Mammon category archive
The Privatization Scam 0
Sam and the crew dissect the deception behind the duplicity behind the double-talk.
Vampire Capitalists 0
Rebecca Watson warns that hedge funds are coming for your medical care.
Or you can read the transcript.
The Electric (Car) Bugaloo 0
Nikolai Tesla must be rolling over in his grave with embarrassment to have his name associated with this outfit.
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
In the course of a longer article debunking a rumor that AI bots are being “trained” on DropBox documents, security expert Bruce Schneier observes (emphasis added)
And Round and Round We Go 0
It would seem that Donald Trump’s lawyers’ strategy can be summed up as, “If at first you don’t succeed, do the same thing harder.”
From Above the Law:
Trump never lied on his financial statements. Or if he lied, he had an “ironclad disclaimer clause” that immunized him from prosecution. And nobody was hurt by his fake finances, it’s a victimless crime. Anyway how can there be a “lie” about subjective valuations, it’s all vibes, man. Plus Michael Cohen is a liar, and the state has no authority to bring this case. Also, if the original loan is outside the statute of limitations, then all the annual statements of finance submitted to the lender are time-barred. So, please don’t murder the Trump Org?
Justice Arthur Engoron wasn’t persuaded the first 1,000 times Trump made these arguments, and he didn’t break his streak yesterday. Although, honestly he seemed a little bored with the whole thing.
Aside:
Methinks the point isn’t to win the motion; it’s to delay the arguments.
Delay has always been Trump’s primary strategy when someone wants to call him to account.
Courting Disaster 0
Gene Collier, writing at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, fears that the current Supreme Supremacist Court is forsaking the rule of law for the rule of flaw. A snippet:
Follow the link to see why he said that.
Our Polite Society 0
Thom discusses America’s most exceptional exceptionalism.
The Crypto Con 0
Michael Hiltzik, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has had enough.
Follow the link for his reasoning.
This New Gilded Age 0
At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Gene Collier forcefully argues that what lies behind many price increases is not, as Republicans would have you think, inflation, but, rather, greedflation. Here’s a bit from his article:
Such price-tampering methods included exporting eggs to reduce the domestic supply and limiting the number of chickens through various means including artificially limiting cage space, flock reduction, and “early slaughter.”
(snip)
The result of all that, you’ll doubtless recall, was ridiculously high egg prices Republicans blamed on Joe Biden, the old chicken farmer. More pointedly, it validated what some economists had taken to calling greedflation.
His whole piece is worth your while.
Afterthought:
This is the result of not enforcing anti-trust laws, of thinking that trusts can be trusted.
The first Gilded Age taught us that they could not, and we chose to forget that lesson.