Like a lot of older Gen-X I remember the good times without having every participated in them. By the time I was an adult stagflation, the Federal Reserve, Reagan and Thatcher had done their work and the decline had begun. Everything kept getting shittier for most people in the western world and it has kept doing so for about 40 years now. Depending on what group you’re in, it might be fifty.
This has given rise to a whole body of how to get rich works. They rival those of the gilded age: Napoleon Hill’s “How To Think and Get Rich” is a good example. (The best of them is still “How To Make Friends and Influence People,” its advice will work as long as humans are human.)
The catchphrase these days is “abundance thinking”. There’s a ton of good stuff in the world, and you just have to figure out how to get some. The world isn’t full of scarcity, it’s full of too much.
This is, of course, true. There are money spigots, like various central banks, early entry to crypto, being attached to important resource economies like oil (though that’s ending) and so on. There are people who have way more money than they need, for whom money is a trivial concern, a way of keeping score, and those who just have too little.
You want to move to a position of abundance. You want to find a spigot. On the right this selling is courses on how to get fit or slim or rich or whatever. Sometimes the courses are bogus, sometimes they’re pretty good stuff, but they price them high and find desperate people to buy them.
So it is, so it always has been. Sell the dream to desperate people and you’ll get rich. Attach to a money spigot and you’ll be fine. It’s why the fights are so savage these days. Corbyn in Britain threatened the money-spigot attachment of Labour elites and they hate him for it and will do anything they can to destroy him. Nothing was too low to do to stop Sanders, because he would have brought in his own administrative class into the Democratic party. Democrats used many of the same vote suppression tactics against Greens and Sanders as they squealed about Republicans using against them.
It’s all about position. This is why the standard advice in prosperity circles is to ditch your loser friends and hang out with successful people. They’re attached to some spigot, or have found some vein of insecurity to mine and they can cut you in or show you how to get in.
(It’s my annual fundraiser (and going slower than normal this year.) If you value my writing and can afford to, please consider donating.)
But this is the larger issue: it’s all about position.
It’s a giant game of musical chairs. Some people are in abundance economies, other people are in scarcity economies (these have little to do with national economies, though it’s easier to get into an abundance economy in some places, obviously.)
But there are only so many money spigots and only so many people who can mine veins of insecurity. There aren’t enough good seats.
So the abundance stuff focuses on how you can become one of the winners, one of the people in an abundance economy. If you do it ethically, you help others get inside. If you do it unethically, you’re just a parasite and you reduce the number of prosperity chairs. (Jamie Dimon, for example.)
The issue with all this, even when done ethically, is that even the “good” guys are rarely increasing the number of seats in the abundance economy. They’re just redistributing who gets them.
In econo or math-speak that’s a zero sum game. But because most of the people attached to money spigots like the Federal Reserve are actually reducing the number of good seats, it’s actually a negative sum game. Every dollar someone like Dimon earns hurts other people.
Abundance thinking could be a good thing: there’s no reason the world can’t be abundant. I am perfectly aware of limits to growth, but every human could have a good life if we wanted them to. But right now it’s all about winners and losers. It’s about each of us, perhaps on team with the other “winners.”
You can win such games, of course, but they produce a world that is hell, and worse a world that keeps heading towards worse hells. This is how downward spirals happen: when we’re concerned only with a few people’s well-being, rather than the well-being of all.
Eventually the hell becomes so bad that practically everyone is in hell, with perhaps a few lords of hell still enjoying life (almost every post-apocalyptic story still has some people doing fine.)
This is the treadmill we’re on, as we seek to save ourselves from the horrible fates we see around us.
So we resort to “I see what it takes to be successful and I’m going to do it and I have those characteristics or can get them. I’m not a loser. I’m a winner!”
The worse things get, the more we focus on what it takes for individuals to grab onto a money spigot.
We grab a prosperity chair (or we don’t, I haven’t!) And that’s great, but the number of chairs relative to the number of people keeps going down, the carbon goes up, and every day more species go extinct.
