Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick

Finland has some strange sports

200 teams play Swamp Soccer – i.e., they play it in a swamp filled with mud. 

Since 1995, they have held the Mosquito Killing World Championships, the winner of which kills the most bugs in five minutes

They stopped  the World Sauna Championships in 2010 because a competitor died from third-degree burns. 

The winner of the wife-carrying races receives the wife’s weight in beer.

They hold air guitar contests.

They have just started to compete in hobbyhorsing, wherein competitors trot and hurdle obstacles while riding the wooden toys. 

See a real tornado

From our Pemnroke correspondent

Another interesting chart by Bloomberg

The Snake Lady

Wells Fargo again

Remember last year when the bank was fined $190,000,000 for inventing accounts for their existing customers? Well, this year the issue is car insurance. More than 800,000 customers who took out car loans from Wells Fargo were charged for car insurance they did not need, A goodly number (274,000) of them went into delinquency; 25,000 had their car repossessed. This was over a 4.5 year period. Furthermore, the insurance, which the bank required, was more expensive than auto insurance that customers often already had obtained on their own. It is estimated that the bank owed $73 million to wronged customers. Customers also got hit for repossession costs, late fees, charges for insufficient funds and damage to their credit reports.

Although the bank was required by state law to notify customers of the insurance before it was imposed, it did not always do so. 

Do you agree?

Defense costs not included in the Pentagon budget

William Hartung has an interesting article, The Hidden Costs of ‘National Security', in which he lists a number of defense-related costs that are not in the Pentagon's budget. These total $450.6 billion dollars, or about 78% of the Pentagon budget. They are: 

War Budget: $64.6 Billion

Department of Energy (nuclear): $20 Billion

Veterans: $186 billion

Military Retirement: $80 Billion

Defense Share of the Interest on the Debt: $100 billion

Our friend, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a good market for our arms industry. It just sold them $110 billion of arms, which is added to the $350 billion we already had. One way the Saudis are using these arms is by bombing the hell out of Yemen. They have devastated transportation routes (both sea and air), storage facilities for holding food (including an Oxfam warehouse for food aid) and a water project funded by the European Union.

The UN’s special envoy for the secretary general for Yemen says that 20 million of Yemen’s 25 million people are affected by the war. Most of them have little access to water, sanitation, hygiene and food. Seven million of them — including 2.3 million children under the age of 5 — are on the “cusp of famine.” The UN is trying to raise $6.27 billion to prevent the famine but has been able to raise only half of it. There are now 320,000 suspected cases of cholera in the country, with 1,700 confirmed deaths because of that disease.

In 2016, a UN panel of experts concluded that the Saudi war on Yemen documented grave violations of human rights that were “widespread and systematic.”

Who pays taxes?

Getting to work

Will he convince his peers?

Football is tough

Boston University researchers released a study of the brains of 202 deceased football players. The brains were donated by relatives of the players; the relatives were concerned about the behavior of the players. The players were active in various levels of football: pre-high school (2), high school (14), college (53), semi-pro (14), Canadian league (8) and NFL (111).  86.6% (177) had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is a degenerative brain disease that can result in troubling behavior, disturbed moods, impaired thinking, agitation, impulsivity, explosive tempers and memory loss. More than half of the players contemplated suicide. Suicide, in fact, was the leading cause of death among those with mild CTE.

The participants played football for an average of 15 years. More than 90 percent of college players in the study sample had CTE. Among the 111 National Football League players whose brains were donated, CTE was found in all but one.

Husband and Wife. Master and Slave

China Grows

From Piketty etal

Would you like a microchip in your finger?

That's what a technology company in Wisconsin is offering its employees. Employees can choose to have a chip the size of a grain of rice injected between their thumb and index finger. Once that is done, any task involving RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology — swiping into the office building, paying for food in the cafeteria — can be accomplished with a wave of the hand. So far, more than 50 of the company's 80 employees have opted for it. 

Will the chip be hackable one day?

Child Labor is a big thing in Lebanon

While child labor is illegal in Lebanon, Unicef says that about 280,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon have been forced into child labor. Some are as young as 5 years old. They're hired because they are cheap. They work because their fathers can't find work. As Syrians, the fathers can only work in agriculture, construction, and cleaning — all low-paying, temporary jobs. Otherwise, they need a work permit.

The kids have a very rough time - they work long hours, often in hazardous conditions — using dangerous machinery in factories, being abused by employers, and working under the hot sun in agricultural fields. They're missing out on the chance for an education, and the grueling nature of the work leaves them little time to process, or heal from, the emotional and psychological wounds they’ve suffered.

