Three Things: It’s All About the Cable, Mabel. Oh, and the Mooch

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If last night’s Twitter timeline was any measure, folks have a LOT to say about premium cable programming let alone the cable television industry. Add the crazy surrounding White House communications and it’s best if I just get out of the way and run like hell.

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I simply can’t write fast enough or better about the situation than many folks have on Twitter already.

Basta.

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Crazy amount of chatter about cable networks and M&A. Biggest stories:

Discovery to buy HGTV’s owner Scripps because of Scripps’ audience demographics — heavily weighted toward women.

Charter Communications will not merge with Sprint to expand into cell phone business; it already has a reseller agreement with Verizon.

However, Japan’s Softbank, Sprint’s parent, is interested in buying Charter Communications. This deserves debate in Congress as well as CFIUS review. There’s a reason why Charter isn’t Cable but Communications now; do we want additional foreign ownership of another communications network even if it isn’t fully into the cell phone business (yet)?

Should note here that a beef I have with my GOP representative on regulating cable networks is on this very point. Rep-who-will-not-be-named sent a pro forma response spouting what is probably party line: FTC has always regulated cable, shouldn’t increase regulation by allowing cable to be regulated by FCC.

Except that cable isn’t just a series of tubes distributing entertainment content. It’s also a series of tubes carrying our communications.

Again, do we want to allow foreign ownership of these particular communications tube in addition to existing cell phone network ownership?

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By now you may have heard HBO’s most popular series, Game of Thrones, may have been affected by a breach of the cable network’s system. Based on conflicting reports, it’s not clear what was stolen from HBO, though unlike other recent hacks HBO itself was attacked and not a content creator/producer. It may sound reminiscent of the Sony Entertainment hack but HBO is nowhere as leaky as Sony.

Will winter still come after this hack? You’ll have to tell me — this isn’t a series I follow.

~ 0 ~

There you have it, your next open thread. Trump-Russia stuff in the last one, please. Everything else here.

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McCain’s Brain Versus American Lives and Healthcare

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There is no joy here in the Mudville that is Arizona. John McCain may have been somebody that natives like me disfavored from the start because of his hubristic usurpation of a true legend and son of Arizona, John Rhodes, but no one here wanted this.

Not now. Not ever.

So the “press” such as they may be, can run all their blathering hagiographies. Go run with that. It’s what you do, isn’t it?

But, for now, thankfully, McCain is alive and well. I am thankful for that.

And, I hope, at this critical juncture in life, John McCain finds it within himself to realize that the healthcare that has kept him alive, and diagnosed his problems, should NOT be limited to Congresspeople and those that married into money. We all deserve the benefit of what McCain has realized.

John McCain has an opportunity to stand up now for those that have none of his storied display of heroism, nor the benefit of his position. His story, because Mr. McCain was born into military care and then segued into other money and entitlement that does not transfer to most of us. For the common citizens he has always talked about, yet curiously abandoned, when it counted in close measures on the Senate floor, where has John McCain been? Absent, that is where.

The man who lived under the press moniker “Maverick” can ride into the famous sunset of his adopted state by helping real people instead of going out with the McConnell Republicans determined to screw the populous. Who will John McCain be?

Who will John McCain be? The elusive and etherial “Maverick” he has always painted himself as being? Or the reliable vote for craven Republican policies that devastate real citizens? Arizona, indeed America itself, deserves the McCain always portrayed and lionized in his numerous campaigns. Not the guy who always defaulted to the GOP sick and craven core.

Will John McCain have the guts and glory he is famous for, and go out fighting for the common American and their human rights to healthcare and financial and educational stability? The exact things McCain has fatuously blabbered about and never really supported in Congress? Or will he do better?

Who are you truly John McCain? A dying country, in the age of Trump, wants to know.

You have a chance to now be the man you always painted yourself to be. For the sake of this country, please be that man.

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‘Look, You Can Live on Minimum Wage!’ Say Modern Slavers

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[Sample budget via McDonald’s and VISA]

Jesus fecking Christ on a pogo stick. I can’t believe McDonald’s and VISA were stupid enough to put together this oh-so-helpful budget estimate showing how fast food workers can get by and still have money left over.

