Like everything else the cheers had been manufactured

I had written that the nasty guy had tweeted that illegal workers at farms and hotels should not be picked up because they are necessary for these businesses. I noted that the White House said the policy of raiding those places had not changed. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Homeland Security tried to clarify by sending Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin to Newsmax. Yes, raids on worksites are sill a cornerstone of ICE operations. There was no exemption for farms and hotels. McLaughlin lied when she said ICE was only going after “the worst of the worst.” I recently wrote that Sen. Alex Padilla was forced to the ground and handcuffed when asking HS Secretary Noem a question. Now there is a second political arrest. Lisa Needham of Kos said ICE arrested Brad Lander, a Democratic candidate for NYC mayor. The reason appears to be because he was accompanying someone they wanted to nab and he tried to prevent it. One problem: ICE isn’t allowed to arrest citizens. McLaughlin announced the charges as impeding a federal officer. That nicely confuses FBI agents who can arrest citizens with ICE agents, who can’t. They way she said it made it sound like the real victims were ICE agents, not the immigrants. Needham talked about the old practice of company towns. When a company set up operations in a remote area workers had to live in company housing and shop in company stores. They were paid in company scrip, which couldn’t be spent elsewhere. Pay and prices were such that the workers fell deeper into debt, and thus were stuck. Bringing that up to date, the possibility of creating new crypto currencies allows Walmart and Amazon to consider issuing their own. At least they are thinking about stablecoins, meaning their value is pegged to the dollar. But a person paid in Walmart coin would be restricted to spending it at Walmart, even if prices were better elsewhere. There is a reason, outside of tying people to their store, for issuing their own currency – they can sidestep the significant costs of payment processing and banking fees. But it leaves consumers juggling currencies. A different president might protect consumers. But the nasty guy made $57 billion from crypto last year and the Securities and Exchange commission dropped a crypto case after the company cozied up to a nasty guy company. Needham reported that companies that cozy up to the nasty guy are getting a good payback. Sure, that cozying can cost millions, but the payback is much higher. Needham gave a couple examples. I’ll mention one. GEO is a company with government contracts to run ICE detention centers. The EPA had a complaint against GEO last year for failing to provide protective gear from chemicals that can cause skin burns and eye damage. The NLRB filed a complaint for using detainees as workers and not paying them proper wages. Large fines were pending. Then the company gave the maximum to the nasty guy’s campaign, $1 million to his PAC, and smaller amounts to other Republicans. The NLRB no longer has a quorum and can’t hear cases. And the EPA withdrew its complaint. That’s called corruption. Alex Samuels of Kos wrote about the other side of the issue: “Sen. Bernie Sanders is urging Democratic leaders to stop cozying up to their own wealthy donors.” Sanders and seven other Democratic senators wrote a letter to the leaders asking them to ban super PACs and “dark money” in Democratic primaries. If Democrats are to fight the influence of rich people, something Sanders has been talking a lot about lately, they need to start with themselves. The letter noted that these super PACS spend in Democratic primaries, then spend to defeat Democrats in the general election. Overturning Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that opened unlimited outside spending, is a long-term project. But citizens already notice (thanks to Musk) that rich people have too much influence. That give Democrats an opening. In 2022 the 988 suicide crisis hotline began working. One could contact that number in a variety of ways. A person is first asked a bit about who they are. One of the options is LGBTQ. If that is chosen they are passed on to the Trevor Project, counselors trained to handle queer people. This separate service is needed because of the high suicide rate of queer youth. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that initial menu option disappears on July 17. The reason is the nasty guy is being nasty and said so. Yeah, this is part of his and Republican attacks on LGBTQ people and trans people in particular. Suicide rates will go up.

Young LGBTQ+ people are under attack by their state and federal governments. And now, if they are driven into darkness, Trump has cut off a vital and lifesaving resource that the community increasingly depends on.