Furthermore, Lebanon doesn’t have formal Syrian refugee camps. So, Syrians have to pay an average rent of $200 a month to live in Palestinian camps. 

The Rich Get Richer

Data from Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Pikkety, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, The World Wealth and Income Database, April 5, 2016.

Almost a miracle

How does the Pentagon handle waste?

The waste is comprised of the Pentagon’s discarded contents from bullets, chemical makings from bombs, and raw explosives — all used or left over from the manufacture and testing of weapons ingredients. They are doused with fuel and lit on fire, igniting infernos that can be seen more than a half a mile away.  This waste contains health hazards, such as lead, mercury, chromium and compounds like nitroglycerin and perchlorate.  This handling of waste has poisoned millions of acres, and affected tens of thousands of residents in surrounding towns. And, this waste handling, referred to as "open burns", goes on at least 51 Pentagon sites. It affects schools, water supplies and homes. The EPA estimates that 40,000,000 acres of land has been contaminated by the Pentagon or its contractors in the U.S.

Congress had looked at the open burns situation in the 1980s and banned the practice except that it gave the Pentagon a temporary reprieve from the law. The Pentagon has a strange definition of 'temporary'.

271 to 1

That's the ratio of  the compensation of  CEOs at America’s largest firms to the average US worker. Are the CEOs really worth that much? Fifty years ago, that ratio was 20-to-1. 

Fighting voter fraud

Holding hands

From the NY Times interview re Trump and Macron:

TRUMP: He’s a great guy. Smart. Strong. Loves holding my hand. 

HABERMAN: I’ve noticed. 

TRUMP: People don’t realize he loves holding my hand. And that’s good, as far as that goes. I mean, really. He’s a very good person. And a tough guy, but look, he has to be. I think he is going to be a terrific president of France. But he does love holding my hand.

The beginning of the end?

Car, as opposed to the many forms of trucks, sales are down. Some models have been cancelled: Dodge Viper; the Volkswagen Eos, the Honda CR-Z hybrid 2-door; the Lincoln MKS; and Toyota’s entire Scion line. GM is getting hit harder than any of the major automakers. In the first half of 2017, GM’s car sales in the US plunged 19%, and in June 38%. The rest of the industry (without GM) booked declines in car sales of “only” 10% in the first half and 9% in June.

GM is considering eliminating more models, closing some plants or converting them to making trucks. They have begun discussions with the UAW.

Some models that may be dropped: Chevrolet Volt, Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Impala, and Chevrolet Sonic.

He just got his license

75 years with American Airlines

That is one way you could describe Azriel Blackman. He began working as an airline mechanic for American Airlines in 1942. And, he is still working today, as he awaits his 92nd birthday next month. He works eight hours a day, five days a week. Azriel starts at 5 a.m. and works until 1 p.m. Note that he drives himself to work.

He is a crew chief who reviews paperwork detailing what maintenance has been completed and what remains to be done on 17 jetliners that are kept overnight at the airport. And then he walks around to review the work that is being done.

He is listed in Guinness World Records for the longest career as an airline mechanic.

Being on parole

Emma and Rachel

Seismic testing means fewer fish

Your next car

A fawn is saved

Is this good management?

From the New York Times

Has this drug reached its expiration date?

If so, we - and more sophisticated users such as hospitals - throw it out. But the federal government does not necessarily do so, as the drugs are still useful for their intended purposes. For decades, the federal government has stockpiled massive stashes of medication, antidotes and vaccines in secure locations throughout the country. The drugs are worth tens of billions of dollars and would provide a first line of defense in case of a large-scale emergency.It spends a lot of money to do so but the roi is quite high, like $677 saved for every dollar spent. 

The costs of development by the World Bank

What ProPublica found: 

Over the last decade, projects funded by the World Bank have physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, forcing them from their homes, taking their land or damaging their livelihoods.

The World Bank has regularly failed to live up to its own policies for protecting people harmed by projects it finances. The World Bank and its private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation, have financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations such as rape, murder and torture. In some cases the lenders have continued to bankroll these borrowers after evidence of abuses emerged.

Ethiopian authorities diverted millions of dollars from a World Bank-supported project to fund a violent campaign of mass evictions, according to former officials who carried out the forced resettlement program.

From 2009 to 2013, World Bank Group lenders pumped $50 billion into projects graded the highest risk for “irreversible or unprecedented” social or environmental impacts — more than twice as much as the previous five-year span.

Ethiopian authorities diverted millions of dollars from a World Bank-supported project to fund a violent campaign of mass evictions, according to former officials who carried out the forced resettlement program.

