New video, uploaded onto Youtube on Monday, offers a rare glimpse inside the cockpit of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber for the first time in the thirty-year history of the Air Force’s most secretive stealth program.
FIlmed by Dallas-based film producer Jeff Bolton, the Air Force allowed him to become the first civilian to fly and film aboard the highly classified jet.
Bolton is currently producing a twelve-part television series called the “Guardians: A Mission For Peace,” which examines the role and mission of American nuclear forces in the 21st century.
The video was taken in 2018, shows Bolton aboard a B-2A with the 509th Bomb Wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. The short, seven-second video, gives viewers the first-ever look inside the cockpit.
“In an era of rising tensions between global nuclear powers — the United States, China, Russia, and North Korea — this timely video of is a vivid reminder of the B-2’s unique capabilities,” Bolton said in a statement. “No other stealth bombers are known to exist in the world.”
Another video from Bolton shows internal and external footage of the B-2’s refueling sequence.
“The workload in there for two people is just outrageous. The systems and processes that you have to understand to operate the jet are enormous. The teamwork and coordination involved between the ground and the pilots and between the pilots themselves, between the planners and the pilots – I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said in a Defense News interview.
The B-2 Spirit is a heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed to penetrate regions that are defended by advanced missile defense systems. The bomber can carry conventional and nuclear payloads. The advanced aircraft is a cornerstone of America’s nuclear deterrence capabilities.
Watch the full reveal video:
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WhrPWv Tyler Durden
A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of 394 likely New Hampshire Republican voters released Tuesday is showing more bad news for GOP challenger Bill Weld in his own backyard: 72.3 percent favor President Donald Trump, while just 16.5 percent back the former two-term governor of Massachusetts. When fence-sitters John Kasich and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan are thrown in, Weld slips to third place behind the CNN commentator, 7.9 percent to Kasich’s 9.1, more than 60 percentage points behind the incumbent.
Like many of Trump’s most fervent political opponents, Kasich and Hogan had been hoping that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation would dramatically alter the political landscape, giving them an opening against an otherwise overwhelming favorite busy stacking his party’s deck. Well, so much for that. The official Hogan position these days is “seriously considering” but needs to see a “path to victory”; meanwhile, Kasich hype man John Weaver keeps hyping every new some-conservatives-don’t-like-Trump poll, as his meal ticket gets paid for repeating on CNN that “all of my options remain on the table.”
Weld, who told me in late February that “I’m not waiting to see what happens with the Mueller investigation, because I know all I need to know about the rule of law,” has since his April 15 official announcement been ratcheting up his Trump/Russia criticism, while fundraising, he claims, is “in the millions.””It’s time for Trump to resign,” he wrote last week for the NeverTrumpers over at The Bulwark (whose founder Bill Kristol, meanwhile, keeps pining for Nikki Haley to jump into the race).
Weld hired Robert Mueller in 1990 as his deputy at the Justice Department (fun fact: Mueller’s only reported political contribution was to Weld’s losing Senate race against John Kerry back in the ’90s). So I asked him while guest-hosting Sirius XM Insight’s Stand UP! with Pete Dominick last Thursday what (if any) special insights he has on the special counsel’s work.
“I think the whole conspiracy with Russia issue is gone,” Weld said. “Mueller is a very thorough prosecutor, found no evidence of that. If he didn’t find any evidence of that, that didn’t happen.” However: “He didn’t say Trump is guilty of obstruction, [but] he puts out all the evidence.” More:
I can tell you, it’s very obvious that the evidence goes well beyond what’s required to charge the president with obstruction of justice. It goes well beyond anything President Richard Nixon ever did. What the Mueller report says at the end of Volume Two is, we would have liked to have come to a conclusion that the president is not guilty of obstruction of justice, but we were unable to come to that view. They didn’t pull the trigger, because they thought they couldn’t charge the president. If you read Volume Two, it’s very clear that the president committed the offense of obstruction of justice.
I asked Weld to address the objection that obstruction is a dubious charge when, unlike in the case of the Watergate burglary, there is no underlying crime. “Well, that’s not the law,” he said. More:
I realize that’s the theory advanced by Bill Barr, now Attorney General Barr, in his June 2018 19-page memo for the president’s eyes, which wound up with him getting selected to be attorney general. … It’s as though he never read United States vs. Nixon, the summer of 1974 case, decided unanimously by an eight to nothing Supreme Court, saying, “Nixon, you’ve got to turn over those tapes in response to the subpoena, or you’re going to be guilty of contempt of Congress.”
