From NewScientist:

Image: Wikipedia

Welwitschia is one of the world’s strangest and most resilient plants, living in the exceptionally dry Namib desert, which stretches along the coasts of Angola, Namibia and South Africa. But climate change may push these hardy plants past their limits, suggesting that they should be placed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Vaguely reminiscent of a pile of kelp nowhere near the ocean, welwitschia (Welwitschia mirabilis) is unlike anything else on Earth. The plant consists of just two ever-growing leaves. These can grow to more than 4 metres long erupting out of a subterranean stem. These tough leaves split and coil, turning into a dishevelled, sun-baked heap over the plant’s roughly 1000-year-long lifespan.

Although we’re not nearly that dry. How do they estimate a thousand year lifetime, I wonder…

On the anniversary (well, off by one day) of the first day of service of CAHOOTS, the Eugene, OR, emergency mental health service often invoked rather than police, CNN, rather tardily, publishes an article on them. Readers may recall that I lamented that I couldn’t find an assessment of CAHOOTS performance, and while there’s nothing like a formal assessment in this article, they do have a few numbers:

Per self-reported data, CAHOOTS workers responded to 24,000 calls in 2019 — about 20% of total dispatches. About 150 of those required police backup.

CAHOOTS says the program saves the city about $8.5 million in public safety costs every year, plus another $14 million in ambulance trips and ER costs.

Although Eugene may be somewhat atypical in the United States:

Lane County, which encompasses Eugene and neighbor city Springfield, has staggering rates of homelessness.

The county’s per-capita homeless rate is among the nation’s highest. Recent data from the county also suggests mental health crises are widespread, too — the suicide rate, at around 17 deaths per 100,000, is about 40% higher than the national average.

Police encounters with the homeless often end in citations or arrests. Of homeless people with mental health conditions, anywhere from 62.0% to 90% of them will be arrested, per one journal review of homelessness studies. They may end up in jail, not in treatment or housing, and thus begins the cycle of incarceration that doesn’t benefit either party.

CAHOOTS was created in part because of another disturbing statistic — around 25% of people killed by police show signs of mental illness, according to a journal review of the Washington Post’s extensive officer-involved shootings database.

It’s an interesting article. Retired CAHOOTS co-founder David Zeiss notes that every city is different, and every solution must be local and organic. As a member of the Instant Gratification Generation, I found this a little disheartening, to be honest:

[CAHOOTS is] not an immediate fix. Zeiss said it took a lot of “patient plotting” for CAHOOTS to really have an impact.

“At this point, we’ve patiently waited out an entire generation of police officers,” he said. “There’s nobody on the Eugene police force today who can remember being a Eugene police officer without CAHOOTS. It’s been that slow of a process.”

Which suggests distrust and even resentment, which I suppose should not be surprising. But it’s important to understand that Zeiss himself does not agree with the Get rid of the police! movement:

But a growing group of dissenters feel there’s little room for police in the movement to fundamentally change the American criminal justice system. Services like CAHOOTS, they say, may function better and more broadly without the assistance of police.

Zeiss isn’t sure he agrees.

“Partnership with police has always been essential to our model,” he said. “A CAHOOTS-like program without a close relationship with police would be very different from anything we’ve done. I don’t have a coherent vision of a society that has no police force.”

He said the current movement has seemingly pitted service providers like CAHOOTS against police, which may stoke suspicion among police over “whether we’re really their allies or their competitors,” he said.

“In some sense, that may be true. But I think we still need to focus on being part of a system, and a system that includes police for some functions,” Zeiss said.

I think I’m with Zeiss. I, personally, view the police, in some form, as essential. That form does not look a lot like today’s form, though. I think leaders must ask themselves why we need a heavily armed organization that sometimes seems to be on a hair-trigger, and, from the behavior and statements of the current Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) police union president, Bob Kruller, views its duties as inherently violent and right-wing. Other problems include an atmosphere of extreme mutual protection, even in the face of illegal behavior by members, and the use of a funding source, civil forfeiture, that is prone to corruption. The militarization of the police has been a national topic of debate, and I’d like to see most or all of the heavy weapons removed from police armories.

Leaders need to very carefully select metrics for measuring police performance. Those metrics must not measure quantities that do not advance community interests, or are easily inflated quantities. Funding sources must be completely outside of the control and influence of the police as well. The idea that taxation is always bad needs to be jettisoned as the community wrecker that it is. Improper funding of anything will lead to corruption, so we need to come to an agreement on proper funding levels, adjust as needed, and implement the funding through taxation. Enough with hiding behind dubious sources and proclaiming how you’ve kept taxes low.

And, since it’s a related topic, we should also ban private prisons, as they can lead to behaviors by the corporations providing the service that are deleterious to the community, while only benefiting the coffers of the company.

Off the soap box. I’m getting dizzy from the altitude.

