The Powell Memo

1971- the push to bring government back under the thumb of the corporate plutocrats.

GOTV

Never forget how deeply Republicans hate our traditions of democratic self-government.

Their project is to tear it all down and replace with a corporate plutocracy.

Duty To Warn

#UNTRUTH- Mini-Film from DSI Vid on Vimeo.

About That AT&T Thing

Sorry not sorry, AT&T, but for this, you deserve nothing but a big fat

FUCK YOU.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Trump’s favorite channel, One America News, was never ‘news’ at all

The whitewashing and denialism of the Jan. 6 insurrection started at One America News on that very same day.

As President Donald Trump tried to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election — inciting a deadly riot along the way — the cable channel’s brass were sending an all-too-clear message to their team about how to cover this horrifying event.

“Please DO NOT say ‘Trump Supporters Storm Capitol. . . .’ Simply call them demonstrators or protestors. . . . DO NOT CALL IT A RIOT!!!” came the impassioned email directive from a news director to the staff.

The next day, OAN’s top boss, founder Robert Herring Sr., ordered producers to get in line behind the president, as he floated the conspiracy theory that it wasn’t Trump supporters breaking those windows and storming those barricades — that it was the leftist movement antifa instead. exposé

“We want to report all the things Antifa did yesterday. I don’t think it was Trump people but let’s investigate,” the 80-year-old chief executive wrote in an email. There was simply nothing to support this far-fetched theory: The FBI has found no evidence of antifa involvement, and almost all of the hundreds of suspects charged have been well-documented Trump supporters; some are members of white-supremacy or other far-right extremist groups.

When Reuters, the global news agency, published its two-part investigation last week of OAN, the most startling finding was that AT&T indirectly provided 90 percent of the channel’s revenue, after letting it be known that it was eager to host a new conservative cable network.

Yes, the world’s largest communications company played a major role in creating and sustaining the far-right channel that spins wacky ideas, promotes fraudulent covid-19 cures and, in its fervor, makes the pro-Trump market leader, Fox News, look almost reasonable. (AT&T has challenged aspects of Reuters’ reporting and said that the company, through its offshoot, DirecTV, provides “viewpoints across the political spectrum.”)

But just as noteworthy as AT&T’s involvement was the way Reuters’s John Shiffman pulled back the curtain on how the San Diego-based network operates, relying in part on court documents.

What they showed is that OAN is dedicated not to the “news,” which is part of its name, but to propaganda, directed from the top.

“If there was any story involving Trump, we had to only focus on either the positive information or basically create positive information,” Marissa Gonzales, an former OAN producer who resigned last year, told Reuters. “It was never, never the full truth.”

That’s what was going on in the background. It adds valuable — if appalling — perspective to what we already knew about OAN.

We knew that Trump appreciates the blind loyalty, promoting the channel more than 100 times on his Twitter feed, often as he complained about Fox News’s failure to back him fully and at all times. We knew that Herring was far from shy about his partiality, tweeting in early January: “If anyone thinks we will throw the best President America has had, in my 79 years, under the bus, you are wrong.”

And we knew that OAN let two of its on-air personalities raise more than $600,000 to help fund a private “audit” of the presidential vote in Arizona. One of them even worked part-time for the Trump recount effort’s legal team.

It’s no wonder the voting machine company Dominion is suing OAN for defamation, for spreading and endorsing false reports that it helped steal the 2020 election from Trump. Dominion’s suit describes the problem succinctly: “OAN helped create and cultivate an alternative reality where up is down (and) pigs have wings.”

But OAN maintains that this all falls under protected free speech or opinion, including a series of pseudo-documentaries about unproven election fraud that MyPillow chief executive and Trump loyalist Mike Lindell paid to put on the air. A federal judge over the summer suggested the courts may not accept that defense, as he allowed a number of Dominion’s related defamation suits, including one against Lindell, to go forward.

Trump’s relentless misinformation campaign, aided by his loyal media allies, has clearly gotten through to millions of Americans. Although there is no basis in fact, no evidence to support it, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found in April that about half of Republicans believe the siege was either a nonviolent protest or caused by left-wing forces “trying to make Trump look bad.” A majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that widespread voter fraud robbed him of a second presidential term.

OAN’s television reach may not be vast: Most Americans won’t encounter it when they turn on their TV. But its website’s offerings very well may show up in their social media feeds. Typical of these was a three-paragraph article Friday, featuring Trump’s official statement slamming the “Unselect Committee of Partisan Democrats,” under this headline: “Report: President Trump Fights Democrat-Led ‘Probes’ Into Jan. 6 Protest.”

In terms of spreading misinformation and helping Trump deny the devastating realities of the Jan6 insurrection, OAN is punching way above its weight.

