I don't care if he's doing it for the wrong reason. If Trump gets rid of the debt ceiling, it will be good, because, as Dday says, "The Debt Limit Should Absolutely Be Eliminated: Trump is offering the deal of a lifetime. We've gotten a preview of the next four years in the space of a few hours on Wednesday. Elon Musk provided the shock troops to topple an end-of-year spending deal, and Donald Trump provided the final blow. To say the commotion was based on rumor and myth would be an insult to rumor and myth; even now, Trump is calling for a 'clean' funding bill while keeping the $100 billion in disaster funding and $30 billion for farmers, which comprises virtually all of the additions from a monetary standpoint. But Trump also added an entirely new demand: take the debt limit off the table, rather than forcing him to deal with it next year. And he doesn't just want the debt limit raised; he explicitly wants it eliminated. 'The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,' Trump told NBC News. Let's not overthink this. Regardless of who suggested it, any day we can say goodbye to the stupidest element of our political structure is a good day."
The suspected assassin of the United CEO, turned into a folk hero instantly, appears to be someone called Luigi Mangione from Maryland, and he even had a sort of "manifesto" handy. Or what some people would term a "note". The major media has copies but for some unexplained reason have refused to publish it. So Ken Klippenstein got hold of it and posted it on Substack. "To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty." The Unibomber's manifesto was much longer and the WaPo and NYT had no trouble publishing that. They don't want to use photos that show his face, either. (Thomas Neuberger thinks he knows why.)
"Supreme court agrees to hear TikTok challenge to law ending its US operations: The US supreme court said on Wednesday that it would hear TikTok's challenge to a law that could make the company's popular video app disappear from the US. In its order on Wednesday, the supreme court said it would set aside two hours for oral arguments on 10 January to consider TikTok's lawsuit against the justice department and the attorney general, Merrick Garland. TikTok issued a statement in response to the court agreeing to take up its case: 'We're pleased with today's supreme court order. We believe the court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights.' The law that will either ban TikTok or force the sale of the app is set to go into effect on 19 January. A federal appeals court in Washington DC rejected ByteDance's argument earlier this month that the law violated the free speech provision of the US constitution's first amendment. The ruling allows the law, passed in April, to remain in place."
There's a lot of mush going around that purports to explain that it's not the insurance companies' fault, but Matt Stoller puts it right, "It's Time to Break Up Big Medicine: UnitedHealth Group is not an insurer, it's a platform. And it's in the crosshairs as Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley propose breaking it apart, severing its pharmacy arm from the rest of the business [...] These kinds of discussions are always done in bad faith, since people who make a lot of money from killing people with spreadsheets like to pretend to be very offended when anyone points out health care is a matter of life and death. That said, moral hypocrisy isn't the primary reason our health care system is so problematic. A more important objection to reform is from a certain dominant strain of thinking among economists and health care wonks, who question whether the health insurers are really that bad. [...] It turns out the reason health care costs kept going up despite the reforms meant to reverse the trendline is because policymakers misdiagnosed the underlying problem. The Dartmouth work was just wrong on overuse of medicine. Higher medical costs in America were result of, you guessed it, monopoly power."
"Coalition of Missouri businesses attempting to override new minimum wage, paid sick leave laws: Almost immediately after voters in Missouri signed onto Proposition A, a referendum that would state-wide increase of the minimum wage and mandatory paid sick leave, a collection of business associations announced they would explore ways to subvert the November results. The coalition is crying election fraud despite an overwhelming 58% of voters approving the measure."
I wasn't bothered when Biden pardoned his son, because, let's face it, he never would have been charged in the first place if he hadn't been a Democratic president's son. But this really does go beyond the pale: "Victims of 'kids-for-cash' judge outraged by Biden pardon: 'What about all of us?' Victims of a former Pennsylvania judge convicted in the so-called kids-for-cash scandal are outraged by Joe Biden's decision to grant him clemency. In 2011, Michael Conahan was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after he and another judge, Mark Ciavarella, were found guilty of accepting $2.8m in illegal payments in exchange for sending more than 2,300 children – including some as young as eight years old – to private juvenile detention centers. Conahan was released from prison in 2020 due to Covid-19 and placed on house arrest, which had been scheduled to end in 2026. Conahan's sentence was one of about 1,500 the US president commuted – or shortened – on Thursday while also pardoning 39 Americans who had been convicted of non-violent crimes." I actually find it hard to see that as a non-violent crime.
Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect says it's looking good, "The Face of the Democratic Party: The next DNC chair will have a higher profile than usual. The two leading candidates, Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, are both terrific. It's hard to think of a time when the Democratic Party was more bereft of real leaders. As the losing presidential candidate, Kamala Harris is not held in warm regard, and her continuing fundraising efforts have added to the irritation. Joe Biden, who accomplished more than his critics give him credit for, is going out on a low note. Usually, the chair of the Democratic National Committee is a technocrat and not the face of the party. But this time could be different. A number of names have been mentioned in the press coverage and in self-promotion, but it's clear that the two finalists will be Ken Martin, 51, Minnesota party chair, and his neighbor, Ben Wikler, 43, who chairs the Wisconsin state party. Both are excellent party-builders, both are substantive progressives, and both have earned wide respect. The election is set for February 1." On the other hand, One other party leadership post is open, and here the news is terrible. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters is stepping down as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the fundraising arm of the Senate Democratic caucus. The only declared candidate for the job is New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Gillibrand, in contrast to Martin and Wikler, represents all that is corrupt and opportunistic in the Democratic Party. She is very close to the crypto industry, which dumped scads of dark money into late campaign ads to defeat progressives such as Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Gillibrand also is widely loathed for leading the campaign to hound Sen. Al Franken out of office on charges of sexual harassment. Gillibrand will get the job mainly because nobody else wants it."
On the other hand, the Free Speech Warriors are still remarkably silent on "The Coming Threats to Press Freedom: Watch out for massive libel suits, efforts to repeal Times v. Sullivan, and an attempt to create an official secrets act—as Trump and MAGA flood the First Amendment zone. As the house optimist, I keep finding intact democratic guardrails and weaknesses in Trump's attempt to impose a dictatorship. But this is the one that really keeps me up at night. Traditional press freedom is already at risk because of the travesty of what so much of the media has become. It's not clear what sort of First Amendment protections the shabbier forms of social media even deserve. But with the second coming of Trump, it's the mainstream fact-based media that's in the crosshairs. What's gotten the most attention lately are Trump's own threats to sue for libel and a few actual suits. These are mostly outlandish, but sufficiently serious to have caused legacy media to pay protection money."
Krugman leaves The New York Times and starts his own Substack, Krugman wonks out, which is currently free to read. "The Fraudulence of 'Waste, Fraud and Abuse': Once upon a time a Republican president, sure that large parts of federal spending were worthless, appointed a commission led by a wealthy businessman to bring a business sensibility to the budget, going through it line by line to identify inefficiency and waste. The commission initially made a big splash, and there were desperate attempts to spin its work as a success. But in the end few people were fooled. Ronald Reagan's venture, the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control — the so-called 'Grace commission,' headed by J. Peter Grace — was a flop, making no visible dent in spending." I wonder if we'll see any change from Krugman now that he doesn't have a boss.
"The Far-right Activist Who Sparked an Imaginary Pogrom in Stockholm [...] The online news site Mako reported that Jews were attacked 'in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, during a ceremony commemorating the Kristallnacht pogrom.' It said anti-Israel demonstrators yelled derogatory names at the ceremony's participants, snatched their Israeli flags, tore them up and threw them into the river. [...] In the real world, what happened in Stockholm is indeed troubling, but for different reasons. First, no ceremony commemorating Kristallnacht took place there. Second, no Jews were attacked. Third, this false information was disseminated by people who counted on the media to spread the lie, thereby providing them with free political propaganda. And they were right. The Swedish media refused to buy the goods, but the Israeli media sure did (I might add, for the benefit of Mako's investigative reporters, that Stockholm doesn't have a river)."
Also from Haaretz, "It's Time for Israel to Grant the Black Hebrew Israelite Community the Full Rights It Deserves: The Hebrew Israelite community marked an unfortunate milestone last week, when it lost its first member in combat, Elishai Young, a 19-year-old conscript from Dimona. He was buried last Monday. Some at the funeral expressed the irony that while Elishai was born in Israel and died defending the country, he was not eligible to be an Israeli citizen. That's because Hebrew Israelis are still engaged in a struggle for full recognition that began with the first arrivals in 1969."
"Eviction and Voter Turnout: The Political Consequences of Housing Instability: In recent years, housing costs have outpaced incomes in the United States, resulting in millions of eviction filings each year. Yet no study has examined the link between eviction and voting. Drawing on a novel data set that combines tens of millions of eviction and voting records, this article finds that residential eviction rates negatively impacted voter turnout during the 2016 presidential election. Results from a generalized additive model show eviction's effect on voter turnout to be strongest in neighborhoods with relatively low rates of displacement. To address endogeneity bias and estimate the causal effect of eviction on voting, the analysis treats commercial evictions as an instrument for residential evictions, finding that increases in neighborhood eviction rates led to substantial declines in voter turnout. This study demonstrates that the impact of eviction reverberates far beyond housing loss, affecting democratic participation."
More Perfect Union's survey on "Taking on Corporate Power" sure seems to indicate that Americans want to see corporate power reduced.
"Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data: (Reuters) - A new report adds to a growing line of research showing that police departments don't solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives."
"There's Nothing More Corrupting Than Flying Private: Want to understand the motives of our mercenary elite? Take a trip on a private plane, writes Tina Brown."
Speaking of corruption, there are now 11 episodes of Master Plan and you really shouldn't miss this historical rollercoaster ride through the plot for the rich mob to take over the country.
An artist I recently noticed, Richard Savoie (Canadian, 1959), might be fun to investigate, although I wish his own website had a more comprehensive gallery display.
I ran into this YouTube economist called Unlearning Economics because Nathan Robinson interviewed him about his video "Thomas Sowell Is Worse Than I thought," which sounded pretty irresistible so I watched it, and now I'm watching "Free Stuff Is Good, Actually."
A couple of decades back I posted a clip of one of my favorite scenes from the original film of Bedazzled, but it was during that period when the remake was in release so they got YouTube to take it down. But later on, someone else posted it, so enjoy a few minutes of Peter Cook (as the Devil, aka George Spigot) explaining to Dudley Moore (a burger-flipper) why he got kicked out of Heaven.
I'm not sure whether I approve of this version, but "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," with John Legend and Esperanza Spalding.
Sorry I missed Advent, but your traditional Advent music is yet another version of "