Republican hypocrisy and lies on display, once again

Radical: advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme, progressive or conservative section of a political party; (noun) a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or part of a party pursuing such aims

Mitch McConnell is warning Biden to not nominate a ‘radical’ supreme court justice because his mandate from the 2020 election was to govern from the middle and unite America. His hypocrisy on all three points is blatant, shameless, insulting and immoral. The New York Times writes:

“The American people elected a Senate that is evenly split at 50-50,” Mr. McConnell said in his first statement since word of the retirement leaked. “To the degree that President Biden received a mandate, it was to govern from the middle, steward our institutions and unite America. The president must not outsource this important decision to the radical left. The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution.”

Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer said he wants to act quickly on Biden’s nomination, but in view of bad faith Republican obstructionism over Merrick Garland’s nomination by Obama, he said “We need to be ready and willing to fight, and fight ferociously.” He is probably right about that. 

Who is the radical here?

What Republicans want is thorough political and social change in American government and society. Along with wealthy special interests and their money, the GOP is dominated by fundamentalist Christian nationalists who openly want to establish Old Testament Biblical law, Christian sharia, on America. Most Americans would oppose that if they were asked, which unfortunately they are not. In Republican propaganda, anyone who is not a radical right authoritarian, is smeared and slandered as a socialist or communist radical. The GOP lies and slander story is that Democrats and Biden are hell bent on establishing a tyranny where racial and ethnic minorities brutally oppress White people, White rights and the practice of Christian religion. The Republican Party is hostile to free and fair elections and has been for decades.

In situations like this, Republicans never, ever mention the fact that the results of elections are skewed to rural states due to our electoral system. Lies of omission are front and center. For the GOP, it does not matter one iota that most Americans often oppose them. Republicans deny, downplay or distort this reality into insignificance. Republicans govern as radical right neo-fascist Christian fundamentalists and brass knuckles laissez-faire capitalists regardless of public opinion. Republicans in power are no more responsive to public opinion than Democrats. And when Democrats try to push forward policies that most Americans support, e.g., environmental regulation, fairer tax policy, etc., the GOP and lobbyists with their vast free speech (campaign contributions) power is always right there to block it.

By contrast, Biden is a neoliberal capitalist who caters to Wall Street special interests at least as much as he wants to cater to the public interest. Democrats tend to want society to progress as it will and government to reflect those changes over time. Democrats what time to pass, while Republicans want to freeze time and re-establish an illusory past at some ill-defined point(s) in time. Polls show that a majority of Americans support many or most major Democratic goals, e.g., health care, environmental protections and correcting unfair taxation. That includes Democratic Party support for free and fair elections unlike the GOP, which opposes voting rights and free and fair elections, which it has to do in view of its minority status in terms of public support.

Or, are both parties so much alike that significant distinctions are more illusion than reality?

Quota filling...

I like balance.  Balance is good.  I like symmetry.  And I really like that elusive idea of “fairness.”  I know, I know... in these tribal days, call me silly.

For example, I’m glad that Biden promised to nominate a woman on the Supreme Court.  That gives it more balance.  Some might consider that quota-filling:

Definition of quota

1: a proportional part or share especially : the share or proportion assigned to each in a division or to each member of a body

2: the number or amount constituting a proportional share

3: a fixed number or percentage of minority group members or women needed to meet the requirements of affirmative action

So, this leads to a couple of questions:

1. Are you for quota-filling, whether it be in government, schools, workplace, etc.?  Give your pro/con reasons.

2. Is the United States the kind of country that needs to have quota-filling mandated, else top (usually) man on totem pole constantly keeps his “side” in power?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

The deep and bitter the American reality divide

The AP writes:

BENSON, Minn. (AP) — The newspaper hit the front porches of the wind-scarred prairie town on a Thursday afternoon: Coronavirus numbers were spiking in the farming communities of western Minnesota.

“Covid-19 cases straining rural clinics, hospitals, staff,” read the front-page headline. Vaccinate to protect yourselves, health officials urged.

But ask around Benson, stroll its three-block business district, and some would tell a different story: The Swift County Monitor-News, the tiny newspaper that’s reported the news here since 1886, is not telling the truth. The vaccine is untested, they say, dangerous. And some will go further: People, they’ll tell you, are being killed by COVID-19 vaccinations.

It’s another measure of how, in an America increasingly split by warring visions of itself, division doesn’t just play out on cable television, or in mayhem at the U.S. Capitol.

It has seeped into the American fabric, all the way to Benson’s 12th Street, where two neighbors -- each in his own well-kept, century-old home -- can live in different worlds.

Jason Wolter, is a thoughtful, broad-shouldered Lutheran pastor who reads widely and measures his words carefully. He also suspects Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as a political tool, doubts President Joe Biden was legitimately elected and is certain that COVID-19 vaccines kill people.

