The Raw Story has the article Watch this activist politely destroy CNN for racism: ‘Whiteness gets nuance and blackness doesn’t’. The focus is on the following video clip:

One feature of The Raw Story article is that it provides a transcript of the interview. With my aging hearing, there are always a few words that I miss when I watch the video. For instance, I didn’t quite get the last few words in the excerpt below

McKesson slammed the media for what he called “a constant pathologizing of black bodies,” which gave the impression that “when black people assemble, it’s always criminal.”

The last few words are kind of important to the message.

Robert Reich has posted his article Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

He has example after example of gross violations of what you would think are the anti-trust laws. Here is just one of his examples.

Drug companies pay the makers of generic drugs to delay cheaper versions. Such “pay-for-delay” agreements are illegal in other advanced economies, but antitrust enforcement hasn’t laid a finger on them in America. They cost you and me an estimated $3.5 billion a year.

As far as I can tell from the article, the anti-trust laws have not changed. They are just not enforced anymore. Is this something we voted for? Well, yes it is when we vote to put any Republicans (and many Democrats) in office. They just don’t explicitly run on the platform of decimating our anti-trust laws.

This is an issue that must be addressed in the 2016 Presidential campaign.

The Atlantic has the article What If Everybody Didn’t Have to Work to Get Paid?

Scott Santens has been thinking a lot about fish lately. Specifically, he’s been reflecting on the aphorism, “If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he eats for life.” What Santens wants to know is this: “If you build a robot to fish, do all men starve, or do all men eat?”

This is a wonderfully eloquent way of stating a thought process that have I been trying to promote for sometime. The way I have been putting has not been as successful as I hope this way is.

The basic premise for my thought experiment is stated in the article:

Many experts believe that, unlike in the 20th century, people in this century will not be able to stay one step ahead of automation through education and the occasional skills upgrade. A recent study from Oxford University warns that 47 percent of all existing jobs are susceptible to automation within the next two decades. Worries about robots replacing human labor are showing up more frequently in the mainstream media, including the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Recent books, such as The Second Machine Age and Who Owns the Future, predict that when it comes to robots and labor, this time is different.

Perhaps this, and the numerous links in the article, will get readers to believe that I am not just blowing smoke from orifices that ought not to be blowing smoke, but there really is some intellectual substance behind the exploration of the idea.

Thanks to Randy Katz’s Facebook post for bringing this to my attention.

Doug Hoffman’s Facebook post of the C-SPAN Hillary Clinton Roundtable in New Hampshire was very enlightening.

Watching the first 15 minutes, I came away with some impressions of what would be wrong if this were her whole presidential campaign. It is certainly not her whole campaign, so keep that in mind when you read my criticism of the first part.

I think this will be a great campaign where Bernie Sanders will have little trouble differentiating himself from Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton might think that hobnobbing with small business people who can start breweries will give her a good handle on the plight of the middle class, but she is missing most of what used to be the middle class that did not own their own businesses.

Trickle down economics from the small-business class to the working class, might be a tad better than trickle-down from the wealthy, through small business, and only then on to the middle class. However, it is not a big enough vision to solve this country’s problems. And it is certainly not enough when the trickle from either level does not occur.

Small start-up businesses are not net job creators if they only steal market share from their larger competitors. Net job creation comes from creating net new product to sell to net new buyers.

I colloquially phrase that as “What part of not enough freakin’ customers do you not understand?”

I am pretty sure that Bernie Sanders, and perhaps Elizabeth Warren, could school Hillary Clinton on this topic. Otherwise, I am sure that Hillary can do a good job of getting all the Eisenhower Republican vote.

If she makes it this clear on where she stands, then I don’t see how she excites the Kennedy Democratic voters.

Now moving on to looking at this roundtable’s value in the overall political discussion, there was a lot of excellent information on what we need to do to promote the growth of small business. Enlightening everyone on the value of the programs we have and additional programs we need makes for a much more informed political discussion when these programs come before Congress for continued funding, increases or cuts to funding, or for elimination.

Hillary Clinton has shown how well she understands this aspect of our government, economy, and society. She would make a great Secretary of Commerce. She or any other Presidential candidate needs to show how these small pieces of policy and programs have to fit into a comprehensive solution to getting this country back on track. This roundtable conference is certainly a good start.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker recently praised the passage of his fraudulent MBTA reform bill. See Governor Baker Statement on Senate Passage of MBTA Fiscal Management and Control Board.

