Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Golden Gate Bridge opens to the public; U.N. Tribunal indicts Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic; the British Navy sinks Nazi Germany’s battleship Bismarck; Actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Continue reading

World’s rivers ‘awash with dangerous levels of antibiotics’

Largest global study finds the drugs in two-thirds of test sites in 72 countries

Hundreds of rivers around the world from the Thames to the Tigris are awash with dangerously high levels of antibiotics, the largest global study on the subject has found.

Antibiotic pollution is one of the key routes by which bacteria are able develop resistance to the life-saving medicines, rendering them ineffective for human use. “A lot of the resistance genes we see in human pathogens originated from environmental bacteria,” said Prof William Gaze, a microbial ecologist at the University of Exeter who studies antimicrobial resistance but was not involved in the study.

The rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a global health emergency that could kill 10 million people by 2050, the UN said last month.

Right-wing figures warn of looming ‘civil war’ over abortion laws

One pastor said: ‘A civil war is coming to America, only this time, it will be abortion, rather than slavery, that divides the nation’

Victoria Gagliardo-SilverNew York

As the abortion rights debate continues, some prominent right-wing American Christians have shared an ominous warning: that conflict over abortion access may lead to a new civil war.

With restrictive abortion bills passing around the US – like the Alabama abortion ban and foetal heartbeat bills, which restrict elective abortion at the about six weeks into pregnancy – America seems divided on a woman’s right to choose.

Both lawmakers and influential Christians sources have reinforced this narrative. Charisma magazine, a spiritual Christian magazine, ran six or so articles on the potential of an imminent, abortion related civil war in America.

Far-right League becomes Italy’s largest party in EU elections

It’s called bronzer

Between Sanders and Warren the good ideas just keep coming.

Senator Sanders and Representative Lee Propose to Make Wall Street Pay
Written by Dean Baker, Center For Economics and Policy Research
21 May 2019

This week Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Barbara Lee are introducing bills in the Senate and House for a financial transaction tax (FTT). Their proposed tax is similar to, albeit somewhat higher than, the FTT proposed by Senator Brian Schatz earlier this year. The Sanders-Lee proposal would impose a 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions, with lower rates on transfers of other financial assets. Senator Schatz’s bill would impose a 0.1 percent tax on trades of all financial assets.

At this point, it is not worth highlighting the differences between the bills. Both would raise far more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade, almost entirely at the expense of the financial industry and hedge fund-types. In the case of the Schatz tax, the Congressional Budget Office estimated revenue of almost $80 billion a year, a bit less than 2.0 percent of the budget. The Sanders-Lee tax would likely raise in the neighborhood of $120–$150 billion a year, in the neighborhood of 3.0 percent of the federal budget.

While the financial industry will make great efforts to convince people that this money is coming out of the middle-class’ 401(k)s and workers’ pensions, that’s not likely to be true. This can be seen with some simple arithmetic.

Take a person with $100,000 with a 401(k). Suppose 20 percent of it turns over each year, meaning that the manager of the account sells $20,000 worth of stock and replaces it with $20,000 worth of different stocks. In this case, if we assume the entire 0.5 percent specified in the Sanders-Lee bill is passed on to investors, then this person will pay $100 a year in tax on their 401(k).

While no one wants to pay more in taxes, this hardly seems like a horrible burden. After all, the financial industry typically charges fees on 401(k)s in excess of 1.0 percent annually ($1,000 a year, in this case), and often as much as 1.5 percent or even 2.0 percent.

The actual financial transaction tax burden to this 401(k) holder will be considerably less than this $100 for two reasons. First, not all of the tax will be passed on to investors. The industry will have to bear part of the burden in lower fees. If they can pass on 90 percent, the burden on this 401(k) holder falls to $90 on their $100,000 in assets. If the industry can only pass on 80 percent, then the burden falls to $80, or 0.08 percent of the value of the holder’s 401(k).

Even this amount overstates the actual impact. One outcome of the tax is that stocks will be traded less frequently. That is an intended result. There is considerable research on how the cost of trades affects the volume of trading. Most of the research finds it to be roughly proportional, meaning that a 10 percent increase in the cost of trading results in a 10 percent decline in the volume of trading.
…
For most of us, trades will just be a wash. This was the great insight of Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, who died earlier this year. Bogle argued that since most people are not going to gain by trading they should save their money and just buy a low-cost index fund. Many people do follow this advice (Vanguard has over $4 trillion in assets). But for those who don’t follow Bogle’s advice, a financial transaction tax will help to eliminate lots of wasteful trading. .

To be clear, there is value to having a liquid market where people can sell stock or other financial assets when they need to. But we had highly liquid financial markets two decades ago when trading volume was roughly half its current levels. In other words, we don’t have to worry that FTTs along the lines proposed by these two bills will prevent the financial markets from functioning.

There will be some traders who do lose from these bills. The losers are the high-frequency traders who can trade billions or even tens of billions of dollars in a single day, relying on beating the market by a fraction of second to get small profits on each trade.

