MINIMUM WAGE PAIN: Red Robin eliminates bus boys as a result of labor cost increases. Note that these aren’t positions easily replaced by automation. Other workers will have to work harder to make up the gap left by positions that politicians decided were worth more than the business owner did.
Archive for 2018
January 9, 2018
WOW: Saudi Arabia arrests 11 princes who protested suspension of government payments.
Crown Prince bin Salman is not screwing around.
CONSERVATIVES IN UPROAR ON TRUMP’S ‘BRING BACK EARMARKS’ COMMENT: President Donald Trump mused during today’s White House meeting with Republican and Democrat congressional figures that back in the good old days when congressmen could be bought and stayed bought for the right (earmark) price (OK, that’s not exactly how it was said but cut me a little Wolffian slack here), there was a lot more bipartisanship. It took about three nanoseconds for leaders of the fight a decade ago to abolish earmarks to roast Trump.
REPORT: Bannon Steps Down At Breitbart. They should bring back the old pre-Bannon gang of Dana Loesch, et al.
FINALLY: With ingestible pill, you can track fart development in real time on your phone.
Please keep this technology out of the hands of my young sons, who would undoubtedly ingest several of these along with Pop Rocks and a two-liter bottle of Coke.
A LOOK AT THE 2018 Ford F-150.
THEY ALSO LEAD IN LEFTY ECONOMICS: Washington and California Lead U.S. in Bigfoot Sightings.
MAMMOTH SMUG STORM THREATENS SAN FRANCISCO:
● Shot: Why Liberals Need to Look Down on Conservatives.
● Chaser: When I say “Trump is my fourth Hitler,” it’s only because I’m too young to remember Goldwater.
Goldwater was Godwinized by no less than CBS’s Daniel Schorr and Walter Cronkite.
● Hangover: Delete your account: Jimmy Kimmel writer cries sexism after being called out for attacking 3rd-grade teacher. Tweet in question was deleted, but I’m pretty sure it’s this:
As Fred Siegel wrote in his 2014 book, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class, “The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. ‘Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class,’ Parrington insisted, referring to both democracy and capitalism, ‘and the artist and the scientist will erect in America a civilization that may become, what civilization was in earlier days, a thing to be respected.’”
And that credo, now internalized after a century of “Progressivism” is what drives the media to rage an increasingly angry war with its customers.
(Classical allusion in headline.)
CIVIL SOCIETY: Racist goons are targeting the FCC chief — and his family.
The source of great consternation on the left is the FCC’s decision to scrap an Obama-era rule implemented in 2015 deemed “net neutrality.” The end of net neutrality will allow internet service providers to, if they choose, privilege the content of providers that they own or support.
Over this, Pai has been the target of a campaign of harassment that amounts to a national scandal.
HBO host John Oliver was among the first mainstream cultural figures to organize a net-neutrality campaign, which he dubbed “Go FCC Yourself.” He encouraged followers to bombard the FCC’s website with comments supporting the regulation, and so they did.
Those comments were peppered with claims that Pai was a pedophile, a “dirty, sneaky Indian” who should self-deport and reminders that anonymous online hordes maintain the “power to murder Ajit Pai and his family.” Oliver was eventually compelled to release a video urging his followers to dial back the racism and death threats.
This episode would prove to be just the beginning of Pai’s ordeal. By May of last year, Pai’s tormentors began a campaign to ensure that the FCC chairman could enjoy no peace — not even in his own home.
If this were happening to a Democrat appointee, it would be the lede story, everywhere, all the time.
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE. WELL, IT’S ALMOST NEVER TOO LATE. Heart health can be improved in older age, study finds.
The whole thing is behind the SSRN paywall, but maybe you’ll find it worth your $5.
Here’s the summary:
We exploit quasi-experimental variation in assignment of rent control to study its impacts on tenants, landlords, and the overall rental market. Leveraging new data tracking individuals’ migration, we find rent control increased renters’ probabilities of staying at their addresses by nearly 20%. Landlords treated by rent control reduced rental housing supply by 15%, causing a 5.1% city-wide rent increase. Using a dynamic, neighborhood choice model, we find rent control offered large benefits to covered tenants.