After looking it over, here’s my assessment: A couple corporations need to do drug testing among white-collar staff. Somebody had to be be out of their gourd to think this was accurate, let alone an effective marketing tool to promote their businesses.

As many folks have pointed out, an immediate glaring error on this ‘budget cheat sheet’ is the lack of heating/cooling expenses. Sure, some apartment complexes included HVAC in the rent they charge, but this can’t be assumed as a norm.

Every line item included is grossly flawed. I’ll look at three points:

1) First job’s NET salary of $1105 based on an estimated 21% income tax equals ~$1400 gross salary. Based on current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, that’s ~193 hours worked in a month, or ~44.6 hours a week.

This is NOT a part-time job. Most fast food jobs are deliberately limited to under 32 hours a week to avoid paying unemployment taxes or other benefits.

2) Second job’s NET salary of $955 — HAHAHAHAHAHAH Right. That’s another ~167 hours of labor per month at current federal minimum wage and 21% income tax rate.

To make this sample budget work, either two people MUST live together, MUST work a combined ~83 hours a week at current federal minimum wage. Or one person must do all this and simply have no time to do anything beyond eat/sleep/bathe/maybe laundry.

If two people lived together to make this budget work, they MUST share a tiny/cheap/ratty car, or hope like hell there’s public transportation which costs less than $150 a month to get to/from ~83 hours of work, grocery store, school, so on.

The rest of the assumptions in this budget are just plain trash. Like health insurance for two people versus one. Or savings of $100 which is really half that, spread between two people, as is the discretionary daily spending.

Some trollish account said, “But nobody stays at minimum wage forever! They get pay increases!” Sure…now person working First Job only has to work 43 hours a week instead of ~44.6. The average wage at McDonald’s is $8.25 — but does that include assistant managers and shift managers? Does this include people who’ve worked at McD’s for years? Let’s be real: most fast food workers are closer to the federal minimum wage.

Perhaps with pay increase a person working BOTH jobs only has to work ~80 hours a week instead of ~83. Give me a fucking break.

3) Transportation and insurance combined = $250 — HAHAHAHAHAHAH Right, again. I checked Progressive’s website calculator for insurance on a vehicle only, assuming a 2007 4-door Honda Civic, personal use, unmarried single male driver age 18-24 living alone, who lived in the same rented home for 1-3 years, had driven for more than 3 years, had insurance for 1-3 years, assuming a 20-year old male student living in Lansing, Michigan. Car insurance alone was $219 per month AND +$400 was required upfront before coverage began.

Maybe bundling renter’s insurance would help but the cost McDonald’s and VISA used in their example budget for insurance and a used car loan is simply unmoored from reality.

And perhaps insurance is cheaper in other parts of the country, but I will bet good money some other line item in that budget increases. Like the cost of an annual automobile license (higher in FL than MI) or a mandatory vehicle emissions test (required in CA but not MI).

Roughly 50% of Americans can’t get their hands on $400 cash for an emergency. Imagine if your insurer dropped you and you’re a fast food worker living to this prospective budget. That’s where VISA comes in with an opportunity to finance your emergency, compounding the stranglehold minimum wage has on your life.

God help you if you’re trying to put yourself through college without scholarships or family assistance. Even the imaginary example student attending Lansing Community College will pay more than $65,500 for four years. How long will it take to get through a four-year degree if one works ~83 hours a week? How long will it take to pay off school loans if one manages to break out of fast food service work after graduation — let’s say they double or triple their wages to $14.50 or $21.75 hour? This prospective student faces somewhere between 12 and 15 years of payments ranging from $950 to $1050 per month, and payments may begin as early as NOW while attending school at $650 per month.

You will be in debt for much of your adult life. There will be no extra money for anything.

Maybe the rare avocado toast, if you can find one marked down in the Damaged bin or live someplace warm where fallen avocados can be found for free. And maybe if you can afford bread this week.

“But millennials buying pricey iPhones!” some out-of-touch jackass might say. Let’s say you’re a fast food worker who might have to change housing at any time because rent has increased dramatically in your city. Even my example dude in innocuous Lansing faces a +7% increase in rent each year though his wages have been stagnant. Your entire life — telephone, computer, internet access, records, more — resides in a single, portable device. Of course you’ll pay more for a phone which hails a tow truck when your ratty little car breaks down, or finds you a quick cash gig (or a plasma blood bank) to pay for repairs. That phone is your lifeline, the lifesaver you can count on unlike white-collar jerk-offs who have no clue what you’re going through to survive.

