Old Age or Poor Management

The fires in California resulted in a two-day power shut-off to shut down the wildfires. One group affected by this shutdown was a group of seniors who resided in a senior center in Northern California. They lived in a low-income apartment complex and were trapped with their wheelchairs and walkers. Although they were old, sick or cognitively impaired to care for themselves during an extended outage, they were without guidance from their property management company or the utility behind the blackout as they faced pitch-black stairwells and hallways and elevators that shut down.

$75 billion has increased to $120 billion

That's the amount of money the New York Fed is giving each day day in cheap overnight loans to Wall Street securities trading firms. Also, it is increasing its 14-day term loans to Wall Street, a program which began in September, to $45 billion. Why?

No Wall Street crisis has been announced to the public to explain these massive loans and Treasury buybacks.

Not one hearing has been held by Congress on the matter.

Not one official elected by the American people has authorized these loans.

The loans are not being made to commercial banks (which could re-loan the money to stimulate the U.S. economy). The loans are going to the New York Fed’s primary dealers, which are stock and bond trading houses on Wall Street who count hedge funds among their largest borrowers.

Inflation where it hurts

Halloween costumes

Dementia and smell

Another casualty of climate change

The Pentagon has just issued a report that climate change could decimate the military. The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within “the next 20 years,” and the danger of disease epidemics. The report sees climate change resulting in global starvation, war, disease, drought, and a fragile power grid.

The deer got even

A hunter in Arkansas shot a deer and watched it collapse. Assuming the animal was dead, the hunter went to check on the body - at which point the deer stood back up, attacked and killed him.

Finally a bold proposal

Chuck Schumer wants to get rid of gas-powered cars; he wants all drivers to drive electric cars. And, he wants it done in 20 years. He is not alone, as the following groups support him: the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, the United Automobile Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Ford and General Motors.

How would this happen? First, there would be a large discount on an American-made electric vehicle when you trade in a gas-powered car. There would be grants given to states and cities to build charging stations all over the country. There would also be grants to retool existing manufacturing plants in the United States and build new ones in this country that specialize in those technologies. 

Of course, it's not cheap; Schumer estimates it would cost $454 billion over 10 years.But, it would also create tens of thousands of new, good-paying jobs in this country and should re-establish the United States as the world leader in auto manufacturing.

What are the odds of this happening with a do-nothing Congress?

Hiring the right people

I thought a basic problem with the GW Bush administration was its inability to hire good people. Now, we have a worse manager in Trump. He fires people quickly; there have been four different heads of the Department of Homeland Security, three in charge of the Department of Defense, two at the EPA, two at State. The interior secretary has been under investigation by the department’s inspector general since his first day on the job. All in three years!

Then, we have Barr, Pompeo and Mulvaney who think their job is defending Trump. And Carson who doesn't know that in the HUD world the word REO refers to foreclosed properties, not Oreo cookies.

Does Trump even know the names of his cabinet members? This past week he tweeted of the defense secretary Mark Esperanto, who is really Mark Esper.

Another vote for impeachment

This vote from Andrei V. Kozyrev, the Russian foreign minister from 1991 to 1996. 

The summary of his article in today's NY Times: When I was the Russian foreign minister, America was a beacon of moral truth. By impeaching Donald Trump, it can become one again. 

His final paragraphs: 
That sort of presidential morality seems to be a thing of the past. But the America I knew then is still with us today, in the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens and members of Congress. If Washington looks different now, I believe it to be an aberration. 

Russia likes seeing President Trump in the White House in part because it provides the Kremlin a chance to point to the ugly side of American politics — to say, just as they did with Mr. Nixon, look how sordid, how hypocritical. 

But I believe that if Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, act to remove this president, a new powerful message would be sent to governments and people around the globe, just like the one that went out in 1974: Moral principles still matter in American politics and policy. And the future still belongs to moral truth and to those who embrace it.

Not a quiet bird

Flaring is not good for us

Flaring is performed by the major energy companies such as Exxon and BP. It is the intentional burning of natural gas as companies drill faster than pipelines can move the energy away. And,  according to data from the three largest shale-oil fields in the United States, it is increasing significantly. Last year, operators across the three basins together flared or vented a record 320 million cubic feet of gas, more than 40 percent above levels seen just five years ago. The pace for the first two quarters of 2019 has been even higher.

Why is it done? There aren’t pipelines close enough to a well to capture and transport the gas, or because gas prices are so low that it’s cheaper to discard the gas than to try to sell it. 

Why is this a bad thing? Because natural gas is a potent contributor to global warming and also wastes vast amounts of energy.

Where the money is

What does Exxon believe in?

ExxonMobil says it believes “the risk of climate change is real,” and it is “committed to being part of the solution.” Plus, it also says it supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement. Yet, why did it give over $750,000 to such groups as the American Petroleum Institute? Why did it spend another million dollars on congressional candidates who did not believe that climate change was here?

