Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics

The New York Times informed us yesterday the the federal deficit in the current fiscal year ending last month rose to $587 billion. You can go to a nice government website which shows colorful charts illustrating this deficit and confirming the story told to us by the Times.

I’m always a little suspicious when I see something this elaborately stage managed, not to mention that I saw the word “budget” in that report, so let’s dig a little deeper.

It took a while, and this government website is nowhere as pretty, but the Treasury Department does publish a monthly statement of the total debt outstanding owed by the federal government. Guess what, it doesn’t verify the $587 billion deficit. It doesn’t contain the word “budget” either. The amounts are in trillions.

So it would appear that the deficit was closer to $1.5 trillion than it was to the $.5 trillion that the Times is telling us about. Where did the other $835 billion go?

Is it the difference between the budget and actual spending? Perhaps so, but to some degree it is the result of a distortion caused by lumping Social Security revenue into the general revenue stream. That money is paid into a trust fund, not into the government’s coffers, and the government borrows from the trust fund, borrowing which is largely concealed in the reporting by the ploy of including non-government funds into government revenue reporting.

This is just one of many ways in which our government lies to us.

The Idiocy of Economics

Dean Baker produced a response today to a column in Bloomberg News in which he says it is “almost impossible to exaggerate how absurd” the premise of the column is. He then proceeds to illustrate that the columnist cannot hold a candle to an economist when it comes to being absurd.

First, he says that “it only takes the debt side of the ledger,” which is something that “no business would ever engage in.” This after spending years pointing out repeatedly that the government is not a business in that governments do not repay debt, but we’ll let that one slide.

Then he points out that “Microsoft has much more debt than the restaurant down my street,” and suggests that Bloomberg should be “highlighting Microsoft's massive debt.” All of that is, of course, irrelevant to the column’s argument about the increasing size of government debt. In any case, if you look up Microsoft’s balance sheet, it has a rather small debt, 32% of its assets and only 75% of its annual revenue.

He than explains that Bloomberg’s business reporters would “report on Microsoft's debt in relation to its assets and its debt service in relation to its revenue or profits,” and that if they reported on the government debt in this fashion, “it would be pretty obvious and totally non-scary that our per capita debt rises through time.” Actually, that’s precisely what the column said and was, in fact, the whole point of the column. Baker may consider that “totally non-scary,” but not everybody agrees with him.

Besides which, it’s not clear to me how reporting the government debt “in relation to its assets and its debt service in relation to its revenue or profits” would make it in any way obvious that government debt is increasing over time, or especially why it would make that fact “totally non-scary.” For one thing, how does one determine the assets of the federal government?

The big lie, though, is the part where he advocates reporting of government “debt service in relation to its revenue or profits,” and then says that if they did so then “it would be reported on the ratio of debt service to GDP,” which he cites as being 0.8% currently. That is an utterly false picture, because the Gross Domestic Product is an order of magnitude larger than federal revenue. The government does not have access to the money represented by the GDP, it only has access to the money that is paid into its coffers by taxes and other sources.

Federal revenue this past year is $3.3 trillion, but of that $1.1 trillion is social services taxes which are paid directly into a trust fund for Social Security and medical care. The general fund revenue is $2.2 trillion, then, of which $432.7 billion was paid to service the debt, i.e. interest charges, which amounts to 19.7% of revenue. That is not the trivial amount that Dean Baker wants us to believe it is.

There is a very large difference between the reality of “19.7% of federal revenue” which Dean Baker says Bloomberg should be reporting and the meaningless “0.8% of GDP” which he cites instead.

He then declaims the “absurdity that in the Bloomberg Halloween debt story our children would be better off if we eliminated public schools and funding for their education altogether,” which apparently came entirely from his feverish imagination, because it certainly is not contained in the Bloomberg column. He then claims they say that it “would be even better off if we stopped spending to maintain and improve infrastructure,” despite the fact that the column doesn’t say that and apparently unaware that we’ve already stopped such spending decades ago.

He finishes up with a tirade on patents, which is a pet peeve of his, but is pretty much irrelevant to government debt. Sort of like writing about a football game and complaining about a baseball rule. He considers patents as a government plot to permit corporate graft and overpricing and thinks patents and copyrights should be outlawed. Authors and inventors may disagree.

Consensus Prediction

I have been reading, and watching, the local sports media too much, resulting in a brainwashed prediction of a Chargers win tonight by a score of 24-0. The reason that the Broncos will be scoreless is that every time their quarterback attempts to throw a pass Joey Bosa will sack him. San Diego will miss eighteen field goals, be successful on one, and Rivers will throw three touchdown passes.

Reward

Returning home after running some errands, I walked into the room where Molly was hanging out. I had not begun petting her, had not yet even spoken to her, and she was already purring audibly. Merely at the sight of me. That's why one houses a cat.

Limited Reading

I ditched places like Salon and Democratic Underground a couple of months ago. Now I'm having to abandon even Facebook in order to avoid being inundated with the personal shortcomings of Donald Trump. It's not that I support the guy, I don't, but I'm not a chimpanzee and I don't participate in feces flinging contests.

Delusion Abounds

Just to illustrate how delusional the San Diego sports writers are, Nick Canepa is claiming today that head coach Mike McCoy should not be fired, at least not until the end of the season. As evidence of this theory he cites another sunken ship, "McCoy is the captain. When the Exxon Valdez crashed into Bligh Reef, people didn’t blame the reef."

No, Nick, they blamed the captain, and they didn't wait until he crashed into a dozen more reefs before they fired him.

Update: No, Canepa does not have a valid point regarding injuries. The Chargers lost their best receiver to a season-ending injury. So they are going to lose a whole bunch of games because the team doesn't have any other receivers? Those other guys are no-talent window dressing that were added just as a formality to fill out the roster? They didn't expect them to, you know, actually catch any passes? I guess we only had one linebacker as well, right?

Well, It Was Creative

We did all the traditional things, yes -- fumbles and interceptions, two of each. The sixteen-yard punt from our own ten yard line was pretty creative, but we did that before in game one.

Lining up for a game-tying field goal at the opponent’s twenty and having the holder fumble the snap from center – well, you have to admit that adds a nice note of novelty.

Raiders 34, Chargers 31. Chargers season: 1-4

One has to think we saw 20,000 or so votes in favor of the new stadium disappear yesterday, which should kill the subject permanently because the deal made with the NFL was that if we did not build a new stadium the Chargers had just one year to move in with the Rams in Los Angeles.

This past week, however, Hizzonor the mayor made some deals with the Chargers which allowed him to support the measure to build the stadium. They are not being incorporated in the measure, are only “verbal assurances,” but Hizzonor says they can be worked into whatever stadium deal is proposed next year.

He doesn’t seem to recognize that he is a) acknowledging that he knows this “convadium” deal is going to fail notwithstanding his support of it and b) admitting that he knows that the Chargers and the NFL were lying when they said the Chargers would move to Los Angeles in 2017 if we didn’t build them a stadium this year.

Politics as usual. Here, Sacramento and Washington.

Update, Monday, 4:30pm: A poll taken this afternoon has support for the "convadium" at 36%. That's down from 41% last week.

More on Proposition 64

A couple of excellent points were raised in comments on my discussion regarding Proposition 64.

Based on the title of the book she referenced, I think that Barbara was suggesting that the “War on Drugs” is worse than drugs themselves, and I have little doubt that such is the case. I suspect that the “War on Drugs” has caused infinitely more suffering and death than has drug abuse, and certainly we are doing this wrong.

I don’t have the answer, and I suspect that solution lies much closer to the legalization end of the spectrum than it does to where we are now. I think my argument yesterday was more that we need to know how to assess “responsible use” more than than it was taking a position in opposition to legalizing it.

And I'm talking about the users themselves, actually, as well as the law. It's by no means uncommon for people impaired by alcohol to insist that they are not impaired, and that phenomenon is much more pervasive in users of marijuana. We need a way to measure that impairment in order to help establish a subjective standard for users of the substance to measure themselves against.

Bruce also raises the problem of “citizen measures,” and many official ones, which are poorly worded, sometimes deliberately so. It’s not unusual to have measures so deceptively worded that a liberal position requires a “no” vote while appearing to require an affirmative one. The whole “citizen’s initiative” process in California is badly broken.

Proposition 64

Proposition 64 would legalize marijuana for recreational use for persons over 21 years of age in California. Our Attorney General warns against the crime wave that revolves around the weed, but the idiot fails to recognize that said crime wave is the result of the weed’s illegality. A very similar crime wave revolved around alcohol during prohibition.

Reality is that legalizing marijuana is likely to reduce crime, not increase it, and the Attorney General is not as stupid as her argument would seem to indicate. She is merely as dishonest as most of the advocates on both sides of pretty much all of the measures on this year's ballot.