Unexpectedly.
CAN I GO FOR A RIDE? Lockheed may have completed a prototype hypersonic SR72.
TYLER O’NEIL: If it’s politics without policy, Oprah! wins.
FRENEMIES: Huawei, Seen as Possible Spy Threat, Boomed Despite U.S. Warnings. “Chinese telecom giant has gobbled up huge global market share; now Washington is warning anew about alleged spy threat as U.S. telecoms embark on $275 billion 5G network build-out.”
Since 2012, Huawei has expanded to 170 countries from 140, and now claims 45 of the world’s 50 biggest wireless carriers as customers. Huawei, which also runs a popular smartphone brand, made $75 billion overall in 2016. About $26 billion came from its telecom equipment and software business, making it the leader in the $126 billion-a-year global market, according to research-firm IHS Markit Ltd.
Huawei’s dominance is again stoking fears among Washington security and intelligence experts, who worry major U.S. carriers might be tempted to turn to Huawei.
Last month, members of the Senate and House intelligence committees sent a letter asking the Federal Communications Commission to review any relationship with Huawei and requested that the FCC get briefed on the security concerns raised in 2012. The letter also raised concerns about Huawei’s growing smartphone business, now the world’s No. 3 brand behind Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc.
It feels a bit like buying satellite telecom equipment from the Soviets in the early ’80s.
BLAMING A “HOSTILE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT:” GoPro will stop selling drones once remaining Karma inventory is gone.
PHILIP H. DEVOE: President Oprah’s Pseudoscience.
On June 22, 2011, James Arthur Ray was found guilty of negligent homicide after three attendees of his “Spiritual Warrior” retreat died. That only three died — 18 others were injured — is nothing short of a miracle: In what Ray called a traditional Native American sweat-lodge ceremony, participants were first subjected to 36 hours of fasting in the Arizona desert, with nothing but a sleeping bag for company, and then required to participate in a ritual inside a 200-degree lodge. Ray called this a “heat endurance” exercise, but a better description would be a $10,000 life-threatening scam.
Twice in 2006, Ray was a guest of the Oprah Winfrey show. Twice, she endorsed his outré New Age thinking. In an interview with The Verge, the mother of retreat victim Kirby Brown revealed that Ray’s appearance on Oprah helped quell concerns her daughter felt about becoming a follower of Ray’s methods. If Oprah endorsed it, her daughter assumed, it must be safe. Alas, it seems the opposite is true. If Oprah endorses it, odds are it’s pseudoscience.
But probably no less disassociated from reality than endorsing Oprah for President.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: NASA’s $1 Billion Probe Just Sent Back Mind-Meltingly Gorgeous New Images of Jupiter. The polar clouds are particularly cool, and look as if they were painted by Van Gogh.
I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING: David Brooks Says Anti-Trump Movement Is Getting ‘Dumber,’ Becoming a ‘Smug Fairy Tale.’
I THINK THAT BOTH CONGRESS AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT NEED TO INVESTIGATE THESE CLAIMS THAT GOOGLE IS A CESSPIT OF RACE- AND GENDER-BASED HATRED AND DISCRIMINATION: James Damore sues Google, alleging intolerance of white male conservatives.
Damore, who was fired in 2017 after writing a controversial memo about gender and technology, alleges in the lawsuit that white, male conservative employees at Google are “ostracized, belittled, and punished”.
The lawsuit claims that numerous Google managers maintained “blacklists” of conservative employees with whom they refused to work; that Google has a list of conservatives who are banned from visiting the campus; and that Google’s firings of Damore and the other named plaintiff, David Gudeman, were discriminatory.
