Political Randomness

[AWS260]

An article (linking to) The Brainwashing of My Dad.

I haven't seen the documentary, and I generally agree with the sentiment that a lot of contemporary conservative media is damaging to civil discourse.

But damn, that article seems custom-designed to drive me up the wall:

Constant use of italics for emphasis. Protip: this is a hallmark of bad writing.

Outrage that it is legal to lie on television in the United States: "It’s become perfectly normal – legal even [italics again!] – for a private entity to distort, manipulate, mislead, and flat out lie under the auspices of so-called 'fair and balanced' 'news.' " First Amendment, schmirst amendment.

Closing with this:

I can’t help but recall a scene from George Lucas’ last Star Wars film, Revenge of the Sith: Natalie Portman watches the Senate deliberately vote against their best interest, misled by their leadership. Coming to terms with the repercussions of such irrationality, she turns to Jimmy Smits and regretfully sighs:

“So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”

[GreenGoo]

Yep it was a terrible article that's basically "free speech killed my father".

[Isgrimnur]

Psychology Today

The first reason is personality. Indeed, a review of 92 scientific studies shows that intellectual curiosity tends to decline in old age, and that this decline explains age-related increases in conservatism.
...
The second is judgment, in particular information-processing capacity. In most people (and I’m sorry to break the news) the speed of information-processing, a core ingredient of judgment and intelligence, peaks around the mid 20’s. To make matters worse, most people become considerably slower after their mid 40’s, with a substantial deceleration after their 60’s. The good news, however, is that slower does not necessarily mean dumber. In fact, older people are better able to rely on knowledge, experience and expertise, so they are not as affected by slower information-processing capacity. However, in order to retrieve knowledge more efficiently it is essential that they economize thinking, and seeing things in more categorical or “black-or-white” terms does make for more frugal and efficient thinking. In line, a review of 88 studies in 12 countries shows that older people are generally less tolerant of ambiguity, and have a higher need for closure and structure.
...
The third and final reason is familiarity. As we grow older, our experiences become more constrained and predictable. This is partly adaptive; order and structure enable us to navigate the world in autopilot, whereas change requires proactive adaptation, effort, and improvisation. In fact, at any point in life change is disruptive and taxing, but it is especially stressful when we are old. Thus, conservatism increases familiarity, which in turn increases conservatism. In line, research has shown that in older age conservatism is positively related to self-esteem. The implication is that remaining open minded when you are old may cause not only counterproductive uncertainty, but also insecurity and self-doubt.

[Isgrimnur]

Cook County sues over musical performances defined as not 'fine art':

At an administrative hearing Monday morning, a Cook County official doubled down on a controversial position that the Reader first reported on last week: she explained to attorneys for two Chicago venues that live performances of rock, country, rap, and electronic music do not constitute "music" or "culture" by the county's standards.

This is more than a cultural debate, though, because these definitions affect which small Chicago venues are entitled to an exemption from the county's 3 percent amusement tax on cover and ticket charges. Anita Richardson, a hearing officer appointed by the county's Department of Administrative Hearings, seemed to be arguing this morning that only small venues that book chamber orchestras, symphony orchestras, or operas should be entitled to the tax break—those relying instead on "rap music, country music, and rock 'n' roll" in addition to electronic music and DJ performances should have to pay.

"Rap music, country music, and rock 'n' roll" do not fall under the purview of "fine art," she explained.

Attorneys for Beauty Bar and Evil Olive took issue with the hearing officer's position. (The county is going after those venues and several others, in each case attempting to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in amusement taxes dating back at least six years.) They said the shows booked at the establishments they represent are indeed culturally valuable enough to warrant exemption from the county's amusement tax.

County code stipulates that venues with a capacity of 750 or fewer are not subject to the tax as long as any cover charges or admission fees are for "in person, live theatrical, live musical or other live cultural performances." A separate section of the code defines live music and live cultural performances as "any of the disciplines which are commonly regarded as part of the fine arts, such as live theater, music, opera, drama, comedy, ballet, modern or traditional dance, and book or poetry readings."