And hell looms.
A solution that just works for a few is a solution: but it’s only a partial solution unless you don’t care about others, about the future, or about non-human life.
Not everyone, as we’ve designed the modern world, can live in an abundance economy.
Perhaps we should try for a world where people don’t have to do everything just right, or be born to wealth, to live well?
bruce wilder
The predatory nature of the administrative classes is sufficiently disguised that the members of that class whose prosperity is guaranteed by educational and professional credentials feel justified in that their prosperity has been earned by the disciplined life they have led to earn those credentials and to demonstrate sufficient conformity to norms for a place in the bureaucracy of modern life. One of the two American political parties is made up of such people and their counterparts in the other Party will inevitably turn to authoritarian demagogy. Isn’t that the political path to hell?
“Abundance” for all or even the many of a non-predatory majority in some localities will require radical constraints on energy use. So much economic activity is organized in an open-ended way, with waste spilling out in a flood -tide that social relations are not ultimately what matters. Work still must be organized to be efficient — the imperative to do so only increases as the problems of waste and its consequences loom larger than any shortage of attention, effort or material resources. We have to pursue a good life for all, but find a way to do so that entails less effort, in order to produce less waste.
Plague Species
On CNN this morning, I watch it sometimes as a media critic and not to be informed or I should say misinformed, they had a young professor from NYU, all smiles as though he is a Stepford Professor, schooling folks on how to be a successful entrepreneur amidst a raging pandemic. One example he gave was, if you are a craft person, you can teach online craft workshops mentoring people in the craft that is your passion. Online’s the answer for everything, isn’t it? Hell, it will cure COVFEFE-45 better than any new-fangled vaccine that must be stored at -99,999 degrees C, in fact.
The last thing the world needs is yet another entrepreneur, all things considered. Entrepreneurship is just another word for Non-Essentialism. It amounts to nothing more than glorified superfluity/ubiquity. To a wasteful surplus of product and service for which there is not adequate demand despite the pathetic tactics used to try to create that demand.
In watching A Perfect Crime, they interviewed a former member of the original RAF who was recruited by the Stasi to defect and come live in the GDR before it collapsed entirely. She witnessed the collapse from a GDR perspective firsthand and its Unification aftermath. She described how disgusting and preposterous it was. There was 50-60% unemployment due to the privatization theft and yet in grocery stores, they were selling 50 different varieties of yogurt. She underscored the insanity of that. Whereas a few varieties of yogurt is all that is needed, the insulting insane irony was that no one could afford all these varieties of yogurt because they had no income. Superfluity where there is no adequate demand to rationalize the superfluity. That’s the modern economy and it’s 180 degrees from efficient.
Hugh
We’re 50 feet past the cliff edge over a 1000 foot chasm. There are those who will cheat and scheme to their last breath to get more before they hit the rocks below, but the rich mostly get rich in our country by being born rich. For the rest, it is really just chance, being in the right place at the right time and having no morals, then claiming their own merit, brilliance, and hard work did it if they get lucky.
Our society sustains us all, but the welfare of all of us would get in the way and place limits on how much the rich can have so it just isn’t talked about it or vilified if it is.
S Brennan
Ian…Sander’s and AOC are both pols who, in your words; “Sell the dream to desperate people”.
AOC has been working hand in hand with Pelosi since her election*, she is to be the next next judas goat to take the place of Sanders leading “desperate people” to the NeoDemocrat’s dismemberment plant.
People who are the type you seek exist but, they must be sought out, they don’t self-advertise being FDR-redux as Sanders and Cruz do. For months before he quit the primary race Sanders was working with the DNC/Obama to ensure that he delivered his voter to the NeoDemocrat Party; Sanders did. And if the polls are to be believed, in the innermost cities, voter turnout for Biden, in some areas, hitting unheard of before, in American history, of 90% plus turnouts.
Indeed, if the 2020 polls are to be believed, it appears Obama was riding Biden’s popularity in 2008 and 2012.