It's time - past time - for some good old-fashioned Teddy Roosevelt-style Trust-Bustin'

The AT&T Empire

• HBO
• HBO2
• HBO Comedy
• HBO Family
• HBO Latino
• HBO Signature
• HBO Zone
• HBO Go
• HBO Now
• HBO on Demand
• HBO Home Entertainment
• RED by HBO
• HBO Films
• HBO Miniseries
• HBO Sports
• HBO Entertainment
• HBO Kids
• HBO Original Productions
• HBO Documentary Films
• HBO International
• HBO Asia
• HBO Europe
• HBO Hungary
• HBO India
• HBO Poland
• HBO Romania
• HBO Latin America Group
• HBO Latin America
• HBO Brazil
• Cinemax
• MoreMax
• 5StarMax
• ActionMax
• Cinemáx
• MovieMax
• OuterMax
• ThrillerMax
• Cinemax on Demand
• Cinemax Latin America
• Warner Channel
• E! Latin America
• Turner Broadcasting System
• Turner Broadcasting International
• Millennium Media Group
• Turner Broadcasting System Latin America
• Chilevisión
• Turner Entertainment Networks
• truTV
• TBS
• TNT
• Studio T
• Turner Studios
• TCM
• TCM Productions
• FilmStruck
• Turner Sports
• Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network
• Bleacher Report
• Universal Wrestling Corporation (UWC)
• TBS, Inc. Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media (AYAKM) division
• Cartoon Network
• Cartoon Network Productions
• Cartoon Network Studios
• Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe
• Adult Swim
• Boomerang
• Williams Street
• Williams Street West
• Williams Street Records
• Hulu (10%) (in partnership with Comcast and The Walt Disney Company)
• NonStop Television
• Mezzo
• Cartoon Network Nordic
• TNT7
• CNN News Group
• CNN
• HLN
• Great Big Story
• International
• TCM & Cartoon Network / Asia Pacific
• Cartoonito
• TNT Latin America
• Pogo
• I.Sat
• HTV
• Tooncast
• Turner Japan K.K. (formerly Japan Entertainment Network K.K. and Japan Image Communications Co.,Ltd.)
• Cartoon Network
• Boomerang
• TABI Channel
• Tabitele
• MONDO TV
• Mondo Mahjong TV
• Joint Ventures
• Turner Entertainment Media Networks Limited
• CNN Chile
• CETV
• CNN-IBN
• CNNj
• CNN TÜRK
• CNN.co.jp (Japanese)
• Zee Turner Ltd (India)
• Boing
• Turner International India Private Limited
• WB Channel
• Cartoon Network (India)
• Websites/Broadband Services
• CallToons
• Super Deluxe
• Beme Inc.
• Technology
• iStreamPlanet
• LTS Garðbær Studios
• Wit Puppets
• Le Gué Enterprises BV

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

• DC Entertainment
• Warner Bros. Consumer Products
• Warner Bros. Digital Networks
• Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures
• Warner Bros. Pictures International
• Warner Bros. Museum
• Warner Bros. Pictures Group
• Warner Bros. Pictures
• Music
• Domestic Distribution
• Warner Animation Group
• Warner Bros. Family Entertainment
• DC Films
• New Line Cinema
• Turner Entertainment Co.
• WaterTower Music
• Warner Bros. Domestic Distribution
• Castle Rock Entertainment
• The Wolper Organization
• Flagship Entertainment (China) (49%) (joint venture with China Media Capital (41%) and TVB (10%))
• Warner Bros. Television Group
• Blue Ribbon Content
• Warner Bros. Television
• Warner Horizon Television
• Warner Bros. Television Distribution
• Warner Bros. International Television Production
• Warner Bros. Television Productions UK
• Ricochet
• Twenty Twenty
• Wall to Wall
• Renegade Pictures
• Yalli Productions
• Eyeworks
• Telepictures
• Momlogic
• Alloy Entertainment
• eleveneleven
• The CW (50% with CBS Corporation)
• Warner Bros. Animation
• Hanna-Barbera Cartoons
• Fandango Media (30% with NBCUniversal)
• Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group
• Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
• Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
• WB Games
• Avalanche Software
• Monolith Productions
• NetherRealm Studios
• Portkey Games
• Rocksteady Studios
• TT Games
• TT Games Publishing
• TT Fusion
• Traveller's Tales
• TT Animation
• Playdemic
• Turbine
• WB Games Montréal
• WB Games San Francisco
• WB Games New York

Content libraries & investments

• Adify (Acquired by Cox)
• Admeld (Acquired by Google)
• Arroyo (Acquired by Cisco)
• BigBand Networks (Acquired by ARRIS)
• BroadLogic (Acquired by Broadcom)
• Entropic Communications (IPO in December 2007)
• GoldPocket (Acquired by Tandberg TV)
• Glu Mobile (IPO in March 2007)
• Kosmix (Acquired by Walmart)
• Maker Studios (Acquired by The Walt Disney Company)
• MediaVast (Acquired by Getty Images)
• Meebo (Acquired by Google)
• N2 Broadband (Acquired by Tandberg TV)
• NuvoTV (Acquired by Fuse Networks, LLC)
• PlanetOut (IPO in October 2004)
• PlaySpan (Acquired by Visa)
• ScanScout (Acquired by Tremor Media)
• SkyStream Networks (Acquired by Tandberg TV)
• Tumri (Acquired by Collective)
• Vindigo (Acquired by For-Side)
• Other units
• Global Media Group
• Time Warner Medialab
• Time Warner Investments - venture capital unit
• Adaptly
• Bluefin Labs
• Conviva
• CrowdStar
• Dynamic Signal
• Double Fusion
• Everyday Health
• Exent
• Gaia Online
• tvtag previously as GetGlue
• Simulmedia
• Tremor Video
• Trion Worlds
• VisibleWorld

We All Fall Down

When you spend several decades repeating the mantra that government is bad, and that only stupid people would pay taxes to support a bad thing like government:

NYT: (pay wall)

Lax Enforcement Let South Florida Towers Skirt Inspections for Years

The collapse of Champlain Towers South has prompted a review of hundreds of older high-rises. Some buildings ignored or delayed action on serious maintenance issues.

Out of the smoke and cinders of a city convulsed by race riots and an immigration crisis, the towers kept rising, each new development remaking Miami’s skyline in the early 1980s and marking an ambitious bet that the battered community would turn itself around.

Over the next 40 years, high-rises like Champlain Towers, in the sleepy, beachfront enclave of Surfside, stood witness to Miami’s remarkable rebound, luxurious, multistory symbols of endurance — of booms and busts but also the harsh South Florida elements: scorching sun and driving rains, battering winds and slashing saltwater.

Florida’s high-rise building regulations have long been among the strictest in the nation. But after parts of Champlain Towers South tumbled down on June 24, killing at least 24 people and leaving 121 unaccounted for, evidence has mounted that those rules have been enforced unevenly by local governments, and sometimes not at all.

Miami-Dade County officials said last week that they were prioritizing reviews of 24 multistory buildings that either had failed major structural or electrical inspections required after 40 years or had not submitted the reports in the first place. But the county’s own records show that 17 of those cases had been open for a year or more. Two cases were against properties owned by the county itself. The oldest case had sat unresolved since 2008.

In the tiny town of Bay Harbor Islands, two teardrops of land in Biscayne Bay that lie just north and west of Surfside, more than a dozen multistory structures or large commercial buildings that had been scheduled to turn in inspection reports had not submitted them as of last week, records show. One property appeared to be more than seven years late in filing.

The city of North Miami Beach had tried and failed for years to bring a 10-story condo building within its borders, Crestview Towers, into compliance with the 40-year recertification requirements. When the building’s condo association finally submitted the required paperwork last week, about nine years late, it documented critical safety concerns, a city spokesman said. Officials evacuated the building on Friday.

Meanwhile, the same local governments were pursuing a haphazard approach to identifying other potentially unsafe buildings across the region, with the age and height criteria that would prompt added scrutiny varying from one place to the next. At least one local government, the village of Key Biscayne, was opting to conduct no extra inspections at all, an official there said.

Even if building auditors focus only on towers of 10 stories or more that were built in the 1970s and 1980s, the task would still be daunting. An analysis of property records by The New York Times shows that at least 270 such buildings dot the skylines of Miami-Dade County’s cities, villages and towns, with dozens more in the county’s unincorporated reaches.

Investigators have yet to determine whether the Champlain Towers South collapse was caused by inherent structural problems, a lack of needed maintenance or some other, unknown factor. They were forced to pause work at the site last week amid concerns that the portions of the building that were still standing had become unstable and could collapse at any time. On Sunday, officials demolished the remainder of the building as a tropical storm bore down on Florida from the Caribbean.

The patchwork response to the Champlain Towers South collapse, and lack of answers about what caused the building to fall, were doing little to ease the minds of South Florida condo residents, some of whom had begun to eye their waterfront homes with sudden fear. Such concerns only intensified over the weekend after local officials evacuated a second building, this time a three-story structure in Miami Beach with 24 condo units, after the authorities found a failure in the flooring system and “excessive deflection on an exterior wall.”

“Every time there is a noise or a rumble, you start to think, How safe is this building?” Albert M. Barg, 77, said of his 23-story condo building in Sunny Isles Beach. The answer, he added, was “I don’t know.”

Dyann Piltser, 49, said she had put her Sunny Isles Beach condo up for sale. “I just don’t want to live in such a large building,” she said, “with so many elements beyond your control.”
Built Amid Turmoil

Miami is packed with multistory buildings that have spent decades exposed to sun, rain, winds and saltwater.

Some went up during Miami’s Art Deco heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. Others rose during an era of explosive growth in the 1950s and 1960s. Records show that more than 57 high-rises were built on barrier islands surrounding the city from 1970 to 1979.

The buildings of the early 1980s took shape against a backdrop of turmoil and economic uncertainty. In May 1980, rioters looted and burned large areas of the city, enraged at the acquittal of four police officers who had beaten an unarmed Black man to death during a traffic stop. Scores of Cubans and Haitians were coming ashore each day in a mass immigration event that would leave Miami’s public safety and social service agencies overwhelmed under the weight of some 150,000 new arrivals.

The combined effect was an exodus that pushed down property values in the city and surrounding communities, which had their own problems. South Beach was so awash in crime in 1980 that many were afraid even to walk its streets, said Merrett R. Stierheim, who was the county manager at the time. “I remember putting my feet on the floor and asking myself, ‘What in the hell is next?’” Mr. Stierheim recalled of those days. “It was a long struggle for Miami-Dade and all our cities to get a handle on this.”

In 1981, the year the Champlain Towers buildings were completed, Time magazine published a cover story titled, “Paradise Lost?” that singled out South Florida for its high rates of violent crime and drug smuggling.

The project’s developer, a Toronto lawyer and businessman named Nathan Reiber, who died in 2014, had run afoul of Canadian tax authorities before moving to Florida in the 1970s, and he eventually would plead guilty to a tax evasion charge in Canada, The Hamilton Spectator in Ontario reported. While the Champlain Towers were being built, other developers criticized city officials for accepting campaign contributions from the project in exchange for helping it along.

Grand jury inquiries through the 1980s and 1990s documented slipshod work by Miami-area building inspectors, though much of that scrutiny focused on inspections of single-family homes. Other criminal investigations have singled out government employees for taking gifts from developers, including, most recently, the top building official in Miami Beach.

Still, there was no evidence that high-rise buildings constructed during that era have been any more prone to problems than others, engineering experts and builders said.

Residents and visitors of older buildings across the Miami area in recent days have posted photos and videos of failing concrete and other problems on social media, but such defects are often superficial and not cause for alarm. “All concrete cracks — it’s made to crack,” said Allyn E. Kilsheimer, a structural engineer hired by Surfside to help investigate the Champlain Towers collapse. “The issue is to understand what the crack is, what might have caused it if anything, and then making sure it doesn’t cause more problems.”

Property data shows that more than 30 high-rises were built in coastal Miami areas from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, and records and interviews suggest that their states of repair vary widely from building to building.

Eleven of those towers were 12 stories or higher and built in the three years preceding the construction of Champlain Towers South. All are now past the age at which they should have submitted reports proving they had been scrutinized by an engineer for structural and electrical problems.

In one such report, an engineer noted last year that several concrete support columns had deteriorated in the parking garage of Winston Towers 700, a 23-story condo building in Sunny Isles Beach built in 1980. The problem most likely occurred as a result of pool chemicals leaking onto them from above, the engineer wrote, noting that while the columns appeared to have been properly shored up, they would have to be repaired before he would certify the building as safe. It was not clear whether the work was completed.

In another report, for the 19-story Bal Harbour 101 on Collins Avenue, less than two miles north of where the Champlain Towers stood, the engineering inspector documented a need for concrete repairs to the pool deck and waterproofing of the building’s north deck but concluded that the overall building structure was in good condition. Even so, he noted, concrete spalling and corrosion of reinforcement metal in the pool’s pump room would require significant structural repairs.


Recertification regulations required the building to complete an inspection report around 2018, when the building turned 40. But the process lagged, and records show that the village did not certify that the high-rise was in compliance until July 1 — a week after the Champlain Towers South collapse.

The condo building’s manager, Igor Bond, said Friday that he had been getting calls from concerned residents for a week. “They’re asking me about how safe the building is,” Mr. Bond said, “and we’re telling them, ‘Absolutely!’”

The condo association’s president did not respond to a request for comment.
Uneven Enforcement

Unlike the standards for single-family homes, which were blasted by critics after entire neighborhoods were wiped out by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the regulations for multistory structures have been among the toughest in the nation since the 1950s, builders and engineers said. One major reason: Many of the area’s first high-rises went up along the ocean, and officials wanted to be sure they could stand up to hurricane winds, flooding and rain.

