Thursday, September 20, 2018
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Monday, September 17, 2018
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Saturday, September 15, 2018
A public bank for LA: instead of sending hundreds of millions to predatory finance, Angelenos' taxes can fund community development
from Boing Boing:
The City of Los Angeles sends the nation-wrecking finance industry more than $100MM/year in the form of fees and penalties for its banking business, supporting the institutions whose racist lending practices, financial engineering and mortgage fraud have wreaked untold harm on the city's residents.
This November, Angelenos will get to vote on a proposition to create a public bank that will back LA's smaller community banks and do the city's business without lining finance's pockets. This bank will be able to fund community projects from housing to transit to health-care, and will be able to take deposits from the city's burgeoning cannabis industry, which is presently shut out of the federally guaranteed bank system and relies on safes in entrepreneurs' homes or businesses to stash millions in cash.
The finance industry hates and fears this proposal and is spreading FUD about how a bank that is under democratically elected political control will inevitably become corrupt -- while the discipline of the market will supposedly keep banks on the straight and narrow. Tell that to the millions of Americans whose suffered from Wells Fargo's corruption.
And those are not the only benefits of a public bank, backers claim. A public bank would enable the city to loan money for badly needed affordable housing development. They believe a city-owned bank could extend the credit lines of community banks and credit unions to offer loans to low-income residents and help bankroll affordable housing.Public Bank LA
Another benefit touted by bank promoters: badly needed investment in infrastructure. They hold out the example of Costa Rica’s public bank, Banco Popular. Advocates claim that this bank has been the financial linchpin behind the financing of water supply systems, residential solar panels, and hydroelectric generators.
“A public bank could make some investments that in the long-term would be profitable for LA… [investments that] no bank focused on short-term profit would dare to invest in,” Baradaran asserted.
A public bank is also seen by many as a means to local self-determination and bypassing high Wall Street interest rates. For example, LA public bank advocates estimate Los Angeles pays $3.14 billion in debt service, the cost to borrow money, from Wall Street. They argue a municipal bank would allow the city to recapture that money and give Los Angelenos a say in redirecting this funding toward local projects.
Banking on the Public Option: Will LA Lead the Way for People-Owned Banks? [Glenn Daigon/Whowhatwhy]
(via Naked Capitalism)
Friday, September 14, 2018
Tim "Net Neutrality" Wu
on the case for breaking up Facebook
from Boing Boing:
Competition scholar and cyberlawyer Tim Wu (previously) is best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality," but his work ranges over all sorts of issues related to technology, competition, monopoly and innovation; in his forthcoming book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, he makes the case for breaking up the tech giants, starting with Facebook -- because the problem with Big Tech isn't "tech," it's "big."
Wu sensibly lays the current antitrust crisis at the feet of Ronald Reagan, who followed the University of Chicago economists' doctrine and dismantled antitrust enforcement except in the narrow case of price-fixing to set a minimum price; this has allowed companies to get away with a host of anticompetitive evils, from predatory pricing to market-cornering to buying up all competition before it becomes a threat.
Wu sets out the case for breaking up the tech giants without any legal reforms -- just through a change in enforcement strategies, the kind of thing that President Elizabeth Warren could order on her first day of work in January 2020 regardless of the makeup of Congress or the Senate.
“The easiest way to do it is to start by breaking off WhatsApp and Instagram so those are separate companies,” says Wu. “Hopefully, those companies try to introduce more privacy-sensitive or otherwise better social networking options. Right now, because they’re all owned by the same place, they’re never really allowed to get at the mothership and be a true replacement for Facebook. I think WhatsApp is in an even better position [than Instagram], frankly, to try to go at it. They’ve got this great messaging service. Everyone loves it.”The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age [Tim Wu/Columbia Global Reports]
But wouldn’t reaching in to break up Facebook be difficult for the government to justify? Wu thinks differently. “Unless you believe that we want one ruling master of all social networking and it should be Mark Zuckerberg… then there’s no good reason not to break it up,” he adds. “What’s the argument against it?”
“These are corporations,” says Wu. “They have subunits. Sometimes corporations divide by themselves. It’s not that dramatic, and there’s been this campaign to say, ‘Oh my god, this would be like the most insane thing ever.’”
It’s time to break up Facebook [Nilay Patel/The Verge]
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
2018's Blue Wave needs to take down Trump, and the right-wing establishment of the Democratic Party
from Boing Boing:
California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown repeatedly vetoed universal healthcare after the state legislature voted it through; Democratic state majorities in NY, CT and NJ refused to enact legislation to close the "carried interest" tax loophole that makes billions for hedge-fund managers; Rhode Island Democrats went on a slashing spree, taking down pensions for teachers, firefighters and other public servants while the finance-affiliated state treasurer funneled the pension funds into her pals' underperforming hedge funds; Democrats in NJ gutted the tax bill to give millionaires an easy ride; New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down the state anti-corruption commission, only to have his top aide busted for being horrifically corrupt.
These establishment Democrats all hold the safest of seats, and when that happens, they cozy up to industry at the expense of workers. After all, osculating captains of industry gets you invited to fancy parties where you can collect tons of campaign checks, plus those guys will give you awesome "consulting" work once you're out of office (think of this as the "Dan Lipinski effect".
All things being equal, robber-barons would rather give money to Republicans, but if a Republican can't get elected, they'll just buy themselves some Democrats.
But the 2018 Tsunami is changing that. By primarying these DINO's, progressive Democrats are offering a real challenge -- not just to Trump, but to the Trump-lites who aren't openly racist but who are just as happy as Trump is to hand the country over to looters.
