New Economic Perspectives has the article Hillary Remains Clueless About Regulation on the 28th Anniversary of the Keating Five Meeting by William K Black.

I thank Samantha Lachman for her April 9, 2015 column entitled “As Clinton Tries To Win Over Progressives, She Might Want To Distance Herself From This Economic Adviser.”
.
.
.
Lachman’s column explains that Hillary Clinton chose Robert Hormats as one of her most prominent economic advisors.
.
.
.
Lachman is correct about the content of Hormats’ policy positions. But here are the key factors I would urge readers (and potential campaign supporters and voters) to consider that arise from these positions.

1. The problem with Hormats is not that he will upset “progressives.” The problem is that he is incompetent, dishonest, and supports policies that have devastated and will continue to devastate our Nation and the people of the world. Hormats has been wrong on every important economic issue – for decades. That should upset everyone regardless of their politics.

.
.
.

1. The real problem is the Clintons.

If I can get you to read this article and understand 10% of it, I cannot fathom how you could possibly want to vote for Hillary Clinton even for dog catcher, let alone for President.

I left the following comment on Black’s article.

Devastating.  As a fan of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, I have already decided that Hillary Clinton is not a person I can vote for.  I knew in a general way that Clinton just did not understand.  This article gives me the specifics that I did not know.

Mark Twain is reputed to have said

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Whether or not Mark Twain said this doesn’t matter.  It is the takeoff point of this post.

I am going to give you the rhyme pattern, and I’d like you comment on the places in history where you can detect that pattern or even some significant parts of the pattern.

• A less powerful societal entity (A) demands that a more powerful entity (B) stops committing a perceived offense against the the less powerful entity (A).
• The more powerful entity (B) refuses to talk to the less powerful one (A) about their demands.
• The less powerful entity (A) commits an escalating series of stealthy violent acts against the powerful one (B) until they get some attention to their grievance.
• Eventually, the more powerful entity (B) decides that the pain is great enough that it would just be better to resolve (A)’s grievance against (B).
• (A) gets their grievance resolved, and they become powerful themselves.
• (A) looks back at how they achieved their goals and resolves never to allow a lesser power to  use the technique against them that they used against (B).
• Along comes an entity (C) that is less powerful than (A) and has a grievance against (A).
• (C) starts to use the tactic against (A) that (A) used successfully against (B).
• With (A)’s resolve based on its historic memory it is  even more intransigent against (C) than (B) was against (A).  They even tell (C) that there is nothing (C) can do to get them to change their mind.
• (C) takes this as a challenge for themselves to find something so horrible to do against (A), that (A) will finally agree to address the grievance.
• An escalating series of violent acts are performed by (A) on (C) in retaliation for the escalating attacks of (C) on (A).

There are only a few inevitable outcomes from this battle.

1. (A) finally gives in and tries to resolve its issues with (C).
2. (A) annihilates (C)
3. (C) annihilates (A)
4. (A) and (C) mutually destruct.

Let the contest begin.  The winner is me, if I can get enough of you to participate to build a long enough list.  At some point we might be able to measure which outcome produces the most happy people, the fewest deaths, and the fewest guilty consciences.  If you have other measures of success, I would be glad to hear them.  Even in scenarios 2 and 3, one side is silenced and the other side is left with a blot on their history that will haunt them (or at least their descendants) forever.

Oh, another winner would be the powerful entity that sees the rhyme emerging, and decides to cut to the resolution phase, and skip the pain of delaying the inevitable.

NPR has the article Transcript: President Obama’s Full NPR Interview On Iran Nuclear Deal. You’ll have to want to find out what the President said, and watch the video, because I am not going to give you any snappy excerpts from the video that let’s you go away thinking you have actually learned something.

NPR’s interview with President Obama focuses on the pact the U.S. and allied nations recently negotiated with Iran. The framework requires the nation to reduce its nuclear capacity in exchange for the lifting of some international sanctions.

Below is a window in which YouTube will display the video.  The video is not coming from me or this blog.

I did find the interviewer as annoying as all media people are these days. I won’t give you the exact words that annoy me, because then you might think you actually learned something without having seen the video. I’ll paraphrase the type of dialogue that annoyed me. The interviewer asks a question. The President answers in detail with a quite reasonable answer. Then the interviewer has a followup question where he asks the President if he really meant to say the stupid thought that is stuck in the interviewer’s brain. The President then has to say that no that isn’t at all what he just said. The President then repeats what he actually said and what he actually meant. This happens a number of times throughout the interview. In fact there are probably few questions that don’t lead to this back and forth.

If you want to hear the soundbite that The Daily Kos trivially focused on, then go read their article. If you need a sound bite to entice you to see the whole interview, then less power to you.

The Jerusalem Post has the story Geologists claim stats, science prove Jesus buried in Jerusalem with wife and supposed son.

I have no idea why I post this article here, except that here might be a use for it someday.

The Friends Of Bernie have posted this on their Facebook page.

He has brief discussions on some important issues. I liked almost all his answers. And to think, the guy has a sense of humor, too.

The New York Times has the story Lincoln Chafee Hits Hillary Clinton on Foundation Donations.

Mr. Chafee said his disagreements with Mrs. Clinton were largely about foreign policy issues rather than domestic. He said he recognized that fund-raising would be a challenge if he decided to run, but that he planned to travel to Iowa, New Hampshire and other primary states to drum up support.

Well, I don’t like her foreign policy, but her Wall Street oriented domestic policy is awful.  How could Lincoln Chafee miss that?

Mr. Chafee was a Republican when in the Senate from 1999 to 2007 and later served one term as governor as an independent. He became a Democrat in 2013.

Now I get it.

USA Today has the story Iran: Lift sanctions immediately or no final nuke deal.

In a televised address Thursday at a ceremony marking Iran’s nuclear technology day, President Hassan Rouhani appeared to rule out a gradual removal of the sanctions, which have hit the nation’s energy and financial sectors hard — and devastated its economy.

“We will not sign any agreement, unless all economic sanctions are totally lifted on the first day of the implementation of the deal,” he said. “We want a win-win deal for all parties involved in the nuclear talks.”

“The Iranian nation has been and will be the victor in the negotiations,” he added.

It all sounded pretty reasonable until that last sentence.  Perhaps something got lost in translation.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

The article shows a tweet from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

All #sanctions should be removed just when the deal is reached. If sanctions removal depends on another process then why we started to talk?

That’s something I have been wondering myself.

As for the negotiations final outcome, I will have to defer to Yogi Berra, who once said “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

I have been thinking of skipping my 50th reunion at MIT since it became KIT (The Koch Institute of Technology).  I was wavering though, because it would be nice to visit with some of my old classmates.

Well, KIT managed to settle it for me with the following flyer they sent to me in email. Notice one of the featured presentations.

• Faculty presentations from the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

The UK Telegraph has the story Alexis Tsipras risks fresh schism with Europe after warning of new Cold War with Putin.

Mr Tsipras also risked opening up a new schism with the European Union, repeating his claim that economic warfare would not resolve Europe’s simmering security problems with its eastern giant, and could presage a new “Cold War in Europe”.

Ahead of the visit, EU officials warned Greece of undermining the continent’s unity over economic sanctions imposed on Moscow in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.

The Kremlin has been courting Greek political support against its Western-backed sanctions, threatening a fresh rupture between the debtor state and the EU.
.
.
.
“If one of the Europe’s leaders acts according to his national interests then it is perceived as a violation of the principle of solidarity – as if the principle of solidarity, as it might seem, was invented only in order to support the Russophobic minority in the European Union,” said Mr Lavrov.

Russian companies would also look to take part in the tenders for planned privatisations of Greece’s strategic assets – including its ports, airports and energy grids. The likes of state-backed Gazprom have already been invited to take part in the exploration of oil and natural gas off Greece’s eastern shore.

I tried to string enough excerpts together to justify my opinion.  I am not sure it completely conveys how I got to the conclusion that I did.

The western oligarchs are trying to rape Greece, but they want Greece to maintain its solidarity with them.  They want to drive Greece into a privatization of its assets at fire-sale prices to the western oligarchs, but Greece may sell them to the Russian oligarchs.

The western oligarchs want to maintain sanctions on Russia so that they can force the Ukraine to take the same deal and eventual rape that they are offering Greece.  Greece may have found an alternative path that frustrates both aims of the western oligarchs.

As they say in this country, “Payback is a bitch.”  Maybe I should have said itch in my comment on the Telegraph web site.

Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Telegraph.

With the notorious nudes they have on page three of some of their newspapers, I didn’t think they would be so sensitive.  Must just be a cultural misunderstanding.

The Daily Kos has the article Sen. Schumer and 7 other Democrats are making a terrible choice siding with GOP on Iran bill.

Chuck Schumer, the expected replacement as top Senate Democrat when Harry Reid retires at the end of his term, has made a big splash in the past few days by saying he supports a bill designed to give Congress the clout to wreck a deal with Iran. He is not, of course, the only Democrat backing the Corker-Menendez bill, S. 615, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. Since March 26, when Schumer quietly signed on as the latest of eight Democratic co-sponsors of the bill, it’s had 21 co-sponsors, including one independent, Sen. Angus King of Maine.

But given his clout, Schumer could be key to making it okay for other Democrats to support the bill, giving it the 67 votes it would need to override the veto that President Obama has vowed to impose.

I always knew there were reasons why I thought Chuck Schumer was a jerk.  This is one of the reasons besides his being the Senator from Wall Street.  I shudder to think what he might say about Elizabeth Warren if only his Wall Street friends were listening.  Is he also the Senator from the military/industrial complex.  He is certainly no friend of Israel in taking this stance.

I hope we can muster enough outcry to prevent Shumer from replacing Harry Reid.  If he did replace Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren might have less reason to want to stay in the Senate and more reason to want to run for President.  That could be a good thing.  Maybe there really is a silver lining in every cloud.