only U.S. automaker using nonunion workers at a stateside plant, and breaking through would give organized labor a foothold in the tech industry as well. Until then, the Tesla experience reveals that green jobs aren’t necessarily good jobs without worker power. “They want to make sustainable cars,” says Ortiz. “We need sustainable employment.”

………


But after originally describing Tesla as “union neutral,” Musk said on an earnings call in February that “there are really only disadvantages to someone to want the UAW here.” In a later email to workers, Musk delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to Moran’s Medium post, arguing that overtime had decreased and incident rates were below average. Instead of offering workers better wages and input on production, Musk promised “a really amazing party” for the launch of the Model 3, “free frozen yogurt stands” at the factory, and “a Tesla electric pod roller coaster” connecting the parking lots. “It’s going to get crazy good,” Musk concluded.

………

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein expressed horror at Musk’s rhetoric. “It was the worst kind of caricature of a capitalist, like it’s 1898,” he said. “They have these sophisticated systems of production and distribution, but their social arrangements are utterly retrograde.”

Mr. Lichtenstein may not know it, but his categorization of Musk's rhetoric can be more broadly applied to the tech industry.

Until the drones at places like Tesla, Facebook, Uber, and Google come to understand that providing free frozen yogurt is not a sign of respect from their employers, but rather an indicator that management thinks that the employees are easily manipulated rubes, this situation will not improve.

The autoworkers are sharper than the Stanford educated programmers when they say about this attidude is that, "It’s insulting, it shows you what he thinks of us."

Headline of the Day

The Trump White House Even Managed to Screw Up the Annual Easter Party

—Alternet

People who despise the concept of government don't do a good job of governing.

Headline of the Day

What Is 'Global Britain'? A Financier and Arms Merchant to Brutal Dictators

—Nick Dearden in an OP/ED in the Guardian

This is a pretty good description of what the UK's global footprint these days.

For a very long time, the UK has aggressively moving away from productive work and toward a financialized economy which is little more than a vehicle for parasitism.

It is what is happening to the US as well, but it's not moving quite as quickly, if just because our government is less centralized, and because our economy is so much bigger.

Well, Isn't This Special

It appears that the current poster child for corrupt corporate behavior, Uber, was using its software to cheat both drivers and passengers:

Uber has devised a "clever and sophisticated" scheme in which it manipulates navigation data used to determine "upfront" rider fare prices while secretly short-changing the driver, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing app.

When a rider uses Uber's app to hail a ride, the fare the app immediately shows to the passenger is based on a slower and longer route compared to the one displayed to the driver. The software displays a quicker, shorter route for the driver. But the rider pays the higher fee, and the driver's commission is paid from the cheaper, faster route, according to the lawsuit.

"Specifically, the Uber Defendants deliberately manipulated the navigation data used in determining the fare amount paid by its users and the amount reported and paid to its drivers," according to the suit filed in federal court in Los Angeles. Lawyers representing a Los Angeles driver for Uber, Sophano Van, said the programming was "shocking, "methodical," and "extensive."

The first, and most obvious, point, is that sh$# like this is why we need aggressive and competent regulation.

The second point, and perhaps it's just my inner pinko showing, is that if a company mistreats its employees, there is a pretty good chance that they will f%$# the customers as well.

Linkage

Cities Hit Hardest by Extreme Poverty - 24/7 Wall St.

Still Dealing with Computer Issues

My 7 year old laptop is being retired, so I am setting up a new laptop.

Major PITA, but it's gotta be done.

Light Posting for a While

I'm having serious problems with my laptop.

What the F%$#ing F%$#?

We are launching missiles at Syria, in response to their alleged chemical weapons attack a few days ago.

50+ cruise missiles, though it appears to be limited in scope: targeting just one airfield, so it's a $75 million statement of disapproval.

Still, what the f%$#?

Good News in Florids ……… Wait ……… What? Florida?

Actually it is good news, not another Florida Man story.