Cook County commissioner John Fritchey says he hopes to gain support from his colleagues on the Cook County Board to amend the county's ordinance to reflect a city rule that includes amusement-tax exemptions for live DJ and other musical performances at small venues.
...
During this morning's proceedings, Beauty Bar attorney Matt Ryan argued that the Department of Administrative Hearings "shouldn't be in the business" of determining what is and what is not fine art. If it's music, he said, it should be exempt.

"Your argument is honestly a stretch," Richardson countered. "I'm going to be looking for some rather persuasive legal arguments that will persuade me . . . that all music falls within the category of any of the disciplines regarded as fine arts."

Ryan and an attorney for Evil Olive, Sean Mulroney (who's also a co-owner of Wicker Park venue Double Door), said that at a hearing scheduled for October 17 the two establishments will present evidence, including live music and testimony from a musicologist, in an effort to budge the hearing officer from her opinion regarding the cultural value of DJ performances.

[El Guapo]

What are the county official's views on the propriety of kids being on her lawn?

[hepcat]

Cook County sues over musical performances defined as not 'fine art':

I'm guessing someone isn't going to be buying H. Jon Benjamin's new album, I Can't Play Piano.

[Isgrimnur]

They're just technicians.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

The National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private universities are school employees, clearing the way for them to join or form unions that administrators must recognize.
...
The 3-to-1 decision overturns a 2004 Brown University ruling in which the board said grad students engaging in collective bargaining would undermine the nature and purpose of graduate education. Many doctoral programs require students to teach or conduct research before earning their degrees, and as a result, universities argue that they have an educational, not economic, relationship with those students.

Teaching and research assistants at Columbia University and the New School in New York reignited the fight two years ago by filing separate petitions with the board to join the United Auto Workers. Although a regional board director rejected their bids last fall, the full board picked up the case, inviting students, unions and universities to submit briefs.

Stanford University, the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology and the entire Ivy League submitted a brief arguing that involving students in the bargaining process would disrupt operations, if they want to negotiate the length of a class, amount of grading or what’s included in curriculum. Bringing more people to the table, they said, could lead to lengthy and expensive bargaining to the detriment of all students.

[stessier]

Cook County sues over musical performances defined as not 'fine art':

I'm guessing someone isn't going to be buying H. Jon Benjamin's new album, I Can't Play Piano.

That's pretty awesome.

[Kraken]

Cook County sues over musical performances defined as not 'fine art':

I'm guessing someone isn't going to be buying H. Jon Benjamin's new album, I Can't Play Piano.

That's pretty awesome.

Hey! I can't play piano either. Maybe people will pay me not to try?

[hepcat]

I know I'm taking this way off topic, but this will be my last post on the matter:

Here's the NPR interview with Benjamin on the work he did on this "album".

[Max Peck]

Zephyr Teachout (who has the best name of any politician, ever) cuts out the middleman, and instead of challenging her opponent to a debate she challenges the billionaire who donated $500k to her opponent's superPAC.

Video of her ad, courtesy of Cory Doctorow.

[Defiant]

If she wants to cut out the middlemen, shouldn't the debate be between that guy and one of the people who donated $15 to her?

Personally, I'd rather hear from the candidate than from their supporters, but then I assume the whole challenge is for optics, not for a real debate of the issues.

[Max Peck]

If she wants to cut out the middlemen, shouldn't the debate be between that guy and one of the people who donated $15 to her?

Personally, I'd rather hear from the candidate than from their supporters, but then I assume the whole challenge is for optics, not for a real debate of the issues.

It's a gimmick to draw attention to the issue of special interests having an allegedly undue influence on public policy by making large donations to pliable politicians. She contends her opponent doesn't have any positions of his own, but is taking those dictated by a big-money backer. Whether it's a clever gimmick is obviously in the eye of the beholder.

[El Guapo]

Rush Limbaugh has exposed Obama's latest sinister plot: mass lesbian infiltration of the agriculture sector.

[hepcat]

He's had a hard on for lesbians and "feminazis" for most of his career, if I'm not mistaken. At one point he called them all "fat alcoholics".

[Holman]

Rush Limbaugh has exposed Obama's latest sinister plot: mass lesbian infiltration of the agriculture sector.

Two suspiciously unhusbanded ladies on my street keep a pig and eight chickens. It's happening!