A small tax taking away the bulk of these traders’ profits hardly seems like a bad thing, since these traders are some of the richest people in the country. Furthermore, their profits from high-frequency trading come at the expense of other investors who are half a second slower in completing a trade. Their loss is everyone else’s gain.

In short, an FTT is one of those rare taxes in which everything goes pretty much the right way. Ordinary investors will be largely unharmed by the tax. It reduces the resources devoted to wasteful trades in the financial industry. It whacks some of the richest people in the country who now profit at the expense of ordinary investors. And, it raises lots of money for the government.

What’s not to like?

What’s not to like indeed?

Let’s Have A Kiki – Scissor Sisters

Remedy – Alesso

Set it all free – Ash

Trump dismisses North Korean tests of ‘some small weapons’

US President Donald Trump has dismissed concerns about recent North Korean missile tests, appearing to contradict his own national security adviser.

In a tweet issued shortly after his arrival in Japan on Sunday, Mr Trump called the missiles “small weapons”.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Saturday that the tests violated UN resolutions on North Korea.

President Trump began a state visit to Japan on Sunday by teeing off a round of golf with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Jews in Germany warned of risks of wearing kippah cap in public

Germany’s government commissioner on antisemitism has warned Jews about the potential dangers of wearing the traditional kippah cap in the face of rising anti-Jewish attacks.

“I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany,” Felix Klein said in an interview published Saturday by the Funke regional press group.

In issuing the warning, he said he had “alas, changed my mind (on the subject) compared to previously”.

An Inside JobThe Right-Wing Populist Plan to Destroy Europe

Europe’s right-wing populists haven’t been stopped by the scandal in Austria. They are working hard to destroy the European Union from within its own institutions and the European elections may show how close they are to success. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

After the Ibiza videos had made their way around the world, after Austria’s vice chancellor had resigned and the government appeared to be on the verge of collapse, as people found themselves wondering just how deep the abyss could be, the operatic aria “Nessun dorma” – “none shall sleep” – could be heard on the square in front of Milan’s Duomo cathedral. It’s Matteo Salvini’s entrance music.

It was last Saturday, one week before elections to the European Parliament. And Salvini, Italy’s interior minister, had assembled a pan-European festival of right-wing populists and radicals. Marine Le Pen had come in high spirits from France, Geert Wilders was there from the Netherlands, Jörg Meuthen from the Alternative for Germany party, along with Bulgarian, Slovak, Austrian, Flemish, Danish, Finnish and Estonian nationalists, 11 parties from Europe’s right-wing periphery who want to form a “super group” in the next European Parliament.

Iraq warns of ‘danger of war’ as Iranian FM visits

Iraqi leaders have warned of the risks of war during a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, whose country is locked in a tense standoff with the United States.

Zarif’s visit to neighbouring Iraq — which is caught in the middle of its two allies the US and Iran — follows a decision by Washington to deploy 1,500 additional troops to the Middle East.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi warned of the “danger of a war” during a meeting with Zarif on Saturday night, his office said.

Special report: The mechanics of silencing online dissent

Online campaigns are not looked upon kindly when they go against the dominant state narrative, even if they are organic.

Ramsha Jahangir

Journalists in Pakistan who dissent from the official narrative are feeling the brunt not only of the state and its bad laws. A more insidious form of censorship is being used to silence them online.

Each morning, in the last few months, journalist Shahzeb Jillani would wake up to a barrage of notifications on Twitter.

Jillani, who has a following of over 14,000 users on the micro-blogging site, was usually not alarmed by the scurrilous trolling and abuse.

These schoolgirls want an end to child marriage. So they’re fighting to change their country’s constitution

By Bukola Adebayo, CNN

Institutional Democrats and Credulous Centrist Commentators constantly whine and complain that the Democratic Party can not be electorally successful without having a positive future plan instead of mere opposition and obstruction.

Surprisingly, I agree as far as it goes. How far is that?

First- Democrats have an Agenda! This Democrats in Disarray crap is at best misinformed.

Also, consider that those inveighing against Impeachment claim it’s too big a distraction from Democrat’s 2020 “message” (as is indeed any mildly controversial Left policy program). They say the choice is between Impeachment and passing all these “productive” policy proposals as if Democrats are too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time.

It’s simply not true. Democrats has passed any number of Bills that are sitting stalled in the Senate by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans. This is not novel behavior, they’ve been doing it for decades.

So the choice they would posit is between Impeachment which we will lose in the Senate, and Agenda which will also lose in the Senate.

Since we’re going to lose anyway, how about doing both?

Democrats in Congress are getting things done. Trump and Republicans are just ignoring them.
By Ella Nilsen, Vox
May 24, 2019

President Donald Trump is angry at House Democrats for “getting nothing done in Congress.” He may want to quarrel with his own party instead.

Trump released a tweet tirade on Thursday morning admonishing Democrats for not making enough progress on infrastructure, health care, and veterans issues. The tweet came after an explosive meeting on infrastructure between Trump and Democrats the day before, which the president walked out of.