NeoD’s were right to fully ignore Sanders voters as they have, by far and away turned into Biden’s strongest supporters. The key to victory in the future will be to dismiss the left of the party entirely, the worse they are treated, the more pliant Sander/AOC type voters become. After this election it will be decades before the “left” of the party will have a say in anything more than window dressing item…which I am sure they will cling to with the tenacity of Scarlett’s dress made from the parlor’s drapes. Too bad, had the Sanders/AOC D’s not shot their wad with Biden in 2020..2024 could-of/could-of been a major realignment year. Now it will be decades before Sander/AOC type voters will have another chance and ha..ha, I am sure the DNC will find another judas goat for them to follow…and so it goes. Pity those innocents who must be slaughtered to keep this farce running.
*Upheaval: AOC’s chief of staff and top spokesman quit
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/turmoil-aocs-chief-of-staff-and-communications-director-quit
Hugh
So if everything falls apart, it’s not the fault of the rich or malevolent idiots like Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans. In fact, they don’t get a mention. It’s Bernie and AOC at fault. In other words, shoot the people who at least are talking seriously about the problem. The rightwing, fascist perspective is that if problems are just denied or any discussion of them suppressed, they will simply go away, disappear. Inequality? What are you some kind of Communist? Climate change? What climate change?
bruce wilder
Rolling coal in a jacked-up Dodge Ram and peak smugness in a Prius are opposite ends of a political spectrum, but neither deserves any credit for “talking seriously” about climate change. They are locked into a caricature of political struggle and persuasion, each furnishing the other a figure of ridicule.
bruce wilder
I saw this on tiktok and liked it.
If you received $5000/day and saved it, in a bit less than 7 months, you would qualify as a millionaire.
To become a billionaire, you would have to receive $5000/day for . . . almost
(wait for it)
550 years.
There is rich and ridiculously rich.
S Brennan
As per usual with Hugh, he wants to put words into peoples mouth and then argue against the resulting strawman. Wouldn’t it be great if we all could be as rhetorically clever as Hugh?
I think people can read my argument, which is entirely internal to the DNC/NeoDemocrat party and it’s widespread institutional failure to represent working peoples interests for last forty years without having me interject Hugh’s preferred subject
Quoting myself:
“NeoD’s were right to fully ignore Sanders voters as they have, by far and away turned into Biden’s strongest supporters. The key to NeoDemocrat victory in the future will be to dismiss the left of the party entirely, based on this election poll numbers, the worse they are treated, the more pliant Sander/AOC type voters become. After this election it will be decades before the “left” of the party will have a say in anything more than a window dressing…which I am sure they will cling to with the tenacity that Scarlett’s clung to her dress…made from the parlor’s drapes. Too bad, had the Sanders/AOC D’s not shot their wad with Biden in 2020..2024 could-of/could-of been a major realignment year. Now it will be decades before Sander/AOC type voters will have another chance and ha..ha, I am sure the DNC will find another judas goat for them to follow…and so it goes. Pity those innocents who must be slaughtered to keep this farce running.”
Now why didn’t I bring “Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans” into the argument as Hugh stridently insists I must?
Well Hugh, maybe because “Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans” have nothing to do with what I am talking about? I’m talking about the internal politics of the NeoDemocratic party and in particular with the DNC’s extremely successful policy of ignoring Sanders/AOC types. None of which has anything to do with “Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans” no matter how much Hugh screams and stamps his feet.
Willy
So why do you never mention cult conservatism or their Dear Leaders?
Hugh
“a caricature of political struggle and persuasion, each furnishing the other a figure of ridicule”
More false equivalence from bruce. The Green New Deal moves us toward an industrial policy to confront climate change. Trump and the Republicans remain locked in denialism. So really pretty much NOT the same thing, except for bruce.
And SB’s “ ‘Trump, McConnell, and the Republicans’ have nothing to do with what I am talking about?”
Well, it’s not like Trump and McConnell were the ones in power the last four years. Oh, wait, yes, they were. And you’re a Trumper so if AOC and Sander hadn’t backed Biden that would have helped your crying sore loser, can’t man up baby Führer Trump. Color me surprised.
Hvd
So S Brennan you keep telling us why Sanders, AOC etc are all false prophets and how a vote for Trump will teach the perfidious Dems a lesson so that a true left wing with true left wing leaders will emerge. Well who on the current scene would come close to or fully embody your ideal Leader? Why? How could we recognize such a person?
nihil obstet
In the early 1900s, rich men were frightened of the arrival of plenty in capitalist societies. So they used the early psychological insights to create desire for ever more stuff. Then at the end of World War II, they were aware that the war had ended the Great Depression, so they launched the permanent war economy.
This was part of the tragedy of rejecting Henry Wallace. He preached the 20th c. as “the century of the common man”, which would bring prosperity everywhere. FDR was on the same page, rejecting the maintenance of the European empires in the rest of the world; Churchill tracked Roosevelt’s health, pulling for his death prior to the end of the war. Wallace had gotten support for the U.S. during the war from South America and China. He had been effective and was highly regarded both places.
And now our betters have turned not only the war machine into a money spigot, but virtually everything from food (agribusiness subsidies) to upscale leisure (cruise ship bailouts).
different clue
@bruce wilder,
How would we sum that up into a bumper sticker slogan?
How about . . . . America Needs a Cheaper Dream
Anyone who thinks that’s useful can go right ahead and use it.
different clue
@bruce wilder,
There is this difference between the Prius Driver and the Coaly Roller. The Prius Driver is making a visible gesture in support of eco-sustainable survival for everyone. The Coaly Roller is making a visible gesture in support of runaway heat death for everyone.
The Prius Driver may or may not be amenable to serious thinking about techno-social redesign and purpose-reorientation for achieving eco-sustainable survival.
The Coaly Roller is not amenable to any such discussion.
S Brennan
Hvd, I think you are not genuine in your question, given it’s use of jaded sarcasm but, other people might listen to the Hugh’s use of outright lies that is common currency in this comment section during a political year, so I will answer.
In the Primary, in spite Hugh/Willy’s banal intonations to the contrary, I fully, vocally, financially supported Tulsi Gabbard who, as the DNCers here claim, with out the slightest trace of evidence, to be a Russian agent. Yep, as I say, it’s commonplace here for many who virtue signal as “liberal” – “lefty” – “progressive”…to deceive. I assume these frauds are modeling themselves after the upper class in the hopes of getting picked up like EZ-Rah Klein did by convincing the gullible “left” that the Iraq Invasion was a good idea…as was Libya, Syria, Ukraine and…whatever Biden will come up with.
For those who follow the MSM/DNC declarations and clueless about the world, Gabbard was a boilerplate FDRist with a strong opposition to the endless neocolonial wars of Clinton-Hillary, Cheney-Bush and Obama-Biden. I didn’t agree with several of Gabbard’s positions but, she was genuine, unlike Sanders.
While Sanders stood obediently silent, Tulsi knocked-out the “leading candidate” Kamala Harris in a quick flurry of talking points outlining Harris fraudulent rewrite of her history as Prosecuter, AG and Senator. FYI, Tulsi supported Sanders in 2016, paid a heavy price and then was spit upon by Sanders and his supporters. Coordinating with the DNC Sanders waited to throw his hat in the ring after Gabbard had committed and then Sanders quietly supported her debasement by the DNC until others, particularly Yang, made Sanders obsequiousness to the DNC politically untenable.
And for those who are genuine here, hopefully, you will recall I predicted Sanders behavior in 2020, down to the last detail, from the onset of his February candidacy announcement. Sanders has never shown courage…and never will…he knows his limitations, he’s much better off taking the dive on cue rather than putting up a real fight and risk getting hurt. Look for much of the same from Cruz.
