Steve's Politics Blog

Think Progress has the article Republican Amendment Could Force Underage Trafficking Victims To Carry Their Pregnancies To Term.

Reproductive rights groups have also harshly criticized the abortion provision in the bill, accusing Republicans of playing politics with the vulnerable victims of human trafficking. They point out that victims often need access to abortion services because they have been subject to sexual violence, so a fund designed to help them shouldn’t cut off resources related to abortion.

This article has a link to a Huffington Post article, GOP Sneaks Anti-Abortion Language Into Bipartisan Human Trafficking Bill.

Even Democrats on the Judiciary Committee said they had no idea the abortion provision was in the bill. Some suggested they had been misled.

“There was a representation that the controversial provision was not included in this bill. It turns out that it was,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a Judiciary Committee member. “I don’t know how that happened or who was the author of it.”

“A list was sent to certain members saying, ‘Here are the changes from last year.’ This provision was not listed among them,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), also a Judiciary Committee member.

I don’t know why any Democrat still trusts a Republican colleague to tell the truth about a pending piece of Legislation,  “Oh, you don’t have to read the bill. I assure you that there is nothing in it that would make you want to oppose it.”

Talking Points Memo has the article Jon Stewart Slams GOP Blocking Sex-Trafficking Bill As ‘F**kery’ (VIDEO). I’ll share the video with you so Jon Stewart can explain it all.

Bernie Sanders posted this statement on Facebook.

I’ll display it below, but it seems to take a while to appear.

Bernie, give us Stephanie Kelton’s views on the deficit. There is no sense promoting a false idea. If the American people aren’t ready to hear the truth about it, then just stop mentioning it. You don’t want to be in a position when the American people are finally ready to listen to have to retract all the things you ever said about it.

The truth about the deficit is most easily seen by the following realization: you can divide up the net flow of US dollars every year into three pots – 1. The domestic private sector, 2. the government, and 3. foreign accounts. That accounts for the net flow of all U.S. money. If the government does not run a deficit at least as large as our foreign trade deficit, then the difference between the foreign trade deficit and the federal budget deficit must come out of the U.S. private sector. That means that if the federal government had a balanced budget in any given year, the domestic private sector would be drained of wealth that year by the size of the trade deficit.

Are you people sure that this is what you want?

The following equation defines the situation:

(domestic private sector surplus) = (government deficit) – (U.S. foreign trade deficit)

or

(domestic private sector net in flow of money) = (government net out flow of money) – (net U.S. money flowing to foreign recipients)

The word  net in the above is an essential part of the equation.  Money may flow among different sections of each pot, but between the pots, it is the net money flow that I am talking about.

If you do not think I have written the right equation to show the flow of net money among the three pots, you tell me what the right equation would be among those three pots.  If you don’t think these three pots cover every bit of net U.S. money flow, then you tell me what other pot there may be. If you think you have found another pot, I will explain to you where that new pot actually fits into one of my three pots.

If the concept of all this blows your mind, please pick up the pieces, and don’t spread the mess around here.

The Russian Duo has another video on YouTube.

Now if only my other talented cousin would put up a YouTube video, I’d be pleased to give you another musical interlude.

The Daily Kos has published Cartoon: Just kidding!

Who knew that the reality world just didn’t have a good enough sense of humor?

Elizabeth Warren has a petition she would like you to sign called ISDS is a bad deal for America.

The United States is in the final stages of secret, closed-door negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade agreement with 11 other countries.

Who will benefit from it? One provision hidden in the fine print – “Investor-State Dispute Settlement” – may sound harmless, but don’t let that fool you: ISDS could let foreign companies challenge US laws without ever stepping in an American court.

That would undermine US sovereignty and tilt the playing field even further in favor of multinational corporations.

Sign my petition and spread the word: ISDS is a bad deal for America.

See how the President and the Republicans are going to make appointments to the Supreme Court a moot point.  Laws will be overthrown, huge penalties will be assessed against the American people. The Supreme Court won’t even get a chance to judge any  particular case if it comes before them, because the TPP makes it impossible for it to come before them.

Is this something that shows the patriotism of those who hide behind the flag every chance they get?  These people who tout their strict constructionist bona fides don’t even want to let the Supreme Court do its job.  How far can their actions get from their rhetoric before the voters notice?  Of course, if these “strict constructionists” had there way, there would be very few voters left on the voting rolls to vote.

Recently I have published several items about The Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe Covers Up for Wall Street, Ignores Swaps Losses in Coverage of MBTA Turmoil

Boston Globe Ignores Its Own Culpability In Misleading About the MBTA

The Boston Globe Ignores The Rhinoceros

On Friday, Scott Lehigh wrote the opinion piece State should seize control of the T.

In Sunday’s Globe, Yvonne Abraham wrote the column, Transit rage can’t melt.

