Yearly Archives: 2018

A random selection of the endgame for plants. A leaf noted on our front step, sadly out of focus.

And this dry rose, seen at local deli Kramarczuk’s. Again, the focus of the smartphone ruins what might have been a lovely picture.

On Right Turn, Jennifer Rubin pastes^[1] the GOP for its continued support of President Trump:

The political implications of Trump’s latest confession are quite stunning. Will the rest of the GOP go along with the position that it was perfectly fine for Russia to help Trump? That would sure be a change from “No collusion” (to “Collusion, so what?!”). I don’t know how a major political party can maintain the view that hostile powers have carte blanche to influence our elections. Every Republican in elected office or on the ballot should be asked his or her view on the matter.

The notion that collusion with a hostile power is no big deal is so preposterous and unpalatable, you would think Republicans would not dare try to defend Trump on this point. But this crowd? They might just try it.

This reminds me of a recent report on the political elite of Britain of which I wrote about here. It’s beginning to appear that Putin has been trading on the lust for power of the conservative wing of the democracies confronting him, buying himself influence with cash and riding the wave of research in political marketing.

The line of strong anti-Russian hawks has finally been broken here in the United States with the election of President Trump, and the selection of John Bolton as his National Security Advisor. In Britain, as I noted in the above post, the opposition leader appears to have sympathy for Russia and President Putin, but Prime Minister May, whatever her defects as leader, at least does not appear to have that particular ill.

While this is greatly damaging to the reputation of Democracy throughout the world, there is one saving grace: Democracies change leaders. The selection of a new class of leaders can easily result in the return to the proper attitude towards Russia: an honest wariness, a willingness to punish transgressions of international agreements, such as the annexation of Crimea, and honest assessments of Russian ambitions and how they’ll impact American interests.

This is what much of the GOP members of Congress are failing to do.

¹“Pastes” was slang from, I think, my parents’ youth, meaning to destroy beyond any hope of recovery.

WaPo reports on a scandal in Japan:

One of Japan’s top medical universities has been systematically blocking female applicants from entering the school for at least eight years, local news agencies reported on Thursday.

Tokyo Medical University, a private institution consistently ranked among the country’s best for clinical medicine, has been automatically lowering the entrance exam results of female applicants for the past decade, an attempt to keep the ratio of women in each class of students below 30 percent, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. A specific coefficient was reportedly applied to the scores of all female applicants, lowering them by 10 to 20 percent.

Amazing. Of course, they have excuses for their bad behavior, including the worst: Everyone else is doing the same.

But – if I were a citizen of Japan – I’d call them traitors and boot their hairy asses right off the islands. Why? As I’ve mentioned before, nations prosper or not on the genius of their citizens, legal or not. By suppressing the potential careers of those women, they’ve deprived the nation of the genius for medicine they may have developed.

Worse yet, they were treated unjustly. Why should these women, who may have already suspected something fishy was going on, continue to have faith in their society? Unless the injustice is corrected to each and every one of them, they have every right to become disaffected.

Poor Japan. Their devaluation of women negatively impacts the entire nation. And will those responsible be held to punishment?

I know I said that I wouldn’t be reviewing Fringe shows unless they were extraordinary, and while I might not go so far as to say What To Do In Case Of Dinosaur Attack is extraordinary – it’s more of a novelty piece – it was a huge amount of fun and worth the time, at least if you like dinosaurs of the real or cinematic sort.

And, if you’re on a tight schedule, well, don’t be. Get there early and be prepared to stand in line outside.

The next in a line of special elections is coming up this Tuesday in Ohio as, due to the resignation of Representative Patrick Tiberi, the OH-12 seat in the House of Representatives has become available. According to Ballotpedia, this is a safely Republican seat, as the Republicans won the seat by 36.8 points in 2016, and previous to that margins of 40.3, 27, and 14.8; previous elections are not valid for this comparison due to redistricting. It’s been Rep. Tiberi this entire time, which may skew the results if voters connect with him, but in the end, this looks like a safe Republican seat.

So why are Speaker Ryan, President Trump, and Vice President Pence actively campaigning for the Republican candidate, State Senator Troy Balderson, and why has President Trump found it necessary to endorse Balderson?
[tweet https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1020811550771294211]

Because of this Monmouth poll result:

The race to fill the open seat in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District has shifted from a Republican advantage last month to a toss-up now, according to the Monmouth University Poll. Different voter models suggest that the race could go either way. The underlying GOP-lean of this district benefits State Senator Troy Balderson. But an increase in Democratic enthusiasm and a shift in independent voter preferences have boosted the standing of Franklin County Recorder Danny O’Connor.

That must be a shocking poll for Republicans who considered this a safe seat. Looking at the Balderson campaign website, he’s not a invoking the Trump name at all on the front page – at least not now. If he does not win, we know where Trump will go with his defense of his failure to drag Balderson across a finish line that should have been easy for a Republican who has a long record in the State House and doesn’t even appear to be an extremist, although he does sing the “no new taxes” theme song of the Republicans. He’ll blame Balderson for not embracing the Trump agenda.

But even if O’Connor fails, but only fails by a small margin, this will be an indictment by the American people of the Republican ideology of Trump, because Balderson bears the brand name on his shoulder, without a slavish devotion to Trump. So even without the name of Trump to remind independents of an ideology which is looking increasingly like madness, the polls – including the most important one, the last one – appear to show an overwhelming advantage for the Republicans going right into the shitcan.

That has to be a big red warning sign for Republican leaders who continue to act as if they’re convinced they have a winning political message for the upcoming elections.

From WaPo’s interview with North Texas sportscaster and occasional commentator Dale Hansen:

So how about now? Will you vote in the midterm elections?

I’m going to start again. Because I was wrong. I wanted the perfect candidate, and I didn’t want to be the guy who voted for the lesser of two evils. But I’ve learned that when you don’t vote for the lesser of two evils, sometimes the more evil guy wins.

In winner-takes-all elections, this is the message that every voter needs to consider.

And I loved the interview.

Salwa Samir in AL Monitor reports on an appalling subject in Egypt – female genital mutilation (FGM):

FGM was banned in the country in 2008, and in 2016 it was criminalized. Nevertheless, a 2016 survey by the UN Children’s Fund revealed that 87% of women and girls ages 15-49 in Egypt have undergone the procedure. Even after the criminalization, families in poor villages in Upper Egypt force their girls to undergo FGM, because they believe it promotes chastity.

A distressingly high percentage, given that it was banned a decade ago, and it’s beginning to look like it’s going to point up that in clashes between the law and tradition, the latter is often the victor.

Not being religious myself, I am sure I’m missing a lot of nuance, yet I’m left with this question running through my head for those who would advocate for FGM and happen to be religious: It should be clear that the human body is a gift from your deity(s), and mutilation that destroys the sources of pleasure in an often bitter life would seem to be an insult to that deity. How can you possibly hope to reside with your deity when you die after committing such a terrible crime against them?

For those wondering about circumcision, yep, it also applies. Sure, some will point at the Bible and claim it was commanded by Jehovah, but this merely underlines the question of the authenticity of the Bible.

If you feel like you’re stumbling into the spider’s web, that’s one good reason to discard divinities and look for better explanations.

Also noted in Samir’s article was the increase in the Egyptian population:

The population of Egypt has nearly doubled since 1985, which is a serious headache for the Egyptian government. In May, the government earmarked 100 million Egyptian pounds ($5.5 million) to bolster a family planning program entitled “Two is Enough.”

“Simply imparting information and increasing knowledge is not sufficient: The messaging must target the beliefs, ideas and feelings that drive behavior and that can remove social barriers and empower people to act. If we can shift these ideational factors — for example, if we can shift perceptions of what people believe other people will think of them if they use contraception or shift an individual’s belief that their peers are using contraception — then the behavior will subsequently change,” Bodiroza said.

The general thrust of Samir’s article was the use of celebrities and songs in influencing the sexual mores of the Egyptian state, which I should think should have been employed a decade ago.

A transcript of a AG Sessions speech from the Department of Justice website:

But in recent years, the cultural climate in this country—and in the West more generally—has become less hospitable to people of faith. Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack.

