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Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#10141 User is offline   WellSpyder 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 07:23

View PostAl_U_Card, on 2018-May-15, 06:53, said:

Like all good quality control efforts, the net result should be comparable to the original otherwise sources of bias will be introduced and when that bias consistently favours one narrative, questions should be raised (same goes for the temperature records)

Thanks for posting these charts, Al. I know quite a lot about the construction of price indices so am well able to understand that it does not make much sense, for instance, to try to measure today's inflation rate by looking at what is happening to the price of items that were the chief components of consumption in 1980. I know much less about the construction of temperature records, etc, but if the charts that you like posting on those issues are comparable to these CPI charts then I know how little weight to give to them.
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#10142 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 08:51

View Postldrews, on 2018-May-15, 06:49, said:

It seems to me that one of the differences in the conversations stems from whether you believe the world is a collection of friendly family members or a collection of competing nations. Those are not mutually exclusive but do give rise to different premises. I hold to the latter view.

The view should be more like a collection of corporations, each with their own specialties. They trade the fruits of their labors with each other, and everyone benefits.

Yes, there can be some overlap in their products, so there will be competition between those parties to sell to everyone else. This is all part of the free market, which is not a bad thing.

Protectionism returns us to a time where every country was on their own. This was reasonable before technology made global trade cheap. Now it makes no sense.

There was a time when most people grew their own food and made their own clothes. A typical person owned about two changes of clothing, and maybe one nice suit for church.

#10143 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 09:00

View PostAl_U_Card, on 2018-May-15, 06:53, said:

I readily accept that changes can and should be made to any system to limit inaccuracy and improve precision. Like all good quality control efforts, the net result should be comparable to the original otherwise sources of bias will be introduced and when that bias consistently favours one narrative, questions should be raised (same goes for the temperature records) The MIT data are interesting and require further study. Thanks for the link.

A summary of the methodology. Forbes

Changes made and their effect on the "real"(?) inflation rate. Shadowstats

Posted Image

Posted Image

In The intellectual cesspool of the inflation truthers, Matt O'Brien at WaPo notes:

Quote

Shadow Stats says that it applies the old methods to the new data to get the "real" inflation rate, which is supposedly in the double digits. But that's not true. It quietly admits that it's not recalculating anything. It's just taking the official inflation numbers and adding a semi-arbitrary constant to them.

That's not a method. It's a punchline.

Perianne Boring's Forbes piece is the worst thing I've ever read in Forbes. Putting you back on ignore bro.
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#10144 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 09:54

View Postbarmar, on 2018-May-15, 08:51, said:

The view should be more like a collection of corporations, each with their own specialties. They trade the fruits of their labors with each other, and everyone benefits.

Yes, there can be some overlap in their products, so there will be competition between those parties to sell to everyone else. This is all part of the free market, which is not a bad thing.

Protectionism returns us to a time where every country was on their own. This was reasonable before technology made global trade cheap. Now it makes no sense.

There was a time when most people grew their own food and made their own clothes. A typical person owned about two changes of clothing, and maybe one nice suit for church.


To make that worldview work, small-government libertarians resort to a fictionalized utopia, a variation of whataboutism mixed with the True Scot fallacy. It is amazing how much some people discount governments' actions that were positives in their own lives, like banking systems, public education, fair housing practices, safe food, safe water, safe drugs, operating sewers, national defense, all types of policing, relatively honest investment systems and on and on - none perfect but all much safer because of the power of the government.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10145 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 10:01

View Posty66, on 2018-May-15, 09:00, said:

In The intellectual cesspool of the inflation truthers, Matt O'Brien at WaPo notes:


Perianne Boring's Forbes piece is the worst thing I've ever read in Forbes. Putting you back on ignore bro.


Funny, when you start with a preconceived notion - the government is evil, climate change is a hoax, a giant cabal controls the world - it is easy to find supporting nonsense to re-enforce the nonsense that is nonsense to accept in the first place.

Better to start with a clean slate and try to uncover evidence of reality - and let your opinions follow the evidence.

(Note: when 97% means that 3% disagree, it does not mean that 3%=97% so that something is unsettled. It means that science is working as it always does.)
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10146 User is offline   ldrews 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 10:39

View Postbarmar, on 2018-May-15, 08:51, said:

The view should be more like a collection of corporations, each with their own specialties. They trade the fruits of their labors with each other, and everyone benefits.

Yes, there can be some overlap in their products, so there will be competition between those parties to sell to everyone else. This is all part of the free market, which is not a bad thing.

Protectionism returns us to a time where every country was on their own. This was reasonable before technology made global trade cheap. Now it makes no sense.