That being said, I do see a couple of problems with legalization, one being that after the state of Washington legalized marijuana they experienced a large increase in fatal highway crashes involving drivers who had been using marijuana, in fact the number of such crashes doubled. A direct cause and effect is hard to prove because of the second problem, which is that we have no way to detect when a person’s use of marijuana has become an impairment.

Alcohol use is generally defined as an impairment when the content in the blood reaches .08%, but even that, while close enough for legal action, is really only an approximation. Under some circumstances and for some people a blood alcohol content significantly lower than .08% can impair performance to a dangerous degree. We have nothing of a similar nature to determine safe levels of marijuana use.

Until we know more clearly what degree of impairment is caused by marijuana, when it is caused, and how to measure the effect of that impairment I think it is unwise to release it for general and unrestricted use.

Coaching Change

It has been suggested that the Chargers should fire head coach Mike McCoy and hire Les Miles, and I think the idea has merit.

LSU, despite it's recent woes, has had a much better winning record than the Chargers over the years, even this season, and it faces considerably tougher competition, relatively speaking.

Even if we didn't win more games, Les Miles would be a hell of a lot more entertaining on the sidelines and in the media than McCoy. If nothing else, the media could discuss his habit of eating grass.

Okay, perhaps "habit" is a bit hyperbolic, but even having done it once is a lot more interesting than anything Mike McCoy has ever done.

Double Standard

Various accusations have been made regarding Clinton and donations to the Clinton Foundation, in response to which Clinton dares anyone to show any instance where “I did any specific favors for those donors.” Typical Clinton triangulated denial in which she may actually be admitting to have taken bribes, but claiming that she didn’t fulfill her part of the bargain.

The media, of course, blows off any suggestion that donations to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State could possibly have been improper in any manner; says that anyone making such suggestions are irresponsible louts and are probably unpatriotic to boot.

But then the media pounces on a story about Trump’s use of his charitable foundation, including a headline that he “Used Foundation Funds for 2016 Run, Filings Suggest.” Given the last two words, the beginning of the headline should have read “May Have Used,” not “Used.”

The story revolves around Trump meeting with various conservative groups early in his campaign, many of whom asked for contributions, and he gave them money from his foundation in a perfectly legal manner.

The person reporting the issue to the media points out that “Trump did not explicitly ask for favors in return for the money,” but the article continues with vague accusations of illegality about what may have been wandering around in Trump’s mind when he wrote the check.

Does that sound familiar? Sure it does. See Hillary’s challenge to name anyone for whom she “did specific favors.” No one speculates about what may or may not have been wandering around in her mind when she received the money.

Meanwhile, the New York Attorney General is investigating the Trump Foundation and has shut it down for the moment. The investigation involves filing errors, and no on will be surprised to learn that the AG is a Democrat.

There are two parallel sets of standards for media reporting and legal investigation. There is Comey’s “no intent” standard for investigating those who are in power, and there is Schneiderman’s “file charges and shut it down now” standard for those who seek to gain power.

Well, That Was Epic

Not only did the Chargers lose to an 0-3 team, they lost after leading by 13 points with 8:39 left in the game. In their last three possessions they fumbled twice and threw an interception and, on the two New Orleans possessions that counted, could not prevent touchdowns and lost by one point. Awesome. Beyond awesome. I truly believe there is only one team in the league that could do that.

Proposition Nonsense Again

Backers of the proposition to build the "Convadium" in downtown San Diego... For those who don't know, that is the combination of a convention center and a football stadium, and the idea is every bit as ridiculous as you think it is. Chargers ownership knew they could not pass a measure paying for a stadium, but that the expansion of the convention center to accommodate ComicCon is a popular cause, so they jumped on board that one. The organizers of ComicCon want no part of it but aren't saying what they will do if it is built.

Anyway, the Convadium backers are saying that raising the hotel tax to 16.5% will not hurt tourism because two other California cities already have taxes that high and draw lots of visitors. Yes. Well, Anaheim has Disneyland, and San Francisco has, um, San Francisco. San Diego has nice beaches, but so do about eight other cities just to the north and south of us. And, have you stayed in a San Diego hotel lately?

Better Times

Somewhat over forty years ago I met a young fellow at a party who had just come to this country from Poland, which was still behind the Iron Curtain at the time. I asked him what most impressed him about the United States and without hesitation he replied, “You don’t have to be afraid of the police.”

Of course, he was a white guy so he might feel the same way today. I’m a white guy, though, and I’m not sure I do. One of the cops who shot the man in El Cajon was facing two charges of domestic assault, and was still on duty and still carrying a firearm. That’s not a police department that engenders a feeling of public safety.

And Another Lie

Another commercial urging a "no" vote, this one on Proposition 53 because it "gives the state control over local projects."

Oh, please. The proposition requires a popular vote before the state can issue general revenue bonds for amounts exceeding $2 billion. So, regarding the claim made in the commercial, the state does not issue bonds for local projects, local governments issue those bonds and this proposition affects only state issuance of bonds. In any case, how many local projects exceed $2 billion?

That doesn't mean I'm going to vote for this mess, but...

Just A Thought

Somebody is spending a huge amount of money to defeat Proposition 61. There are ads everywhere, every fifteen minutes on television, full page ads in the newspaper, and even major billboards all over town telling me I should vote "no" on Proposition 61.

All of this suggests to me that I should vote "yes" on it.

Are You Listening, Spanos?

The LSU Tigers lost two of their first four games, and head coach Les Miles is fired along with offensive coordinator Cam Cameron. Now, if we could just get the owner of the San Diego Chargers on the same page.

The difference, of course, is that the LSU administration expects their football team to win games. Spanos makes money either way, and Mike McCoy's salary is pretty cheap, so Spanos doesn't really care one way or the other. It's kind of short sighted, though, because with the Chargers having a 1-2 record and in firmly last place in the AFC West division, that new stadium proposition vote is looking pretty shaky right now.

Campaign Style

If I am going to be asked by the establishment to disbelieve claims made about Clinton's email and charitable foundation, then I am going to choose to disbelieve similar claims made about Trump and his use of his charity funds as well.

We have deteriorated to campaigning like chimpanzees; whoever flings the most excrement wins.

Karma

Yesterday a middle aged woman in an Escalade was tailgating me as I drove on a residential street. I was driving a bit faster that I should have been actually, about 35mph, and she got so close to me at times that all I could see in my mirror was the grill of her car. I did what I always do in these circumstances, which is find a way to pull over and let her go by.

She blasted past me a high speed just as I noticed a speed limit sign, so I adjusted my speed to the required 30mph. We had been going up a slight hill, the crown of which was about three blocks ahead. When I topped the hill there was a motorcycle cop in the act of dismounting with a radar gun in his hand, parked in front of the Escalade which had just passed me.

I almost had a wreck because I was laughing so hard.

Oh Gack

Sixty Minutes did a piece last night that should have been titled "Do You Really Want Donald Trump's Finger On This Button?"

Choice little lines were included like, "So these are the President's rockets?" The "expert" replied that no, they are the nation's rocket, but that only the President can fire them. Dickweed repeated his line that they are, then, "the President's rockets."

Frankly, yes, I would rather have Trump's finger on that button than have Hillary Clinton's finger there.

Yeah, That Makes Sense

Melvin Gordon was running behind a fullback in the first half Sunday and gaining 8-10 yards at a time, scoring two touchdowns. In the second half he ran only three times, all three as a single setback from a shotgun formation, and gained a total of five yards. Coach Mike McCoy told the media, when asked about it, that the change was due to "the flow of the game." What? The flow of the game is dictated by the plays called, not the other way around.

I told my trainer at the gym this morning that she needed to go easy on me because I was suffering from dehydration. She laughed and told me that I should have fully recovered in 90 minutes.

And So It Continues

Giving us information which, while it may not be entirely false, is misleading and distorts reality.

The New York Times blares in a headline that "Household Income Grew
5.2 Percent in 2015," which sounds like quite an accomplishment for our economy. Our local bird cage liner went even further, headlining the same article, "Americans Register Big Economic Gains."  Read the details, however, and we see that income for men grew by 1.5% while income for women grew by 2.5% in the same period.

There is one aspect of the latter that is actually good news, because it indicates progress toward gender pay equality, but if household income has grown by an amount so much greater than either component of that household it means that there are more workers per household than the prior year, and that is anything but good news, and it certainly isn't "big economic gains."

The same article says that "unemployment dropped to 5%," but doesn't remind us that the number does not represent 5% of the workforce, but rather is 5% of those who are participating in the workforce. That percentage is only 63% of those who are in the workforce, and is a historically low number which is not improving significantly.

The Cheerleaders Are Back

I just read the sports section of our city's Sunday morning bird cage liner, which reminds me that the Chargers are playing in Kansas City today. I had not forgotten, of course, but...