And it’s easy to see why. We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives.

We’ve seen U.S. Senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma—even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for public office. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips.

Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds are concerned about what this changing cultural climate means for the future of religious liberty in this country.

Under attack? How many of my readers have felt their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack? The intellectual flaw here, both in Sessions’ remark and my question, is to lump the religious into one group, rather than realistically acknowledging the differences, sometimes antagonistic, between the various faith groups, including those of no faith. Does a Christian feel threatened? A Satanist? A Jew, a Muslim, and the atheist down the street?

A mixture of answers will ensue if you ensue if you pursue persons of each group.

Given Sessions’ background, it’s not difficult to assume this is code for Christians are not as dominant as they used to be, and people are still taking seriously the idea of government not being dominated by religion! And this puts Sessions in the place of practicing subterfuge in order to promote his agenda, which appears to be Dominionist.

And I cannot take the paragraph regarding judicial & executive nominees being asked about dogma seriously. The rebuttal lies in his very words – government is not a vehicle for religion, so it is incumbent to ask if those who embody government will bring their religious prejudices into government, or if they’ll be faithful to the law of Man – not the many religions which those nominated practice.

Still, how many of the religious really feel under attack – and how many are just being stirred up by those fell power-mongers of the right?

A reader writes about disobedience to higher powers:

I spent a 30-year career working for 60,000 employee, $12 billion global financial services firm. It didn’t take long for those of us in the field offices to learn to ignore policy/procedure edicts emanating from the mothership in NYC, most of which we viewed as being untethered from reality and counter to good client service.

We knew, based on multiple experiences, that senior policy maker turnover occurred so frequently, that merely giving the appearance of partial acceptance of mandated changes was sufficient to survive until the next idiot assumed the helm.

I work for one of the larger engineering firms out there, and my group just basically does our thing and lets management tell us when that’s not what they want. We take care of our customers and prepare for the future.

And try to ignore HR as much as possible.

As part of the climate change coverage, Suchul Kang & Elfatih A. B. Eltahir present an article in Nature Communications entitled “North China Plain threatened by deadly heatwaves due to climate change and irrigation“:

The North China Plain. Map: U.S. State Department.

North China Plain is the heartland of modern China. This fertile plain has experienced vast expansion of irrigated agriculture which cools surface temperature and moistens surface air, but boosts integrated measures of temperature and humidity, and hence enhances intensity of heatwaves. Here, we project based on an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate model simulations that climate change would add significantly to the anthropogenic effects of irrigation, increasing the risk from heatwaves in this region. Under the business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse gas emissions, North China Plain is likely to experience deadly heatwaves with wet-bulb temperature exceeding the threshold defining what Chinese farmers may tolerate while working outdoors. China is currently the largest contributor to the emissions of greenhouse gases, with potentially serious implications to its own population: continuation of the current pattern of global emissions may limit habitability in the most populous region, of the most populous country on Earth. …

The North China Plain (NCP; defined here as 34°N to 41°N; 113°E to 121°E, see Fig. 1), with an area of about 400 thousand square kilometers, is the largest alluvial plain in China1,2. This region, inhabited by about 400 million, is one of the most densely populated in the world.

It’s well known that President Trump has claimed climate change is a Chinese hoax, a statement with no attribution to any known fact, and in fact risible on its face. But this threat to the Chinese heartland suddenly made me wonder:

Could climate change, given the conservative elite’s refusal to take action on it, constitute a weapon?

It’s a dark, very unlikely thought. The potential collateral damage is enormous. But for a movement with a religious, and thus potentially irrational, even eschatological element to it, it’s not impossible to believe there’s at least some potential there.

Noted during a visit to the Loring Park Arts Festival.

I wish the last one hadn’t turned out grainy, but I suppose if it’s important to me, I’d shell out the bucks for a real camera.

BuzzFeed reports on how much attention US Government officials are paying attention to the pronouncements of President Trump when it comes to the recent G7 Summit:

Shortly after leaving the G7 Summit in Canada in June, President Donald Trump tweeted to say he had instructed US officials not to endorse a statement he had agreed to just hours earlier with other world leaders. Trump was displeased with something Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during the summit’s closing press conference, which the president was following on TV from Air Force One.