Nixon, as I’ve said, had self-awareness and a sense of shame, whatever you want to call it. He turned them over right away. He resigned August 9th; I think that opinion was July 24th or something like that. That was a huge earthquake around the Supreme Court’s holding, that the president is not above the law. Part of their rationale was that this is pursuant to a legitimate criminal inquiry, there was some evidence, etc. etc. In other words, they went into exactly the sort of thing that Mr. Barr says you can’t go into. He says, once the president does something, you can’t examine the motivations or the circumstances surrounding it. It’s just pure executive power. You can’t even cross examine him on that.
Weld’s bottom line: “Mueller showed obstructive acts. He recited enough to show corrupt intent as well. That’s all there. The only thing that stopped him was this internal Justice Department opinion from 20 years ago. I would not have relied on that myself.”
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2ZOYGUC
via IFTTT
A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of 394 likely New Hampshire Republican voters released Tuesday is showing more bad news for GOP challenger Bill Weld in his own backyard: 72.3 percent favor President Donald Trump, while just 16.5 percent back the former two-term governor of Massachusetts. When fence-sitters John Kasich and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan are thrown in, Weld slips to third place behind the CNN commentator, 7.9 percent to Kasich’s 9.1, more than 60 percentage points behind the incumbent.
Like many of Trump’s most fervent political opponents, Kasich and Hogan had been hoping that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation would dramatically alter the political landscape, giving them an opening against an otherwise overwhelming favorite busy stacking his party’s deck. Well, so much for that. The official Hogan position these days is “seriously considering” but needs to see a “path to victory”; meanwhile, Kasich hype man John Weaver keeps hyping every new some-conservatives-don’t-like-Trump poll, as his meal ticket gets paid for repeating on CNN that “all of my options remain on the table.”
Weld, who told me in late February that “I’m not waiting to see what happens with the Mueller investigation, because I know all I need to know about the rule of law,” has since his April 15 official announcement been ratcheting up his Trump/Russia criticism, while fundraising, he claims, is “in the millions.””It’s time for Trump to resign,” he wrote last week for the NeverTrumpers over at The Bulwark (whose founder Bill Kristol, meanwhile, keeps pining for Nikki Haley to jump into the race).
Weld hired Robert Mueller in 1990 as his deputy at the Justice Department (fun fact: Mueller’s only reported political contribution was to Weld’s losing Senate race against John Kerry back in the ’90s). So I asked him while guest-hosting Sirius XM Insight’s Stand UP! with Pete Dominick last Thursday what (if any) special insights he has on the special counsel’s work.
“I think the whole conspiracy with Russia issue is gone,” Weld said. “Mueller is a very thorough prosecutor, found no evidence of that. If he didn’t find any evidence of that, that didn’t happen.” However: “He didn’t say Trump is guilty of obstruction, [but] he puts out all the evidence.” More:
I can tell you, it’s very obvious that the evidence goes well beyond what’s required to charge the president with obstruction of justice. It goes well beyond anything President Richard Nixon ever did. What the Mueller report says at the end of Volume Two is, we would have liked to have come to a conclusion that the president is not guilty of obstruction of justice, but we were unable to come to that view. They didn’t pull the trigger, because they thought they couldn’t charge the president. If you read Volume Two, it’s very clear that the president committed the offense of obstruction of justice.
I asked Weld to address the objection that obstruction is a dubious charge when, unlike in the case of the Watergate burglary, there is no underlying crime. “Well, that’s not the law,” he said. More:
I realize that’s the theory advanced by Bill Barr, now Attorney General Barr, in his June 2018 19-page memo for the president’s eyes, which wound up with him getting selected to be attorney general. … It’s as though he never read United States vs. Nixon, the summer of 1974 case, decided unanimously by an eight to nothing Supreme Court, saying, “Nixon, you’ve got to turn over those tapes in response to the subpoena, or you’re going to be guilty of contempt of Congress.”
Nixon, as I’ve said, had self-awareness and a sense of shame, whatever you want to call it. He turned them over right away. He resigned August 9th; I think that opinion was July 24th or something like that. That was a huge earthquake around the Supreme Court’s holding, that the president is not above the law. Part of their rationale was that this is pursuant to a legitimate criminal inquiry, there was some evidence, etc. etc. In other words, they went into exactly the sort of thing that Mr. Barr says you can’t go into. He says, once the president does something, you can’t examine the motivations or the circumstances surrounding it. It’s just pure executive power. You can’t even cross examine him on that.
Weld’s bottom line: “Mueller showed obstructive acts. He recited enough to show corrupt intent as well. That’s all there. The only thing that stopped him was this internal Justice Department opinion from 20 years ago. I would not have relied on that myself.”
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2ZOYGUC
via IFTTT
The simmering feud between Ottawa and Beijing that erupted after Canadian authorities arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou may have disappeared from the headlines…but it’s far from over. To wit, on Tuesday, the Jiangmen Intermediate People’s Court sentenced another Canadian to death on drug trafficking charges, making him the second Canadian national to receive a death sentenced in the past year.
According to the Globe and Mail, the Chinese court, in Guangdong province, accused Fan of leading what it called the “extraordinarily serious transnational trafficking and manufacturing of narcotics.” The case dates back to 2012.
The court sentenced another conspirator to death, but it didn’t disclose his nationality. Several others, including American Mark Swiden and four Mexicans, were also sentenced on drug charges Tuesday. Swiden was given a suspended death sentence, an effective life sentence, but the sentences for the others weren’t disclosed – though the court said the minimum sentence was life imprisonment, according to Reuters.
Between July and November of 2012, the court said, the group manufactured 63.83 kilograms of methamphetamine and 365.9 grams of dimethyl amphetamine. However, most of the details on the case available in the West have come through Swiden’s family, who have proclaimed his innocence. The businessman was arrested despite the fact that no drugs were found on him or in his hotel room; police said they found drugs on an interpreter, who implicated Swiden in the scheme.
Following Meng’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 1, Chinese police arrested two other Canadian nationals, including a former diplomat and a businessman who organized trips to North Korea, and is charging them with threatening national security. Both men remain in custody even as Ottawa has demanded their release.
Meng, who is currently out on bail in Vancouver, has denied allegations that she misled banks about Huawei’s business in Iran, violating US sanctions. President Trump once said that Meng’s case could be used as a “bargaining chip” in trade negotiations.
China, which through its English-language press had threatened “severe” retaliation against Canada for the arrest of Meng, who in addition to being Huawei’s CFO is also the daughter of its founder, a Chinese business luminary, has also apparently retaliated against Canada by cancelling Richardson International’s license to ship canola to China.
China has previously executed at least two Canadian citizens for drug crimes.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2vqSswu Tyler Durden
Nothing quite says “things are great” in your business and industry more than an absolute blowout fire sale of all of your inventory. This is what Tesla is set to announce regarding its solar panels and related equipment on Tuesday, according to the NYT.
Tesla plans to announce that it has started selling its solar panels and related equipment for up to 38% less than the national average price by standardizing systems. Customers are going to need to order the equipment online and Tesla will be offering systems only in 4 kilowatt increments or 12 panels.
The drop in price is stunning: not unlike the auto business, the solar business is a capital intensive industry with tight margins, where companies perform intense analysis to find even the smallest synergies and cut off pennies per watt in cost. To undercut the national average by 38% is a nearly unthinkable strategy, assuming Tesla still strives to make money from this segment.
Meanwhile, the company’s solution to make this happen is about as novel of an idea as building a production tent.
Tesla is going to be asking customers to do some of the work for them. Customers will be asked to do some of the installation basics, such as taking photos of their own electric meters and other equipment to provide to the company. Customers could then pay $1.75 to $1.99 per watt after all of these changes, according to the company. The average residential solar customer pays $2.85 per watt, including $1 for permitting and inspections, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Sanjay Shah, who runs Tesla’s solar business said: “We spent hours and hours and days and days on the process. It adds cost. It adds time. We needed to have a very streamlined process.”
Ever since Tesla’s “strategic” bail out purchase of Solar City, the energy portion of the business has been volatile and trending toward a decline. Back in February 2018, the company said it would sell panels in 800 Home Depot stores – that idea lasted until June, only 4 months later, when they ended the partnership. Solar’s decline was confirmed again by Tesla’s 10-Q, filed just days ago, showing an anemic number for its Solar MW Deployed.
The solar roof shingles that Tesla pitched to the public about 2 years ago have also not come to fruition yet. Finally, Tesla faces additional pressure from its Buffalo factory where, due to taking on significant subsidies, it needs to rush to meet certain hiring and investment requirements. Musk was recently spotted in Buffalo.
In a thread from one Twitter user, they noted that “hospitals don’t cut costs by asking their patients to set up their own X-Rays”:
5/ Thats not how to solar industry works folks. You cant cut corners and pass off to a customer what needs to be done by a professional.
Hospitals do not cut costs by asking their patients to set up their own X-Rays.$TSLA$TSLAQ
They also asked important questions like whether or not these new changes could wind up being more trouble than they’re worth:
6/ In the end how much will this actually save? How much time will be wasted instructing the customer, waiting for the customer to provide the measurements, and asking to redo/send additional info?
Will this give Tesla the proper info to bring the right materials/equipment?
Offering the latest hint at the true depths of the White House’s frustration over the ongoing trade talks with Beijing, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said during an interview at the Milken Institute that the talks couldn’t go on “forever” and would be resolved “one way or another” during the next two weeks.
Echoing a remark made a few weeks back by President Trump, Mulvaney added that the US wouldn’t do a deal with China if it’s not “great”.
Whether or not he intended his remarks to sound like the administration is souring on the prospects for a deal, that’s how the market took it, and stocks moved lower on the headline.
Steve Mnuchin and Robert Lighthizer started the latest round of talks in Beijing on Tuesday, and it’s expected that Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will travel to Washington next week for what the administration hopes will be the ‘final’ round of talks, after which plans for a Trump-Xi summit can be announced.
Watch the rest of Mulvaney’s interview with Maria Bartiromo below:
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VzuEFj Tyler Durden
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–New York) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) will be meeting with President Donald Trump today to discuss a new, bipartisan infrastructure package. If a letter sent to Trump from the two leaders yesterday is any guide, their asks will include new taxes, new spending, and a healthy dose of protectionism.
“The issue of infrastructure spending is a bipartisan Congressional priority and we believe there are significant majorities in both the House and the Senate to take action on this issue,” wrote the two in a Monday letter which argued the country needs to “rebuild its infrastructure to promote commerce, create jobs, advance public health with clean air and clean water, and make our transportation system safer.”
To do this, Pelosi and Schumer listed three priorities any infrastructure package should focus on.
This includes a call for “substantial, new and real revenue”—i.e. tax increases of some form—in order to fund a package “big and bold enough to meet our country’s needs.”
Something big and bold should “go beyond transportation and include broadband, water, schools, housing, and other initiatives,” reads priority number two, which adds that “we must also invest in resiliency and risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change.”
Lastly, any infrastructure package “must have strong Buy America, labor, and women, veteran, and minority-owned business protections” all of which will help make any infrastructure deal “a major jobs and ownership boost for the American people.”
As far as Democratic infrastructure initiatives go, this is all pretty pro forma. Since at least 2017, Democrats have floated various spending plans as a counter to Trump’s famed $1 trillion infrastructure initiative.
Unlike the president’s proposal—which initially was focused mostly on transportation projects, included relatively modest amounts of new federal spending, and contained a number of privatization and deregulatory provisions—Democrats’ plans have called for lots of new federal spending on a wide range of priorities that often stretch the definition of infrastructure.
In March of last year, Senate Democrats floated the idea of a $1 trillion infrastructure package comprised entirely of federal spending, and which echoed many of the priorities advocated in Schumer and Pelosi’s letter, including billions of dollars for schools, affordable housing, and internet infrastructure. This proposal would also have undone some of Republicans’ 2017 corporate tax cuts as well.
In January 2018, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.)—both now presidential contenders—sent a letter to Trump asking that any infrastructure package include stiff Buy America provisions.
More recently, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—also running for president—released her only $1 trillion infrastructure plan that included lots of money for rural broadband, high-speed rail, and schools.