And God help you if you get sick or injured. You can’t count on your elected officials to make sure you’ll be healthy enough to show up to work those ~83 hours a week.

Indentured servitude, without a contract, that’s what this budget reflects. Product marketing by modern slavers.

And they can’t understand why millennials are killing so many things like fast food businesses. They simply can’t afford them.

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Death of the Car(go) Cult(ure)

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I had an epiphany recently. It sneaked up on me, right about the time I let go of my comfortable illusion of middle-class security and embraced the fact I may be faced with more than $26,000 per year in health care premiums and untold thousands in out-of-pocket deductibles and medication expenses. It could be more than my household income, forcing me to draw down on retirement savings nearly ten years prematurely.

Ticking off monthly expenses — what things could be reduced or eliminated in my household to make up for the additional health care expenses if some mutant abomination of AHCA passes — I came to an abrupt conclusion.

I don’t need a car anymore.

It costs more to own a car at my personal disposal than calling a car-for-hire, whether Uber or Lyft or local cab service.

I had to sit down after that. For nearly fifty years I’ve thought I needed a car, that every American aspired to vehicle ownership, save for big city residents for whom cars would be unmanageable. My entrance to adulthood was marked by the ability to drive a car; my personal freedom hinged upon being able to get away in my own vehicle.

But now? I might be trapped by a car. My six-year-old grocery-getter Mom mobile cost me more than I invested in the stock market the year it was manufactured — it’s worth a fraction of its original value, while my stock is worth several times over. My investment in wheels won’t pay for my future health.

I thought about my kids and the reality they face; only four years separates these two siblings, but a massive cultural shift occurred between them. My 23-year-old daughter drove off like the wind when I gave her my car keys seven years ago; she saw her first vehicle as freedom, just as I did when I was her age. She just signed her first lease on a vehicle, though; after crunching the numbers on new cars, it didn’t make sense to buy one. Leasing a car would yield a lower total cost to operate than buying one. She’s also not stuck with trying to sell it in a couple years when an electric vehicle might be preferred.

This isn’t an earth-shattering shift, but it’s a tectonic move; no one in my family has ever leased a vehicle. We have always bought and owned them over the last four generations.

And now my son. One might assume he was a car buff living here in the backyard of the Big Three Automakers, the progeny of one family which made its fortunes in auto parts and spawn of another family in which two successive generations made a living engineering in automobile manufacturing.

But no — he dragged his feet for nearly three years getting his license. He just didn’t care to get it; the only reason he got a driver’s permit was that everyone else his age had done so. He had the public school bus to get him to class every day, and me to get him to every intramural event. Why should he bother when he had it so good?

Especially when it came to the annoying expense of having his own vehicle. Being in a high-risk group — male, 16-25, driving more than 25 miles a week — he might pay more in insurance each year than the purchase price of the car he would drive. And then gas, which was near $4.00/gallon when he got his permit. And car washes, tires, wipers, oil changes, other increasingly frequent car repairs, and so on…this was not freedom.

His sister had been fortunate to land an internship for the duration of her college career, which helped defray automobile expenses. This has not been the case for her brother because of their different academic pursuits. He works at a summer job, stashing as much of his paycheck away for the academic year while living on his tips during the season. The paycheck and tips combined from his summer service job do not equal the amount his sister made each year; he simply cannot afford a car of his own.

We don’t know how long this may be the case, either. His prospects are different from his sister’s given his field of study. He may need to pursue a master’s degree immediately after he gets his bachelor’s. Leads on internships for his junior year of college are good, but the pay may be less than his sister made at the same point in their studies. A car of his own is a very iffy prospect for years.

Let’s face it: my son’s life is closer to that of the overwhelming number of American’s his age than my daughter’s is to her cohort. This is the shift in our culture, one in which we begin to let go of personal and family automobiles as a norm.