Or, at least, so it feels. BuzzFeed requested a new version of the Mueller Report, now that Roger Stone’s trial has concluded, and the courts obliged. Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic has combed through the newly revealed information, which I won’t be doing, and came up with this:

But there are a few shreds of information that are really, genuinely new, and they’re damning of the president. Namely: Trump had direct knowledge of Roger Stone’s outreach to WikiLeaks, according to multiple witnesses interviewed by Mueller. He encouraged that outreach and asked his campaign chairman to pursue it further, those witnesses said. And Mueller’s office appears to have strongly suspected, without putting it in so many words, that Trump lied to the special counsel in his written answers to Mueller’s questions about the Stone affair.

The redacted report hinted at this. But it’s another thing to see it spelled out unmistakably by the special counsel.

I suspect that, at this juncture, Lawfare really isn’t a non-partisan third party in many observers minds, but partisan is a slippery term: it usually refers to adherents to one side or another for a cause for which neither side can be considered malicious.

This is no longer true for President Trump. His list of incompetencies and malevolencies are too long to bear repeating here; it’s safe to say, though, that most or even all of Lawfare’s contributors are more or less scornful of President Trump and his enablers.

So I can say that it’s unsurprising that Mueller’s report is more incriminating of Trump than the previously heavily redacted report. Trump’s performance in just the last year has been appalling, and I don’t intend to say that in the appallingly partisan, grating manner that I might have read of Obama’s performance on National Review back in the day; as an independent voter who desperately wishes there was a reasonable conservative party that could be considered competent to be a governing party, I have to report that, objectively speaking, Trump’s not worthy of anyone’s support.

Here’s just one example Jurecic provides of many:

“…beginning in June 2016 and continuing through October 2016, Stone spoke about WikiLeaks with senior Campaign officials, including candidate Trump.” (Vol. I, p. 51)

While the redacted report hints at involvement by Trump, the hidden material makes this frustratingly unclear. The unredacted copy directly states that Trump spoke multiple times with Stone about WikiLeaks’s release of material damaging to Clinton. Specifically, according to the report, Stone told the Trump campaign “as early as June 2016”—that is, at least a month before WikiLeaks began its releases on July 22—that Assange would release damaging documents.

It’s all old, unimportant news in one sense, yet it functions as a confirmation of many suspicions of Trump’s mendacity, as well as his enablers’, and should guide future judgments.

I seem to be afflicted with short lilies, I’m not sure if that’s just their genetics or their treatment.

Siberia continues to be that fabled canary:

Neither Dallas nor Houston has hit 100 degrees yet this year, but in one of the coldest regions of the world, Siberia’s “Pole of Cold,” the mercury climbed to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) on June 20.

If confirmed, the record-breaker in the remote Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow, would stand as the highest temperature in the Arctic since record-keeping began in 1885.

The triple-digit record was not a freak event, either, but instead part of a searing heat wave. Verkhoyansk saw 11 straight days with a high temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) or above, according to Rick Thoman, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. The average June high at that location is just 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 Celsius).

This week, Ust’-Olenek, Russia, about 450 miles north of the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 93.7 degrees (34.3 Celsius), about 40 degrees above average for the date. On May 22, the Siberian town of Khatanga, located well north of the Arctic Circle, recorded a temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit — about 46 degrees above normal. [WaPo]

Disquieting, to say the least. Any change on the CO₂ measurement front?

No improvement there. Oh, wait, maybe a graphic representation will calm my nerves:

Siberia doesn’t look too awful, but world-wide that’s an awful lot of red.

Maybe this will turn out to be good news:

What is the aim of this project?

The SUN-to-LIQUID project is developing a technology that produces aviation fuels from water, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and the power of the sun.

How could this technology be explained to a high school student?

Concentrated solar radiation is absorbed in a solar reactor that converts water and CO₂ into synthesis gas – a gas mixture comprising hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The synthesis gas is then delivered to a gas-to-liquid plant where it is converted into jet fuel. [International Energy Agency]

I wonder about its long term stability. My thought is, rather than deliver it to the airports to be burned, just store the stuff in caverns. I suppose it’s too slow to actually be effective, though.

Republican internal polling signals a Democratic rout

[CNN/Politics]

From the article:

Democratic and liberal aligned groups have put out 17 House polls taken in April or later. Republican aligned groups have put out 0. That’s a very bad ratio for Republicans.

Interestingly, Republicans were the ones dominating the polling landscape in the first quarter of the year. From January through March, Republican and conservative groups released 10 polls compared with the Democrats’ 2.

The April turning point lines up well with when the coronavirus pandemic became the headline story of the year. It’s when President Donald Trump’s approval rating started an almost continuous decline that remains unabated.

In other words, it makes a lot of sense that Democrats started to dominate the House polling landscape in the past few months. They had a lot of good news for their side that they wanted out in the public. Republicans, meanwhile, were likely seeing numbers that wouldn’t make them look good.

Under the hypothesis that parties only release good news for themselves, the avalanche of poll releases from the Democrats point towards a rout of Republican candidates in November.

