brainiac conspiracy

Public Spaces

One thing I've noticed since I started riding public transit is just how polite and courteous most subway/bus riders are. This stands in sharp contrast with solo drivers in this burg, a good many of whom seem either oblivious to the presence of their fellow motorists, or who are simply contemptuous of them. These diverging behaviors, I think, arise out of the demands of each respective transit mode: riding in a bus or a subway train, for instance, requires a level of direct social interaction with other people that driving by yourself in an enclosed vehicle simply doesn't. Combine that isolation with, say, a three-hour commute each day, and it's easy to see over time how people can become alienated from their peers, which erodes their social skills and generally makes them less happy. It's a fairly compelling argument for expanding public transit, no?

---Baron V

Killer Corn

It's bad enough the shit is fouling our waters, it's also apparently causing mass extinction events. Or as it's sometimes known, colony collapse disorder. Whatever you call it, it's not good!

Beekeepers and some researchers say there is growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, incorporated into the plants themselves, could be an important factor. The pesticides are absorbed by plants and transported throughout a plant's vascular tissue, making the plant potentially toxic to insects.

Four professional beekeepers and five environmental and consumer groups said they would try to get a court to order the EPA to take action. The groups filed their lawsuit against the EPA in the Northern District Court of California, demanding that the regulatory agency suspend the use of pesticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam.

In the United States, such pesticides are routinely used on more than 100 million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton, and are in some home gardening products.

The scary thing is, this was entirely foreseeable, because it, well, it was:

Every spring millions of bee colonies are trucked to the Central Valley of California and other agricultural areas to replace the wild pollinators, which have all but disappeared in many parts of the country. These bees are routinely fed high-fructose corn syrup instead of their own nutritious honey. And in an effort to boost productivity, the queens are now artificially inseminated, which has led to a disturbing decline in bee genetic diversity. Bees are also dusted with chemical poisons to control mites and other pathogens that have flourished in the overcrowded commercial colonies.

In 1923, Rudolph Steiner, the German founder of biodynamic agriculture, a precursor of the modern organic movement, predicted that within a hundred years artificial industrial techniques used to breed honey bees would lead to the species’ collapse.

It would really not be a good thing for the bees to go away forever because, you know, it would seriously mess with the global food supply. But I guess we can now scratch fruits and vegetables from our diet, and add junk food to the jellyfish that's already on the menu at Mad Max's Doomsday Diner.

---Baron V

They Don't Care

If you live or die, so long as you give them your money. What they do care about is shareholder value:

The menus offered to children by most U.S. restaurant chains have too many calories, too much salt or fat, and often not a hint of vegetables or fruit, according to a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The group, which has agitated for everything from healthier popcorn at the movies to calorie labeling in supermarkets, found that among almost 3,500 combinations surveyed, kids' meals failed to meet nutritional standards 97 percent of the time.

That was a marginal improvement over 2008 when such meals failed to meet standards 99 percent of the time.

Every children's meal offered at popular chains such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, Dairy Queen, Hardee's, McDonald's, Panda Express, Perkins Family Restaurants and Popeyes fell short of standards adopted by the center from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutritional recommendations.

---Baron V

Really Smart Advice

The best way to deleverage from a debt-fueled housing bubble is to assume more leverage in another debt-fueled housing bubble.

Considering that a lot of the targeted borrowers will be unable to make their mortgage payments in a few years, I can't see why anyone in his/her right mind would see this as anything other than an open invitation for banks to steal more homes. Unless here's some hidden angle to this story that I'm missing?

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

The Waltons:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers, a new twist on speedier delivery services that the company hopes will enable it to better compete with Amazon.com Inc.

Tapping customers to deliver goods would put the world's largest retailer squarely in middle of a new phenomenon sometimes known as "crowd-sourcing," or the "sharing economy."

Insane? Yes, but it conforms closely to their current business model:

At the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Wal-Mart where Mary Pat Tifft has worked for nearly a quarter-century, merchandise ready for the sales floor remains on pallets and in steel bins lining the floor of the back room---an area so full that “no passable aisles” remain, she said. Meanwhile, the front of the store is increasingly barren, Tifft said. That landscape has worsened over the past several years as workers who leave aren’t replaced, she said.

“There’s a lot of voids out there, a lot of voids,” said Tifft, 58, who oversees grocery deliveries and is a member of OUR Walmart, a union-backed group seeking to improve working conditions at the discount chain. “Customers come in, they can’t find what they’re looking for, and they’re leaving.”

Years ago, supervisors drilled a message into employees’ heads: “In the door and to the floor,” Tifft said. That mantra now seems impossible to execute.