Astrid
Before JMG’s blog turned fully into an echo chamber of Trump dead enders and false equivalencies, he had a rather insightful explanation for Hugh and idpol/interventionist left.
http://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/american-narratives-rescue-game.html?m=1
Why ask people you’re purportedly speaking out for, when they might turn down the humanitarian invasion by the great Democratic savior against their local despot ( who, upon closer inspection, doesn’t seem notably more despotic than the USian regime and certainly better than US allied creatures like Guaido and Bolsanero and MBS)? Much better to yell dictator and despot into the fray and claim the moral high ground!
Now, I think being performatively “green” and performatively antigreen are both variants protective mental spells, to help their practitioners ignore, for a little longer, a head on collision with the consequences of climate change, resource depletion, and a toxic radioactive sludge global governing elite. Not so different from Pro-Trump and TDS both stemming from the wish to deny that we live in a hell world where Trump is no better or worse than all the other elite acceptable alternatives. Anyone who might be capable of real good will be 6 foot under, very quickly
mago
Que feo la escena en general y que “fey” aquí en las comentas. Como siempre. Mierda en todas partes.
different clue
@mago,
Dear Mr. Mago,
Thank you for your interest in our comments. We are always happy to hear from you. Please let us know if you have any further concerns.
bruce wilder
@ different clue
Yes, both Rolling Coal and driving a Prius are meaningful gestures. Rolling Coal is a gesture with the middle finger, while the Prius Driver is showing liberal politesse. Astrid has it right, I think: it is denial either way, in a functional or substantive sense. It is not like a Prius actually economizes on anything or is to any degree “sustainable”. If anything a Prius expresses the (false) ideas that nothing has to change and shiny tech will save us (from having to make any effort or sacrifice).
bruce wilder
@ nihil obstet
I always snicker when the story of the 1944 Democratic Convention is told, and in hushed tones, the serious concerns about FDR’s health show up as the sense that the leading delegates and power brokers would have to get serious about the V-P choice, and then they turned to Harry S Truman. Truman!!! As if.
Hugh
BTW It’s being reported that Biden will name Neera Tanden to run the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). That’s just wrong on so many levels but fits right in with the musical chairs economic philosophy theme.
Ten Bears
LOL ~ I saw that, gabby, slick trick but not slick enough.
Hardly original.
Stirling S Newberry
Many a genius died poor. There are more things than life than money – but it is hard to think of them when you are short of cash.
nihil obstet
@bruce wilder
The equivalent of today’s DNC put Truman on the 1944 ticket as VP. Truman was the “Senator from Pendergast”, a man whom moneyed interests had good reason to believe they could control. He had a national reputation because of his work against war profiteering. He had appeared on the cover of Time magazine. He had the virtues and vices of a relatively small, ignorant man. He was honest, but his ignorance led him to enter enthusiastically into the cold war and the permanent war state. He was the man the conservative capitalist establishment believed they could sell, and it turned out they were right.
S Brennan
I have often criticized Trump’s appointments since the D’s managed to blind him by filing false charges against a man who knew where the bodies were buried.
But clearly Biden seeks to out-due Trump in appointing vile 3rd rate people. For all the criticism of Trump it will be fun to watch NeoDemocrat fall all over-themselves defending the indefensible…while the “vote blue no matter who” crowd goes back to their cocoons for the next four years.
—————————————————-
Glenn Greenwald – greenwald.substack.com
“The announcement that Joe Biden intends to nominate Neera Tanden as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget — a critical position overseeing U.S. economic and regulatory policy — triggered a wide range of mockery, indignation and disgust from both the left and the right. That should not be surprising: though a thoroughly mediocre and ordinary D.C. swamp creature from the perspective of both ideology and competence, Tanden’s uniquely unhinged, venomous, corrupt and pathologically dishonest conduct as a Clinton Family and DNC apparatchik and President of the corporatist-and-despot-funded Center for American Progress (CAP) has earned her a list of enemies far longer and more impressive than her accomplishments.