A court in Florida has ruled that, unlike a physical examination of brakes and tires of a vehicle, authorities need a warrant to extract data from vehicle black boxes:

An interesting decision has been reached by the Florida Appeals Court as to Fourth Amendment protections for vehicle "black boxes." The black boxes -- which are a mandatory requirement in new vehicles -- record a variety of data in the event of a crash. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

Charles Worsham Jr. was the driver in a crash in which his passenger was killed. His vehicle was seized and impounded by police. Twelve days later, police accessed the data in the black box without obtaining a warrant. Worsham challenged the lawfulness of the warrantless search. The police maintained the black box was full of third-party records which required no warrant or consent from the vehicle's owner.

The court sees the issue differently. In a relative rarity, the state Appeals Court decides [PDF] to get out ahead of the issue, rather than wait for precedential decisions to trickle down from the federal courts. It looks at the data harvested by the black box and suggests the amount gathered will only increase in the coming years. Rather than wait until then to make a call on the Fourth Amendment merits, it draws the line now.

Citing the Supreme Court's Riley decision (which introduced a warrant requirement for cell phone searches), the court concludes the crash data contained in the black box has an expectation of privacy.

A car’s black box is analogous to other electronic storage devices for which courts have recognized a reasonable expectation of privacy. Modern technology facilitates the storage of large quantities of information on small, portable devices. The emerging trend is to require a warrant to search these devices.
[...]
Although electronic data recorders do not yet store the same quantity of information as a cell phone, nor is it of the same personal nature, the rationale for requiring a warrant to search a cell phone is informative in determining whether a warrant is necessary to search an immobilized vehicle’s data recorder. These recorders document more than what is voluntarily conveyed to the public and the information is inherently different from the tangible “mechanical” parts of a vehicle. Just as cell phones evolved to contain more and more personal information, as the electronic systems in cars have gotten more complex, the data recorders are able to record more information.

Also of importance is the difficulty of extracting the information from the black boxes.

Extracting and interpreting the information from a car’s black box is not like putting a car on a lift and examining the brakes or tires. Because the recorded data is not exposed to the public, and because the stored data is so difficult to extract and interpret, we hold there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information, protected by the Fourth Amendment, which required law enforcement in the absence of exigent circumstances to obtain a warrant before extracting the information from an impounded vehicle.

Not only that, but recent legislation (the Driver Privacy Act of 2015) specifically states that the contents of data recorders belong to the vehicle's owner, not the manufacturer or any other third party.

Outstanding.

Headline of the Day

Bill O’Reilly’s New Book About ‘American Values’ Grabs NY Times Bestseller List Right By The Pussy

—Wonkette

The underlying story is that falafel boy's latest "book shaped object" debuted at the top of the Times best seller list, which of course shows that our society is degenerate, and doomed.

Son of a Bitch!

I am not surprised that Republicans pulled the trigger on the nuclear option, but I am surprised that the Democratic caucus actually held together to sustain a filibuster.

I was wrong in my assessment of the Democratic caucus in the Senate,and (for once) they exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations:

Senators voted on Thursday to advance Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a final confirmation vote on Friday.

By a vote of to 55 to 45, all Republicans and three Democrats voted to proceed to final debate on the nomination of Gorsuch, 49, a Denver-based judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. If confirmed, Gorsuch would replace the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who died unexpectedly last year, sparking a more than year-long feud among senators about the future makeup of the high court.

Gorsuch’s nomination advanced shortly after Republicans successfully voted to approve what is known as the “nuclear option,” changing Senate rules to allow the confirmation of Gorsuch and all other Supreme Court nominees by a simple-majority vote.

The long-anticipated change came after Democrats earlier blocked attempts to advance Gorsuch’s nomination. The change now means that all presidential nominees for executive branch positions and federal courts need only a simple-majority vote to be confirmed by senators.

But the change is also likely to make an already bitterly divided Senate even more partisan, with several senators warning in recent days that ending filibusters of presidential nominees could lead to the end of filibusters on legislation — effectively ending the Senate’s role as a slower, more deliberative legislative body.

First, the filibuster is, and always has been, an accident, and was never intended to be routine.