“Permits and the codes were always tough in South Florida,” said Oscar Sklar, an architect and builder who helped complete Champlain Towers East in Surfside in 1994. “I don’t think it was any more lenient before than now.”

The regulations became even tougher in the 1970s, when the collapse of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration building led to the 40-year recertification requirements.

They were strengthened once more in the mid-1980s, after a condo complex in Cocoa Beach, which is about 60 miles east of Orlando, collapsed during construction, killing 11 workers. That change required developers to hire independent inspectors to monitor the structural integrity of multistory development projects as they progressed, but it was not in effect when Champlain Towers South was going up in 1981.

Even so, buildings across the region have racked up histories of violations, allowed to linger in some cases as a result of spotty compliance and enforcement.

Bay Harbor Islands, for one, has struggled to bring all of its buildings into compliance with the tough recertification rules. Fourteen structures were supposed to submit 40-year inspection reports in 2020.

Six of those never responded to notices, records show. The town sent certified letters to three property owners, but the letters were returned. Four other buildings submitted reports but were rejected because the buildings needed to do more work.

As of last week, town records listed only one building as having successfully completed the process.

“The small number of buildings that have yet to comply with the 40-year inspection have already received a notice of violation, and they are subject to fines if they do not timely comply with the certification process,” Maria Lasday, the town manager of Bay Harbor Islands, said in an email.

In North Miami Beach, where Crestview Towers was evacuated on Friday, the city said it had fined the building for noncompliance repeatedly, though it was not clear whether it had ever collected any money from the property.

It was only after the Champlain Towers collapse that Crestview turned in its 40-year recertification report, which had been completed in January. A lawyer for the condo board said the board had assumed the engineer conducting the inspection had shared findings with the city, but that was apparently not the case.

“The very first page of the report, once we got it, said, ‘This building is unsafe,’” said Willis Howard, the spokesman for North Miami Beach.

Holman J. Pérez, who had to leave his eighth-floor apartment on Friday night with his wife and two children, faulted the building’s management but also the city.

“Why did the city allow this?” he said, standing outside the building. “How can they have a report that was made in January and just not turn it in to anyone? Aren’t they the ones in charge of this?”

Unfortunately, this may turn out to be a very good example of why you don't want "the free market in charge of things".

First, because any correction is always after-the-fact - after people have been hurt and killed.

And second, because "the free market" will now begin the process of ducking responsibility - trying to lay it off on the other guy - or more probably blaming "bad government", as if the rent-seekers haven't been busily fucking up the government all along, intending to make it bad - so they'd have a patsy they could blame when the shit went down.

Truth In Government

Let's go see what doin' in Puerto Rico.

What They Don't Tell Us

No matter what happens, and no matter what the Press Poodles manage to dig up while it's happening, we never get to know everything we should know about any big event.

There's always a few details - usually a whole metric fuck ton of details - that we never get to see.

Once in a while, somebody cracks a little and we get The Pentagon Papers, but that's the exception instead of the rule. And given our commitment to "peaceful transition of power", we've evolved part of the system into a game of Stall 'Em.

Somebody shits the bed, and there's a bad reaction, and the people in power (some of them) get thrown out and new people come in, but the PR guys get to work and before ya know it, a few years have passed, and power has transitioned again, and deals are made and those details are lost until historians suss it out (sorta) and then we learn about some pretty fucking important stuff 30 years after it woulda made a real difference for us.

And here we are again.

WaPo:

U.S. deaths soared in early weeks of pandemic, far exceeding number attributed to covid-19

An analysis of federal data for the first time estimates excess deaths - the number beyond what would normally be expected - during that period

In the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to covid-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.

The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.

Is there terminology that's any creepier than "Excess Deaths"?

Anyway - yes, dammit, we have a right to know stuff. Most stuff. Certain stuff. Stuff that wouldn't get the good guys killed if it we knew about it - assuming of course the good guys are who we're told they are, and we're not just being sold another Vaporware upgrade, and only because I believe the guys in charge as long as they're my brand of guys and as long as I'm relatively sure they aren't just fuckin' with me, pretending to be my guys when they really aren't.

So that's clear, right?

Anyway also too, one of the really big things about our slide into this Daddy State authoritarian ocean of shit is the degradation of our official-government-supposed-to-be nonpartisan data gathering and reporting.

The Daddy State must control the flow of information if it's to have any chance of dictating reality to us.

That's why they insist on not properly funding the research at various entities to keep us informed on the public health aspects of guns and pollution and the other profit-over-people activities of this bullshit version of Capitalism that they're always pimping.

