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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Culture, Never Trump, Ocasio-Cortez, Politics

Why Won’t You Smile?

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One can guess that libertarians oppose the anti-market economics of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. It’s odd, to me, though, how much time conservatives have spent complaining, critiquing, and analyzing that democratic socialist from New York.

In those conservative critiques, however, one sees more than an economic or foreign policy disagreement: some of these conservatives are upset that she’s upset with Trump, and are themselves upset with the very idea that Ocasio-Cortez might be upset about anything.

In her opposition to Trump, in her revulsion to his lumpen bigotry, Ocasio-Cortez is, however, both right and sympathetic.

Consider this exchange between conservative Peggy Noonan and Ocasio-Cortez about how Noonan thinks Ocasio-Cortez should have behaved at the State of the Union address last night:

Noonan (@Peggynoonannyc):

And good natured with the white jackets, who I see some on twitter are calling the straight jackets. AOC had a rare bad night, looking not spirited, warm and original as usual but sullen, teenaged and at a loss.

Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC):

Why should I be “spirited and warm” for this embarrassment of a #SOTU?

Tonight was an unsettling night for our country. The president failed to offer any plan, any vision at all, for our future.

We’re flying without a pilot. And I‘m not here to comfort anyone about that fact.

All considered, Ocasio-Cortez is restrained, almost mild, in her reply.

She’s also on solid ground: Ocasio-Cortez owes no one a smile, least of all Noonan, an aged conservative at a Murdoch publication who’s able to live comfortably while Trump inflicts injuries on countless common people.

While I would not (and could not) speak for @AOC, for myself I will say that there will be smiling enough when both Trump and those such as Noonan find themselves in the political outer darkness they so deserve.

Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Demographics, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Local Government, Mendacity, Politics, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC

Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project’

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Willy Shih, of Harvard Business School, writes that Foxconn’s Wisconsin Factory Is What The Chinese Call A ‘State Visit Project’:

Last week I wrote that Foxconn’s giant flat-screen factory in Wisconsin was facing an economic reality check, and might not get built after all. On Friday, after a call between Foxconn chairman Terry Gou and President Donald Trump, it was reported to be on again.

In China, they have a term for this type of project: … “Gao Fang Xiangmu”) – a “state visit project” which is signed during a high-level visit. They are announced during the visit of a head of state, or some high-profile event where there is an important political message. Back in 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Boeing widebody facility in Everett, Washington, and announced an order for 300 aircraft. This gave President Xi the opportunity to emphasize the importance of China to Boeing, its workers, suppliers, and the communities they operate in. The specific details would be worked out later.

….

I think Mr. Gou’s visit to Wisconsin last June was the same thing. A state visit project – a high-profile way to earn some serious good will and political capital. But as Foxconn worked through the details, I suspect they were having trouble figuring out how to make economic sense of it all, for many of the reasons I explained.

This is, of course, economically irrational, and offers benefits only for the political leaders and cronies who stand to benefit personally.

State capitalism (when the public subsidies for business deals) and crony capitalism (where insiders benefit from those publicly-subsidized deals) are the core of the Foxconn project.

There’s a wide gap between business groups that cajole for as much public money as they can get and a free market of private buyers and sellers who make their way in the world without leaching money from taxpayers.

These pro-government American conservatives are tiny versions of the hangers-on and operatives of party-controlled foreign economies.

Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, and Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.6.19

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-five.  Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:15 PM, for 10h 09m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1967, activist Stokely Carmichael speaks at UW-Whitewater.

Recommended for reading in full:

 David Frum writes Trump Doubles Down:

The 2019 State of the Union doubled down on trade wars and border walls, on ally-baiting and America-preening. Unfortunately for Trump, Option 2 only makes sense when you command a potential majority coalition, as Reagan and Obama did. When you don’t, as Trump does not, the highly divisive politics that rally your base simultaneously rally your opponents’ bigger base.

By talking so fiercely about abortion, Trump has hugely raised the stakes for his judicial nominations, including the pending nomination of Neomi Rao for the D.C. Circuit. Trump’s accusatory language about border walls seems intended to make impossible any kind of agreement on border security.

Meanwhile, Trump’s most indispensable supporters—the Republican senators—looked unconvinced and displeased through the speech’s more pitchfork-waving passages. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has little interest fighting Pharma or launching another round of tariffs against China and Mexico.

