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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
july 25, 2024
Real News Today
TRUMP RAN UP NATIONAL DEBT TWICE AS MUCH AS BIDEN: NEW ANALYSIS
REALITY
AMERICA IS STILL HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF RONALD REAGAN'S CORRUPTION
america
ROBERT REICH DEBUNKS THE MYTH THAT 'THE RICH DESERVE TO BE RICH'
reality
THE MOST COMMON ESSENTIAL JOBS IN THE US DON’T PAY A LIVING WAGE
THE ECONOMY IS IMPROVING, BUT INEQUALITY IS TEARING THE US APART. DEMOCRATS IGNORE WORKING-CLASS PAIN AT THEIR PERIL.(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
trump says: america is a stupid country
comment/tweet of the day
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thom hartmann
How Authoritarians Like Trump, Orbán, & Putin Take Down a Free Press
Trump is right now following a road blazed before him by multiple authoritarians and dictators who took over democracies in recent years…
JD Vance's Elegy Grift Vance’s career and his life story are a grift.
Just like most all of Donald Trump’s businesses. Republican policies, in fact, have been one long grift for more than half a century…
JD Vance's Audacious Attack: Demands Kamala Harris 'Show Gratitude' to White Male Power? Vance is apparently offended that ungrateful American women like Kamala Harris demand not just birth control and abortion but also the right to divorce...
The Prosecutor Versus the Felon
We must unite quickly around our candidate and her and our Party’s pick for VP and hit the ground running by the end of this week...
These 9 high-profile GOP candidates all have ties to group behind Project 2025: report
american exceptionalism - defined
1. illegitimate & corrupt scotus
2. significant voting population of stupid people who lack a basic understanding of how government operates or even know the 3 branches of government
3. a traitor and criminal running for president. Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean
Kamala Harris as A Corporate Crime Fighter
dirt diggers digest
July 24, 2024
The coming weeks are likely to see much discussion, pro and con, about Kamala Harris’ record prosecuting street crime during her time as District Attorney of San Francisco. Perhaps even more relevant to her as a presidential candidate was her tenure as the California Attorney General.
State attorneys general involve themselves in many issues, but one of their key roles is to address business misconduct, especially in the areas of consumer protection and antitrust. As the California AG from 2011 through 2016, Harris was for the most part an aggressive corporate crime fighter.
In Violation Tracker we have more than 40 cases her office successfully prosecuted, resulting in over $3 billion in fines and settlements. About one-third of that total came from a 2016 judgment against the predatory for-profit Corinthian Colleges, which by that time had ceased operations and was in bankruptcy.
Here are some of the other more significant cases:
A $750 million settlement with the Canadian company Powerex, which was accused of manipulating the market during the 2000-2001 western energy crisis.
A $323 million settlement with SCAN Health Plan to resolve allegations the company overcharged the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal.
A $298 million settlement with JPMorgan Chase, which was accused of misleading state pension funds in the marketing of residential mortgage-backed securities. This was part of a broader $13 billion settlement the bank reached with state and federal agencies concerning the toxic securities that helped bring about the financial crisis of the late 2000s.
A $241 million settlement with Quest Diagnostics, which also involved Medi-Cal billing abuses.
A $168 million settlement with K12 Inc., a for-profit online charter school operator, and 14 affiliated non-profit schools known as the California Virtual Academies it managed, over alleged violations of California’s false claims, false advertising and unfair competition laws.
An $86 million settlement with Volkswagen concerning the installation of defeat devices to evade emissions testing in its diesel vehicles. This was a supplement to the company’s $14 billion federal-state settlement.
Among the other companies her office successfully pursued were Walmart (for over-charging customers), Toshiba (price-fixing), Wells Fargo (privacy violations) and Chevron (improper hazardous waste disposal).
Harris’ office was also involved in many cases brought by groups of state AGs, often taking a leading role. The largest case was a $25 billion settlement reached by federal and state agencies in 2012 with five of the largest mortgage servicing companies over their foreclosure practices. Others included:
A $687 million settlement with Standard & Poor’s Financial Services, which had been accused of inflating ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities at the center of the financial crisis.
A $339 million settlement with Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie) to resolve allegations it promoted its drug Depakote for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
A $151 million settlement with drug wholesaler McKesson to resolve allegations the company inflated the price of prescription drugs by as much as 25 percent, causing the states’ Medicaid programs to overpay millions of dollars in pharmacy reimbursements.
A $90 million settlement with the Swiss bank UBS on charges of anticompetitive and fraudulent conduct in the municipal bond derivatives industry, which took the form of bid-rigging, submission of non-competitive courtesy bids and submission to government agencies, among others, of fraudulent certifications of compliance with U.S. Treasury regulations.
Harris’s record as AG was not flawless. Most notably, she was criticized for failing to prosecute OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations. The bank was controlled by Steve Mnuchin, who would go on to become Donald Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury.
If she were to become president, Harris would be in a position to set the tone for the way her administration would address corporate misconduct. That would begin with her choice for attorney general and extend to the approach she encourages for all regulatory agencies.
This is an area in which she cannot simply promise to continue the policies of the current administration. Biden’s Justice Department initially signaled it would get tough on corporate miscreants after Trump’s lax approach, but it has largely failed to deliver. Instead, the DOJ has stressed leniency agreements, which have turned out to be a boon for recidivist companies.
Harris would do well to signal that she intends to change course and draw on her experience as state AG to be an aggressive corporate crime fighter at the federal level.
State attorneys general involve themselves in many issues, but one of their key roles is to address business misconduct, especially in the areas of consumer protection and antitrust. As the California AG from 2011 through 2016, Harris was for the most part an aggressive corporate crime fighter.
In Violation Tracker we have more than 40 cases her office successfully prosecuted, resulting in over $3 billion in fines and settlements. About one-third of that total came from a 2016 judgment against the predatory for-profit Corinthian Colleges, which by that time had ceased operations and was in bankruptcy.
Here are some of the other more significant cases:
A $750 million settlement with the Canadian company Powerex, which was accused of manipulating the market during the 2000-2001 western energy crisis.
A $323 million settlement with SCAN Health Plan to resolve allegations the company overcharged the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal.
A $298 million settlement with JPMorgan Chase, which was accused of misleading state pension funds in the marketing of residential mortgage-backed securities. This was part of a broader $13 billion settlement the bank reached with state and federal agencies concerning the toxic securities that helped bring about the financial crisis of the late 2000s.
A $241 million settlement with Quest Diagnostics, which also involved Medi-Cal billing abuses.
A $168 million settlement with K12 Inc., a for-profit online charter school operator, and 14 affiliated non-profit schools known as the California Virtual Academies it managed, over alleged violations of California’s false claims, false advertising and unfair competition laws.
An $86 million settlement with Volkswagen concerning the installation of defeat devices to evade emissions testing in its diesel vehicles. This was a supplement to the company’s $14 billion federal-state settlement.
Among the other companies her office successfully pursued were Walmart (for over-charging customers), Toshiba (price-fixing), Wells Fargo (privacy violations) and Chevron (improper hazardous waste disposal).
Harris’ office was also involved in many cases brought by groups of state AGs, often taking a leading role. The largest case was a $25 billion settlement reached by federal and state agencies in 2012 with five of the largest mortgage servicing companies over their foreclosure practices. Others included:
A $687 million settlement with Standard & Poor’s Financial Services, which had been accused of inflating ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities at the center of the financial crisis.
A $339 million settlement with Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie) to resolve allegations it promoted its drug Depakote for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
A $151 million settlement with drug wholesaler McKesson to resolve allegations the company inflated the price of prescription drugs by as much as 25 percent, causing the states’ Medicaid programs to overpay millions of dollars in pharmacy reimbursements.
A $90 million settlement with the Swiss bank UBS on charges of anticompetitive and fraudulent conduct in the municipal bond derivatives industry, which took the form of bid-rigging, submission of non-competitive courtesy bids and submission to government agencies, among others, of fraudulent certifications of compliance with U.S. Treasury regulations.
Harris’s record as AG was not flawless. Most notably, she was criticized for failing to prosecute OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations. The bank was controlled by Steve Mnuchin, who would go on to become Donald Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury.
If she were to become president, Harris would be in a position to set the tone for the way her administration would address corporate misconduct. That would begin with her choice for attorney general and extend to the approach she encourages for all regulatory agencies.
This is an area in which she cannot simply promise to continue the policies of the current administration. Biden’s Justice Department initially signaled it would get tough on corporate miscreants after Trump’s lax approach, but it has largely failed to deliver. Instead, the DOJ has stressed leniency agreements, which have turned out to be a boon for recidivist companies.
Harris would do well to signal that she intends to change course and draw on her experience as state AG to be an aggressive corporate crime fighter at the federal level.