“There’s no manpower in the store to get the merchandise moving,” she said.

When I dream of better days, I imagine short-sighted assholes like these literally cost-cutting themselves right out of business. And who knows, it could happen! But it does point out the ethical and intellectual bankruptcy of running a business for the benefit of shareholders, even if it means screwing your customers. Maybe they'll learn the lesson?

---Baron V

Paid Sick Leave

It really is amazing that thirteen years into the 21st Century, we are still having to debate shit like this at all. I mean, when people get sick, they should stay at home from work (1) so they can heal up faster, and (2) so they won't infect their co-workers and/or customers. And when people get sick, they shouldn't have to worry about losing their jobs or their paycheck because everyone gets sick eventually, and it's no one's fault in particular. Why would this be at all controversial? You'd think this would be the law of the land at this point, but apparently, it's not.

---Baron V

The Health Care is Too Damn Expensive

It's really what our so-called health-care "crisis" is all about---not that 30 million or 40 million or however many people are uninsured but because the procedures, drugs, devices, et al are just prohibitively, absurdly, obscenely expensive for everyone but the very rich. Will getting millions more people enrolled for insurance drive down the cost curve? Perhaps, but since insurance-company costs are largely a reflection of what the companies are paying out in claims, plus their profit margin (surprisingly, not that big), it's hard to see how health-care costs are ever going to be driven downward to any noticeable degree if the health-care providers, drug companies, etc., refuse to lower their prices/fees. And no, the "free-market competition" analogy doesn't work because health-care doesn't operate on true free-market principles.

It would be nice if the Affordable Care Act had addressed this concern, but sadly, it doesn't, so all it really guarantees us in the end is access to health care, period. If we can't afford to pay for it, well, guess that's our problem. If that's not the definition of a "fake" freedom, I honestly don't know what would be.

---Baron V

Crazy Idea

What would happen if our government decided to allow us to contribute more money to Social Security than what they take out of our paychecks in payroll taxes? Here's what I mean: I've got a 401(k) that I've been stashing money in for the last ten years or so, and while I've put away a tidy sum, it's fairly modest in the bigger scheme of things, and if I had to rely on it as my primary source of income (along with Social Security), I could probably live off of it for maybe three years, five at most, before I'd have to consider relocating to some suburban trailer park to lower my living expenses. (Stop laughing.) But what if I could roll over my whole 401(k) into the SSI trust fund in return for a higher payout---say, an extra grand each month? I wouldn't hesitate to make that deal, and neither, I suspect, would many millions of people around my age.

Of course, our job creators would throw conniption fits, and that's why it will never be allowed to happen, but it's not the stupidest idea I've ever heard of, and no matter how our policymakers choose to address the problem, we need to find a way to get more money, not less, into the trust fund because we are going to need to increase Social Security payments, not reduce them, if we want to avert a coming epidemic of senior poverty in America.

---Baron V

Coming Attractions

Basically, it's what we have been watching in Cyprus, and will soon be watching in Greece, Spain, Portugal and all the other socialist hellholes of Old Europe, and it's coming soon to a bank lobby near us: Stealing our money to recapitalize the casino:

An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company into equity. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself—thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution.

Actually, we will get hit twice: First by having our deposits converted to bank stock---which may end up being worthless anyway---and then a tax hit to cover the FDIC's insurance exposure. Then again, look on the bright side: those three-hour queues at the ATM machine after BofA or JP Morgan fails are sure gonna be fun---particularly when you consider how many people in this country, unlike in Cyprus, have guns.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Today's Worse-Than-Worst Person

Colonel Sanders:

A Tupelo woman hired earlier this month by a KFC was fired Monday after the franchise owner discovered she’s homeless.

Eunice Jasica has been staying at the Salvation Army lodge since early December after losing her job, her car and her home.

The nonprofit organization requires its residents to seek employment daily and, upon finding it, to pay for lodging and start saving for a place of their own. Jasica said she had been job hunting for months and was relieved to find work on March 11 at the KFC on North Gloster Street.

A document signed by that location’s general manager on March 12 confirms Jasica had been hired to perform “prep work” and would receive a paycheck every two weeks.

But when Jasica reported for duty Monday, franchise owner Chesley Ruff withdrew the job offer upon learning she lived at the Salvation Army.

Good thing we're agreed that this job creator deserves a tax cut.

---Baron V

Random Thought

I'll admit that Team Democrat comes in for some pretty rough handling on this blog, but one thing I'm always mindful of---and a reason why I'm still a reluctant member of the team---is that for all their shortcomings, in many important ways they're simply not like the other team. Which is to say, not sex-obsessed perverts.