Back during the campaign, Trump defenders excused their man’s acknowledged faults by recycling a compliment President Lincoln paid General Grant: “He fights.” But Grant planned his fights. He counted his troops and those of the adversary, reconnoitered the ground, brought up supplies, devised a plan. He didn’t just plunge head first against a wall in a spasm of ill temper. Trump doesn’t do any of those things. That’s why this president who talks so much about winning is suddenly losing on almost every political front.

 Aaron Blake writes Virtually every organization Trump has run in recent years has been under investigation. Here’s where those probes stand:

News broke Monday night that federal prosecutors issued a subpoena in the burgeoning investigation of the Trump inaugural committee. And we can add that one to the list of serious investigations President Trump has faced, including of himself, his campaign, his conduct as president, his business, his charity and his “university.”

Below, we break down the latest in each, along with how much trouble each could pose for Trump.

(Blake lists investigations of the Trump inaugural committee, Trump campaign [collusion], Trump himself [obstruction of justice], Trump himself [campaign finance violations], Trump Organization, Trump Foundation, and Trump University.)

Allyson Chiu reports ‘Queen of Condescending Applause’: Nancy Pelosi clapped at Trump and the Internet lost it:

Rising from her seat along with others in attendance, Pelosi began applauding with her arms oddly extended out toward the president. When Trump turned toward her and the pair locked eyes, Pelosi, still clapping, appeared to smirk.

Embed from Getty Images

(Honest to goodness, whatever else one could say, Pelosi surely does have Trump’s number.)

  How These Hummingbirds Turned Their Beaks Into Swords:

Culture, Politics

Dupes of Bogus Stories: Partisan or Biased?

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Yesterday, I posted to a study that found a disproportionate amount bogus news accounts on Twitter came from elderly conservatives. (For reporting about the study, see Older, right-leaning Twitter users spread the most fake news in 2016, study finds.  For the study, see Science, Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, PDF link.)

What about those who are the dupes of bogus stories? Laura Hazard Owen asks Do people fall for fake news because they’re partisan or because they’re lazy? Researchers are divided: 

The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed.

Where the research splits. Here’s a helpful meta-analysis of the fake news analysis. For The New York Times, psychologists Gordon Pennycook and David Rand, who’ve done plenty of their own fake news research, write:

Much of the debate among researchers falls into two opposing camps. One group claims that our ability to reason is hijacked by our partisan convictions: that is, we’re prone to rationalization. The other group — to which the two of us belong — claims that the problem is that we often fail to exercise our critical faculties: that is, we’re mentally lazy.

However, recent research suggests a silver lining to the dispute: Both camps appear to be capturing an aspect of the problem. Once we understand how much of the problem is a result of rationalization and how much a result of laziness, and as we learn more about which factor plays a role in what types of situations, we’ll be better able to design policy solutions to help combat the problem.

There’s no obvious answer here, and either possibility – or a combination – represents a significant, but not insuperable, obstacle to a well-ordered politics.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.5.19

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 5:13 PM, for 10h 09m 57s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens: “the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling. The first class was organized as a preparatory school in the first department of the University: a department of science, literature, and the arts.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess report Trump Inaugural Committee Ordered to Hand Over Documents to Federal Investigators:

Escalating one of the investigations into President Trump’s inaugural committee, federal prosecutors ordered on Monday that its officials turn over documents about donors, finances and activities, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.

The subpoena seeks documents related to all of the committee’s donors and guests; any benefits handed out, including tickets and photo opportunities with the president; federal disclosure filings; vendors; contracts; and more, one of the people said.

The new requests expand an investigation prosecutors opened late last year amid a flurry of scrutiny of the inaugural committee. And they showed that the investigations surrounding Mr. Trump, once centered on potential ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election, have spread far beyond the special counsel’s office to include virtually all aspects of his adult life: his business, his campaign, his inauguration and his presidency.

In the subpoena, investigators also showed interest in whether any foreigners illegally donated to the committee, as well as whether committee staff members knew that such donations were illegal, asking for documents laying out legal requirements for donations. Federal law prohibits foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds.

Robert Windrem and Ben Popken report Russia’s propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard:

The Russian propaganda machine that tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election is now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat who earlier this month declared her intention to run for president in 2020.

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

Several experts who track websites and social media linked to the Kremlin have also seen what they believe may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard.