The more I thought about it, the more disturbed I became. Both of my kids will leave college without any debt; I spent what should probably have been my retirement health care savings on their tuition and board. In contrast, my prospective son-in-law carries $40,000 in debt after his graduation this month. Thankfully he has a good job and can pay it down quickly, but what of all other college students in the U.S.? The overwhelming majority will be saddled with a similar or greater amount of debt and middling jobs. They’re part of nearly 50% of America which cannot muster $400 cash in the event of an emergency, perhaps part of the 53% participating in the stock market but still one of the precarious.

These youngsters will be hard pressed to juggle health insurance premiums and deductibles under AHCA with massive college tuition debt and rising rents.

They will be hard pressed to buy a car outright. Screw all of those idiotic “Millennials are killing everything!” opinion pieces; their parents and grandparents have done little to ensure college would not burden them as much or more than an automobile payment.

Or a mortgage. I realized, too, that I am financing and paying taxes on a garage and a driveway I rarely use. I must trek out and shovel tons of snow every year to keep that rarely-used driveway clean; when it’s too much to do by hand, I break out the gas-guzzling, exhaust-belching snowblower.

All in service to a rapidly depreciating fossil-fueled demi-god with a deteriorating finish and in need of an oil change. I’ve become an adherent of a cargo cult, who has for too long believed that possessing this object would yield some greater blessing from the great god of capitalism. Instead of throwing several handfuls of dollars per mile traveled into a gaping maw I should be riding my bike or taking a bus.

When the rest of the U.S. wakes up to this same reality, the real earth-shattering shift will begin. Perhaps it already has.

What happens to a people when they lose their religion? We’re about to find out.
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Food for thought:
U.S. automakers question possible excess capacity – but is the challenge too much manufacturing capacity or too little buyers’ capacity due to decades of stagnant wages?

If carmakers like Volvo are already committed to switching completely to electric while entire cities and countries are forcing fossil fuel’s phase out, are potential car buyers simply driving their gas guzzlers to death until the industry has completely migrated?

Or maybe the future isn’t on the road but in the air; will buyers save their pennies for a flying car?

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Garden of Fallen Leaders

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On a recent trip to Moscow, we visited the Garden of the Fallen Leaders, in Muzeon Park near the New Tretyakov Gallery. The Park displays a number of statues of leaders of the former Soviet Union. Here’s an example.

For more pictures and details about the Park, see this travel post by my wife, Janet Eyler. Although most monuments to Soviet leaders have been removed, many destroyed, and others moved to Muzeon Park, there are still monuments to these leaders. There is a very large statue of Lenin in Uglich, one of the small towns we visited, and we saw several in St. Petersburg, and at least one of Stalin.

All around the US today, something similar is happening with monuments to those who fought for and who led the Confederacy. The recent removal of statues in New Orleans caused a lot of dissent and more discussion. Here’s an example from the New York Times. The Garden of the Fallen Leaders provides a model for what to do with all those unwanted memorials, unwanted, that is, by a substantial majority.

Each state should designate a historical park area, and as it removes its monuments, they can be re-mounted in the park, with whatever ceremony and explanation the state thinks proper. There should be only one rule. This is a recent work found in the Garden:

I think it’s meaning is clear. Something similar must be in each such park, a clear demonstration of the individual agonies suffered by slaves. It will serve to remind people that, as Lincoln put it in his Second Inaugural Address:

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.

Maybe we should require the posting of the entire Second Inaugural Address to remind us that we are all Americans and bound together by history and belief.

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Angry Mom: Hauling out the Time-Out Chair

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This week has been a disaster — yet another week of disasters — and it’s only Thursday. Every time I check my news feed I see something that makes me want to march an overgrown child toward the time-out chair.

How did we devolve to this point where the basics of civilized human behavior we teach preschoolers are thrown out the door like quaint but useless antique artifacts?

Like Turkey’s Erdogan inciting goons to rough up protesters protester on U.S. soil.

Time out. NO. You do NOT abuse your host’s hospitality by disregarding their laws. I hope law enforcement has tracked down one identified offending minion to his New Jersey construction firm to have a chat with them about their violent behavior.

Or Montana’s GOP Congressional candidate roughing up a journalist during a tantrum over questions about the House AHCA bill’s CBO numbers.

Time out. NO. You do NOT assault and batter anyone, especially a journalist who represents your constituency by exercising a First Amendment right.

