The Huffington Post has the article Trump Promises Truckers Jobs from Tax Cuts, as UPS Invests in Outsourcing Trucking Jobs.

The coming contract battle at UPS involves a new program that was reflected in company job listings, reviewed by TYT, that first began appearing on UPS’s LinkedIn page in August. The program involves holiday-season hiring of non-staff drivers, referred to in the job listings as “Seasonal Personal Vehicle Package Drivers.”

According to the job listings, the company will use not just non-staff drivers, but the drivers’ own vehicles. Both tactics may have implications for the number of jobs held at UPS by full-time staff drivers, mechanics, and other personnel.

So even if tax cuts were to help “create” jobs, they would be at lower salaries and without benefits. This is not going to help bolster the middle class. Before long all the jobs could be at starvation wages, but at least we would all be employed. So busily employed, as a matter of fact, that we wouldn’t have time to protest what they are doing to us.

YouTube has the video Obama Actually Admits He’s A Moderate Republican!.

This is definitely NSFW, but it is an answer to the people who blame me for Trump because I would not vote for Clinton.

I have not figured out how to tell the moderate Republicans running the Democratic Party and all the people who support them, that if they insist on running another candidate like Hillary Clinton, I will not vote for her or for him. Well, I tell them this, but they refuse to listen or believe me.

Truthdig has the article Trump Pushes More Loans on Devastated Puerto Rico.

Despite loud and growing demands that Puerto Rico’s debt be cancelled outright, President Donald Trump is being blasted for doing the exact opposite by calling on Congress to saddle the U.S. territory with even more loans amid a massive humanitarian crisis on the storm-ravaged island.

This is exactly how Puerto Rico got into the financial problems that they were in before the hurricanes. This is the sales pitch the banks give to people who are struggling.

“Oh, so your drowning in debt. Here, we’ll lend you some more money. If we are lucky, you will finally succumb so we can take everything you once had.”

As a bystander, I can see the train wreck coming. All I can do is to shout, “NOOOO, don’t do it.” That’s what I was doing as people were borrowing on the equity in their houses to make up for the raises they weren’t getting at work. From the real estate bubble crash experience, I know that the victims are too desperate to listen to my warnings.

Medium has the article Your app is an onion: Why software projects spiral out of control.

You start with the best of intentions. You hire a developer to build out your startup idea. But almost every week, it feels like the project needs tweaking. Features start creeping in, and the scope slowly expands.

This is why I developed this tool to create outlines in HTM. It is free for the taking.

For the first 30 or so years of my career I worked for people who had enough faith in me that they would let me do proper design before I implemented anything. For the last 6 years of my career, people thought that proper design as described in the article was wasting time. What little design I could do, I had to sneak in and keep hidden from management.

When I had had enough of the insanity, I retired.

YouTube has the video Vegas Shooting Taxi Driver’s Video ! Must Watch B4 Well You Know , The Take Down !.

Cori Langdon at Mandalay Bay In taxi line

As I was watching this, I was thinking that this is too detailed to have been staged.

I don’t know what is the significance of this video. That may only become apparent later, if at all. So here is something for our memory banks as the story unfolds in the corporate media. There is no telling if we will ever get the straight story on this event.

The Ring Of Fire has the article Watch Rachel Maddow Peddle Completely Debunked Story – Redacted Tonight.

There are obviously a lot of people interested in tense relations with Russia. They would be what the Pope calls “blood – soaked arms traders.” Too bad these people own our government and are able to frame our debates by owning our media.

Warning: X-rated for language that you probably hear almost every day.

Slate has the article Partisan Gerrymandering Got the Sotomayor Treatment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor posed a very simple inquiry that cut to the core of the case: “Could you tell me what the value is to democracy from political gerrymandering? How does that help our system of government?”
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Sotomayor then drilled down and posed an even sharper follow-up question to Murphy: “It’s OK to stack the decks so that for 10 years—or an indefinite period of time—one party, even though it gets a minority of votes, can’t get … the majority of seats?”

Murphy couldn’t come up with a truthful answer to any of these questions. Perhaps the Supreme Court can come to the rescue of this country.

Scientific American has the article Black Holes, Cosmic Collisions and the Rippling of Spacetime.

Gravitational wave astronomy, where we view the Universe not in light or particles but by picking up the vibrations of spacetime itself, is a true revolution in our view of the cosmos. We can only guess at what it might show us as we continue to feel our way forward into the vast unknown.

If you want an explanation of the concept of spacetime, look at my previous post CERN scientists simplify space-time in 3 short videos. That should clear up any questions you might have. 🙂

New Economic Perspectives has the article The Poorest Tax Payers to Pay the Most Under Trump Plan.

NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network and says that both Republicans and Democrats are financially illiterate when they speak about the deficit, and Trump’s economic experts are ‘completely disconnected from the real world.’

The title on the YouTube video is Trump’s Tax Plan Increases Marginal Taxes for Only the Poorest Tax Payer.

I was of two minds about posting this video. It has a lot of good information in it, but it has a few flaws. The flaws muddy up the message.

The good stuff you can get from the video include the fact that taxes do redistribute income (lately the redistribution is in the upward direction). Bill Black cares about tax cuts because it just redistributes even more income to the wealthy.

Bill’s explanation of the difference between the deficit and the debt is somewhat off point, but possibly exactly backwards. I am surprised that he, of all people, would confuse that issue. The national debt the accumulation of deficits over the years. I bet he wishes he could take back what he said.

Talking about losing political arguments, the one about taxes not funding spending may be literally correct, but is too strange a claim to be worth using.

Proto Thema has the article Russia writes off over $20bln debt to African countries.

“We have written off more than $20 billion of African countries’ debts as part of an initiative to help out the world’s poorest and most deeply indebted nations,” President Vladimir Putin told reporters after meeting with his Guinean counterpart Alfa Conde on Thursday.

There go those nasty Russians again. Trying to win over the hearts and minds of people by forgiving their countries’ debts. Why we can’t win their hearts and minds by pushing for austerity for those people seems to remain a mystery to our politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike. If the people don’t like austerity we can offer to overthrow their elected governments for them and introduce our own dictators to help them see the light. What’s not to like about what we offer compared to Russia?

Of course there is always this from my quotes page.

James Galbraith – posted here December 19, 2012 – source
A debt that can’t be paid won’t be paid.