The FDA chief is right: we are failing people with diabetes
The $400bn in diabetes-related annual expenditures is breaking the back of our healthcare system. But there is an alternative
Neil Barsky - the guardian
7/24/2024
A funny thing happened when Dr Robert Califf, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, delivered the keynote address to the American Diabetes Association’s annual scientific session last month – he told the truth about our country’s colossal failure to treat the raging health crisis.
“For the larger epidemic of type 2 diabetes, we’re failing right now,” Califf said. “I don’t say that lightly.”
Califf did not praise his hosts, the ADA – the powerful body that sets the standard for diabetes care, while accepting tens of millions of dollars annually from the drug and medical device industry.
He also did not the laud the ADA’s funders, the drug and medical device companies that earn billions of dollars selling the insulin, pumps, needles, continuous glucose monitors and other paraphernalia Califf’s agency regulates. And he did not shrink from pointing out that, according to some accounts, diabetes has surpassed cancer as the leading economic cost to our health care system, adding up to over $400bn annually.
Instead, Califf cited America’s ruinously high consumption of sugar and the food industry’s poor labeling policies. He pointed out that affluent Americans invariably receive greater access to the latest technology than poor Americans. And he pointed out, according to an account in MedPage Today, that even the vast majority of digital tools routinely prescribed for people with diabetes fail to help people manage the disease.
“A big part of this [the solution] is going to have to be digital health tools,” he said. “We’re living in a world now where new digital health tools are coming out on a daily basis, but analyses that have been done are not showing that they’re delivering on the promises.”
Now if only Califf had connected the dots!
As I have written, a safe, effective and cheap solution to the type 2 diabetes epidemic already exists. To put it simply, type 2 diabetes, the condition of insulin resistance which afflicts 95% of people with diabetes, is reversible with a low-carb diet. The American Diabetes Association has even quietly acknowledged this. Numerous clinicians practice this and have published their results. Yet, as over 100,000 Americans still die from the condition annually, the American Diabetes Association and medical establishment steadfastly refuse to advocate for it.
It is one of the greatest disconnects in all of American healthcare – even as fatalities and costs of the disease continue to soar, why does the ADA and medical establishment refuse to advocate for, and educate patients about, the dietary solution that could spare lives and save billions? Moreover, at what point will the medical establishment and public servants such as Califf recognize the forces benefitting from the diabetes epidemic such as big pharma, big medtech, big food and – yes – the American Diabetes Association, are the actual sources of our diabetes problem?
Califf’s address to the ADA is a great example both of what is promising and depressing about diabetes care nowadays. Califf is a respected cardiologist who spent most of his career in academia. He is vocal advocate for healthcare as a right and understands how unbalanced access to healthcare is in our country, based on income, region and race.
And yet, his speech virtually ignored critical research that screams for greater adoption of the low-carb diet for people with diabetes. For example, Califf’s citation of a study that concluded that the majority of digital tools prescribed for people with diabetes are not effective. That claim came from a March study this year by the independent Peterson Health Technology Institute which analyzed eight companies that sold digital technology tools to people with diabetes. And it is correct that Peterson concluded that “the evidence shows that the technologies do not deliver meaningful clinical benefits, and result in increased healthcare spending”.
But now take a little closer at the Peterson study. According to Peterson, there were “two potential bright spots” in the diabetic treatment area, one of which was Virta Health, a medical care company which treats people with diabetes with a low-carb diet. “Initial data showed that Virta users are much more likely to achieve clinically meaningful benefits in glycemic control, including diabetes remission and the ability to reduce or eliminate their diabetes medications, if they can maintain the rigorous dietary requirements of the intervention.” In layperson’s terms, in other words, Virta’s low-carb diet helped people with diabetes reverse their disease!
Califf is unequivocally correct that we are “failing” people with type 2 diabetes. The question is, can the medical establishment and federal agencies wean themselves off the carbohydrates that spike blood sugars, and the drugs that often only make matters worse?
As someone with type 2 diabetes who reversed his condition with a low-carbohydrate diet, I understand this is an uphill battle, but one worth fighting. And I am far from alone; in fact there is a growing ecosystem of extraordinary writers, clinicians, researchers and patients who advocate for healthy low-carb eating. Writers Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz have produced extraordinary “follow the science” journalism that should be essential reading for every diabetes practitioner in the country. Their science-based work has literally revolutionized the thinking of thousands of diabetes sufferers such as myself, yet they remain a decided minority in the area of nutrition journalism.
And on the grass roots level, a number of promising new David v Goliath organizations are sprouting up that are attempting to challenge the American Diabetes Association’s stranglehold on how we treat the disease.
Leon Rock, a community activist who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2005, created the African American Diabetes Association in the wake of the Covid epidemic, after being struck by how the American Diabetes Association fails to fund research or provide support for the unique needs of African-Americans with diabetes. “When I was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I went to the ADA to learn if there were any programs that addressed the needs of the Black community and they blew me off,” he said. “I would say nine out of 10 Black men do not trust their doctor.”
One of Rock’s main concerns with the ADA’s approach to treating the disease is that in addition to “having Black faces on their website”, it needs to meet people with diabetes “where they live”. The African American Diabetes Association, Rock adds, has been focusing on the Boston, Washington DC and Baltimore communities offering pop-up educational sessions in local barbershops and hair salons. His group next plans to begin work in the Mississippi Delta. “We want to take our message to the diabetes belt,” he says.
And this year, a group of physicians who advocate a low-carb diet for people with diabetes and obesity, created a new non-profit, the American Diabetes Society that is meant to offer an alternative to the ADA’s big pharma approach to treatment. “There’s been more research about low-carb than any other therapy and it’s shown the benefits,” said Dr Ken Berry, a family doctor, author and leading low-carb advocate. “But the ADA just had its huge conference, and they barely mentioned the existence of the low-carb diet.”
Berry has enlisted the support of other low-carb clinicians and is actively fundraising for the new non-profit. “What’s wrong with the ADA is they are so intertwined with big food and big pharma and the people who make insulin and diabetic medications,” he said. “Low carb will improve your health and lessen your complication, but just like in every other walk of life, money talks.”
In the meantime, the ADA remains in control of diabetes policy in this country, and dissenting voices have a difficult time being heard. In fact, if you want to hear or read Califf’s keynote address, best of luck. Not a word about his speech on the ADA website – the ADA did, however, cover 2023’s less-controversial keynote about genomics, however!).
But that doesn’t mean Califf isn’t on to something. Yes, we are failing the 38 million people with diabetes in this country, not to mention the over 100,000 Americans who die from the condition annually. And yes, the $400bn in diabetes-related annual expenditures is breaking the back of our healthcare system. But the overwhelming evidence points to an effective, safe and cheaper solution – the low-carbohydrate diet. The first step is to tell the truth.
“For the larger epidemic of type 2 diabetes, we’re failing right now,” Califf said. “I don’t say that lightly.”
Califf did not praise his hosts, the ADA – the powerful body that sets the standard for diabetes care, while accepting tens of millions of dollars annually from the drug and medical device industry.
He also did not the laud the ADA’s funders, the drug and medical device companies that earn billions of dollars selling the insulin, pumps, needles, continuous glucose monitors and other paraphernalia Califf’s agency regulates. And he did not shrink from pointing out that, according to some accounts, diabetes has surpassed cancer as the leading economic cost to our health care system, adding up to over $400bn annually.
Instead, Califf cited America’s ruinously high consumption of sugar and the food industry’s poor labeling policies. He pointed out that affluent Americans invariably receive greater access to the latest technology than poor Americans. And he pointed out, according to an account in MedPage Today, that even the vast majority of digital tools routinely prescribed for people with diabetes fail to help people manage the disease.
“A big part of this [the solution] is going to have to be digital health tools,” he said. “We’re living in a world now where new digital health tools are coming out on a daily basis, but analyses that have been done are not showing that they’re delivering on the promises.”
Now if only Califf had connected the dots!
As I have written, a safe, effective and cheap solution to the type 2 diabetes epidemic already exists. To put it simply, type 2 diabetes, the condition of insulin resistance which afflicts 95% of people with diabetes, is reversible with a low-carb diet. The American Diabetes Association has even quietly acknowledged this. Numerous clinicians practice this and have published their results. Yet, as over 100,000 Americans still die from the condition annually, the American Diabetes Association and medical establishment steadfastly refuse to advocate for it.
It is one of the greatest disconnects in all of American healthcare – even as fatalities and costs of the disease continue to soar, why does the ADA and medical establishment refuse to advocate for, and educate patients about, the dietary solution that could spare lives and save billions? Moreover, at what point will the medical establishment and public servants such as Califf recognize the forces benefitting from the diabetes epidemic such as big pharma, big medtech, big food and – yes – the American Diabetes Association, are the actual sources of our diabetes problem?
Califf’s address to the ADA is a great example both of what is promising and depressing about diabetes care nowadays. Califf is a respected cardiologist who spent most of his career in academia. He is vocal advocate for healthcare as a right and understands how unbalanced access to healthcare is in our country, based on income, region and race.