What's In The Bill?

Imagine the temptation - TWO TRILLION DOLLARS ($2,000,000,000,000.00).

The "smallest" tranche is about $450 Million, and how hard is it gonna be, really, to gin up some bullshit "company" that gets a teens-weensy little grant of $25 million or so.

We'd better have some really really really heavy scrutiny on the receipts. The gang we've got in charge is just champin' at the bit - straining for a chance to steal every dime they can fuckin' carry.

Kelsey Snell, NPR:

The Senate has passed a roughly $2 trillion coronavirus response bill intended to speed relief across the American economy. This is the third aid package from Congress and is meant to keep businesses and individuals afloat during an unprecedented freeze on the majority of American life.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., described the legislation, known as the CARES Act, as necessary emergency relief and vowed to put partisanship aside to get it done.

"No economic policy can fully end the hardship so long as the public health requires that we put so much of our commerce on ice," McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday. "This isn't even a stimulus package. It is emergency relief. Emergency relief. That's what this is."

There are six main groups that would see the widest-reaching impacts: individuals, small businesses, big corporations, hospitals and public health, federal safety net, state and local governments, and education.

More "Conservative" Fuckery

"Conservatives" play this game where they dangle your job in front of you and say, "Give us what we want or we'll fuck you over."

And then they fuck you over anyway, because that's how this game is played.

Sometimes, what they want is another tax cut. Sometimes it's the OK to siphon tax money directly out of the treasury and into their pockets.

When they're whining about "gubmint reggalations", it can mean anything from forcing us to accept the poisoning of the air and the water and the soil, to stripping away more of our labor rights (or consumer protections - or civil rights - or whatever) to making it impossible for most people to make their own way in the world without selling their souls for little more than subsistence level survival.

This is Daddy State plutocracy.

Catherine Rampell, WaPo:

Last week, amid damning new testimony in the impeachment inquiry, the White House tried to change the subject by touting one of its supposed wins: President Trump’s “historic deregulation.”

“We are now reducing the size, scope, and cost of Federal regulations for the first time in decades, and we are already seeing the incredible results,” Trump said. In a Cabinet meeting, senior officials likewise offered inflated economic numbers about Trump’s “gangbusters” deregulatory achievements.

In reality, Trump’s regulatory rollback has largely been a bust. In some cases, in fact, it’s been an outright fraud: The Trump administration has added bureaucracy and uncertainty for businesses that it either willfully misunderstands or overtly dislikes.

Consider a list of Trump’s major deregulatory efforts, many of which involve allowing companies to pollute more.

Yes, there are a few identifiable, isolated winners from this agenda. Like, imagine you run a company whose business model depends on dumping lead, mercury or arsenic into the water; pumping methane or fine particulates into the air; or using pesticides that give kids brain damage. Sure, recently loosened restrictions on these toxic activities might fatten your profit margins.

But whether such policy changes significantly boost the overall economy is a different question entirely.

One reason to distrust the administration’s claims about these regulatory rollbacks: In its official cost-benefit analyses of such changes, it has used a lot of shady — one might say dishonest — assumptions. In other words, it’s cooking the books.

For instance, in some cases it has thrown out solid scientific studies that happen to produce inconvenient results. In others, it has disqualified large categories of benefits historically counted in such assessments. It has also arbitrarily scaled back estimates for the social cost of carbon. And so on.

These are all wonky, technical accounting changes that go largely unnoticed by the public. That’s by design. The goal is to make Trump’s deregulatory efforts look like they’re turbocharging the economy.

In fact, even some of the companies the Trump administration claims to be helping have protested that they’re being harmed. As a result, several major deregulatory changes have faced opposition not just from the usual tree-huggers and public-health advocates, but from industry, too. That’s been true for the administration’s laxer requirements for methane and mercury emissions, as well as its automotive fuel-efficiency standards.

In those cases — as with the trade wars — the Trump administration seems plainly confused about what policies will be “pro-business.” In others, though, its regulatory changes seem deliberately anti-business. Or at least they seem designed to hurt certain disfavored businesses or populations.


Let's take a quick look at that one aspect - Trade Wars:

Gosh - maybe the "policies" coming out of Cult45 aren't meant to achieve peace and prosperity for all, but to blow smoke in our faces while the Kleptocrats loot the joint.

In Our Faces

Were you continuing to wonder what Cult45's corruption actually looks like?

I knew you were, so here ya go.

John LeGere, CEO T-Mobile

Jonathan O'Connell and David Fahrenthold, WaPo:

Last April, telecom giant T-Mobile announced a megadeal: a $26 billion merger with rival Sprint, which would more than double T-Mobile’s value and give it a huge new chunk of the cellphone market.

