Category: Politics

Politics Dominates as Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation Hearings Begin in Senate – WSJ

Senate Republicans will be pushing full force for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee at the start of hearings to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, while Democrats will try to make Republicans pay a political price for speeding toward her confirmation before Election Day and in the midst of a pandemic.

Politics Dominates as Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation Hearings Begin in Senate – WSJ

I don’t have anything to say about Amy Coney, or about the confirmation hearing circus. I just wanted to say that I’ve officially hit my limit on the number of times I can see “in the midst of a pandemic” in a news article.  I don’t want to even debate the semantics of what it might mean, even if it were being used in good faith, in this particular instance. It’s just a dash of despair and paranoia that journalists just sprinkle on everything now, so it has come to mean nothing any more.

Big Tech to face its Ma Bell moment? US House Dems demand break-up of ‘monopolists’ Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google • The Register

Of course, there is still a long way to go before any of the report’s recommendations become a reality. Even within the committee, there is not unanimity, with some Republican members expressing concerns over breaking up companies in particular. Republicans will also be more ideologically opposed to adding regulations or removing companies’ ability to arbitrate disputes themselves, rather than through the courts.

And then of course there is the enormous collective power of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – some of the world’s largest and richest corporations – who will be willing and able to do anything to protect their markets and profits.

Source: Big Tech to face its Ma Bell moment? US House Dems demand break-up of ‘monopolists’ Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google • The Register

I note, for the record, that AT&T was broken up long before Citizen’s United was decided, when our government still worked, because both sides actually  compromised on legislation. I also remind everyone the the Supreme Court is NOT, in fact, the final say in our laws. If Congress doesn’t like the way a decision went, they can write a new law in light of what was decided.

But do you really think that a bunch of Congress-people are going to forego campaign funding from Silicon Valley by voting to break up four of the biggest corporations in the world? Even if they weren’t getting money from those companies before, you can bet their primary challengers would, the next time around. You can’t fix our corporatocracy until you get rid of Citizen’s United, and we will never be free of it now. As if we didn’t have a big enough problem with it before, the decision guarantees regulatory capture forever. Campaign funding and the life-and-death polarization of our two-party system will never allow for reversing it.

There’s no public interest in these hearings. There is literally zero chance that anything will substantively change. Even if they do break Instagram out of Facebook, or YouTube out of Google, what will that really do? Nothing. If this is really about the advertising market, then all you’re going to do is split your existing spend, and if there are just 4 entities involved in the market instead of 2, they’ll collude on pricing, as a middle finger to the government. And, like AT&T before it, they will eventually just reassemble themselves into something even more monstrous than before.

This is about money. It’s always about money. Congress thinks that these companies should be giving more of their money to their campaigns, and this is how they go about getting that done. Watch campaign contributions rise in the wake of these hearings, note that nothing effectively changes, and then remember I was right. This isn’t rocket surgery. We’ve seen this before from the Microsoft trial.

It’s Called the “War on Drugs,” and it Leads to Everything Else | Hacker News

Source: *I can imagine a scenario where I think many objective individuals would agree a… | Hacker News

I am for decriminalizing most drugs, because of the overwhelmingly net-negative effects on society by the so-called War on Drugs, which better people than me have expounded on for decades to an un-hearing legislature. I also think there’s been enough written about the way the CIA started the problem in the black community, in the first place, to justify its end. I just thought this comment was a good summary of how ridiculous no-knock raids are, prima facie, let alone in actual practice.

Sacrifice for Thee, Vast Wealth for Me | Epsilon Theory

From 2014 – 2019, the same years that CEO and Chairman Doug pocketed $200 million in real money stock-based comp, American Airlines had *negative* free cash flow of $3.2 billion.

And took on an additional $14 billion in debt.

And bought back $13 billion of its stock. How did all this work out for American Airlines shareholders from 2014 – 2019?

Over this six year period, AAL stock was up 13%. Not 13% per year, but 13% over SIX YEARS of the best bull market in history.

Barf.

Source: Sacrifice for Thee, Vast Wealth for Me | Epsilon Theory

This kind of thing is happening all the time. The system of government we have is no longer a democratic republic. It’s a corporatocracy. It’s a return to a modern version of feudalism. The C-levels of our largest corporations are the land-owning royalty, and “employees” work their “land” to be protected from our profit-seeking health care system. Whatever these executives want to do to increase their personal wealth and standing, no matter the harm to the company’s long-term prospects, or its employees and their long-term prospects, is fair game.

Meanwhile, the government has become a modern version of the Catholic Church, weaving their cross-“country” influence to help pick and choose their preferred benefactors in this version of clashing medieval kingdoms. The “priests” of this “church,” blessing the armies of these border skirmishes, are mostly geriatrics, who tend towards narcissism, and have a hard time connecting with the concept of what these battles will leave the field looking like for the next generation.