I went into the article hoping for more Republicans expressing confidence about November; the cognitive dissonance behind such pronouncements can be quite entertaining. But that’s not the message of this article. They just screwed up their article title.

Ah well.

Watercourt:

About 700 years ago the Calusa people of Southern Florida created large watercourts for capturing and storing live fish, according to a new archaeological study published in March by the Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences. Although researchers have thought for years that these watercourts existed, this is the first archaeological study that documents when and how they were constructed, said archaeologist Victor Thompson of the University of Georgia, the lead author of the study. [“Ancient People Built Pens To Store Live Fish,” Paul Neely, American Archaeology (summer • 2020, print only).]

I did not find a congruent definition online; watercourt leads to articles concerning legal courts with jurisdiction over water rights.

The NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, seeing the recent mess of Georgia primary elections, have a donation to make:

On July 20, voters will be able to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention social distancing guidelines as they cast early ballots for the Georgia general primary runoff election, which takes place on Aug. 11. Voters also will be able to access the 21-year-old venue in October for early voting in November’s general election.

Hundreds of Hawks employees and arena staff will be trained as election workers at the 700,000-square-foot venue, which hosts more than 16,000 spectators for basketball games and 21,000 for concerts. The team says parking will be free for voters and more than 1,500 spaces will be made available. The recently renovated arena has been home to the Hawks since 1999. [WaPo]

Given the dubious strategies employed by GOP state parties and GOP-controlled governments to discourage voting by groups considered anti-GOP, this may constitute one of the most substantial pushbacks available to this particular commercial entity.

March of 2015.

And this is another clue that corporate America has become dissatisfied with the Republican Party as their representation in local, state, and federal governments. This is not entirely new, of course; Indiana experienced a lot of pushback in 2015 after then-Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) signed the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by the GOP-dominated Indiana legislature, widely recognized, especially by corporate America, as an authorization to discriminate against the LGBTQ community by hiding behind religious institutions. It was part of an effort to give birth to paranoia among conservative religious practicioners by suggesting that shameful social practices were justified by religious beliefs. Such are the methods of constructing epistemic bubbles.

There was also the abandonment of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), best described as the link between the GOP and businesses, by Google (now Alphabet) and several other businesses over claims that ALEC was issuing misleading information concerning climate change back in 2015. As I said at the time,

From a wider viewpoint, one must wonder if the last couple of years are starting to signal a rift between a GOP increasingly controlled by a deeply religious conservative faction, and businesses who find the assumptions of this new GOP are no longer compatible with good business practices.  We saw signs of a rift earlier this year when Indiana passed a law widely interpreted as giving small businesses the right to discriminate against virtually anyone they wished on religious grounds, resulting in various businesses and other organizations vowing to leave, or avoid, the state.  Indiana eventually replaced the law; other states with similar laws in the pipeline then did not pass their versions.

The Atlanta Hawks donation of the stadium would be the next step, as it’s plausible to suggest this would imperil GOP control of the Atlanta legislature, as well as GOP success in national-level elections, including not only the Oval Office, but both Senate seats (one is up for a special election after the retirement, due to ill health, by Senator Isakson  (R-GA)).

And the recent move of corporations, ever loving of a stable environment and happy consumers, to dictate to social media platforms to stop fucking around and fix the propaganda problem is another cobblestone on the path towards disjointing the GOP from the business world.

So when the Republicans have been reduced to the a group of morality-free power-lovers, the religious groups who are desperately against change of any kind, a band of uneasy libertarians, a gross of racists and liberal-haters, a few class-B Hollywood actors, and some rogue billionaires, will they still truly qualify as a political party?

Only the voters can decide that.

Recent research on the Chicxulub impact crater, generally considered the remains of the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, yielded the following fascinating diagram of the impact:

New simulations have revealed the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs struck Earth at the 'deadliest possible' angle. The simulations show that the asteroid hit Earth at an angle of about 60°, which maximised the amount of climate-changing gases https://t.co/xqv3AmE4oH pic.twitter.com/faKoIAR25E

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 27, 2020

It’s fascinating to think of granite as acting like a very low-grade rubber, isn’t it? It clearly compresses and then decompresses, leaving a peak, as shown at the end of the simulation. Compare to the lunar crater Moretus:

Information courtesy of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera concerning central peak formation in lunar impact craters is here.

In the last week or so, we (my Arts Editor and I) exited our position, as professional investors and advisors like to say, in the Elon Musk-controlled company Tesla (TSLA). Some of that position was the result of buying Tesla stock, and some of it was the result of the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity, another company controlled by Musk.

Regardless, we had become uncomfortable with Tesla. It didn’t hurt that we had made a tidy profit on Tesla stock over the years, nor that it seemed to be perhaps a trifle overvalued by the market, especially in the context of a pandemic that may force many businesses to become dormant and risk bankruptcy, in many cases again.

But we had recently become increasingly uncomfortable with the holding for reasons having nothing to do with its context, but with the company itself.

First, we didn’t like their strategies surrounding their cars. We had been in line to buy the Model 3, but when our names came up, we didn’t like how the car was sold: We were told that to avoid slewing off the road while the auto-pilot was engaged, we must keep our hands on the wheel during ‘S’ curves, since the feature as installed was not yet fully developed and we’d be likely to end up in the ditch if not paying attention.  As my Arts Editor is a former QA Engineer, she didn’t wish to be Tesla’s beta-tester when it came to the self-driving feature. We also didn’t feel that it was asking too much that a major feature installed in the car actually work.  Especially one which was being advertised as one of the car’s main selling points, which added a considerable percentage to the price of the car, and which, were it to fail, would certainly be a major liability and safety issue. We would have been happier to not have the feature, truth be told.

Their pricing strategy was annoying as well. Advertised as starting around $35,000, it turned out that, at least when we were considering it, it couldn’t be acquired for less than $52,000, as it was required that you also buy a package that significantly increased the price. I don’t recall how many packages we had to choose from, but we were unimpressed by this unethical bait & switch strategy.

But the discomfort truly started with Musk’s antics. They consisted of two incidents.

First, there was the incident in which a number of children from a Thai soccer team were trapped in a sea cave. After offering to help and being rebuffed:

In other replies to critics on Twitter Sunday morning, Musk said, “Stay tuned jack— …” and “Bet ya a signed dollar it’s true” to someone expressing skepticism that Unsworth could be a pedophile.

Musk deleted the Twitter thread hours later on Sunday, but not before they had been captured in screenshots. [Business Insider]

Spreading rumors of pedophilia is certainly beyond the pale, and the fact that he deleted the Twitter thread doesn’t mean he necessarily regretted the remark, as he should have, but may have been advised that it would be damaging. It brings up questions of his suitability and judgment for positions of responsibility.

But it’s been the second, recent incidents that have really left us with serious questions about his ethics and judgment: his refusal to take the coronavirus-caused pandemic seriously.

The coronavirus panic is dumb

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2020

If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great. They should be allowed to stay in their house and should not be compelled to leave, but to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist, this is not democratic, this is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom. [Transcript from Wikipedia, recording of Tesla conference in which it occurred]

Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2020

If he thought that might make him a folk hero, he failed with us. And then followed by this deal-breaker:

As Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory reopened in mid-May, CEO Elon Musk reassured nervous workers that they wouldn’t have to report to work if they “feel uncomfortable” about showing up to the factory during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, Tesla has fired at least five workers for staying home due to COVID-19 fears, according to The Washington Post. Three of those employees told The Post they were fired in the past week. [Business Insider]

I’m not going to hold forth on how dishonest or unethical leadership leads to inevitable failure in business, because the tobacco industry behaviors and results would invalidate that claim.  But profit, regardless of societal cost, is not part of our philosophy of life.  Such behavior damages society, and why should we be associated with such behaviors? Are we so important that the very society in which we are embedded should be damaged just so we can have a few more dollars?

So we’re out of Tesla stock. Perhaps we’re going to miss the next big jump in value for Tesla. Maybe it’ll go over the cliff with the rest of the market as investors begin to realize that Covid-19 isn’t disappearing in the summer heat and loves to ravage the patrons of bars and beaches as much as it does rest homes for the elderly, and comes with life long damage for those who end up surviving the infection.

I don’t predict any of those things happening, because we don’t need to. Our discomfort with Musk’s antics was really enough. It betrays a dubious ethical framework, and quite possibly an arrogance, known to be associated with the bright and successful, that may lead Musk and Tesla down the wrong path.

Our advice to you: If you’re uncomfortable with an investment for non-financial reasons, get out. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, so why make yourself uncomfortable, perhaps for the rest of your life, just because some dollars have been dangled in front of you?

Sometimes, even when you’re just a little fish in a medium-sized pond, you still get to let your money speak for you.

Another lily, brazenly showing off its sex organs.

It almost looks like a painting.

Former Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO) and Tom Rogers suggest in Newsweek that President Trump may continue to fight the battle after the November elections finish with a narrow loss for him:

The second pathway to subverting the election is even more ominous—but we must be cognizant of it because Trump is already laying the groundwork for how he can lose the popular vote, and even lose in the key swing states necessary for an Electoral College victory, but still remain president. …

Recent press reports have revealed the compilation by the Brennan Center at New York University of an extensive list of presidential emergency powers that might be inappropriately invoked in a national security crisis. Attorney General William Barr, known for his extremist view of the expanse of presidential power, is widely believed to be developing a Justice Department opinion arguing that the president can exercise emergency powers in certain national security situations, while stating that the courts, being extremely reluctant to intervene in the sphere of a national security emergency, would allow the president to proceed unchecked.

Something like the following scenario is not just possible but increasingly probable because it is clear Trump will do anything to avoid the moniker he hates more than any other: “loser.”