---Baron V

New Normals

It certainly speaks volumes about the state of our discourse, of our political leadership class, that the Most Pressing Issue of our time is how we can drive prosperity by spending less money on stuff because, presumably, public-sector spending crowds out private-sector spending, so if government reduces its level of spending, the private sector will rush in to make up for the decreased demand. It's a novel theory---heck, it might even be true!---but an obvious problem arises when one realizes that for the theory to hold water, people in the private sector must have more money to spend than they did in years past. Unfortunately, at present, the opposite is true.

They had the opportunity to resolve many of our economy's structural imbalances four years ago, when the wind was in their sails, their approval ratings were in the 70s, and talk of "change" was in the air. They started in the right direction, then stopped abruptly. At the time they told us that they'd reached the desired destination, that the Recovery Act was all that was needed to kick-start the economy again, that now it was time for all of the serious persons to turn their attention to deficit reduction. But anyone who was paying attention could see that they were many miles short of the ultimate policy goal. It's really a shame, because they were advised at the time not to let a good crisis go to waste. But that's pretty much what they did.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Barack Obama.

There was nothing furtive about this legislation, at least for those of us in the blogosphere---it was broadly discussed in the days leading up to its passage, and hundreds of thousands of people petitioned against it, so the members of Team Democrat in the Senate or the White House could have put a stop to it whenever they wanted to. But they didn't want to, so they didn't put a stop to it. That's not to say the members of Team Democrat are evil, but it is a another sign---as mentioned earlier---that we are governed by people whose overarching policy goals are increasing shareholder value---and if those policies happen to be detrimental to our health, well, we can always sell our shares. Don't have any shares to sell? Oh well!

---Baron V

Entitlements

One of the most maddening developments in our discussion of social-welfare policy over the last couple of decades has been the acquiescence of our leaders---across the ideological spectrum, frankly---to the concept that programs such as Medicaid and food stamps aren't initiatives that satisfy basic human needs but are a privilege our society bestows upon its less fortunate members as some sort of temporary favor. Favors, of course, are not open-ended and need to be repaid, but since poor people generally don't have the money to repay us, we must reserve the right to withhold or withdraw our favors in order to teach the lower orders a lesson in thrift. This only reinforces the idea, naturally favored by the wealthy, that poor people are poor because they're morally deficient, and not because of any extant socioeconomic conditions that might create or perpetuate cycles of poverty; thus can we marginalize them to the fringes of policy discussion, and the next thing you know, tens of millions of people have been rendered invisible. Not constructive!

I guess what I am trying to get at is, our leaders need to abandon this socially corrosive mindset that turns millions of people into pariahs, and stop calling these programs "entitlements"---because the ability to remain free from sickness and starvation shouldn't be considered privileges at all but fundamental human rights.

---Baron V

The Joneses

Keeping up with them can be a bit of an imposition:

As the wealthy have gotten wealthier, the economists find, that’s created an economic arms race in which the middle class has been spending beyond their means in order to keep up. The authors call this “trickle-down consumption.” The result? Americans are saving less, bankruptcies are becoming more common, and politicians are pushing for policies to make it easier to take on debt.

Not to discount the effect of status-seeking on American consumers' behavior, but I think the most important reason why so many people are going broke in this country isn't because their next-door neighbor just bought a Bentley Mulsanne or a 60-inch flat screen but because too many things that they can't live without cost more than their crappy wages can afford to purchase.

How to fix? Simple!

1. Raise the minimum wage to $12/hour---more if we can afford it.
2. Extend the payroll tax to cover all income levels. This will pay for expanded Social Security benefits, which we are going to need very soon.
3. Enact single-payer health care. Impose price controls on medical procedures, devices, prescription drugs, etc. This will probably do more to repair Americans' finances than any other single thing we could do.
3. Rewrite tax law to reinstate pre-1980 taxation levels, i.e., abolish Reaganomic tax policy for good. Use the extra revenues to pay down the deficit and finance infrastructure improvements.
4. Pass the damn Employee Free Choice Act. Enforce antitrust laws. Stop approving disastrous mergers.
5. Wait a few a years. If my policy proposals don't work, we can always undo them.

Basically, it's like this: if people don't have enough money to pay for life's necessities, we need to find a way to get them more money. It doesn't really matter if you take as multi-step approach like mine, or simply mail out $10,000 checks to every American with a Social Security number, but bottom line, if we agree on the social utility of redistributing income more equally, we need public policy that, well, redistributes income more equally. If the Smiths earn enough money to pay for their essentials and have a little left over for a few nice things each month, they probably won't care what the Joneses next door are doing.