He hasn’t seen the death certificates and hasn’t contacted health authorities, but he’s sure the vaccine deaths occurred: “I just know that I’m doing their funerals.”

He’s also certain that information “will never make it into the newspaper.”

“There are no alternative facts,” Reed Anfinson [publisher, editor, photographer and reporter for the Monitor-News] says. “There is just the truth.”

Wolter’s frustration boils over during a late breakfast in a town cafe. Seated with a reporter, he starts talking as if Anfinson is there.

“You’re lying to people,” Wolter says. “You flat-out lie about things.”

So, there you have it. Anfinson reports facts as best he can, but is nonetheless considered a liar by Wolter for whom the facts must be too inconvenient and psychologically threatening to be accepted. Disbelieving people like this base beliefs on faith, not hard evidence. In the case of alleged COVID vaccine deaths, death certificates would prove that the COVID vaccine kills people. Such evidence does not exist because, with very few exceptions, the vaccines do not kill people. That wonderful Lutheran pastor calls newspaper publisher Anfinson a liar without one shred of evidence. Instead Wolter relies on blind raging faith in his false alt-reality. Unfortunately, reality does not care whether Wolter or anyone else believes something that is true or false. It just doesn't care. Only people can care.

Some vaccine facts for context:

Over 339 million vaccine doses were given to 187.2 million people in the US as of July 19, 2021. The vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective. .... Between December 2020 and July 19th, 2021, VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) received 6,207 reports of death (0.0018% of doses) among people who got a vaccine, but this does not mean the vaccine caused these deaths. Doctors and safety monitors carefully review the details of each case to see if it might be linked to the vaccine. There are three deaths that appear to be linked to blood clots that occurred after people got the J&J vaccine. (emphasis added)

This raises some issues. One is how much actual evidence and data is needed to convince a disbeliever that actual facts and true truths are real. Another is how damaging such reality disconnects are to democracy and empowering they are to authoritarianism. If intentional polarization and alt-reality propaganda victimizes people and causes this kind of fantasy about public health, why wouldn't it cause the about same reality disconnects for all other issues that have been propagandized? 

Actually, some don't do any research and 

just rely on propaganda for their blind faith

Your pick...

 

-So, with Justice Stephen Breyer retiring, who is your pick for  his SCOTUS replacement, and why?  Give as many details as possible.

-Do you foresee any interference by the Republicans on Biden's SCOTUS nomination?  If yes, in what way(s) and by whom?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Planned obsolescence: A short history

"By the mid-1920s [1], just about every American who needed a car had one. It had been hard enough to convince Americans that this new-fangled invention was a necessary investment, but now automakers had a new problem. How the hell were they going to sell more cars? How were they going to make any money?" 

The program Throughline, which is broadcast by NPR, looks at the historical origins of various aspects of modern society, politics and life (link here). This program is devoted to the origins and modern manifestations of planned obsolescence is instructive. Not surprisingly, planned obsolescence is designed by capitalists to increase profits by decreasing the durability and/or repairability of products that consumers and businesses have to buy more frequently than if those products had been designed to last and be more easily repairable.

Maybe less known, but also no surprise once it is known is the fact that modern planned obsolescence marketing and rhetoric is grounded in modern cutting edge propaganda technology, which is grounded in cutting edge cognitive biology and social behavior science research. 

A couple of points merit mention:

• One of the first known examples of planned obsolescence was hatched by a global organization of businesses called the Phoebus Cartel. In December of 1924, the cartel hatched and initiated a secret plan to increase sales of light bulbs by bringing the average bulb's lifespan from 2,500 hours down to 1,000 hours. It took several years of engineering and testing to finally build light bulbs that reliably burned out at about 1,000 hours, but the plan finally succeeded. Giant businesses such as General Electric participated in this plan to boost profits by selling light bulbs intentionally designed to fail sooner.

• Under the guidance of the brilliant engineer and master marketer Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors (president, chairman and/or CEO from the 1920s through the 1950s), along with designer Harley J. Earl, pioneered the concept of psychological obsolescence, e.g., by inventing annual car and truck model changes. That was do to make last and previous year's vehicles look and feel obsolete or shabby compared to newer year models. One tactic that GM used was to flog a new car sales as hard as the GM sales force could, but then the instant a new car was sold, the sales people would instantly pivot to a ruthless psychological campaign to instill regret in the new car buyer by shifting the consumer's focus from their brand new car. The focus changed from how great this new car is to how great the new and improved model that will come out next year compared to the one you just bought. This sales tactic started even before the buyer had driven a new car off the lot. Psychological obsolescence was worth billions is sales to GM over the decades. From what I can tell, GM marketing worked so well that most Americans actually came to believe the propaganda that what is good for GM is good for America.