And yet, his speech virtually ignored critical research that screams for greater adoption of the low-carb diet for people with diabetes. For example, Califf’s citation of a study that concluded that the majority of digital tools prescribed for people with diabetes are not effective. That claim came from a March study this year by the independent Peterson Health Technology Institute which analyzed eight companies that sold digital technology tools to people with diabetes. And it is correct that Peterson concluded that “the evidence shows that the technologies do not deliver meaningful clinical benefits, and result in increased healthcare spending”.
But now take a little closer at the Peterson study. According to Peterson, there were “two potential bright spots” in the diabetic treatment area, one of which was Virta Health, a medical care company which treats people with diabetes with a low-carb diet. “Initial data showed that Virta users are much more likely to achieve clinically meaningful benefits in glycemic control, including diabetes remission and the ability to reduce or eliminate their diabetes medications, if they can maintain the rigorous dietary requirements of the intervention.” In layperson’s terms, in other words, Virta’s low-carb diet helped people with diabetes reverse their disease!
Califf is unequivocally correct that we are “failing” people with type 2 diabetes. The question is, can the medical establishment and federal agencies wean themselves off the carbohydrates that spike blood sugars, and the drugs that often only make matters worse?
As someone with type 2 diabetes who reversed his condition with a low-carbohydrate diet, I understand this is an uphill battle, but one worth fighting. And I am far from alone; in fact there is a growing ecosystem of extraordinary writers, clinicians, researchers and patients who advocate for healthy low-carb eating. Writers Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz have produced extraordinary “follow the science” journalism that should be essential reading for every diabetes practitioner in the country. Their science-based work has literally revolutionized the thinking of thousands of diabetes sufferers such as myself, yet they remain a decided minority in the area of nutrition journalism.
And on the grass roots level, a number of promising new David v Goliath organizations are sprouting up that are attempting to challenge the American Diabetes Association’s stranglehold on how we treat the disease.
Leon Rock, a community activist who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2005, created the African American Diabetes Association in the wake of the Covid epidemic, after being struck by how the American Diabetes Association fails to fund research or provide support for the unique needs of African-Americans with diabetes. “When I was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I went to the ADA to learn if there were any programs that addressed the needs of the Black community and they blew me off,” he said. “I would say nine out of 10 Black men do not trust their doctor.”
One of Rock’s main concerns with the ADA’s approach to treating the disease is that in addition to “having Black faces on their website”, it needs to meet people with diabetes “where they live”. The African American Diabetes Association, Rock adds, has been focusing on the Boston, Washington DC and Baltimore communities offering pop-up educational sessions in local barbershops and hair salons. His group next plans to begin work in the Mississippi Delta. “We want to take our message to the diabetes belt,” he says.
And this year, a group of physicians who advocate a low-carb diet for people with diabetes and obesity, created a new non-profit, the American Diabetes Society that is meant to offer an alternative to the ADA’s big pharma approach to treatment. “There’s been more research about low-carb than any other therapy and it’s shown the benefits,” said Dr Ken Berry, a family doctor, author and leading low-carb advocate. “But the ADA just had its huge conference, and they barely mentioned the existence of the low-carb diet.”
Berry has enlisted the support of other low-carb clinicians and is actively fundraising for the new non-profit. “What’s wrong with the ADA is they are so intertwined with big food and big pharma and the people who make insulin and diabetic medications,” he said. “Low carb will improve your health and lessen your complication, but just like in every other walk of life, money talks.”
In the meantime, the ADA remains in control of diabetes policy in this country, and dissenting voices have a difficult time being heard. In fact, if you want to hear or read Califf’s keynote address, best of luck. Not a word about his speech on the ADA website – the ADA did, however, cover 2023’s less-controversial keynote about genomics, however!).
But that doesn’t mean Califf isn’t on to something. Yes, we are failing the 38 million people with diabetes in this country, not to mention the over 100,000 Americans who die from the condition annually. And yes, the $400bn in diabetes-related annual expenditures is breaking the back of our healthcare system. But the overwhelming evidence points to an effective, safe and cheaper solution – the low-carbohydrate diet. The first step is to tell the truth.
talking to the stupid is a waste of time!!!
reality!!!
american values redefined: greed, racism, hypocrisy
racism: The unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race. Violent behavior towards them. Having the belief that some races of people are better than others. General beliefs about other people based only on their race. Showing this through violent or unfair treatment of people of other races.
greed: intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food
hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
another cover for racism and hate!!!
Christian nationalism is a 'perversion of Christianity' — and tightening its grip on GOP: conservative
Alex Henderson - alternet
July 24, 2024
Under President Joe Biden, the United States has enjoyed record-low unemployment and considerable job growth. The unemployment rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), was 4.1 percent in June — which was an increase from 3.7 percent in May but shows no sign of a recession.
Trump has claimed that much of the job growth under Biden has gone to illegal immigrants. But liberal economist Paul Krugman debunks that claim in a July 23 newsletter for the New York Times.
"Since President Biden took office," Krugman explains, "the United States has gained 15.7 million jobs. Trump, however, has been dismissing the good news on employment, claiming that all the job gains are going to illegal immigrants."
The economist/columnist goes on to lay out some data.
"The question…. is whether the jobs immigrants have taken would have gone to native-born workers if immigration had been lower," Krugman writes. "Well, if immigrants were stealing our jobs, we'd expect to see a sharp rise in unemployment among the native-born. We don't."
Krugman adds, "The unemployment rate among native-born workers is near a historic low." The economist adds that there is no evidence showing that immigrants cause wages to go down.
"Most labor economists now believe that immigrants don't do much head-to-head competition with native-born workers; they bring different skills and take different jobs," Krugman argues. "And the past few years, with elevated immigration, have also been an era of exceptional growth in wages for the worst paid. So, none of these negative claims about the effects of immigration hold up.
Trump has claimed that much of the job growth under Biden has gone to illegal immigrants. But liberal economist Paul Krugman debunks that claim in a July 23 newsletter for the New York Times.
"Since President Biden took office," Krugman explains, "the United States has gained 15.7 million jobs. Trump, however, has been dismissing the good news on employment, claiming that all the job gains are going to illegal immigrants."
The economist/columnist goes on to lay out some data.
"The question…. is whether the jobs immigrants have taken would have gone to native-born workers if immigration had been lower," Krugman writes. "Well, if immigrants were stealing our jobs, we'd expect to see a sharp rise in unemployment among the native-born. We don't."
Krugman adds, "The unemployment rate among native-born workers is near a historic low." The economist adds that there is no evidence showing that immigrants cause wages to go down.
"Most labor economists now believe that immigrants don't do much head-to-head competition with native-born workers; they bring different skills and take different jobs," Krugman argues. "And the past few years, with elevated immigration, have also been an era of exceptional growth in wages for the worst paid. So, none of these negative claims about the effects of immigration hold up.
nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
GOPers' "DEI," sexist attacks on Kamala
"She was a DEI hire": Right-wingers slammed for responding to Kamala Harris with racism and misogyny
Republican reaction to Harris rise shows they can't be normal about a woman of color
By CHARLES R. DAVIS - salon
Deputy News Editor
PUBLISHED JULY 23, 2024 11:14AM (EDT)
President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race for the White House may have been a shock, but it should not have come as a surprise. For weeks, Democrats openly panicked about a landslide loss in November if the party kept an 81-year-old at the top of the ticket.
Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, sat back and watched the damaging spectacle unfold. What they did not do is plan for it to end.
As The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta reported earlier this month, Republican operatives were convinced that Trump had fatally wounded Biden’s campaign at their June 27 debate. But they also thought — and hoped and prayed — that Biden would stubbornly refuse to accept the political reality, hold on to the Democratic nomination and lead his party to disaster.
What Republicans did not do is any real planning for an alternative. Trump chose a running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who appeals more to hard-right ideologues and donors like Peter Thiel than female swing voters in the suburbs; it was a pick that reflected confidence, if not hubris. Then, at the Republican National Convention last week, the GOP spent days going on about how their opponent was old, frail and weak, all but ignoring the 59-year-old vice president, former prosecutor and heir apparent, Kamala Harris.
“When convention speakers reached out to the GOP nominee’s campaign, gauging whether to hedge their speeches with attacks on Harris,” Alberta noted in an update this week, “they were told to keep the focus on Biden.”
That the Trump campaign and its media affiliates were inexplicably blindsided is apparent in their insta-response to Harris’ ascendance. Opposition research from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, provided to reporters on Monday, includes bullet points that try to paint Harris as “weird,” the evidence including that she laughs at “inappropriate” times and likes Venn diagrams. There are the usual lines of attack — conflating Harris’ diplomacy in Central America with her being a “border czar” — but it’s largely a cut-and-paste job.
It’s not that the NRSC isn’t bringing it’s best, but that this is the best the GOP can do. Republicans can also do much worse.