Since Gabbard announced her intention to run on Jan. 11, there have been at least 20 Gabbard stories on three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government: RT, the Russian-owned TV outlet; Sputnik News, a radio outlet; and Russia Insider, a blog that experts say closely follows the Kremlin line. The CIA has called RT and Sputnik part of “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine.”

  Who Invented Diet Soda?:

Indolence, Kakistocracy, Trump

Slothful: Donald Trump Works Less Than Most Americans

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Even before the latest reporting from Alexi McCammond and Jonathan Swan, there has been ample evidence that Trump was slothful — a shiftless, unproductive man:

In a Special Report, MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent, Ari Melber, examines Trump’s first two years in office and a scandal hiding in plain sight: mounting evidence that there are stretches of time when Trump avoids doing most of the work of the Presidency. Melber breaks down how Trump has demonstrated a “new low” in Presidential work ethic, coming into the office late, play golf frequently, spending “Executive Time” watching TV and making personal calls and failing to make many key Government appointments in the State, Defense and other departments.

Mendacity, New Media, Twitter

The ‘Supersharers’ Speading Bogus Stories

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Ben Guarino reports Older, right-leaning Twitter users spread the most fake news in 2016, study finds:

The notion that fake news exists in its own universe turns out to be doubly true: One universe is the realm outside truth. The other is its own seedy pocket of social media.

In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, political scientists surveyed the inhabitants of this Internet pocket around the time of the last presidential election, from Aug. 1 to Dec. 6, 2016. They found that people who shared fake news were more likely to be older and more conservative. “Super-sharers” were responsible for the bulk of fake news, soaking their Twitter feeds in falsehoods with the gusto of kids with water pistols. They were enthusiastic communicators, tweeting an average of 70 times a day, and had a very limited reach.

Only 0.1 percent of users shared 80 percent of the fake news. “And almost all exposure is among 1 percent of Twitter users,” said David Lazer, a political-science professor at Northeastern University and an author of the new report. The algorithm that researchers designed to sniff out fake news — using a list of offending publishers, like Truthfeed.com, compiled by academics, journalists and fact-checkers — could not detect any fake news in the feeds of about 90 percent of users.

Lazer and his colleagues matched the Twitter accounts of more than 16,400 users who posted their real names, and provided their home cities, to publicly available voter records. “We’re almost certainly dealing with real people,” he said. What’s more, those real people had known attributes, including political-party registry, gender and age.

Science, Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, PDF link.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.4.19

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of forty-five.  Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 5:12 PM, for 10h 07m 26s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Downtown Whitewater, Inc.’s board meets today at 5 PM.

On this day in 1863, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry fights a skirmish at Batesville, Arkansas.

Recommended for reading in full:

Alexi McCammond and Jonathan Swan report Insider leaks Trump’s “Executive Time”-filled private schedules:

A White House source has leaked nearly every day of President Trump’s private schedule for the past three months.

Why it matters: This unusually voluminous leak gives us unprecedented visibility into how this president spends his days. The schedules, which cover nearly every working day since the midterms, show that Trump has spent around 60% of his scheduled time over the past 3 months in unstructured “Executive Time.”

  • We’ve published every page of the leaked schedules in a piece that accompanies this item. To protect our source, we retyped the schedules in the same format that West Wing staff receives them.

What the schedules show: Trump, an early riser, usually spends the first 5 hours of the day in Executive Time. Each day’s schedule places Trump in “Location: Oval Office” from 8 to 11 a.m.

  • But Trump, who often wakes before 6 a.m., is never in the Oval during those hours, according to six sources with direct knowledge.
  • Instead, he spends his mornings in the residence, watching TV, reading the papers, and responding to what he sees and reads by phoning aides, members of Congress, friends, administration officials and informal advisers.

Jonathan Swan and Alexi McCammond also report How Trump’s schedule compares to past presidents:

President Trump’s time management — or lack thereof — is without recent historical precedent. To put our new reporting on his schedules in context, we spoke with former top aides to presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The big picture: The difference between Trump and his recent predecessors is eye-popping.

Trump has the least in common with George W. Bush.

  • Bush’s calendar was tightly scheduled and booked out months ahead.
  • Bush would wake around 5:15 a.m.; have coffee with his wife, Laura; read the newspapers; and get to the Oval Office by 6:45 a.m., per a former top aide who spoke anonymously to avoid offending Trump.

….