When news of her appointment broke, many of the journalists and activists she has spent years abusing, slandering, and lying about instantly stepped forward to compile just some of her worst political and behavioral lowlights. And some preliminary signs emerged that she might encounter difficulty in obtaining the Senate confirmation needed for her to assume this position. The Communications Director for GOP Senator John Cornyn of Texas announced that “Tanden stands zero chance of being confirmed” by the Senate.
Former Sanders campaign aide David Sirota hypothesized that “it is not a coincidence that they are putting Neera Tanden — the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States of America — specifically at OMB while Sanders is Senate Budget Committee ranking/chair.” Sirota’s statement suggests Biden’s nomination of Tanden was intended as yet more humiliation doled out to the Democratic-loyal Sanders left by cucking the Vermont Senator even further by forcing him to shepherd the confirmation of one of his most vicious and amoral attackers (who Sanders himself in 2019 vehemently denounced). But Sirota’s point also raises the prospect that Tanden’s nomination could even encounter trouble from that side of the aisle as well (given Sanders’ compliant and disciplined conduct over the last six months, it’s more likely we will see him roll out a literal red carpet for Tanden to walk on, gently toss red roses on it before she passes, and then serve her a glass of Chardonnay rather than meaningfully obstruct her confirmation).
The list of sociopathic and even monstrous acts from Tanden is too long to list comprehensively. She punched one of her own employees, a reporter for CAP’s now-abolished blog ThinkProgress, after he had the temerity to ask Hillary Clinton in 2008 about her support for the Iraq War (Tanden claimed she “merely” had “pushed,” not punched, her undeferential reporter). In 2011, as the Obama administration was participating in the NATO bombing of Libya, Tanden suggested in internal CAP discussions that the U.S. steal Libya’s oil as a way of reducing the U.S. deficit (a story I was able to report only because Tanden had abused and alienated so many of her employees that they worked together to leak her incriminating emails to me).
During her tenure as CAP’s President, Tanden accepted millions of dollars from the regime of the United Arab Emirates, which built Dubai and Abu Dhabi using slave labor, along with massive donations from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, the Walton Family and Michael Bloomberg, while hiding the identity of some of her think tank’s largest donors. A huge chapter on the NYPD’s abusive policies toward Muslims under Mayor Michael Bloomberg was removed from a CAP report after Boomberg donated more than $1 million to Tanden’s organization, and he continued to donate even more after that courteous gesture.
She ordered the supposedly independent journalists of the ThinkProgress blog, including Muslim writers, to stop writing critically about Israel after key CAP donors, including Barney Frank’s sister Ann Lewis and long-time Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson, complained. She and Wolfson plotted in 2016 how to weaponize female journalists and people of color against Hillary’s critics as well to use their identity to stigmatize and thus stop undesirable coverage from The New York Times. In 2018, she outed a CAP employee at a staff-wide meeting who had filed an anonymous complaint of sexual harassment and retaliation against one of Tanden’s male allies. Secure with her UAE-and-corporate-funded large salary, she has long urged cuts to Social Security. The list goes on and on.”
S Brennan
Meanwhile Atlanta Election Official have already “wiped clean for prints” the Dominion voting machines used to count the 90-97% turnout for Biden in certain districts; districts that have for the last two decades managed a 37% or less turnout and then, it was a split vote ~ 67% vs 18%, not 100% for Biden. This while Trump, according to exit polls, outperformed all previous Republican candidates in minority votes dating back to IKE.
Anyhow, nothing to see there…’cause Trump is worse than Hitler, that’s why you effing deplorable! Don’t ask questions, we need to unify this country under one party.