But almost two months on, those instructions from Trump have never been acted upon, apparently ignored, two sources who were directly involved in the G7 process told BuzzFeed News.

US inaction means Trump effectively endorsed the final statement after all.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Fox News, reportedly President Trump’s main source of information about the world (and just think about that for a while!), had anything on this. A major search engine showed nothing. A visit to the Fox News website also showed nothing. It’s still a young story, though, isn’t it?

Not really, not generically. Steve Benen has more:

In April, for example, the president announced via Twitter that Russia should “get ready” because he was poised to launch a military offensive in Syria. White House officials found Trump’s declaration “distracting,” and proceeded “as if nothing had happened.”

A couple of months earlier, Trump asked Defense Secretary James Mattis to provide him with military options for Iran. The Pentagon chief reportedly “refused.”

Making matters slightly worse, last summer, the president published missives barring transgender Americans from military service. Soon after, the Joint Chiefs effectively ignored it, leaving the status quo in place.

Steve calls it an “alarming dynamic.” It’s well more than that.

First, it tells the observant so much about the level of incompetency in this Administration. I cannot think of similar stories for any other recent President. The inclination to hire loyal cretins and ignoramuses, as well as ideological fellow-travelers, is reinforced by this reaction by those folks who have spent their careers holding the United States together.

It sets a shocking precedent. OK, I’m not going to faint over it, as an institution as large as the Executive Branch will no doubt contradict the will of the guy at the top both inadvertently and purposefully, not to mention over legal constraints. Until this Administration, though, the purposeful group was definitely the outsiders, the extremists – just think of Col. Oliver North’s deliberate deceptions in the Iran-Contra scandal. (Col. North, USMC (retired), is now a top muckety-muck at the NRA, which is telling.) Now it’s arguably the good guys, those folks grounded in reality, who are deliberately ignoring the President. It quite probable they will get canned if the President ever notices it. It’s conceivable they could end up in court and end up convicted. And while they could be pardoned by a savvy President, it’s still a blot and a strain on honorable members of government who are trying to keep the boat afloat in the midst of a self-inflicted storm. But it’s a horrible precedent, because while we may appreciate the efforts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others to mitigate the sheer idiocy of the President, what happens tomorrow when someone we think of as competent is ignored?

This cannot come out well.

Third, what does this say about Fox News, assuming they refuse to run the story? Are they patriots under their deceptive skins? Are they just trying to keep him in power by not letting him know his power is even more limited than he’s already discovered? Or are they so confused by the situation that they’re melting down? This, by the way, appeals to my sense that those who are doing evil in the world tend to trip over their own feet and break their necks, eventually.

If this ever comes to the President’s attention, and is really true, it could cause a real shit-storm for those public servants. I’m completely conflicted over there their actions, as short-term they are doing good, but making the long-term a little less secure. Or maybe a lot less secure.

When he wakes up, no one mention both of his legs are gone!

Hands of a Stranger (1962) suffers from a central problem: the theme is a muddled mess. Gifted pianist Vernon, just coming into his own, is involved in a taxi accident, and his hands are mangled beyond repair. His surgeon, however, urged on by Vernon’s agent, performs hand transplants using those of a murder victim.

When Vernon learns, he tries to pick up where he left off, but when his new hands fail him, he flies into violent rages which result in the deaths of various people he knows or associates with the accident, including the young son of the taxi driver, who was blinded in the accident as well. Meanwhile, a police lieutenant is adding up the clues and beginning to wonder about the amazing surgeon and his patient.

Driven to madness, Vernon traps the surgeon and his own sister, threatening to kill them, but the lieutenant arrives just in time to save them from the insane pianist.

There were a lot of good elements to this movie. The acting was generally excellent, and I found the police lieutenant particularly intriguing. Vernon, played by James Stapleton, bore a passing, if distracting, resemblance to current actor Rufus Sewell, although on comparison it didn’t seem that great.