“One hundred percent, she was a DEI hire,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said Monday, claiming the former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, and U.S. senator lacked the qualifications to even be a vice president (Vance, by contrast, has written one (1) book and been a senator for less than two years). Biden, he said, only picked Harris because she is of Black and Indian heritage.
“What about — what about white females?” Burchett asked, normally and not sounding a little suspect and actually kind of weird.
Playing to white racial anxiety, using the preferred euphemism of the day (DEI standing for diversity, equality and inclusion, now used as a stand-in for “affirmative action” and far worse), is not Republicans’ only play. There is also that old favorite, misogyny; combine it with racist dog whistles and you have your new 2024 talking points.
Matt Walsh, a self-styled "fascist" who watches Disney cartoons and gets offended for a living, asserted that Harris had only got to where she is by sleeping with powerful men and “begging for hand outs.”
Megyn Kelly, a former cable news personality who was fired by NBC for defending white racists donning “blackface,” likewise ignored Harris winning multiple contested elections in the country’s most powerful state and declared that the sitting vice president was an “unqualified political aspirant” who had chosen to “sleep her way into and upwards in California politics.”
On Fox News, Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway managed to avoid calling Harris “colored” — what passes for a win in MAGA circles, and a test failed by former Trump advisor Seb Gorka — but her attacks were only marginally more subtle. Harris, Conway said, “doesn’t work hard” and “she does not speak well" (Trump appears to believe differently and is trying to back out of his scheduled debate with her).
Speaking Tuesday, former Republican lawmaker Joe Scarborough lamented his old party’s decline, arguing that the “DEI” and related attacks make the GOP looks like “total idiots,” alienating voters who are less online and steeped in far-right grievances. They might not completely understand what Republicans are going on about, but “they know it is probably racist.”
Since Harris locked up the Democratic nomination, the question for Republicans has been: "Can you be normal about a woman of color?" The answer so far is a resounding “afraid not.”
Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, sat back and watched the damaging spectacle unfold. What they did not do is plan for it to end.
As The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta reported earlier this month, Republican operatives were convinced that Trump had fatally wounded Biden’s campaign at their June 27 debate. But they also thought — and hoped and prayed — that Biden would stubbornly refuse to accept the political reality, hold on to the Democratic nomination and lead his party to disaster.
What Republicans did not do is any real planning for an alternative. Trump chose a running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who appeals more to hard-right ideologues and donors like Peter Thiel than female swing voters in the suburbs; it was a pick that reflected confidence, if not hubris. Then, at the Republican National Convention last week, the GOP spent days going on about how their opponent was old, frail and weak, all but ignoring the 59-year-old vice president, former prosecutor and heir apparent, Kamala Harris.
“When convention speakers reached out to the GOP nominee’s campaign, gauging whether to hedge their speeches with attacks on Harris,” Alberta noted in an update this week, “they were told to keep the focus on Biden.”
That the Trump campaign and its media affiliates were inexplicably blindsided is apparent in their insta-response to Harris’ ascendance. Opposition research from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, provided to reporters on Monday, includes bullet points that try to paint Harris as “weird,” the evidence including that she laughs at “inappropriate” times and likes Venn diagrams. There are the usual lines of attack — conflating Harris’ diplomacy in Central America with her being a “border czar” — but it’s largely a cut-and-paste job.
It’s not that the NRSC isn’t bringing it’s best, but that this is the best the GOP can do. Republicans can also do much worse.
“One hundred percent, she was a DEI hire,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said Monday, claiming the former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, and U.S. senator lacked the qualifications to even be a vice president (Vance, by contrast, has written one (1) book and been a senator for less than two years). Biden, he said, only picked Harris because she is of Black and Indian heritage.
“What about — what about white females?” Burchett asked, normally and not sounding a little suspect and actually kind of weird.
Playing to white racial anxiety, using the preferred euphemism of the day (DEI standing for diversity, equality and inclusion, now used as a stand-in for “affirmative action” and far worse), is not Republicans’ only play. There is also that old favorite, misogyny; combine it with racist dog whistles and you have your new 2024 talking points.
Matt Walsh, a self-styled "fascist" who watches Disney cartoons and gets offended for a living, asserted that Harris had only got to where she is by sleeping with powerful men and “begging for hand outs.”
Megyn Kelly, a former cable news personality who was fired by NBC for defending white racists donning “blackface,” likewise ignored Harris winning multiple contested elections in the country’s most powerful state and declared that the sitting vice president was an “unqualified political aspirant” who had chosen to “sleep her way into and upwards in California politics.”
On Fox News, Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway managed to avoid calling Harris “colored” — what passes for a win in MAGA circles, and a test failed by former Trump advisor Seb Gorka — but her attacks were only marginally more subtle. Harris, Conway said, “doesn’t work hard” and “she does not speak well" (Trump appears to believe differently and is trying to back out of his scheduled debate with her).
Speaking Tuesday, former Republican lawmaker Joe Scarborough lamented his old party’s decline, arguing that the “DEI” and related attacks make the GOP looks like “total idiots,” alienating voters who are less online and steeped in far-right grievances. They might not completely understand what Republicans are going on about, but “they know it is probably racist.”
Since Harris locked up the Democratic nomination, the question for Republicans has been: "Can you be normal about a woman of color?" The answer so far is a resounding “afraid not.”
Trump campaign repeatedly smears Black veteran beaten by cops as it attacks Kamala Harris
Travis Gettys - raw story
July 23, 2024 1:05PM ET
Donald Trump's campaign has repeatedly smeared a Black veteran who was brutally beaten by police as they attempt to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Trump War Room account has posted multiple times false claims about Jaleel Stallings, a Minnesota man who was ultimately acquitted of charges related to the George Floyd protests in 2020, to suggest Harris helped free violent criminals by tweeting her support for a bail fund as those protests raged nationwide.
"Meet Jaleel Stallings," posted the Trump War Room account on Tuesday. "In June 2020, Stallings was charged with the attempted murder of two police officers during the 2020 riots. @KamalaHarris raised money to bail Stallings out of jail. Kamala Harris is radically liberal and dangerously incompetent."
Stallings was indeed charged with rioting, attempted murder, and deadly force against police officers four years ago, but a jury found him not guilty on all charges. He later won a $1.5 million lawsuit and one of the officers involved in his violent arrest pleaded guilty to assault last year and was sentenced to 15 days in jail.
The U.S. Army veteran and concealed carry permit holder claimed he saw an unmarked white van pull up with its lights off and its side door open when he heard a pop and felt a projectile strike him in the chest, and fearing he had been grazed by a bullet fired by the white supremacists prowling the area, Stallings fired three shots at the van but did not hit anymore.
The 29-year-old Stallings immediately realized he had fired at police, so he dropped his gun and lay face down and motionless — but body camera video shows officers kicking and punching him, even after he was placed in handcuffs, as he tried to explain himself.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which Harris had promoted on Twitter, now X, paid $75,000 to bail Stallings out of jail while he awaited the trial that later cleared him, but the Trump campaign then and now have seized on the case to attack the former California attorney general and senator who went on to win the vice presidency and then become the presumed 2024 presidential nominee.
"Kamala Harris helped raise money for a far-left organization that bailed a rioter who shot at police out of jail," the Trump War Room wrote on X on Monday, the day after president Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed his running mate.
The Trump War Room account has posted multiple times false claims about Jaleel Stallings, a Minnesota man who was ultimately acquitted of charges related to the George Floyd protests in 2020, to suggest Harris helped free violent criminals by tweeting her support for a bail fund as those protests raged nationwide.
"Meet Jaleel Stallings," posted the Trump War Room account on Tuesday. "In June 2020, Stallings was charged with the attempted murder of two police officers during the 2020 riots. @KamalaHarris raised money to bail Stallings out of jail. Kamala Harris is radically liberal and dangerously incompetent."
Stallings was indeed charged with rioting, attempted murder, and deadly force against police officers four years ago, but a jury found him not guilty on all charges. He later won a $1.5 million lawsuit and one of the officers involved in his violent arrest pleaded guilty to assault last year and was sentenced to 15 days in jail.
The U.S. Army veteran and concealed carry permit holder claimed he saw an unmarked white van pull up with its lights off and its side door open when he heard a pop and felt a projectile strike him in the chest, and fearing he had been grazed by a bullet fired by the white supremacists prowling the area, Stallings fired three shots at the van but did not hit anymore.
The 29-year-old Stallings immediately realized he had fired at police, so he dropped his gun and lay face down and motionless — but body camera video shows officers kicking and punching him, even after he was placed in handcuffs, as he tried to explain himself.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which Harris had promoted on Twitter, now X, paid $75,000 to bail Stallings out of jail while he awaited the trial that later cleared him, but the Trump campaign then and now have seized on the case to attack the former California attorney general and senator who went on to win the vice presidency and then become the presumed 2024 presidential nominee.