But for T-Mobile, one hurdle remained: Its deal needed approval from the Trump administration.

The next day, in Washington, staffers at the Trump International Hotel were handed a list of incoming “VIP Arrivals.” That day’s list included nine of T-Mobile’s top executives — including its chief operating officer, chief technology officer, chief strategy officer, chief financial officer and its outspoken celebrity chief executive, John Legere.

They were scheduled to stay between one and three days. But it was not their last visit.

Instead, T-Mobile executives have returned to President Trump’s hotel repeatedly since then, according to eyewitnesses and hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post.

By mid-June, seven weeks after the announcement of the merger, hotel records indicated that one T-Mobile executive was making his 10th visit to the hotel. Legere appears to have made at least four visits to the Trump hotel, walking the lobby in his T-Mobile gear.

These visits highlight a stark reality in Washington, unprecedented in modern American history. Trump the president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump the businessman owns a hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania.

Countries, interest groups and companies like T-Mobile — whose future will be shaped by the administration’s choices — are free to stop at both and pay the president’s company while also meeting with officials in his government. Such visits raise questions about whether patronizing Trump’s private business is viewed as a way to influence public policy, critics said.

John Oliver

The addiction treatment industry is dangerously unregulated. John Oliver explains why many rehab programs should incorporate more evidence-based care and carefully reconsider their doctor-to-horse ratio.

Makes me wonder if there are dots in need of connecting - something that would give us a clearer picture of a legalized system of Drug Cartels right here in USAmerica Inc.

• Pharma
• Prescribers
• Insurance
• Healthcare
• Law Enforcement
• Prisons
• Lobbyists
• Congress

I'm a capitalist because god's a capitalist.

I have to take in more calories than I need right this minute because I need a surplus of  energy in order to do the work required to get my next meal. I have to make some profit.

And I insist on appropriate regulation because god insists on appropriate regulation.

Without a properly functioning pancreas, my blood sugar goes wacky and I die.

Without a properly functioning brain stem, my heart rate goes wacky and I die.

...my body temperature

...etc etc etc

"Government Interference in the Free Market System" is what freed the slaves, dummy.

Every once in a while, we have to step up and save capitalism from the capitalists.

There Will Be Propaganda

It's never time for Radical Skepticism - because that's an exercise in self-defeat, which makes it a very useful thing for the Daddy State.

Radical skepticism or radical scepticism is the philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible.[1] Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified. To determine the extent to which it is possible to respond to radical skeptical challenges is the task of epistemology or "the theory of knowledge".
Every year, the big guys spend many many billions of dollars on Marketing and Branding and Advertising and straight-up Propaganda. They don't spend that kinda money on something that doesn't work.

Be Aware.

Dark Forces (ie: "conservatives" in this case) have been pouring very large butt-loads of Money, Time, and Effort into a project that takes us back to the equivalent of mid-18th century Europe.

Confirming Evidence

45* and the GOP lie. A lot. I keep thinking, eventually that's not going to come as any kind of news to anybody. And as soon as I think that, I remember the rubes will never hear anything but what The Ministry of Dis-Infotainment tells them.

WaPo:

• “The entire purpose of this is to lower middle class taxes.” — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)
• “Primarily, and priority number one, is middle-class Americans.” — White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
• “The theme behind this bill is to get middle-class tax relief for most people in the middle class.” — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Fox News on Tuesday

President Trump was so excited about passing his first major piece of legislation Wednesday that he blurted out that the Republican Party had misrepresented the entire bill, handing Democrats some potentially troublesome talking points for the 2018 midterm elections.

Speaking at the White House just before the House prepared to sign off on the tax-cuts bill one last time, Trump reveled extensively in his win before turning things over to Vice President Pence to heap praise upon him continuously for a few minutes. It was a thoroughly unique spectacle, even as victory dances and Trump Cabinet meetings go.

But along the way, Trump basically admitted that the GOP's talking points on the bill weren't exactly honest in two major ways.

While talking about the corporate tax rate being cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, Trump said, “That's probably the biggest factor in our plan.”

President Trump says GOP tax plan will lower tax on businesses: “That’s probably the biggest factor in this plan.” pic.twitter.com/ntTtnnD55b

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 20, 2017

Oops

This one's worth tracking:
"these companies...will start pouring into the country..." (jobs jobs jobs - and raises for everybody - yeehaw)

Trump's second admission was about the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate being repealed in the bill. Apparently eager to argue that this constituted his having cut taxes and slain Obamacare in one fell swoop (after Congress came up short on Obamacare this year), he argued that repealing the individual mandate was basically the same as repealing Obamacare.
So we have enormous corporate powers being given more money to spend on Coin-Operated Politicians, who are increasingly obliged to strip out protections of the law in order to accommodate the avarice of the American Aristocracy - at the expense of everyone else.