But in the end I was left wondering why had they made this movie. An entry in the horror genre? It didn’t feel like it. A cautionary tale concerning technology? Not really. The pitfalls of becoming famous? But Vernon is quite the humble chap. And what about that last frame of the movie, the message What’s Past Is Prologue? What should I make of that?

In the end, I could only shrug, because the story let the movie down.

And here it is, in case you’re wondering about it.

Rohollah Faghihi  of AL Monitor notes that the ‘young, strict conservative’ movement, previously discussed, has taken over the state broadcaster:

The recent appointments of new managers at Iran’s conservative-dominated state broadcaster may indicate that the organization is about to adopt a more hard-line position. This comes as a number of powerful moderate officials at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) have been weakened lately.

IRIB has a monopoly over domestic radio and television services, and has more than 50 channels, with the most-viewed channels being Channels 1 through 6.

Conservative Abdulali Ali-Asgari is the current chairman of the state broadcaster, and like his predecessors, is directly appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. …

In 2014, a new channel named Ofogh (Horizon) was established, focusing on “the concepts of Islamic Revolution, the Holy Defense [1980-88 Iran-Iraq War] and regional developments.”

The channel is managed by the new generation of hard-liners, who are vehemently against the Reformists and moderates. Since its inception, Ofogh has broadcast various documentaries angled against government policies — including the nuclear negotiations that led to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and indeed the nuclear deal itself. The channel has some well-known talk shows that appear to mostly pursue the single goal of weakening the conservatives’ political rivals.

The younger generation of hard-liners who control Ofogh are now determined to expand their domain to the entirety of IRIB, and in the process of doing so, eliminating moderates and other members of the entourage of parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, who has been a close ally of Reformist-backed Rouhani in recent years. For a decade, Larijani was the chairman of IRIB; his tenure ended in 2004. While he had adopted hard-line positions during his chairmanship of the state broadcaster, he gradually turned moderate upon leaving the organization.

What better way to enforce the ideology of the conservatives than to take over the state broadcaster? Well, my suspicion is they’ll end up disappointed. True believers rarely attract the masses when the masses have already had recent experience with the true believers, and given how the Iranian citizenry has shifted over the years, it’s quite probable that they’ll quietly ignore these young firebrands, having far more urgent, if mundane concerns at hand.

The 2018 version of the Minnesota Fringe Festival starts today and my Arts Editor and I will be Fringing some of the next 10 or 11 days, and no doubt it’ll impact my normal blogging to some extent. I don’t anticipate posting any reviews to UMB unless we run across something truly extraordinary early enough in its run for my local readers to see it as well.

I think there is a reviewing facility on their web site, but last time I used it people yelled at me for being too mean.

I hope you folks find time to enjoy a show or two as well.

Two days ago I received a response from Senator Klobuchar to my letter concerning the immigrant families experiencing the kidnapping of their children at the hands of the U.S. Government, and I can report she’s 4-square against it.

I recently visited the southern border in Texas, where I spoke with people who had experienced the Administration’s policy firsthand—including a mother fleeing an abusive partner in Honduras who was separated from her 10-year-old son for more than a month. I also heard from religious and humanitarian workers who are dedicating their time to help those seeking refuge in our country.

We must reunite these children with their parents immediately. Our country’s medical professionals – including the American Medical Association and the American Association of Pediatrics – have warned about the consequences of family separation, saying that it can cause irreparable harm to children that lasts their whole lives. I will keep fighting to help these families and I am an original cosponsor of a bill that would prevent this from ever happening again. I have also repeatedly advocated for congressional oversight hearings on this Administration’s immigration policies.

A form letter, I’m sure, but directly addressing my concerns in a firm and forthright manner.

A recent analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) proposed “Medicare For All” (M4A) by the free enterprise think tank Mercatus has the liberals all a-twitter with excitement. Here’s Kevin Drum:

Here’s some good news. The libertarians at the Mercatus Center did a cost breakdown of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan and concluded that it would save $2 trillion during its first ten years:

Now, as you might guess, this was not the spin the Mercatus folks put on their study. Their headline is “M4A Would Place Unprecedented Strain on the Federal Budget.” This isn’t really true, of course, since M4A would absorb all the costs of our current health care system but would also absorb all the payments we make to support it.

