“When Boeing and McDonnell Douglas sought to merge in 1996, the Clinton White House pushed for the approval of what was a clearly anti-competitive merger apparently based on the belief that the United States needed a company large enough to compete effectively with Europe’s Airbus. At the risk of stating the obvious, Boeing has not benefited from those indulgences.” #TimWu https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/google-antitrust-remedy.html
feels like The New York Times is dog-whistling to replacement theorists with this subhead.
Screenshot of New York Times app. Headline: Immigrants Are Becoming U.S. Citizens at Fastest Clip in Years Subhead: The government has reduced a backlog of applications that built up during the Trump administration. New citizens say they are looking forward to voting.
Solicitations of political cash by e-mail and text are a pox. What I wouldn’t give for a campaign that got in touch to meaningfully communicate with me rather than to milk me.
It begins.
(The Supreme Court’s sabotage of the regulatory state begins to take effect.)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson
#HaroldMeyerson on #JonathanChait https://prospect.org/politics/2024-08-12-why-joe-biden-moved-center-economic-progressivism/ ht @ddayen
Text: Chait doesn't trouble himself to say which of the actions that these lefties are promoting amount to bad policy and are politically damaging to boot. The push to regulate cryptocurrencies? The lawsuits to break up the monopolies that stifle competition? The move to enable the 20 percent of American workers who are bound by noncompete agreements that keep them from seeking different jobs? The efforts to enable workers to join unions without fear of being fired? The enforcement of trade laws preventing sham Mexican unions? The ruling that companies that break U.S. labor laws during union elections must then recognize the union? None of this, and in fact no action outside of legislation-which Congress drives as much as the president-is mentioned at all. Without getting into, or even near, specifics, Chait sees unnamed, undiscussed Biden officials' tenures as something to be repudiated.
I find myself reminded of this old, excellent blog post by #DaniRodrik, “Why do economists disagree?” https://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/08/why-do-economis.html
finally giving obsidian a try (on @llimllib’s recommendation, others too i think i’m sorry if i’ve omitted you) and am kind of loving it so far. @obsidian https://obsidian.md/
Is Barack Obama a divisive figure within the Democratic coalition?
16.3%
Yes
(8 votes)
83.7%
No
(41 votes)
wall street is like hollywood: milking profit from existing hit franchises is lots easier than coming up with new ones. in hollywood that's sequels. on wall street it's expanding margins.
photographs of kamala’s long slim fingers are AI deep fakes.
“mind your own damned business” does feel like a vibe shift for the Democratic Party, probably an electorally helpful one.
donald trump gets me. https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/112930518896116093
This story about Amazon using the FBI and civil forfeiture against a white-collar employee it claims violated employment terms (so “fraud”) is wild and terrifying. Is there another side to this story? How common is shit like this? https://x.com/amy_k_nelson/status/1822318185556648348
This post contains spoilers.
"Banks got 'credit' to handle the rest of their obligation for routine operations like donating loans, or even things that make banks money, like collecting incentive payments from making loan modifications, or lending money in low-income areas. As I said at the time, this was like sentencing a bank robber to opening a lemonade stand." @ddayen https://prospect.org/power/2024-08-09-why-tony-west-matters/
"High-powered lobbyists like Tony Podesta and others came up with a new playbook to brush back regulatory oversight by paying outside researchers to launder industry talking points through the guise of neutral 'expertise.'" #LukeGoldstein https://prospect.org/justice/2024-08-09-will-googles-monopoly-be-vanquished/
"When I look at proposals to ban products such as alcohol, tobacco and pot, I see one massive negative consequence (more crime and punishment), and then some other effects that are hard to judge." #ScottSumner https://www.econlib.org/the-scorecard-on-pot-legalization/
if trump were to step down, who would replace him on the ticket? would it automatically be jd vance?
The main problem with the failure of journalists and academics to abandon Twitter despite knowing that they should (the liberal professional condition is accepting a paycheck from sources we know perhaps we shouldn't) is that at some margin, Elon and his algorithm drive mainstream journalism in directions it otherwise wouldn't have gone, or at least not as far and as credulously.
I wonder whether the coverage given the lame attempt to "swift boat" of Tim Walz isn't an example of that in action.
Once crypto was wrapped behind ETFs, I thought it'd trade just like any other contract on NASDAQ.
I gave it a try today. (Given the political decision to entrench rather than crush crypto, I think a small allocation in a portfolio towards proof-of-stake crypto may be reasonable.)
Interestingly, my broker requires I apply for special trading permissions.