(And BTW - wanna talk about what happens with expanded Corporate Power, together with no ACA, together with HR 1313, proposed in March 2017, that says companies can require DNA - and health info on all family members - from all of it's employees? Wait til you see what that one costs ya.)

In the First World of Industrialized Nations:
Every country except the US has some form of Single Payer
Every country except the US has a sizable Labor Faction in government
Every country except the US has Anti-Climate Change policies in place
Every country except the US has sensible Gun Safety laws
And on and on and on

American Exceptionalism just ain't what it used to be.

SLAPP Happy

Sec'y Reich explains:

It should be pretty clear now why the Repubs are trying so hard to fill the Federal Bench with mouth-breathers who'll go along with whatever horse shit comes down from Corporate HQ.

The Web

Ajit Pai is a lyin' sack of shit.  Net Neutrality is the deregulated internet. This jackass wants to deliver it into the hands of privateers and rent-seekers.

First - fuck you, Mr Pai. The web is absolutely vital to people who are just trying to get on in their everyday lives. (eg) It's nearly impossible now to apply for a job without internet access. Killing Net Neutrality translates into people having to pay for the privilege of looking for a job. Obviously, there's a cost to it now, but your "deregulation" opens it up to massive potential for abuse.

How do we know this "Plan To Restore Internet Freedom" is bogus? The name. When these assholes are selling something that's aimed at fucking us with our pants on, they give it a name that's exactly the opposite of what happens if they put it into practice.

The Clear Skies Act: allowed for massive increases in air pollutants.

The Clean Water Act: raised the allowable amounts of things like arsenic in drinking water. 

The Healthy Forests Initiative: opened protected Public Lands to logging - including clear-cutting in certain cases.

When we deregulated banking the 1st time in the 80s, we got the Savings & Loan crisis.

Deregulating the airlines - are there more air carriers now? Do they offer better service at a lower price?

How 'bout electric utilities? I seem to recall something called Enron.

Deregulating banks again in the 90s gave us a near-total collapse of the world economy, and a "recession" that we're still stuck in.

When 45* fucked up Bears Ears recently, his closing pitch was "protecting our precious resources".

We don't protect our resources by handing them over to private mining interests.

It's the game of opposites.

And by the way:

• Uranium deposits in Utah (Bears Ears)
• Pimping the Uranium One scandal
• Hillary Clinton gave away 20% of our precious uranium supply!?!
• We must do something to compensate
• I know - we'll sell off some of the National Monuments for peanuts and let a few rich guys get a lot richer at tax-payer expense
• Yeah - that's the ticket

As stoopid and incompetent as Cult45 is, there's a whole school of very adept sharks and flocks of talented vultures cashing in.

Today's Tweet

"...solve for middle income..."

Malarkey - the only thing they're trying to solve is the problem of getting us to say "thanks for the hat" while they shit on our heads.

Trump WH adviser Cohn on tax bill: “the whole trickle down is good for the economy.” my @cnbc Speakeasy interview https://t.co/AWAQ1d0fRN

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) November 9, 2017

 

That Guy We Never Hear About

Bob Mercer's ridiculous attitudes* are everywhere you look when you get way out there to  Wingnutopia. Watch out for that guy.

Charlie Pierce points up a few things we need to keep in mind:

If you accept, as Joshua Green argues in his splendid Devil's Bargain, and as events subsequent to the election have more than borne out, without Steve Bannon, it is unlikely that we would have a President* Trump to be embarrassed by in front of the entire 21st Century. And what is also clear is that, without Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the reactionary New York gozillionnaires, Bannon would be back on Giedi Prime with the rest of the Harkonnens. 

At the moment, Robert Mercer is being sued by his former partner in Renaissance Technologies, a guy named David Magerman, who is not quite as enthusiastic about the Trump presidency* as the Mercers are. Documents are becoming public and, as Vanity Fair reports, some of those documents are well off the boy-howdy scale of revelatory.

You don't get Trump without Bannon, and you don't get Bannon without Bob and Rebekah Mercer.

*as lined out in Charlie's piece:

a) The United States began to go in the wrong direction after the passage of the Civl Rights Act in the 1960s

b) African Americans were doing fine in the late-1950s and early-1960s before the Civil Rights Act

c) The Civil Rights Act “infantilized” African Americas by making them dependent on government and removing any incentive to work

d) The only racist people remaining in the United States are black

e) White people have no racial animus toward African Americans anymore, and if there is any, it's not something that the government should be concerned with