Trump actually tweeted on June 22: “Rigged 2020 election: millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries, and others. It will be the scandal of our times!” With this, Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for the step-by-step process by which he holds on to the presidency after he has clearly lost the election:

1. Biden wins the popular vote, and carries the key swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by decent but not overwhelming margins.
2. Trump immediately declares that the voting was rigged, that there was mail-in ballot fraud and that the Chinese were behind a plan to provide fraudulent mail-in ballots and other “election hacking” throughout the four key swing states that gave Biden his victory.
3. Having railed against the Chinese throughout the campaign, calling Biden “soft on China,” Trump delivers his narrative claiming the Chinese have interfered in the U.S. election.
4. Trump indicates this is a major national security issue, and he invokes emergency powers, directing the Justice Department to investigate the alleged activity in the swing states. The legal justification for the presidential powers he invokes has already been developed and issued by Barr.
5. The investigation is intended to tick down the clock toward December 14, the deadline when each state’s Electoral College electors must be appointed. This is the very issue that the Supreme Court harped on in Bush v. Gore in ruling that the election process had to be brought to a close, thus forbidding the further counting of Florida ballots.
6. All four swing states have Republican control of both their upper and lower houses of their state legislatures. Those state legislatures refuse to allow any Electoral College slate to be certified until the “national security” investigation is complete.
7. The Democrats will have begun a legal action to certify the results in those four states, and the appointment of the Biden slate of electors, arguing that Trump has manufactured a national security emergency in order to create the ensuing chaos.
8. The issue goes up to the Supreme Court, which unlike the 2000 election does not decide the election in favor of the Republicans. However, it indicates again that the December 14 Electoral College deadline must be met; that the president’s national security powers legally authorize him to investigate potential foreign country intrusion into the national election; and if no Electoral College slate can be certified by any state by December 14, the Electoral College must meet anyway and cast its votes.
9. The Electoral College meets, and without the electors from those four states being represented, neither Biden nor Trump has sufficient votes to get an Electoral College majority.
10. The election is thrown into the House of Representatives, pursuant to the Constitution. Under the relevant constitutional process, the vote in the House is by state delegation, where each delegation casts one vote, which is determined by the majority of the representatives in that state.

And Trump wins, 26-24.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Trump would pursue this strategy. He is reportedly being considered for indictment the moment this ridiculous cloak of Presidential immunity is removed, so if he wants to push off those contretemps for another four years, and perhaps bring the statute of limitations into play for at least some of those indictments, this may seem to be an attractive route.

This, of course, would be a Pyrrhic victory par excellence for the Republican Party, which is to say that if the Republican politicians responsible for these votes were to close their eyes and mutter that, Yes, maybe there was corruption in the voting! and hand Trump the Oval Office again, their family names would go down forever after as dishonorable toadies, unworthy of even contempt, much less responsibility, and the Republican Party would have reached the absolutely lowest nadir possible in their mad chase for power. All they would have to hide behind are the grasping clerics who keep telling the Republican base that Trump, with 18,000+ lies, betrayals obvious to everyone, caging children, etc etc, is still somehow more Godly than the Democrats.

As if it even matters.

If Trump were to even consider trying it, though, it would mark him forever after as a loser, and all Americans, even his base, would know it. Just the attempt would brand it into his forehead. We’d know the emergency powers thing was nothing more than a fraud.

Now, despite the evident entertainment value of this maneuver, it would not be healthy for the nation to take this detour before returning sanity to the White House. This is why – not that it need be said – the Democrats must continue to work hard to win every contest in every State, even those that seem impossible. An overwhelming rejection of Trumpian corruption is necessary to signal to Americans everywhere that renewal is underway, and that corruption in both Parties is in the process of being oustered and neutered.

Without anesthesia.

When then-candidate Trump spoke of emptying the swamp, we hadn’t yet caught on to his habit of projection. Heather Cox Richardson has a lovely summary of an exotic addition to the Trumpian Swamp:

It was [Attorney General William] Barr’s father, Donald Barr, the headmaster of the prestigious Dalton School in New York City, who launched Epstein, hiring the 20-year-old math whiz and college dropout Epstein to teach high school calculus and physics. It was a student’s father who gave him a start in the more lucrative profession of options trading.

She doesn’t give a source, though. But it sure seems to be a coterie of corruption in the White House these days, doesn’t it?

Later: And especially ironic, given Barr’s speech to a Notre Dame audience where he accuses militant secularists of destroying society.

From The Lincoln Project:

Wow. The rapid change in scenes really knocks the senses reeling, doesn’t it? And the Russian narration is quite menacing.

