Archive for 2018
August 21, 2018
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Security Clearances, RUSSIAN Cyberattacks and Much, Much More. “Why is the President watching CNN? No one else does.”
THE MORE THEY CALL TRUMP INSANE, THE CRAZIER THEY GET: Liberal Media Scream: MSNBC expert calls US a ‘white supremacist country.’
It was just a few years back when experts featured on MSNBC were praising the unity of blacks and whites to elect former President Obama. That was then.
This week’s Liberal Media Scream features former MSNBC host Toure Neblett on Saturday’s AM Joy calling the nation a “white supremacist country” as he discussed whether President Donald Trump is a racist.
It came during a discussion with fill-in host Al Sharpton and Virginia Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart. Neblett also declared that President Donald Trump “stands on black people’s necks.”
Weird, then, that we see record-low black unemployment, and rising black support for Trump.
THE HUMAN TOUCH: Why Banks Are Giving Tellers Raises, Instead of Firing Them All.
When Goldman Sachs Group Inc. launched its digital consumer bank, it conducted a survey on customer attitudes. It turns out people want to find answers without assistance — until they can’t and immediately want help from a qualified banker. There’s high tolerance for self-service until it fails, and then there’s no tolerance. As banks across the country reassess branches, those findings keep getting validated.
It’s one reason why many bank tellers are getting raises this year. Conventional wisdom is that the job — held by almost a half-million Americans — is entering a sharp decline. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects banks will eliminate more than 40,000 positions in the decade through 2026. That would likely suppress teller wages, which hovered around a median $13.50 an hour last year.
Yet, in interviews and anecdotally, a more nuanced picture emerges. After banks received generous tax cuts in December, several of the nation’s largest — including Wells Fargo & Co., PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and Fifth Third Bancorp — said they’re raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Branches and tellers aren’t going away entirely. Instead, as customers turn to mobile phones for routine financial services, tellers are being upgraded, taught to pitch loans, guide local entrepreneurs and offer technical support. The result is that at many lenders, a job widely seen as endangered by automation is starting to pay more.
No matter how good algorithms become, there may be some things where people still insist on dealing with other people.
AT AMAZON, AncestryDNA: Genetic Testing.
Plus, Lightning Deal, Monocular Telescopes Scope Adults Cell Phone Adapter Bird Watching (Black).
THIS WHOLE #METOO THING IS JUST GOING SWIMMINGLY: Nineteen former Miss America winners are calling for the ENTIRE pageant board including chairwoman Gretchen Carlson to step down over claims of bullying.
IT MIGHT NOT BE LONG NOW BEFORE THEY RULE IT IN: Brazil has not ruled out closing border with Venezuela.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Antifa in Portland beat up a Bernie Bro because he was carrying a ‘fascist’ American flag.
HMM: Some Tesla Suppliers Fret About Getting Paid. “Auto maker’s tumultuous year has concerned some of its suppliers, which are pushed to extend payment terms or asked to give cash back.”
A recent survey sent privately by a well-regarded automotive supplier association to top executives found that 18 of 22 respondents believe that Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies, according to the document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Separately, several suppliers in interviews said Tesla has tried to stretch out payments or asked for significant cash back. And in some cases, public records show, small suppliers over the past several months have claimed they failed to get paid for services supplied to Tesla.
Tesla has improved its on-time payments to production-related suppliers to about 95% from 90% last year, according to people familiar with the matter. For nonproduction suppliers, Tesla is paying on time about 80% of the time, the people said.
“We’re not behind because we can’t pay them,” Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an interview Friday. “It is just because we’re arguing whether the parts are right.”
This looks less like a genuine cashflow issue and more like Tesla’s suppliers pushing back on those rebates Tesla reportedly demanded last month, but we’ll see.
JIM LINDGREN LOOKS AT A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PROGRAM ASKING IF THERE CAN BE CAPITALISM WITHOUT RACISM:
IMO, the answers to these questions are fairly obvious:
1. Racism came first. Every inhabited continent had slaves, and ethnic out-groups were among the most likely to be enslaved. It is the abolition of slavery that is particularly Western, as Orlando Patterson explains his books Freedom and Slavery and Social Death.
2. (and 3.) If there can be any economic system without racism (I suppose it depends on how high one’s standards are), then capitalism is not always racist and there can be capitalism without racism. Capitalism is easier to square with a reduction in racism than most ideologies because (a) it is individualistic, (b) it is not built on envy for despised groups, and (c) in the United States at least, pro-capitalists tend to be less racist personally than anti-capitalists.
Indeed, in the general public it is the opposition to capitalism and the desire for redistribution that are positively associated with racism and intolerance.
I explore this relationship in “Redistribution and Racism, Tolerance and Capitalism,” which analyzes data from 20 nationally representative surveys of the general public.
Yep. Also, the more people yell about racism, sexual harassment, etc., the more likely it seems that they’re guilty of it.
PRIVACY: Man sues over Google’s “Location History” fiasco, case could affect millions.
Last Friday, Google quietly edited its description of the practice on its own website—while continuing said practice—to clarify that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps.”
As a result of the previously unknown practice, which was first exposed by the Associated Press last week, Google has now been sued by a man in San Diego. Simultaneously, activists in Washington, DC are urging the Federal Trade Commission to examine whether the company is in breach of its 2011 consent decree with the agency.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court last Friday in San Francisco, attorneys representing a man named Napoleon Patacsil argued that Google is violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the state’s constitutional right to privacy.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status, and it would include both an “Android Class” and “iPhone Class” for the potential millions of people in the United States with such phones who turned off their Location History and nonetheless had it recorded by Google. It will likely take months or longer for the judge to determine whether there is a sufficient class.
I hope this goes forward.
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer Announces Forthcoming Lawsuit Over Patreon Account Removal. “They will soon be hearing from attorneys.”
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Dad catches teen having sex with disgraced track coach.
A volunteer track coach at a Missouri high school has confessed to having sex with a 17-year-old male athlete whose father once interrupted one of their illicit encounters, authorities said.
Ericka Beverly Oxford, a 41-year-old unpaid parent volunteer for the boys track team at Fort Zumalt East High School, surrendered to police in St. Peters on Friday on a charge of felony sexual contact with a student, KMOV reports.
Who knew the public schools were such cesspits of sexual exploitation?
ON THIS DAY IN 1940: Leon Trotsky died from his wounds in Mexico City. He had been attacked with an ice axe (no, not an ice pick, an ice axe) the day before by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-Catalan communist and NKVD agent, acting on orders from the top. Look, when Stalin wanted you dead, you were dead. It didn’t matter where you were.
PREDICTION CONFIRMED! Focus: Solar Wind Shock Wave Gives Ions a Push.
FEW AS COMPARED TO WHAT? Too Few Girls?
INDEED: Making young bookworms: looking to the future. But the left would rather impose their opinions and eat the seed corn.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND STUFF: Brennan: I didn’t mean that Trump committed treason when I said his actions are ‘nothing short of treasonous’.
IN OTHER WORDS, MONDAY: Watch as ex-CIA analyst falls victim to Trump Derangement Syndrome, goes berserk on CNN.
OH, MY PEOPLE! She Did Nazi That Coming.
YEAH, BUT THIS IS THEIR APPROACH TO EVERYTHING: Of course Trump is guilty because we say he is.
WILL BACKING KAVANAUGH HELP OR HURT RED-STATE DEMOCRATS?: It may depend on which state you’re talking about. Or so say some polls.