• Modern products are obsolescence planned. The Throughline program discusses the iPhone as a prime example. Batteries were built to fail and not be replaceable until enough consumer complaints forced just enough changes to mostly blunt the complaints. The overall iPhone strategy is to force customers to replace their designed-to-fail iPhones as soon as psychologically acceptable to consumers. 

One way to see this more broadly

Stepping back and looking broadly, essentially all American political, religious and business elites are well-grounded in cutting edge propaganda technology, which includes planned obsolescence. It arguably amounts to a propaganda movement. Most of the public is mostly unaware of how pervasive and effective it is, maybe because,  like fish in water, most people can't see it because it is everywhere and therefore nowhere. That is no accident. The elites use propaganda technology ruthlessly and relentlessly on average citizens to get what they want, often or usually by deceit, flawed reasoning, irrational emotional appeals, and irrationally fomented social division and polarization. The latter tactic applies to all three of modern American politics, American Christian religion and American business.

What do the elites want? For the most part, and regardless of what they say to the contrary or how hard or often they say it, the elites in America want and are getting wealth and power concentrated among themselves at the expense of the masses (the mob as they see us, or as Trump has called us, "disgusting people"). In general, two kinds of ideology or mindset drives the wealth and power trickle up in modern America, laissez-faire capitalism and radical fundamentalist Christian theocracy.

That is the real us vs. them fight that is now underway in America, and liberal democracies elsewhere. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of the bigger picture. 

When an apologist for hard core capitalism tells you that capitalism works because it is based on selling the best products at the lowest cost to maximize benefit to all people, it is fair and balanced to tell them they are full of crap and either ignorant or lying. Yes, some businesses are exceptions, but most or all of the big ones are not. 

As discussed in footnote 1, early on Ford and GMN operated on different principles. Ford build vehicles to last a long time. GM built them to not last. The economic success of GM's sales and marketing propaganda forced Ford to adopt the same tactics. That is why I assert that that most of all big corporations have the same mindset, which is maximize profit over all other concerns, including social, personal and environmental risk or harm. That is what it means to have profit as the one and only overriding moral value in most of capitalism and most capitalists. Planned obsolescence is just one manifestation of that general rule.

Footnote: 

1. That article, A Primer on Planned Obsolescence – How to Avoid Self-Destructing Goods, includes these comments:

Henry Ford, despite his white supremacist leanings, had an engineer’s integrity—and didn’t see any point in altering the Model T. It worked well, it came in one color (black) and they lasted as long as their owners maintained them.

His competitors at General Motors, however, didn’t have the same scruples. The head of GM, Alfred Sloan Jr., suggested a campaign that his critics would later label “planned obsolescence,” he would introduce new models each year, in new colors, styles, and with more powerful engines. In so doing, he would create demand for new cars, even before his customers had worn out their first one.  

If you’re reading this article on your phone or computer (or even if you’re a psycho and printed it out), you’re familiar to some degree with planned obsolescence. Notice how your devices don’t hold a charge like they used to? Or how your printer cartridges seem to run out of ink before they ought to? That’s planned obsolescence, baby.  

Though we attribute the first modern application of planned obsolescence to Alfred Sloan of GM, the philosophy thereof was developed by another man: Bernard London. London’s 1932 pamphlet, Ending The Depression Through Obsolescence, espoused the theory that creating products with an artificially shortened lifespan could boost the economy and lift the nation out of the Great Depression. He explains,

In a word, people generally, in a frightened and hysterical mood, are using everything that they own longer than was their custom before the depression. In the earlier period of prosperity, the American people did not wait until the last possible bit of use had been extracted from every commodity. They replaced old articles with new for reasons of fashion and up-to-dateness. They gave up old homes and old automobiles long before they were worn out, merely because they were obsolete. All business, transportation, and labor had adjusted themselves to the prevailing habits of the American people. Perhaps, prior to the panic, people were too extravagant; if so, they have now gone to the other extreme and have become retrenchment-mad.

London goes on to suggest a government program whereby old goods that had been deemed “useless” would be bought up by the government and destroyed so that consumers could go out and buy newer versions of the same products and stimulate the economy and get people back to work in manufacturing jobs (*cough cough* Cash for Clunkers *cough cough*) .

NOTE: As noted above, the Phoebus Cartel to control light bulbs was launched in 1922 and London wrote in 1932. Thus, the article above gets the origins of planned obsolescence wrong, but it's there for some historical context and commentary, e.g., Henry Ford really was a rabid White supremacist.