“Their heart is not into Infrastructure, lower drug prices, pre-existing conditions and our great Vets,” Trump tweeted. “All they are geared up to do, six committees, is squander time, day after day, trying to find anything which will be bad for me.”

Trump is objectively wrong; House Democrats haven’t been squandering time. In addition to their investigations, they’ve been passing legislation at a rapid clip. In all, the House has taken up 51 bills, resolutions, and suspensions since January — 49 of which they’ve passed. This includes a slate of bills to attempt to end the longest government shutdown in history, the result of a protracted fight between Trump and Congress over border wall funding.

Ironically, over the past two weeks, the House has passed bills to address most of the issues Trump mentioned in his tweet. They recently passed a bill to lower prescription drug prices, and another one to protect preexisting conditions. The House also passed nine bills on veterans issues this week alone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted at her weekly press conference. On Thursday, Democrats tried to present Trump their infrastructure plan before he walked out of their meeting.

So if the House is passing all these bills, why does it seem like Congress isn’t getting anything done? Welcome to the reality of divided government in Washington. The vast majority of House Democrats’ agenda has hit a dead end in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has dubbed himself the “grim reaper” of Democratic legislation. Pelosi has blasted the Senate leader for embracing this role, saying he’s working for special interests in Washington, rather than the people of the United States.

“The Senate is the graveyard where bills that pass in the Congress, that have bipartisan support in the country, go to die,” Pelosi said at a recent press conference.

Despite Trump’s declaration that it’s impossible for Democrats to “investigate and legislate at the same time,” House Democrats have been doing a lot of legislating over the past few months.
…
There’s a clear political strategy to McConnell not working with Pelosi on her agenda. He’s staring down 2020, where Senate Republicans are defending more seats than Democrats. Plus he has his own seat in Kentucky to worry about (though McConnell losing that is unlikely). No matter what, there’s little incentive for McConnell to hand Democrats any legislative wins.

That has lent itself to a sense of legislative paralysis on Capitol Hill. In the upper chamber, there’s a perception that the power of individual senators to filibuster bills or introduce legislation has diminished. It’s a dynamic that’s visible in the fact many high-profile potential Senate candidates like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have declined a Senate bid this year, opting instead to run for president or mull another gubernatorial bid.

Much of the media focus these days is on Democrats’ investigations, rather than their legislation, because that’s where the action is. Trump’s attempts to thwart these investigations have turned into what Pelosi and some of her committee chairs have dubbed a constitutional crisis. But even though Washington is consumed with investigations news, it doesn’t mean policy work isn’t happening. It just means it isn’t getting talked about as much.

House Democrats have passed a wide range of bills since they came to power in January, ranging from a sweeping anti-corruption and pro-democracy reform known as HR 1, to bills to save net neutrality, establish background checks for guns, and put the United States back in the Paris Climate Accord.

They have also put a large emphasis on health care, a defining issue of the 2018 election after Trump and Senate Republicans attempted to pass a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Democrats have focused on bills to lower prescription drug costs, protect preexisting conditions, and condemning the Trump administration’s legal battle to strike down the ACA in the courts.

Much of this agenda is sitting in the Senate. The few things House Democrats and Senate Republicans have agreed on: disaster relief aid, reopening the government after the shutdown, the resolution to end US involvement in the Yemen war, a bill to protect public lands, and a resolution disapproving of Trump’s use of emergency powers.

But on major policy issues — like health care and infrastructure, or even bipartisan ones like net neutrality or the Equal Pay Act — Democrats’ bills are continuing to languish in the Senate.

Nilsen goes on to list 49 Measures the House has passed since January, 2019. Democrats have an Agenda!

StarCo4ev.

Jack Sparrow – The Lonely Island featuring Michael Bolton

Sabotage – Beastie Boys

The Politics Of Dancing – Re-Flex

Even my Therapist, when I attempt to describe situations metaphorically in terms of popular culture, insists she’s never seen, heard, or read the source and makes me recapitulate in excruciating detail. Because she’s Cognitive I assume it’s a Beckian technique to elicit your true reaction and the crux of your emotional response.

C’mon folks, these are $200 for 45 minute (my Therapist goes a little over with me because I’m the funniest client she has) hours. Therapy never cures anything. It makes you feel better (for a longer or lesser moment) with the structure, social interaction, and non-judgemental discussion, and you pick up some coping techniques.

Why would you want a cure from being yourself?

On the other hand I admit that certain works of Art are simply perspective changing and it can be as simple as a Mondrian or complicated as an Esher and the reason I use them as touchstones and shorthand is to spare my readers.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

“Star Wars” — the classic sci-fi movie written and directed by George Lucas — premieres; Former Enron execs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling are convicted of conspiracy and fraud; Comedian Jay Leno begins his run as host of N-B-C’s “The Tonight Show

Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance.

Bennett Cerf

Continue reading