Secondly, the Senate is not a great deliberative body, it is a Petri dish for narcissistic sociopaths.

In the short term, the winners are the Republicans, and the losers are the American people, who will be subject to the Republican "ideas", and the Democrats.

In the long term, the winners will be the Democratic Party, who can enact policies without watering them down to meaninglessness, and the American people, who can benefit  from those policies.

The long term losers are the Republicans, who will find it harder to obstruct, conservative Democrats, who can no longer use the filibuster as an excuse to water down policies to their base.

All in all, I think that this turned out as well as can be expected.

I would suggest that people remember the 4 disloyal Democrats, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Manchin, and Bennet.

These political careers need to be ended.

Meanwhile in Germany

A court in Germany has ruled that family members must rat each other out or pay the fines themselves:

Copyright trolls are a plague spreading across the world, one which has received far too little social medicine for the taste of many. This virulent form of rent-seeking tends to put out some of the more despicable strategies, from flatout falsely accusing people of piracy, lying to international students about the punishment for copyright infringement, and threatening those that expose their actions.

But a case that was winding its way through German courts sees copyright trolls there now going even further, winning the argument over whether parents should have to serve their own children up to the courts for copyright trolls.

………

Levying responsibility for the failure to out one's own family member is almost comically pernicious. That the court saw fit to route around local laws protecting families from this sort of thing in the name of copyright trolls seems doubly so.

Just f%$#ing lovely.

Way to enforce the stereotypes of the German people, German courts.

Matt Taibbi Agrees With Me

He refers to the current hysteria over potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia as, "Putin Derangement Syndrome.

I think that the major impetus for this is that no one likes to admit that they have screwed this badly, and anyone who supported the Clinton campaign in a meaningful way is using this as a way to avoid admitting that they completely screwed the pooch:

………

Perhaps it will come off just the way people are expecting. Perhaps Flynn will get a deal, walk into the House or the Senate surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers, and unspool the whole sordid conspiracy.

He will explain that Donald Trump, compromised by ancient deals with Russian mobsters, and perhaps even blackmailed by an unspeakable KGB sex tape, made a secret deal. He'll say Trump agreed to downplay the obvious benefits of an armed proxy war in Ukraine with nuclear-armed Russia in exchange for Vladimir Putin's help in stealing the emails of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and John Podesta.

I personally would be surprised if this turned out to be the narrative, mainly because we haven't seen any real evidence of it. But episodes like the Flynn story have even the most careful reporters paralyzed. What if, tomorrow, it all turns out to be true?

What if reality does turn out to be a massive connect-the-dots image of St. Basil's Cathedral sitting atop the White House? (This was suddenly legitimate British conspiracist Louise Mensch's construction in The New York Times last week.) What if all the Glenn Beck-style far-out charts with the circles and arrows somehow all make sense?

This is one of the tricks that keeps every good conspiracy theory going. Nobody wants to be the one claiming the emperor has no clothes the day His Highness walks out naked. And this Russia thing has spun out of control into just such an exercise of conspiratorial mass hysteria.

………

But when it comes to Trump-Putin collusion, we're still waiting for the confirmation. As Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters put it, the proof is increasingly understood to be the thing we find later, as in, "If we do the investigations, we will find the connections."

But on the mass hysteria front, we already have evidence enough to fill a dozen books. And if it doesn't freak you out, it probably should.

As I have noted before, I think that a lot of this is a desperate attempt by the Democratic Party intelligentsia to avoid any sort of introspection, which would otherwise reveal them to be complete prats.

Today's Philosophy Read

How French “Intellectuals” Ruined the West: Postmodernism and Its Impact, Explained

It is a (IMNSHO) well deserved systematic dismantling of the philosophy of postmodernism, a philosophy which I loath, but which has found much favor in academe.

It reduces the whole of human knowledge to competing relativistic fictions.

The Trump administration's comments regarding, "Alternative Facts," is the epitome, if not the apotheosis, of post modernist thought.