It was at that moment, I decided that I had to cancel my subscription to The Boston Globe.

Today, Monday, I called and cancelled my subscription.

When The Boston Globe gets on one of these campaigns to flog a bad idea, they just do not give up.  Every columnist that is available seems to get recruited.  I do not need the print or digital version of Faux Noise to try to cloud my thinking about the news of the day.

The Boston Globe has the letter to the editor, Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices raise nagging security concerns.

I am a retired federal employee with 35 years’ experience. It was always impressed upon us that it was chiefly for security reasons that we were only to use our government e-mail accounts for work-related communication.

This letter is a perfect example of the danger of drawing conclusions from the similarities of two dissimilar things. The mistake is comparing the personal email of an ordinary person to that of a very wealthy former President and then drawing conclusions from that comparison. The ordinary person might have a free gmail account supplied by a giant corporation on the giant corporation’s computers. Gmail stores email that the giant corporation reads to look for clues as to what they might be able to sell you.

The Clintons’ email was set up on a private computer server in their private home while Bill Clinton was President. The home and the server is protected by a Secret Service contingent dedicated to that one task. The State Department probably has inspected and vouched for Hillary Clinton’s private system as opposed to the ordinary person’s free email which we already know is read by the supplier of the system.

This same error is made when people draw conclusions from comparing a family budget to that of the federal government which has the sole power of creating the money supply in this country. I wonder if people think about what would happen if they tried to pay their bills with money they created themselves. Might there be a difference in how to operate the two vastly different systems?

Naked Capitalism has the article Michael Hudson on the IMF’s Tender Ministrations in Ukraine and Greece.

This RT interview with Michael Hudson focuses on the appalling state of the Ukraine economy and the role of the IMF, both in its policy-violating rescue package there and on a more general basis.

The section with Hudson starts at 13:45.

Yes, I know RT is a Russian production. Skeptics are going to say, “What do your expect a Russian show to say about the Ukraine?”

The other side of that skepticism is that our lame stream media is a production of the oligarchs. What can you expect them to be hiding?

Another way to look at this is to realize that these are the true views of Michael Hudson. I have heard him express them in other venues, some of which are discussed on this blog. There aren’t any mainstream outlets in the US that will let him express these views, so where else could he possibly go to say what he thinks?

There just don’t seem to be any objective facts anymore that everyone can believe, if there ever were any.

Here is a February 13, 2014 article in Workers World, U.S. officials caught in Ukraine plot.

On Feb. 6, Victoria Nuland, U.S. assistant secretary of state for European affairs, discovered that someone considered her recent phone discussion with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, too frank and pithy to remain in the archives.

First of all, their conversation showed Washington considered it perfectly normal and reasonable not only to have an opinion on who among the Ukrainian contenders should run the country, but to intervene to make sure a U.S. favorite won. In addition, it showed that the U.S. is contemptuous of the role of its EU partners, who are also imperialist rivals.

Why bring this up now?  I got into a discussion where I was challenged by my assertion that the U.S. was meddling in Ukrainian affairs before Russia started taking military action against the Ukraine.  I remembered the incident that helped form my opinion, but I wasn’t sure I could find the article on this blog to show it.  The key name that I did not remember was Victoria Nuland.  How could everyone, including me, forget this important name?

Although I did get a long list of articles when I searched the blog for the word “ukraine”, I didn’t have the time to read them all enough detail to pick out the reference to this incident.

Now that I know the name, I see that a search for “nuland” does bring up two of those articles.

This all fits in nicely with my previous post, The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal.  The incident of finding Victoria Nuland’s name is a perfect demonstration of why I have this blog.  I get so frustrated when I know the “facts” support me, but people put an equal weight on the opinions of others who just don’t know what they are talking about.  Marden Seavey is always calling me out for my believing I am always right.  The purpose of the blog is to archive the material to prove I am always right.  (Come on folks, can’t you see the self-deprecating humor in what I have just written?)  You might notice I also like to hear myself blather on.

The Washington Post has the article The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal.

I’ll give you one of the conclusions in the article.  You’ll have to read the article to find out why the author offers this opinion.

Still, I think it’s pretty obvious that human groups (especially in the United States) err much more in the direction of giving everybody a say than in the direction of deferring too much to experts. And that’s quite obviously harmful on any number of issues, especially in science, where what experts know really matters and lives or the world depend on it — like vaccinations or climate change.

I think this explains why so many people (Jacquelyn Wells) think it more important to get a middle of the road consensus than it is to have people fighting for what they believe is essential for success of the society, political system, economic system.  It isn’t necessarily found in the middle of the road where there is probably a lot of road kill (to mix metaphors a little).

Thanks to Sarah Clark for posting this on her Facebook page.

As I said to Sarah and I will remind Marden Seavy, this is why I get so frustrated when people cannot see that I am always right 🙂