Thankfully, the Trevor Project remains. All that is being lost is the vital connection to the 988 hotline, which is much easier to remember than the name and full number of the Trevor Project. That’s still losing a lot. If you are in crisis, contact 988. If you are queer you can still contact 988 for now or find the Trevor Project number. The nasty guy created a Religious Liberty Commission. Alix Breeden of Kos reported they met for the first time this week. Thankfully, it seems all they did was gripe about “anti-Christian bias,” how Christians are “under attack,” that religious liberty is threatened, and that the society has no moral code. Yes, we as a nation do have a moral code. It’s quite a good one, though far from perfect. It just isn’t completely Christian. Though this is a “Religious” commission one can easily guess how much representation there was from Muslim, Jewish, or even liberal Christian groups. The group’s next meeting is scheduled for September. We can hope they’ll gripe some more and not actually do anything. In last Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a couple good quotes. This was before the No Kings protest and the dreary parade for the nasty guy. Just before then the nasty guy went to the re-re-named Fort Bragg and used cheering soldiers as a backdrop for a rally style speech. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer added a bit of background.

The insurrectionist Bragg surely would have been heartened when Trump used his powerful platform to rally an entire army against democratically elected public officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — and when the uniformed troops of a once-proudly-apolitical U.S. Army answered with thunderous applause. Like everything else about Trump’s strongman regime, the cheers had been manufactured. Military.com later reported that the chiseled forces of the storied 82nd Airborne Division behind Trump’s podium had been picked in part for their right-wing political views and also — according to one email obtained by the news site — to satisfy our allegedly 224-pound (lol) president with “no fat soldiers.” (Yes, Donald Trump’s Tinder ad for his dream-date U.S. soldier essentially read, “No fatties.”)

Tom Nichols of The Atlantic noted the generals did not speak up and added:

He mocked former President Joe Biden and attacked various other political rivals. He elicited cheers from the crowd by announcing that he would rename U.S. bases (or re-rename them) after Confederate traitors. He repeated his hallucinatory narrative about the invasion of America by foreign criminals and lunatics. He referred to 2024 as the “election of a president who loves you,” to a scatter of cheers and applause. And then he attacked the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, again presiding over jeers at elected officials of the United States. He led soldiers, in other words, in a display of unseemly behavior that ran contrary to everything the founder of the U.S. Army, George Washington, strove to imbue in the American armed forces.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme playing on one of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claims that Democrats could control the weather. This meme shows a woman with a bright smile ready to push the button on the Democrat Party Weather Machine on the day of the parade. It did rain that day in Washington, though a White House spokesperson claimed that it hadn’t. In today’s pundit roundup Dworkin had more good quotes. From Ron Fournier of Convulsions:

During a contentious Senate Armed Service Committee meeting Wednesday, [Elissa Slotkin,] freshman Democrat, grilled [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth over whether he had authorized members of the military to "detain and arrest protesters" in Los Angeles. He ducked and deflected. She erupted. "What is the order?" Slotkin demanded. "Be a man, list it out. Did you authorize them to detain or arrest? That is a fundamental of democracy. I'm not trying to be a snot here. I'm just trying to get the actual — did you authorize them to do that?" Be a man, she said. But Hegseth didn’t have it in him.

Dworkin wrote about the nasty guy saying he’ll decide in two weeks if the US should help Israel against Iran:

Reports are that Pete Hegseth and [director of intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard are ignored when it comes to input on what Trump is supposed to do. No surprise; they, like DHS Sec Noem are only there to cosplay. And as for Bibi Netanyahu, Trump knows any advice he gets is to benefit Netanyahu, not Trump. When it comes to Iran, Trump is stuck with making a decision. The buck stops with him. And he’s afraid to decide. My best guess is that Trump will do the right thing (not bomb Iran) for the wrong reason (he’s a coward and is afraid of his base turning on him). But who knows? Trump’s a damaged human being and is hard to predict when it comes to doing something difficult.

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times worked with Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley law school, to list five grounds on which to impeach the nasty guy. Dworkin quoted two.

Trump has repeatedly ignored due process of law, such as in sending people to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador and to the South Sudan without a semblance of due process. The cutoff of funds to universities and to grant recipients has been done without any due process. This is a very serious abuse of power. President Trump has used his power for retribution. His actions against law firms, which have been done without due process, have been expressly stated to be for personal retribution because they employed lawyers who investigated or prosecuted him. This is a very serious abuse of power.

Dworkin reminds us we need “a Democratic House to impeach him (and a heavily Democratic Senate to convict).” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. A sample:

“I am genuinely baffled. Why is it when a foreigner—or someone that shouldn’t be here—kills one of us, we’re going to put 150-billion dollars into border security, we’re going to militarize our cities, we’re going to spend trillions of dollars to bomb and destabilize foreign countries overseas, we're going to ban people from random countries from ever f---ing visiting here, [and] we’re going to take our shoes off at the airport forever? But when we do it to ourselves? Nothing. It makes no sense—it's jarring cognitive dissonance.” —Jon Stewart, on the MAGA cult’s obsession with beefing up law enforcement and the military in response to barely-existent shootings by immigrants, while doing nothing to reduce the epidemic of shootings—like the assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark—by home-grown Americans.

A tweet from the Daily Show has the caption, “Iran: Weeks away from having nuclear weapons since 1995.” And something I heard in the news: As part of the Israel-Iran war Iran hit an Israeli hospital. Israel’s defense chief declared that to be a war crime. I thought that statement took chutzpah to cover the hypocrisy, considering what Israel has been doing in Gaza. Bill quoted an NBC News report:

“Nearly all hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, told NBC News. During the war, Gaza’s hospitals have eked back services, only to be repeatedly struck or besieged again.

What if they weren’t mistakes, but intentional?

When NPR interviews a Republican or conservative I usually turn my radio off for the duration of the segment. For example, yesterday (I think) they talked to Steve Bannon. I turned it off. But today I kept the radio on the whole six minutes while host Michel Martin talked to Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, which makes her the top spokesperson. Perhaps I wanted to tally McLaughlin’s lies and exaggerations. First, McLaughlin said they were doing what they do because of the “mandate the American people gave him.” The word “mandate” is said a lot. But that tiny margin of victory in last November’s election is not a mandate. And her usage implies that a large majority of Americans are behind that mandate while polls show less than half of Americans agree with their immigration/deportation policies. It brings to mind the Shakespeare line from Hamlet that she “doth protest too much.” Yeah, I had to verify where it came from. Second, she blamed Biden – the ICE agents have been “hamstrung for the last four years.” That dismisses Biden’s efforts to lower the number of migrants attempting to cross the border. Yeah, the numbers have gone down since Biden left office. But he also brought them down while in office. Of course, that assumes stopping migration into the US is a good thing, and I doubt it is. Third, she talked about getting “criminal illegal aliens off of our streets.” Of which there are very few. Most crime in America is committed by Americans. The statement is just to make us fear immigrants. Fourth, she played games with the meaning of “due process,” which deportees are supposed to get before being deported. She said if the detainee is a member of a terrorist organization what is “due” in “due process” “is going to look different.” That implies less than what our Constitution and traditions require. Fifth, she said they knew they would have to “battle” activist judges. So they will use every tool they have to execute the mandate of the American people, implying one of those tools is defying judicial orders. Sixth, she said when they mistakenly arrest the wrong people they do an internal investigation to make sure they don’t make that mistake again. She did not say they release those wrongfully detained or return those already deported. She also didn’t define “wrong people” or “mistake.” I’m sure a careful reader could come up with several more ways she lied or clouded the issue. McLaughlin is very good at sticking to the propaganda script. Alas, NPR didn’t follow this segment with a Democrat giving a rebuttal. Steve Inskeep of NPR discussed with Democratic Rep. Adam Smith what the House Republicans are doing about Signalgate. That’s the scandal where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed a military attack on the unsecured Signal app. Then did it again. Smith has a lot to say on the topic, too much for me to quote. So I’ll summarize. Smith filed a resolution of inquiry, to force an investigation. Republicans responded by disallowing resolutions of inquiry. That frustrates the democratic process by not allowing an open public discussion. Republicans can’t defend Hegseth so won’t talk about it and will prevent Congress from doing its oversight of the Pentagon and over a dangerous person. Democrats haven’t welcomed demands for investigation by Republicans but they recognized the minority needs to be heard. True even if it is Democrats losing the later vote. But Republicans are shutting of debate. A representative government is supposed to have debates. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about some of the mistakes made by the nasty guy administration. Kilmar Abrego Garcia sent to the El Salvador gulag by a mistake and not brought back. Children who are citizens deported with a parent being deported (one two years old, another a four-year-old with late stage cancer). They deservedly get negative attention. We believe they must be mistakes (and in the Abrego Garcia case the mistake was admitted) because they are so awful. Needham posed the questions: But what if they weren’t mistakes? What if they were intentional decisions that have become policy? Needham answered by saying if they were mistakes they would have been fixed. Also, when a similar situation arises and the same “mistake” is repeated. In the case of the children the administration said the parent being deported wanted their citizen child to be deported with them. By the time a judge was able to issue instructions to interview the parent to verify that is what they wanted the government said, “Whoopsie, too late” – the plane deporting the parent and child has already departed and out of US airspace. Yep, that’s the same excuse given for why the first batch of deportees sent to El Salvador weren’t given a chance to challenge their deportation and why the government is saying they can’t get Abrego Garcia back. This isn’t a mistake. There was no mistake when they arrested the judge accused of protecting an immigrant from deportation. It wasn’t a one-time goof. They plan to repeat.

It isn’t an accident that the administration has harmed people with sympathetic stories. Making 4-year-olds with cancer the antagonist of your immigration crackdown isn’t just morally repugnant. It also looks terrible and sparks immediate and widespread disapproval. Telling the world you’ve got no problem arresting judges doesn’t land super well, either. But that’s the point. The administration wants everyone to know that nothing will protect you. There’s no bridge too far, no line they won’t cross. If they’ll deport 2-year-olds and not give it a second thought, if they’ll leave someone in a violent prison overseas, if they’ll roll up on a judge and arrest her at the courthouse, they’ll do anything. The fear is absolutely the point.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Nadine Yousif of BBC News who noted that in the recent election in Canada the overall election went the liberals the youth vote went to the conservatives. They were more concerned about housing not being affordable, the cost of living, and crime and hadn’t seen improvement under the liberals. Kev added that youth voting for the far right is an issue in more than Canada. It was also a factor in recent elections in South Korea, Japan, Argentina, across Africa, and across Europe (though not in Mexico and India). Kev next quoted the Harvard Youth Poll done by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. This year they surveyed 2,096 Americans between ages 18 and 29 during March 14-25.

"From significant economic concerns to dramatic feelings of social isolation, and from growing mental health challenges to mounting distrust in the government and both parties, young Americans have apprehensions about what would have seemed unimaginable just a few short years ago," said IOP Director Setti Warren. "These findings are a stark reality check and leaders across the country would be wise to pay close attention." "This is a generation that's weathered pandemic isolation during formative years, entered an unstable economy, and faced skyrocketing housing and education costs—all while being told they're not resilient enough," said John Della Volpe, Director of Polling at the Institute of Politics. "What Gen Z needs isn't another lecture, but genuine recognition of their struggles and leaders willing to listen before they speak." "Amid financial hardship and a devastating crisis of community, young Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the world as they struggle to find their place in it," said Jordan Schwartz, Student Chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project. "This generation doesn't expect politics to solve their problems, but as young Americans continue to lose faith in government institutions, the need for politicians to listen to and learn from young people has never been greater."

Down in the comments is a tweet by Garry Kasparov, who quotes Aaron Rupar. Rupar included a video of the nasty guy presiding over a cabinet meeting. At ever cabinet position around the table is a red MAGA hat. Rupar quotes AG Pam Bondi saying: “President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you.” I heard elsewhere that every cabinet secretary said something similar. Kasparov wrote:

If you are competent, or even know anyone who is competent, you know how impossible it is to perform a real job competently when this is the type of feedback you must provide to your boss. Nepotism and sycophancy turn autocracies into corrupt, failed regimes and economies.

And exlrrp posted a meme of Sen. Ted Lieu saying:

The fact that we even have to introduce an amendment that says ICE cannot deport U.S. citizens is bats--- crazy. This should not even be a discussion.

Further down Todd Alcott posted a Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon by Ruben Bolling. This uses Peanuts characters to reinterpret the Halloween story in which Linus wishes the Great Pumpkin to come. This version shows the Great Pumpkin has arrived and is fascist, making Linus quite happy. Yesterday, I included a meme about Jeff Bezos: “Trump bullied me. Now I’m afraid to show what you will pay for tariffs.” Demonstrating how far behind I am in my reading of news... On Tuesday Emily Singer of Kos reported that Amazon will show the tariff costs beside the cost of each item so consumers can see how much more they are paying because of the nasty guy’s trade policy. And, yep, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went into attack mode saying the move is “a hostile and political act by Amazon.” And, citing a story by Reuters, she said “Amazon has recently partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm, so this is another reason why Americans should buy American.” Nice way to treat a guy who donated to and attended the inauguration. Singer wrote that a big reason for the attack is that showing the “import fees” proves the nasty guy’s claim that the tariffs are paid by China is a lie. Though Amazon was just testing the waters other companies are already listing “import fees.” A big one is the China-based online retailer Temu. Yeah, that’s not an example of an American company listing fees. Big box stores warned the White House that tariffs will lead to big price spikes and product shortages. And UPS announced cutting 20,000 jobs because tariffs will reduce the volume of packages being shipped.

What a hero is worth

Leana Wen of the Washington Post talked about how to gauge risk as things reopen. All 50 states have eased lockdown restrictions at least a little bit. None of them have met the guidelines for when to reopen safely. Wen talks of four kinds of risk.

There is relative risk, measured in proximity, activity, and time. Close proximity to an infected person for a long time is high risk. Birthday parties can be superspreader events. Passing a stranger while outdoors is low risk. If you really must visit friends, do it outdoors, skip the hugs, keep your distance, and even bring your own food.

There is pooled risk. If two families have been rigorously sheltering at home then visiting each other is low risk. That changes when any person from either family resumes work outside the home.

There is cumulative risk. For example, if you must have your hair cut, don’t follow that with a meal in a restaurant.

There is collective risk. The more infected people in a community the more likely you will come in contact with an infected person. This is why mask wearing is important.



Meteor Blades of Daily Kos quoted a bit from Jake Johnson of Common Dreams. A few of the notoriously abusive corporations – such as Amazon and Walmart – have been running ads on TV and YouTube praising their employees as being heroes. Some of the ads even proclaim they are doing everything they can to ensure their health and safety.

Two replies to that: Three days after such an Amazon ad appeared workers at their Staten Island warehouse walked off the job to protest inadequate measures to prevent the spread of the virus. And Bernie Sanders says it is nauseating that these companies don’t pay their workers what a hero is worth.



skralyx of the Kos community takes a look at what the virus is doing to the coal industry. First there are two maps comparing coal burning power plants in the US in 2010 and 2019. The later map shows fewer plants with a lot of them designated as in the process of closing. That was before the virus.

