ANGEL AND RAPTOR: Capt. Eric Doyle, commanding officer of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, flies in formation with an F-22 Raptor assigned to the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team.
Archive for 2019
May 9, 2019
NOW OUT FROM MYRON MAGNET: Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution.
HMM: Uber gambled on driver arbitration and might have come up the loser.
As the ride-hailing titan prepares to go public this week, in a listing that could value Uber at almost $84 billion, the number of U.S. drivers who have filed arbitration demands against Uber has swelled to more than 60,000, according to the company’s prospectus. The figure surprised legal experts, who said resolving that many cases would take decades and cost Uber at least $600 million — with no end in sight.
Uber’s pending listing this week, on the heels of a planned strike by drivers, has brought the legal tactic into sharper focus. From Uber’s perspective, arbitration prevents drivers from banding together in class actions in open court, and from possibly winning a ruling with the power to threaten a linchpin of the company’s business model: treating drivers as independent contractors, avoiding the costs of full-time employees.
Arbitration decisions, whether for or against the company, don’t set any legal precedent, and the results are confidential. “Uber kind of picked its poison in that regard,” said Nancy Cremins, general counsel at Globalization Partners in Boston.
But while the choice might have initially deterred lawsuits, 60,000 arbitrations are “a death by a thousand cuts,” Cremins said. “The volume is impossible to deal with from an administrative and legal perspective.”
We live in a remarkable age, when the union option might be the easier and cheaper one.
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Who Were the Mueller Report’s Hired Guns?
#JOURNALISM: New York Times story on Trump’s billion-dollar tax write off was told by Trump 15 years ago on ‘The Apprentice.’ What a scoop!
Our Paper Of Record.
WELL, FOR ONE THING, IT COMES FROM NADLER: David Harsanyi: Why Jerry Nadler’s ‘constitutional crisis’ talk is utter bull.
From the moment the central claim of the Russiagate conspiracy was decimated by the Mueller Report, Democrats have generated a series of manufactured outrages to keep the conspiracy dream alive.
Why the theatrics? Well, the scope of the Trump “collusion” theory has radically contracted from its heyday.
What was once “Donald Trump personally colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election for the Kremlin!” is now “Why won’t the attorney general release the entire unredacted version of a report that exonerates the president of collusion!” It doesn’t have quite the same bite.
So Democrats have moved from conspiracies about Russia to conspiracies about the report debunking the conspiracy.
And the whole narrative is to distract from what the Obama Administration was doing to its political opponents.
CYBERCRIME: Amazon hit by extensive fraud with hackers siphoning merchant funds. “Amazon said it was still investigating the compromised accounts and believed that hackers managed to change details of accounts on the Seller Central platform to their own at Barclays and Prepay Technologies, which is partly owned by Mastercard, according to the filing.”
No word how much was stolen, and it could be that not even Amazon knows at this point.
THE HILL: The strange greatness of Donald Trump.
He is divisive. But so is the unprecedented rejection of the 2016 election by the congressional Democrats and the Rise and Resist movement and the endless criticism from the media. Trump has shown remarkable personal strength in standing up to relentless attacks.
Moving from the defensive to the positive side of the balance sheet, despite all of the attacks and resistance, Trump has accomplished more in two years than his four immediate predecessors accomplished in four to eight years.
The economy is in the best shape in modern history. New and better trade agreements have been developed with the major economies. Our defense is much stronger, including a stronger and better funded NATO. Our principal adversaries — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — are more off-balance than they have been in decades. Each of them is tough and ruthless, but they see in Trump someone who understands them and is equally tough in defending his country. And, with the collapse of ObamaCare, Trump has a huge opportunity to advance an effective, market-based approach to American health care coverage and cost control to help everyone.
Belying the hysteria of the left, all Americans are moving forward; these are not “sad times,” and there is no “crisis.”