But a Judge did stop the remaining outlying areas voting machines from being “wiped clean for prints” so, the horse may have already left the barn but there might still be a few ponies left:
————————————-
Resetting Election Machines
By Ivan Pentchoukov and Petr Svab
November 29, 2020 Updated: November 30, 2020
Print
UPDATE: In a third order issued late Sunday night, a federal judge overseeing Sidney Powell’s Georgia lawsuit granted a temporary restraining order on elections officials in Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee counties, to prohibit them from allowing “alteration, destruction, or erasure of any software or data on any Dominion voting machines” used in the 2020 elections. The judge’s decision allowed Powell to amend a previous complaint to include the counties in possession of the voting machines.
—
A federal judge presiding over a major election lawsuit in Georgia on Nov. 29 issued and then reversed an order directing the state to cease and desist wiping or resetting election machines.
“Defendants are ordered to maintain the status quo & are temporarily enjoined from wiping or resetting any voting machines in the State of Georgia until further order of the court,” U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten Sr. wrote in an emergency order issued Nov. 29.
The judge reversed the order not long after, explaining that the defendants aren’t in possession of the machines.
“Plaintiffs’ request fails because the voting equipment that they seek to impound is in the possession of county election officials. Any injunction the Court issues would extend only to Defendants and those within their control, and Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that county election officials are within Defendants’ control. Defendants cannot serve as a proxy for local election officials against whom the relief should be sought,” the judge wrote.
The change of course by the judge drew a flabbergasted response from Lin Wood, an attorney associated with the Trump campaign.
“What??? Judge reversed order based on Defendants’ claim that GA Counties control voting machines,” Wood wrote on Twitter, adding that the machines are owned by the state and that the Georgia secretary of state administers elections.
“Why are GA officials determined to wipe these machines clean [by] resetting them?”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit on Nov. 29 filed an emergency motion that included an affidavit featuring a Nov. 25 message from an election official stating that the ballot-counting machines would be reset to zero on Nov. 30 before performing a recount.
“The process will begin with an L & A – resetting the machine to ‘zero’ to begin the recount,” the text of the message stated before describing the specifics of the recount process.
The affidavit was written by a Republican poll worker who says he or she addressed concerns about wiping the machines to the election manager.
“Because the plan on Monday is to wipe the voting machines clean, and start from 0 so that we can recount using those machines, I’m concerned by what I am reading online,” the poll worker wrote, according to the affidavit.
“I am seeing lots of notices from lawyers about possibly impounding the machines. Lawyers are now saying that the machines should be confiscated immediately before this happens to protect forensic data. They are saying those machines need to be impounded ASAP. Yikes. Maybe I’m being overly paranoid but let’s be sure this is what we’re supposed to be doing.”
The supervisor responded: “It’s what we are supposed to do. It will take a court order to stop this process—so I guess we need to keep watching the news. If we get a court order to stop, we will see it in our SOS information. The issue is, the Atlanta area has already started.”
When the poll worker asked if the reset will wipe the forensic info from the machines, the manager said that “Atlanta already did it.”
The lawsuit in question is being litigated by Sidney Powell, an attorney who defended former national security adviser Michael Flynn. President Donald Trump pardoned Flynn, a retired three-star Army general, on Nov. 25. The Trump campaign has said that Powell isn’t part of its legal team.
Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer wrote after the judge issued the order that election officials in Fulton County were updating the software on voting systems earlier the same day.
“Our Republican recount monitors at the World Congress Center waited today for four hours while Fulton County elections officials ‘updated the software.’ The explanation given to me—‘just the usual Fulton County incompetence’—is completely unacceptable,” Shafer wrote on Twitter.
“It is outrageous that we cannot rely on Fulton County elections officials to do their jobs without unexplained four-hour delays, interventions by private attorneys, and federal court orders.”
john halasz
B. W. :
My recollection is that Truman was chosen as the compromise VP pick, because the bosses wanted to block off Henry Wallace, (given FDR\’s poor health).
different clue
Neera Tanden is the perfect Pink KKK Democrat. I wonder who suggested her name to the half-senile Biden?