 

A fight over solar power: Capitalism and money vs. environmentalism and consumers

When money is at stake, deceptive propaganda, lies and smears is the go-to tactic for capitalists. Consumers get slaughtered in the crossfire because they have few or no big guns on their side, so they stand there with sticks and rocks while the opponents use more effective weaponry. In other words it is business as usual. This is about a huge fight over solar panels on rooftops here in California. Tens of billions of dollars are at stake. California skies have gone black with lobbyists carrying briefcases from capitalists on both sides parachuting in from squadrons of massive aircraft transports. 

A batch of lobbyists parachuting in to

fight for the cash

Getting another load of lobbyists ready for transport to 

do battle in California for huge piles of cash 

The New York Times lays out the battle lines and describes what’s at stake:

California has led the nation in setting ambitious climate change goals and policies. But the state’s progress is threatened by a nasty fight between rival camps in the energy industry that both consider themselves proponents of renewable energy.

The dispute is about who will get to build the green energy economy — utilities or smaller companies that install solar panels and batteries at homes — and reap billions of dollars in profits from those investments. At stake is whether the state can reach its goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2045.

For years, the rooftop solar business was ascendant in California, growing as much as 62 percent a year. That angered utilities and their labor unions, which long controlled the production, sale and distribution of electricity, and they lobbied state leaders to rein in the rooftop solar business — an effort that is on the cusp of success.

In addition to having about 12 percent of the U.S. population, California is widely considered a leader in energy and climate policy. Its decisions matter far beyond its territory because other states and the federal government often copy them.

The California Public Utilities Commission [CPUC] plans to vote in the next few weeks to reduce the growth of solar energy in the state, which has added more of it than any other. The commission has proposed slashing the incentives homeowners receive to install rooftop solar systems. Officials argue that the changes would help reduce utility bills for lower-income residents about $10 a month by forcing rooftop solar users to pay higher fees to support the electric grid.

The proposal would force California to rely more on large power installations, including solar and wind farms, and long-distance transmission lines operated by utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Every watt of electricity not produced on the rooftop of a home will be produced and transmitted by a utility or wholesale power companies.

“You can understand why utilities don’t like distributive resources,” said David Feldman, a senior energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, using an industry term for small energy systems. “The more electricity they sell, the more money they make.”

Some energy experts say utilities would not be able to produce or buy enough renewable energy to replace what would be lost from the decline in rooftop solar panels — which supplied 9 percent of the state’s electricity in 2020, more than nuclear and coal put together. California would need to set aside about a quarter of its land for renewable energy to meet its climate goals without expanding rooftop solar, said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental energy at Stanford. As a result, utilities would have to turn to natural gas and other fossil fuels.

People who install solar panels on their roofs or property are still connected to the electrical grid, but they receive credit on their bills for power they produce beyond what they use [Consumers are proposed to get paid a paltry ~$0.04/KWh for excess energy their solar produces and the utility then sells it at market rates, ~$0.31/KWh here in San Diego (national average is ~0.11/KWh) -- a bad deal for consumers, but a freaking gold mine to the utility]. California’s proposal would cut the value of those credits, which are roughly equivalent to retail electricity rates, by about 87 percent. In addition, the measure would impose a new monthly fee on solar homeowners — about $56 for the typical rooftop system [about $672/year]. 

The monthly cost of solar and electricity for homeowners with an average rooftop system who are served by PG&E, the state’s largest utility, would jump to $215, from $133, according to the California Solar and Storage Association.

An intense campaign is underway to sway regulators. Rooftop solar companies, homeowners and activists on one side and utilities and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on the other are lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom to intervene. While the commission is independent of Mr. Newsom, he wields enormous influence. The governor recently told reporters that the regulators should change their proposal but didn’t specify how [Newsome is scared -- he’s between a capitalist-campaign contribution 

rock (special interest and rich people free speech) and a consumer-environmental hard place].

The electrical workers union, which did not respond to requests for comment [not surprisingly], is playing a central role. It represents linemen, electricians and other utility employees, who usually earn more than the mostly nonunion workers who install rooftop systems. Many union members, an important constituency for Democrats, fear being left behind in the transition to green energy. 

Californians carry the10th highest tax burden in the US, is one of the most heavily regulated states, and consumers here pay high utility costs. Adding a fee, proposed by the CPUC at $8/month/KWh of solar panels on roofs, would add another ~$600 in utility fees adds to the average consumer’s electric utility bills. For context, California utilities are usually solidly profitable -- 10.2% for our local SDG&E. For every dollar California utilities spend building electric or gas infrastructure, they are allowed to charge customers an additional ~10 cents in profits for their shareholders. 

Tax burden data

Source: WalletHub

Question: Which side are you on, the greedy company capitalists and their non-union labor or the greedy utility capitalists and their protected by law labor union, or the consumers and the environment (which are not represented in the arguments between the two elephants, but both elephants argue they are on the side of consumers and the environment), or no side because this is just too complicated and it makes your brain hurt?