They are trying to bust up one of the last geographically conservative regions in the country; that’s rural America … So here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up … apparently enough money it make it happen, and the objective here is to attack rural states.

Translation: homosexuals exist, and it's Obama's fault.

[Moliere]

An interesting history on free and common socage aka the property tax.

The Feudal Origins of America’s Most-Hated Tax

[Rip]

Rush Limbaugh has exposed Obama's latest sinister plot: mass lesbian infiltration of the agriculture sector.

Two suspiciously unhusbanded ladies on my street keep a pig and eight chickens. It's happening!

They are trying to bust up one of the last geographically conservative regions in the country; that’s rural America … So here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up … apparently enough money it make it happen, and the objective here is to attack rural states.

Translation: homosexuals exist, and it's Obama's fault.

Individuals can't prosper economically farming, corporations have already eaten that goose.

[Defiant]

Even with all the subsidies we put into it?

88 percent of all U.S. farms are small family farms.

Hmmm.

[El Guapo]

Rush Limbaugh has exposed Obama's latest sinister plot: mass lesbian infiltration of the agriculture sector.

Two suspiciously unhusbanded ladies on my street keep a pig and eight chickens. It's happening!

They are trying to bust up one of the last geographically conservative regions in the country; that’s rural America … So here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up … apparently enough money it make it happen, and the objective here is to attack rural states.

Translation: homosexuals exist, and it's Obama's fault.

It's worse than that. Not only do homosexuals exist, they even exist in conservative parts of the country.

[Rip]

Even with all the subsidies we put into it?

88 percent of all U.S. farms are small family farms.

Hmmm.

Sure it is now, ask them how they are fairing.

http://bloomp.net/articles/plight_americas_farmers.htm

There are several things that are at issue when it comes to what is effecting the American farmer. These issues are effecting the small independent, local, family farmer, and have caused the number of family farms in America to decrease by 5 million farms since the 1930’s, so that only about 2 million still exist. At the same time, the number of corporate-owned farms has increased by almost 50% just in the last quarter century.

[Isgrimnur]

Funny thing about those corporate farms:

The 2012 US Census of Agriculture indicates that 5.06 percent of US farms are corporate farms. These include family corporations (4.51 percent) and non-family corporations (0.55 percent). Of the family farm corporations, 98 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders. Of the non-family farm corporations, 90 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders.

So 90% of corporate farms are still family-owned.

[Defiant]

I'm also not sure why corporate farms (family owned or not) should inherently be considered to be a negative. Unless they were doing something bad in addition to simply existing.

[Kraken]

Rush Limbaugh has exposed Obama's latest sinister plot: mass lesbian infiltration of the agriculture sector.

Two suspiciously unhusbanded ladies on my street keep a pig and eight chickens. It's happening!

They are trying to bust up one of the last geographically conservative regions in the country; that’s rural America … So here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up … apparently enough money it make it happen, and the objective here is to attack rural states.

Translation: homosexuals exist, and it's Obama's fault.

It's worse than that. Not only do homosexuals exist, they even exist in conservative parts of the country.

It's a well-known fact that the Reagan administration invented homosexuality as a means of spreading AIDS. And the CIA something-something too. As an oldster myself, I can personally attest that there were no gays before the 1980s.

[Rip]

Funny thing about those corporate farms:

The 2012 US Census of Agriculture indicates that 5.06 percent of US farms are corporate farms. These include family corporations (4.51 percent) and non-family corporations (0.55 percent). Of the family farm corporations, 98 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders. Of the non-family farm corporations, 90 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders.

So 90% of corporate farms are still family-owned.

The real money is being made by the corporations that hold those farms hostage. Cargill, Mosanto, ADM, and the like.

This was in 1999 and the issues discussed in it have only gotten worse.

http://www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/coop.pdf

Most farm organizations and farmers movements originated from farmers beliefs that they were treated unfairly in the marketplace.

For over a century, farmers have felt that suppliers of certain inputs needed by farmers, such as bankers and farm equipment manufactures, received a disproportionate share of the profits from food production.

They also believed that the buyers of their products, the processing firms and the transportation firms which moved the farm products from the farm to the consumer --- a group often referred to as "middlemen," earned an unfair share of the consumer's dollar relative to what farmers received for their contribution.