Does this say something about America in the 21st century

Andrew Johnson was the only president impeached in our first 200 years. In the last 50 years, two have been impeached and it seems likely that a third will be. What does this say about us today?

Reviewing our military budget

Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, looks at some areas of the defense budget that could be cut. She thinks we could save $300 billion a year, just about the same amount as Medicare for All. Now, I'm not in favor of Medicare for All, but I do think we spend a hell of a lot of our money on the military.

She begins her article by reminding us that "Over 18 years, the United States has spent $4.9 trillion on wars, with only more intractable violence in the Middle East and beyond to show for it. That’s nearly the $300 billion per year over the current system that is estimated to cover Medicare for All (though estimates vary)." Let's look at the areas she thinks we can cut.

"The $4.9 trillion we’ve spent on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere grows to $5.9 trillion once we add in future care for veterans of those wars. That’s more money than the G.D.P. of every country in the world other than the United States and China.... Despite the obvious downsides, Pentagon officials first requested $165 billion in war funds for 2020, although even they admit that only $66 billion of that is actually related to fighting wars — the rest covers regular operations.

"Our support of foreign militaries, $14 billion, is more than five times the budget of the United Nations."

We have "more than 800 bases and installations in more than 90 countries. Closing half or more of our foreign bases could actually enhance our national security by defusing unnecessary tensions and discouraging ill-thought-out interventions. And it would raise about $90 billion for things like Medicare for All. What are we doing with that base in Aruba, anyway?"

We have a lot invested in nuclear weapons; we have "4,000 deployed or stockpiled nuclear weapons, plus 2,500 more retired weapons awaiting dismantling. Our nuclear stockpile amounts to almost half the world total of 15,000."

"President Trump’s border wall has been estimated to cost as much as $25 billion. The sum budgeted for this year alone, at $9 billion, is more than the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency."

Rescuing animals from floods

Stock Buybacks by Major Banks Are Not Good For Us

This Thursday, the House Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets will hold a hearing on stock buybacks by publicly traded corporations. The practice was illegal until 1982. When major banks do it, they have less to spend on investing in our economy. When other companies do it, they have less to spend on boosting stagnant worker wages, investing in new equipment or research and development.

And, the banks are not dropping small change into buybacks. JPMorgan Chase has spent $16.4 billion in buybacks. How much better would the economy be if they spent that money on loans to small businesses to kick start innovation and job growth? Banks are not alone with the practice; buybacks have gone from less than $200 billion in 2000 to a record $811 billion last year.

Then, we also have to live with so-called “universal” banks, in which Wall Street’s brokerage firms and investment banks have combined with deposit-holding, federally-insured banks – giving the the potential to use savers’ deposit money to artificially inflate their own stock through buybacks. And, the SEC allows these mega banks to trade in their own stock in their own Dark Pools, the equivalent of an in-house stock exchange.

Then, in another heart-warming effort, we have a strange Federal reserve which for the past month has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars each week to Wall Street stock trading firms (not commercial banks) with no authorization or hearings occurring in Congress. This is the first time the Federal Reserve has acted in this fashion since the epic financial crash of 2008.

Let's do something

Another way to destroy the American Indian

A government of lobbyists

In the two years of the Trump administration 281 lobbyists have been hired. That's four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. Or, one lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made.

Trump has also abandoned an Obama-era ethics pledge clause that prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

What are the odds?

The Grid

There is more and more talk about our electric grids vulnerability to cyberattacks. The GAO has looked at the matter and concluded that cyberattacks could cause widespread power outages in the United States, but the scale of such outages is uncertain. They strongly recommend that the DOE develop plans for electric grid cybersecurity that address the key characteristics needed for a national strategy.

Here are some areas which could be 'invaded'.

Going to work

Teaching skateboarding at age 9

Farming in Paris

Big pigs

China can't seem to import enough pork, so it is breeding them so that they become giant swine. The average pig in the U.S. weighs 750 pounds. In China the 'new' pigs at 1,650 weigh more than double that.

There are strange people out there

From our Florida correspondent

One effect of the latest tax law

The 2017 tax law capped federal deductions for state and local real estate and income taxes at $10,000 a year and also eliminated some mortgage interest deductions. This has had a pretty big reduction  in home values.  Counties with high home prices and high real estate taxes and where homeowners have big mortgages are suffering the biggest hit, given the larger value of the lost tax deductions. The decline in values is over 11% in some areas.

A different view of Christ

This is how he is perceived in some parts of Panama, where this statue resides. While people visit the statue year-round, they really celebrate it on October 21 when as many as 60,000 pilgrims and beyond travel for a festival, in which 80 men with shaved heads carry the black Christ statue on a large float through the streets of the city. 

The men use a common Spanish style for solemn parades – three steps forward and two steps backward – as they move through the city streets. The night continues with music, drinking and dancing.

Should you work at home?

Where is OSHA?

I never realized that, unless the government issues a special enforcement initiative, OSHA can inspect a workplace only if a worker complains. However, under the Trump administration, these initiatives no longer exist. After almost three years there has been no permanent administrator. Further, almost half of OSHA’s senior executive positions are now empty and filled with “acting” staff, temporarily leading offices on short-term bases. Thus, OSHA currently has fewer inspectors than at any time in the agency’s almost 50-year history, and it has conducted a near-record low number of inspections. At its current staffing level, it would take the agency 65 years to visit every workplace in the country just once

Many of the workers in dangerous jobs are immigrants, unlikely to ever call OSHA because they fear firing — or worse. This means the agency currently has almost no ability to focus inspections on the workshops where workers are being overexposed. 

Live in a blimp for a couple of days

Goodyear is offering its blimp for rent via Airbnb at $150 a night for the October 22nd weekend. That's when Michigan plays Notre Dame; tickets to the game are included in the deal.

The blimp has been outfitted with a bed, a couch, two chairs, several tables, a potted plant and plenty of football knicknacks.

While you will not be able to leave the property other than for the game, just outside the blimp are a TV and open bar.

From our Florida correspondent

Is it because they have better accountants?

Where did the water go?

Very hard to believe

JP Morgan Chase hit with RICO

The Department of Justice charged JPMorgan Chase with racketeering under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act)statute. This is the first large bank to be charged under this statute, which has been used against members of the Gambino and Bonanno crime families. The charge is against the bank's precious metals desk. DOJ says that the desk rigged the prices of gold, silver and other precious metals for the past eight years; it “conducted the affairs of the desk through a pattern of racketeering activity, specifically, wire fraud affecting a financial institution and bank fraud.”

The economy needs watching

From Wall Street on Parade: 

Two notable things happened on Monday, September 16, 2019. Rates started to spike in the overnight loan (repo) market, reaching a high of 10 percent the next day and forcing the Federal Reserve to step in as a lender of last resort for the first time since the financial crisis. The Fed has had to intervene every business day since then with overnight loans, funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to its primary dealers, while also providing $150 billion in 14-day term loans to unnamed banks.

Very funny if you know something about Catholicism

From a Duncaster resident

The Railroad and Culture

I never really thought much about the railroad, but The American Scholar has an interesting article which argues that it had a large effect on the culture that took form in Europe beginning in the 1840s. It affected the way people read, how music was played in public and in private, and the development of museums. 

For example, not many books were shipped between countries prior to the railroad because of the cost of shipping. It had been expensive and slow to ship books, but the expansion of railways slashed the cost and sped up distribution. The number of books France exported between 1841 and 1860 doubled. 

Trains also encouraged reading because of the boredom of long journeys. By 1854, the French publisher Louis Hachette had 60 stalls in railway stations. Fifteen years later, he had 500. The more astute publishers understood quickly the need for a new type of literature for passengers. Short stories became hugely popular, as did travel guides and the detective tales known as “penny dreadfuls.” Many more books were published outside their country of origin.

And the sale of pianos burgeoned because the rails could transport the huge, heavy instruments. Exports and deliveries multiplied, and by midcentury, piano ownership was no longer a luxury.

And it boosted tourism. A museum in Manchester, England attracted more than 1.3 million visitors from all over Europe.

Minimizing costs

One way the sheriffs in Alabama do so is by placing sick prisoners on medical bond, where they release inmates who do not have Medicaid or insurance to cover their medical bills. Thus, the sheriff's office would be financially responsible.

Some sheriffs really push the issue, as with a woman prisoner who the dispatcher said to the sheriff, “We are going to have to do something with Tracie because she is throwing up everywhere. … Her blood pressure is at 183 over 113. I don’t have a county unit available to carry her to the hospital.” The sheriff's response, “See if she had insurance, if she had Medicaid.” This, despite the fact that the nearest hospital was only 1½ miles away.

Inmates suffering heart attacks, on the verge of diabetic comas and brutalized in jail beatings have been released so sheriffs wouldn’t have to pay for their medical care. Some were rearrested once they had recovered.

Punishing young robbers in Madagascar

More Climate Change

A UN agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has released a pretty scary report, which was written by more than 100 international experts and is based on more than 7,000 studies. It is the most extensive look to date at the effects of climate change on oceans, ice sheets, mountain snowpack and permafrost. And things look pretty bad.

Climate change is heating the oceans and altering their chemistry so dramatically that it is threatening seafood supplies, fueling cyclones and floods and posing profound risks to the hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts. The report concludes that the world’s oceans and ice sheets are under such severe stress that the fallout could prove difficult for humans to contain without steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Fish populations are already declining in many regions as warming waters throw marine ecosystems into disarray.

The oceans have served us well as a buffer against global warming. They soak up roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, factories and cars; they absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped on Earth by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This will not continue unless we act now.