There was a time when most people grew their own food and made their own clothes. A typical person owned about two changes of clothing, and maybe one nice suit for church.


Except that you ignore the use of force by one of the corporations to seize the other. In a world of angels no laws are needed. In a world of humans they are required.

"Free markets" exist only as long as everyone behaves. Unfortunately that seems to be the exception.
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#10147 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 13:15

View Postldrews, on 2018-May-15, 10:39, said:


"Free markets" exist only as long as everyone behaves. Unfortunately that seems to be the exception.


Please note: Economists have established a whole bunch of conditions that are necessary for free markets to work in an efficient manner.

"Everyone behaves" is not one of them.
Alderaan delenda est
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#10148 User is offline   ldrews 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 13:31

View Posthrothgar, on 2018-May-15, 13:15, said:

Please note: Economists have established a whole bunch of conditions that are necessary for free markets to work in an efficient manner.

"Everyone behaves" is not one of them.


I fail to see how, if I put a gun to your head, we would have anything resembling a "free market".
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#10149 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-15, 14:10

View Posthrothgar, on 2018-May-15, 13:15, said:

Please note: Economists have established a whole bunch of conditions that are necessary for free markets to work in an efficient manner.

"Everyone behaves" is not one of them.


It works in the novel... B-)
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10150 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-16, 10:22

Oh, look, another Dennison "accomplishment"!

Quote

Democrats flipped another seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Tuesday night, bringing the total number of state legislative flips to 41 since Donald Trump’s inauguration.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10151 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2018-May-16, 16:31

Not sure whether Mueller or Trump is the one who buried the other two SARs

https://www.newyorke...nancial-records

If this was done at the behest of Trump or one of his cronies...
Alderaan delenda est
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#10152 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-16, 19:42

Treasury seems to lose a lot of paper...

Wall Street Journal:

Quote

By Richard Rubin
Sept. 28, 2017 6:41 p.m. ET
25 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department has taken down a 2012 economic analysis that contradicts Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s argument that workers would benefit the most from a corporate income tax cut.

https://www.wsj.com/...ners-1506638463
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10153 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-May-17, 04:09

From Gardiner Harris' NYT story about Rex Tillerson's commencement speech at VMI in Lexington, Virginia:

Quote

Former Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson warned on Wednesday that American democracy was threatened by a growing “crisis of ethics and integrity.”

“If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom,” he said in a commencement address at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va.

“When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth even on what may seem the most trivial matters, we go wobbly on America,” he said.

The dude abides, for a day anyway, which is a start.
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#10154 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2018-May-17, 05:56

5 USC App. 4 §§101(a), (f)(1), 102(a)(4) & 104(a)(2)(B) make it a federal crime for the president to knowingly and willfully file a financial disclosure that fails to report a liability of more than $10,000 owed to a creditor.
Alderaan delenda est
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#10155 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-17, 07:50

Consolidating information from the Daily Beast:

A) On the day he arranged the meeting the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, Trump Jr. placed two calls to blocked numbers. After the meeting ended without the promised dirt, Trump Jr. placed another call to a blocked number.

B) The phone calls began on June 6, 2016. That morning, Trump Jr. received an email from Rob Goldstone, music producer for Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov. Goldstone wrote that the Kremlin “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary” and Trump Jr. should talk to Emin to arrange a meeting to obtain it.

C) Minutes after speaking to Emin, Trump Jr. placed a four-minute call to a blocked number.

D) Minutes later, Trump called Emin again, scheduled the meeting for June 9, and then placed another call to a blocked number that lasted 11 minutes.

E) Two days later, candidate Trump announced he would give a “major speech” the following week where “we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.”

F) The following day, June 9, Trump Jr. met Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower where she alleged Democratic donors stole money from Russia.

E) After the meeting ended without the promised dirt, Trump Jr. had a three-minute call with a blocked number.

F) Trump’s promised speech on the Clintons never happened.

G) When asked if his father used a blocked number on any phone, Trump Jr. told the committee: “I don’t know.” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, on the other hand, testified that Trump’s “primary residence has a blocked [phone] line.”

Hey, Mr. Mueller,
Can you help me make this call?
The number on the matchbook is old and faded
He's livin' without friends
and his best third wife again
a woman that he never knew from a country he hated
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10156 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2018-May-17, 13:13

View PostWinstonm, on 2018-May-17, 07:50, said:

G) When asked if his father used a blocked number on any phone, Trump Jr. told the committee: “I don’t know.” Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, on the other hand, testified that Trump’s “primary residence has a blocked [phone] line.”


This is very unfair to Don Jr. He probably barely knows Don Sr and probably doesn't even know if Don Sr owns a phone or where he lives and works. Is he supposed to know these things about anybody in the country?

