Steve's Politics Blog

In the Clinton administration lingo they might have said “It’s the oil and gas, stupid”

One piece of information that came out of the news conference was the reason we want to sanction Russia and to stop their pipeline to Germany. We have LNG (liquified natural gas) we want to sell to Europe, If Russia builds a pipeline that is more convenient to use than our LNG tankers, Europe will buy from Russia rather than the USA. Do the American people support using our military might to promote our commercial interests?

Time has published a press conference transcript in the article Read a Transcript of Trump and Putin’s Joint Press Conference.

TRUMP: Well, actually I called him a competitor. And a good competitor he is. And I think the word “competitor” is a compliment.

I think that we will be competing when you talk about the pipeline. I’m not sure, necessarily, that it’s in the best interests of Germany or not, but that was a decision that they made. We’ll be competing — as you know, the United States is now — or soon will be, but I think it actually is right now the largest in the oil and gas world.

So we’re going to be selling LNG, and we’ll have to be competing with the pipeline and I think will compete successfully, although there is a little advantage locationally.

So I just wish them luck. I mean, I did. I discussed with Angela Merkel in pretty strong tones. But I also know where they’re all coming from and they have a very close source. So we’ll see how that all works out.

PUTIN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): If I may, I’d throw in some two cents.

We talked to Mr. President, including this subject as well.

We are aware of the stance of President Trump, and I think that we, as a major oil and gas power, and the United States as a major oil and gas power as well, we could work together on regulation of international markets, because neither of us is actually interested in the plummeting of the prices. And the consumers will suffer as well, and the consumers in the United States will suffer as well. And the shale gas production will suffer. Because beyond a sudden price breakup (ph), it’s no longer profitable to — to produce gas.

But nor we are interested in driving prices up, because it will drain just as — just as from all other sectors of the economy, from (inaudible) building (ph), et cetera. So we do have space for cooperation here. That’s the first thing.

Then about the Nord Stream 2, Mr. President voiced his concerns about the possibility of disappearance of transit through Ukraine. And I reassured Mr. President that Russia stands ready to maintain this transit. Moreover, we stand ready to extend this transit contract that’s about to expire next year in case — if the dispute between the economic entitles — dispute will be settled in the Stockholm arbitration court.

YouTube has the video Putin-Trump meeting in Helsinki: News conference following summit.

Since I have no powers of mind control, I am sure you will make of this video what you will.

<sarcasm>Don’t blame me if you start having strange hallucinations after watching this. Maybe you should scrub your computer of CIA malware after you click on this.</sarcasm>

Truthdig has the article Indictment of 12 Russians: Under the Shiny Wrapping, a Political Act.

Now, here is an analysis of what is going on that is based on a calm consideration of what we know and what we don’t know. This would be of significant influence if people were of a mind for calm consideration. However, usually fearmongering cannot be beaten by rationality.

Let me see if I can find something in the article to quote to give you even a hint at all the article contains. Let me leave it at this.

In the connection of known factual details to assumed actors and motives, the quote below states a truth we all need toi remember.

That’s the point of an indictment, however — it doesn’t exist to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, but rather to provide only enough information to demonstrate probable cause.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on Facebook about the Financial Times article Fiscal hawks’ tales of doom do not fly with the young.

Her is an excerpt from her post.

Ever notice how the “how do you pay for it” argument is selectively employed against working class benefits?

I started reading the article itself. Here is something they failed to adequately debunk.

A prime example of this can be found in the warnings from some fiscal hawks about how financial markets would be overwhelmed by the wave of government bonds needed to fund the stimulus.

In debunking this the Financial Times fails to point out that these bonds, which are required by law but not required to “finance” the stimulus, actually cancels out the stimulative and inflationary impact of the package. In order to get am actual and full stimulus, the Fed would have to buy all the bonds. In other words, one arm of the government would have to buy all the bonds sold by another arm of the government.

After listening to some propaganda about Nicaragua on NBC Nightly News, I decided to check in with Telesur to see if possibly we were only getting the side of the USA backed regime change rebels.

Telesur has the article Nicaragua: Legitimacy And Human Rights.

Clearly, Amnesty International and the IACHR have deliberately covered up that reality and misled international opinion, faithlessly exploiting their image as defenders of human rights, just as they do on Venezuela and Cuba. Even so, despite the extreme violence and the egregious dishonesty of its apologists, the U.S.-backed right-wing opposition coup to oust President Daniel Ortega has failed. People in Nicaragua overwhelmingly support efforts to return to normality and a political solution to the crisis. The Nicaraguan authorities will tolerate the IACHR’s theatricals for another few months before the OAS circus eventually moves on. Defeated opposition leaders hoped to impose their coup, failed because they lacked popular support, and now have to accept what the Sandinista government is prepared to agree as the sovereign power in Nicaragua. Miguel Ramos did not die in vain.

Now that we understand the illegitimacy of any regime change sponsored by the USA, it is transparently easy to detect propaganda from our corporate media. For one thing, they will never cover the government side of the issue. Why do they continue to think their reporting will seem to be fair and balanced when they only cover one side?

Medium has the article 4 Keys to Getting Into and Staying in Flow.

2. Avoid Interruptions

One focused hour a day of uninterrupted creation time can turn almost anyone into a prolific creator, the key work being “uninterrupted.” When we get interrupted, it kicks us out of flow. In fact it can take up to 15 minutes to get back into flow after an interruption. Designate at least some small part of your day to be completely free of interruptions.

I got reminded by this when someome posted the following image on Facebook.