The American experiment in democracy has ended. Corporate power and political influence, expanded by the Citizens United ruling, has officially killed it. Right now, Congress is holding hearings on anti-trust against companies like Facebook and Google, but we all know how this circus will turn out. If penalties are applied, it will amount to a slap on the back of the hand. If actual regulation is enacted, it will be written by the lobbyists, and actually help the company is was supposed to limit, by hurting their competitors more. And the fact that we can know both of these things with perfect certainty, based on lots of previous (in)action, tells you everything you need to know about regulatory capture.

And all the time this is playing out, the emperors of our “free” press have us arguing about personal political and religious differences. They took the turkey while we were pulling on the wishbone.

Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work

A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon.com Inc. delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs: smartphones dangling from trees. Contract delivery drivers are putting them there to get a jump on rivals seeking orders, according to people familiar with the matter.

Source: Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work

Our country has allowed companies like Amazon to extract and outsource an integral part of their product to individual contractors who are fighting over slivers of scraps. They have the money to hire real people, full-time, with benefits and everything — and pay for the fleet of vehicles — to deliver the products they sell from Whole Foods.

These delivery gig workers, in a lot of cases, aren’t even making enough to cover the mileage on their personal vehicles. Meanwhile, Amazon sits on $71.3B in cash, paid $0 in corporate taxes for the previous 2 years, paid just 1.2% this past year, and execs all laugh their way to the next exercised stock option worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As they say, “It’s good work if you can get it.”

People in Portland continue to protest, loot, and burn the place down, and the media wants us all to think this all about the Presidential race. In my opinion, this sort of inequality that’s really driving the rage behind these “protests.” Large companies in America have broken the implied social contract that a corporate charter implies. Amazon is just one of the handful of extreme examples. There are many others. It think it’s time to get serious about reforming unfettered capitalism, and limiting the size and scope of a company, based on how well they share their success with their employees.

The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into – The Weekly Dish

Yes, we still have an election. But barring a landslide victory for either party, it will be the beginning and not the end of the raw struggle for power in a fast-collapsing republic. In a close race, Trump will never concede, and if he is somehow forced to, he will mount a campaign from the outside to delegitimize the incoming president, backed by street-gangs and propaganda outfits.

Source: The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into – The Weekly Dish

The venerated Andrew Sullivan makes a lot of good points in this article, and seems to run a balanced take between both extremes, “pointing out the illiberalism on both sides,” as he says. However, this argument is something I see repeated a lot from people on the Left: that Trump is literally going to hijack the electoral process, and enshrine himself as a king. The notion is farcical. Why? Because I saw all the exact same arguments during the Obama years from people on the Right.

A big part of the continued problem with increasing polarity in our politics is because both sides are so entrenched in process that they can get away with drifting to the extremes.

Look at how much trouble there is in trying to pass obviously-needed legislation today. There are no policies being enacted. Except for the ACA, I can’t think of a single piece of significant policy law that’s been passed for 12 years. I’m sure people could pile on and tell me all the things I’ve missed, but the fact that I can’t think of them is problem enough. I watch this space more than most, and nothing else is coming to mind. And note that, when I say “policy,” I mean policy that helps people, and not corporations. All that’s been happening is that Congress is ramming through spending bills designed to enrich their campaign donors in the name of “saving” the economy. It’s deleterious and diabolical.

I can’t understand how someone can look at our log-jammed political process, our byzantine structure of state-level election laws, and the legacy institutions of the DNC and RNC, with their crazy parliamentary procedures, and think that any one person — no matter how ill-intentioned and popular — could sweep all that away in some move designed to create the second coming the Third Reich. Our system just doesn’t allow for it. There are too many checks and balances. There is too much paperwork already in place.

If my argument doesn’t persuade you, think of it this way: The people in the highest echelons of our government want to be “next.” They absolutely will not abide someone corrupting the well-worn-if-hopelessly-complex process to get there, including the other Republicans, waiting in the wings for their shot. So none of this talk is realistic, and I can’t consider it anything other than — to use the technical term — FUD. And both sides are doing it.

If someone were actually trying to understand “the illiberalism on both sides,” they would recognize this too.

On eve of bankruptcy, U.S. firms shower execs with bonuses – Reuters

Source: On eve of bankruptcy, U.S. firms shower execs with bonuses – Reuters

Every time there’s a hiccup now, the government slathers a bunch of money all over all the current-crony companies, when the entire point of a corporation was to bear the risk of the market to reap the rewards of the profit. (Which they then hide in offshored shell companies.) Companies are running this country. We have a corporatocracy. Or maybe just a plain old plutocracy. The older I get, the more this sort of thing makes me nauseous. Let these companies fail, and give smaller companies a chance to get their foot in the door to take up the slack. No matter how much of a fan you may be of capitalism, you have to admit that the “market” is completely broken. Whatever it is we have at this point, it is NOT capitalism.

