My easy-like Sunday morning reads:
• Should you be panicking about a stock market crash? (LA Times) but see China Stocks Are Battered Anew: Shanghai Composite Index is on the verge of bear-market territory (WSJ)
• GDP’s Going Down? That’s Good! It’s long past time to discard an antiquated, and often wrong, indicator. (Politico)
• TPP and fast track: Why Congress should study David Ricardo (Fortune)
• How Tesla’s Commercial Batteries Have Changed The Future…For Winemakers? (Fast Company)
• Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America: Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason (Psychology Today)
• Is Pope Francis Too Gloomy? Or Are Conservatives Just in Denial About Our Planet? (New Republic)
• Celebrity Sex Tapes Like Hulk Hogan’s Used to Thrill Us. Now They Trouble Us. What Changed? (Slate) see also Hulk Hogan is fighting for the privacy of the world’s sex tapes (Fusion)
• FBI Agent: The CIA Could Have Stopped 9/11 (Newsweek)
• All In: The Bush Family Goes for Number Three (Huffington Post)
• How Not to Be Misled by Data: Numbers can deceive just as surely as words—so here’s a guide to avoid being led astray. (WSJ)
• Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling (Medium)
What are you reading?
Inflation?
Source: WSJ
The Bloomberg piece on Uber is worth a read. I have always hated municipal taxi monopolies, but it is also troubling to see a monster team of top attorneys and lobbyists destroying local legislation across the globe. It reminds me of how the MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) was foisted upon us.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-23/this-is-how-uber-takes-over-a-city
they dont seem to want to pl;ay by any rules, except the ones they make. which does sound like MERS and wall street
USA Today has an interesting list of what they think are the 21 most famous Supreme Court decisions. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/26/supreme-court-cases-history/29185891/
The dissent on gay marriage thundered against the court co-opting the democratic process. It is interesting to look at the Supreme Court decisions on race, marriage, and homosexuality form that perspective.
Dred Scott, Plessy, and Korematsu all clearly followed the will of the democratic majority in supporting slavery, Jim Crow laws, and Japanese-American internment. I don’t think history has looked favorably on those decisions indicating that the court rubber-stamping legislation is not entirely desirable.
Brown vs Board of Education marked the turning point where the court became “activist” and came down with decisions in front of the democratic process in the states and Congress. These have been followed by Loving, Lawrence, and now Obergefell. If the court waited for state legislatures and Congress on these issues, there is a very good chance that some states would still have segregated schools, bans on inter-racial marriage, and homosexuals in jail. The quantity of Confederate flags sill flying on state government properties is virtual proof of that. I think providing women the right to vote is one of the few social areas where the democratic process clearly led the courts.
A key role of the Supreme Court is to protect individuals from the tyranny of the majority. The Supreme Court finally really figured that out in the 1950s and Obergefell is just the latest in important decisions in protecting individuals rights.
I didn’t list Roe v Wade in the list above because I think it is a special category given that it deals with the most fundamental taboo of all against killing. I understand the pro-life arguments against it (without agreeing with all of them). However, discrimination against people for simply being who they are is a totally different set of issues.
well if you go back before the 20th century (and even some into it) the court couldnt see any reason that any level government should regulate business in any way fr any reason. it took a while for it to even see how safety rules were valid. and it was long after ww2 before it started to even consider protecting the individual. it didnt matter if there was any in the constitution that mandated it either. or allowed it. they also didnt seem to see democracy as being important. what did they see that way? that the 1% could do what they wanted too.
it took until the 20th century that allowing employers to kill their workers as being wrong. and took almost as long to keep them from killing them slowly at work
oddly enough we seem to have fallen back in a lot of ways. business hasnt started hiring goons to kill it workers .
yet
CNN mistakes dildoes for Arabic and spends six minutes expressing deep concern:
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/28/8857415/cnn-isis-dildo-gay-pride-flag
Help me Obi Jon Stewarkobe, you’re our only hope.
~~~
ADMIN: BR Tweeted this yesterday and it went kinda crazy viral
https://twitter.com/ritholtz/status/614899413983625217
OMG !!!!!
ISIS advocating the gay lifestyle – those islamist guys are more dangerous than we thought.
Mike Hug-a-bee (not a gay).
Huckabee calls for MLK-like passive resistance to gay marriage ruling
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/28/politics/mike-huckabee-gay-marriage-mlk/
1) Huckster, You’re no MLK.
2) OK but you go to jail, Repeat offenders get more time and three strikes and you’re out states it’s life. Cya.
3) Why don’t these guys refuse to do business with women who get abortions? And the men who are, presumably, intimately involved?
I support Mike Huckabee entirely on this. One of MLK’s first major passive resistance actions was organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott in response to Rosa Parks arrest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott
So Mike Huckabee should immediately organize an action whereby his followers will not be married to a same sex partner, go to gay bars, or participate in gay pride parades. That would immediately have a chilling effect on the US economy similar to the impact that the bus boycott had on the Montgomery transit system.
How to change your Social Security number if you get hacked
…within the world of identity thieves, Social Security numbers are among the most prized pieces of information. Armed with a victim’s name and Social Security number, an identity thief can open a new line of credit, apply for a home or car loan, obtain medical goods or services in the victim’s name, defraud the victim’s health insurance by getting reimbursed for medical care that never happened, or even file a fake tax return and then steal the victim’s refund. ….
In a certain limited set of circumstances, the Social Security Administration allows people to get new Social Security numbers. …however, doing so comes with its own distinct set of problems.
NB: Back in the day SS cards were issued with the following edict printed at the bottom: FOR SOCIAL SECURITY AND TAX PURPOSES — NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION
Over the decades that has clearly changed but, to this day, I am unsure if that involved actual statutory changes or what. Regardless I still refuse to provide my number on anything but critical documents which basically means documents where no alternative ID is acceptable and I, for one reason or another, have no alternative but to complete them.
and it doesnt really help as the credit bureaus arent using the SSN as the main way to connect your creditor together. its just one of several pieces of info doing that. and of course that is how thieves can get into it. and one of the easiest ways is to work for a creditor,. cause they can look at all kinds of data to see where they can come close to matches. but today it seems that most companies dont actually care to keep the data secret (even while saying they do. that was never the case, its more or a PR scheme, than real. they are too busy making the sale to care beyond that, if that wasnt the case, they would have been more viligent)