But Mercatus is quite consistent in saying this:

By conservative estimates, this legislation would have the following effects:

• M4A would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the first 10 years of its implementation (2022–2031).
• This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022. This amount would rise to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and continue to rise thereafter.

These estimates are conservative because they assume the legislation achieves its sponsors’ goals of dramatically reducing payments to health providers, in addition to substantially reducing drug prices and administrative costs.

And if the legislation fails to reduce payments to health providers? Costs could grow a lot more than projected. Kevin shouldn’t be complacent that Mercatus’ number is less than the projected number.

It’s a nuance worth thinking about, because it leads to more interesting questions, such as whether or not health providers will accept lower payments. That question has more texture to it than you might think. Does the legislation still utilize insurance companies, or is the health insurance industry abolished by this legislation? If not the latter, then does the legislation establish, or propose to establish, a standardized approach to health claims specification? Keep in mind that this one area often consumes one more persons in a doctor’s office, because health insurance claims are just that inconsistent.

Another thought is that a doctor’s office guaranteed a certain amount of business may be willing to accept the legislatively specified discount, much as will suppliers of more tangible objects, also known as the bulk discount.

Speaking of Mercatus, I don’t have time to analyze their result, but I do notice they don’t seem to acknowledge that earlier interventions, which are more likely under M4A, result in lower health care costs. This is another detail simply glossed over. If they calculated for that, it should be well-publicized so that the various interested parties could engage with it, tear it to pieces, and really get a good look at what that might mean for us.

Similarly, questions concerning whether M4A would impact new therapy development are also important. I see Mercatus has a study on how Medicare impacts it, but I can’t read that at the moment.

Perhaps one of the most important results to come out of the upcoming mid-term elections will be the interpretation of the winners & losers as a referendum on President Trump. You’ll note that I’m not saying the President’s policies, because much of his appeal lies in his personality and his promises, kept or unkept. The performance of those Republican candidates who’ve clasped him to their breasts will keep my attention, because these candidates have bought as much into his personality as they have his policies.

So, in this respect, the governorship of the state of Florida is up for grabs this mid-term, and the leader for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, has only assumed this position because of the formal endorsement by President Trump, reportedly because DeSantis became a favorite interview subject of Fox News, where he reportedly praised Trump and his policies.

Now he’s taken the next step, and this is where his venture becomes very interesting, because his new commercial, despite the suggestion that he’s more than a Trump-clone, does absolutely nothing to actually bring him to life as anything other than being a frenzied Trump-lover.

For those who didn’t want to waste those 30 seconds, DeSantis is featured with his small children, teaching them to build a wall, teaching them to read from Trump materials, and the like. It’s quite the unimaginative bleat of the sheep following the leader.

Minus unforeseen disasters for DeSantis, I expect he’ll win the nomination, because the character of the GOP is now “The party of Trump.” But will the Trump-clone play well with the Florida independent voters to which he’ll need to appeal in order to win? Is his imminent nomination the opening Florida’s Democratic Party has been waiting for? Or does the elderly Florida population favor the xenophobic attitudes of President Trump and are ready to elect the guy clinging to Trump’s butt-hairs?^[1]

A little over 90 days left to find out.

¹The saying used to involve “coat-tails,” but it seems discourteous to use such an euphemism in today’s atmosphere of brutal remarks.

Noted in Minneapolis’ Loring Park:

This bird was evidently the lookout for some ducks busying themselves with the algae.

I’ve barely begun a new book, Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin and Sergey A. Nefedov, both Russian with Ph.D.s, I’m not even done with the freakin’ Introduction, but a report from The New York Times rings an interesting bell in conjunction with it:

The Trump administration is considering bypassing Congress to grant a $100 billion tax cut mainly to the wealthy, a legally tenuous maneuver that would cut capital gains taxation and fulfill a long-held ambition of many investors and conservatives.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Argentina this month that his department was studying whether it could use its regulatory powers to allow Americans to account for inflation in determining capital gains tax liabilities. The Treasury Department could change the definition of “cost” for calculating capital gains, allowing taxpayers to adjust the initial value of an asset, such as a home or a share of stock, for inflation when it sells.