"Kamala Harris helped raise money for a far-left organization that bailed a rioter who shot at police out of jail," the Trump War Room wrote on X on Monday, the day after president Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed his running mate.
Welcome to RepublicanDebt.org
This site tracks the current Republican Debt.
The Republican Debt is how much of the national debt of the United States
is attributable to
the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush,
George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump,
and
the Republican fiscal policy of Borrow-And-Spend.
As of Friday, July 26, 2024 at 1:39:37AM PT,
The Current Republican Debt is:
$16,810,608,865,814.00
which means that in a total of 24 years,
these four presidents have led to the creation of
94.73%
of the entire national debt
in only 9.6774% of the 248 years of the existence of the United States of America.
British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read
Nate White
“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
in the land of stupid!!!
THE DAILY TRASH REPORT FEATURING TODAY'S DESPICABLES
THOMAS JEFFERSON CALLED THEM "WASTE PEOPLE" AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CALLED THEM "RUBBISH" WE CALL THEM "MAGA PEOPLE" and the worthless media gives them a voice.
they are more accurate called euro-trash!!!
TEXAS SUES BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO LIMIT TEENAGE ACCESS TO BIRTH CONTROL
Ohio’s voter purge 'disproportionately targets voters of color': activists
Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal - raw story
July 25, 2024 10:46AM ET
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s voter purge disproportionately goes after voters of color, Ohio civil rights organizations argue.
More than half of Ohio voters who might be purged from the state’s voter rolls are registered in counties where a majority of the population is people of color, said Ohio Unity Coalition Executive Director Pierrette Talley.
“It appears to me that this purge disproportionately targets voters of color, many of whom have long been disenfranchised from the political process, either because of discriminatory barriers that prevent them from exercising their power to vote or people’s life circumstances that have prevented them from being able to fully participate in our democracy,” she said during a Tuesday press conference.
Last month, LaRose published a list of 158,857 inactive voter registration who were eligible to be removed from the Statewide Voter Registration Database — meaning they would be purged from voter rolls and not able to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. County board of elections had until Monday to finish their voter purge.
LaRose’s office did not respond to questions about when they would have a final list of purge voters or about the accusation the purge disproportionately affects voters of color.
“What our politicians should be focusing on is expanding voting rights rather than trying to restrict them,” said Bria Bennett, the communications director for Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
A registered voter could be on the list if they filled out a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service signaling they have moved or they have not voted at their registered address in the past four years after being marked for removal by a county’s voter registration system. The voter purge is part of Ohio’s process of updating its rolls and removing voters who have moved out-of-state or died.
There has to be a better way to clean Ohio’s voter roll, said Deidra Reese, voter engagement director at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
“This ability to take people off the rolls is saying people who have affirmatively registered to vote will not be able to vote simply because of a procedural issue, that’s just not fair,” she said. “It is not proper to say people who meet those regulations should be taken off the roll. … We just want people who are eligible to actually be able to vote and not have barriers and particularly not to disproportionately impact voters of color.”
Talley is disappointed the voter purge is happening.
“People should be allowed to opt out of any election and they should certainly not live in an environment where if you don’t exercise your right to vote that you lose your right to vote,” she said.
Voting is an essential part of democracy, said President of the Ohio Conference NAACP Tom Roberts.
“By definition, democracy means people rule and our democracy works best when every voter can participate in this democracy and voting is one of the most public ways of sharing the work of a democracy,” he said.
A voter whose registration has been purged can regain their ability to vote by reregistering on the Secretary’s registration website or by visiting their county board of elections.
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.
More than half of Ohio voters who might be purged from the state’s voter rolls are registered in counties where a majority of the population is people of color, said Ohio Unity Coalition Executive Director Pierrette Talley.
“It appears to me that this purge disproportionately targets voters of color, many of whom have long been disenfranchised from the political process, either because of discriminatory barriers that prevent them from exercising their power to vote or people’s life circumstances that have prevented them from being able to fully participate in our democracy,” she said during a Tuesday press conference.
Last month, LaRose published a list of 158,857 inactive voter registration who were eligible to be removed from the Statewide Voter Registration Database — meaning they would be purged from voter rolls and not able to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. County board of elections had until Monday to finish their voter purge.
LaRose’s office did not respond to questions about when they would have a final list of purge voters or about the accusation the purge disproportionately affects voters of color.
“What our politicians should be focusing on is expanding voting rights rather than trying to restrict them,” said Bria Bennett, the communications director for Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
A registered voter could be on the list if they filled out a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service signaling they have moved or they have not voted at their registered address in the past four years after being marked for removal by a county’s voter registration system. The voter purge is part of Ohio’s process of updating its rolls and removing voters who have moved out-of-state or died.
There has to be a better way to clean Ohio’s voter roll, said Deidra Reese, voter engagement director at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
“This ability to take people off the rolls is saying people who have affirmatively registered to vote will not be able to vote simply because of a procedural issue, that’s just not fair,” she said. “It is not proper to say people who meet those regulations should be taken off the roll. … We just want people who are eligible to actually be able to vote and not have barriers and particularly not to disproportionately impact voters of color.”
Talley is disappointed the voter purge is happening.
“People should be allowed to opt out of any election and they should certainly not live in an environment where if you don’t exercise your right to vote that you lose your right to vote,” she said.
Voting is an essential part of democracy, said President of the Ohio Conference NAACP Tom Roberts.
“By definition, democracy means people rule and our democracy works best when every voter can participate in this democracy and voting is one of the most public ways of sharing the work of a democracy,” he said.
A voter whose registration has been purged can regain their ability to vote by reregistering on the Secretary’s registration website or by visiting their county board of elections.
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.
excerpt: Prominent billionaire GOP donor accused of repeatedly making racist remarks
April Corbin Girnus, Nevada Current
July 23, 2024 9:30AM ET
A national civil rights leader is calling on Nevada to investigate a prominent Las Vegas businessman and Republican donor following allegations he repeatedly used racial slurs in the workplace and once pulled a gun on a Black truck driver.
The Rev. Al Sharpton wrote a letter to Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford calling for an investigation into Don Ahern, who made his name and fortune as a construction equipment tycoon and has become a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates, including congressional hopeful John Lee.
Sharpton’s call for an investigation, first reported by The Hill last month, came in response to documents surfaced from a now-settled 2022 lawsuit brought by a former Ahern Rentals employee in California. Mark Townsend alleged Ahern as CEO “regularly and frequently” used the n-word and made discriminatory comments about other marginalized groups. CNBC reported on the allegations ahead of Trump’s most recent visit to Las Vegas, where Ahern co-hosted a private fundraiser for the former president with suggested donation levels ranging from $1,000 per person to more than $840,000 per couple.
Townsend alleged Ahern made repeated racist, sexist and ageist remarks during business meetings, including saying:
“We don’t like hiring niggers. They are dumb. They are just born that way.”“We do not hire any niggers or women for the sales force or positions where they are first seen by the public.”“We need to get rid of all the old faggots, niggers, Mexicans, and women, because they’re useless.”
In his lawsuit, Townsend also alleged that Evan Ahern, the CEO’s son, said, “We do not hire niggers at Ahern Rentals.” To which Don Ahern allegedly responded, “Or fat people, they have way too many health issues.”
Townsend, who was fired from Ahern Rentals shortly after turning 58, argued he was a victim of age discrimination and claimed Ahern had previously told managers, “If you have any employees getting close to the age of 60 start lining up their replacement now and get rid of them as soon as possible.”
Ahern has previously denied all of the allegations. He could not be reached for comment this week. The lawsuit was settled out of court. Months after the settlement, Ahern Rentals was acquired by United Rentals, a Connecticut-based publicly traded company that describes itself as the largest equipment rental company in the world.
One of Ahern’s former attorneys, Mohammed Sami Bakdash, confirmed in a May deposition related to separate litigation against an Ahern company that he heard the CEO use the derogatory language cited in Townsend’s lawsuit. That deposition was also reported by CNBC.
In his letter to Ford, which the Current obtained, Sharpton references additional sworn statements made during litigation against Ahern, including one alleging the CEO once “called a truck driver the ‘n-word’ and pulled a gun on him.”
Sharpton acknowledges in his letter that because Ford is a Democratic attorney general who is Black, a potential investigation into a Trump donor would be politically charged and invite conservative ire “but the sworn statements of these courageous employees should also compel you to rise above that and do what is right for those either intimidated by or denied an opportunity due to Ahern’s warped view of the world.”
He added, “I make this inquiry not for political reasons, but moral ones.”[...]
The Rev. Al Sharpton wrote a letter to Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford calling for an investigation into Don Ahern, who made his name and fortune as a construction equipment tycoon and has become a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates, including congressional hopeful John Lee.
Sharpton’s call for an investigation, first reported by The Hill last month, came in response to documents surfaced from a now-settled 2022 lawsuit brought by a former Ahern Rentals employee in California. Mark Townsend alleged Ahern as CEO “regularly and frequently” used the n-word and made discriminatory comments about other marginalized groups. CNBC reported on the allegations ahead of Trump’s most recent visit to Las Vegas, where Ahern co-hosted a private fundraiser for the former president with suggested donation levels ranging from $1,000 per person to more than $840,000 per couple.
Townsend alleged Ahern made repeated racist, sexist and ageist remarks during business meetings, including saying:
“We don’t like hiring niggers. They are dumb. They are just born that way.”“We do not hire any niggers or women for the sales force or positions where they are first seen by the public.”“We need to get rid of all the old faggots, niggers, Mexicans, and women, because they’re useless.”
In his lawsuit, Townsend also alleged that Evan Ahern, the CEO’s son, said, “We do not hire niggers at Ahern Rentals.” To which Don Ahern allegedly responded, “Or fat people, they have way too many health issues.”
Townsend, who was fired from Ahern Rentals shortly after turning 58, argued he was a victim of age discrimination and claimed Ahern had previously told managers, “If you have any employees getting close to the age of 60 start lining up their replacement now and get rid of them as soon as possible.”
Ahern has previously denied all of the allegations. He could not be reached for comment this week. The lawsuit was settled out of court. Months after the settlement, Ahern Rentals was acquired by United Rentals, a Connecticut-based publicly traded company that describes itself as the largest equipment rental company in the world.
One of Ahern’s former attorneys, Mohammed Sami Bakdash, confirmed in a May deposition related to separate litigation against an Ahern company that he heard the CEO use the derogatory language cited in Townsend’s lawsuit. That deposition was also reported by CNBC.
In his letter to Ford, which the Current obtained, Sharpton references additional sworn statements made during litigation against Ahern, including one alleging the CEO once “called a truck driver the ‘n-word’ and pulled a gun on him.”
Sharpton acknowledges in his letter that because Ford is a Democratic attorney general who is Black, a potential investigation into a Trump donor would be politically charged and invite conservative ire “but the sworn statements of these courageous employees should also compel you to rise above that and do what is right for those either intimidated by or denied an opportunity due to Ahern’s warped view of the world.”
He added, “I make this inquiry not for political reasons, but moral ones.”[...]
putin's bitches!!!
Should Billionaires Exist?
by Robert Reich | the smirking chimp
May 4, 2024 - 6:07am
Do billionaires have a right to exist?
America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.
Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism:
1. Exploit a Monopoly.
Jamie Dimon is worth $2 billion today… but not because he succeeded in the “free market.” In 2008, the government bailed out his bank JPMorgan and other giant Wall Street banks, keeping them off the endangered species list.
This government “insurance policy” scored these struggling Mom-and-Pop megabanks an estimated $34 billion a year.
But doesn’t entrepreneur Jeff Bezos deserve his billions for building Amazon?
No, because he also built a monopoly that’s been charged by the federal government and 17 states for inflating prices, overcharging sellers, and stifling competition like a predator in the wild.
With better anti-monopoly enforcement, Bezos would be worth closer to his fair-market value.
2. Exploit Inside Information
Steven A. Cohen, worth roughly $20 billion headed a hedge fund charged by the Justice Department with insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” Another innovator!
Taming insider trading would level the investing field between the C Suite and Main Street.
3. Buy Off Politicians
That’s a great way to become a billionaire! The Koch family and Koch Industries saved roughly $1 billion a year from the Trump tax cut they and allies spent $20 million lobbying for. What a return on investment!
If we had tougher lobbying laws, political corruption would go extinct.
4. Defraud Investors
Adam Neumann conned investors out of hundreds of millions for WeWork, an office-sharing startup. WeWork didn’t make a nickel of profit, but Neumann still funded his extravagant lifestyle, including a $60 million private jet. Not exactly “sharing.”
Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud for her blood-testing company, Theranos. So was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto-exchange FTX. Remember a supposed billionaire named Donald Trump? He was also found to have committed fraud.
Presumably, if we had tougher anti-fraud laws, more would be caught and there’d be fewer billionaires to preserve.
5. Get Money From Rich Relatives
About 60 percent of all wealth in America today is inherited.
That’s because loopholes in U.S. tax law —lobbied for by the wealthy — allow rich families to avoid taxes on assets they inherit. And the estate tax has been so defanged that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates have paid it in recent years.
Tax reform would disrupt the circle of life for the rich, stopping them from automatically becoming billionaires at their birth, or someone else’s death.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. But do today’s entrepreneurs really need billions of dollars? Couldn’t they survive on a measly hundred million?
Because they’re now using those billions to erode American institutions. They spent fortunes bringing Supreme Court justices with them into the wild.They treated news organizations and social media platforms like prey, and they turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.
This has created an America where fewer than ever can become millionaires (or even thousandaires) through hard work and actual innovation.
If capitalism were working properly, billionaires would have gone the way of the dodo.
America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.
Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism:
1. Exploit a Monopoly.
Jamie Dimon is worth $2 billion today… but not because he succeeded in the “free market.” In 2008, the government bailed out his bank JPMorgan and other giant Wall Street banks, keeping them off the endangered species list.
This government “insurance policy” scored these struggling Mom-and-Pop megabanks an estimated $34 billion a year.
But doesn’t entrepreneur Jeff Bezos deserve his billions for building Amazon?
No, because he also built a monopoly that’s been charged by the federal government and 17 states for inflating prices, overcharging sellers, and stifling competition like a predator in the wild.
With better anti-monopoly enforcement, Bezos would be worth closer to his fair-market value.
2. Exploit Inside Information
Steven A. Cohen, worth roughly $20 billion headed a hedge fund charged by the Justice Department with insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” Another innovator!
Taming insider trading would level the investing field between the C Suite and Main Street.
3. Buy Off Politicians
That’s a great way to become a billionaire! The Koch family and Koch Industries saved roughly $1 billion a year from the Trump tax cut they and allies spent $20 million lobbying for. What a return on investment!
If we had tougher lobbying laws, political corruption would go extinct.
4. Defraud Investors
Adam Neumann conned investors out of hundreds of millions for WeWork, an office-sharing startup. WeWork didn’t make a nickel of profit, but Neumann still funded his extravagant lifestyle, including a $60 million private jet. Not exactly “sharing.”
Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud for her blood-testing company, Theranos. So was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto-exchange FTX. Remember a supposed billionaire named Donald Trump? He was also found to have committed fraud.
Presumably, if we had tougher anti-fraud laws, more would be caught and there’d be fewer billionaires to preserve.
5. Get Money From Rich Relatives
About 60 percent of all wealth in America today is inherited.
That’s because loopholes in U.S. tax law —lobbied for by the wealthy — allow rich families to avoid taxes on assets they inherit. And the estate tax has been so defanged that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates have paid it in recent years.
Tax reform would disrupt the circle of life for the rich, stopping them from automatically becoming billionaires at their birth, or someone else’s death.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. But do today’s entrepreneurs really need billions of dollars? Couldn’t they survive on a measly hundred million?
Because they’re now using those billions to erode American institutions. They spent fortunes bringing Supreme Court justices with them into the wild.They treated news organizations and social media platforms like prey, and they turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.
This has created an America where fewer than ever can become millionaires (or even thousandaires) through hard work and actual innovation.
If capitalism were working properly, billionaires would have gone the way of the dodo.
Here are 4 things you should know about Trump's VP pick
Sarah K. Burris - alternet
July 15, 2024
Donald Trump announced that his vice presidential running mate will be J.D. Vance, the Ohio Senator and a close friend of Trump's son Donald Jr.
While Vance has a long history of harshly criticizing Trump, he has spent the past few years working to pivot to be a MAGA loyalist.
As The Nation's Joan Walsh wrote in June, Vance became the supposed bard of the white working class after he wrote his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. The New York Times promoted it as "a tough love analysis of the poor who back Trump."
Meanwhile, PBS noted that after Trump's near-death experience at the weekend, the role of Vance is now much more significant.
Here are five things that Americans should know about Vance:
1. Onlookers have claimed Vance's morals have collapsed
According to retired professor Tom Nichols, who describes himself as a Never Trump conservative, Vance is a "contemptible and cringe-inducing clown."
Writing for The Nation in July 2021, Nichols said that the lawmaker has turned "on everything he once claimed to believe." He's a "sellout” or “backstabber." A “traitor” or “apostate.”
"Worse, Vance has not only repudiated his earlier views on Trump, but has done so with ruthless cynicism, embracing the former president and his madness while winking at the media with a What can you do? shrug about the stupidity of Ohio’s voters," said Nichols
“If I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about,” Nichols quoted Vance telling Time Magazine, “I need to just suck it up and support him.”
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called Vance a “pathetic loser poser fake jerk."
