24 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in Other Columns
≈ Comments Off on This Week’s Main Column…
24 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on “Crazy” Uncle Bernie Starts to Make Sense
Tags
2020, Bernie Sanders, cancel it all, debt, economics, student debt
It’s a good start, what the Senator is set to propose: canceling ALL student debt in the United States.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will propose on Monday eliminating all $1.6 trillion of student debt held in the United States, a significant escalation of the policy fight in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary two days before the candidates’ first debate in Miami.
Sanders is proposing that the federal government pay to wipe clean the student debt held by 45 million Americans – including all private and graduate school debt – as part of a package that also would make public universities, community colleges and trade schools tuition-free.
Sanders is proposing to pay for these plans with a tax on Wall Street his campaign says will raise more than $2 trillion over 10 years, though some tax experts give lower revenue estimates.
A few things:
The tax isn’t even necessary.
This, however funded, would be substantially cheaper than the bankster bailout from Too Big To Fail. Unlike that scheme, Sanders’s proposal would benefit the American people.
Before libertardians and “CONservatives” wail about “a deal’s a deal,” kindly consider the original terms of the underlying deals.
And, this is a good start – on the way to repudiating all $74 Trillion in existing total US debt. There’s a very simple way to do it – and to “pay it all off” – within the scope of existing law. After that’s accomplished, new debt should be illegal, in the current mode of many jurisdictions’ misdemeanor drug possession laws: catch an individual with debt, seize the promissory note and any remaining funds – for destruction; catch someone manufacturing debt, felony and hard jail time.
It will be interesting to if this gets traction.
discedite fures!
23 Sunday Jun 2019
Posted in News and Notes
≈ Comments Off on Queen Elizabeth Finally Acknowledges Migration Problems
Tags
Englands’ do nothing monarch is horrified, horrified I tell you, about an infestation of rats and mice in her palace.
BUCKINGHAM Palace has called in a pest control squad to tackle a plague of rats and mice said to have left the Queen “horrified”.
Officials decided to get help with the problem after a rat was spotted tearing through the kitchens.
On Saturday night a source said: “Mice and rats are increasingly problematic in the capital, especially in very old buildings.
“Staff in the lower quarters especially have become quite used to seeing little brown mice tearing along the corridors.
“There isn’t a huge amount that can be done.
“But council pest control did come in to put down poison and examine the problem.
Your Majesty, this is exactly how your legacy subjects feel about their Island Home being overrun with a sad assortment of “new Britons.” That too is a problem. And, there is something that can be done about it. Call in the other pest squad.
23 Sunday Jun 2019
Posted in News and Notes
Tags
UPDATE: the following, original focuses on the “smart” littoral combat ships of the US Navy. An example of how well they work, with their smart new crews, was displayed Monday when one collided with a freighter parked in Montreal harbor. Why does the smart new Navy keep driving ships into freighters?
***
The Atlantic examines the Navy’s “smart” ships, the LCSs and extrapolates to the wider, modern workforce.
And he discovered another correlation in his test: The people who did best tended to score high on “openness to new experience”—a personality trait that is normally not a major job-performance predictor and that, in certain contexts, roughly translates to “distractibility.” To borrow the management expert Peter Drucker’s formulation, people with this trait are less focused on doing things right, and more likely to wonder whether they’re doing the right things.
High in fluid intelligence, low in experience, not terribly conscientious, open to potential distraction—this is not the classic profile of a winning job candidate. But what if it is the profile of the winning job candidate of the future? If that’s the case, some important implications would arise.
One concerns “grit”—a mind-set, much vaunted these days in educational and professional circles, that allows people to commit tenaciously to doing one thing well. Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor, has written powerfully about the value of grit—putting your head down, blocking out distractions, committing over a course of many years to a chosen path. Her writing traces an intellectual lineage that can also be found in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which explains extraordinary success as a function of endless, dedicated practice—10,000 hours or more. These ideas are inherently appealing; they suggest that dedication can be more important than raw talent, that the dogged and conscientious will be rewarded in the end.
These trends are more prevalent in certain fields and in certain locations. I think they have the potential to change, for the better, how people are employed – giving more power to the employee. However, I don’t think that’s the future. Human (herd) nature will intervene, and there’s the robotic/AI/civilizational collapse think, proceeding unopposed. In the end, like the LCS sailors, most folks will have to abandon ship.
Lessons, if heeded, for far-distant generations.
22 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on They’re Not Going Back
Tags
Wait two days. Two weeks. Two years…
Trump delays limited deportation enforcement in search of a “deal.” Like what? Are they going to agree to go home voluntarily? No. They are here to stay – for now.
From the Tweeter in Chief:
At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!
They, many of them, will go home – as soon as the coming hostilities begin in earnest. That’ll be just a little longer than a two-year delay. But, not by much.
Please make sure to vote in the VERY IMPORTANT election, whenever that is…
22 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in Other Columns
≈ Comments Off on The Quiet Spaces
Tags
Sometimes the Old Gray Lady has a very interesting idea or story. Here’s one about the fading tranquility of happy, wireless-free life in a land gone media mad.
The off-grid places are disappearing. And that’s as it should be. We must wire up rural America; cell service is now a utility almost as essential as electricity or heat. In April, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it will hold the biggest auction of radio spectrum in this country’s history; the auction, scheduled for late this year, is part of an effort to spread cell coverage to even the most remote towns ahead of the rollout of 5G networks.
Unfortunately, ownership of the telecommunication grids will go to corporate giants rather than to the communities themselves. But even so, small towns are fighting to be wired up. It’s likely that in 10 or so years, the country will be blanketed with signal, from sea to shining sea.
I’m hopeful that when that happens, we might retain just a few quiet places where it’s still possible to disconnect.
Activists have already created “dark sky reserves” to protect wilderness from artificial light. In the future, might we also create “privacy reserves” where we can go to escape the ubiquitous internet?
The irony is that, even as I type this on a laptop, wi-fi connected to Skynet, and with a stupid phone by my side, I consider that maybe all the technology could have been a mistake. To back 20 years. Or, 40. 400?
22 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in Other Columns
≈ Comments Off on Summer 2019
21 Friday Jun 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes
≈ Comments Off on Nuclear “Strategic Stability”
Tags
If achieved, will rapidly give way to logistical collapse. Someone at the Pentagram knows this, paying attention to the alarming (if predictable) results of the analysis of Civil War 2.0 fallout. But the DOD still hosts a large cadre of idiots.
NUCLEAR weapons could still create “decisive results” and break stalemates during a war, Pentagon top brass have claimed.
The ominous new document – since deleted – is called ‘Nuclear Operations’ and suggests military chiefs could once again use the weapons of mass destruction to “restore strategic stability.”
Arms control experts say the doctrine marks a dangerous shift towards the idea of actually fighting and winning a full-scale nuclear conflict.
“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” the joint chiefs’ document states.
“Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”
Whose commanders?
The odds of a meltdown, collapse, or terminal domestic war, the remains of America, are a near mathematical certainty. I think the odds of heavy bombing and/or artillery barrages hovers north of 50%. Can we add the odds of nuk-u-lar weapons to the mix? 10%? 20%? Let’s hope the rumors about tritium scarcity are true.
When it comes, the primary death toll culprits will probably be disease and starvation, rather than Mark 83s. However it happens, it will cut into these newly released population estimates.
The graying of America continues.
The national median age rose to 38.2 years last year, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That suggests half of the U.S. population is more than 38-years-old and half is younger. By gender, the median for woman is 39.5 while for men its 36.9 years.
The aging of America is widespread with 49 of 50 states showing an uptick in older residents. North Dakota was the only state to see a decline in its median age, from 37 years in 2010 to 35.2 in 2018.
“This aging (phenomenon) is driven in large part by baby boomers crossing over the 65-year-old mark,” said Luke Rogers, the Chief of the Population Estimates Branch at the Census Bureau.
A decline in birth rates is another reason. The number of U.S. births fell to lowest level in 32 years in 2018.
There were less than 3.9 million babies under age 1 as of July 1, 2018. This represents the smallest age cohort until age 64. The largest age cohort is 27-year-olds, making up 4.8 million of the population.
Bombs for boomers? That might be a strategy.
21 Friday Jun 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns
≈ Comments Off on Cool Hand Trump
Let’s hope this lasts. Trump calls off Iranian airstrike:
Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.
The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said.
The abrupt reversal put a halt to what would have been the president’s third military action against targets in the Middle East. Mr. Trump had struck twice at targets in Syria, in 2017 and 2018.
It was not clear whether Mr. Trump simply changed his mind on the strikes or whether the administration altered course because of logistics or strategy. It was also not clear whether the attacks might still go forward.
Let’s hope he realized he’s being lied to by the neocon nuts. Maybe he’ll just launch them at Iran.
20 Thursday Jun 2019
Posted in Other Columns
Tags
Two items:
1) The first Tom Ironsides novel (yes, novel, as in full-length book) has grown to around 120-125 (paperback) pages. It needs a ton of work and there’s probably another 200-ish pages to go. I’m getting there and having fun with it.
2) I recently debuted an additional set of characters in a different story set in the Ironsides universe. THIS ONE. I intentionally released it here and sent it to three reviewers. Two have responded. The first said it was excellent and left little doubt as to the evil nature of the subjects and their programs. The second, a very good fiction writer, was more nuanced: “Quite remarkable, disturbing,… well, it defies easy description” He later gave me the difficult description. He warned me about mixing genres, which I get and will work to smooth as that story develops towards bookhood. BUT! He said the style reminded him of H.P. Lovecraft. My first horror/Sci-fi bit was compared to Lovecraft. So, any day after I pass away, I should become a millionaire. Yay?
Thanks. More to come. P
PERRIN LOVETT 