I know that I frequently call blocked numbers without knowing why I called them and then talk for minutes without knowing who I am talking to. Doesn't everybody do this?
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#10157 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-17, 13:42

View Postjohnu, on 2018-May-17, 13:13, said:


I know that I frequently call blocked numbers without knowing why I called them and then talk for minutes without knowing who I am talking to. Doesn't everybody do this?


I don't remember.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10158 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-May-17, 21:12

It used to be called the "protection racket".

Quote

Associated Press LOLITA C. BALDOR and ZEKE MILLER, Associated Press 7 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump laid out a stark choice for North Korea's Kim Jong Un ahead of their planned summit next month: Abandon nuclear weapons and be rewarded with "protections," or risk being overthrown and possible death if the arsenal remains.


Don Trumpeone will make him an offer he can't refuse.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#10159 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-May-18, 06:42

From Does Calling Out Racism Change Anyone’s Mind? by Max Fisher and Amanda Taub at NYT:

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When it comes to racism, should the rule be “see something, say something”? Or, in these fraught and polarized times, could that be counterproductive, causing a backlash that makes people double down on the language or behavior in question?

Obviously there are many reasons to talk about racism when you see it. You might want to distance yourself from the statement or act in question. Or to demonstrate solidarity with its targets.

But often, people criticize an act or statement of implicit racism because they want to change minds: to draw attention to the racism in order to prevent it happening again in the future, or to convince others to distance themselves from it.

But does that work? Or does it just make people feel defensive, and therefore unwilling to listen to the critique at all?

That question has been coming up pretty frequently in the conversations and research we follow. We thought it might be helpful to round up a few key takeaways from some of the experts we’ve spoken to.

The bottom line: while there’s no evidence that calling out racism pushes people into defensively agreeing with racist views, the evidence on whether, and when, it’s possible to change people’s minds is mixed and very nuanced.

More ..
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#10160 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-May-18, 06:55

From How Baby Boomers Broke America by Stephen Brill at Time:

Quote

Lately, most Americans, regardless of their political leanings, have been asking themselves some version of the same question: How did we get here? How did the world’s greatest democracy and economy become a land of crumbling roads, galloping income inequality, bitter polarization and dysfunctional government?

As I tried to find the answer over the past two years, I discovered a recurring irony. About five decades ago, the core values that make America great began to bring America down. The First Amendment became a tool for the wealthy to put a thumb on the scales of democracy. America’s rightly celebrated dedication to due process was used as an instrument to block government from enforcing job-safety rules, holding corporate criminals accountable and otherwise protecting the unprotected. Election reforms meant to enhance democracy wound up undercutting democracy. Ingenious financial and legal engineering turned our economy from an engine of long-term growth and shared prosperity into a casino with only a few big winners.

These distinctly American ideas became the often unintended instruments for splitting the country into two classes: the protected and the unprotected. The protected overmatched, overran and paralyzed the government. The unprotected were left even further behind. And in many cases, the work was done by a generation of smart, hungry strivers who benefited from one of the most American values of all: meritocracy.

This is not to say that all is rotten in the United States. There are more opportunities available today for women, nonwhites and other minorities than ever. There are miracles happening daily in the nation’s laboratories, on the campuses of its world-class colleges and universities, in the offices of companies creating software for robots and medical diagnostics, in concert halls and on Broadway stages, and at joyous ceremonies swearing in proud new citizens.

Yet key measures of the nation’s public engagement, satisfaction and confidence – voter turnout, knowledge of public-policy issues, faith that the next generation will fare better than the current one, and respect for basic institutions, especially the government – are far below what they were 50 years ago, and in many cases have reached near historic lows.

It is difficult to argue that the cynicism is misplaced. From matters small – there are an average of 657 water-main breaks a day, for example – to large, it is clear that the country has gone into a tailspin over the last half-century, when John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier was about seizing the future, not trying to survive the present.

For too many, the present is hard enough. Income inequality has soared: inflation-adjusted middle-class wages have been nearly frozen for the last four decades, while earnings of the top 1% have nearly tripled. The recovery from the crash of 2008 – which saw banks and bankers bailed out while millions lost their homes, savings and jobs – was reserved almost exclusively for the wealthiest. Their incomes in the three years following the crash went up by nearly a third, while the bottom 99% saw an uptick of less than half of 1%. Only a democracy and an economy that has discarded its basic mission of holding the community together, or failed at it, would produce those results.

Meanwhile, the celebrated American economic-mobility engine is sputtering. For adults in their 30s, the chance of earning more than their parents dropped to 50% from 90% just two generations earlier. The American middle class, once an aspirational model for the world, is no longer the world’s richest.