Cleveland News Scene said of Vance: "If politics is the art of empty gestures, J.D. was proving himself a prodigy."
2. Vance has been accused of lying about being a "working class hero."
New York Magazine reporter Sarah Jones wrote in March that Vance pretends he's fighting for working-class people but that the reality is he's trying to "reshape the Republican Party, and America too, in part by appealing to working-class voters."
She was responding to a Politico profile heralding that Vance was "something like an intellectual, or at least like a completely unselfconscious nerd."
The reality is, she wrote, he's become a "figurehead for the New Right," attacking anti-Trump conservatives and the left to ensure the "upper echelons of American government, business, media, entertainment and academia" are all "populated" by conservatives.
Vance isn't fighting for working-class people, she argued. His voting record in the Senate shows he opposes union organizing while marching on picket lines with the UAW.
Historian Gabriel Winant wrote Vance’s “false class politics” puts “the suffering of working-class people” in “conspiratorial rather than structural terms.”
"Vance isn’t stupid," Jones said. "And he knows that he can stitch anything onto a critique that is divorced from reality. He can peddle racism in anti-immigration ads and justify himself by his mother’s addiction... He can insist that he is still that working-class whisperer. But the truth is far uglier. The working class has many enemies in Washington, and Vance is one of them. He is selling out America’s workers to his friends and allies on the right — and they have no interest in sharing power or wealth with the masses. The New Right seeks power for itself and itself alone. In Vance’s America, workers will stay on the bottom rung."
3. Trump has complete control over Vance, critics have said.
Unlike former Vice President Mike Pence, Vance's career in Republican politics is tied to Trump. While Vance's successful book may have catapulted him to success, it is his association with Trump and MAGA that has put him in a position of power, experts have said.
As the Cleveland News Scene recalled, Trump "is a cruel master. He demanded servility from his yes-men, then belittled them for their weakness in doing so. He couldn’t resist mocking J.D. for the toady he’d become."
“J.D. is kissing my a-s he wants my support so bad,” Trump told a rally crowd in Ohio. It was a humiliation for Vance, said the Toledo Blade.
Still, the Cleveland report called Trump the "impresario of fraud," who was doing nothing more than "mocking a lesser practitioner."
4. He's been criticized as being little more than a right-wing troll
The Guardian's Jan-Werner Müller wrote, "Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals," Müller wrote. "Mobilizing voters is less about programs, let alone a real legislative record (Vance has none; his initiatives like making English the official language of the US are just virtue signaling for conservative culture warriors). Rather, it’s to generate political energy by deepening people’s sense of shared victimhood."
The column noted that "Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals."
MSNBC opinion columnist Hayes Brown highlighted another way that Vance was able to deploy his trolling beyond social media to the halls of the U.S. Senate.
In a letter to the Justice Department, Brown said that right-wing trolls are always known for asking questions they claim they're "just asking."
"Ones who pretend they aren’t necessarily arguing for any specific point of view or outcome but are just bravely bringing thorny subjects up," Brown said.
While Vance has a long history of harshly criticizing Trump, he has spent the past few years working to pivot to be a MAGA loyalist.
As The Nation's Joan Walsh wrote in June, Vance became the supposed bard of the white working class after he wrote his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. The New York Times promoted it as "a tough love analysis of the poor who back Trump."
Meanwhile, PBS noted that after Trump's near-death experience at the weekend, the role of Vance is now much more significant.
Here are five things that Americans should know about Vance:
1. Onlookers have claimed Vance's morals have collapsed
According to retired professor Tom Nichols, who describes himself as a Never Trump conservative, Vance is a "contemptible and cringe-inducing clown."
Writing for The Nation in July 2021, Nichols said that the lawmaker has turned "on everything he once claimed to believe." He's a "sellout” or “backstabber." A “traitor” or “apostate.”
"Worse, Vance has not only repudiated his earlier views on Trump, but has done so with ruthless cynicism, embracing the former president and his madness while winking at the media with a What can you do? shrug about the stupidity of Ohio’s voters," said Nichols
“If I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about,” Nichols quoted Vance telling Time Magazine, “I need to just suck it up and support him.”
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called Vance a “pathetic loser poser fake jerk."
Cleveland News Scene said of Vance: "If politics is the art of empty gestures, J.D. was proving himself a prodigy."
2. Vance has been accused of lying about being a "working class hero."
New York Magazine reporter Sarah Jones wrote in March that Vance pretends he's fighting for working-class people but that the reality is he's trying to "reshape the Republican Party, and America too, in part by appealing to working-class voters."
She was responding to a Politico profile heralding that Vance was "something like an intellectual, or at least like a completely unselfconscious nerd."
The reality is, she wrote, he's become a "figurehead for the New Right," attacking anti-Trump conservatives and the left to ensure the "upper echelons of American government, business, media, entertainment and academia" are all "populated" by conservatives.
Vance isn't fighting for working-class people, she argued. His voting record in the Senate shows he opposes union organizing while marching on picket lines with the UAW.
Historian Gabriel Winant wrote Vance’s “false class politics” puts “the suffering of working-class people” in “conspiratorial rather than structural terms.”
"Vance isn’t stupid," Jones said. "And he knows that he can stitch anything onto a critique that is divorced from reality. He can peddle racism in anti-immigration ads and justify himself by his mother’s addiction... He can insist that he is still that working-class whisperer. But the truth is far uglier. The working class has many enemies in Washington, and Vance is one of them. He is selling out America’s workers to his friends and allies on the right — and they have no interest in sharing power or wealth with the masses. The New Right seeks power for itself and itself alone. In Vance’s America, workers will stay on the bottom rung."
3. Trump has complete control over Vance, critics have said.
Unlike former Vice President Mike Pence, Vance's career in Republican politics is tied to Trump. While Vance's successful book may have catapulted him to success, it is his association with Trump and MAGA that has put him in a position of power, experts have said.
As the Cleveland News Scene recalled, Trump "is a cruel master. He demanded servility from his yes-men, then belittled them for their weakness in doing so. He couldn’t resist mocking J.D. for the toady he’d become."
“J.D. is kissing my a-s he wants my support so bad,” Trump told a rally crowd in Ohio. It was a humiliation for Vance, said the Toledo Blade.
Still, the Cleveland report called Trump the "impresario of fraud," who was doing nothing more than "mocking a lesser practitioner."
4. He's been criticized as being little more than a right-wing troll
The Guardian's Jan-Werner Müller wrote, "Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals," Müller wrote. "Mobilizing voters is less about programs, let alone a real legislative record (Vance has none; his initiatives like making English the official language of the US are just virtue signaling for conservative culture warriors). Rather, it’s to generate political energy by deepening people’s sense of shared victimhood."
The column noted that "Vance has perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days: trolling the liberals."
MSNBC opinion columnist Hayes Brown highlighted another way that Vance was able to deploy his trolling beyond social media to the halls of the U.S. Senate.
In a letter to the Justice Department, Brown said that right-wing trolls are always known for asking questions they claim they're "just asking."
"Ones who pretend they aren’t necessarily arguing for any specific point of view or outcome but are just bravely bringing thorny subjects up," Brown said.
a congress of traitors, thieves, grifters!!!
elected officials who owe their offices to stupid voters and the greedy
Bites from Real News
*7/26/2024*
*Jewish National Fund of Canada Has Its Charitable Status Revoked
The move marks a significant victory against apartheid, genocide and Palestinian dispossession.
*US Corporations Pump Aquifers Dry as Police Kill Water Defenders in Rural Mexico Farmers are risking their lives to fight back against the US-owned factory farms that are destroying Mexico’s water.
*More than 100,000 Americans with diabetes have limbs amputated each year. This is a crisis
Black Americans with diabetes are four times more likely to suffer amputations than white Americans
*"You Are Not A Loan!" Introducing the Nation's First Debtors' Union
Debtors’ unions, in solidarity with labor unions and tenants unions, are the organizing formations we need to dismantle genocidal racial capitalism.
*People Are Still Being Swallowed by Storm Drains. One U.S. Agency Is Pushing for Safety Measures.
A new federal rule requires that local officials in flood-prone areas consider safety features for drain openings. In 2021, ProPublica reported that uncovered storm drains were responsible for at least three dozen deaths over six years.
*Farmers Fight a Hazardous Carbon-Capture Pipeline in Rural Midwest
Opposition has delayed the project, but recent approval by Iowa officials has breathed new life into the undertaking.