Read the whole thing, but here is my favorite paragraph:

Our current crisis is not one of Left versus Right but of consistency, reason, humility and universal liberalism versus inconsistency, irrationalism, zealous certainty and tribal authoritarianism. The future of freedom, equality and justice looks equally bleak whether the postmodern Left or the post-truth Right wins this current war. Those of us who value liberal democracy and the fruits of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution and modernity itself must provide a better option.

Go read.

Another Stopped Clock Moment

The Trump administration has revealed plans to crack down on H1B visa abuse:

The U.S. administration began to deliver on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on a work visa program that channels thousands of skilled overseas workers to companies across the technology industry.

Fed up with a program it says favors foreign workers at the expense of Americans, the Trump administration rolled out a trio of policy shifts. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency on Friday made it harder for companies to bring overseas tech workers to the U.S. using the H-1B work visa. On Monday, the agency issued a memo laying out new measures to combat what it called "fraud and abuse" in the program. The Justice Department also warned employers applying for the visas not to discriminate against U.S. workers.

………

This week’s moves weren’t the administration’s first attempts to adjust the program. Last month, the immigration department suspended a system that expedited visa processing for certain skilled workers who paid extra. But people who have been pushing for reform had become frustrated in recent weeks that the Trump administration wasn’t moving fast enough.

Outsourcing firms are considered the worst abusers of the system, an impression that the tech industry has been happy to encourage. Monday’s USCIS announcement targets those firms, with the agency saying it will focus inspections on workplaces with the largest percentage of H-1B workers, and those with employees who do IT work for other companies. Shares of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Accenture Plc each slipped more than 1 percent on Monday.

………

The new guidelines released Friday require additional information for computer programmers applying for H-1B visas to prove the jobs are complicated and require more advanced knowledge and experience. It’s effective immediately, so it will change how companies apply for the visas in an annual lottery process that begins Monday. The changes don’t explicitly prohibit applications for a specific type of job. Instead, they bring more scrutiny to those for computer programmers doing the simplest jobs.

"This is a step in the right direction in terms of tightening up the eligibility," said Ron Hira, an associate professor at Howard University, who has done extensive research on the H-1B program. "You’re going to have to beef up your argument for why you need this person."

It's baby steps, but considering that the previous 4 administrations have been aggressive in undermining wages of tech workers with the H1B and L1A visas, it is very much a step in the right direction.

Yank on Your ATM (It Just Sounds Dirty, but It Isn't)

Click for larger images

---

ATM with skimmer installed


Note the pinhole for a camera to read your PIN


Note the overlay beginning to pull away


The overlay removed

It turns out that thieves are attaching skimming devices to ATMS to steal your card codes and your pass codes:

Once you understand how easy and common it is for thieves to attach “skimming” devices to ATMs and other machines that accept debit and credit cards, it’s difficult not to closely inspect and even tug on the machines before using them. Several readers who are in the habit of doing just that recently shared images of skimmers they discovered after gently pulling on various parts of a cash machine they were about to use.

………

ATM card skimmers contain tiny bits of electronics that record payment card data from the magnetic stripe on the backs of cards inserted into a hacked ATM. Most commonly (as in this case), a card skimmer is paired with a pinhole spy camera hidden above or beside the PIN pad to record time-stamped video of cardholders entering their PINs. Taken together, the stolen data allows thieves to fabricate new cards and use PINs to withdraw cash from victim accounts.

Card skimmers designed to look like the green anti-skimming devices found on many ATMs are some of the most common cash machine skimming devices in use today, probably because they are relatively cheap to manufacture en masse and there are many fraudsters peddling these in the cybercrime underground.

………

Many people believe that skimmers are mainly a problem in the United States, where most ATMs still do not require more secure chip-based cards that are far more expensive and difficult for thieves to clone. However, it’s precisely because most U.S. ATMs lack this security requirement that skimming remains so prevalent in Europe.

Mainly for reasons of backward compatibility to accommodate American tourists, many European ATMs allow non-chip-based cards to be inserted into the cash machine. What’s more, many chip-based cards issued by American and European banks alike still have cardholder data encoded on a magnetic stripe in addition to the chip.

