Chicken Music of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Newnans Lake SF–East Path (Pithlachocco Path), Alachua, Florida, United States. Virtuosic!

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In Case You May Miss…

  1. Anti-Trump lawfare begins… however with far, way more strong instances.
  2. OMB memo RESCINDED. That was quick!
  3. A protection of slowness.

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Politics

“So most of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in actual fact a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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Trump Assassination Makes an attempt (Plural)

They disappeared The Claims Adjuster too:

Trump Administration

Lambert right here:

From my armchair at 60,0000 ft, right here is how I see Trump’s govt orders and yesterday and in the present day’s barrage of communiqués from the OMB. A primary approximation, issues can change!

First, the Democrat Celebration is sort of a rotten plank, and the Republicans have been going to punch via it in the end. I really feel sooner is best than later, as a result of I’ve some optimism about a greater final result later if “we” take the punch now, what with the varied approaching and inter-related crises that will likely be worse and worse later.

As a result of–

Second, the important thing level is just not what the Republicans do (“You may belief the Republicans… To be Republicans”) however how Democrats react. In any case, Trump is just not that well-liked; his victory in 2024 was strong, however not spectacular; and “pausing” packages upon which the working class relies upon may not be one of the simplest ways for Trump to pivot his get together to make that very same working class his base. This suggests an unlimited energy vacuum within the Democrat Celebration management, and politics abhors a vacuum. Any individual will step up, nearly by definition not from the drained, flaccid, corrupt, and dull-witted get together management, however “out of nowhere.” My thought was a metropolis councillor from, say, Minnesota (plain-spoken and media savvy are musts); Yves puzzled the place our Huey Lengthy is. Maybe the Skunk Celebration!

Third, the Medicaid shutdown fiasco (particulars to return under) reveals some weaknesses within the Trump operation. Stoller is appropriate to say that Republicans wish to govern, and Democrats shrink from it, however all of the Republicans needed to do to forestall the Medicaid shutdown after they wrote the OMB “pause” memo was to explicitly exempt Medicaid by identify, as they did with Medicare and Social Safety, in footnote 2. Everybody is aware of to learn the footnotes, proper? Nicely, apparently no person in Stephen Miller’s OMB did. I don’t know the way the screw-up occurred — some reactionary dweeb thought Medicaid was a part of Medicare? They hate poor individuals? Their AI had a hallucination? — however the identical form of factor occurred with the Bush Administration, which found that you simply simply can’t swap in Liberty College attorneys for Harvard attorneys (Christianists although they could be). Or after they tried to reconstruct Iraq with twenty-something Younger Republicans. In different phrases, simply because Republicans need to control doesn’t imply they do it effectively.

P.S. I don’t wish to suggest that I’m wedded to the Democrat Celebration; in spite of everything, the Republican Celebration was within the White Home after solely two election cycles. I don’t take any of the prevailing different events critically; however that doesn’t imply a brand new second get together couldn’t be created. My thought — blue sky although it’s — is that Democrats 2.0 can be a dues paying get together, an concept that labored so efficiently for Labour within the UK that the spooks, the press, the Israeli Embassy, and the electeds all needed to work laborious to cripple it. So possibly Corbyn was onto one thing. Any individual extra intelligent than I’m must pencil it out, however dues would possibly take the get together out of the palms of the squillionaires. Sufficient dues, and also you begin providing member advantages, too. Why not? Blue skying wildly, the opposite main dues-paying establishment in politics is… unions. Why not a Labor Celebration? Sounds loopy, however whenever you think about the leverage that the Longshoreman, the railway staff, the truckers, and the airline stewardesses might exert if directed towards a single program at a single time… Nicely, “The facility to destroy a factor is absolutely the management over it.”

P.P.S. On the rescission of OMB memo M-25-13 (belowP: I don’t think the impulses behind the memo have changed. There seem to have been three drivers: (1) animus against “big gummint” generally; (2) animus against NGOs; (3) animus against DEI, but also other various “irritable mental gestures.” Taking these out of order: Big Gummint issues are also being handled at the personnel level (see the OPM material). Mental Gestures are not especially relevant — does anybody really believe that “Marxist equity” and “Green New Deal Social Engineering” are sufficiently conceptualized to be “identified” let alone “reviewed”? DEI is the exception since it has an institutional apparatus to support it, but frankly, if the Republicans manage to kill it off, they’ll be doing Democrats a favor. As for NGOs, I think they are the real target of the memo, which might rationally have been pared down to address them alone (and perhaps will be). Do recall, for example, that on the key Republican issue of immigration, the allocation of immigrants to towns and cities across the United States was handled, not by government, but by an invisible albeit well-funded network of NGOs, a policy that ought to be brought into the light of day and examined. So while the memo was poorly drafted, its rescission is a minor tactical victory.

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OMB memo M-25-13 -> Medicaid freeze-up -> reaction -> rescission. This link gives the best timeline and detail–

“As some Medicaid sites freeze up, White House acts to clarify pause on grants and programs” [Stat]. • Summarizing the discourse as it flowed across my feed: M-25-13 explicitly exempted Medicare and Social Security from the freeze (or “pause”) in footnote 2. Medicaid was not exempted. And from footnote 1, “assistance received directly by individuals” was exempted, but that doesn’t exempt Medicaid, which reimburses providers. Given the tenor of the memo (“career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities”) it was rational for government officials to follow the letter of the memo as best they could and freeze the sites. Administration advocates framed this as “malicious compliance,” but putting attributed motives aside, I don’t think compliance was irrational. The text is the text, after all. Accidentally or not, “it’s pretty obvious they just threw a big breaker switch on the federal government” (though it would be nice to have reporting on the details of how the breaker switch was thrown). At this point, the memo was rescinded. I wonder if any heads will roll? For example, Stephen Miller’s:

“[E]xplicitly excluded all assist and profit packages” is incorrect; Miller seems to not have learn his personal memo (see dialogue of footnotes 1 and a pair of above.)

“White Home response provides to confusion on federal funding freeze” [PBS]. “The Workplace of Administration and Finances has rescinded its name for a pause on federal help, in accordance with the company’s memo shared by Democracy Ahead, which led a authorized problem over the trouble. However the White Home stated that solely the unique memo calling for the freeze had been rescinded. The brand new memo says the heads of govt departments and businesses ought to contact their normal counsels ‘in case you have questions on implementing the President’s Govt Orders.’ However Karoline Leavitt, the White Home spokeswoman, informed reporters that the transfer merely meant a recession of the memo. She stated efforts to ‘finish the egregious waste of federal funding’ will proceed. She stated the OMB memo has been rescinded ‘to finish any confusion on federal coverage created by the courtroom ruling and the dishonest media protection.’ The administration expects that rescinding the memo will finish the courtroom case towards it. After widespread confusion from the initially very broad memo calling for a halt in federal help, pending evaluate, the White Home tried Tuesday to additional make clear which packages wouldn’t be affected, later specifying that it might not affect Medicaid and SNAP packages, for instance. This newest assertion from the White Home is probably going so as to add to the confusion reasonably than make clear it.” As for the ability of the purse: “The order supplied an early litmus take a look at for simply how keen Congressional Republicans can be to cede their energy of the purse in deference to the chief of their get together – even quickly…. Home Speaker Mike Johnson known as it ‘an utility of widespread sense,’ and stated it might ‘be innocent ultimately.’” • Is it potential to be a constitutionalist and a consequentialist on the similar time? Johnson appears to assume so, however I’m not so certain….

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Lawfare, however with way more strong instances:

“Lawsuit claims techniques behind OPM governmentwide e-mail blast are unlawful, insecure” [FedScoop]. “A lawsuit filed in federal court Monday alleges that the Office of Personnel Management set up an on-premise server to conduct last week’s mass email blast to federal employees and store information it received in response without doing a privacy impact assessment on the system as required by law. Filed by two anonymous federal employees in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the class-action lawsuit calls for OPM to stop the use of the system until the agency can show that it’s lawfully conducted a privacy assessment. The two employees accuse OPM officials of deploying the new server — which is said to be ‘retaining information about every employee of the U.S. Executive Branch’ or potentially doing so through systems linked to it — in a ‘rapid’ manner without building proper security measures into it or assessing the privacy impacts as required by the E-Government Act of 2002. On Friday, OPM sent a mass email to employees across the federal government — though not every federal employee received it, including one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — to test ‘a new distribution and response list,’ asking recipients to reply ‘yes.’ Over the weekend, federal employees received another test ‘to confirm that an email can be sent and replied to by all government employees.’ Some agency and department heads gave guidance to their employees that the emails from OPM could be trusted. The complaint goes on to say: ‘OPM has not conducted a PIA for this unknown email server or any system which collects or maintains Personally Identifiable Information (‘PII’) obtained from its use,’ nor has a chief information officer or equivalent agency official signed off on an assessment. Finally, such an assessment would need to be made publicly available for review. ‘,’ the lawsuit states. ‘Plaintiffs are being materially harmed by this inaction because they are being denied information about how these systems — which will be rich in PII about every employee of the U.S. Executive Branch — are being designed and used.’ As a measure of relief, the plaintiffs call for an injunction of the systems involved in the matter until OPM conducts the required privacy assessment.” • Alternatively, Trump could have set up the servers in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago…..

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“Trump Hit With New Lawsuit for Funneling Sensitive Info to Elon Musk” [The New Republic]. “Donald Trump’s administration has been hit with a lawsuit over allegedly collecting federal employee information and directing it to an employee of Elon Musk. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Monday, alleges that employee data is going to Amanda Scales, who, according to LinkedIn, works for xAI, a private corporation of which Musk is the CEO. This would violate federal laws on transparency and put the sensitive information of federal employees into the hands of a private corporation.” • Here is the filing.

“Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken Over the Office of Personnel Management” [Wired]. “Sources within the federal government tell WIRED that the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk and to the tech industry. Among them is a person who, according to an online résumé, was set to start college last fall. Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the powerful investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, stands as Trump’s nominee to run the OPM. …. Amanda Scales is, as has been reported, the new chief of staff at the OPM. She formerly worked in talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, according to her LinkedIn. Before that, she was part of the talent and operations team at Human Capital, a venture firm with investments in the defense tech startup Anduril and the political betting platform Kalshi; before that, she worked for years at Uber. Her placement in this key role, experts believe, seems part of a broader pattern of the traditionally apolitical OPM being converted to use as a political tool.” And: “According to the same sources, other people at the top of the new OPM food chain include two people with apparent software engineering backgrounds, whom WIRED is not naming because of their ages. One, a senior adviser to the director, is a 21-year-old whose online résumé touts his work for Palantir, the government contractor and analytics firm cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, who is its chair. (The former CEO of PayPal and a longtime Musk associate, Thiel is a Trump supporter who helped bankroll the 2022 Senate campaign of his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.) The other, who reports directly to Scales, graduated from high school in 2024, according to a mirrored copy of an online résumé and his high school’s student magazine; he lists jobs as a camp counselor and a bicycle mechanic among his professional experiences, as well as a summer role at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company.” • Analytically, I don’t think “Musk’s lackeys” is correct framing. This is a Flex-Net centered on Silicon Valley. As for the 21-year-old…. One of Thiel’s blood bags?

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“Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration freeze on federal grants and loans” [Associated Press]. “A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a push from President Donald Trump to pause federal funding while his administration conducts an across-the-board ideological review to uproot progressive initiatives…. U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan blocked the funding freeze only minutes before it was scheduled to take effect. The administrative stay, prompted by a lawsuit brought by nonprofit groups that receive federal money, lasts until Monday afternoon. Another court hearing is scheduled that morning to consider the issue.” • Here is the docket. Here is the filing. NOTE This filing concerns the OMB memo now rescinded. BWA-HA-HA-HA! I picked the best posssible day to get a late start!

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OMB memo M-25-13 rescinded:

At the least any individual within the White Home has the strength of will to chop their losses, even at the price of permitting the Democrats a minor tactical victory!

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“Trump’s Try to Usurp Congress’s Spending Energy” [Reason]. The rescission of OMB memo M-25-13 apart: “As in his first time period, Trump is once more planning to disclaim federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions except they settle for his dictates on immigration coverage. Earlier, he suspended almost all overseas assist packages, besides these for Israel and Egypt. Trump additionally lately threatened to withhold catastrophe aid funds from California, except they undertake his most well-liked adjustments to state election legislation. Extra usually, he and his underlings have far-reaching plans to ‘impound’ federal spending they disapprove of. Together, this can be a large assault on Congress’ energy over federal spending. The Spending Clause of the Structure is evident in giving Congress, not the president, the ability to allocate federal spending. On the subject of circumstances imposed on grants to state and native governments, the Supreme Courtroom has lengthy made clear that they too should be imposed by Congress, and meet quite a few different necessities, as effectively. Such circumstances should, amongst different issues, 1) be enacted and clearly indicated by Congress (the manager can not make up its personal grant circumstances), 2) be associated to the needs of the grant in query (e.g. – grants for well being care or schooling can’t be conditioned on immigration enforcement), and three) not be ‘coercive.’ Thus, for instance, even Congress couldn’t situation catastrophe assist on adjustments in state election legislation, as a result of the 2 points usually are not associated. Some would possibly argue that most of the Administration’s actions on spending are not any large deal as a result of they’re solely “momentary.” But when the White Home can ‘quickly’ withhold congressionally allotted funds for a month, why not for 2 months, or for 2 years? There isn’t a logical stopping level right here.” • Huge triers, these guys. And lots of parallel traces of assault. I’m slightly amazed that the Home — which I’d assume values having the ability of the purse — is rolling over for this. What do these guys have on Mike Johnson, anyhow?

Nomination

RFK (1):

RFK (2):

RFK (3):

2024 Submit Mortem

I’m stealin’ again to my usual was:

Democrats en déshabillé

“‘A 5 Alarm F-ing Hearth’: Trump’s Federal Funding Freeze Is Jolting Some Dems Into Battle Mode” [HuffPo]. “Democrats on Capitol Hill are fuming about President Donald Trump’s Monday night announcement that he is freezing all federal grants and loans, a stunning action that appears as unconstitutional as it is harmful to millions of Americans…. Nearly two dozen Democrats on Tuesday opposed confirmation of Trump’s transportation secretary nominee, Sean Duffy, who is relatively noncontroversial. Some explicitly said their reason was because of the president’s freeze on federal money.” • I suppose it’s a step up from a sternly worded letter.

Please kill me now:

We’re gonna pry that “struggle” meme from their chilly, useless palms….

Not such a nasty thought:

The bottom is just not joyful (however can be fully addled by RussiaGate, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and an excessive amount of brunch, so what do you do):

Syndemics

“I’m in earnest — I can’t equivocate — I can’t excuse — I can’t retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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Covid Assets, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; consists of many counties; Wastewater Scan, consists of drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide knowledge). “An infection Management, Emergency Administration, Security, and Common Ideas” (particularly on hospitalization by metropolis).

Lambert right here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To replace any entry, do be happy to contact me on the tackle given with the vegetation. Please put “COVID” within the topic line. Thanks!

Assets, United States (Native): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater studies); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Assets, Canada (Nationwide): Wastewater (Authorities of Canada).

Assets, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tricks to useful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, sq. coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Keep secure on the market!

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Lambert right here: Every part’s gone darkish aside from trusty New York State hospitalization (each day), Walgreen’s positivity (weekly), and the Cleveland Clinic? Readers, do you might have any recommendations about alternate options at state stage? Thanks! How I want we had Biobot again….

TABLE 1: Each day Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC January 13 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC January 18 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11

Hospitalization
New York[5] New York State, data January 27: National [6] CDC January 24:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens January 27: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 18:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC December 30: Variants[10] CDC December 30

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

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Manufacturing: “Boeing plans to wrap up rework in ‘shadow factories’ this year” [FlightGlobal]. “Boeing has made progress winnowing its once-massive inventory of undelivered 737 Max and 787s and is now preparing to shutter so-called “shadow factories” in which it has been completing rework on the aircraft.” Shadow factories. First I’ve head. More: “Many of Boeing’s stored 737s and 787s have required rework due to manufacturing issues. At one point, Boeing was sitting on some 450 undelivered 737 Max and 120 undelivered 787s. So far this year, Boeing has already delivered around 10 of the 55 737 Max 8s in its inventory at end-2024, says West. ‘We now expect to shut down the shadow factory mid-year, and to deliver all the remaining [Max 8s] to customers within the year.’ Boeing intends to complete rework on the 25 undelivered 787s in ‘early 2025’, though deliveries of those jets will run into next year, West adds. Several production quality issues, including those affecting 737 Max aft-pressure bulkheads and 787 fuselages, have forced Boeing to rework already produced aircraft. Boeing has been conducting the time-intensive and expensive work on 787s at its production site in Everett and on 737 Max aircraft at a site in Moses Lake, Washington.” • Oh. I think Deming would have had something to say about all this.

Tech: “OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor” [Financial Times]. • Somebody call a w-h-a-a-a-mbulance! OpenAI ripped off the entire internet — the Bearded One calls this “original accumulation” — and know they’re whinging about theft?

Tech: If you think it’s worth it:


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At the moment’s Worry & Greed Index: 46 Impartial (earlier shut: 44 Worry) [CNN]. One week in the past: 42 (Worry). (0 is Excessive Worry; 100 is Excessive Greed). Final up to date Jan 29 at 1:05:03 PM ET.

Musical Interlude

The one band the mattered:

“#1 You may have the fitting to not be killed.” That track is a propos, however I unintentionally had autoplay on, and so this got here up, truly my favourite:

One of many higher anti-war songs….

Zeitgeist Watch

“A defence of slowness on the finish of the world” [Sarah’s Substack]. Contradicts the above a bit, I suppose. Ah well, nevertheless. “Spencer Greenberg of Clearer Thinking recently wrote that believing you only have one option is dangerous. Grasping to preserve what you believe is your sole choice can lead to poor decision-making, like tolerating abuse in a relationship or staying in the wrong job. I think this argument extends to believing you have very little time. To live in the shadow of an impending singularity can make every opportunity appear as one of an ever-dwindling number. It can end in money you wish you hadn’t spent, sex you wish you hadn’t had, or nights you wish you hadn’t drunk so much. It can obscure opportunities whose benefits might take longer to manifest. Staying in the Slow World can guard against impulsivity. It can expand your menu of options, and make you more likely to take bets that will pay off in longer timelines (which we might be lucky enough to get!). It’s ok to comfort yourself with age-old adages meant to stave off myopicism – that you’re still young, that you’ve got your whole life ahead of you and that there’s always next year. It’s ok to really believe these adages and to live as if they are true.” • I think the “singularity” is Silly Valley foofrah bred from too much stupid money sloshing about. But slow (as in Slow Food) is still good.

Class Warfare

All bets are off” [Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic]. “When unions are outlawed, only outlaws will have unions. Unions don’t owe their existence to labor laws that protect organizing activities. Rather, labor laws exist because once-illegal unions were formed in the teeth of violent suppression, and those unions demanded – and got – labor law. Bosses have hated unions since the start, and they’ve really hated laws protecting workers. Dress this up in whatever self-serving rationale you want – ‘the freedom to contract,’ or ‘meritocracy’ – it all cashes out to this: when workers bargain collectively, value that would otherwise go to investors and executives goes to the workers. I’m not just talking about wages here, either. If an employer is forced – by a union, or by a labor law that only exists because of union militancy – to operate a safe workplace, they have to spend money on things like fire suppression, PPE, and paid breaks to avoid repetitive strain injuries. In the absence of some force that corrals bosses into providing these safety measures, they can use that money to pay themselves, and externalize the cost of on-the-job injuries to their workers.” • Worth reading in full.

News of the Wired

Taking the Frecciarossa 500 set from Reggio Calabria to Turin, Italy’s longest high-speed rail journey:

The video reveals that Italy places up glass anti-noise limitations, so you possibly can nonetheless see the view. Not concrete blocks!

“Watch the trail of a raindrop from anyplace on this planet” [River Runner Global].• Enjoyable!

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Contact data for vegetation: Readers, be happy to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn the way to ship me a test if you’re allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn the way to ship me pictures of vegetation. Greens are advantageous! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary vegetation! If you’d like your deal with to seem as a credit score, please place it at the beginning of your mail in parentheses: (thus). In any other case, I’ll anonymize by utilizing your initials. See the earlier Water Cooler (with plant) right here. From RM:

RM writes: “Mushrooms encircling the bottom of useless and burned ponderosa pine.”

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered.

To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.













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