HSBC and the drug cartels

The war on drugs is a massive paramilitary and military operation involving the US working with the military of various countries armed forces that can erupt into in gunfights with drug cartels. But as the excellent program Cartel Bank in the Netflix documentary series Dirty Money points out, there is a weak link in the drug business that can be more easily targeted but is not being done. The real pressure point that can be applied to stop or at least limit the drug trade is to choke off the money flow because, after all, the drug cartels are in it for the money not for any ideology.
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Great moments in sportsmanship

I have written before about my distaste when players even challenge the calls by officials on the field, let alone get into arguments with them and even resort to abusive language. This happens a lot in American professional sports. But what is even more appalling is when team managers (who in my opinion play far too big a role in American sports) go onto the field and argue with officials, with grown men displaying temper tantrums that even a child would be ashamed of. This was on display with a minor league baseball team, where the manager not only resorts to the most crude language against the umpire but ends up throwing equipment all over the field. And his team just sits on the bench and smiles indulgently, as if this is perfectly normal behavior.

Does religious identification change as people get older?

Kevin Drum reproduces a chart from the Wall Street Journal that shows the results of a survey in which the percentage of people in the US who identify as Christians decreases as you go to younger age cohorts, while the number who are unaffiliated increases.

He concludes that Christianity is dying out in 21st century America as it finally catches up with Europe that saw a major drop with identification with Christianity in the last century. But such claims can be challenged by the assertion that as the young people of today get older, they will become more religious, so that there will be no long term changes.

So what we need is to compare this chart with a similar chart made decades ago to see if there is an actual drop across all age groups. Maybe the Wall Street Journal article has this information but it is behind a paywall and I cannot access it.

Let the game of chicken begin!

Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell has made no secret of the fact that he plans to use the Senate trial on impeachment as a pro forma exercise in which he uses his party’s majority to ram through an acquittal as soon as possible without calling on any witnesses or even presenting any defense. Then he and Donald Trump can claim a great and glorious victory. In fact, he has proudly boasted that this is his goal. If that were to come to pass, one can already write Trump’s tweets: “It was the greatest acquittal in the history of the world.” “I am the most innocent person the world has ever seen.” And so on. You know the dreary script by now.
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The menace of private equity firms

Cory Doctorow argues that private equity firms are terrible and should be abolished and points to 1982 as the year they took off, thanks to former treasury secretary William Simon.

This was the starter pistol for future leveraged buyouts, through which companies like Bain Capital and the Carlyle Group buy multiple companies in the same sector and transmit “winning strategies” between them: new ways to dodge taxes, raise prices, and avoid regulation. PE owners suck any financial cushion out of companies — funds that firms set aside for downturns or R&D — and replace it with “brutal debt schedules.” The PE owners benefit massively when this drives up share prices, but take no downsides when the companies fail.

Under PE, companies have emphasized firing workers and replacing them with overseas subcontractors, and amassing “brands, patents and tax loopholes” as their primary assets. PE firms specialize in self-dealing, cutting in the banks and brokers who set up the deals for a share of the upside. A company bought by a private equity firm is ten times more likely to go bankrupt than one with a traditional capital/management structure.

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Trump impeached

A few minutes ago, Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, becoming only the third president to be impeached in the history of the US.

On the first article that dealt with abuse of power, the vote was 230-197. A few minutes later the second article that dealt with obstruction of justice, passed by a vote of 229-198. For both votes, one person voted ‘present’. (There are 233 Democrats, 197 Republicans, one Independent, and four seats vacant. This means that three votes are unaccounted four in the final tally.)

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard was the one who voted ‘present’ for both articles and has explained her reasoning in a tweet.


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Football team doctors are not the players’ friends

Professional football is a brutal sport and players get injured a lot. It should not be surprising that NFL teams have doctors and other medical personnel on staff and on the sidelines to take action if needed. The sight of these people rushing on the field when a player gets hurt may give us the sense that the teams care about the well-bring of the players. But what the spectators and even some players may not fully realize is that the primary aim of these medical staff is not to protect and take care of the players. Instead they represent the interests of the team and its owners who are seeking to protect their financial investment and hence they may overlook potentially dangerous and even life-threatening conditions in their effort to squeeze more playing time out of the players.
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Revealing behavior of the Democratic establishment

There was an uproar recently when the Democratic party establishment in the form of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said that they would cut off any consultants and vendors who worked for primary challengers to party incumbents. This was seen as yet another example of the party leadership trying desperately to retain its neoliberal ideology in the face of more progressive challengers who had succeeded in unseating entrenched conservative incumbents.
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Get a grip, Carly!

Carly Fiorina is the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who ran for president in 2016 and faced withering and scornful attacks by Donald Trump who even stooped as low as denigrating her looks, not that that kind of behavior should come as a surprise anymore.

In an interview, Fiorina says that she thinks Trump should be impeached and then in the very next breath says that she might vote for him in 2020.

“I think it is vital that he be impeached,” Fiorina said. But whether Trump should be removed from office, Fiorina said, “this close to an election, I don’t know.”
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After dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination in 2016, Fiorina said she did vote for Trump in 2016, citing her disapproval of then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but since then she has been “bitterly disappointed.” But when asked whether she would vote for Trump in next year’s presidential election, Fiorina did not rule out voting for him again.

“It depends who the Democrats put up,” she said.
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In a September 2015 Rolling Stone interview, Trump mocked Fiorina’s looks and said, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” Trump later said he was talking about her persona, not her appearance.

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