---Baron V

A Job Well Done

Is its own reward:

Covington & Burling, a prominent law firm, plans to announce on Thursday that Mr. Breuer will be its vice chairman. The firm created the role especially for Mr. Breuer, a Washington insider who most recently led the Justice Department’s investigation into the financial crisis.

For Mr. Breuer, who will now shift to defending large corporations, Covington is familiar turf. He previously spent nearly two decades there.

“There’s a strong emotional pull to the firm,” Mr. Breuer, who departed as the Justice Department’s criminal division chief on March 1, said in an interview. “It’s my professional home.”

Mr. Breuer is expected to earn about $4 million in his first year at Covington.

If you want to know how and when our political system started to break down, you can point to the day when Team Democrat placed a bunch of career corporate guys in charge of its policy agenda instead of the traditional career civil servants, academics, or labor lawyers. This meant we no longer had a liberal populist party to act as a check against the corporatists, and this is why we simply don't have a liberal democracy anymore, or even a constitutional Republic. Well, we do, but it's more like a Potemkin Republic where we go through the pretense of conducting elections every couple of years, but nothing gets done (a) unless it returns dividends for shareholders, and (b) if it might harm shareholder value. Not a shareholder? Oh well!

---Baron V

Eat More Jellyfish

Might as well get used to it because in the future, we may have no choice:

By far the most widespread stress factor was phosphorus and nitrogen, which are used in fertilizer. Forty percent of river and stream length had high levels of phosphorus and 28 percent had high levels of nitrogen, the report said.

Risk levels of mercury in fish tissue were exceeded in 13,144 miles of rivers. Streams were not surveyed. In 9 percent of river and stream length, samples for enterococci bacteria topped levels for protecting human health.

FYI, corn leaches huge quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus from soil, so to grow corn year-round, the chemicals need to be continually reintroduced into the ground---some of which is lost to irrigation runoff, which then seeps into creeks, then to streams, then to rivers, then finally to giant ocean dead zones where only invertebrates can thrive. As it turns out, jellyfish is quite nutritious, though apparently lacking much flavor. Lucky for us, there's a Website for that!

---Baron V

Cannabis Default Swaps

Capitalism doesn't necessarily have to be evil. In fact, it can bring a great deal of pleasure, even joy (if not utility) to people's lives---and not only to investors, but to everyone else. It's simply a matter of which asset classes they choose to exploit while they're gingerly picking our pockets.

---Baron V

Purple Lines

Can't vouch for the methodology since I can't read the report, but all I can say from my own recent experience is that our local subway enjoys a fairly healthy ridership at virtually all hours of the day; the train I rode home from downtown on a Sunday night at 10:30---when "nobody" is stereotypically out and about in L.A.---was full up with people by the time we reached the Western terminus stop, and this has been my experience most other nights as well. I think this falls under the category of "If you build it" because I can remember---vividly!---how so many people ridiculed the very idea of building a light-rail/subway system in this burg because it was so expensive and that no one would ride it because, well, just because. Expensive it may be, but it does improve social mobility for many thousands of people in this town every day, which translates
---however indirectly---into increased economic output, so even if its actual operating margins are small, the system more than pays for itself.

---Baron V

Lies, Lying Liars, Job Creators

They've been repeating the same rap for as long as I've been alive:

Executives have complained for years that their firms face the highest tax burden in the world, citing the United States’ 35 percent top corporate tax rate as the highest among developed economies.

P&G chief executive Bob McDonald was among 20 business executives---including other leaders of Dow 30 companies such as General Electric’s Jeffrey Immelt and Wal-Mart’s Michael Duke---who met with Obama in November to discuss the country’s fiscal issues, including the tax code.

The country needs to “make our tax system more competitive and . . . reduce the corporate tax rate,” P&G said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

Meanwhile, competitiveness:

Not that it matters, but if I ran the monkey show, I'd rewrite the corporate tax code to remove any distinctions between "tax avoidance" and "tax evasion"---because in practical terms, there aren't any---then send a note to every Forbes 400 CEO and CFO that reads, "Pay or prison." If they threaten to move their operations overseas, nationalize their companies and fire-sell the assets to some deserving investors who'll keep the companies Stateside. If that means we all end up working for the Danes or the Dutch or the Swedes or the Canadians one day in the future, I could live with it---and I suspect a lot of our fellow countrymen could live with it, too, if it meant experiencing the vicarious pleasure of watching these greedy little shits trying to make ends meet on unemployment insurance, the same way the rest of us do.

---Baron V