In the spirit of Kremlinological Inquiry and Byzantinology-in-general, I could wonder about the motives and reasons and multi-dimensional-chess plotting behind the Tanden nomination. Was it extorted by the Pink KKK empress-in-chief herself? Was it a cynically sacrificial offering to the Republican Senators ( they need to be seen denying at least one of Biden’s picks, give them Tanden as the one to deny), or some other Deeply D C reason?
( By the way, even though no one has asked me what Pink KKK Democrat stands for, I will explain it anyway. Pink KKK Democrat stands for Pink Kitty Kap Klintonite Democrat. The KKK stands for Kitty Kap Klintonite, get it?)
different clue
In his novel God Bless You Mister Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut wrote some passages about the ” money river” very similar to what Ian Welsh has written about “money spigots” here. I tried finding on-line copies of Vonnegut’s novel that I could copy-paste the relevant parts here from, but I could find none that would upload before timeout.
I did find a site with some quotes from the novel. I will copypaste the nearest-to-relevant quotes that I find.
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”
“A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.”
And here is a paragraph from the Money River passage itself . . .
“And just what do you think that would do to incentive?” “You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?” “The what?” “The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it—and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts’ content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.” “Slurping lessons?” “From lawyers! From tax consultants! From customers’ men! We’re born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes’ screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.” “I wasn’t aware that I slurped.” Eliot was fleetingly heartless, for he was thinking angrily in the abstract. “Born slurpers never are. And they can’t imagine what the poor people are talking about when they say they hear somebody slurping. They don’t even know what it means when somebody mentions the Money River. When one of us claims that there is no such thing as the Money River I think to myself, ‘My gosh, but that’s a dishonest and tasteless thing to say.”
different clue
I just left a comment about Kurt Vonnegut’s very similar concept of the Money River. I included some other quotes. The comment “disappeared”, perhaps into moderation from whence it will emerge in due time.
Or perhaps it disappeared into the digital ether , never to be seen again. So just in case that happened, I will submit this shorter comment with only the best “money quote” ( ha ha) from Vonnegut’s novel.
“And just what do you think that would do to incentive?” “You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?” “The what?” “The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it—and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts’ content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.” “Slurping lessons?” “From lawyers! From tax consultants! From customers’ men! We’re born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes’ screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.” “I wasn’t aware that I slurped.” Eliot was fleetingly heartless, for he was thinking angrily in the abstract. “Born slurpers never are. And they can’t imagine what the poor people are talking about when they say they hear somebody slurping. They don’t even know what it means when somebody mentions the Money River. When one of us claims that there is no such thing as the Money River I think to myself, ‘My gosh, but that’s a dishonest and tasteless thing to say.”
different clue
About the Prius Driver and whether he/she “makes a difference” or not, one Prius Driver won’t make a difference in a world of One Billion Car Drivers. But if all One Billion Car Drivers were driving One Billion Priusii, would the one billion tiny differences add up to a measurable difference? As compared to one billion strictly ICengine-only cars?
To answer that, one would have to know the total carbon emission load needed to MAKE each normal car and the total carbon emission load needed to MAKE each Prius. And one would have to know the length of the emitting usage-lifetime of each normal car and the length of emitting usage-lifetime of each Prius. And knowing all that information would allow us to “work out” whether switching from One Billion normal cars to One Billion Priusii would make an emissions difference or not.
Now, that would not be a DEEEEEEEP change , either way. A DEEEEEEP change would be that One Billion Drivers no longer Driving. At all. Maybe a bunch of Prius Drivers would be ready to think about how to make that change upon discovering that merely driving Priusii was not sky-draining the carbon effectively enough. I can guarantee that a bunch of Coaly Rollers will never entertain any such a discussion.
There is a third kind of denialism. That is “perfection or nothing” denialism. That is the fatalistic resignation denialism which says that a bunch of Priusii changes nothing, only radical reconfiguration of everything will change anything, and since nobody will tolerate the radical reconfiguration of everything, nothing will be done and therefor nothing should be tried or even bothered with. And therefor there is nothing for it but to lie back and think of England.