The Las Vegas betting line is the Chiefs winning by six points. The San Diego sports writers are picking San Diego to win by a six to one margin. The one writer picking us to lose is doing so for the wrong reason; something about the new stadium, which is neither new or a stadium at this point. Needless to say, the six picking us to win are simply delusional.

Now the Chargers will probably win and make me look like an idiot, but I can deal with that. I've been looking like an idiot for much of my life.

Debunking the Debunker

Dean Baker writes a column called “Beat The Press,” in which he debunks articles written by other pundits and sets the records straight with what they would have said if they a) were not liars, b) did not have an agenda and/or c) were not stupid. He is not always polite about it and is frequently fun to read but, being an economist, he is fairly often full of shit himself.

Yesterday he set about correcting a column by David Brooks, which is usually fun, what with David Brooks being who he is, but he gets a little weird in the process. He cites a claim made by Brooks that, “the exchanges are disproportionately drawing lower-income people.” Actually, since the exchanges pick up a portion of the cost of insurance based on income, I believe that’s precisely what they are designed to do, but Dean Baker doesn’t go there.

Instead, he refutes Brooks by saying that, “Apparently Brooks did not realize that the ACA also requires that all insurers charge patients the same premium regardless of their health condition,” which is a masterpiece of non sequitur. He tries to strengthen what purports to be an argument by talking about health conditions a bit, and finishes that sick people now, “can get insurance at the same price as anyone else of the same age.”

“Non sequitur,” for those who don’t know, is Latin and loosely translates to, “What the hell does that have to do with what I just said?” Brooks is talking about people choosing the exchanges based on income and Baker “refutes” him by babbling about choosing the exchanges based on health condition.

In the comments it becomes somewhat more clear. Dean Baker was actually ignoring the Brooks comment about low income users of the exchanges and changing the subject to say, “Yeah, but Obamacare does some good things, too.” Typical economist, in that he can never admit that the other guy has made a valid point; when that happens he changes the subject.

Football ?

Not sure that what I watched this weekend was actually football. All of my teams not only lost, they humiliated themselves. Haven't heard any Les Miles firing rumors, but I would not settle for that anyway, preferring lynching. About the middle of the fourth quarter last night I swore off football altogether. Francois, forsooth. That's not only a first name, not a surname, it's a girl's first name. I think I'm over the swearing off thing now, though. I'm nothing if not resilient.

Fantasyland

Media reporting is becoming increasingly detached from reality these days.

The New York Times carries a column by Paul Krugman in which he claims that the shortcomings of Donald Trump are being unreasonably downplayed by the media, while the travails of Hillary Clinton with respect to email servers and charitable foundations is being seriously and unfairly distorted into what amounts to falsehoods. I don’t know what planet he is living on, but it isn’t Earth.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post goes on at great length about a national security investigation into “a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions.” I think our own politicians have already beaten the Russians to the punch on that, but…

The headline reads “U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections,” an accusation which is not made in the article. In fact, the statement is made within the article that, “The Kremlin’s intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union,” which is pretty opaque, but does not seem to imply “swaying November elections.”

Employment's "Sound Footing"

The consensus of reporting is that the 155,000 new jobs created last month means that “employment growth is still on a sound footing.” That number, however, is seasonally adjusted. The unadjusted number was a mere 33,000 new jobs. Even if you accept the rosier adjusted number, despite no explanation ever being given for why the adjustment is needed or how it is made, the 155,000 new jobs did not keep up with the 176,000 new people who entered the work force, so I find the “sound footing” hard to swallow.

Of those 176,000 new workers, 33,000 found new jobs, 20,000 joined the workforce as unemployed, while 122,000 were “seasonally adjusted” out of the statistics. Awesome.

Year-to-date numbers are even more depressing. Without the “seasonal adjustments,” which cannot possibly be needed in annual numbers, 275,000 fewer jobs have been created this year than were created in the same period of 2015, and 460,000 fewer jobs have been created this year than were created in the same period of 2014. To condense that a little bit, the economy is down by 275,000 jobs over last year, and by 460,000 jobs over the year before that. Sound footing?

The candidates are too busy pointing out each other’s personality flaws to have time to discuss anything like the job situation faced by working class men and women.

Food Blogging, Friday

I invented this recipe out of thin air and made it last night. Results, frankly, surprised me a bit. I don't usually hit it on the first try. My wife freaked out. It is very spicy, so you may want to use a little less Creole seasoning, but my wife said it was a home run the way it is.

Pasta Jambalaya

1 lg or 2 sm Chicken breast, skinned and deboned
8-12 shrimp, uncooked, peeled and deveined, tails removed
1 ea, spicy smoked sausage, diced fairly small
8-12 oz ham, diced fairly small
2 tsp Creole seasoning, plus more for blackening
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 can petite diced Tomatoes
½ cup white wine (Pinot Grigio)

Put tomatoes, wine and seasonings into a large stovetop pot and bring to a simmer. If you think the volume doesn’t justify the large pot, just trust me and use it anyway.

Brown the diced sausage and ham in a hot skillet and add it to the pot, mixing them in.

Now things get a little more tricky. Cut the chicken into pieces bigger than bite sized, but not very large. You can use the “chicken tenders” which are about the right size. Now dust those pieces very heavily with Creole seasoning. Don’t be bashful, use quite a lot. Put the seasoned chicken pieces into a little oil in a very hot skillet and brown them heavily. Get them very brown; maybe a little black. The skillet should be hot enough that it happens quite rapidly, and we aren’t concerned with cooking them through.

Once they are done on both sides, place them on top of the liquid in the pot. Just let them rest on top, don’t submerge them. Cover the pot and let it simmer very low for about one hour.

Now take your shrimp and do the same thing with them that you did with the chicken, only use less Creole seasoning and less time in the skillet. Just a few seconds on each side will do the trick. Put the shrimp on top just like you did with the chicken. Cover and let it continue to simmer until the shrimp are done; about 15-20 minutes.

Serve over pasta.

Modern Navy

Another new littoral combat ship has been rendered “hors de combat” on a long term basis, the third one in a year, and while the article does not say so, this one appears to be one of at least two where the issue was crew maintenance failure. The USS Freedom lost a main engine when “seawater entered the engine oil lube system through a leak in a seawater pump's mechanical seal.”

It’s hard to follow that description, because normally the mechanical seal on a seawater pump would be sealing the shaft that connects the electric drive motor to the pump, and it would be sealing the pumped content from the atmosphere of the ship, or from the electric motor. Freedom must have some pretty funky mechanical systems to allow the failure of such a seal to dump seawater into the lube oil system. Either that or the government is doing one of its infamous tap dances again.

And yes, seawater pumps cooling diesel engines is something I know quite a lot about. Look at the picture at the top of this blog. Granted, I was an electrician, but those pumps are driven by electric motors, and I have actually changed the mechanical seals in question. Seawater did not get into our engine lube oil when the seal failed; it sprayed into the electric motor, creating a bit of havoc, and then went into our bilge.

In any case, allowing the leak (whatever it was) to develop is bad enough, but apparently it was not discovered for quite a long time, because the entire engine is having to be replaced due to interior rust. That means a lot of seawater got into the lube oil, a hell of a lot, and it stayed there for a long time without anyone noticing. Seawater in lube oil is not that hard to notice, and regular inspection should have caught it long before it did any damage.

USS Fort Worth was crippled when it tried to operate with no lubricating oil in its main propulsion reduction gears because the crew had forgotten to put it in after draining the gearbox for maintenance. Again, I thought it was pretty remarkable that a ship that new would already be changing the gearbox oil, but that the crew would overlook something so basic as replacing the oil is mind boggling.

This incident happened in Japan, and the ship is having to be towed all the way back to San Diego for repairs, which raises the question of why they were performing this level of maintenance in a foreign port.

The USS Milwaukee suffered a disabling breakdown when a clutch failed to disengage, but she had been in commission for less than a month so it's hard to draw any conclusions from that. Although, from other events in the news it would not surprise me that a Navy crew could screw up a new ship in less than a month.

Later in the article an admiral actually comes to the defense of the ships as if these failures were the fault of the ships themselves. He refers to them as “teething problems of the class.” So the Navy has massive leadership and crew incompetence problems and doesn’t even recognize what it is looking at.

The Navy in which I served was certainly not perfect, but this is astonishing. We had ships that were twenty years old and we took good care of them. We paid attention to our jobs. We took pride in our service. Today’s Navy seems to incorporate none of that, being given brand new ships and simply trashing them.

Attracting?

Dean Baker, a couple of days ago, offered a rather odd explanation of why the Obamacare healthcare exchanges are failing in many states, with major insurers losing money and pulling out of them. He says that the exchanges are, “attracting a less healthy group of patients.”