Both of these ugly incidents would fail this mom’s rule: DO. NOT. TOUCH. ANYBODY. WITHOUT. THEIR. CONSENT.

How many conflicts are violations of this simple rule?

Just KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF.

Failure to do so here is an automatic grounding after a stint in time-out and a loss of privileges. I hope Montana’s voters punish Gianforte at the polls, but if they rely on the example Trump set in response to Erdogan’s abuse on our land, they won’t. Fundraising after the assault unfortunately suggests many GOP voters are a lost cause.

Now AG Jeff Sessions claims he was advised not to disclose his interactions with foreign agents while completing his security clearance forms.

Time out. NO. You do NOT offer a “dog ate my homework” excuse and prevaricate about anything related to security clearance while blaming somebody else. Fess up. Further, you should step down since you have not demonstrated by leadership the honesty and integrity required of our nation’s law enforcement by lying under oath more than once.

We’re also told GOP Congressman Mark Meadows was teary-eyed after he read yesterday’s CBO numbers analyzing the latest House version of the AHCA.

Time out. NO. You do NOT cry after the fact about your lack of spine after you voted for that death sentence for many Americans who would lose their insurance coverage. You didn’t do your homework nor check your work before you voted for it. You didn’t vote against it based on incomplete work. Buck up, wipe your eyes and march right into your office now. Issue an apology to every one of your constituents for failing to faithfully execute your office, and then contact your state’s senators and tell them you regret you didn’t do your job before offering to assist with a remedy.

The capper: the lies, lies, LIES from Budget Director Mark Mulvaney’s mouth yesterday. Do NOT sit there and tell the public 3% percent growth is realistic when your party is planning to:

— cut health care coverage for those who can least afford it; hello, escalating health care-driven bankruptcies?

— cut after-school programs and food aid to children whose families can least afford it; these families won’t be spending money on transportation and better housing if they can’t buy food already.

— mess with college tuition loans and forgiveness;

— cut funding to science and art in many different ways; just how do you think artists and researchers make a living? They can’t and don’t all work in private sector; corporations depend on the output from publicly-funded science and art.

I could go on but the problem isn’t details ignored but the lies. Mulvaney and his team didn’t crunch numbers and they’re lying that they did, or they did crunch the numbers and they’re lying that they ran them properly. There’s simply no way TWO TRILLION DOLLARS can be yanked out of the economy without a corresponding Jenga-effect, when nearly a third of Americans pay half their wages for housing leaving too little left as a buffer. There’s simply no way we should allow this brazen deceit to be shoved in our faces without repercussions.

Time. Out. Mulvaney should step down because he’s simply unable to do the execute his job in a manner which safeguards the public’s welfare. ALL of the public, not just the One Percent who can afford to buy all the health care they want.

It just doesn’t stop. While I sit here and fume, wishing I could put this entire administration and nearly all GOP members elected and otherwise in time out, Trump is bullying Europe, being rude during handshakes, literally shoving Montenegro around during a photo op and badgering our EU allies about money.

See the bit above about KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF — this guy simply doesn’t get this rule, whether shoving the newest member of NATO, snatching at Melania’s hand on the tarmac, or grabbing some other woman’s pussy.

He also can’t be bothered with doing his homework, going off about NATO members’ economic contributions without any obvious effort to understand how NATO works. He’d rather suck up to vicious and deadly bullies like the Philippines’ Duterte while spilling more intelligence. Not to mention the blatant lies he made to his supporters during his campaign about Medicaid — now squarely on the chopping block.

But worst of all is the GOP’s reaction to the AHCA. Sure, Meadow’s all torn up a little too late. What about the rest of the damned Republican Party? They’re completely okay with voting party-over-country for a pig-in-a-poke which turns out to be a deadly xenomorph for 23 million Americans? They’re peachy-keen with offering a nearly insignificant number of Americans some financial reward they don’t actually need?

If you’re a billionaire, you can only be on so many yachts at the same time. You can only reside in so many multi-million dollar urban luxury apartments or vineyards you can’t staff cheaply without breaking immigration laws. You don’t need the money. Your country does, however.

As a society we teach our children universal ethics, valuing love, truthfulness, fairness, freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility, respect for life. These ethics transcend all boundaries between people.