U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation – Reuters

McGirt, 71, has served more than two decades in prison after being convicted in 1997 in Wagoner County in eastern Oklahoma of rape, lewd molestation and forcible sodomy of a 4-year-old girl. McGirt, who did not contest his guilt in the case before the justices, had appealed a 2019 ruling by a state appeals court in favor of Oklahoma.

Source: U.S. Supreme Court deems half of Oklahoma a Native American reservation – Reuters

Who continues to argue a 20-year-old case, at 71 years old, with a 1,000-year sentence, for raping a toddler, when you plead guilty to the charge?! A puppet, that’s who. People behind the scenes are using this case to wrest control of a large chunk of land away from the state of Oklahoma, and the power that will come with it. That is the real story. Who are the protagonists here? What’s their agenda? What have they been doing for the past 20 years?

US Government Gunning for the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Again…

Attorney General William P. Barr declared on Monday that a deadly shooting last month at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., was an act of terrorism, and he asked Apple in an unusually high-profile request to provide access to two phones used by the gunman.

Source: Barr Asks Apple to Unlock Pensacola Killer’s Phones, Setting Up Clash – The New York Times

Whatever tools we allow the government to have, to abridge, contravene, or curtail our Constitutional rights, in the name of terrorism, they will eventually use against anyone who disagrees with the presiding administration, regardless of party affiliation.

“Justice Department officials said that they need access to Mr. Alshamrani’s phones to see messages from encrypted apps like Signal or WhatsApp to determine whether he had discussed his plans with others at the base and whether he was acting alone or with help.”

For years, above all the hand-wringing about it, we heard Bush-administration officials tell us how they had obtained vital intelligence from the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” — i.e., torture — that the US government used against captured terrorists after 9/11. The Senate conducted an oversight investigation into these practices. The report was released in 2014. Turns out, it was all lies. All of it. They gained exactly zero actionable intelligence from a dozen years of those practices. Out of thousands of torture sessions. Not “a little.” Not “one.” ZERO.

And the two retired military “advisors” who led the “EIT” program walked away with $80,000,000 of our tax dollars.

(And, yes, I admit that it’s a shame that it took a movie to educate me about this, but, to be fair, the government took pains to limit the scope and exposure of the report, and pressured news sites to downplay coverage of the report.)

The deep state of the military-industrial-intelligence complex has repeatedly shown that they will utterly shamelessly lie and propagandize to control the narrative to their wishes, against any pressure of truth or justice or the American way in the Constitutional free press.

The only thing that has lead to capturing and killing other terrorists has been good, old-fashioned surveillance. In the aftermath of targeted killings like Bin Laden, we are said to have known their whereabouts most of the time, with a high-degree of certainty. No cell phones or apps needed at all, encrypted or otherwise. Yet we have this continual demand from law enforcement that they be allowed to decrypt all communications at will, in direct contravention of our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.

It’s not that I have anything to hide. Rather, I do not trust the opaque intentions of our government, particularly when so many whistleblowers have outed so many internal programs of malicious intent, and effectively zero oversight.

Amazon and AI/ML

At this point in our glorious capitalistic society, it’s the companies who are running the country, and they’ve got us by the short hairs. Who could have guessed, even 25 years ago, that the American public would literally fall over themselves letting companies track everything they do — and therefore surmise our thoughts — in the name of getting directions, seeing friends’ baby pics, and getting an illusory 3% discount on purchases?

Amazon has stated that they see themselves becoming a SHIPPING company. They’ll just send you the stuff they know you want and are ready for. On the odd occasion you DIDN’T want what they shipped you, you just send that one back. Once they get their predictions algorithms down to a theoretical 5% return rate, they’re going to start doing it. That’s how well they feel they can predict our thinking.

Amazon, Google, and Facebook all have an internal profile of every person in America. Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast too. Even if you don’t have an account, these profiles are built over decades of data collection, colluding with other tracking companies, and collating everything you do which could have left a digital trail.

These companies know IF you’ll vote, and who you’ll vote for, and they know how to present things to people on the fence in order to tip their preference. This is all in the documentary on Cambridge Analytica: The Great Hack. Yes, the last presidential election was hacked, but not by Russia. By the Republicans. In aggregate, it’s a definitive science. I don’t even see the platforms being used in this regard (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) necessarily preferring one party or the other, as long as they push votes to candidates that they feel will allow them to continue to extract rent from society, unchecked.

This is what we’re up against now. Silicon Valley has captured our government through campaign contributions, and they have the means to keep it in their pocket going forward. The United States is now a corporatocracy. We are now the United States of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon. (And Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and Apple.) Some people want to use the full weight of the US government to fight climate change. I would rather use it to break up the tech companies to manageable, competing pieces, and return to a government of, by, and for the people; not companies.