“If it can’t get done through a legislation process, we will look at what tools at Treasury we have to do it on our own and we’ll consider that,” Mr. Mnuchin said, emphasizing that he had not concluded whether the Treasury Department had the authority to act alone. “We are studying that internally, and we are also studying the economic costs and the impact on growth.”

Add in the lone piece of legislation to be passed by Congress and signed into law during this term, the tax ‘reform’ bill, which, as predicted by independent economists, has resulted in a windfall for the wealthy. Then add the greediness of investors just prior to the Great Recession, as augmented by a couple of recent articles by Professor Pearlstein referenced here, and it all adds up to a feeding frenzy by those who already have more than enough.

And in Turchin and Nefedov’s book?

Such a happy state (for the elites) cannot continue for long. First, expansion of elite numbers means that the amount of resources per elite capita begins to decline. This process would occur even if the total amount of surplus stayed constant. But, second, as general population grows closer to the carrying capacity, surplus production gradually declines. The combination of these two trends results in an accelerating fall of average elite incomes.

The dynamic processes described above also have a sociopsychological aspect. During the good times the elites become accustomed to, and learn to expect, a high level of consumption (this is the growing extravagance of noble households” of Dobb and Sweezy). An additional elements, as pointed out by Sweezy, is the ever-increasing quantity and variety of goods available to the elites  as a result of urbanization….Modern studies of consumption level expectations suggest that people generally aim at matching (and if possible exceeding) the consumption levels of their parents. …

The deteriorating economic conditions of the elites during the late stagflation phase of the secular cycle do not affect all aristocrats [elites] equally. While the majority are losing ground, a few lineages, by contrast, are able to increase their wealth. The growing economic inequality results from the operation of what some sociologists call the “Matthew effect”… [pp. 10-11]

(All typos mine.) It’ll be fascinating to see how this book applies to our current era, and to make some guesses concerning our current position in the secular cycle and how we might expect our economy to respond to the growing rapacity of the elite part of our society. A key question will be whether their materialistic urges will surge out of control, or if they’ll heed the moralistic requests that the sinking balance of a very rich, if lopsided, society be saved from utter poverty. While carrying capacity was certainly the most important economic measure of the medieval ages, I don’t know if that still applies to today. We’re not yet at mass “soup kitchen” stage, and it’s not clear to me that this’ll happen, unless climate change destroys substantial portions of our arable land.

But it won’t get read fast. Dense prose will slow me down.

Regarding the letters I sent to my various Congress people concerning civil asset forfeiture, I just received a reply from Senator Smith, a delay of maybe a month and a half. Unfortunately, it’s a form letter. Here’s the meatiest paragraph:

To make a more equitable and cost-effective system, we need to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to justice and confront sentencing disparities, prison overcrowding, and bias in our criminal justice system. Mandatory minimums — which require fixed sentences for specific criminal convictions — have been used too widely and led to mass incarceration, which disproportionately impacts people of color and costs taxpayers billions of dollars. That’s why I am a cosponsor of the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bipartisan bill that would reduce mandatory minimums for some non-violent drug offenses and allow people sentenced under previous, harsher laws the chance to have their sentences revisited. I also support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, another bipartisan bill that would give judges greater discretion in sentencing, make some of the drug sentencing reforms enacted in recent years retroactive, and support anti-recidivism initiatives. I am also a cosponsor of the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act of 2017 (ERRPA), which would prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement and require trainings and updated procedures to eliminate this practice.

That has little to do with civil asset forfeiture. While I appreciate that she’s active in this area, I’d place far more value on knowing her opinion on the topic I selected, rather than her activities in other, if related, areas.

In fact, it’s more campaign literature than an honest reply.

Which probably won’t stop me from voting for her – or at least not voting at all. But it’s disappointing that she, or her staff, failed to address an important question in today’s justice system, a question which, answered improperly, damages the faith that citizens have in their system being a just system.