When thieves skim ATMs in Europe, they generally sell the stolen card and PIN data to fraudsters on the other side of the pond. Those fraudsters in turn will encode the card data onto counterfeit cards and withdraw cash at ATMs here in the United States.

One more thing to be paranoid about.

Oh, Snap!

Massachusetts instituted background for "ride sharing" drivers, and over 10% failed the check:

More than 8,000 Massachusetts residents who want to drive for ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft won't be allowed to, because they didn't pass a new background check system that operates in that state.

Most were rejected because they had suspended licenses or hadn't been driving for long enough to qualify, according to a report on the matter in The Boston Globe. But hundreds had committed serious crimes, including violent crimes and sexual crimes. 51 applicants were registered sex offenders. Others had convictions for drunk driving or reckless driving.

The checks came about because Massachusetts passed a new law regulating ride-sharing companies, which required a background check run by the state government, in addition to the companies' own background checks. The state checks began in January, and the results were announced yesterday. Out of the 70,789 drivers who went through the state application process, 8,206 were rejected.

………

"Under Massachusetts law, Lyft’s commercial background check provider, like all consumer reporting agencies, is legally prevented from looking back further than seven years into driver applicants’ histories," Lyft said in a statement to the Globe. "The state does not face the same limitation, which likely explains why a small percentage of our drivers failed the state’s background check while passing ours."

Note how most were simply unqualified to drive a hack, which IS something that should be picked up in a, "Lyft’s commercial background check."

Lyft did not want to catch this, so they paid for a search that didn't, otherwise they would have caught the folks who lacked sufficient driving experience to qualify.


Lyft and Uber did this because they thought that they could get away with it.

I Predict That They Will Cave

The Democrats are now saying that they have sufficient votes to filibuster Neil Gorsuch.

They might have the votes right now, but I would bet the proverbial, "Credits to Navy Beans," that they are going to fold in the end.

The Democratic Party seems to be constitutionally incapable of standing their ground these days, so I think that a significant portion of the caucus will eventually fold in the name of, "Keeping their powder dry."

Realistically, this would have the effect of preserving the filibuster on SCOTUS only for Republicans, because, of course, if the Dems ever attempt such a filibuster, then the 'Phants will threaten the nuclear option, and if the Democrats filibuster anyway, they will pull the trigger:

Senate Democrats have clinched enough support to block Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court, setting up a "nuclear" showdown over Senate rules later this week.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) announced on Monday that he will oppose President Trump's pick on a procedural vote where he will need the support of eight Democrats to cross a 60-vote threshold to end debate on Gorsuch. Coons is the 41st Democrat to back the filibuster.

“Throughout this process, I have kept an open mind. … I have decided that I will not support Judge Grouch's nomination in the Judiciary Committee meeting today," Coons said.

"I am not ready to end debate on this issue. So I will be voting against cloture," Coons said, absent a deal to avoid the nuclear option.Unless one of the 41 Democrats changes their vote, the filibuster of Gorsuch will be sustained in a vote later this week.

Gorsuch's path to overcoming a filibuster closed on Monday after Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Mark Warner (Va.) each announced they would oppose Gorsuch's nomination.

Only four Democratic senators have said they will support President Trump's pick on the initial vote to end debate: Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Michael Bennet (Colo.).

Needless to say, defeating Heitkamp, Donnelly, Manchin, and Bennet in their next elections should be a priority for Democratic activists.

There is a difference between a conservative Democrat and a disloyal one, and this particular, "Gang of 4," are disloyal Democrats.

Know Your Rights

Iceland is the first modern nature requiring public disclosure of salary as a way to combat discrimination, but a lot of people don't know that in the US it is illegal for your boss to restrict discussions among employees of their pay:

Iceland recently decided its laws preventing pay discrimination were insufficient. New legislation will require employers to prove that their employees are being compensated fairly. This is a significant advance. Pay secrecy gives employers the power to discriminate against workers, or to pay them based on arbitrary, opaque criteria. Forcing employers to be transparent about compensation puts Iceland at the front of the pack in protecting worker rights. In many countries, including the United States, the onus is on the employee to uncover pay discrimination, and bring about legal action to remedy the situation.