The virus will be the knockout punch for several coal companies who were teetering. Longview Power put out a notice that it filed for bankruptcy, that included this:

The West Virginia power plant blamed the move on low power prices caused by competition from cheap natural gas, a warm winter and the COVID-19 pandemic’s stamp on the economy.

skralyx noted:

A warm winter, huh? Did anyone else get a whiff of irony here in the building?

Murray Energy, the nation’s largest coal miner, also filed for bankruptcy, saying it might be force to liquidate if it can’t shed health care payments for retirees. Yup, retirees on the chopping block first.

There are several quotes saying how hard coal has been hit. And that mines and plants that are shut down because of the virus will not reopen once the virus is gone.

skralyx is aware that when a mine or power plant closes a community will be hit hard. These are communities that had relied on coal for generations. Even so:

But coal is dangerous, deadly, polluting, and awful for the climate, and it’s long past time to move on. Instead of making empty promises to bring back the coal industry and then going golfing, we need to be serious about getting these workers training for rising energy industries like solar and wind. They’re not married to coal; they just want stable jobs.

Who loved you into existence?

I finished the July/August 2013 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. One of the science fact articles was *Galactic Cannibalism: Who’s On the Menu* by H.G. Stratmann. It talks about what happens when galaxies collide. In particular, he says the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with our own Milky Way Galaxy in about … 3¾ billion years.

But don’t fret. Galaxies, in spite of their size and having billions of stars, have a huge amount of open space. Our nearest stellar neighbor is about 4 light-years away, which is about 24 trillion miles. So the chance of a star from the other galaxy crashing into our sun is quite tiny. Even so, as the to galaxies interact it is possible the orbit of our sun within the Milky Way may be perturbed, sending our sun (and solar system) either closer to the galactic center or away into the depths of space.

NASA and its Hubble Telescope site and some talented artists created a series of images showing what the collision, um, “merger” will look like from earth over the next 7 billion years. The link is to the first image. Click next for the rest of the series.



This afternoon I went to see the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Lloyd Vogel (played by Matthew Rhys) is a writer for Esquire magazine. After he gets into a fight with his father at his sister’s (third) wedding his editor sends him out to interview Fred Rogers – yes, that Fred Rogers (played by Tom Hanks, who did a wonderful job capturing Rogers). The editor knows Vogel demonizes his subjects and Rogers is the only one who returned calls. Throughout the story I was repeatedly amazed at the kindness that Rogers showed to everyone around him, especially Vogel. At one point Rogers asks Vogel to think about the people who loved him into existence. I highly recommend it.

The editor asked Vogel to write 400 words. The final article was 10,000 words. It was the cover story for that issue.

The movie is based on real life events. Journalist Tom Junod really did write an Esquire article on Rogers and as a result the two men became lifelong friends. Though Junod is clear he did not punch his father at his sister’s wedding – his sister didn’t have a wedding.



Bodie Ashton tweeted a thread about the bush fires in Australia. He talks about how clueless the government is. One measure of the magnitude of the fires: Summer started there about ten days ago. Fire season usually starts two weeks from now. But fires have already been raging for three months. And temperatures have already been consistently well above 40C (104F).

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos adds a few more details. As well as the hottest year, this has also been the driest. Fires have pushed people to beaches or even into the ocean to avoid the heat and flames. The Navy is being rather slow in rescuing those who have been trapped. The gov’t says it is “mostly” meeting goals for carbon reduction. But that statement ignores that a third of the world’s coal comes from Australia. A lot of the locals have moved away from cash but downed telecommunications lines means credit/debit cards can’t be used for gas or lodging.



David Rothkopf tweeted a thread. Here’s part of it:

I just don't believe the only goal is to beat Trump. I believe it is to find a president who can help defeat Trumpism, inequality, and rise to the challenges ahead. I believe any Dem can beat Trump.

