Not Pragmatic

Among my many personal failings is that I rarely resist the opportunity to say ‘I told you so.’

When on the 9th, a little less than a week ago, I drew your attention to the Ocasio-Cortez/Sanders 15% Usury Cap out of a recognition of its fundamental justice and economic sanity.

I am gratified but not surprized that it’s wildly popular even among Republicans.

The vast majority of Republicans support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’ plan to cap credit-card interest rates at 15%
Eliza Relman and Walt Hickey, Business Insider
5/15/19

The vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats who said they plan to vote in the 2020 presidential primary support legislation rolled out by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders last week that would cap credit-card interest rates at 15%.

Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters and 73% of Democratic primary voters said they either support or strongly support the proposal to cap rates at 15%, according to a new INSIDER poll. Just over 60% of respondents who don’t plan to vote in the 2020 presidential primaries also said they support the bill, known as the Loan Shark Prevention Act.

Just 13% of GOP primary voters were opposed to the idea, while 7% of Democratic primary voters were opposed.

INSIDER specifically asked Americans whether they support or oppose a law that would cap credit-card interest rates at 15%, noting that the current median interest rate for a credit card is about 21.36%.

Overall, about 68% of respondents said they either support or strongly support the plan and 10% oppose it.

Support for the cap was consistent across income levels, but higher-income respondents appeared to support the proposal more strongly than the average respondent — though the sample size was too small to draw any specific conclusions.

Under the proposed law, the annual percentage rate applicable to any extension of credit would be capped at 15% on “unpaid balances, inclusive of all finance charges” or “the maximum rate permitted by the laws of the State in which the consumer resides.”

In short, the bill would impose the cap on credit-card interest rates at the federal level and allow states to establish even lower interest rates. The bill would also give the Federal Reserve flexibility to allow lenders to charge higher rates if it’s determined the federal cap “would threaten the safety and soundness of financial institutions.”

The median credit-card interest rate was 21.36% as of last week, compared with 12.62% a decade ago, according to Creditcards.com. Meanwhile, Americans collectively hold more than $1 trillion in credit-card debt, according to the Federal Reserve.

The law would implement a 15% interest-rate cap on all federal loans and also institute postal banking — allowing the US postal service to offer banking services as an alternative to payday lenders and commercial banks.

This poll was conducted by Survey Monkey. It’s a digital poll which skews the way those skew and was also incentivised by a directed charitable contribution. The sample universe is 1127 respondents weighed for age and gender but not race or income leaving a margin of error around 3.12%.

Still the numbers are stark.

Listen up Democrats- Popular Policies are popular by definition. If you are being “pragmatic” about electoral victory you support (or at least appear to) Popular Policies. If you don’t because they conflict with your Neo Liberal Religion of Mammon Worship are you being “pragmatic” or “faith-based”?

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

B Jessie Hill: Could abortion become illegal in America? All signs point to yes

America is facing a full-frontal attack on Roe v Wade. There is no guarantee that the supreme court will protect the right to terminate a pregnancy

On Tuesday night, the Republican-controlled state senate in Alabama voted to effectively ban abortion at every stage of a pregnancy, including in cases of rape or incest. The legislation would ensure that doctors who perform abortions could face up to 99 years in prison.

The measure is just the latest in a spate of anti-choice legislation that has recently been passed in the United States. Last week, Georgia became the fourth state to pass a so-called “heartbeat” abortion ban in 2019. (Two other states – Iowa and North Dakota – passed similar laws in prior years.) These laws – the Center for Reproductive Rights calls them “bafflingly” unconstitutional – are designed to be full-frontal attacks on Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 US supreme court case recognizing the fundamental constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Rather than pursuing the sort of incremental strategy that anti-abortion activists have favored in the past – such as banning abortions late in pregnancy, or attempting to gradually regulate abortion clinics out of existence with increasingly burdensome regulations – these newer laws are written to prohibit virtually all abortions in the state.

Richard WolffeBarr’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia inquiry is corruption eating itself

This investigation by the attorney general should scotch any illusion that Trump would be held in check by Washington’s institutions

What happens to a government when the man in control is a delusional conspiracy-theorist desperate to cover up his own corruption?

This is more than a rhetorical question, and we’re not just asking for a friend.

At this stage of the presidency (See: The Decline and Fall of the Empire), the corrosive effect of Donald Trump is decaying and degrading some of the most powerful institutions that represent the United States.

One of the most-repeated conceits at the start of the Trumpian epoch was that the culture of good government and the rule of law were so ingrained in Washington that public servants of sound mind would thwart the wingnut whims of a demagogue.

How quaint. Now we find ourselves in a country where the attorney general is combining forces with the entire intelligence community – the directors of the CIA, FBI and national intelligence – to investigate how the whole Russia investigation began.

Spoiler alert for all the spooks and prosecutors about to waste what’s left of their reputation: it was the Trump campaign.

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Cs And Ds Make Degrees

Four Yorkshiremen

You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o’clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing ‘Hallelujah.’

But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won’t believe ya’.

All About The Benjamins

The XXVI Amendment

Power In Numbers

Cartnoon

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian

From the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verse 16. Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.

The Breakfast Club (Here After)

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.

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This Day in History

Alabama Gov. George Wallace shot on presidential campaign trail; Newly-founded Israel attacked by Arab neighbors; The U.S. Supreme Court breaks up Standard Oil.; Country singer June Carter Cash dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

I spend a lot of time thinking of the Hereafter – each time I enter a room I wonder what I’m here after.
Tim Conway (December 15, 1933 – May 14, 2019)

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Six In The Morning Wednesday 15 May 2019

Alabama passes bill banning abortion

Alabama lawmakers have passed a bill to outlaw abortion in almost all cases, the strictest such US law.

The state Senate approved the law by 25 votes to six, rejecting exemptions for cases of rape or incest.

It will now go to Republican Governor Kay Ivey. She has not said whether she will sign it, but she is seen as a strong opponent of abortion.

Restrictions on abortion rights have already been introduced this year in 16 US states.

Activists hope the new Alabama law will challenge a landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalised abortion in the US.

Putin smiles as Washington ties itself in knots over Russia

Updated 0502 GMT (1302 HKT) May 15, 2019

Vladimir Putin keeps on getting the last laugh, and he knows it.

The Russian leader and former KGB officer could not resist some sardonic trolling on a day when the tortured legacy of the 2016 election sowed fresh mistrust and discord in Washington and the US President’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., got caught in the fallout.
“Despite the exotic nature of the work of special counsel Mueller, we must give him credit,” Putin said during a visit from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Sochi on the Black Sea.

‘Terrifying’ Ebola epidemic out of control in DRC, say experts

More than 1,600 people infected in North Kivu province since outbreak began in August

An Ebola epidemic in a conflict-riven region of Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control and could become as serious as the outbreak that devastated three countries in west Africa between 2013 and 2016, experts and aid chiefs have warned.

New cases over the past month have increased at the fastest rate since the outbreak began last year, as aid agencies struggle to enact a public health response in areas that have suffered decades of neglect and conflict, with incredibly fragile health systems and regular outbreaks of deadly violence involving armed groups.

US close to ‘dangerous military confrontation’, warns senior Iranian diplomat

‘We hope they understand they they are playing a very dangerous game and it may have consequences for them’

Kim SenguptaDiplomatic Editor

America is getting “dragged into a dangerous military confrontation” with Iran by an alliance of malign states in the Middle East and hawks in the Trump administration, one of Tehran’s most senior diplomats has charged as tensions continue to rise in the region.

The leaders of IsraelSaudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US President’s National Security Advisor were singled by the Iranian ambassador to Britain as those supposedly attempting to orchestrate a conflict.

Macron, Ardern host Paris summit against online extremism

French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand’s premier Jacinda Ardern will host other world leaders and leading tech chiefs on Wednesday to launch an ambitious new initiative aimed at curbing extremism online.

The initiative, known as the ‘Christchurch call’, was pushed by Ardern after a self-described white supremacist gunned down 51 people in a massacre at two mosques in the New Zealand city in March, the country’s worst atrocity of recent times.

Participants will be asked to commit to pledges to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content on social media and other online platforms.

San Francisco’s facial recognition technology ban, explained

The city’s ban on the technology could set a nationwide precedent.

By 

San Francisco is the first major city to ban local government agencies’ use of facial recognition, becoming a leader in regulating technology criticized for its potential to expand widespread government surveillance and reinforce police bias.

The “Stop Secret Surveillance” ordinance passed 8-1 in a vote by the city’s board of supervisors Tuesday. The ordinance will implement an all-out ban on San Francisco city agencies’ use of facial surveillance, which tech companies such as Amazon and Microsoftcurrently sell to various US government agencies, including in Amazon’s case, US police departments and in Microsoft’s case, a US prison. These technologies can detect faces in images or live video streams and match those facial characteristics to someone’s identity in a database.

Kristallnacht

Y’all stop being Fascist and I’ll stop talking about it.

Kristallnacht was-

a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.

Estimates of the number of fatalities caused by the pogrom have varied. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews were murdered during the attacks. Modern analysis of German scholarly sources by historians such as Sir Richard Evans puts the number much higher. When deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll climbs into the hundreds. Additionally, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.

Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were either destroyed or damaged. The British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from the foreign journalists working in Germany sent shock waves around the world. The British newspaper The Times wrote at the time: “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday.”

It’s a real thing that actually happened unlike that “Moon Landing” they’re trying to duplicate and doctor the pictures of for the 50th anniversary.

So ask yourself, would the United States do something like this?

Before Trump’s purge at DHS, top officials challenged plan for mass family arrests
By Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey, Washington Post
May 13, 2019

In the weeks before they were ousted last month, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and top immigration enforcement official Ronald Vitiello challenged a secret White House plan to arrest thousands of parents and children in a blitz operation against migrants in 10 major U.S. cities.

According to seven current and former Department of Homeland Security officials, the administration wanted to target the crush of families that had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border after the president’s failed “zero tolerance” prosecution push in early 2018. The ultimate purpose, the officials said, was a show of force to send the message that the United States was going to get tough by swiftly moving to detain and deport recent immigrants — including families with children.

The sprawling operation included an effort to fast-track immigration court cases, allowing the government to obtain deportation orders against those who did not show for their hearings — officials said 90 percent of those targeted were found deportable in their absence. The subsequent arrests would have required coordinated raids against parents with children in their homes and neighborhoods.

But Vitiello and Nielsen halted it, concerned about a lack of preparation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the risk of public outrage and worries that it would divert resources from the border.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence were especially supportive of the plan, officials said, eager to execute dramatic, highly visible mass arrests that they argued would help deter the soaring influx of families.

The arrests were planned for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the other largest U.S. destinations for Central American migrants. Though some of the cities are considered “sanctuary” jurisdictions with police departments that do not cooperate with ICE, the plan did not single out those locations, officials said.

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations branch had an initial target list of 2,500 adults and children, but the plan, which remains under consideration, was viewed as a first step toward arresting as many as 10,000 migrants. The vast majority of families who have crossed the border in the past 18 months seeking asylum remain in the country, awaiting a court date or in defiance of deportation orders.

DHS officials said the objections Vitiello and Nielsen raised regarding the targeted “at large” arrests were mostly operational and logistical and not as a result of ethical concerns about arresting families an immigration judge had ordered to be deported.

“There was concern that it was being hastily put together, would be ineffective and might actually backfire by misdirecting resources away from critical border emergency response operations,” said one DHS official, who, like others, described the plan on the condition of anonymity.

Nielsen and others also worried that a massive effort to deport parents and children would detract from the Trump administration’s stated goal of going after “criminal aliens.”

“The proposal was nowhere near ready for prime time,” the official said, which is why DHS senior leaders blocked the White House. “They wanted 10 cities, thousands of targets.”

Let’s just stop, shall we? Ten or more cities, especially ones that are politically opposed? Thousands of targets?

Give me a Helicarrier and an eyepatch, we be looking at a cheap imitation of Winter Soldier Matey. Spoiler Alert: Hydra are the bad guys because they’re like ultra Nazis, not fine people at all. Hail Hydra!

And the reason they didn’t do it is not that they had any particular scruples about it, it’s that they couldn’t organize it!

This is Republican Racism 101, not just Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio, the 80% of the 24% of deplorables who support him and let’s not discount that 80% number. That’s almost all of them.

On the other hand only 24% are at the left side Bell Curve on the extreme fringe of idiocy.

31% support Democrats despite their feckless mendacity and merely common corruption which I think a bad thing but a problem that can be corrected. I mean Democrats not voters. As for the Deplorables you don’t need a Scarlet Letter ‘D’ as they usually reveal themselves the moment they open their mouths.

An example- I was at a reunion with a bunch of people I mostly never knew and this one guy hunts me out (I could tell because I was watching the crowd and saw him getting directions), walks up to me and says- “I’m so and so and I work in Mutual Funds and Real Estate and I voted for Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio!”

Uh, great. Hope that makes your life worthwhile.

Look, I know almost none of these people although all of them seem to remember me, and with an undeserved fondness I might add. I’m open enough about the fact I write on the Internet with those I meet in real life so my ek hornbeck avatar is not a secret though my less impressive meatspace footprint is, still, it’s rare to have a fan (though I have some Nurses in ICU who hate my guts by handle and chatted about it for an hour twice. You listen because you can’t sleep and you can’t change the channel from the burbling brook relaxation one designed to take your mind off the fact you’re going to die.).

Or perhaps in some distant interaction from long ago that had some kind of seminal impact on him which I can’t remember at all I gave him the impression that voting Republican was something I disapproved of and that mattered to him enough to seek me out, but not change the behavior.

Well, up against the wall ‘Bless Your Heart (Dixie)’.

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Leah Litman: Is Roe in Danger? Liberal Justices Seem to Think So

Conservative justices took a step in laying the foundation for the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court made clear on Monday that Roe v. Wade may soon no longer be the law of the land. The decision, Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, actually has nothing to do with abortion; it concerns when one state may be sued in another state’s courts.

But Hyatt has everything to do with the Supreme Court’s respect for precedent. And respect for precedent is one of the few things, if not the only thing, that stands between the conservative Roberts court and overruling Roe v. Wade. Hyatt made clear that the five conservative justices are perfectly content to overrule a precedent merely because they disagree with it. That should raise alarm bells about Roe, particularly as states enact draconian restrictions on abortion.

In Hyatt, the justices were asked to overrule the court’s 1979 decision in Nevada v. Hall, which held that an individual could sue a state in the courts of a different state.

The doctrine of stare decisis directs judges, including Supreme Court justices, to adhere to prior decisions even when they think those prior decisions are wrong. Under the doctrine, justices shouldn’t overrule an earlier ruling unless several things are true: The decision is unworkable and has generated inconsistent results; it rests on outdated facts; and it represents an outdated mode of legal thinking. The court is also not supposed to overrule precedent where parties have relied on the decision to structure their lives.

Paul Krugman; Killing the Pax Americana

Trump’s trade war is about more than economics.

O.K., they weren’t supposed to start the trade war until I got back from vacation. And I really have too many kilometers to cover and hills to climb to weigh in on a regular basis or at great length. But since I’m currently sitting in an outdoor cafe with my coffee and croissant, I thought I might take a few minutes to address two misconceptions that, I believe, are coloring discussion of the trade conflict.

By the way, I don’t mean Trump’s misconceptions. As far as I can tell, he isn’t getting a single thing about trade policy right. He doesn’t know how tariffs work, or who pays them. He doesn’t understand what bilateral trade imbalances mean, or what causes them. He has a zero-sum view of trade that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned over the past two centuries. And to the (small) extent that he is making any coherent demands on China, they’re demands China can’t/won’t meet.

But Trump’s critics, while vastly more accurate than he is, also, I think, get a few things wrong, or at least overstate some risks while understating others. On one side, the short-run costs of trade war tend to be overstated. On the other, the long-term consequences of what’s happening are bigger than most people seem to realize.

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#49 of 196

Fully in the 75th percentile or to give it a letter grade, a solid ‘C’.

Oh, that’s the United States Ranking in Gender Inequality.

Desi Lydic: Abroad

Sweet Georgia Brown

Cartnoon

Lest we forget, Zack Morris is trash.

Hall Monitor – Season 4 Episode 4

Drag Race – Season 4 Episode 5

1, 2, 3, 4. I declare a Prank War – Season 4 Episode 6

Zack also steals a dog.

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