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Open thread October 1, 2019

Dan Crawford | October 1, 2019 5:45 am

Tags: open thread Comments (11) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
11 Comments
  • Denis Drew says:
    October 1, 2019 at 11:30 am

    Steven Greenhouse wrote at Kindle location 6101 in his 2008 book The Big Squeeze that:

    “To help reverse labor’s decline, every union should be required to spend at least 25 percent of its budget on organizing. That would be an investment in the betterment of American workers. Any union that falls short of this requirement should face sanctions up to and including expulsion from its respective federation, the AFL-CIO of Change to Win. Union leaders should recognize that they have a responsibility to organize nonunion workers in their industries often undercuts the wages and benefits of members of their own unions.”

    If every union spent 25 percent of its budget advocating Andrew Strom’s idea of regularly scheduled cert/recert/decert elections, it would bear a hundred times more fruit!

    “In light of the pay excesses of the past, the two labor federations and Congress should take strong action to impose salary limitations on labor leaders. To prevent unions from turning into a family business, union leaders should also be prohibited from having any family members on the payroll of their union or union benefit fund.”

    Recertification elections spaced, say, every five years would remotivate lazy leaderships and deter making any local into a family bank — keep the mob out too, if that is still a problem. Members don’t really know who any oppo officers might be who might want to contest leadership or why they want to run, unless there is some exceptional problem — not much foundation for the discipline of the ballot. But, leadership cannot help worrying about that election cycle (even if there should be no reason to) — it’s just human nature. (My Teamsters local 804 president in 1970 was Ron Carey, later national president, which may explain why I thought I was in union heaven.)

    Just takes one rule added to the NUBA (National Union Busting Act). https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/

  • EMichael says:
    October 2, 2019 at 11:35 am

    Imagine voting for this mentally disturbed racist.

    “Thanks to a new report from New York Times reporters Julie Davis and Michael Shear—adapted from their upcoming book, Border Wars, an examination of Trump’s apocalyptic battle against immigration—we have new insight into just how Good the president’s Brain is. Did you need more insight? Here’s more insight.

    ‘Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.’

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a29337085/trump-shoot-migrants-legs-wall-moat-alligators/

    • run75441 says:
      October 2, 2019 at 12:37 pm

      EM:

      You have not had the privilege of living at Gitmo. It was and probably still is the largest mine field (Leeward side) globally and meant to deter the communist Cuban military horde from attacking the base. Yes, I know it is a military story again. I was there for 10 months moving the CP bunker every couple of months and handling the land line communications. Kind of changed since then. Now there is a high security prison run by the military for people who are not given the Geneva Convention protections. The oddity is they now have a Pizza Hut, McDonalds, a golf course, a hotel, etc. so you can feel at home while stationed there. Except, don’t be a captive.

      What they have done to the place is a distraction from what it was intended to be . . . a military base in a hostile foreign country. We had the Barrel Club on the Leeward side where I as a Corporal would stand duty with a Navy Petty Office and conduct the drunks to behave in a polite way while wearing my light wool khakis to look official and keep the off ship Navy from battling with the Marines. Amazing what a shot of CC with a drop of water (could not have straight shots – so the drop of water qualified it as mixed) does to all sanity. PFC pay was about $104/month. My Corporal pay was $225/month. On a weekend a corpsman and I would go across the bay (Windward) to a base restaurant and get a 1+ pound Porterhouse steak which was absolutely amazing. There was also the Copacabana where we had a going away party for the Master Sergeant. One of our drunks laid on his back and almost choked to death on his vomit. Fortunately one of us rolled him over and emptied him of it and off to sickbay he went. The next morning Master Sergeant Janero had to explain to the Marine Commander on site why this happened. I am sure he remembers that party!

      We were a mixed bag of guys of different races and nationalities. I do know that people did make it through the mine field and came over the fence. The Master Sergeant did not like me working out there at night so I was given a loaded 45 to carry. All in all, it was boring duty and not much happened. Somehow, I can not imagine patrolling a wall and a moat on the south border of the US to be any more exciting. We are creating another Cuba with these plans of building fortress Amerika. We can not get rid of that SOB soon enough.

  • Michael Smith says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLO)s. Let’s talk

    This is now a $60 billion dollar market lending to companies that are leveraging 4×1 or more that a bank will not lend directly to. These companies are using them to fund operations or provide upstart capital in return for control of their accounts receivables and future cash flows. This is a dangerous and growing predicament where you have essentially a Ponzi scheme building as the global economy slows. CMOs are arguably bigger as a share of GDP, but CLOs are nothing to shake a stick at, and any downturn in consumer purchasing and all of the mid-market companies obtaining CLOs are kaput, as are the lenders, venture capitalists, and wall street players. A $60 billion in funds could create $200 billion in economic loss when its all said and done. This is just one sector, go look at consumer spending on the debt side and you will see a bubble there too. Too much debt, no growth, and high housing prices…2006 anyone?

    • run75441 says:
      October 2, 2019 at 2:18 pm

      MS:

      Buy a company, milk it of its potential. go into bankruptcy, and wash your hands of it after taking all of the profits or assets. Trump, Sears, etc?