Most Americans with average incomes have been left to fend for themselves, often at jobs where automation, outsourcing, the decline of union protection and the boss’s obsession with squeezing out every penny of short-term profit have eroded any sense of security. In 2017, household debt had grown higher than the peak reached in 2008 before the crash, with student and automobile loans staking growing claims on family paychecks.

Although the U.S. remains the world’s richest country, it has the third-highest poverty rate among the 35 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), behind only Turkey and Israel. Nearly 1 in 5 American children lives in a household that the government classifies as “food insecure,” meaning they are without “access to enough food for active, healthy living.”

Beyond that, too few basic services seem to work as they should. America’s airports are an embarrassment, and a modern air-traffic control system is more than 25 years behind its original schedule. The power grid, roads and rails are crumbling, pushing the U.S. far down international rankings for infrastructure quality. Despite spending more on health care and K-12 education per capita than most other developed countries, health care outcomes and student achievement also rank in the middle or worse globally. Among the 35 OECD countries, American children rank 30th in math proficiency and 19th in science.

American politicians talk about “American exceptionalism” so habitually that it should have its own key on their speechwriters’ laptops. Is this the exceptionalism they have in mind?

Perhaps they should look at their own performance, which is best described as pathetic. Congress has not passed a comprehensive budget on time without omnibus bills since 1994. There are more than 20 registered lobbyists for every member of Congress. Most are deployed to block anything that would tax, regulate or otherwise threaten a deep-pocketed client.

Indeed, money has come to dominate everything so completely that the people we send to D.C. to represent us have been reduced to begging on the phone for campaign cash up to five hours a day and spending their evenings taking checks at fundraisers organized by those swarming lobbyists. A gerrymandering process has rigged easy wins for most of them, as long as they fend off primary challengers–which ensures that they will gravitate toward the special-interest positions of their donors and their party’s base, while racking up mounting deficits to pay for goods and services that cost more than budgeted, rarely work as promised and are seldom delivered on time.

...

It seems like a grim story. Except that the story isn’t over. During the past two years, as I have discovered the people and forces behind the 50-year U.S. tailspin, I have also discovered that in every arena the meritocrats commandeered there are now equally talented, equally driven achievers who have grown so disgusted by what they see that they are pushing back.

From Baruch College in Manhattan to the University of California, Irvine, more colleges are working to break down the barriers of the newly entrenched meritocracy. Elite Eastern institutions such as Amherst, Vassar and Princeton are using aggressive outreach campaigns to attract applicants who might otherwise be unaware of the schools’ generous financial-aid packages.

Entrepreneurs like Jukay Hsu, a Harvard-educated Iraq War veteran who runs a nonprofit called C4Q out of a converted zipper factory in Queens, are making eye-opening progress with training programs aimed at lifting those displaced by automation or trade back into middle-class software-engineering jobs. “Some of the smartest, hardest-working people I’ve ever met were soldiers who didn’t graduate from college,” says Hsu. (Disclosure: I am an uncompensated board member of C4Q.)

Even Washington is poised to benefit from the new wave of achievers. Issue One, a nonprofit ensconced in an office on lobbyists’ row on K Street, is fighting for campaign-finance reforms and pushing legislation that would limit the influence of lobbyists by reining in their checkbooks. The group is supported by a growing band of disillusioned politicians from both parties. Better Markets, a well-funded lobbying organization that squares off against the usual lobbyists and is filled with people whose meritocracy credentials match those of their adversaries, is going after continuing abuses and lack of accountability on Wall Street. Two other organizations, the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Partnership for Public Service, are preparing blueprints for civil-service reform, tax reform, better budgeting and contracting, and infrastructure investment–all of which can attract bipartisan support if and when our elected officials finally get pushed to act.

Although their work is often frustrating, the worsening status quo seems to energize those who are pushing back. “My kid complained the other day that he still couldn’t play the violin, even though he’d been practicing for two days,” says Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service. “Well, yeah, that’s true, but you have to keep at it. Persistence is an underrated virtue.”

Stier and the others believe that the country will overrun the lobbyists and cross over the moats when enough Americans see that we need leaders who are prepared and intelligent, who can channel our frustration rather than exploit it, and who can unite the middle class and the poor rather than divide them. They are certain that when the country’s breakdown touches enough people directly and causes enough damage, the officeholders who depend on those people for their jobs will be forced to act.

The new achievers are doing what they do not because they are gluttons for frustration, but because they believe that America can be put back on the right course. They are laying the groundwork for the feeling of disgust to be channeled into a restoration.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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