This raises the central question to be framed in the next election: What should we demand of our president? If we’re looking for dignity, manners, grace and orderliness, Trump is vulnerable. If we’re looking for strong leadership to provide real opportunity for economic advancement for all Americans and a strong defense of America and its interests, then Trump has a claim to greatness over his current opponents and his predecessors.
Interestingly, the author is an Establishment Republican of the Rockefeller/Richardson variety.
THIS WOULD BE TRUE, IF IT WERE TRUE: If Trump continues to ignore the forces that elected him, he will unleash great cynicism. But I don’t think most Trump voters feel ignored. Am I wrong?
GOOD QUESTION: How Will China Take Its Venezuela Lesson?
Beijing proceeded in Venezuela much as it has in East Asia and elsewhere along its Belt and Road route. The China Development Bank (CDB) extended loans. At their peak in Venezuela they amounted to over $50 billion. The funds seemed to be at Caracas’ discretion but were tied explicitly to sales of specific volumes of oil to China at a fixed price. The arrangements state that Venezuela’s state oil company Petrolos de Venezuela (PDVSA) will sell to mostly state owned Chinese companies, at market prices. According to the terms, these buyers, rather than sending the money to PDVSA, deposit the sums into an account at the CDB, which then withdraws the amount needed to service the debt. When market prices fall below the fixed price, Venezuela has had to deliver more oil. If, as has been the case for some time now, Venezuela cannot deliver the required volumes, the CDB has extended what it calls “forbearance arrangements” on which Venezuela accrues a further obligation on the delayed payments.
As Venezuela has fallen into chaos, some $25 billion in such loans remain outstanding. The forbearance China already extended between 2016 and 2018 was pegged to the rate on U.S. Treasuries and hardly compensates Beijing for the risks involved. Venezuela pumps so little oil these days that it cannot possibly meet its obligations. Even if Maduro were to remain in power, and that is far from a sure thing, Venezuela will fail to meet its obligations to the CDB. If Juan Guaido secures power, the fate of these arrangements would become even more ambiguous. At the very least, China will have to take a haircut on what remains outstanding. Though $25 billion is a manageable sum for the CDB and certainly for the cash-rich People’s Republic of China, there is a larger lesson for Beijing in this turn of events. China will also lose all the influence the loans were meant to buy. Even if Maduro prevails, he might see China as a weak partner who insisted on legalities when he was in jeopardy. If Guaido wins, China will not just lose influence, it will have incurred considerable hostility for its support of Maduro.
Read the whole thing.
BUY IN BULK AND SAVE: Price Drop: Lockheed Pitches $80M F-35A to Pentagon.
TOXIC MEMES: When Will We Confront the ‘Columbiner’ Subculture? In part, of course, it’s blowback from the War On Boys.
COLLEGE CAMPUSES, BREEDING ZONES FOR HATRED AND VIOLENCE: WATCH: Feminist Repeatedly Punches Pro-Lifer In The Face On Campus. She’s Been Charged With Assault.
COMEY’S IN TROUBLE, AND HE KNOWS IT: James Comey: ‘Spying? I Have No Idea What Barr’s Talking About, The FBI Doesn’t Spy …’
END THE OCCUPATION! TURKS OUT OF CONSTANTINOPLE! Turkey Venerates Its Violent Conquest of Christian Territory with Conversion of Hagia Sophia to a Mosque. There’s a much better boycott/divest/sanctions argument here than there is for Israel.
TO BE FAIR, MODERN SOCIETY KEEPS GIVING US MORE REASONS TO DRINK: Alcohol use soaring worldwide: The average adult now consumes about 1.7 gallons of pure alcohol per year.
May 8, 2019
AT AMAZON, save in Sexual Wellness.
PAUL KRUGMAN, MORON. “Krugman, 66, evidently does not remember President Barack Obama’s eight years in office, and all the Presidential Medals of Freedom he fastened around the necks of aging celebs.”
That’s different, because shut up.
NOW OUT FROM S.M. STIRLING: Theater of Spies (A Novel of an Alternate World War).