He goes on to say that insurance companies “are happy to insure relatively healthy people,” which seems fairly obvious, and suggests that the states can “require that insurers commit to insuring less healthy people on the exchanges as a condition of insuring the more healthy people on the individual market.”

Let’s see if we can parse what he’s saying here. People who are healthy buy expensive policies outside of the exchanges, while people who are sick buy cheaper policies in the exchanges. No, that doesn’t sound right.

People who buy health insurance on the exchanges rather than in the mass market do not do so because they are sick, they do so because they have lower income and receive a subsidy when using the exchanges. That subsidy applies to sick people and healthy people, but the healthy people don’t want to buy health insurance.

Obamacare was supposed to assure that healthy people would buy health insurance whether they wanted to or not, but has not delivered on that promise because the penalties are far too small. Healthy people have figured out they are better off paying the trivial penalty than they are spending a vastly larger sum on insurance they don’t want. Pundits universally claimed that no one would ever think that way, but…

As for Baker’s suggestion that states require that insurance companies remain in the exchange as a condition of remaining in the mass market, yes, they could do that. The result would be an increase in rates for the mass market to offset losses in the exchanges, which might not be too popular, especially given that popular pressure is to reduce health care cost rather than increase it.

Biden Barking

Watched a film clip last night of Joe Biden in Turkey barking with great indignation about how the United States would never, ever, never, under any circumstances support the evils of a military coup. He apparently has already forgotten about Egypt and Honduras, both of which happened during his watch. Whatever shred of credibility this nation might once have had is long gone now.

Missing the Point

Clinton is accused of doing government favors for donors to the Clinton Foundation because of memos as Secretary of State and because more than half of the meetings she has had as a candidate were with Foundation donors; says she met with them but never actually did them any favors.

Opponents say she’s lying, supporters say she’s telling the truth, and both of them are missing the point. The problem is that, favors or not, such access to government officials is a problem in itself. Ordinary people, people who are not filthy rich, do not get to meet with people in power and express their views.

Opponents also say she’s lying about the email server thing while supporters say she’s telling the truth but, in reality, why should any of us pay the slightest attention to anything she’s says about it? Not because she’s crooked, but because she’s not stupid. If she did do something wrong, is she going to admit that to a reporter? The reporter is actually pretty damned stupid to ask the question.

“Mrs Clinton, did you send secret material on an insecure email server?”
Do you really think that she is going to answer in the affirmative? So why bother to make such a big deal about her giving the only possible answer and saying that she didn’t do it?

I’m not claiming that she did any of these things; I’m just asserting that her denials mean nothing.

A "Still Small Voice"

I’m leery of “Wall Street experts,” but James Grant makes, I think, an interesting point when he discusses the wisdom of investing in government treasury bonds.

“Sovereign debt is my nomination for the number one overvalued market around the world. You are earning nothing or less than nothing for the privilege of lending your money to a government that has pledged to depreciate the currency that you’re investing in. The central banks of the world are striving to achieve a rate of inflation of 2% or more and you are lending certainly at much less than 2% and in many cases at less than nominal 0%. The experience of losing money is common in investing. But where is the certitude of loss even before your check clears? That’s the situation with sovereign debt right now.”

He does not go into the perfidy of governments paying less than 1% on the money you lend them while deliberately devaluing that money at an annual 2% rate. Who is served by such a policy? Yes. Bankers.

The whole thing is worth reading, especially the part about the Swiss National Bank buying American equities using Swiss francs which they “create from the thin alpine air where the Swiss money grows.” Unlike the American Fed money which is created from the humid, heavy air at sea level.

The Effect of Taxes

The media is not talking much about what the two candidates are promising for income tax changes. They don’t offer much detail, and they don’t say how the changes offered by either candidate will affect taxes paid by average working class Americans.

Trump, we hear, proposes to change the brackets and have only three tax rates of 10%, 20% and 25% with increase in the standard deduction to $25,000 for single filers and $50,000 for married couples. The media stresses that such a scheme would result in the rich paying lower taxes.

Clinton says that she will add a new rate at the top, percentage unspecified, which the media quotes her repeatedly as saying will, “finally make the rich pay their fair share for a change.”

Trump doesn’t say what the wage brackets are for his three rates, but since under the current tax plan the 10% bracket tops out at a mere $9275, there is no 20% bracket and the boundary at which we begin paying 25% is below average wage of $39,156, it’s safe to say that income on which you are now paying 15% will be taxed at 10% and income on which you are paying 25% tax will be taxed at either 10% or 20%. Not to mention that the standard deduction, for the 82% of people making average wage who do not itemize, is quadrupled.

In other words, Trump’s proposal will significantly reduce the tax liability for average working class men and women. The media carefully does not point that out.

Clinton’s proposal does not change the taxes paid by the working class, but does raise taxes paid by the rich by some unspecified amount. The media, then, is persuading working class voters to reject a tax reduction for themselves in favor of a tax increase to punish the rich. What kind of sense does that make? How does the working class benefit from making the rich just a tiny bit less rich?

They would, perhaps, rather feel good about kicking someone else’s ass than having some extra income for themselves? Have we really deteriorated to that?

Uber Gets A Beating

Bill Mitchell had a discussion Tuesday on why progressives (damn, that is starting to sound to me like a dirty word) should not be swanning over the likes of Uber, explaining the ways in which that business model resembles sharecropping. He goes on at some length about the evils of sharecropping, and of Uber.

He does not, at least, refer to “the sharing economy,” a term which seems to have lost momentum lately. Thank God. That term was always nonsense. If you’re charging money for it, you’re not “sharing” it. Anyway…

I have noticed lately that Uber is running television commercials for drivers. They ran them for riders for a long time, but then there was nothing for a while and now it’s for drivers. I’ve been wondering what that means, but now I read that Uber also does car financing and I think I know. Ugh. That’s not a pretty picture.

I agree with much of what Mitchell has to say, although I’m less sympathetic than he with the taxi industry. I have a little different slant than he does on the history of the taxi industry persuading (bribing) local governments to limit the number of licenses. He sees that as opportunity for impoverished taxi drivers to realize capital gains on taxi licenses, while I see it as a method of enriching taxi owners through the limitation of competition. Either way, seeing them suffer from competition now because their bribes were overtaken by events doesn’t really bother me much.

Way down in the comments section someone mentions that sharecropping is not intrinsically evil; that it provides entry into farming without the need for capital to purchase land, for instance. Which raises an interesting point. Most systems, either in government or business, are intrinsically neither good or bad. What matters is the manner in which that system is implemented.

The modern generation of “progressives” are ranting on the evils of capitalism, and notably not offering to say what should replace it, but capitalism is what produced the boom times and almost utopian living standard of the 1960's and 70's. What changed about the way our systems have been implemented between then and now is for another discussion, certainly Uber is part of the change and part of the problem, but the problem is not the system itself.

Pearls of Wisdom

A talking head commenting on the women's eight rowing team said that they dominate the class because, "They have established their own identity and are rowing to their potential."

The women were in command from the opening horn and won gold by a bit over two seconds, so I'm sure this female commentator was pretty excited, but what does that even mean? Their own identity? Yes, they wore team uniforms, as did all the other teams. Rowing to their potential? Yes, I dare say they were, as were seven other teams in that competition. I'm no rowing expert, but I suspect that their winning probably had a lot to do with strength training and many hours of practice to get their timing just right, and very little to do with "establishing their identity" etc.

I once told my father when I was a kid that I needed to "find out who I am." I won't tell you what his response was specifically. He sent me on a journey, but it was very short and it wasn't about self discovery.

Yes, I sometimes engage in snark when I pick titles.

Say What?

In the comment section on an NBC article about Joey Bosa's holdout with the Chargers a fan writes, "As much as I think Bosa should accept the reasonable terms set by the team I still hate that the Chargers always seem to find ways to crap on their players."

So, making a reasonable offer to a player which he does not accept is "crapping on the player" these days?

They're Back!

This is even better news than the return of Twinkies! Archway only had one facility, which went bankrupt several years ago, and now they are back. These are the real deal, too. They are crispy, crunchy and you can taste the molasses. So far Vons is the only store I've seen that has them.

Twinkies, Windmill cookies and football season only days away. I am almost giddy. Well college football and the NFL regular season is still four weeks away, but the NFL preseason will tide me over until then.

Now if we can only get Chase Elliott to quit doing stupid things on the race track.

What is Progressive?

In a comment on another venue a commentor referenced polls showing that "younger people are overwhelmingly progressive." Someone has a different definition of "progressive" than I do.

"We want to receive a free college education and a higher minimum wage, and we want the rich to pay for it," is not progressive.

"We want to build water systems and develop clean energy and are willing to pay taxes to cover the cost," is progressive.

What Is Democracy?