… insert appropriate tune above …

A friend posted this to Facebook:

STOP HATE FOR PROFIT

Advertisers are taking a break from advertising on Facebook, I’m going to do my part by being on Facebook less. A lot less. That’s fewer ads that Facebook can put in front of me and charge companies for.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

1. Spend less time on Facebook and Instagram
2. DON’T click on any ads you see on Facebook or Instagram
3. Don’t purchase from companies that still advertise on Facebook or Instagram

https://www.stophateforprofit.org/

Just as I was considering this piece by WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin concerning how the behavior of the companies behind the various social media patterns should, and is beginning, to change:

Tech companies might finally see the handwriting on the wall. Reddit, one of the least-moderated platforms, has already had a change of heart. Banning a group with nearly 800,000 subscribers that became a haven for “racism, violent threats and targeted harassment,” Reddit’s chief executive, Steve Huffman, is now committed to eliminating hate speech. Other tech companies should follow his lead. Before the government or advertisers impose rules upon them that would undermine their business model or affect their content, it would behoove them to end the hostility toward outside criticism. Unless they adopt a collaborative approach that results in more self-regulation, they risk losing their biggest advertisers, becoming social pariahs and seeing the government begin to regulate micro-targeting and use of personal data. In other words, if they don’t clean up their act, they might see their business model collapse.

Given Rubin’s rational^[1] conservative credentials, it’s a little surprising that she doesn’t place greater emphasis on the power of the consumer in this situation. If half the users of Facebook simply refused to click on ads – a practice that I personally denigrate and refuse to do – the change in habit would be swiftly reflected in marketing analytics, followed by the dropping of advertising rates by Facebook, or the abandonment of the platform by the advertisers.

Connecting this with Facebook’s refusal to fact-check all forms of political advertising should bring to the fore their anti-social qualities, and that they should be corrected at once. If we’re to be faced with company CEOs who worship the dollar like Zuckerberg and many of these others do, as testimony to the design of these platforms seems to indicate, then it’s necessary to hit them right in those pocketbooks.

But this may be a defining characteristic of non-specific social media companies: a vulnerability to both consumer and advertiser pressure. They must have consumers to attract advertisers and thus revenue; they must keep advertisers convinced that they are an honorable platform, especially as at least some corporate citizens are beginning to shift from the model of Let’s make money! to being actually good citizens.

They may perceive that if they make this or that change in response to complaints, they may lose some group such as, for instance, white supremacists. The trick is to realize that these small groups will not critically damage their profitability by their absence, and indeed may advance it – and improve society by reinforcing societal disapproval.

¹ It’s sad that the corruption of the word conservative has become so universal that I feel it necessary to prefix conservative with a modifier to indicate my judgment of someone who, in a more sane world, would simply qualify as a conservative —  temperamentally skeptical of change, but open to being convinced on persuasive argument. I have several of those sorts of friends.

Longitudinal:

What Is Longitudinal Data?

Longitudinal data, sometimes called panel data, is a data that is collected through a series of repeated observations of the same subjects over some extended time frame – and is useful for measuring change. Longitudinal data effectively follows the same sample over time, which differs fundamentally from cross-sectional data because it follows the same subjects over some time, while cross-sectional data samples different subjects (whether individuals, firms, countries, or regions) at each point in time. Meanwhile, a cross-sectional data set will always draw a new random sample.

Longitudinal data is used widely in the social sciences, including among economists, political scientists, and sociologists. [Investopedia]

Noted in “Tech companies are finally being shamed into action,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

A new study is out that looks at how tax burdens are distributed racially, and comes to a discouraging conclusion:

In the United States, the residential property tax is an ad valorem tax. The amount levied should be proportional to the value of the home. Authorizing legislation regularly makes explicit that the relevant concept of value is the market price of the property in a fair transaction. Property tax bills, however, are generated by applying the locally determined rate of taxation to an assessed value, which is a local official’s projection of market price. Any wedge between market values and assessed values, therefore, generates some deviation from the intended rate of taxation. Equitable property tax administration requires the ratio of assessed value to market value to be the same for all residents within any particular taxing jurisdiction. This paper documents the existence of a widespread and large racial assessment gap: relative to market value, assessed values are significantly higher for minority residents. This assessment gap places a disproportionate fiscal burden on minority residents: within the same tax jurisdiction, black and Hispanic residents bear a 10–13% higher property tax burden than white residents. …

We show the assessment gap cannot be explained by racial or ethnic differences in realized market prices, nor is it simply a byproduct of racial wealth differences and the previously documented propensity for assessment ratios to be regressive (Baar 1981, Black 1977, Engle 1975, McMillen and Weber 2008, Paglin and Fogarty 1972). As a result of the assessment gap, minority residents are therefore paying a significantly larger effective property tax rate for the same bundle of public services. For the median minority homeowner, the differential burden is an extra $300–390 annually. This finding is strongly robust across most states in the U.S. We produce county-level estimates to characterize the distribution of this assessment gap. The average black homeowner in a county at the 90th percentile of the assessment gap distribution has a 27% higher assessment ratio, and would pay an extra $790 annually in property tax.

Researchers Avenancio-León and Howard go on to explain that this is a problem with assessors – not that they’re racist, but that the assumptions they work off of only applies to predominantly white communities, or so how I read this; the assessed values for housing in black communities appears to be consistently higher than they should be, and so taxes based on such assessments – which I think is virtually universal – come in too high.