From 2009 to 2013, World Bank Group lenders pumped $50 billion into projects graded the highest risk for “irreversible or unprecedented” social or environmental impacts — more than twice as much as the previous five-year span.

Fighting for control of the Middle East

Doctors and Hospitals make errors

Big Pharma spends more on buybacks than r&d

A study by the Institute for New Economic Thinking concludes that big pharmaceutical companies have spent more on share buybacks and dividends in a recent 10-year period than they did on research and development. From 2006 through 2015, the 18 drug companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index spent a combined $516 billion on buybacks and dividends. This exceeded by 11 percent the companies’ research and development spending of $465 billion during these years.

Who benefits the most from these buybacks? The drug company executives, whose pay packages, based in part on stock prices, are among the lushest in corporate America.

Moving Day

Texas - the land of the free

As of September 1 Bowie knives, swords, spears, daggers and machetes will be back on the streets of Texas after having  been illegal to carry in Texas for years. There will be some exceptions. You cannot carry them in  schools, churches, jails, polling places and many bars. 

Some Texans are still not satisfied. They want  the remaining restrictions removed.

Health Care Fraud

The federal government has just made the largest raid against health care fraud. They arrested 412 people around the country who were able to collect $1.3 billion in false billings. Those arrested included 115 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals. The basic charges were for medically unnecessary prescription drugs and compounded medications that often were never even purchased and/or distributed to beneficiaries. 

Scenes from Martha's Vineyard

Building a Raft

Relative Cost of Living

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (an arm of the Fed) publishes Regional Price Parities (RPPs), which enable the comparison of the cost of living at the state level. RPPs measure the differences in the price levels of goods and services across states and metropolitan areas for a given year. They are expressed as a percentage of the overall national price level for each year, so RPPs higher than 100 represent state prices higher than the national average and vice versa. Here are the states with a higher cost of living than the national average:

Hawaii 118.8  
District of Columbia 117.0 
New York 115.3 
California 113.4 
New Jersey 113.4

And here are the lowest:

Mississippi 86.2 
Alabama 86.8 
Arkansas 87.4 
South Dakota 88.2 
Kentucky 88.6

Building a tower

10 Organizations Are Responsible for 36% of Our Fossil Fuel Emissions

The Carbon Disclosure Project has looked at global fossil fuels emissions since 1988 and asserts that the following ten organizations are responsible for 36% of the emissions.

1. China (Coal): 14.3 percent
2. Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco): 4.5 percent
3. Gazprom OAO (Russian): 3.9 percent
4. National Iranian Oil Co: 2.3 percent
5. ExxonMobil Corp: 2.0 percent
6. Coal India: 1.9 percent
7. Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex): 1.9 percent
8. Russia (Coal): 1.9 percent
9. Royal Dutch Shell PLC (Shell): 1.7 percent
10. China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC): 1.6 percent

Bloomberg on Climate Change

Google Home to the rescue

A man and his girlfriend were house-sitting in New Mexico when the woman received a text message. The man  saw the text message and became angry, accusing the woman of cheating on him. He then punched and kicked her before retrieving a gun and threatening to kill her. As he did so, however, he asked her, “Did you call the sheriff’s?”.  Google Home  was hooked up to a surround-sound speaker system and recognized the words as a command and called 911.  The police were able to free the girlfriend and her children and arrest the man.

The local news by Sinclair

Gluten-free bread is bad..

...at least for Holy Communion in the Catholic Church. It cannot be used for Holy Communion unless it has enough protein in the wheat to make it without additives. I find the reasoning difficult to understand as this is being done because the bread is now sold in supermarkets and on the internet.

I wonder what his legal bills are

"Before the election, USA Today tallied up all the lawsuits that Trump and his companies were involved in over just the last 30 years. The final count was 4,095." From today's NY Times Magazine

That works out to 136.5 per year, 2.625 per week and 0.375 per day.

The Ku Klux Klan in the 21st century

It's coming back. The following video is from 2012 at which time the group had grown from 500 to 6000. Now it is around 8000.

 

Their most recent activity involves a protest today against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA. The protesters will be armed. The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have threatened that many of their members will be armed. 

GAO Summarizes DOD's Record on Key Issues

The McClatchy cartoon of the week

Some Pew Research

Some comments from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR)

“The larger the bank, the greater the potential spillover if it defaults; the higher its leverage, the more prone it is to default under stress; and the greater its connectivity index, the greater is the share of the default that cascades onto the banking system. The product of these three factors provides an overall measure of the contagion risk that the bank poses for the financial system. Five of the U.S. banks had particularly high contagion index values — Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs.”