The Democratic Establishment is running scared. After the New York Democratic Party libeled a progressive candidate for governor who is standing up to Andrew Cuomo, Cuomo claimed he had no idea what was going on.
Perhaps one of the dozens of Republican operatives he's hired to work for his government could explain it to him.
There, the administration of Democratic stalwart Rahm Emanuel has used that power to initiate one of American history’s largest mass closures of public schools and layoff hundreds of teachers. During Emanuel’s tenure, public workers’ retirement savings were invested with financial firms whose executives have bankrolled Emanuel’s political apparatus. Emanuel’s administration also reportedly oversaw a police dark site where suspects were allegedly imprisoned without charge – and the Democratic mayor’s appointees infamously blocked the release of a videotape of Chicago police gunning down an unarmed African American teenager.
With the city subsequently suffering an explosion of gun violence, racial strife and economic inequality, Democratic donors responded by lavishing Emanuel with massive campaign contributions and Democratic voters reelected him. When Hizzoner later announced his retirement amid the trial over the police shooting, Emanuel was immediately lauded as a great hero by the most famous face of the Democratic party, Barack Obama.
The former president’s move was a powerful reminder that Democrats’ let-them-eat-cake attitude and nothing-to-see-here complacency is a toxic gangrene afflicting not just the distant tips of the party’s local tendrils. The fish rots from the head down, and Democrats’ festering noggin is at the top of the national party, where Democratic states’ federal lawmakers have been helping Republicans ransack everything not nailed down to the floor.
Yes, let's wipe out Trump. But take neoliberal Democrats with him, too [David Sirota/The Guardian]
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Monday, September 10, 2018
School of Life Monday:
Why We Sometimes Don't Feel 'In The Moment'
One of the dangers of emotional life is that we find that we don't feel 'in the moment': we're at a funeral, but we don't feel sad. We're making love, but our minds are elsewhere. It's our birthday, but we're not jolly. Why is it sometimes so hard for our true inner feelings to keep pace with events in the outer world? An investigation into the psychology of feeling in the moment - or to the left or right of it.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Friday, September 7, 2018
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Taggers left this Q train completely covered in graffiti
from the New York Post:
A subway Q train is covered in spray paint at the 96th Street station.
Haaaa!
A subway Q train is covered in spray paint at the 96th Street station.These taggers work fast.
A Q train was completely covered in graffiti overnight at a Second Avenue subway station while it was parked just off the platform, according to photos and a transit activist.
Photos posted to the Progressive Action Facebook page show the colorful train parked at the 96th Street station at about 5 a.m., just before the start of the morning rush hour.
Train conductor Tramell Thompson, a transit activist who runs the Progressive Action page, said it appears that the tagger got to the train while it was parked just off the platform overnight — and that should be a warning to city transit officials.
“If they can go back there and have the time to do all of that graffiti, they have time to do something to the train,” Thompson said. “It’s obvious they have no security back there.”
MTA officials declined to comment on the incident or say how long it took to take the train out of service.
NYPD officials didn’t return requests for comment.
Haaaa!
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
After Nike hires Colin Kaepernick for ad campaign, conservative halfwits destroy own property to own the libs
from Boing Boing:
go to the original Boing Bing piece to see some of the destruction
Nike hired Kap for an ad campaign: a satisfying yet bathetic result of his de facto expulsion from professional football for protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. Conservatives are mad, obviously, and are expressing it by destroying the Nike-branded gear that they have already paid for.
Life is but a dream.
go to the original Boing Bing piece to see some of the destruction
Monday, September 3, 2018
The Original SkateBoarder Magazine
(Full Documentary approx. 35 minutes)
The magazine that documented the "birth of the now" as coined by Dogtown & Z-Boys, Skateboarder magazine was the original Bible of skateboarding and the history it captured in its pages tell the story of modern skateboarding's roots and influenced an entire generation of skateboarders. This documentary tells the story of how this magazine became THE magazine of skateboarders worldwide, why it meant so much to them, and how it left an indelible mark on them during it's meteoric rise and fall by the early 1980s. From shoeless surfers riding the concrete waves and the vast blacktop of Southern California, to fully padded sessions at skateparks, Skateboarder exposed the sport to kids around the world.Video: www.sixstairstudio.com
Sunday, September 2, 2018
R.I.P. The Village Voice
from Boing Boing:
"Today is kind of a sucky day," Village Voice owner Peter Barbey told newspaper staff in a phone call Friday. "Due to, basically, business realities, we're going to stop publishing Village Voice new material.”
"I bought the Village Voice to save it; this isn't exactly how I thought it was going to end up. I'm still trying to save the Village Voice,” said owner Barbey, who bought the paper in 2015.
Gothamist first reported the sad news that New York's once-great indie newspaper is shutting down. 63 years after it was co-founded by the late Norman Mailer. They'd stopped printing a paper version about a year ago.
Barbey said half the staff (15 to 20 people) will "wind things down," and work on a project to archive the Voice's material online.
Everyone else at the organization lost their job today.
From Gothamist:
The Voice, founded as an alternative weekly newspaper in 1955, has had a number of previous owners, including New York magazine, Rupert Murdoch, Leonard Stern, and New Times (later Village Voice) Media.Barbey has issued a statement, and you can read it here.
Barbey also seemed to indicate that he may have been thinking about selling the Voice for some time.
"I've been having conversations with other entities for months now," Barbey said in the Friday meeting. "This is something we have to do—for some of them this is something we'd have to do before they could talk to us any further."
[Photo: Village Voice newspaper boxes on a sidewalk in 2013 (Mark Lennihan/Shutterstock)
Saturday, September 1, 2018
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