At one work place I complained about the public address system constantly saying “Attention, Attention please. Paging Joe Blow.” I finally convinced them about the affects of such interruptions. They went to individual pagers instead. This was in the days before cell phones, for those who can remember back that far.

I first read about the concept of being in the flow in the book Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams.

New York Magazine has the article New Study Confirms That American Workers Are Getting Ripped Off.

Economists have put forward a variety of explanations for the aberrant absence of wage growth in the middle of a recovery: Automation is slowly (but irrevocably) reducing the market-value of most workers’ skills; a lack of innovation has slowed productivity growth to a crawl; well-paid baby-boomers are retiring, and being replaced with millennials who have enough experience to do the boomers’ jobs — but not enough to demand their salaries.

There’s likely some truth to these narratives. But a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) offers a more straightforward — and political — explanation: American policymakers have chosen to design an economic system that leaves workers desperate and disempowered, for the sake of directing a higher share of economic growth to bosses and shareholders.

It must have been 20 or 30 years ago that I came to the conclusion that being a worker is no way to get rich. You have to be an owner to make it. That’s when I got really interested in buying corporate stocks. I am not rich, but I am a heck of a lot better off now than I would have been had I not reached my conclusion.

The Real News Network has the interview Has Mueller Caught the Hackers?.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 12 officials with the GRU, Russia’s main foreign intelligence agency, for allegedly meddling in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic Party emails. Case closed? Author and investigative journalist Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News joins TRNN’s Aaron Mate to discuss.

This is quite a back and forth between Aaron Mate and Michael Isikoff. I have a lot of respect for Michael Isikoff, but I don’t believe he is God.

He admits his lack of computer expertise in judging some of these claims. I have read computer experts that I have a lot of faith in (besides my own expertise) that makes it trivial to knock down the claims of the “intelligence” report that supports much of what Isikoff believes.

Isikoff uses the old debate trick by asking Mate if he has a better explanation. As I have said many times about people who say “I can’t imagine another explanation”, that this says more about their lack of imagination than it says about the story they believe to be true. Like a mathematical proof, you can convincingly knock holes in a proof that destroy that proof without having a better proof of your own. There are many mathematical proofs that have been postulated to “prove” one thing or another that were shown to be wrong long before anybody came up with a proof that did not get knocked down. Mathematicians may say that they strongly believe something is true, but are willing to admit there is no proof yet. There are mathematicians who will spend a career trying to prove a mathematical conjecture that they do not succeed in proving, and do not succeed in disproving.

Remember that there were politicians, journalists, and other “experts” who were so sure about the story of Iraqi WMD that turned out to be completely fictitious. Isikoff mentions that there have been two different administrations, Obama and Trump, who have made the same claims about Russia. What he fails to mention is that there has only been one intelligence apparatus (some call the deep state) that has existed throughout most of the past administrations perhaps dating as far back as WW II or before.

I always think of the lawyer’s ploy when confronted by a witness who has a record of lying, but swears to be telling the truth. The lawyer asks, “Do you expect us to believe that you were lying before, but are telling us the truth now?” Dor me, that is a very effective question. Once you lie, you destroy your credibility. It is almost impossible to get your credibility back. That is one reason I hate lies even if they are coming from “my side”.

The New York Times has the opinion piece There’s So Much You Don’t Know About Brett Kavanaugh, And you probably won’t until it’s too late.

First, the questions everyone wants answered: What is his judicial philosophy? How does he approach interpreting the Constitution and statutes? Does he agree with the decision in landmark Supreme Court cases like, say, Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools, or Griswold v. Connecticut, which established a constitutional right to privacy? There’s no reason, despite their protestations, that nominees for the highest court in the land can’t give the public straight answers to these questions and many more like them — several, including Chief Justice Roberts himself, did so in the past.

Naked Capitalism has an article with an excerpt from Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in the Citizen’s United Supreme Court case. Their article is Anthony Kennedy and Our Delayed Constitutional Crisis.

[W]e now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. …

The fact that speakers [i.e., donors] may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt. …

The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.

If Senate Democrats could get the nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, to read this passage aloud, and ask him to explain the logic of Kennedy’s opinion, then we would know all we need to know about the nominee.

If the appearance of ellipsis in the above quote makes you wonder what was left out, I looked this up in the opinion on CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION as published by the Supreme Court.

While a single Bellotti footnote purported to leave the question open, 435 U. S., at 788, n. 26, this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy. Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U. S. ___, distinguished. Pp. 40–45.

In my mind the ellipsis was not meant to deceive and it did not deceive.

Naked Capitalism has published the article Michael Olenick: Update Confirms That Share Buybacks Are Still Corporate Suicide. Here is an excerpt of an excerpt from the article.

Corporate executives and directors are apparently bereft of ideas and the confidence to make long-term investments. Rather than using record profits, and record amounts of borrowed money, to invest in new plants and equipment, develop new products, improve service, lower prices or raise the wages and skills of their employees, they are “returning” that money to shareholders. Corporate America, in effect, has transformed itself into one giant leveraged buyout….

If you want to get an idea of the long-term consequences of Trump’s recent corporate tax cuts, this article ought to scare the pants off you.

I have written many posts about the harm that vulture capitalists do with their leveraged buyouts and taking publicly traded companies private. Turns out, CEOs of publicly traded companies have figured out how to do this without having to take the company private.

In simple terms, they strip the assets of the company, put the company into huge debt, pay themselves more than handsomely, then walk away to let someone else try to pick up the pieces.