“A bank that has large foreign assets and large intrafinancial system liabilities is a potential source of spillover risk. If a large loss in value in foreign assets caused such an institution to fail, the losses could be transmitted to the rest of the U.S. financial system. Five banks had large foreign assets (exceeding $300 billion) and Citigroup and JPMorgan had large figures for both foreign assets and intrafinancial system liabilities…Again, the largest banks are the most interconnected and they are involved in the most cross-jurisdictional activity.”

As of March 31, 2017 these were the  levels of derivatives: in notional (face amount) of derivatives, Citigroup held $54.8 trillion; JPMorgan Chase held $48.6 trillion; Goldman Sachs Group had $45.6 trillion; Bank of America held $35.8 trillion while Morgan Stanley sat on $30.8 trillion.

From Wall Street on Parade

A change in global trading?

Japan and the European Union have given their ok to a trade deal that will cover nearly 30 percent of the global economy, 10 percent of the world's population and 40 percent of global trade. The "agreement" requires more work as it only describes broad outlines. If it does eventually go through, it would lower trade barriers for a sweeping array of products, including pork, wine, cheese and automobile and would also protect so-called “geographical indications” — products that derive their identity by being produced only in a specific region, like champagne or parmesan. The deal would make U.S.-made goods relatively more expensive and less competitive in the major markets of Japan and Europe.

That's Life

From Harper's Weekly Review: 

An Arizona man wearing a bullet-proof vest shot a police officer with a bow and arrow; 
an Oklahoma man who in 2004 told the Secret Service that Satan made him drive his car into a monument to the Ten Commandments drove to Arkansas and crashed his car into another monument to the Ten Commandments; 
a Florida man impersonating a police officer was arrested for pulling over a police officer; 
the residents of a town in Kentucky reportedly elected a pit bull as their mayor; 
a Maryland man arrested for robbing a convenience store was released from jail and then arrested again for attempting to rob the same store; 
a Michigan man set his garage on fire while attempting to blow up a nest of bees with fireworks; 
a Minnesota man attempted to avoid being arrested on a drug charge by giving the officer a Get Out of Jail Free Monopoly card; 
a man in Missouri kidnapped his sister to prevent her from marrying; 
an unemployed Michigan salesman, who in 2003 became the first person to survive an unprotected jump off of Niagara Falls during a suicide attempt and then became a daredevil, jumped off of Niagara Falls with a seven-foot snake, and died; 
a man in New York ate 72 hotdogs in ten minutes; 
a North Carolina man forced a family at gunpoint to shop at Target; 
an Ohio man removed his prosthetic leg and hit his wife in the head with it; 
a shirtless Washington man walking down a highway dragging a dead raccoon tied to a rope was shot twice in the leg by a passing motorist who mistook the animal for a dead dog; 
a West Virginia man broke into a house, ransacked it, fell asleep in the owner's bed, and was awoken by police; 
and a Washington, D.C. man who formerly sold vodka and ran a teen beauty pageant before being elected president of the United States did not respond publicly to reports that he hung a fake Time magazine cover featuring a portrait of himself in at least four of his golf courses, tweeted that a talk-show host who called his hands small was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" and that another host was a "psycho," banned the press from attending a fundraiser he threw for himself at his own hotel, threatened during the fundraiser to sue CNN, promised during another speech not to call CNN "fake news" provided they continue to film him, tweeted incorrectly that CNN's rating were down, and then tweeted a video of himself at WrestleMania XXIII body slamming, mounting, and punching another man, whose face in the footage had been overlaid with the logo for CNN by a Reddit user named HanAssholeSolo, who has previously written about putting a cat in a blender, bringing punch blades to Paris in case he needed to hit "Islamic fucks," and calculating the number of "shitloads" in a "fuck ton," which he claimed was 4,000,000,000,000.

Coal is on the way out

Kim and Donald

Killing fewer animals

Bob Hope not telling a joke and James Cagney not acting

This is our president?

Why do states fund professional sports teams?

Since 2008 ten states have allocated $6 billion of public funds to fund new professional sports stadiums for privately owned teams. At the same time six of those states–Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, Texas and Wisconsin–have cut their education budgets. Three of those states–Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin–rank in the top 12 among states that have cut education budgets since 2008.

Yet, virtually every analysis of the long term economic effects of stadiums find no evidence that cities receive anywhere near an attractive return on their investment. Cities, in fact, lose money on these investments. Most recently, a study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that 86 percent of economists agreed that ‘local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises.’

Healthcare in America is expensive, very expensive

From Visual Capitalist