I don't get it. Republican voters select a presidential nominee, and no fewer than fifty members of Republican "leadership" say that they will reject the choice made by the voters and will vote for the Democrat. Not that I hold any brief for Donald Trump, but who do these "leaders" think is supposed to be in charge in a democracy?

Barack Obama and others say that Trump is "temperamentally and intellectually unfit," apparently not caring that in doing so they are insulting millions of citizens who chose him to represent them. To disagree with policies is one thing, but a campaign that abandons persuasion for this flood of personal character assassination is divisive and, in the end, accomplishes nothing useful.

Does anyone seriously think that you are going to get me to vote for your candidate by personally insulting mine? Do you really think that by telling millions of people that they voted for a man who is "temperamentally and intellectually unfit" you are going to change their votes to Clinton?

What are we doing? What is all this rhetoric about?

The Sky Is Falling

Democracy Now warned us on Thursday that, “First Evidence Surfaces of Foreign Money Pouring into U.S. Elections After Citizens United.”

Citizens United, you may recall, is the Supreme Court decision based on the premise that a) corporations have the same rights of free speech as persons, and that b) money is the same as speech and that therefor corporations may donate money to the campaigns of politicians. It caused all sorts of alarm to the effect that money would corrupt our elections beyond redemption.

Democracy Now is sounding the alarm over the contribution of some $1.3 million by a Chinese couple to the campaign of Jeb Bush, six years after the court decision in question

But, Jeb Bush? Given the nature of Jeb Bush’s campaign, Democracy Now seems to have missed the point just a bit. If Bush’s campaign was an airplane, it not only would not have gotten off the ground, it would not have gotten to the runway. It never, as it turned out, even left the gate.

If the Jeb Bush campaign is what results from the influx of foreign money, then I think we should encourage a vast flood of foreign money and destroy a few more campaigns.

Nature Can Be Interesting

We have an African Tulip tree in our front yard, which is supposed not to be deciduous but is – sort of. It stays fully green and lush all winter, but then in May or so it produces a prolific and dramatic crop of reddish orange flowers and sheds about 80% of its leaves. It is native to Africa, southern hemisphere, and that may have something to do with the timing, although I’m inclined to doubt it.

So far this is not all that interesting, nor is it particularly interesting that in late July the tree starts vigorously putting out new leaves. What’s interesting is the degree to which that new leaf growth initially occurs on the top and South (sunny) side of the tree and not on the North side.

The top and South side of the tree right now are covered with new growth, and not just buds but fully developed leaves, while the North side is not even setting buds yet. If you think that the angle of the Sun (which is much higher here than it would be in, say, Minnesota) doesn’t make a difference, think again.

And Somewhat Less Interesting

Comes from ESPN.COM which tells us that (are you ready?), "Danica Patrick continues to amaze us with her yoga skills." There are pictures. Of her doing yoga. Go look if you want, but be warned that if you do you cannot unsee them.

Pop Goes Another Bubble

Dean Baker yesterday refutes a claim made by the New York Times, and in doing so pops a bubble that is a favorite of Paul Krugman. That’s the problem for economists. Their little theories are such exercises in fantasy that when they prop one up, they always manage to do damage to another one.

The Times claims that the federal deficit is projected to increase by 2020 “as increasing entitlement costs for retiring baby boomers take their toll on federal coffers." Dean Baker says that is untrue and that the projected deficit increase is due to the “Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) projection that interest rates will rise.”

He seems to have no argument with the CBO’s projection that payments of interest will rise to about $800 billion per year just four years from now. That’s a pretty big jump from the $223 billion we spent on interest payments in 2015, and it should be receiving a lot of discussion in the presidential campaign. It’s not mentioned at all, of course.

Anyway, Paul Krugman is fond of repeating that the government should be borrowing a lot of money right now because interest rates are low and “debt is cheap.”

Borrowing money merely because the interest is low is a stupid move under any circumstances. My family doesn’t, for instance, need a new car; we don’t want a new car; we can’t afford a new car; we can’t afford to put gas in a new car; but we buy a new car because we are offered one at a good price. Stupid.

But borrowing money merely because the interest rate is low is particularly stupid when the interest rate is not going to remain low.

The government secures debt in the form of fixed rate bonds, but many of them are short term bonds and none of them are of indefinite term. All of them must be either repaid or rolled over into new debt at whatever interest rate prevails at the time. Since Krugman also promotes the theory that governments “never pay off debt” (which is another discussion), and our government has not done so in any meaningful amount since World War II, that means in effect that the government has a variable rate loan.

Remember all those people in 2000 through 2006 who bought houses using the wonderful adjustable rate mortgage loans? They were so happy that, because the interest rate was only 2%, they could afford to buy a much bigger house. Right? They must all have been reading Paul Krugman.

Government, that is taxpayer’s, payment of interest on the debt was $223 billion last year and is objectively forecast to increase to $800 billion in just four more years, even if the government does not borrow any more money. That’s a 259% increase, or more than tripling the expense. Somebody please ask Paul Krugman if that borrowing still sounds like a real bargain.

Question

How do Democrats reconcile their new "America is already great" mantra with their claim to being the country's "progressive party?"

Dean Baker is an Idiot

Dean Baker repeated yesterday the absurd claim which Keynesians are fond of repeating that, “We got out of the last Great Depression by spending lots of money on fighting World War II.”  He obviously wasn’t around during that war, as my parents were, or he would know that World War II merely changed the form of depression from one where many people had no jobs to one where they had jobs but there were no goods to buy with the income they were making.

He would also know that we actually got out of that depression by rebuilding a world destroyed by war, and that we had no competition while doing it because we had bombed our competition into rubble. We also provided college educations for much of the generation which fought that war.

He goes on to say that, “the economy doesn't care what we spend money on, it responds in the same way.” Actually, that’s not even close to being true, because when the money winds up being spent on consumer goods manufactured in other economies, that spending merely increases the trade deficit and does essentially nothing for our economy. When we spend it on fighting wars in foreign countries it is money gone forever and we have nothing to show for it.

When, on the other hand, we spend it on building roads, bridges, water and sewer systems and energy production and transmission, we grow our economy, provide meaningful employment for our working class, and we still have the money in the form of infrastructure because we have invested the money instead of merely spent it. We have not, however, done anything meaningful in this arena in more than fifty years.

Hopefully that spending is done in a manner which reduces our impact on the planet, but that’s a different topic.

Dean Baker is an idiot, as are all economists by definition, because we cannot grow our economy from within like some sort of self licking ice cream cone, we can only do so from without by means of a positive trade balance as we did from the end of World War II until the 1970’s, and when we do spend money it matters very much how and on what we spend it.

Also Interesting

The San Diego Chamber of Commerce has taken a position supporting the Chargers bid to build a stadium downtown, financed in part by a 32% increase in the city's hotel tax. What's interesting is that the Chamber apparently did not reach out to any of the downtown businesses it represents to obtain their opinions before taking this position. If they had, their position might be a bit different, since the business owners downtown almost universally oppose the plan.

Seems that the Chamber of Commerce represents its constituents in much the same manner that the United States government does.

Interesting

Donald Trump "invites" the Russians to hack Clinton's email server, which no longer exists, and there is a massive freakout from the entire Democratic party and the media, who think he's serious.

It's going to be an interesting political campaign year.

Well, That Was A New Low

America's Got Talent: Results was a one hour show. It took about four minutes to announce which five acts will go on to the semi-finals, and the rest of the time was... I don't know what it was. It was just nonsense and crap.

Happily, the ninety-year-old stripper has reached the end of her road and, even more happily, the Philadelphia Eagles football player will continue. "Thank you America," he said, "and thank you Eagles for allowing me to do this."  I've always been an Eagles fan; more so now.

Distraction Continues

The by now infamous emails are homophobic, anti-Semitic and betray both Democratic and democratic principles, and of course Obama does not even address, let alone condemn that content, but merely condemns Russia for the act of illegally obtaining and releasing the emails. He says that the Russian purpose in doing this was to “interfere with US elections,” which is precisely what the DNC was doing.

That is the “politics of distraction,” practiced by politicians for many decades, but perfected by Obama's predecessor, Bill Clinton. It is also what psychologists call, “projection;”  accusing someone else of having certain character flaws so that you do not need to acknowledge the presence of those same flaws in your own character.

That’s why we should never elect to any office anyone who has expressed a desire to hold that office.

Delusion, Delusion

Paul Krugman posted a thought piece yesterday saying that Trump is a candidate that “Putin is aiding because he knows Trump is close to, probably financially entangled with friendly oligarchs.” Seriously? The use of popular cant verbiage detracts from one’s believability a bit, but when Putin was asked if he was “aiding Trump” he didn’t even bother to answer, merely laughed in the reporter’s face.

Krugman goes on to say that this controversy about Putin aiding Trump is timely because it is “dovetailing with my bedtime reading,” which is about the Roman Empire. I’m not sure what foreign leaders were nefariously aiding the Roman emperors in their bids for power, but…

To dovetail with my bedtime reading we would have to have combat troops actively engaged at brigade strength in Columbia, so… Who knows? Maybe we do.

Anyway, he compares Trump’s claim of making NATO allies pay their fair share of the cost of common defense, which Krugman describes as “a protection racket, in which countries get defended only if they pay up,” to the Roman Empire’s looting and sacking which, even for an economist, is quite a stretch.

Dean Baker says, also yesterday, that “Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the economic crisis in 2008. The problem was allowing a massive housing bubble to grow unchecked.” The first is debatable, while the second is utter bullshit.

The housing bubble was a symptom to begin with; the real problem being far too much wealth accumulating with no place available to invest it at reasonable rates of return due to the Fed’s low interest rates. That wealth was the fodder for those loans, and the failure to repay those loans was merely the trigger for the collapse.

The meat of the collapse was not the housing loan money itself, but a huge pyramid of “funny money” financial instruments that had been sold based on those mortgage loans and which had face values orders of magnitude larger than those loans.

And because Glass-Steagall had been repealed, money in deposit banks was available for the purchase of these “funny money” financial instruments. Would the collapse have happened without the money which came from the deposit banks? Possibly, but it would have been much less severe.

Economics is not actually a science. It is a profession that allows you to just make up shit as you go along.

Um, Okay? Again

Message from Elizabeth Warren, "Donald Trump’s Divisive Tactics Empower Those At The Top." This from the party that just rigged the primary election in order to assure the nomination of the establishment candidate.

Shoot the messenger, or... Shoot whoever is accused of being the messenger, even if he isn't, but in any case, ignore the message. Democrats are utterly focused on proving that it was Putin who released the emails, and are totally ignoring the fact that the emails reveal a rigged election. Contents, apparently, are irrelevant, their illegal release is all that they care about.

And Democrats accuse Republicans of being deranged.

Um, Okay?

I will doubtless be castigated as a misogynistic pig for this, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign are beginning to make me question their contact with reality.

Hillary Clinton said on CBS Sixty Minutes that she faces more scrutiny than other top-level politicians, saying, “I often feel like there's the Hillary standard and then there's the standard for everybody else.”  Shades of her earlier complaint of a “vast right wing conspiracy.”  Her supporters will doubtless claim something to the effect that being paranoid does not disprove the presence of someone following you.

Then Clinton’s campaign manager claims that Vladimir Putin released the emails which revealed that the DNC had deliberately sabotaged the candidacy of Bernie Sanders; emails with sufficient level of evidence to force the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He claims at considerable length that Putin did so as a deliberate effort to damage Clinton’s election chances and to bolster Donald Trump.

He may, of course, have done that without Clinton’s knowledge or approval, and I may have won the San Diego 10K last month. But I didn’t and neither did he.

Then, after Wasserman Schultz resigns from the DNC, Clinton praises her leadership (yes it is specifically her leadership that Clinton admires) and names Wasserman Schultz as a member of her campaign staff. Why? Well, apparently because the principles revealed by the emails that forced her resignation from the DNC are precisely the principles that Clinton admires and wants to use in her campaign.

The San Diego Union Tribune comments, in an article which is not online, that, “Two years ago it was almost unimaginable that she [Hillary Clinton] would be campaigning on debt-free college, expanding Social Security, breaking up ‘too big to fail’ banks and all these other progressive issues.”

Yes, and it still is. When someone says and does something for decades and then suddenly reverses that position for an election, what kind of person actually believes that reversal? Democrats mock Republicans for believing that dinosaurs coexisted with mankind 6000 years ago, and yet they believe that Hillary Clinton is going to…   Oh never mind.

Smug Word Games

Now here’s a stunningly dishonest piece of opinion from Forbes, a supposedly legitimate economic journal. It is, at least, presented as the opinion of one Tim Wortstall, a “Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London” and apparently a complete idiot.

The headline, “As We've Been Saying, California's Minimum Wage Rises Increase Unemployment,” doesn’t define who “We” is, so one has to assume that it means the staff at Forbes, since writers don’t write their own headlines. Please note the implication of consensus as the piece begins.

This is an interesting little tale which illustrates the other side of the minimum wage story. Around here at least the standard side is that when you raise the price of something people buy less of it. Increase the minimum wage and employers will economise on minimum wage labour. This is a terribly simple point and yet people will twist themselves into ever more improbable positions to try to deny it.

Actually, of course, it’s not a “terribly simple point” at all, because it has been proven repeatedly that employers have not reduced the number of such jobs when the minimum wage was increased. The current increase is larger than past ones, and such a reduction may happen this time, but it’s unlikely, and it certainly has never happened in the past.

The piece babbles some nonsense about “seasonal adjustments,” which has nothing to do with the subject at hand, and then admits that “seasonal factors” are not pertinent to the issue, which makes you wonder why the idiot brought them up in the first place and makes you question his economic bona fides. As if you hadn’t done that already when you read the “Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute” thing.

He then goes on to discuss the way that unemployment is reported, namely that only people who are actively looking for work are counted as unemployed. He tells us that the increase in minimum wage has caused people to resume looking for work, and that since more people are looking for work the unemployment number reported as a percentage of the workforce has increased.

He makes the claim that even though thousands more people are employed rather than fewer, the fact that 27,000 more people are looking for work means that, “higher wages have called more labour supply into the market,” which is true enough. He then concludes that, “unemployment is defined those looking for a job but cannot find one. Thus an increased labour supply at this higher labour rate leads to more unemployment.”

In reality, of course, we know that those not previously looking for work were actually unemployed before they were drawn back into the workforce, and that this smug bastard’s word games prove nothing.

Baton Rouge

I am not a fan of LSU because I like their colors. My parents met when my father was in medical school at Tulane in New Orleans. My grandmother grew up in Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana and once worked as a dietician at LSU.

CBS ran an interview with two women whose husbands were among the police officers killed in Baton Rouge a few days ago. I usually have little patience with these productions, which normally involve much display of weeping and self pity, but this was Southern Louisiana. These women spoke of deep love and respect for their husbands. There was great sadness, and there was dignity that just tore the heart right out of my chest.

This is Cajun country; a people who have a inner core strength that puts the rest of us to shame. They are why Katrina did not beat New Orleans. They are of French heritage by way of Canada, and arrived in southern Louisiana when even native Americans disdained it, making their homes in an uninhabited and formerly uninhabitable swamp.

Cajuns look adversity in the eye, turn it around and kick its ass, and they don’t cry while they are doing it. These women will not raise damaged children. They will raise kids into healthy and happy adults unharmed by the adversity of their childhoods.

But I do like purple and gold.

Hello, Pot. Nice to meet you.

CBS Evening News responded to Trump's speech last night by saying that he stressed "gloom and doom"  too much, that he talked too much about what is wrong in the nation. Right, because their nightly news segment only reports unicorn sightings and rainbows over mountains.

Capitalism, What Capitalism?

Capitalism: an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit

I started to listen to a discussion on the problems of modern capitalism, held by “great thinkers on the economy,”  and turned it off after just five minutes, having found out why our economy is sinking under its own weight.

The first exercise in lunacy was a discussion was about how “every problem has become a financial problem,” citing the example that if there is not enough energy then we must invest in more energy.

That would be a problematic approach if we were following it, because eventually we would be consuming more energy than the planet has resources to produce, but with a population increasing by 20 million every decade when was the last time we invested in new water supplies of any significance? When have we invested in transportation in any real sense?

Then they begin discussing the financial sector, the trading of financial instruments, as if it was part of capitalism, when in fact it is entirely artificial and is destructive to capitalism. It allows capital to become stagnant and to do nothing more than to produce more artificial capital in the form of debt not backed by any real or economic property.

The discussion was rapidly moving toward proof that finance has overtaken capitalism as the basis of our economy, to the almost complete destruction of the latter.

Back to the “energy problem;”  we should, of course, be designing a social model that consumes orders of magnitude less energy, but no one is talking about that.

Why Nucs In Turkey?

In all of the blathering about the attempted coup in Turkey, one thing that was largely ignored by the mainstream American media was that the US has a fairly large collection of nuclear weapons stored at Incirlic Air Base in Turkey. This is a base which is inside Turkey, belongs to Turkey, and which they are permitting us to use.

I have been asking sources, mostly retired military and some former intelligence, why we still have nuclear weapons in Turkey, and have not gotten any really meaningful answers. No one, for instance, is willing to say that we might use them on Middle East nations because they are “harboring terrorists” or because we fear that they might be “building a nuclear bomb.”

One suggestion was to the effect that it is simply inertia; that we needed them during the days of the Soviet Union and have never gotten around to taking them out. That may be the most frightening thought I have encountered.

One person made my question more specific and raised a question of principle. What, he asked, is their purpose there; are they serving as a counter to the nuclear capabilities of others, or are they intended to counter non-nuclear threats?

If the former, it makes no sense whatever and they should have been removed several decades ago. If it is the latter, then it reflects a refusal to rule out the ”first use” of nuclear weapons, in which case that policy should be reversed, a policy of “no first use” should be reinstated and the weapons should be removed.

I recall a time when this country had a clearly stated policy that our nuclear arsenal was strictly a deterrent and that we would never again be the initiator of the use of nuclear weapons. I have not been able to track down precisely when that policy was abandoned, or who it was who first threatened to use “the nuclear option,”  but that threat has become common today. It should be banned, and any question about the use of nuclear weapons should be met with a restatement of the “no first use” policy.

Oh, Please

No fewer than 23 headlines on my news feed to the effect that Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama's speech. Turns out she is actually only acused of plagiarizing part of said speech, but so what if she did?

Her husband is running for president, not her, and she will do nothing in the future other than decorate the White House. Of what real import to the Trump campaign is her speech in real terms? None. Our obsession for trivia...

Here's A Question

If you bought a house in my HOA in, say, 1990 and were forced to sell it after the housing crash of 2008, you lost a ton of money that you had gained in (supposed) equity in that house. If, however, for some reason you did not have to sell that house but held on to it, you came out well ahead of the game, because that house is worth more now than it was at its peak before 2008.

So if that value just before 2008 turned out to be phoney, why is its value today not phoney?

And don't tell me it's inflation, because inflation has been pitifully low. The government is frantically trying to make it higher (for reasons that are entirely bogus, but that's a different subject). Home prices nationwide are back up to where they were before the crash of 2008, and everyone is reporting that as if it is a good thing.

Pokemon Go

What's not to like about this game? Okay, I actually know almost nothing about it, except a quote from one kid playing it. "I've never been to Ocean Beach Pier before. It's pretty cool."  Looking at his iPhone, "Next I'm going to Petco Park. I've never seen that either."

What's not to like about a game that has people getting out and going places they've never been?

Update, 8:15am: Okay, on the other hand, the game seems to have led to two guys falling off a seaside cliff in Encinitas. My guess would be that they had never been there, either, but perhaps they should not have let the game take them there.

Get Used To It

San Diego is not boring, really, but its weather can be. This seems to be the only image that the Weather Service knows how to use for the several months of summer. Not sure where the "patchy fog" occurs, because it looks like a solid overcast where I live. It does, however, burn off well before noon, so...

Oh, Big Whoop

Bernie supporters and other “liberals” in the Democratic party are all excited, as illustrated by an NBC News headline reading, “Democrats Advance Most Progressive Platform in Party History.”  I am, to say the least, somewhat less impressed.

Is there anything less useful than the platform of a political party? Screen doors in a submarine come to mind. A political party platform has all of the significance and impact of a good healthy a fart in the midst of a hurricane.

The lifespan of the party platform is day one of the party convention, when it is passed to much acclaim and self congratulation, after which the process moves on to selection of the party’s nominee for the presidency and the platform sinks into oblivion, leaving no more trace than the proverbial pebble in the mill pond.

“Progressive platform” forsooth. Select a progressive candidate and I’ll be impressed.

"They were not careless."

Judy Woodruff: "Madam Secretary, we also want to ask you about the FBI report that came out this week.

We heard the director, James Comey, say they were not going to recommend criminal charges against you, but he said that you and your colleagues at the State Department were, in his words, extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

Do you believe you benefited from a double standard, that ordinary government employees experience one sort of treatment and a different one for you?"

Hillary Clinton: "No, not at all.

In fact, I think Director Comey made exactly the opposite point in his long testimony yesterday, that those who somehow hoped that action would be taken are the ones who were hoping for a double standard.

He made very clear there was no basis for going forward. And he also clarified what he said in his statement.

You know, with respect to the handling of classified material, I take it very seriously, and the 300 or so people with whom I e-mailed on the course of my time in the State Department do as well. These are experienced diplomats. They have expertise in handling classified material. They were not careless.

And the material that they sent to me, they didn’t believe was classified. The very, very few examples that Director Comey pointed to have also been clarified, as he accounted yesterday. The State Department has said two of the three that he had pointed to were human error. They were not to be classified.

So, I’m very proud of the work that we did over four years. And I’m very proud of our diplomats and our other professionals, who have to act in real time. They are responding to heads of state, to press inquiries. And they are doing the best they can. I do not believe they were careless. I do not believe that they sent material that they thought was classified, and certainly no finding of anything intentional was made after this investigation."

This is the babbling empty suit we will almost certainly elect to be our next president.

And I love Woodruff calling her “Madame Secretary,”  the title of a post she has not held for almost four years. Like Cuba and other tinpot dictatorships, this country now seems to bestow lifetime titles.

Today's Navy

Six months ago or so there was a scandal in the Navy during which it was mentioned that the Captain of a ship was in a night club on shore, drinking with members of his crew. I thought that was part of the scandal, but it turned out that it was being mentioned in defense of the Captain; as an illustration of the crew’s esteem for him.

I was shocked to discover that drinking with the crew ashore by any officer, let alone the Captain, had become common practice in the Navy, and wondered how any kind of command structure or atmosphere of good discipline could possibly be maintained in the face of such behavior.

Turns out, apparently, that it pretty much cannot. One crew, for instance, forgot to put oil in the ship’s main propulsion reduction gears, disabling the ship for almost a year. Then we have Navy gunboats in hostile waters off Iran who were not mounting half their weapons because they didn't want to have to clean them. Those same boats left port three hours late because they could not start their engines, and then were picked up by the Iranians because their engines broke down again.

Now a Navy SEAL is the victim of homicide in training, and it turns out that he was taking medication for asthma and had an abnormality in his heart which contributed to his death. How does a guy with asthma and a potentially fatal cardiac abnormality get accepted for SEAL training?

I used to have momentary regrets from time to time that I did not stay in the Navy and make it a career, but I have not had such a feeling for quite a while. I mostly feel like I “dodged a bullet” so to speak.

Less and Less Pretense

James Comey yesterday, in announcing the results of the investigation regarding Clinton’s use of a private email server, did not attempt to claim that what she did was legal or that a person doing what she did should not be prosecuted for the actions that were uncovered.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

The felony statute regarding the mishandling of classified information makes it an offense to do so “either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.”

Comey claims that their investigation “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,”  but went on to say that “that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

So he declaims any intent, which is possibly but not definitively arguable, but finds that there is a difference between “gross negligence” and being “extremely careless.”  Someone will have to explain that difference to me because I don’t understand it, and Comey made no effort to clarify it in explaining why Clinton should not be subject to prosecution.

Let’s not forget the “undue command influence” that was in place when Obama endorsed Clinton for the presidency before the investigation was completed. Do you think that there was any chance that Comey was going to recommend prosecution after his boss had said of Clinton in a national forum that he had “the highest possible confidence in her judgement and integrity?” Yeah, right. I’m surprised that Comey’s statement was a critical as it was.

I have no real issue with the law not being applied to the ruling class; it has not been for several decades. What astonishes me is the degree to which pretense has been dropped. The ruling class has simply become openly contemptuous of due process and the rule of law.

Comey openly says in his statement that “this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences,” but goes on to say “that is not what we are deciding now.” More plainly put, “I would hang an ordinary person who did this, but not Hillary Clinton.”

Jingoism v. the Rational

Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University and is about as strict constitutionalist as can be found in public discourse today. I read his blog regularly, even though it has mostly deteriorated into meaningless trivia, because he still has pieces from time to time about the ongoing shredding of the constitution by all branches of our government and the efforts by him and by others to prevent that.

He can also be a bit of a jingoistic pain in the ass, for instance beginning his Independence Day post yesterday with, ”This holiday has particular meaning for many of us as we fight those who wish to destroy liberty and to terrorize people into submission.”

For one thing, he isn’t fighting terrorism even at a keyboard, let alone on any field of battle, so his “we fight those who, blah blah blah” was a little bit hyperbolic.

I responded with a comment,

Yeah, right, “They hate us for our freedoms.” They do not wish to destroy freedom and they don’t care about our submission. They are fighting to get us to take our boot off their necks. They want our armed forces out of their countries. They want to stop the terror drones from killing them and their families without warning.

If somebody was raining Hellfire missiles down on Phoenix and Denver at the rate of several a week and killing more than a thousand of our wives and children per year, how would we react?

Their terrorist attacks are not by any means righteous, but neither are ours, and self-righteous posturing is not contributing to the solution.

Interestingly, of the many comments not one was critical of what I had to say, and no few of them specifically agreed with me. One even went so far as to say, “Thank you for summarizing my thoughts.”

There is still rational thought in this nation after all.

Oh, Please

I just read the twentieth claim that Bill Clinton is lying about his meeting with Lynch because, "It has been 110 degrees in Phoenix and, trust me I've been there, no one plays golf in that kind of heat."

Well, I have been there too, and I have seen plenty of people playing golf at 7:30 in the morning when it was 110 in the afternoon. I doubt that a former president would have much trouble getting an early tee time.

That doesn't mean that his strolling over to Lynch's airplane to spend a half hour "chatting with her about their grandchildren" wasn't incredibly stupid, but he most certainly may have been playing golf in Phoenix.

Debt is Good

Yves Smith writes today at Naked Capitalism that today’s debt fears are unfounded; a premise which, I believe, is doubly flawed.

The first is that I see no evidence for the premise that there is any real fear of national debt, since governments everywhere talk about “austerity” and yet continue to crank out deficit spending at ever increasing levels. Republican control of Congress in this country cut our annual deficit from $1 trillion down to just under half that, but pandering in a national election year and fear mongering after a couple of European terrorist incidents has driven it right back up to the $1 trillion ballpark again.

Ms. Smith betrays her Harvard and Goldman Sachs background on an almost daily basis, and tells us in today’s exercise in delusion that (all emphasis is mine),

After the 2008-2009 financial meltdown brought many OECD economies to a standstill, there was a brief revival of fiscal activism. Many OECD governments initially responded with large fiscal stimulus packages, while bailing out influential financial institutions. Major developing countries also put in place well designed fiscal stimulus packages including public infrastructure investment and better social protection.

I would have liked for her to name one nation which did such a thing and describe the nature in which the package was “well designed,” the specific infrastructure in which it invested, and the social protection it provided, because I was paying attention and I didn’t see any.

She certainly wasn’t talking about the American “stimulus package,”  which was woefully small, was far too heavily invested in tax cuts which are pitiful in terms of stimulating the economy, and invested in such things as “high speed rail” projects, the first one of which broke ground seven years later and connects two small towns in California which are 85 miles apart.

She should go have lunch with Paul Krugman. They’d make a nice couple.

Political Derangement

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Obama has proposed to Russia that he will “deepen military cooperation between the two countries against some terrorists in exchange for Russia getting the Assad regime to stop bombing U.S.-supported rebels.”

What part of the word “rebels” does Obama not get? The man is widely regarded as being highly intelligent, but he does not appear to understand what a “rebel” is. Further, Obama seems to think that Vladimir Putin is an idiot as well, if he thinks that Putin is going to ask Assad to quit fighting any forces that are trying to overthrow him.

The article goes on to express frustration the Putin is, indeed, not putting such pressure on Assad, which rather proves my point. What would the United States have thought if, during the Civil War, some foreign government had tried to get us to stop shelling the Confederate forces in, say, Vicksburg?

According to the Post, the Obama administration wants “the Assad regime to stop bombing certain Syrian rebel groups the United States does not consider terrorists.”

So apparently Obama does not understand what a civil war is either. Assad is not fighting terrorists, he is fighting rebels who are trying to overthrow the government of his country. He is protecting Christians and Alawites who are a major part of the Syrian population. He doesn’t care what any group of rebels call themselves, what flag they fly or to whom they claim fealty; if they are shooting at his army he is going to drop bombs and artillery on them.

And note that Obama wants Assad to stop bombing certain Syrian rebels because the United States does not consider them terrorists.

Assad is fighting for the life of his country, and he really does not care what the United States thinks. Think about the hubris of this. A nation is embroiled in a civil war, and our president has the gall to step in and tell that country how he should manage the fighting of that civil war.

We all know that power corrupts, but more subtly I think it leads to derangement.

Hyperbole Abounds

Fox News ran an article about huge crowds at Road America for last week’s Indycar race. Go read the article and tell me what’s missing. Did you spot it?

There is not one single picture of the “huge crowd” presented. Only one picture of a grandstand is shown, and it was taken from half a mile away so that you might not notice that there are only about twelve people in it. That grandstand is crowded compared to all the rest.

The video clip presents some angles that show groups of people that look like a crowd, but if you watched the race on television you would soon realize that those were nothing more than isolated groups. The parking lots were less than half full, and the stands were worse than that.

There was a NASCAR road race at Sonoma the same weekend, a race which has historically drawn huge crowds to California’s wine country. Crowds were even more pathetic that those at Road America. The grandstand at the start/finish line was less than half full, and the rest of the stand had handfuls of spectators.

Reminds me of the other California race, where the track manager claimed that the empty stands were because, “everyone is under the stands shopping.”  I’ve been to that speedway, and I’ve been under those stands. There is no shopping worthy of the name. How long does it take to buy a beer and a hot dog?

Notwithstanding the hype of its proprietors, motorsport racing is a dying act in this country.

Visual Evidence

Just in case we had any doubt that Elizabeth Warren is an empty suit, here we have visual proof.

Universal Health Care

Universal health care? It really shouldn’t be very hard to decide in favor of it.

Back in the dark ages of this nation we had fire protection that functioned on the same basis that health care does today. There were privately owned fire fighting companies which sold their services to homeowners who could afford to pay for them. Some homeowners could not afford coverage and left their homes not covered. Believe it or not, people even paid for different levels of coverage.

If a home caught fire the company which was paid to protect it came and put the fire out. Companies which were paid to protect nearby homes came and prevented those homes from catching fire. Homes without protection caught fire and burned to the ground.

It was a disaster, though, because some companies did a lousy job and came to the scene and didn’t put the fire out. Or they didn’t come to the scene at all because they were dealing with somebody else’s house fire. Or because all the firefighters were all drunk. Fires spread because, “Hey, we’re not paid to protect that house.”

Then somebody said, “You know what? We need universal fire protection.”

So today when you have a fire the truck shows up and they put out the fire. Done. The fire captain doesn’t ask to see your insurance card before he lets his guys get out of the truck, and no one discusses copays or deductibles. They put out the fire, roll up their hoses and leave.

People wind up standing out in the street holding signs saying “Thank you firefighters.”  I’ve seen it many times. They are holding those signs and they have tears in their eyes. We've had universal fire protection for a couple of centuries now. No one seems to think it isn't working, no one dislikes it, and for damned sure no one wants to change it.

But when someone says “we need universal health care” he is shouted down with cries of “socialism” and “you’re fucking nuts” and "government takeover," in many cases by the same people who just months ago were holding signs saying, “Thank you firefighters.”

Dump Trump?

Just in case the "common man" thought that "government by the people" is still a viable concept in the United States, please notice that after a large majority of the Republican voters chose Donald Trump as the nominee for the presidency, the Republican elite, such as George Will, are either leaving the party to "vote for Hillary," or are openly seeking ways to reject his nomination at the party convention. The senior member of the Republican Party will not endorse him.

Those who govern do not care what the "common man" wants. That is not surprising; they have not cared for many decades. What is surprising is they they no longer even pretend to care.

Frantic Fear Mongering

Rory McIlroy will not be going to the Olympics because of the Zika virus, apparently fearing that he might get the virus, become pregnant and have a microcephalic baby.

I wondered what the hell McIlroy was going to do at the Olympics, and then found out that golf has once again become part of the Olympics. It was dropped in 1904 but reinstated this year. I think being frightened of the Zika virus sort of verifies that golfers are not Olympic caliber athletes and that golf is not an Olympic sport.

The media hype over this virus passes comprehension.

The virus has been around since 1947 and has never been considered anything other than a minor irritant until the American media picked it up this year. There has never been any suspicion that it caused anything other than mild, transitory symptoms, even in children. Even now, in the face of all the media hype, there is no direct evidence that it causes anything other than that.

The CDC released a news item on April 13 of this year headlined, "CDC Concludes Zika Causes Microcephaly and Other Birth Defects."

The body of the piece then proceeded to say that the headline was actually false, saying that, "The report notes that no single piece of evidence provides conclusive proof that Zika virus infection is a cause of microcephaly and other fetal brain defects."  They did not, in other words, find any mechanism whereby the virus does the damage, and their conclusion is based entirely on studies of the "correlation is causation" nature.

Further, the studies appear to have been selected to suit their preconceived position, because New England Complex Systems Institute included in their studies one in Columbia where nearly 12,000 pregnant women infected with Zika virus were found to have developed zero microcephaly cases. This organization was not as arrogantly positive as the CDC, but reported with a somewhat more scientifically open mind that,

“In light of this evidence, NECSI says the cause of microcephaly in Brazil should be reconsidered. One possibility that has been raised is the pesticide pyriproxyfen, which is applied to drinking water in some parts of Brazil…”

So I think Rory McIlroy could probably go to Brazil and,
so long as he didn’t drink the water, get as pregnant as nature will allow him to get.

And be sure to remember one thing about the media. They do not care whether it is true or not. They only care that it is dramatic and that it will get attention.