A month or so ago Professor Pearlstein of George Mason University published an article in WaPo concerning the ripples in the national financial pond, and now he has another unsettling article out chronicling current corporate greed in WaPo:

Now it is happening again [the rush after poor investments, as seen just prior to the Great Recession], as investors and money managers scramble to buy floating-rate debt — debt offering interest payments that will increase as global interest rates rise, as they are expected to over the next few years. A big new source of floating-rate credit is the market for “leveraged loans” — loans to highly indebted businesses — that are packaged into securities known as “collateralized loan obligations,” or CLOs. Because the market seems to have an insatiable appetite for CLOs, leveraged lending and CLO issuance through the first half of the year are already up 38 percent over last year’s near-record levels. …

Although some sophisticated investors have begun to pull back from the CLO market, they have been replaced by retail investors seeking higher yields who have flocked to mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that specialize in CLO debt.

Which sounds like wretched amateurs chasing the big return with little thought as to the underlying risk. The sheep will be sheared. But where are the regulators who protect investors against deceptive investments?

Although financial regulators have taken passing notice of the increased volume and declining quality of corporate credit, they haven’t done much to discourage it — just the opposite, in fact.

Earlier this year, after complaints from banks and dealmakers reached sympathetic ears in the Trump administration, the newly installed chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency Office declared that previous “guidance” against lending to companies whose debt exceeded six times their annual cash flow should not be taken as a hard and fast rule.

Whether intended or not, however, the market read the regulators’ announcement not only as a green light to the banks to step up their leveraged lending but also as an indication that regulators would be more responsive to industry pressure than during the Obama years.

And that’s the problem. Regulators don’t exist to increase the profits of an industry – or a company. They exist to keep the economy, or more often some sector of the economy, stable and safe, and thereby create an environment in which reasonable profits are possible. When they collude with the industry they are regulating, there’s a vastly increased chance of a disaster born of the greed of the amateur, the inexperienced.

Or even the cautious, wise citizen.

Because our economy has become so large and convoluted, even the most wise financial actor can get their fins caught in the net of blind bad chance, and dragged onto the beach for a good beating and then a meal. The ceaseless plaints again Glass-Steagall, crowned by its repeal and soon followed by the Great Recession, have been replicated by the grousing about the terrible burdens of Dodd-Frank, which have since been lifted somewhat, ironically with the help of one of its authors, retired Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). Will financial disaster once again befall the nation because of ignorance about the role of regulators?

I shouldn’t be surprised.

But I don’t know enough to even guess, either. But when the experts are shaking their heads …

Accounting firm PwC (aka PriceWaterhouseCoopers, for those of us who don’t keep up so well with corporate name changes) doesn’t think the advance of artificial intelligence and robotics means the permanent creation of an unemployed underclass:

Furthermore, other analysis we have done5 suggests that any job losses from automation are likely to be broadly offset in the long run by new jobs created as a result of the larger and wealthier economy made possible by these new technologies. We do not believe, contrary to some predictions, that automation will lead to mass technological unemployment by the 2030s any more than it has done in the decades since the digital revolution began.

Nonetheless, automation will disrupt labour markets and it is interesting to look at the estimates we have produced to get an indication of the relative exposure of existing jobs to automation in different countries, industry sectors, and categories of workers. We summarise the key findings in these three areas in turn below.

Nevertheless, I do believe that AI and robotics have the potential to continue the long term trend of concentrating wealth and power in the (corporate) hands of a few, at least until a transition occurs in which artificial intelligence no longer refers to what are simply correlation engines and begin to refer to actually conscious creatures. At that point we’ll be seeing questions concerning person-hood popping up, as I’ve discussed before, and then it becomes a lot harder to predict what will be happening to the distribution of all that wealth, much less the actual availability of jobs at all ability levels.

You just have to laugh at some of the people – and things – coming out of the wood work.

[tweet https://twitter.com/LeslieCockburn/status/1023701334434959362]

Leslie Cockburn (D-VA) is running for Congress in Virginia’s 5th District, and Riggleman is her opponent. Along with this accusation, he’s also allegedly been seen in the company of white supremacists.

Just remember, entertainment like this doesn’t translate to good governance. We’ve seen that already.