Maine Army Reservist Mass Shooter Was Homicidal, Shouldn’t Have Reported for Duty: Military Report
INVESTIGATION
Josephine Walker
Breaking News Intern
Published Jul. 23, 2024 11:58AM EDT
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
An investigation into army reservist Robert Card’s shooting rampage that killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, in October 2023 found that poor communication between the military chain of command and Card’s medical providers delayed the sharing of details about the extent of his mental health challenges. After being hospitalized at a psychiatric facility, Card’s discharge summary was not uploaded to the military’s system for more than two weeks after he left their care, and the summary’s findings would have prohibited Card from being ordered to attend an annual military training, CNN reported. According to Card’s discharge summary, he had “homicidal ideations,” and text messages sent a month before the mass shooting revealed that a friend warned military authorities that Card might “snap and do a mass shooting.” Card’s discharge summary also reported that he “had homicidal ideations … appeared resistant to psychoeducation, and he blamed others for his behavior.” Due to Card’s status as an army reservist, who is only on duty 40 days a year, army leaders reportedly had “limited jurisdiction” over his whereabouts. However, three people in Card’s chain of command have been disciplined for failing to conduct a Line of Duty investigation, which would have “properly” documented his medical challenges and hospitalization.
Scientists No Longer in the Dark Over Origins of Oxygen
ORIGINS OF LIFE
David Gardner
Published Jul. 23, 2024 11:34AM EDT
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
Anyone taking notice in their science lessons would know that sunlight was needed for green plants and some organisms to create oxygen through photosynthesis. It may have been in a multiple choice question or require a longer answer, but it was a black mark if you missed the sunlight bit. Now it seems we may have been in the dark all along. Scientists have reportedly discovered that oxygen is produced by “potato-shaped metallic nodules” in pitch blackness over 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface. In the findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists said they found many of these nodules carried an electric charge that split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen through “seawater electrolysis” in a seabed between Mexico and Hawaii. Team leader Professor Andrew Sweetman explained: “We now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light. I think we therefore need to revisit questions like: where could aerobic life have begun?”
the key to republican support
*What's Inside*
SHATTERING DECEPTIVE MIRRORS: YOUNGER GENERATIONS HAVE THE CHANCE TO BUCK THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY SCAM(REALITY)
BOTTLED WATER CONTAINS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PLASTIC BITS: STUDY
REALITY
THE GREAT MEDICARE ADVANTAGE MARKETING SCAM
CORPORATE CRIMINALS
2023 SAW RECORD KILLINGS BY US POLICE. WHO IS MOST IMPACTED?
GESTAPO USA
AMERICA HAS NEVER BEEN UNITED. SO HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER?
COMMENTARY
MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PLANS: THE HIDDEN DANGERS AND THREATS TO PATIENT CARE
REALITY
A NEW STUDY DESCRIBES IN GROTESQUE DETAIL THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE ULTRARICH HAVE PERVERTED THE CHARITABLE GIVING INDUSTRY.
REALITY
HOW TRUMP AND BUSH TAX CUTS FOR BILLIONAIRES BROKE AMERICA
REALITY
FROM 1947 TO 2023: RETRACING THE COMPLEX, TRAGIC ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
REALITY
RED STATE CONSERVATIVES ARE DYING THANKS TO THE PEOPLE THEY VOTE FOR
REALITY
HOW TEXAS BECAME THE NEW "HOMEBASE" FOR WHITE NATIONALIST AND NEO-NAZI GROUPS
AMERICA
HOW THE GOP SUCKERED AMERICA ON TAX CUTS
REALITY
ADVOCATES SUE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FOR FAILING TO BAN IMPORTS OF COCOA HARVESTED BY CHILDREN(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
RACISM AT HEART OF US FAILURE TO TACKLE DEADLY HEATWAVES, EXPERT WARNS
WHITE SUPREMACY
'MISLEADING': ALARM RAISED ABOUT MEDICARE ADVANTAGE 'SCAM'
REALITY
SLAVERY ISN’T JUST BLACK HISTORY — IT’S US HISTORY
RACE MATTERS
enduring commentary
How stupidity is an existential threat to America
Bobby Azarian, Raw Story
May 31, 2024 7:00AM ET
It may sound like an insensitive statement, but the cold hard truth is that there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and their stupidity presents a constant danger to others. Some of these people are in positions of power, and some of them have been elected to run our country. A far greater number of them do not have positions of power, but they still have the power to vote, and the power to spread their ideas. We may have heard of “collective intelligence,” but there is also “collective stupidity,” and it is a force with equal influence on the world. It would not be a stretch to say that at this point in time, stupidity presents an existential threat to America because, in some circles, it is being celebrated.
Although the term "stupidity" may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but rather a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.
To demonstrate that stupidity does not mean having a low IQ, consider the case of Richard Branson, the billionaire CEO of Virgin Airlines, who is one of the world’s most successful businessmen. Branson has said that he was seen as the dumbest person in school, and has admitted to having dyslexia, a learning disability that affects one’s ability to read and correctly interpret written language. But it wasn’t just reading comprehension that was the problem — “Math just didn’t make sense to me,” Branson has said. “I would certainly have failed an IQ test.”
So, what is responsible for his enormous success, both financially and in terms of being a prolific innovator? Branson attributes his success to surrounding himself with highly knowledgeable and extremely competent people. Branson’s smarts come from his ability to recognize his own limitations, and to know when to defer to others on topics or tasks where he lacks sufficient knowledge or skill.
This means you don’t have to be traditionally intelligent or particularly knowledgeable to be successful in life, make good decisions, have good judgment, and be a positive influence on the world. Stupidity is a consequence of a failure to be awareof one’s own limitations, and this type of cognitive failure has a scientific name: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area. They may also simultaneously misjudge the intelligence, expertise, or competence of others. In other words, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. The effect has been widely written about, and investigated empirically, with hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals confirming and analyzing the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the dangers it poses in certain contexts.
It is easy to think of examples in which failing to recognize one’s own ignorance can become dangerous. Take for example when people with no medical training try to provide medical advice. It doesn’t take much Internet searching to find some nutritionist from the “alternative medicine” world who is claiming that some herbal ingredient has the power to cure cancer. Some of these people are scam artists, but many of them truly believe that they have a superior understanding of health and physiology. There are many people who trust these self-proclaimed experts, and there is no doubt that some have paid with their lives for it.
What’s particularly disturbing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people are attracted to confident leaders, so politicians are incentivized to be overconfident in their beliefs and opinions, and to overstate their expertise. For example, Donald Trump — despite not having any real understanding of what causes cancer — suggested that the noise from wind turbines is causing cancer (a claim that is not supported by any empirical studies). It is well documented that on topics ranging from pandemics to climate change, Trump routinely dismissed the opinions of the professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding those phenomena, because he thought that he knew better. It’s bad enough that politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t recognize their own ignorance and fail to exercise the appropriate amount of caution when making claims that can affect public health and safety — but what is really disturbing is that they are being celebrated for their overconfidence (i.e., stupidity).
Although the term "stupidity" may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but rather a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.
To demonstrate that stupidity does not mean having a low IQ, consider the case of Richard Branson, the billionaire CEO of Virgin Airlines, who is one of the world’s most successful businessmen. Branson has said that he was seen as the dumbest person in school, and has admitted to having dyslexia, a learning disability that affects one’s ability to read and correctly interpret written language. But it wasn’t just reading comprehension that was the problem — “Math just didn’t make sense to me,” Branson has said. “I would certainly have failed an IQ test.”
So, what is responsible for his enormous success, both financially and in terms of being a prolific innovator? Branson attributes his success to surrounding himself with highly knowledgeable and extremely competent people. Branson’s smarts come from his ability to recognize his own limitations, and to know when to defer to others on topics or tasks where he lacks sufficient knowledge or skill.
This means you don’t have to be traditionally intelligent or particularly knowledgeable to be successful in life, make good decisions, have good judgment, and be a positive influence on the world. Stupidity is a consequence of a failure to be awareof one’s own limitations, and this type of cognitive failure has a scientific name: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area. They may also simultaneously misjudge the intelligence, expertise, or competence of others. In other words, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. The effect has been widely written about, and investigated empirically, with hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals confirming and analyzing the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the dangers it poses in certain contexts.
It is easy to think of examples in which failing to recognize one’s own ignorance can become dangerous. Take for example when people with no medical training try to provide medical advice. It doesn’t take much Internet searching to find some nutritionist from the “alternative medicine” world who is claiming that some herbal ingredient has the power to cure cancer. Some of these people are scam artists, but many of them truly believe that they have a superior understanding of health and physiology. There are many people who trust these self-proclaimed experts, and there is no doubt that some have paid with their lives for it.
What’s particularly disturbing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people are attracted to confident leaders, so politicians are incentivized to be overconfident in their beliefs and opinions, and to overstate their expertise. For example, Donald Trump — despite not having any real understanding of what causes cancer — suggested that the noise from wind turbines is causing cancer (a claim that is not supported by any empirical studies). It is well documented that on topics ranging from pandemics to climate change, Trump routinely dismissed the opinions of the professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding those phenomena, because he thought that he knew better. It’s bad enough that politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t recognize their own ignorance and fail to exercise the appropriate amount of caution when making claims that can affect public health and safety — but what is really disturbing is that they are being celebrated for their overconfidence (i.e., stupidity).