………

The issue of pay secrecy is particularly fraught for women, who have historically been paid substantially less than men for doing the same work. This is starting to change. In an era of “lean-in” feminism, women have become familiar with research showing that Women Don’t Ask and that starting a career with a lower salary than a man in a similar position can lead to dramatic differences in compensation over the long run. These days, more and more women are asking.

………

In theory, the Ledbetter Act works in concert with Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act which grants non-supervisory employees in private-sector companies the freedom to discuss their wages or salaries. Any such discussion is concerted activity, protected under the act. However, the penalties for employer violations remain woefully weak, and may disappear entirely under the current presidential administration.

Moreover, as legal scholar Cynthia Estlund argues, most workplaces have strong norms against discussing salaries, and many workers incorrectly believe that they may be punished for these discussions. For example, numerous NLRB rulings prohibit companies from putting rules in employee handbooks that flout federal protections of workers’ rights. Yet companies still do it. In 2010, an administrative law judge ruled that ten different sections of the T-Mobile employee handbooks violated federal labor law, including provisions that effectively stopped workers from discussing wages and working conditions. In this case, the company was imposing an illegal policy on over forty thousand workers, chilling their ability to organize together at the same time that the Communications Workers of America was attempting to organize a union at T-Mobile.

Some 60 percent of private-sector workers report that their employers have similar policies to T-mobile. These policies, while technically unenforceable, create a climate where workers do not discuss pay, and therefore cannot uncover any disparities. Many workers wrongly think (no doubt encouraged by their employers) that it’s against the rules to discuss their wages or salaries with their coworkers. 

Know your rights here.

Requiring pay disclosure, and requiring that temp agencies disclose their billing rate to their contractors, would be a very good, but until then, know that any section of the employee manual that forbids discussion of your pay with a coworker is illegal and unenforceable.

Pass the Popcorn

There has been a recent surge by the far left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, in the French campaign for President, which means that it is theoretically possible that you would have a runoff between him and right wing extremist Marine LePen.

If Melenchon makes it into the runoff, I think that we will see the main-stream parties going for the bigot, because he is more of a threat to the bankster's racket:

French left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon’s creeping gain in the polls is adding a new layer of risk to France’s election.

Although the possibility of a second round between Melenchon and the anti-immigration, anti-euro National Front’s Marine Le Pen -- candidates of the extreme left and extreme right -- is remote, his rise casts yet another shadow over what has been one of the most tumultuous and unpredictable election campaigns in recent French history.

Melenchon, who was a distant fifth in the polls until a couple of weeks ago, is now within touching distance of Francois Fillon, currently in third place. According to an Odoxa poll published by Le Point magazine Friday, Melenchon would get 16 percent of the vote in the first round on April 23, just shy of Republican candidate Fillon’s 17 percent. Emmanuel Macron and Le Pen remain the front runners, with 26 percent and 25 percent respectively.

“If Jean-Luc Melenchon’s momentum continues, one could have three or four favorites in a pocket handkerchief, within the margin of error of the polls,” said Yves-Marie Cann, political research director at polling firm Elabe. “And then there will be uncertainty.”

A potential battle of the two populists, coming after the Brexit vote in the U.K. and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., would add to the turmoil in the markets. Although Melenchon, unlike Le Pen, hasn’t said he will take France out of the European Union, he remains hostile to Europe’s institutions and has said he wants to renegotiate treaties and reform the union.

………

The oldest of the main candidates, Melenchon, 65, is on his second run for president and has a loyal base attracted by his uncompromising positions against globalism and Western militarism. He was a member of the Socialist Party and even a government minister before quitting the party over what he saw as its pro-business policies.

In his campaign program, Melenchon says he’d put in place a 100 billion-euro ($107 billion) stimulus package to help tackle poverty, improve public services and protect the environment. He plans 173 billion euros of extra state expenses that he says will generate 190 billion euros of additional revenue, boost growth by more than 2 percentage points from 2018 and create more than 3 million jobs.

Among his populist measures are a plan to raise France’s minimum wage by 15 percent and lower retirement age to 60 years with full pension. He also plans to add 200,000 units of public housing a year. He expects his program to increase public debt as a share of gross domestic product to 95.8 percent, with a plan to reduce it to 87 percent in 2022.

It's a slim chance, but I think that his making the runoff would be a good thing, and not just because he has the best policies of any candidate.

By presenting French voters with two choices outside the general window of acceptability (though Melenchon would have been pretty mainstream circa 1980) it requires actual thought by the voter.

Hopefully, this might create an electorate that eschews the false dichotomies that are presented by the current powers that be.

The disastrous policies coming from Berlin and Brussels have always been sold as being the only alternative, disabusing both the ordinary folk and the PTB would be a very good thing.

Tweet of the Day

This is fraud, theft and abuse #MedicareForAll pic.twitter.com/RGhOFauWhI

— All On Medicare (@AllOnMedicare) March 31, 2017

H/t naked capitalism.

It's the Start of the Crazy Season

Spent most of today cleaning for Pesach (Passover).

It's a period of high anxiety for Sharon^*, and I am doing my level best to be as supportive as possible.

Light blogging for a while.

BTW, anyone know a good way to split the Red Sea?

Have a Pesach joke:

Once upon a time in a far away land there lived a king who had a Jewish advisor. The king relied so much on the wisdom of his Jewish advisor that one day he decided to elevate him to head advisor. After it was announced, the other advisors objected. After all, it was bad enough just to sit in counsel with a Jew, but to allow one to 'lord it over them,' was just too much to bear. Being a compassionate ruler, the King agreed with them, and ordered the Jew to convert. What could the Jew do? One had to obey the King, and so he did.

As soon as the act was done, the Jew felt great remorse for this terrible decision. As days became weeks, his remorse turned to despondency, and as months passed, his mental depression took its toll on his physical health. He became weaker and weaker. Finally he could stand it no longer. His mind was made up. He burst in on the king and cried, "I was born a Jew and a Jew I must die. Do what you want with me, but I can no longer deny my faith." The King was very surprised. He had no idea that the Jew felt so strongly about it. "Well, if that is how you feel," he said, "then the other advisors will just have to learn to live with it. Your counsel is much too important to me to do without. Go and be a Jew again" he said.

The Jew felt elated. He hurried back home to tell the good news to his family. He felt the strength surge back into his body as he ran. Finally, he burst into the house and called out to his wife. "Rifka, Rifka, we can be Jews again, we can be Jews again." His wife glared back at him angrily and said, "You couldn't wait until after Passover?"

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

Hold Onto Your Wallet

Here we have another claim of an earth shattering product.

It's not software, it's an actually a real world high tech physical device, and he is promising to be able to deliver a Lidar (Laser Radar) for things like self driving cars for pennies.

Am I the only one who thinks that this reads like an article about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos:

In the sixth grade, Austin Russell turned a Nintendo gaming handset into a cell phone. At 15, he built a holographic keyboard. By 17, he’d filed for a patent. Now at 22, he’s running a startup at the heart of Silicon Valley’s latest technology mania.

As founder and chief executive officer of Luminar Technologies Inc., Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars. Google parent Alphabet Inc. is suing Uber Technologies Inc. for allegedly stealing lidar designs, while startups Velodyne Lidar Inc. and Quanergy Systems Inc. have raised at least $150 million apiece from giants like Ford Motor Co., Baidu Inc., Daimler AG and Samsung Electronics Co.

Russell has raised a similar amount, according to people familiar with Luminar’s finances. The company, founded in 2012, had sought a valuation above $1 billion when it was raising money last year, one of the people said. It’s unclear who invested -- Luminar is in "stealth" mode, meaning it hasn’t announced itself to the world yet. A spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Russell’s father Michael, a commercial real estate veteran who serves as chief financial officer. A message sent to Austin Russell through his LinkedIn profile was answered by his assistant, who declined to comment.Russell has raised a similar amount, according to people familiar with Luminar’s finances. The company, founded in 2012, had sought a valuation above $1 billion when it was raising money last year, one of the people said. It’s unclear who invested -- Luminar is in "stealth" mode, meaning it hasn’t announced itself to the world yet. A spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Russell’s father Michael, a commercial real estate veteran who serves as chief financial officer. A message sent to Austin Russell through his LinkedIn profile was answered by his assistant, who declined to comment.

………

That a relatively unknown college dropout of barely drinking age can raise millions of dollars shows the appetite for lidar. “It’s a gold rush and we’re selling pickaxes,” said Velodyne President Mike Jellen, who graduated college years before Russell was born. Several car companies want autonomous vehicles on the road by 2020 or 2021, which means they’re starting to order lots of lidar systems. Velodyne expects to ship 12,000 units this year, 80,000 in 2018 and 1.7 million by 2022.

 ………

A top-of-the-range lidar from Velodyne sells for more than $50,000. It offers cheaper lidar, which generates lower-definition 3-D images, for about $8,000, while Quanergy has a product that sells for some $4,000. Autonomous cars often require two or more lidar sensors, so having a capable system can get expensive.

Russell is trying to develop a lidar priced significantly less than $1,000, according to people with knowledge of Luminar’s planning. Quanergy aims to have one that sells below $100 in three to four years.

………

In a recent demonstration, the images generated by Luminar’s lidar system were higher-definition than those produced by competing equipment made by Velodyne or Quanergy, according to someone who saw the equipment first-hand, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly. Another version generated even sharper images, but the information was processed with a slight delay -- because of a lack of computing power to crunch all the data rather than a problem with the core technology, the person said.

Another "unicorn", only because it's not a clever internet idea and actually have to deliver a physical product that is bound by the laws of physics, it ain't quite so easy.

What we have here is the Silicon Valley investors distracted by a shiny bauble.

A few buzz words about the current in technology, and they go crazy.

Kind of like how all of big movers and shakers in tech declaring that Dean Kaman's "Ginger",  now known as the Segway scooter was going to transform the world.

Way too much of the US tech market seems startlingly close to snake oil sales.

If someone suggests investing in this, run in the other direction.

Not Gonna do an April Fools Post

How do you out do the reality that Donald Trump is President?

That is all.

Tweet of the Day

Trump is seeking small changes to NAFTA to make it more like the proposed TPP. Now that's how you break a promise! https://t.co/QkSeU7VU4E

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 30, 2017

H/t Ian Welsh.

Everything That Is Wrong with the F-35 in 1 Article

At 35 Seconds, You can See the Pilot's Head Strike the Canopy

It's a bit of a read but this article lists the the current problems, and the basic architectural problems in excruciating detail:

The F-35 still has a long way to go before it will be ready for combat. That was the parting message of Michael Gilmore, the now-retired Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, in his last annual report.

The Joint Strike Fighter Program has already consumed more than $100 billion and nearly 25 years. Just to finish the basic development phase will require at least an extra $1 billion and two more years. Even with this massive investment of time and money, Gilmore told Congress, the Pentagon and the public, “the operational suitability of all variants continues to be less than desired by the Services.”

Gilmore detailed a range of remaining and sometimes worsening problems with the program, including hundreds of critical performance deficiencies and maintenance problems. He also raised serious questions about whether the Air Force’s F-35A can succeed in either air-to-air or air-to-ground missions, whether the Marine Corps’ F-35B can conduct even rudimentary close air support, and whether the Navy’s F-35C is suitable to operate from aircraft carriers.

He found, in fact, that “if used in combat, the F-35 aircraft will need support to locate and avoid modern threat ground radars, acquire targets, and engage formations of enemy fighter aircraft due to unresolved performance deficiencies and limited weapons carriage availability.”

The details follow, and while some might eventually be fixed (late and expensive) a lot of these are artifacts of the basic architecture of both the plane.

This is going to be a complete cluster f%$#.