[Isgrimnur]

So the farmers are professional victims. Got it.

[tjg_marantz]

So the farmers are professional victims. Got it.

Farmers, gays. Same thing.

[hepcat]

I don't care what the hell any of you say on the matter, but lesbian corn just tastes different than hetero corn.

[GreenGoo]

I don't care what the hell any of you say on the matter, but lesbian corn just tastes different than hetero corn.

It's the flannel.

[Defiant]

Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) daughter may have to explain to Congress why her company hiked up the price of EpiPens, Bloomberg News is reporting.

Heather Bresch serves as the CEO of Mylan, which acquired EpiPen in 2007. Since then, the device's cost has increased 400 percent, from $57 to more than $500.

link


(Wouldn't that be more like 800%?)

[Rip]

I don't care what the hell any of you say on the matter, but lesbian corn just tastes different than hetero corn.

Why do you hate asexual corn?

[hepcat]

Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) daughter may have to explain to Congress why her company hiked up the price of EpiPens, Bloomberg News is reporting.

Heather Bresch serves as the CEO of Mylan, which acquired EpiPen in 2007. Since then, the device's cost has increased 400 percent, from $57 to more than $500.

link


(Wouldn't that be more like 800%?)

I hope this results in some heads rolling. There's no excuse for that level of price gouging for something that has been on the market for decades.

[Defiant]

There's no excuse for that level of price gouging for something that has been on the market for decades.

I'm willing to listen before condemning. If there were a shortage, for example, that could partly explain rising prices (eg, in the past, there have been price spikes in the cost of computer memory for that reason).

[Isgrimnur]

Yeah, but that usually requires earthquakes in Taiwan.

[Jaymann]

There's no excuse for that level of price gouging for something that has been on the market for decades.

I'm willing to listen before condemning. If there were a shortage, for example, that could partly explain rising prices (eg, in the past, there have been price spikes in the cost of computer memory for that reason).

It was just a cash grab.

[gilraen]

There's no excuse for that level of price gouging for something that has been on the market for decades.

I'm willing to listen before condemning. If there were a shortage, for example, that could partly explain rising prices (eg, in the past, there have been price spikes in the cost of computer memory for that reason).

There's no shortage of the actual drug compound (it's pretty cheap by itself). The price gouging is specifically for the injector pens that Mylan developed. It's not like you're going to send your kid to school with a syringe and a vial.

[hepcat]

They're in crisis mode now. They just issued a statement that they'll be cutting the cost by half. Sometimes a firestorm can do good, it seems. Although I still think they're snakes.

It was just a cash grab.

That whole thing reads like a check list of how to be a scumbag.

[LordMortis]

When NPR first reported this in July, she said two things

1) Most people who can't afford epipens get them for free, whatever that means. It never address the people getting gouged or the people who both can't afford then and have to pay for them.
2) The 600% price increase was due to a better delivery system Mylan had devised that saves more lives.


You wonder why there is continued outrage against the bipartisan system we have in DC? Why voters are willing to eat shit to try and keep wallstreet from sleeping with DC? She's a shining example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virg ... ontroversy

I can't speak to how accurate the rawstory are, but they report that if she gets drummed out over this, she'll get paid $61 million in compensation for this fiasco.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/this-ph ... e-manchin/

If Mylan loses too much value, it could struggle to defend itself from a future hostile takeover. But Bresch herself is well-insured: According to a recent analysis from Bloomberg, if she's deposed in a merger, she's in line for a $61.5 million golden parachute.

I don't know what the solution is but our leadership ignores the problems as they get worse excepting individual outcries on social media fueled by small stories. I don't see of my viable candidates in 2016 at the federal level making it any better. This is the system we've bought and paid for and have gone in to debt to.

[gbasden]

I don't know what the solution is but our leadership ignores the problems as they get worse excepting individual outcries on social media fueled by small stories. I don't see of my viable candidates in 2016 at the federal level making it any better. This is the system we've bought and paid for and have gone in to debt to.

I think it's crap that she gets a huge golden parachute, but how is that the fault of our elected leaders? Personally, I'd love to see some kind of law that limited executive compensation, but then again I've been told I'm a pinko commie who hates the free market. Are you proposing some kind of legislation to ban this kind of thing?