And yet the individuals and the groups to which the misbehaved belong appear to have misplaced these shared values. How can you love and tolerate your fellow human when you’re grabbing them by the throat to obstruct their freedom or incite violence against them? How can you demonstrate truthfulness and responsibility by lying repeatedly to the people you have sworn to serve? How can you show unity with humanity and respect for their lives when you offer only pretense at protecting them?

Time out to the poorly behaved. Go to a corner and think about this. Don’t come out until you are ready to take responsibility for your actions, be accountable for your deeds, and act like a adult.

The true adults among us must wield some discipline. Lives are at stake. We no longer have the luxury of standing by and ignoring others’ poorly behaved children. They’re all ours; it’s on us.

Use this as an open thread while we wait for the final results of today’s special election in Montana.

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Yah, These ARE The Droids We Have Been Looking For And Fearing

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I did not always write about it so much here, but I got fairly deep into “Deflategate” analysis and law when it was going on. Because it was fascinating. I met so many lawyers, professors and others, it was bonkers. Have remained friends with many, if not most, of all of them. One is Alexandra J. Roberts, which is kind of funny because she was not necessarily one of the major players. Yet, she is one of the enduring benefits I have come to love from the bigger picture.

Today, Ms Roberts advises of some R2D2 like cop robots. I “might” have engaged in some frivolity in response. But, really, it is a pretty notable moment.

Police droids on the ground? Police drones in the air? You think Kyllo will protect you from a Supreme Court with Neil Gorsuch on it? Hell, you think Merrick Garland would not have done what he has done all of his life and sign off on ever greater law enforcement collection and oppression? Not a chance in hell. Neither Gorsuch, nor Garland, would ever have penned what Scalia did in Kyllo:

It would be foolish to contend that the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment has been entirely unaffected by the advance of technology. For example, as the cases discussed above make clear, the technology enabling human flight has exposed to public view (and hence, we have said, to official observation) uncovered portions of the house and its curtilage that once were private. See Ciraolo, supra, at 215. The question we confront today is what limits there are upon this power of technology to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy.

So, with no further adieu, here, via the Bo Globe, is the deal:

There’s a new security officer in town. But this one runs on batteries, not Dunkin’ Donuts.

Next time you’re visiting the Prudential Center, don’t be alarmed if you bump into a large, rolling robot as it travels the corridors where shoppers pop in and out of stores.

No, it’s not an oversized Roomba on the loose. It’s the “Knightscope K5,” an egg-shaped autonomous machine equipped with real-time monitoring and detection technology that allows it to keep tabs on what’s happening nearby.

Marvelous! R2D2 is making us all safer!

Nope. Sorry. Safe streets, broken windows, and “cop on the beat” policing cannot be accomplished by a tin can.

Just Say No to this idiotic and lazy policing bullshit. The next thing you know, the tin can will be probable cause. And Neil Gorsuch will help further that craven “good faith” reliance opinion in a heartbeat.

Parting Shot: Holy hell, we have our first reference to hate crimes for anti-cop robot violence! See here.

Frankly, having been in the field for three decades, I think the thought that cops are proper “hate crime” victims is absurd. Honestly, all “hate crimes” laws are completely absurd as they create different and more, and less, valuable classes of human crime victims. This may sound lovely to you in the safety of your perch, where you want to lash out at the evil others.

But if the “all men are created equal” language in the Declaration of Independence is to be given the meaning that so many demagogues over American history assign to it, then the “hate crimes” segregation and preference of one set of human victims over others, is total unfathomable bullshit.

That is just as to humans. Let’s not even go to the “victim’s rights” of squeaky ass little R2D2 tin cans.

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Tell The Truth: Who’s Been Bullying Who

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The internet is a strange, yet consummately wonderful place. It allows for a feed from thought leaders and journalists, and with a new age real time speed emphasis, with the ability of other, and different on a granular level, voices to respond. It is a wonderful, even if still difficult, medium of interaction. Twitter is the epitome of it all.

Some will say Facebook, but I think Twitter is a far better avatar, especially for those that really think about hard news, current events and some sort of equilibrium of differing political discourse. Is it a little rough, unfiltered and harsh because of the proverbial 140 character limit? Sure. Absolutely. You hope that the friends you make are equal to the knowledge you take, whether you agree or disagree at any given point in time.