What’s notable about Pelosi and Schumer’s latest pitch to Trump is that, while they might not have moved much on infrastructure, the president seems to be edging closer to them.
Trump’s initial infrastructure proposal from February 2018 included only $200 billion in federal spending, which was supposed to leverage an additional $1.3 trillion in non-federal investment.
It also included calls for exploring the privatization of publicly-owned airports and utilities, streamlining environmental reviews, and shifting from a tax-and-spend model of funding infrastructure to one dominated by public-private partnerships and user fees.
Trump failed to show much interest in advancing his own proposal however, and it eventually died on the vine. The president has also at times contradicted his own marginally more free market stance on infrastructure by bashing privatization and endorsing a gas tax hike.
Trump’s latest $1 trillion infrastructure proposal—included as part of his March budget request to Congress—was remarkably less detailed than the February 2018 proposal, and put much less emphasis on reforming the way infrastructure dollars are spent.
That suggests the president and Democratic leaders might find enough common ground for some sort of pork-laden infrastructure proposal that pairs some Republican priorities (like spending on rural infrastructure) with Democratic requests for money on transit or broadband. Getting Trump to agree to stiff Buy American provisions would not be a tough sell either.
Perhaps the biggest sticking point would likely be the tax increases Democrats are asking for, which would cut against Republicans’ one real legislative achievement in recent years.
Provided that the issue can be solved, a bipartisan infrastructure bill heavy on federal spending and light on reform might be in the cards.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2ZMCD12
via IFTTT
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–New York) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) will be meeting with President Donald Trump today to discuss a new, bipartisan infrastructure package. If a letter sent to Trump from the two leaders yesterday is any guide, their asks will include new taxes, new spending, and a healthy dose of protectionism.
“The issue of infrastructure spending is a bipartisan Congressional priority and we believe there are significant majorities in both the House and the Senate to take action on this issue,” wrote the two in a Monday letter which argued the country needs to “rebuild its infrastructure to promote commerce, create jobs, advance public health with clean air and clean water, and make our transportation system safer.”
To do this, Pelosi and Schumer listed three priorities any infrastructure package should focus on.
This includes a call for “substantial, new and real revenue”—i.e. tax increases of some form—in order to fund a package “big and bold enough to meet our country’s needs.”
Something big and bold should “go beyond transportation and include broadband, water, schools, housing, and other initiatives,” reads priority number two, which adds that “we must also invest in resiliency and risk mitigation of our current infrastructure to deal with climate change.”
Lastly, any infrastructure package “must have strong Buy America, labor, and women, veteran, and minority-owned business protections” all of which will help make any infrastructure deal “a major jobs and ownership boost for the American people.”
As far as Democratic infrastructure initiatives go, this is all pretty pro forma. Since at least 2017, Democrats have floated various spending plans as a counter to Trump’s famed $1 trillion infrastructure initiative.
Unlike the president’s proposal—which initially was focused mostly on transportation projects, included relatively modest amounts of new federal spending, and contained a number of privatization and deregulatory provisions—Democrats’ plans have called for lots of new federal spending on a wide range of priorities that often stretch the definition of infrastructure.
In March of last year, Senate Democrats floated the idea of a $1 trillion infrastructure package comprised entirely of federal spending, and which echoed many of the priorities advocated in Schumer and Pelosi’s letter, including billions of dollars for schools, affordable housing, and internet infrastructure. This proposal would also have undone some of Republicans’ 2017 corporate tax cuts as well.
In January 2018, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.)—both now presidential contenders—sent a letter to Trump asking that any infrastructure package include stiff Buy America provisions.
More recently, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—also running for president—released her only $1 trillion infrastructure plan that included lots of money for rural broadband, high-speed rail, and schools.
What’s notable about Pelosi and Schumer’s latest pitch to Trump is that, while they might not have moved much on infrastructure, the president seems to be edging closer to them.
Trump’s initial infrastructure proposal from February 2018 included only $200 billion in federal spending, which was supposed to leverage an additional $1.3 trillion in non-federal investment.
It also included calls for exploring the privatization of publicly-owned airports and utilities, streamlining environmental reviews, and shifting from a tax-and-spend model of funding infrastructure to one dominated by public-private partnerships and user fees.
Trump failed to show much interest in advancing his own proposal however, and it eventually died on the vine. The president has also at times contradicted his own marginally more free market stance on infrastructure by bashing privatization and endorsing a gas tax hike.
Trump’s latest $1 trillion infrastructure proposal—included as part of his March budget request to Congress—was remarkably less detailed than the February 2018 proposal, and put much less emphasis on reforming the way infrastructure dollars are spent.
That suggests the president and Democratic leaders might find enough common ground for some sort of pork-laden infrastructure proposal that pairs some Republican priorities (like spending on rural infrastructure) with Democratic requests for money on transit or broadband. Getting Trump to agree to stiff Buy American provisions would not be a tough sell either.
Perhaps the biggest sticking point would likely be the tax increases Democrats are asking for, which would cut against Republicans’ one real legislative achievement in recent years.
Provided that the issue can be solved, a bipartisan infrastructure bill heavy on federal spending and light on reform might be in the cards.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2ZMCD12
via IFTTT
The theater department of Columbia College in Chicago attempted to stage a production of “HOME/LAND,” which is about the experience of Palestinian and Latino immigrants in America. But no students of Palestinian descent tried out for the play, and so white actors were cast in these roles.
That was just one of the terrible injustices visited upon the minority community by the play’s director, Catherine Slade, according to aggrieved students who told the campus newspaper, “It got to a place where nobody felt safe.” Yes, their very safety was affected by the director’s habit of “being aggressive and speaking badly” about the cast.
Perhaps Slade—a black woman, theater professor, and vocal coach—was critical of the cast members because they were insubordinate and easily offended, quickly bringing their issues with her to the Mosaic Theater Collective, Asian Student Organization, Black Student Union, and Muslim Student Association.
“There was no trying to collaborate with us,” one actress, Sophia Alonzo, said of Slade. “There was no trying to see if [she was] doing the right thing. It almost felt like we were just being used as pawns. It’s hard because these are real stories to our families and our background that were [not treated as] valid.”
It sounds to me like these students objected to being directed at all. They also objected to white actors reciting their lines in Spanish and were offended by Slade’s suggestion that several white members of the cast could pass as Latin or Palestinian.
The paper has more:
The Chronicle contacted Slade on Saturday, April 20 and requested an interview, to which she initially agreed. On Monday, April 23, the News Office intervened and eventually denied interviews with Slade, Theater Department Interm Chair Peter Carpenter and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Scholar-in-Residence for the Theater Department Khalid Long. After repeated requests for a statement, the News Office supplied one Friday, April 26, in the evening shortly before The Chronicle’s deadline.
“The Theatre Department is committed to providing students with opportunities to perform in diverse theatre productions,” the statement read. “The ‘HOME/LAND’ script called for Latinx, Palestinian and Caucasian characters. All students who auditioned were cast in the production. However, not all of the students who auditioned were of the same race and/or ethnicity as the characters identified in the script. Indeed, no Palestinian students auditioned for the play, and as such, non-Palestinian actors were assigned to those roles. Several Latinx students who initially auditioned for the production didn’t pursue participation.”
Recall that for the modern intersectional left, race is a fundamental, immutable building block of identity. This puts the craft of acting in a tough spot—any attempt to depict or portray people of other races is essentially forbidden. My forthcoming book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump (pre-order here), contains several examples of theater professors giving up in frustration after their student actors and actresses object to playing anyone different from themselves and revolt against negative feedback, which triggers their mental health issues.
Working hard and doing what you’re told is no longer yielding the promised American Dream of security, agency and liberty.
Volume One of Fernand Braudel’s oft-recommended (by me) trilogy Civilization & Capitalism, 15th to 18th Century is titled The Structures of Everyday Life. The book describes how life slowly became better and freer as the roots of modern capitalism and liberty spread in western Europe, slowly destabilizing and obsoleting the sclerotic tyrannies of feudalism.
Today I want to discuss the erosion of everyday life as a manifestation of the endgame of the current version of state capitalism, more precisely neofeudal state-cartel financialization, which combines financial predation of the home (core) economy and global exploitation of the Periphery (a.k.a. neocolonialism.)
Unlike the era Braudel describes, our era is characterized by the decline of liberty and the distortion of capitalism to serve the few at the expense of the many.
The over-used analogy of the boiled frog remains apt in understanding the erosion of everyday life: everyday life has become increasingly more difficult, more stressful, less rewarding financially, more deranging and less free for the past two generations. This erosion has gathered momentum in the 21st century as the status quo has ramped up its dysfunctional dynamics to keep the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, power and liberty in place.
Consider the costs and capital flows of planned obsolescence. The consumer, who once was implicitly assured decades of reliable service from an American-made appliance, now gets an appliance that rarely lasts more than a decade, regardless of the brand or origin.
In the relentless drive for higher profits, every component is outsourced to the lowest cost supplier. I can assure you nobody checks the electronic components for durability; the circuit boards that operate your dryer, washer, refrigerator, etc. are checked to make sure they function coming out of the factory (though even this step is slipshod), but that’s it.
Since I’ve replaced defective boards in appliances, I can report that 1) the labor component of the repair is insanely expensive (which is why I did it myself, of course) 2) the boards are insanely expensive–$150 for what I estimate is $10 of commodity chips embedded in a $5 board, to more than $300, depending on the age and brand and 3) replacing the board is no guarantee the new board will last more than a few years, being made of the cheapest components in the lowest-quality factories.
This is the only profitable model of late-stage state-cartel corporate capitalism: force the consumer to upgrade their perfectly functional mobile phone, tablet, etc., every few years, or engineer the appliance/device to fail in a few years.
The favored corporate exploitation/predation mechanism is the long-term maintenance plan: since consumer, distributor (Best Buy et al.) and manufacturer all know the product has been engineered to fail in a few years, consumers are blackmailed into buying incredibly costly long-term maintenance plans, which work for the blackmailers because:
1) many consumers will lose the paperwork or get confused by the claims process and give up
2) other consumers will just decide to buy a new product, having been conned by “new features” or the ease of buying new rather than being on hold for hours trying to get Corporate America to do anything remotely beneficial to customers and
3) if the consumer is especially obdurate and grinds through all the barriers Corporate America sets up to wear them down and gets a repair person to actually show up, the corporation pays its actual cost for the replacement part–$15–not the $150 the consumer is charged should they fail to buy the long-term maintenance plan.
Here’s a related issue: corporations have made it essentially impossible to repair or service their products unless you are willing to jump through numerous hoops. I have personally observed how auto manufacturers have covered the oil plug with extraneous shielding, using multiple connectors to make it even more difficult for owners to perform the once-simple core of changing the oil in their vehicle.
I could go on, but those of you who actually maintain and repair stuff know there is no good engineering reason for the rising difficulty of performing basic maintenance and repair.
Traffic congestion. When did two-hour or even three-hour round-trip commutes become a standard feature of American life? When did subways and trains move from being occasionally comfortable to standing room only?
Workloads. When did the workloads expected of private sector workers become heavier (outside a few islands of state-funded torpor) as a matter of course?
Loss of purchasing power, a.k.a. inflation. While we’re constantly assured by the federal government and the corporate media that inflation is 2%, real-world prices are leaping higher. (And yet somehow this bogus 2% inflation rate isn’t “fake news”?) As the chart below illustrates, healthcare costs have been outpacing modest wage increases for years if not decades.
Loss of political agency: no matter who you vote for, the dysfunctional, grossly unequal status quo grinds on unchanged. No matter how many more bonds you pass, giving local governments billions of dollars to fix traffic congestion, homelessness, public education, crumbling infrastructure, rundown parks, etc., nothing ever actually gets better.
Financial insecurity: if you happen to master entering and exiting the asset bubble inflations and bursts just right, you can maintain some financial security–but don’t make a single mistake in buying or selling the bubble du jour, or you’ll be wiped out.
Nonsensical narratives: Here’s a simple test to prove the derangement caused by the ceaseless hyping of nonsensical narratives: stop watching “the news” and indeed all social media and all corporate media–go cold turkey other than following your local college and high school sports.
Do you feel less upset, less stressed, less deranged, less angry, less hopeless? Of course you do.
I could go on, but you get the picture: everyday life is eroding, getting harder and less free for the bottom 95%. And even the top 5% has increasingly had enough: working hard and doing what you’re told is no longer yielding the promised American Dream of security, agency and liberty.
* * *
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GKeEXJ Tyler Durden