  • EMichael says:
    October 3, 2019 at 9:59 am

    More justice in Texas.

    “Amber Guyger, 31, the former Dallas police officer convicted Tuesday of murdering an unarmed man in his own home last year, was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years behind bars.

    Guyger fatally shot Botham Shem Jean, 26, in his apartment, then claimed she mistook his apartment for her own, which was located one floor below. Guyger pleaded not guilty and did not testify during the punishment phase of the trial.

    Judge Tammy Kemp instructed jurors to decide on a sentence of between five and 99 years unless they agreed that Jean’s death was the result of an unplanned “sudden passion,” a classification that comes with a penalty of two to 20 years.

    “We the jury find unanimously that the defendant did not cause the death of Botham Jean while under the immediate influence of sudden passion,” Kemp said, reading from the jury’s verdict. The jury deliberated for an hour and a half before coming to a decision.

    Prosecutors asked for at least 28 years, one for each year of Jean’s life. Guyger will have to serve at least half her sentence ― five years ― before she can be considered for parole.

    Angry, emotional chants of “No justice, no peace” echoed in the hallway outside the courtroom by those who felt the sentence was too short for Guyger.

    “Ten years? Ten years is a slap in the face,” one woman shouted.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amber-guyger-sentenced-botham-jean_n_5d93a789e4b0e9e760544c50

    Compared to:

    “In early February 2017, Crystal Mason’s probation officer asked her to come to the federal building in downtown Fort Worth. The meeting was unusual—maybe a surprise drug test, she thought—but Mason wasn’t too worried. She’d rebuilt her life after serving nearly three years in federal prison for tax fraud, finding a good job and attending night school while caring for her three children and helping to raise four nieces and nephews. When Mason arrived, the check-in felt perfunctory. Then she saw an officer waiting for her in the lobby on her way out. The officer approached her, confirmed who she was, handcuffed her arms behind her back, and told her she was going to jail for what she still considers a baffling charge: illegal voting, a second-degree felony.

    Mason had tried to vote in the November 2016 election, not because of any burning interest in politics but rather at the repeated urging of her mother. Neither of them realized that Texas officials considered Mason, who was still under federal supervision for her felony tax fraud conviction, ineligible to vote because of her legal status. At her trial in state court last year, a federal official testified that Mason wasn’t warned that she couldn’t vote in Texas while on supervision because that was considered “common knowledge.”

    Mason insists it was an innocent mistake, saying she’d never knowingly risk going back to prison just to vote. Last year, the Tarrant County judge on the case convicted Mason and sentenced her to 5 years in prison.

    “It was overwhelming,” Mason told me last week. “I felt sick, I felt confused, all I kept saying was, ‘Please don’t let me go back to jail.’ I didn’t want to go back inside, I told myself I’d never do anything to risk that.”

    https://www.texasobserver.org/the-casualties-of-texas-war-on-voter-fraud/

  • psychohistorian says:
    October 4, 2019 at 12:10 pm

    Is it not news in this forum that California government has instantiated public finance?

    There is a seemingly total media blackout of this event and i was curious to see if the public banking initiative by the 5th largest economy in the world would make it into the only econ blog I ever visit anymore occasionally because of your past great coverage of SSI

    • run75441 says:
      October 4, 2019 at 12:56 pm

      We could look and see. I am usually busy with healthcare which as you probably already know has been super busy

    • run75441 says:
      October 4, 2019 at 11:04 pm

      psychohistorian:

      Found it along with another bank which is public and 100 years old. Give me the weekend. I will have it up on California along with a history. Also found your comment out there. This stuff I write on also.

      Regards,

      run75441 Bill

  • psychohistorian says:
    October 5, 2019 at 2:48 am

    run75441 Bill

    The 100 year old one is North Dakota, eh? Not as much of a challenge to the cult that own global private finance as California is.

    So I see humanity in a Civilization war over public/private finance with China leading the effort from the outside and now California from the inside. I don’t see it as Capitalism versus Socialism but about whether finance is public or private….China is a mixed economy lie the US with reportedly 80% “capitalist” and 20% “socialist” but the key is that finance is public not private.

    And Might-Makes-Right doesn’t work anymore unless one wants our species to go extinct because MAD.

    I majored in macro-econ 50 years ago because I wanted know how the world worked but became a computer techie for a career because I wanted public finance back then and none wanted a hippie socialist…..I have been watching and waiting ever since and didn’t think it would happen in my life time but here we are at the point of evolve or go extinct…..I hope our species evolves.

    I have come here before and challenged you all to help lead the way towards public finance and still hope that some of the econ folks do migrate to the public finance meme instead of being “late to the party”

    Best to you,
    James

    • run75441 says:
      October 5, 2019 at 6:19 am

      I have to read it first, understand it, and make it mine.

      Trump deliberately damaging Medicare and giving the advantage to commercial healthcare insurance and the industry is not good. And those fools up there clapping about it. They do not know what he just did to oldsters.

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