And then comes a day where a small fish gets accused of “bullying” by far bigger fishes. As if simple political and moral distinctions and views are “bullying” or otherwise unconscionable among people that have been agreeing and disagreeing/parrying with and against one another for give or take a decade.

Instead, I was always taught to go into a forum, argue like hell for what you think you must and/or right, and then go have a cocktail with your adversary, or at least shake hands and walk off with the understanding there are two sides to any legitimate argument. And, I will be honest, the “fight like hell” part is always job one. Indeed, criminal defense attorneys are schooled to zealously do just that.

So, recently, I was accused of “bullying”. By a friend with a perch several exponents above mine. I tried to explain. I apologized. And I got nothing in response but for the initial intellectual scorn and accusation that I was “bullying” the big fish.

But for the sadness, both on a personal and interpersonal plane, and greater intellectual one, I might laugh instead of cry. But I cannot. I will not.

The times are severe. The moment is critical. Let us all rise above this type of impertinent interaction. You can still respect and admire people you occasionally have real and very hard differences with. And you can talk to them. Both sides will be all the better for that discourse.

Trying times, civil rights, equality of justice, and the American experiment itself, depend on all of us.

[If you didn’t know, that was not just Slow Clapton in the video but also the one and only Yvonne Elliman too. She is, and always has been, special.]

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Three Things: Oracle’s 299, Flashback, Longreads and 4/20

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Day Zero — the day after federal income tax filings were due — came and went, with zero Trump tax returns disclosed to the public. While Trump’s positions on many issues flip-flop and confuse the world, on transparency, ethics, and his tax returns he has been utterly consistent: opaque and unethical.

Fortunately today is 4/20. Do with that what you will. Do you smell brownies?

Speaking of 4/20, did you know that states where marijuana legalization appeared on the 2016 ballot, those initiatives outperformed one or more of the two main presidential candidates? What a candidate or political party might do with that knowledge…anyhow, on with three things.

Unprophetic Oracle
There’s still some fallout after The Shadow Brokers (TSB) release last week of NSA Tailored Access Operations’ (TAO) toolkit. Software vendor Oracle announced a patch for 299 vulnerabilities revealed by the TSB.

Wrap your head around that: 299 fixes.

Bigger than the whopping 276 fixes Oracle issued last summer in one fell swoop.

Now wrap your head around the fact this mega-patch covers a range of corporate enterprise software used for nearly every aspect of business operations, from human resource management to service or manufacturing resource planning.

If the NSA isn’t conducting economic espionage Oracle seems like an odd target to saturate so wide and deeply.

Still haven’t decided what to think of Oracle’s ability to push out this many patches inside a week. Were they tipped off, or were these vulnerabilities so obvious they should have been fixed ages ago? Or maybe this is what happens when a business like Oracle takes its eyes off the ball and focuses on the wrong things like a protracted lawsuit against Google?

Memories, jogged
When I saw this table fragment on Twitter, listing a few exploits revealed by TSB, I had a flashback to the Bush administration.

Gee, I wonder how much of the NSA TAO-Equation Group toolkit could explain the White House’s missing emails post-Plame outing?

Longreads: Economics, Liberalism, Google’s first moonshot
These are worth your time yet this week or weekend.

The Liberal Order Is Rigged by Jeff D. Colgan and Robert O. Keohane in Foreign Affairs (registration required) — An examination of liberalism’s failure and how the failure led to anti-democratic populism. In my opinion, this assessment is good but simplistic; the knee-jerk reaction many will have to the word ‘liberalism’ alone indicates there is far more at work than liberalism failing to deliver on its merits. It’s still worth a read; we must begin to pick out and save the liberal from neoliberal if we are to save democracy. Must say I’m surprised at Foreign Affairs’ steady shift away from rigid conservatism as well as neoliberalism.

The moral burden on economists — Darryl Hamilton’s 2017 presidential address to the National Economic Association warns against treating economics as a morally neutral ‘science’. How much of the failure of liberalism is really due to immoral/non-neutral application of economics?

Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria by James Somers for The Atlantic — This tagline is quite the hook: “Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.” Heartbreaking to think there hasn’t been a middle ground to free these books to the public. In my opinion, Google is out the money on the scanning process. What would happen if they spun off this effort as a nonprofit digital Library of Alexandria? Could the funds from books approaching out-of-copyright date pay for the upkeep and digitization of new works?

Chaffetz out?
I don’t even know what to think of the rumors that Rep. Jason Chaffetz may leave Congress before his term ends December 2017. Some speculate his role in cutting funding directly related to security for diplomats plays a role; others speculate the decision is based on a more personal driver. I hope he can live with what he’s done and what he may yet choose to do. I’d hate to have to explain myself to my kids if I’d made some of his decisions to date.

There’s your three things and a lagniappe. À bientôt!

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Three Things: Not-So-Neutral, Day 2 and Reading

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This house was occupied by outside forces this long holiday weekend, obstructing output. Hope your weekend was similarly occupied by loved ones. Here’s three things for today.

It’s Day 2, Donald
At least 150 Tax March rallies across the country on Saturday reflected the public’s opinion about Trump’s tax returns — he must disclose them. Predictable locations participated, like New York City, but when red state cities and towns like Florida’s West Palm Beach have marches it’s an indicator.

Where are your tax returns, Trump? And don’t give us the “under audit” excuse yet again like you did through Spicer this afternoon. All previous presidents have been automatically audited while in office and still disclosed their returns. Nor are we going to buy your administration’s trash talk about the Tax Marches; we know what’s up with organized white supremacist provokatsiya.

Projection, much?

Net-not-so-Neutral
The big guys in technology — Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, more — are slowly stirring from their post-inauguration torpor on net neutrality and the threat to their businesses non-neutrality poses. Their industry group, the Internet Association, expressed their concerns last week to the Federal Communications Commission about the FCC Chair Ajit Pai’s intent to kill net neutrality regulations established under the Obama administration.

Kind of slow on the uptake, dudes. Could have seen this coming based on Pai’s anti-neutrality stance when he served as an FCC commissioner. Also could have easily predicted Pai’s position based on the current administration’s drive against regulations.

And Pai’s move to reduce FCC oversight of the internet by shifting it to the Federal Trade Commission is a blowjob gift for the telcos — in spite of the fact more communications travel over the internet, a move to the FTC reduces exposure of communications to existing communications regulations. This does not serve the public’s interest.

There’s an alternate tack members of the Internet Association could take, if a little pricey and radical: they could simply buy the telcos. Google could acquire AT&T which has been a major PITA obstructing competition from Google Fiber. Apple could just buy Verizon for iPhone service and Facebook could snap up CenturyLink. The Internet Association could take on a role as mediator addressing traffic issues between them.

And then let’s see what happens to reducing regulation and net neutrality. Of course this creates an entirely new set of challenges with regard to privacy, but I’d rather move toward regulations to address them under FCC. (And I’d really rather digital morons like Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) had nothing to do with the intersection of privacy and technology when he clearly doesn’t grasp the internet is telecommunications deserving the same privacy as landlines.)

Speaking of acquisitions, there’s speculation Apple could buy Disney which includes ABC and other content subsidiaries like ESPN. Looks like wishful thinking right now on part of analysts, but if FCC’s Pai continues shredding net neutrality, it makes more sense for Apple (and other internet companies) to snap up companies which make content, cutting out carriers or forcing them to pay for Apple’s content.

Longreads
Here’s a few things worth your time during a commute or lunch hour this week:

A look at the end of Gaullism as France approaches its election.

Essay: Friendship as a Civic Democratic Practice — that’s little d democratic here; Ivy Schweitzer asks if we can’t look to our friendships to fix our national political schism. (Me? On a limited basis; I can’t be friends with Nazis.)

Marc Ambinder on U.S. government continuity — worth a read, but I’ve long had a nasty feeling continuity plans were changed because of 9/11 and they’re in a classified executive order if I’m right.

Interesting look at impact of open-source citizen investigations on Russian disinformation — focal point of this analysis is the doomed 2014 Malaysian Air flight MH17.

Those should keep you busy. Day 1 ahead — last day to file income taxes without penalty or file for an extension. Time, tide, and taxes wait for no man, Trump.

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