Kevin Drum characterizes the situation:

This is a good example of structural racism. The mechanisms at work here are not necessarily due to personal racism since, as the authors note, “most assessors likely neither know, nor observe, homeowner race.” Rather, it’s been built into the property tax system for decades and has become nearly invisible. But invisible doesn’t mean nonexistent. Even if it’s not easy to see, it’s still there.

And, because something like this requires careful data collection and analysis, any fool barroom blowhard will simply deny its existence. That’s the result of having a disdain for scholarship and science, and a touch of arrogance.

But the racism, whether low-level, and thus in doubt for those who aren’t paying attention, or the overt, such as this young lady so vividly enumerates, serves to beat down the black community when it comes to redress:

The second mechanism is more speculative, but the authors suggest that it has to do with appeals: Black families are less likely to appeal their assessments, and less likely to win an appeal if they do. [Drum]

So if you’re not a minority and you’ve been whining that your taxes are too high, consider A) the minority community taxes, just across town, are probably even higher for comparable services, and B) the GOP just lowered the corporate tax rates substantially a couple of years ago in their hunt for the fabled Laffer Curve effect.

I’m was on 4 hours sleep yesterday, when I wrote this, and this is all feeling pernicious.

Jennifer Rubin gives a brief rundown on all the prices Americans both for and against Trump have paid:

The sycophants who continue to rationalize [Trump’s] conduct got practically nothing from the Faustian bargain. His Supreme Court justices did not overturn abortion precedent, undo protections for the “dreamers” or deny LGBTQ Americans freedom from discrimination. The tax cuts for the rich never delivered on promises of sustained prosperity (and surely did not pay for themselves). The price they (and we) paid was intolerable. We have suffered from a pandemic that has killed more than 124,000 Americans, an economy akin to the Great Depression, a Russian patsy masquerading as a friend of the troops, a self-dealer who corruptly promoted his own holdings as president and a racist entirely out of step with a country yearning for racial justice.

We dare not repeat the error of 2016. We know — because we know Trump — a second term would be equally if not more calamitous than the first. Character this twisted is destiny. Unfitness this severe is irreparable. [WaPo]

Rubin misses perhaps the most damaging aspect of the Trump Presidency, one term or two – the damage it does to the very concept of democracy.

Democracy has been taking it on the nose, as America is, or has been, its leading example – my apologies to the Brits. Along with Trump and all the corruption he’s inevitably entailed, there’s also the inefficiency exhibited in the face of a pandemic, the dirty politics of Senator McConnell (R-KY) and many other Republicans, and, perhaps worst of all, the systemic racism which was born with this country, that even existed during the American gestation, and has stubbornly persisted until this very day.

The combination of these problems, exacerbated by time, should force us each to wonder if democracy will be irreversibly damaged, endangering all the things we value in democracy: our freedoms, our prosperity – or at least those of us who are permitted either.

For my part, my advice to the reader is to consider that, although a 2^nd Amendment absolutist may disagree^[1], it’s not the government, but our government, and that identification is the first step up the edifice we may have to conquer in order to save democracy. Once we recognize it’s our government and not some external force over which we have little to no control, the logical next step is to begin to study how to make it work for our benefit.

Again, not for my benefit or your benefit, but for our benefit. When it comes to government, there’s little of benefit in the study of the private sector when preparing for the public sector. Their goals are incomparable, they are apples and oranges, and therefore the methods of one, designed and optimized for one set of goals, do not transfer to the other. Government is concerned with the common weal, as the old phrase goes, and solutions must focus on the same, whether it’s the common defense, or the public health.

I recall, back in my days of reading libertarianism, the comment that, in Europe, the first rate people went into government, while the second raters and worse went into business; in America, the reverse held true. While I didn’t know what to make of it then, I think it’s become blindingly clear that, at least in the case of the Republican Party, all the quality people are, or have already, leaked away or declared themselves as NeverTrumpers. Those that are left are, for the most part, second raters and much, much worse, either adherents to ideologies of folly, gross incompetents, or both.

We need to change that. We need first raters in all parties. We do not improve because one party or the other has blindingly great ideas, but because one or the other has good ones, that then are hammered at by perceptive, honest, and fair critics from the other parties, thus improving those that can be improved, and destroying those that do not hold up to intellectual challenge. Let’s not pretend that personalities such as Limbaugh, Gingrich, McConnell, Hawley, or any of the other Party hacks of the GOP are worthy of any such adjectives. We need better people to step in.

But, most importantly, we must once again dedicate ourselves to our political system, realize that it was founded on the principle of humility, the humility to realize that We don’t know, but let’s give it a good-hearted try, rather than the unprovable God’s behind us, my pastor says so, we can’t be wrong!

I don’t care how many times you say you “believe, and that’s enough.” This isn’t heaven, this is just earth with just humans, so we need to use the tools we’ve developed to try to govern. Get rid of your arrogance. It’s hurting us. Not you, not me, but us.

The time for repentance, redemption, and rebuilding – the GOP and America, principally – is almost upon us.

¹ As in, I need my guns to defend myself against the government! It’s a common justification, along with concerns about self-defense against crime.

Generally, our clematis does very well, but this year they seem to be a little off. Still, the blooms are fairly nice.

My Arts Editor spots a most unfortunate and accidental mix of article content and commercial ad on her phone:

Yeow!

Borrowing an amusing concept from Andrew Sullivan’s old blog, the Earl Landgrebe Award Nominees are for those politicians who best imitate Representative Earl Landgrebe (R-IN), who, in reference to the impending impeachment of President Nixon (R-CA), became notorious for uttering the phrase, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” Such an utterly un-American sentiment surely deserves an award named after it.

My first nominee:

“As our economy is restored, it is imperative that President Trump is not undermined in his mission to return our economy to greatness. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx continue to contradict many of President Trump’s stated goals and actions for returning to normalcy as we know more about the COVID-19 outbreak. This is causing panic that compromises our economic recovery. We can protect our most vulnerable from the COVID-19 outbreak while still protecting lives and livelihoods of the rest of the population. It’s time for the COVID-19 task force to be disbanded so that President Trump’s message is not mitigated or distorted.”
– Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

Incidentally or not, Rep Biggs’ district is one of the most distressed in Arizona.

Cloture:

the closing or limitation of debate in a legislative body especially by calling for a vote [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Ignoring irony, McConnell warns Dems may ‘vandalize’ the Senate,” Steve Benen, Maddowblog:

I presume “cloture invoked” means the vote passed.

Former Federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg notes on Lawfare that, following testimony from career Justice Department prosecutor John Elias, AG Bill Barr may be giving vent to a personal dislike in an inappropriate manner:

Elias told the Judiciary Committee that proposed mergers in the cannabis industry “[did] not meet established criteria for antitrust investigations.” The targeted companies had low market shares in a fragmented industry. Yet his group was ordered to open investigations into these disfavored companies. Elias added that “[w]hile these were nominally antitrust investigations, and used antitrust investigative authorities, they were not bona fide antitrust investigations.”

If Elias is correct, that is deeply troubling. I am not defending that industry; the nature of it is irrelevant here. I imagine Elias would be equally troubled—I would be—if antitrust resources were used improperly to target hospitals, airlines or energy producers. So, even if these unfounded investigations were ultimately dropped, as Elias explained, what is the harm? Why should we care? For several reasons.

For smaller businesses, the costs of managing a DoJ anti-trust can be overwhelming, as Rosenberg points out. And this is what makes this an underhanded approach to the marijuana business, which is a little puzzling when marijuana remains a Schedule I drug, with no official use.

I’m forced to speculate that Barr, or his backers, believe the political costs of attacking the marijuana industry directly, using the FBI to knock down the doors and arrest everyone, is simply too great; the fact that several states have legalized for medical use, and in a couple of cases even recreational use, makes it very plausible. Such a move on Barr’s part might result in such an uproar from libertarians that they might bolt the right-wing alliance; the libertarians in Colorado are an important part of the alliance to legalize marijuana. Trump, already in trouble, doesn’t need more pressure on those who are doubtful of voting for him already.

But, in an instance of Big Daddyism knows better, it appears Barr is doing what he can to cripple the industry. It’s disappointing to see an intellectual failure of this magnitude in the top law enforcement officer in the country. I’m not saying the people are always right. Long time readers know that I occasionally make noises about leaders having to actually lead, and that means sometimes taking public positions that are not actually popular.

But I emphasize public positions. It’s fine, even great, for the AG to participate in the debate on the anti-pot side. But to decide to attack the industry through a back door in the arrogant belief that his wisdom – in a party that isn’t known for its knowledge base – supersedes that of the people who gave him his job is reprehensible.

Bill Barr risks historical opprobrium.

Last week Kentucky held its primaries plus a special election for a seat in the state’s Senate. For those who like to prognosticate from data, even flimsy data such as small local special elections, this data from the home of Senator Mitch “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY) might prove interesting, as the Democrat wins over the  Republican. More importantly, this had been a Republican seat:

Steve Benen helpfully notes President Trump carried this district by 12 points in 2016.

That said, using small local elections as goat guts, as it were, is a chancy business. Perhaps Ferko was personally disliked by the District 26 voters, perhaps a scandal erupted: putting too much emphasis on a result like this can result in disappointment.

But Senator McConnell must find the loss of a local seat that may have been considered safe surprising. His own opponent in his reelection run was confirmed in the primary to be Amy McGrath, who bested her closest opponent, State Senator Charles Booker, by less than 3 points, and Democratic propaganda making its way to my mailbox suggests McConnell is currently behind in their polls. Whether Booker’s loss to McGrath hurts McGrath with Booker supporters remains to be seen.

I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the outcome of the local contest, but it may be indicative of an imminent earthquake in Kentucky.