Distractions, Distractions Wow! We have a great controversy! A squib of a memo by the House Intel Comm has completely devoured the media. A constitutional crisis! Egad! In two weeks, or maybe two months, it will be nothing. But for now, well, very very very serious. At a minimum it has distracted everybody from Trump’s gloriously successful State of the Union speech, which was so well received until this distraction that he thinks will bring about...
Read More »Focus Economics top 101 economics blogs
Angry Bear maintains its status as one of FocusEconomics Top Economics and Finance Blogs of 2018. Econospeak is on the list as well, whose authors contribute to Angry Bear. Angry Bear The Angry Bear blog is a multi-author blog that covers news, politics and economics. The contributors to the blog are some of the best in the business such as emeritus professors, tax law experts, historians, business consultants, economics PhDs, finance professionals and...
Read More »The Dispensibility of Steven Miller
I have tried to resist Fisking this op-ed by Ross Douthat, but I can’t resist. Whole post after the jump to avoid lowering AngryBear relevance index. “The Necessity of Stephen Miller” (title chosen by an editor not Douthat) He writes negotiations “have mostly taken place between people who are fundamentally in agreement on immigration,” who favor both amnesty for illegal immigrants and reforms that would probably increase immigration rates. The problem...
Read More »The GOP’s Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded
Mother Jones tells the story here in graphic detail. The GOP’s Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded How a washed-up lobbyist built a charter school empire and siphoned millions from public schools. “Now, with ECOT imploding, some state politicians have floated the idea that Lager, who has made millions in profits off the school and come a long way from the Waffle House, should be personally held responsible for paying back some of the $80...
Read More »Filiblustering?
Lifted from comments on the post Our thoughts and opinions are with you, reader Mark Jamison writes: Comment: The filibuster is fundamentally undemocratic in a body that is already constructed undemocratically. The filibuster is an accident of history that has weaponized in the last twenty years. Yes, in particular circumstances it seems like a firewall but ultimately it does far more damage than good. What would the ACA have looked like if the Democrats...
Read More »Court Orders Nonprofit Law Firm to Pay $52,000 to Oil and Gas Company for Defending Local Fracking Waste Ban
Via rjs newletter via Naked Capitalism: “Among its claims: The injection well ban violates the corporation’s rights as a “person” under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments; the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and the Contract Clause and Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.” Court Orders Nonprofit Law Firm to Pay $52,000 to Oil and Gas Company for Defending Local Fracking Waste Ban –In early January, a federal judge ordered...
Read More »Fair use…linking as copyright infringement
Via David Dayen comes Playboy sues Boing-Boing: You can read our motion here, and EFF’s press release here. We’ll have more to say after the judge issues his ruling. Here’s the introduction from our motion to dismiss: This lawsuit is frankly mystifying. Playboy’s theory of liability seems to be that it is illegal to link to material posted by others on the web — an act performed daily by hundreds of millions of users of Facebook and Twitter, and by...
Read More »Rene Boucher Plea Bargains
In case you forgot, a neighbor of Senator Rand Paul was charged with assaulting him. And the reason? Rene Boucher was angry by seeing the 55-year-old senator stack brush near Boucher’s property. An attorney for Boucher did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Boucher faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted, but in the plea agreement federal prosecutors said they would seek a sentence of 21 months in prison. Appears to be excessive....
Read More »The Fat Controller of the Lightning Network
The geeks to whom my post on probability was addressed responded exactly as I expected. "You don't understand the tech", they said. And they went on about network routing protocols and Dijkstra's algorithm. Someone even sent me a spec for an onion routing protocol for the Lightning network. I read it and sighed. They had completely missed the point. To be sure, I had made an incorrect assumption about Lightning. I assumed that Lightning devs respected property rights. It turns out that...
Read More »What If?
Using crime and public safety as a political issue in an election year, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez: “’I don’t believe that police officers should be under this constant threat of lawsuits that will often cause them to pause, if they’re following their training, there should be something that protects them.’ The bill would protect cops and citizens from the ‘massive payouts that taxpayers are giving crooks and thieves who are hurt or injured by...
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