Barack Obama was similarly disciplined. But unlike Bush, he would sometimes stay up until 2 a.m. reading.

  • His daily private schedule would typically have 6 meetings, as well as intelligence and economic briefings, according to Alyssa Mastromonaco, his deputy chief of staff for operations.
  • Obama would usually get to the Oval Office around 9 a.m. and leave around 6 or 6:30 p.m. for dinner with the first lady and his daughters. He would have evening events around 3 nights a week and would travel domestically about 3 times a month, Mastromonaco said.

  The Paralyzed Racer Going Faster than Ever:

Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Mendacity, Newspapers, That Which Paved the Way

Quality Rests on Quality

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Never Trump conservative Tom Nichols, on Twitter, writes sensibly in reply to a question about which news sources one should read. He advises

Start with a national newspaper every morning. Any of them. NYT, WaPo, WSJ, LAT, whatever. If you just read one newspaper a day, you’re light years ahead of anyone who’s staring at Facebook. The next day, read a newspaper again. Repeat.

Spot on: quality rests on quality. Facebook doesn’t care at all about quality (which begins with accuracy) – it’s a data mining operation more than anything else. See This Is How Much Fact-Checking Is Worth to Facebook (“More than nothing, but not much more”):

What is fact-checking actually worth to Facebook?

Poynter has reported that other organizations received $100,000 like Snopes did. A more in-depth report from Columbia Journalism Review found that some organizationsturned down the money.

The amount that Facebook has paid out has increased, but also become more variable. Fact-checkers get paid per fact-check, but only up to a certain amount per month. The amount of money that’s flowing to all of Facebook’s 34 fact-checkers probably remains in the single-digit millions.

For perspective, Facebook generated $16.9 billion in revenue just last quarter. That same quarter, the company’s average revenue per user reached $7.37, so the money coming in from a million or two users over the course of just three months would be enough to cover the global fact-checking costs for the year.

At the local level, every newspaper in the Whitewater area (Gazette, Daily Union, or even the Register assuming a tree falling in the woods with no one nearby makes a sound) is a different version of the same reliance on press releases and puff pieces for right-leaning business welfare.  Indeed, the publishers’ views are nearly indistinguishable from one another, and united in economic error and bad-ideas boosterism.

If that’s one’s news, one’s news comes not from quality but from inferiority.  A day like that would begin with a weak and uncompetitive outlook, enmired as it would be in error, confusion, and fallacy.

We have a great and competitive country, accessible at the click of a keyboard, daily awaiting discovery and embrace.

Quality rests on quality.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.3.19

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:11 PM, for 10h 04m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

February 3, 1959 is the day the music died: “Bad winter weather and a bus breakdown prompted rock-and-roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper to rent a plane to continue on their “Winter Dance Party” tour. Icy roads and treacherous weather had nearly undermined their performances in Green Bay and Appleton that weekend, so after a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, they boarded a four-seat airplane. The three performers and pilot Roger Peterson perished when the plane crashed about 1:00 AM on Monday, February 3rd.”

Recommended for reading in full:

 Kevin Sullivan reports Kamala Harris, daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, defines herself simply as ‘American’:

Harris, 54, now a U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, would be several firsts in the White House: the first woman, the first African American woman, the first Indian American and the first Asian American. The daughter of two immigrants — her father came from Jamaica — she would also be the second biracial president, after Barack Obama.

….

She said she has not spent much time dwelling on how to categorize herself.

“So much so,” she said, “that when I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created.

“My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it,” she said.

David Enrich, Jesse Drucker, and Ben Protess report Trump Sought a Loan During the 2016 Campaign. Deutsche Bank Said No:

Donald J. Trump was burning through cash.

It was early 2016, and he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his presidential campaign and had been spending large sums to expand the Trump Organization’s roster of high-end properties.

To finance his business’s growth, Mr. Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself “The King of Debt.”

Mr. Trump’s loan request, which has not been previously reported, set off a fight that reached the top of the German bank, according to three people familiar with the request. In the end, Deutsche Bank did something unexpected. It said no.

Senior officials at the bank, including its future chief executive, believed that Mr. Trump’s divisive candidacy made such a loan too risky, the people said. Among their concerns was that if Mr. Trump won the election and then defaulted, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between not collecting on the debt or seizing the assets of the president of the United States.

  Six Stories to Help Pregame Your Super Bowl Party: