Author: wrongologist

Are the Bundys America’s Y’all Qaeda?

Off Topic: Here is your last Santa photo of the season. Santa dodges tear gas in Bethlehem, 2015:

Santa in Bethlehem

 

 

Source: The Economist

Everyone is following the story of the standoff in Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop: Will the authorities shut down the Ammon Bundy crew? Will bullets fly? Will they wait them out? As Josh Marshall said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

…we just confirmed from Oregon State police the Ammon Bundy and his crew, who appear to be running low on supplies (Fritos, beef jerky, pizza, etc.) are actually free to come and go as they please. So if they need more food they can just leave the standoff, drive off to the nearest grocery store on a food run and come back and keep up the historic siege.

More from Marshall:

We look at the ridiculously inconsistent way law enforcement handles white right-wing freaks as opposed to other people who break the law or threaten violence…the import should not be that federal law enforcement should just rush in and kill everyone. Using force should be a last resort. And, within reason, if you can just wait people out and then charge them with whatever crimes they committed, great.

Seems like some liberals are willing to work really hard not to create an incident with the Bundy crew, or as Tengrain calls them, Y’all Qaeda. Here’s Booman, commenting on Marshall:

The double standard in how these white men are treated and how, say, Tamir Rice was treated couldn’t be more glaring. However, delivering Ruby Ridge Part Deux just to be consistent is maybe the dumbest idea ever written down by a liberal. The easiest way to end a siege is simply to refuse to besiege them.

Wrongo gets that the Feds and the local authorities don’t want another Waco or Ruby Ridge, but if we had nipped the Bundy problem in the bud when it arose in Nevada, this subsequent event might not have happened.

The Malheur was poorly managed before and after the government took over. Nancy Langston, professor of environmental history at Michigan Technological University wrote about Malheur in the NYT:

By the 1930s, after four decades of overgrazing, irrigation withdrawals, grain agriculture, dredging and channelization, followed by several years of drought, Malheur had become a dust bowl.

The Bundys and fellow travelers refuse to accept that We, the People, already own and run the land. That we determine how to use it. The protesters might not like this, but even if it went back into private hands, it would be a matter of little time before overgrazing brings back dust bowl conditions to the area, and these free marketers ask for federal disaster assistance.

The common thread is the continuing story of corporate welfare in the American West: under-market grazing fees, under-market water rights, under-priced mineral rights, crop subsidies, ad nauseam. And the cry is always the same: “the government is ruining our way of life” (by interrupting the flow of subsidies). The question is whether this “way of life” is sustainable if it’s not supported by the American taxpayer.

Back to the occupation of the Wildlife Refuge:

• We can ignore them until they get bored and go home, but what if they don’t go home?
• OTOH, we can say it’s an armed standoff with the federal government. The very opposite of legitimate protest.

We need to remember that this has its genesis with Cliven Bundy in Utah. There, the Feds backed down to avoid an armed incident, and Cliven Bundy still has not paid his grazing fees. It’s as if threatened violence caused the US government back down. We acted moderately, and now 21 months later, another Bundy is edging up to another armed standoff about other federal land in Oregon.

When we are moderate in the Middle East, the neo-cons say we are emboldening the bad guys. If we move on these guys with guns, the neo-cons will say we are stopping a legitimate protest.

Let’s ask the Y’all Qaeda to leave, letting them know the legal penalties for staying.

Finally, if all else fails, send in unarmed officers to arrest them. The feds should ask for volunteer officers to go in 100% unarmed to arrest these people.

They should tell the media exactly what’s happening. Let every cable and network television channel go live as the federal officers go in, armed only with handcuffs.

Don’t shoot our way in, making them martyrs or giving them a defense of armed self-protection.

If the situation gets adversarial, then of course arrest them, by any means necessary.

See you on Sunday.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Who Has the Answer For 2016?

We have entered the presidential election year, but we, the people, really do not see any candidate as the answer to our problems. Voters on both sides of the aisle think the country needs to turn a page. We are frightened and angry, and increasingly feel that the two parties have no answers to our questions about tomorrow.

The Democrats say the choice is Hillary or Bernie.

The Republicans say we should choose between Trump, Marco, Ted or Jeb!

Consider what Tom Friedman said in Wednesday’s NYT: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The agenda that could actually make America great again would combine the best ideas of the extreme left and the extreme right. This year is probably too soon for such a radical platform, but by 2020 — after more extreme weather, after machines replace more middle-class jobs, after more mass shootings and after much more global disorder — voters will realize that our stale left-right parties can’t produce the needed answers for our postindustrial era.

Ok, agreed! Friedman argues that it’s time for an extremist, a nonpartisan, whose platform draws ideas from both sides. To give Friedman his due, he outlines a fairly radical agenda that includes universal health care, a form of income guarantee for low wage earners, increased military spending along with some unintelligible tax reform:

Slash all corporate taxes, income taxes, personal deductions and corporate subsidies and replace them with a carbon tax, a value-added consumption tax (except on groceries and other necessities), a tax on bullets and a tax on all sugary drinks — with offsets for the lowest-income earners.

A Value-added Tax? Instead of a progressive income tax? That’s the icing on Tom’s pro-business cake.

So he has some good ideas, and some that won’t work. That makes him the same as our two political parties. Much of the problem can be traced to the Democratic Party walking away from its intellectual base in the New Deal and the Great Society, and failing to offer better choices. As Sam Smith says:

It’s [the Democrats] failure to come up with alternatives, [while following] an agenda that appealed to comfortable and more upscale liberals rather than to ordinary Americans.

Bernie Sanders is a New Deal Democrat in “democratic socialist” clothing. He is the first democrat in decades to look outside the box for solutions to the problems our current economy visits on average people. It is unlikely that he will beat the Clinton political machine in 2016.

Hillary Clinton leads in the primary polls, but is she electable in the general election? No one should enter the 2016 general election thinking that HRC isn’t a vulnerable candidate. Democrats seem to forget that in 2008, she lost to a little known black guy with a minimal political record.

If voters are looking for a political savior, Hillary is more of the same middle of the road economics with a slight tinge of social liberalism that Mr. Obama offered.

The question is, has the country moved past that kind of “political triangulation” that Bill Clinton perfected in the 1990s? In 2008, Mr. Obama won as a new breed of politician. By 2012, with staunch legislative opposition from the GOP, he was triangulating to win a 2nd term. Can triangulation work again for Hillary?

Sam Smith points us to the age issue:

Nobody’s talking about this, in part because Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would each be the oldest presidents except for Ronald Reagan. But what if Clinton at 68 faces Rubio or Cruz, both in the mid-forties? It makes the image of a new future considerably harder to project.

He might add that Bernie Sanders is 74 now. Ronald Reagan was 78 at the end of his 2nd term.

So what’s the alternative? It is too late for 2016. Partly due to the strength of Hillary’s resume, the Democrats have no viable alternatives. If Ms. Clinton stumbles, the Democrats would be trying to win with Bernie Sanders, who might do well, but who could also make the George McGovern 1972 shellacking seem like a win. This is indicative of a huge problem for Democrats: It has no viable bench.

Assuming that Clinton is the Democrats’ choice, her liabilities could be lessened by treating the campaign more like a struggle between opposing parties instead of one between political celebrities. The argument becomes: if you want to retain Constitutional freedoms that are under attack by a conservative Supreme Court, if you want to keep Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other social programs, if you want less foreign adventurism, then you have to vote Democratic regardless of what you think of Hillary Clinton.

Despite the fact that many of us are desperate for something shiny and new, this contest is not a “Survivor” or “American Idol” TV series.

It’s the 2016 presidential election.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Pacific Gas Gooses Prices: Why?

Pacific Gas and Electric is America’s largest electric utility and the second largest gas utility measured by number of customers. You may remember that their gas pipeline exploded in 2010 in San Bruno CA, just south of San Francisco, killing 8, injuring 66, and burning down 38 homes. The legal fallout is still in the courts, with the trial scheduled to begin on March 8 in US District Court in San Francisco.

PG&E announced a price increase on December 30, when few would be paying attention. SF Gate carried the customer-friendly part of the announcement:

We want our customers and their families to know that we are here to help them make smart energy choices and save money whenever possible…

That’s corporate-speak for turn down the heater, put on another fleece, buy more efficient appliances, and find subsidies available to low-income households.

The increase was effective two days later, on January 1st. It will hike natural gas rates for the average residential customer by 4.0% and electricity rates by a stunning 8.5%, for a combined rate increase of 7%, the steepest since 2006.

Utilities raise prices all the time. But maybe a few things about PG&E’s price increase are worth a look:

• Natural gas prices have fallen steadily since 2008, much of the power PG&E distributes is generated by natural gas. In fact, in its third quarter financial statement, PG&E says its cost of electricity over the first nine months of 2015 dropped 8.8% year-over-year, and its cost of natural gas plunged 36%.
• The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) agreed in 2014 to let PG&E collect an extra $2.37 billion in revenue from its customers over three years, through the end of 2016. The additional money will pay for maintenance and upgrades to PG&E’s sprawling electricity grid and natural gas pipeline network.
• PG&E pays quarterly dividends of $0.455 per common share. With 489 million shares outstanding, dividends for a year would amount to $890 million.So for the three-year period in question (2014-2016), this amounts to about $2.7 billion, which would have paid for the maintenance and upgrades of its system.

There’s more: In September, PG&E asked the PUC for another $2.7 billion in revenue increases for the three-year period of 2017-2019. That particular amount of money would be used ostensibly to prepare for natural disasters. But, as Wolf Richter reports, over the same period, PG&E would pay out another $2.7 billion in dividends.

The PUC, already under federal grand-jury investigation for its ties to PG&E about the San Bruno disaster, hasn’t voted on this increase. If PG&E had a real regulator, it would be forced to pay for maintenance and upgrades with funds it sourced from something other than rate increases. Particularly when its fuel costs are plunging, and it’s paying out an $890 million annual dividend.

PG&E’s is following the “maximize profits and shareholder value” dictates of a modern market-driven corporation. But in the case of private utilities, the state regulator is supposed to review rate applications and ensure the company is not reaping excessive profits and is charging fair prices.

That the CA PUC allowed these price increases perhaps demonstrates incompetence, or excessive favoritism. Help may be on the way: SF Gate reports that Gov. Jerry Brown shook up the five-member utilities commission, nominating one of his former top advisers, Michael Picker, to be its new president. He also nominated Liane Randolph from the state’s Natural Resources Agency to join the commission. So, perhaps the back-room deals are over, but Californians will have to wait and see.

Capitalism, like any game, needs referees who are beyond influence. The clear operating strategy of the “free market capitalists” is to have regulators of all stripes squeezed by lower funding and by packing the regulatory boards with industry insiders. Far too many of the referees (regulatory agencies) are insiders in the industry game.

Maybe there is help on the way in California. If not, maybe it’s time to put a few corporate heads up on pikes in the California sun!

Facebooklinkedinrss

If The Saudis Want to Fight Iran, the US Should Stand Back and Watch

According to breaking news, the Saudis severed ties with Iran after protesters in Tehran set fire to the Saudi embassy in riots over the execution by Saudi Arabia of the Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. The Saudis are leaning on the Gulf States to break relations with Iran also.

Remember that Iran is a Shiite nation while the Saudis are majority Sunni, as are the Gulfies.

We don’t know if the Saudi charges and verdict against al-Nimr were trumped-up, or if his execution was a deliberate provocation, but, why didn’t Iran do a better job of guarding the Saudi embassy? Wrongo’s first thoughts went back to the 444 days that the US embassy was held by Iran. Was there a better way for Iran to remind America of that historic black eye?

Was Iran dumb, or simply ready to flex their new, post-sanctions muscles against Saudi Arabia?

And what about the new king in Saudi Arabia? Are these executions more about internal House of Saud politicking rather than a direct message to Iran? Is it more important for the Boy Prince Saud to establish his anti-Shia cred with his opponents in the ruling family? A secondary effect may be to rile the Iranians, since the Boy Prince is currently losing his wars in Yemen and in Syria. Perhaps a provocative execution is just what he needs to shore up public support.

The Saudis have now accused Iran of supporting terrorism. At the same time, some US lawmakers want to move the goalposts and make recent Iranian missile firings an issue, even though those missiles were never were part of the deal between the US and Iran.

Expect to see these two issues – Iranian support of terrorism and the Iranian missiles – to be dominant themes in the GOP primaries in an effort to tarnish Obama and Clinton while hoping to stall implementation of the Iran Nuclear deal. The GOP posturing about the Saudi execution continued with Republican presidential hopefuls failing to condemn the executions, while highlighting the strong alliance between Washington and Riyadh on the Sunday bobble head shows.

The fun then went full Sharia with Ben Carson suggesting that the nuclear deal struck last July between Iran, the US and five other world powers pushed Saudi Arabia to violently repress its Shiite population:

The Saudis have been one of our strongest allies in the Middle East, and I think it’s unfortunate that we put them in the position we have by showing the support to Iran that we have with this foolish deal…There’s no reason for the Saudis to believe that we’re really on their side when we do things like that.

And when you hear a medical doctor making excuses for mass executions, you gotta just change channels. And since you know he is vehemently pro-life, you have to cringe while you do it.

Carly Fiorina dismissed Iran’s reaction to the death of the leading anti-government protester:

I take the Iranian condemnation with a huge grain of salt…This is a regime that tortures citizens routinely, that thinks nothing of executions, that still holds four Americans in jail. Saudi Arabia is our ally, despite the fact that they don’t always behave in a way that we condone…Iran is a real and present threat.

You’ve got to hand it to these GOP candidates. It’s nearly impossible to be on the wrong side of nearly every geopolitical issue, but these folks are actually nailing it!

Wahhabism is the state-sponsored form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s export of Wahhabism throughout the Middle East is without question a greater threat to ME peace than Iran’s missiles.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia executed 158 people. They justify the executions as part of its strict interpretation of Sharia law. Punishing government protesters with death while citing Sharia law has led The New York Times editorial board to compare the kingdom’s judicial system to that of ISIS. Yet, unlike ISIS, Saudi Arabia currently sits on the United Nations Human Rights Council and, as both Fiorina and Carson noted, Saudi Arabia is considered a key US ally in the fight against the Assad regime in Syria.

Because of this, even our State Department did not fully condemn the Saudi executions, only voicing “concerns” over the practice. Here is empty suit spokesperson John Kirby:

We have previously expressed our concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia and have frequently raised these concerns at high levels of the Saudi Government…

Weasel words from the State Department.

We should see this as a time to re-balance our ME policy, and be less pro-Sunni.

We shouldn’t have a dog in this fight.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Los Estados Banditos

Today, let’s consider the bombshell dropped by the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the NSA spied on the efforts of the Netanyahu government to purchase win support in Congress when they were considering approval of the Iran Nuclear Deal. A US intelligence official familiar with the intercepts said Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as:

How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take?

There’s more. The Hill reported: The NSA helped the White House figure out which Israeli government officials had leaked information from confidential US briefings our government gave to the Israelis:

The NSA’s snooping allegedly found Netanyahu and his aides leaked details of the negotiations gained through Israeli spying, coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal and asked those lawmakers who were undecided on the deal how it could get their vote…

So, the WH knew that the NSA was spying on both Netanyahu and certain Congress critters. Some will say that the Executive Branch was spying on Congress. But there are two other ways to look at this.

• The NSA was spying on an ally, which we have done in the past (Merkel, Hollande).
• And that spying revealed that members of Congress were apparently working with Israel.

Either way, some in DC will be outraged. In fact, Rep. Devin Nunes, (R-CA) has already started an investigation into the allegations in the story. That is hilarious, since that spying is authorized by NSA procedures, procedures that Rep. Nunes has said are more than adequate to protect the privacy of US persons. You know, in his role as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. From Emptywheel:

If NSA’s minimization procedures are inadequate to protect US persons, the first thing Nunes should do is repeal [the] FISA Amendments Act, which can expose far more people than the tailored…tap placed on Bibi…

However, you could also return to the basic question from last fall: Why are members of Congress working to help a foreign government derail a major foreign-policy initiative of the US? And be outraged yourself.

This is the reason that allowing lawmakers’ communications to be incidentally collected is such a risk — because it inevitably collects details about the legislative process. That can also disclose an untoward quid pro quo by foreign governments to members of Congress. Finding that is within the purview of the Executive branch’s mandate.

Maybe more privacy protections, including for Members of Congress, are needed. But wiretapping the communications with foreign leaders is solidly within the parameters of Congressionally-approved NSA spying, even if it incidentally collects information about members of Congress. Congress itself has deemed these actions may sometimes be important to protect the US.

And didn’t Congress approve all of this spying to catch terrorists? Or, was it just to get intelligence to assist our drone attacks. Or, to assist in the war on drugs, so that we can play catch-and-release a few more times with El Chapo. The problem is, when you build an intelligence gathering system this big and this technologically capable, it will inevitably intrude into domestic politics. Or vacuum up not-so-innocent information that is incidental to its intended target.

As for surveillance of members of Congress, surely everyone in Congress knows how that game works, THEY VOTED TO IMPLEMENT IT!

There’s a substantive difference between direct surveillance of members of Congress, and surveillance of a foreign ambassador’s reporting back to his government about communications with those Members.

If Nunes, et. al were simply trying to hang on to the remnants of our Constitution like the rest of us poor schlub voters, maybe the poutrage would be understandable.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Resolved: Have a New Year

Calvin & Hobbes meditating on 2016:

COW Calvin New Year

 

 

Personal Note:
The Wrongologist doesn’t like New Year’s resolutions. People should change whenever they feel a need for self-improvement, but few of us carry through, and achieve real change.

The one catalyst for change that works for Wrongo is to ask: “Why am I here?” and “What do I want to do with the time I have left?” These days, the answer is the same as it was in my twenties; to tell people about important things they may have missed, and put them in a context that has meaning to their journey through life.

But like many, the intervening 50 years between Wrongo’s twenties and today were largely spent being accountable to whoever was signing the paychecks. That didn’t leave time to look carefully at the issues that threaten our world, much less talk about them to whoever would listen. So the answer to the annual “Why are you here?” question became rationalizations that had little true meaning.

That’s now in the past.

I am an incredibly fortunate person: I have someone who loves me, I live in an awesome place, and have family and friends who seem to love me for who I am. I don’t have to worry about if I’ll be able to pay the mortgage, or concern myself with other difficulties so many others face.

So, last year, I posted 243 columns about what’s wrong in our country and our world. A few people read all of them, while most read just a few. I’m happy to have found any readers at all.

The objective remains to speak about issues that have a big meaning in the lives of my readers, and to place them in a context that may lead the reader to take political action.

In recognition of the fact that it took Wrongo 40 years to return to his life’s work, here is Bob Dylan and the Band playing “Forever Young”.  Although this song gets most play these days at funerals, Dylan wrote the song as a lullaby for his son, Jesse. In 1973 when he first recorded it, he did a fast and a slow version on the album “Planet Waves”. The song has been covered many times, but here is Dylan and the Band playing it live in the movie, “The Last Waltz” with Robbie Robertson on the guitar solos:

Sadly, this great video does not include the second stanza of the lyric to the song, which is Wrongo’s favorite. So here it is:

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Let’s promise each other to stay forever young, to stay open to new ideas and to remain forever hostile to intolerance and greed.

Here’s to 2016, a year in which the Wrongologist blog hopes to make its content as rich, meaningful and enjoyable as possible. That’s my resolution – not just for the Wrongologist blog − but for myself, and for you.

May your 2016 be filled with joy and peace, and may you strive to live your life in as authentic and meaningful way as possible.

Facebooklinkedinrss

What’s the Matter with Kansas? Part Infinity

From the WaPo:

In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home.

Read more:

The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

It started when Robert Harte and his son went to a gardening store to purchase supplies to grow hydroponic tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper in the store parking lot had the job of collecting license plate numbers of customers, compiling them into a spreadsheet, and sending the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation.

They were looking for folks who grow marijuana.

Yes, buying gardening supplies could make you the target of a drug investigation in Kansas. Naturally, the family was cleared of any wrongdoing. The Hartes wanted to know why they were targeted. What probable cause did the police have for sending a SWAT team into their home? But that information was difficult to obtain.

Under Kansas law, the sheriff’s department wasn’t obligated to turn over any information related to the raid. They spent more than $25,000 in legal fees to learn why the sheriff had sent a SWAT team into their home. Once they finally had that information, the Hartes filed a lawsuit.

And they lost the case. Last week, US District Court Judge John W. Lungstrum dismissed all of the Hartes’s claims. Lungstrum found that sending a SWAT team into a home first thing in the morning based on no more than a positive reading by an unreliable field test and spotting someone at a gardening store was not a violation of the Hartes’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Think about this:

The Hartes are a white, financially sound couple who both used to work for the CIA. Most people on the receiving end of these raids aren’t white, aren’t middle-class, didn’t once work for a federal intelligence agency and don’t have $25,000 to fund a fight in court…you can imagine the long odds faced by the typical victim of a botched raid.

Another brick is removed from the wall of Constitutional rights that protects you from your government. By the way, the people who support this kind of thing also like to talk a lot about freedom and liberty.

News you can’t use, Trump edition:

Trump says US wages are too high. (Business Insider)

Trump says US Wages are too low. (CNN)

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke says that Donald Trump speaks “a lot more radically” than he does. (Reader Supported News) David Duke is now a GOP “squish”, since Trump has gone even further right than the KKK.

Personal Note:

Today is the Wrongologist’s birthday. He remembers a time when to be a liberal was to be heroic. It seems that time has returned. Wrongo’s wish for 2016 is an election that provides Americans with the opportunity to debate US policies. However, our politics also provides entertainment to voters along the way to the election.

My prediction is we will see/hear far more ludicrous posturing than serious policy conversations in 2016.

Yet, think about the rest of the world’s politics compared to ours: We peacefully change presidents, elect new congresses, and 50 new state governments.

We do it via the ballot box, not with guns and tanks. This is the strength of our society.

So, PLEASE VOTE IN 2016!

And remember that your vote in a primary election has huge value. That is where the candidate choices are made.

Best wishes for a healthy New Year.

Facebooklinkedinrss

News You Can’t Use – December 30, 2015

Merchandise returns take a new turn:

COW Drone Return

News you can’t use:

The Cop who shot Tamir Rice was not indicted:

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty said it was “indisputable” that the boy was drawing the weapon from his waistband… He called it “a perfect storm of human error” but said no crime was committed.

2016 will see more of these controversies. It may be that a year from now, the failure to indict police for killing Tamir Rice will be a seen as a turning point in community/police relations, but don’t count on it.

This tweet captures an interesting thought about the Tamir Rice shooting:

FireShot Screen Capture #075 - 'Parker Molloy on Twitter-page-0

 

Tamir Rice had not committed a crime. Ohio is an open carry state, where an adult is entitled to be carrying a REAL weapon. Rice did not have a gun and as far as we know, he never did anything wrong. How are people in open carry states supposed to walk around in such a way that does not seem to ‘threaten’ the police? Sure, being white helps a lot, but no one should rely on that.

A few 2016 predictions:

2016 predictions: the emoji edition. (Wired) Article states the obvious using emojis. And provides translations. Didn’t know the emoji for Thanksgiving.

The 2016 Fortune Crystal Ball. (Fortune) They think Apple will buy Tesla. So does most of the world.

Five Tech Predictions for the Year Ahead. (WSJ) Chris Mims says that predictions are worth what you pay for them. We all agree.

Cybersecurity predictions for 2016. (USA Today) One that seems completely scary is this:

The health care industry will remain the largest segment of the economy to be victimized by data breaches both because, as an industry, it does not provide sufficient data security and because the sale of medical insurance information on the black market is more lucrative than selling stolen credit and debit card information.

So, who are the buyers for black market medical insurance information?

China’s economy: Seven predictions for 2016. (LA Times) One prediction worth following in 2016:

“One Belt, One Road”, also known as “OBOR,” is a new development strategy initiated by China in 2015 to promote its economic connectivity and cooperative relationship with nations in Eurasia by helping them develop infrastructure. These initiatives should also help Chinese exports.

2016 will a big year for OBOR as the three institutions lined up to fund its projects, the Silk Road Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, will be in full operation by 2016.

Facebooklinkedinrss

News You Can’t Use – December 28, 2015

A view of Santa’s rowing down the Grand Canal in Venice:

COW Venice Santas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News you can’t use:

Fortune reports that Americans born after 1980 lag behind their overseas peers in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments. Researchers at the Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) conducted the study, which was a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), to measure the job skills of adults in 23 countries. Our kids didn’t fare so well:

Top 5 countries in literacy:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Netherlands
4) Australia
5) Sweden
(The US placed at #17 out of 23)

Top 5 in numeracy:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Belgium
4) Netherlands
5) Sweden
(The US placed at #21 out of 23)

Top 5 in Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Australia
4) Sweden
5) Norway
(The US placed at #18)

The results were shocking to researchers, since American millennials are supposedly the most educated generation ever, according to the study. Madeline Goodman, an ETS researcher told Fortune:

We really thought [US] Millennials would do better than the general adult population, either compared to older coworkers in the US or to the same age group in other countries…But they didn’t. In fact, their scores were abysmal.

Millennials with college credentials did score higher on the PIAAC than Americans with only a high school diploma (yet less well than college grads in most other countries). The study concluded that a more expensive and expansive education “may not hold all the answers.” At least not to questions that are not about the Kardashians.

The Worst People of 2015. (GQ) Making the top 5: Kim Davis, Cameron Crowe, David Cameron, Sepp Blatter, and Hillary Clinton. Several could have been rated higher, like Martin Shkreli @ #28, or Jared Fogle @ #8, just behind Bill Cosby. Why should Hillary be ranked ahead of Shkreli or Fogle?

Never a Dull Moment: A Look Back at 2015. (WSJ) Joe Queenan takes a funny look at 2015. Sample of the writing:

…shockers came right out of nowhere. First, the new, less weepy Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, grew a beard, something no one holding that lofty position had done since 1925. That man’s name was Gillett.

Political Dark Money Just Got Darker. (Editorial Board, NYT):

For two years, President Obama has dithered and withheld the one blow he could easily strike for greater political transparency: the signing of an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign spending.

Wow. It’s almost like Democrats aren’t fully committed to campaign finance reform.

Facebooklinkedinrss

2015 Is On The Run

Time to put our boot on the throat of 2015:

COW New Year

Perhaps Toles means “shred of dignity”. It was certainly an indecorous year.

News you can’t use:

The Onion’s 2015 Year in Review. This sends 2015 off with all due respect.

2015 in mass shootings (Rolling Stone). There have been 353 mass shootings in the US to this point, according the Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced database. (The tracker defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are killed or wounded; the FBI uses three dead or wounded as its criteria.)

10 of the Worst Cable News Moments of 2015 (MoJo). We’ve barely survived another 12 months of cable news. Mother Jones gives you a few of the best of the worst the M$M had to offer in 2015.

Lower Jobless Claims Don’t Point to A Robust Labor Market (WSJ). less than 15 million American made first-time requests for government assistance this year, about half as many claims as were made in 2009, and far fewer than the number filed during the 1980s and 90s when the economy was expanding at a strong clip. The greatest concern in the labor market isn’t those who recently lost their jobs, it is the persistently large number out of work for months or years, and those stuck in low-paying and part-time jobs.

Heavily redacted Benghazi emails released on Christmas Eve (The Hill). Politicians release bad news on slow news days because they think the opposition isn’t listening, but the GOP ALWAYS listens to Hillary.

Meet a Koch-like family working to influence State Legislatures (Political Research Associates). The DeVos family (Amway) is one of the most influential families in conservative politics. Though they share the Kochs´ commitment to corporate welfare, the DeVoses also promote a Christian Right cultural and social agenda.

Facebooklinkedinrss