“We look forward to defending against Mr Damore’s lawsuit in court,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
I look forward to discovery. Plus:
Screenshots of internal communications reveal numerous employees appearing to support the idea of being intolerant toward certain points of view, such as one post arguing that Google should respond to Damore’s memo by “disciplining or terminating those who have expressed support”. In another post, a manager stated his intention to “silence” certain “violently offensive” perspectives, writing: “There are certain ‘alternative views, including different political views’ which I do not want people to feel safe to share here … You can believe that women or minorities are unqualified all you like … but if you say it out loud, then you deserve what’s coming to you”.
Internal posts discussing the debate around diversity at Google, such as a meme of a penguin with the text “If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men”, are filed as an appendix to the lawsuit under the heading “Anti-Caucasian postings”.
One manager is quoted as posting: “I keep a written blacklist of people whom I will never allow on or near my team, based on how they view and treat their coworkers. That blacklist got a little longer today.” Another screenshot reveals a manager proposing the creation of a list of “people who make diversity difficult”, and weighing the possibility that individuals could have “something resembling a trial” before being included.
In the 2014 email from Whetstone, who served as senior vice-president of communications and public policy at Google for several years before departing for Uber, she wrote: “It seems like we believe in free expression except when people disagree with the majority view … I have lost count of the times at Google, for example, people tell me privately that they cannot admit their voting choice if they are Republican because they fear how other Googlers react.”
The complaint argues that Google’s tolerance for “alternative lifestyles” – the company has internal mailing lists for people interested in “furries, polygamy, transgenderism, and plurality” – does not extend to conservatism. One employee who emailed a list seeking parenting advice related to imparting a child with “traditional gender roles and patriarchy from a very young age” was allegedly chastised by human resources.
The suit also alleges that Google maintains a “secret” blacklist of conservative authors who are banned from being on campus.
This is the company that has a near-stranglehold on online advertising and search.
ANN ALTHOUSE CORRECTS DAVID BROOKS:
Preening over his own lofty intellectual standards, Brooks makes a lowly grammatical mistake and no one doing the “normal” journalism at the NYT noticed: “the monotonous daily hysteria of we anti-Trumpers” should be “the monotonous daily hysteria of us anti-Trumpers.”
I think “we” might feel more dignified than “us,” but mixing up your objective and subjective pronouns is a pretty lowbrow mistake. Speaking of things noticed and found silly, I find that silly — not because you made an error but because you’re so sure you’re the one on high looking down at other people.
Anyway, the monotonous daily hysteria of anti-Trumpers is worse than “silly.” I write about it all the time, not — as you might think — because I’m pro-Trump, but because the haters hate too much and it’s making them weird and crazy. In my view, Trump was too weird and crazy to be President, but in the real world, he is President, and it’s weird and crazy not to live in the real world.
I wonder where Brooks goes to notice young people looking at daily hysteria and finding it silly. Is there a coffeeshop in D.C. somewhere or what?
On the other hand, it’s news when David “sharp crease” Brooks notices that the anti-Trump movement is more about tribalism and aesthetics than anything substantive.
BUT THE NARRATIVE! Polar bears have not been driven to the brink of extinction by climate change, they are thriving.
As hard as they may be to get right, predictions about the future are the core of the field that goes by the name of “climate science.” Because of predictions about the future by climate scientists, everybody knows that human burning of fossil fuels will cause world temperatures to increase by multiple degrees over the coming century, leading to a series of calamities ranging from sea level rise to droughts to floods to hurricane and tornadoes. After all, the climate scientists have sophisticated computer models! If you don’t believe the predictions of the models, you must be a “science denier.” The predictions of significantly rising temperatures are so certain that you are to be required by government coercion (unless President Trump can head it off) to dramatically reduce your use of fossil fuels and restrict your lifestyle.
You and I are not going to be around in 2100 to see if any of these predictions about the future have come true. But meanwhile the climate alarm crowd obliges us with shorter term predictions to help us get some handle on how reliable they are. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be doing a very good job of keeping track of these predictions and seeing how they are turning out. So once again it falls to the Manhattan Contrarian to do some leg work.
Read the whole, embarrassing thing.