I just wrote an email to Attorney General Maura Healey.

——– Forwarded Message ——–

Subject:	Who is fighting the real culprits in the MBTA troubles?
Date:	Sat, 23 May 2015 13:56:27 -0400
From:	Steven Greenberg
To:	ago@state.ma.us

There seems to be a political conspiracy to shift the blame for the MBTA’s problems from Wall Street to local MBTA management.

The Boston Globe seems to be a happy participant in this effort to gain some political advantage by shifting the focus.

My blog post – The Boston Globe Covers Up for Wall Street, IgnoresSwaps Losses in Coverage of MBTA Turmoil refers to a similarly named article on the Naked Capitalism blog.

I have written to the responsible person at The Boston Globe, but have never received a response.

I have since cancelled my subscription to the Boston Globe.

Maybe something more effective would happen if the Attorney General’s office could look into the possibility of recovering the massive sums of money that the big Wall Street Banks stole from the MBTA pension funds. Recovering a large part of this loss could probably go farther to fix the MBTA’s problems than the Governor’s recently announced plan to set up a new board to watch over the existing MBTA board.

We don’t need another employment program for the well connected politicians.

/Steve Greenberg

Interested readers might also want to have a look at the Conservation Law Foundation article How NOT to Fix the MBTA: Governor Baker’s Reform Bill.

Naked Capitalism has the article Good News on TPP, as Senate Passes Fast Track Bill with Human Trafficking Poison Pill.

What is so fascinating about this article is the number of twists and turns that it takes. Good guys become bad guys and bad guys become good guys at the blink of an eye. The poison pill goes in, the antidote to the poison is agreed to, and then it fails to get administered.

The links to peripheral issues are enough to keep you busy for a week.

Politicus USA has the article Elizabeth Warren Bill Requiring Trade Deals Be Made Public Blocked By Republicans.

Warren’s bill would have required that the details of trade agreements be made public before they are given fast track status. The difference is disclosure. If a president has to disclose the details before he/she gets fast track authority, the public would have a chance to weigh in on the deal.

This is an important part of the debate, that I had not thought of until reading this. It is not enough that our representatives in Congress get to see what they are voting on before they vote on it. The public needs to have the chance to organize to try to influence the representatives about their vote for the bill.

We need to be suspicious over every move to make it more difficult for the public to voice its informed opinions on proposed legislation. The harder they fight to keep us from seeing what is about to be thrust upon us until it is too late, the more we know that there must be something in it that they know we would not approve.

It’s not only the fact that they approved something we don’t like, it is the additional fact that they knew we wouldn’t like it, but they went ahead with it anyway.

Bernie Sanders made a Facebook post of the article Sen. Bernie Sanders on taxes, trade agreements and Islamic State.

Published on May 18, 2015

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is the second candidate to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Judy Woodruff talks to the senator about rebuilding the middle class, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the U.S. role in the Middle East.

If he can continue to give these interviews where he explains his positions so clearly, I think he has a good chance of success. The dynamic of the video is interesting to analyze in itself. Perhaps this is the only way it can be done. There is not much wrong with the questions Judy Woodruff asked him. The great part of it is that she lets him answer the question with minimal interruption. It is a bit cloying that she can ask these questions with a straight face, giving the impression that she does not already know the answer. I can’t think of another way to conduct such an interview without the interviewers opinions and knowledge walking all over Bernie Sanders’ information, which supposedly is why we would listen to an interview like this.

Maybe we have come to expect Judy Woodruff to carry out a reasonable interview. The amazing part from the Sanders’ fans’ perspective is that he can even get interviews on Faux Noise where he is controlling the conversation and getting his message through.

I’d have a hard time naming another progressive candidate that could go on a far right noise outlet like Faux, get to explain what he or she is all about, and leave the interview with no shouting and threats to turn off his microphone.
Perhaps Elizabeth Warren has managed to do it.

Defense News has the article US Military’s New Swarm of Mini-Drones.

With no motor and only about 10 parts, the Cicada resembles a paper airplane with a circuit board.

That may not sound like much of a drone, but you have to read the article to find out what it can really do. If you thought your idea of a conventional drone was a threat to your privacy, read what these things can do. Low price is no small part of the threat.

Perhaps you have to use your imagination to get it. If you don’t have enough imagination, you can rest assured that criminal and the military element have more than enough imagination to make up for what you and I may lack.