If we settle for someone who wins but has no new ideas, does not address the underlying problems, can't rise to the new challenges, can't be re-elected, is unrealistic about the nature of the opposition, then we can win the battle and (continue to) lose the war.

Though Rothkopf doesn’t say which of the Dem candidates best fits this ideal, this is why Elizabeth Warren is my favorite candidate.



Lauren Floyd of Daily Kos suggests four companies to boycott in 2020. I already boycott all four, though only two by conscious decision.

Amazon treats employees “like the gum stuck on the bottom of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ shoes.” He also doesn’t seem to mind extra pollution in neighborhoods of black and brown people. I began boycotting Amazon when I realized how much money he had and that it means he is exploiting his suppliers (he demands special deals that mean authors are underpaid) and workers. When Amazon bought Whole Foods I stopped going there too.

NFL got on the list for its treatment of Colin Kaepernick and because it pays its athletes (mostly black) less money than any other major sport. This one wasn’t a conscious decision for me. I’m just not into football or any other competitive sport.

Walmart has a long reputation for paying its workers so little they qualify for poverty assistance while the owners earn billions a year. This was a decision I made several years ago.

Wells Fargo repeatedly settles lawsuits because of its discriminatory lending policies. This one wasn’t a conscious decision. I’m happy banking with my credit union so never considered being a Wells Fargo customer.



Quote of the day:

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
~~Theodore Roosevelt, Metropolitan Magazine (1918)

Bulldoze competition

Elizabeth Warren made a big splash with her proposal to split up tech giants Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Some of her points:

* Monopolies in general stifle innovation. An antitrust case against Microsoft allowed Google and Facebook to emerge.

* These big companies have too much power over out economy, society, and democracy. They bulldoze competition.

* They use mergers to limit competition. Warren would appoint regulators to undo some of the latest mergers, such as Amazon and Whole Foods.

* They create proprietary marketplaces and use those to limit competition. If a company is a marketplace platform it should not also do business on that platform. When it does business on the platform there is incentive to skew the platform to favor its business.

* Monopolies don’t compete. One area where they don’t compete is in protecting privacy.

Hard to get a good helpdesk these days

An advantage of a blog is getting the last word in when encountering ineffective customer service. Because of a music order in December, Amazon gave me a gift card for MP3 downloads. I hadn't bought MP3s before, but if it's free I can deal with it using players on my computer. It’s a chance to buy a bit of something in which I might not want the whole album. But what does Amazon have available? Not all albums are offered as downloads and not all of them offer tracks separately.

I thought of browsing through what is available. And that's where the trouble started. I clicked to browse classical music - by historical period - music of the 20th & 21st centuries. It proceeded to show me the 1st 24 albums -- out of 10,750. And out of those 24, 9 are for Christmas (which I think should be a separate category), one is Duke Ellington (not classical), and 4 are not 20th century -- meaning it is a hugely bloated list. But even if the list was only a couple thousand, showing only 24 at a time and not providing a way to skip around or subdivide the list it would take a long time to get through it.

I used their help form to suggest improvements and ask if there is a better way to browse. What I got was an email with instructions on how to search. Um, no.

The email contained a link for the case the question wasn't answered. I filled in the form -- and got two emails in response saying I hadn't used the email address they had on file. I can understand this is a security issue -- but neither response answered the question. If this is an issue why not request I login to make sure the reply goes to the address on file?

I logged in before responding to that. I repeated my previous complaints and added the one about not requiring me to login. The response was the stock answer about how to change which email address is on file. Bzzt. Wrong answer! This time they suggested I try their phone service -- enter your phone number and they'll call. And when they say Right Now they mean right now. I clicked "connect" and the phone rang.

Alas, the woman in India on the other end, once it was obvious there was nothing she could fix, could only apologize, assure me I'm a valued customer, and assure me that someone will be listening to the recording of the call and will consider my suggestions. Of course, I got one more auto response -- did she answer my question? Hard to tell.