Today's news starts with a good observation in a Washington Post editorial from former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders:
Washington Post:
Today, about 1,000 Carrier workers and their families should be rejoicing. But the rest of our nation’s workers should be very nervous.
President-elect Donald Trump will reportedly announce a deal with United Technologies, the corporation that owns Carrier, that keeps less than 1,000 of the 2,100 jobs in America that were previously scheduled to be transferred to Mexico. Let’s be clear: It is not good enough to save some of these jobs. Trump made a promise that he would save all of these jobs, and we cannot rest until an ironclad contract is signed to ensure that all of these workers are able to continue working in Indiana without having their pay or benefits slashed.
Sanders dances around the real issue causing this problem of companies offshoring their manufacturing: Human labor costs too much in America, thanks to minimum wage laws and other regulatory requirements. In an age of increasingly roboticized manufacturing, it just doesn't make financial sense to employ human labor, except in third world countries where it is dirt cheap.
However, Sanders does make one good point:
In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?
In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.
Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives. Even corporations that weren’t thinking of offshoring jobs will most probably be reevaluating their stance this morning. And who would pay for the high cost for tax cuts that go to the richest businessmen in America? The working class of America.
On the bright side, most America workers don't work in manufacturing, so there aren't many more jobs to offshore. Basically, Trump is trying to close the barn door after most of the horses already escaped.
Now let's look at a bad observation:
Politico:
Donald Trump wasn’t the only person to see opportunity in the 2008 housing collapse. As the economy recovered from the rubble of failed banks, foreclosed homes and government bailouts, Steven Mnuchin emerged a winner.
That success is coming back to haunt the hedge fund manager and Hollywood producer who is Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary. OneWest, a bank Mnuchin and his partners established during the collapse, has taken steady fire from regulators and consumer advocates for myriad failures ever since.
In Florida, the company foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo singled out the lender for squeezing Superstorm Sandy victims. Last month, the company’s successor, CIT Bank, was accused of discriminating against minority borrowers.
Because Mnuchin personally made the decision to foreclose on a 27-cent error. Really?
As for the
discrimination charge, can it be tied directly to actions specifically caused by Mnuchin? This is much harder to claim.
What exactly is "squeezing Superstorm Sandy victims"? Expecting payment on their mortgage? News flash: This is how banks stay in business. They lend money, and then they expect to be paid back. Read Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". It is a very old business model.
Anyway...
“We’re just coming out of a foreclosure crisis and a serious economic downturn. It’s not the time to appoint someone who sided with corporate America over real people,” said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “Mr. Mnuchin comes from Wall Street and has served monied interests over homeowners.”
Yes, because the federal government didn't serve "monied interests over homeowners" with the various bailouts after the foreclosure crisis and economic downturn. Have you looked at the "too big to fail" banks lately? They are even bigger now!
Fortunately, after that really misleading lede, the story actually shows a little fairness later:
Mnuchin became a target of consumer activists in 2009, after he and his partners bought the remains of failed mortgage lender IndyMac. The company had specialized in high-risk loans, including so-called liar loans to borrowers with no money or income, and had become a symbol of the Wall Street recklessness that had sent the country into recession and millions of homeowners into default.
When the FDIC shut IndyMac down, Mnuchin and his partners swept in to buy what was left, bad loans and all. As was typical at the time, the FDIC agreed to help OneWest cover the cost of the bad assets it inherited, including losses on foreclosed single-family loans.
And the foreclosures came, 36,000 of them by one estimate. So far, losses under the deal have mounted to $4.6 billion. The FDIC has paid the bank $1.2 billion, according to agency data.
That payout has been a lightning rod for OneWest critics, even though the bank and its successors absorbed $3.4 billion in losses that the FDIC didn’t cover.
Do you realize what happened there? OneWest took a monster huge risk. Fortunately for them:
Despite those losses, Mnuchin came out ahead. Last year, OneWest closed on a $3.4 billion, hard-won deal to merge with CIT Bank, overcoming challenges from fair-housing advocates, civil rights groups and homeowners. Mnuchin took a reported $10.9 million payout and remains on CIT’s board.
Mnuchin sounds like a pretty sharp guy. He took a huge risk, and got a huge payoff for it. That is the American way.
This is basically a hit piece without any connecting dots, other than he was an executive at a bank that lost a lot of money until it was sold to another bank, and he made a lot of money from the deal.
But if that isn't stupid enough for you, check this out:
CNN:
The 2016 presidential race was rife with disinformation, none more blatant than fake news -- hoaxes, half-truths, outright lies -- that flashed through the internet at warp speed.
Take, for example, "Pizzagate," a made-up story of a pedophilia ring supposedly being run out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor by none other than Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta.
Fueled by conspiracy theorists posting on social media sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, the story picked up so much traction that The New York Times and the Washington Post were forced to track it down, finally debunking it.
Then there were the stories about Clinton's health. Not just her actual September bout with pneumonia, but other stories claiming she had a brain injury and was losing her mind.
Western media, for the most part, are blaming Moscow, accusing the Kremlin of exploiting fake news to damage Clinton, help elect Donald Trump, and undermine the American electorate's faith in their government.
The Kremlin has consistently denied it tried to interfere in the election.
Because there were no rumors on the internet before 2016. It must be a Russian conspiracy!
This stupidity gets worse:
Two new studies that were cited by media outlets, including the Washington Post, claim Russia used "thousands of botnets, teams of paid human 'trolls,' and networks of websites and social-media accounts" to "echo and amplify" false or misleading tweets, Facebook posts, videos and media reports.
The first study -- "Trolling for Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy" -- appeared in early November in War on the Rocks, an online magazine.
"Russia's propaganda mechanisms primarily aim for "alt-right and more traditional right-wing and fascist parties," Clint Watts, one of the co-authors of the paper, tells CNN, but they're also "hitting across any group in the United States that is anti-government, or fomenting dissent or conspiracies against the US government and its institutions."
So they are hitting the places where conspiracy theories and anti-government ideals are already prevalent? Exactly how does that get to the mainstream if previous attempts by these groups failed?
Watts says that, during the election campaign, three main groups traded in fake news: passionate Trump supporters; people out to make money by driving followers to their websites with "click bait" stories; and the Russian propaganda apparatus.
Each group used social platforms differently and the research team used various social media metrics to distinguish the behavior among them. Content from "click bait profiteers," for example, is absorbed in a different way to propaganda content.
"If you're just trying to sell something it's more like an Amazon advertisement," Watts explains. "The Russian propaganda system would have what you would call 'horizontal conversations' -- a discussion for influence purposes."
...But importantly, Watts says, Russia's goal wasn't just to elect Trump. "The goal is to erode trust in mainstream media, public figures, government institutions -- everything that holds the unity of the Republic together."
Because being lied to by politicians and the media for decades, and then watching as the government bails out Wall Street during the economic collapse while leaving the average American to fend for themselves, has garnered nothing but unlimited "trust in mainstream media, public figures, government institutions".
If Russia is behind some kind of conspiracy, they don't really have to try very hard. Our elites have already done an excellent job of disillusioning Americans.
So it is only appropriate this story about Russia deserves the bear:
