#Generator Buyback and Replacement​

[kirangenforce]

Mahindra Powerol Diesel Gensets Hyderabad

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[defensive-tactics]

Gun Buybacks Exposed

Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners (MCRGO) Article

Self-defense organizations like MCRGO have historically been critical of gun buybacks. There's little evidence to support gun buybacks have any measurable effect on homicides, suicides, or nonfatal shootings and assaults in either the short-term or the long-term. Gun buybacks usually only collect a few hundred guns at a time. These firearms are often of low quality, poorly maintained, or even inoperable. Sellers are typically older individuals, often widows, who frequently live outside the community holding the buyback. In short, these aren't the firearms used in criminal activity.

However, gun buybacks are popular with gun control-friendly politicians. Gun buybacks are fast and easy to implement. Photos of firearms purchased at buybacks generate news stories that make it appear local officials are doing something to combat crime. Gun buybacks can serve as justification for state and federal grants to municipalities. They are used as a political organizing tool. Proponents argue that gun buybacks take guns off the street, recover illegally possessed firearms, and reduce the overall number of guns in circulation. But do they?

An exposé by the New York Times published on Sunday, December 10, 2023 shows that gun buybacks are "fueling a secondary arms market." Flint, Michigan is used as an example in the article with Mayor Sheldon Neely stating, “Gun violence continues to cause enormous grief and trauma,” Neeley adds, “I will not allow our city government to profit from our community’s pain by reselling weapons that can be turned against Flint residents.”

But the article goes on to point out that, "Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon."

Throughout the article, officials and gun safety advocates express shock and surprise at what the New York Times uncovered. The Rev. Chris Yaw, whose Episcopal church outside Detroit has sponsored buybacks with local officials, said in an interview that he was “aghast and appalled” when told by a reporter how the process works. Gun control groups, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center, claim they had not realized that “destroyed” firearms were being sold in this way. In the article, Flint states, “The city was unaware that weapons were not being incinerated.”

However, a follow-up article fact-checking the New York Times piece, interviewed GunBusters, one of the companies involved in recycling guns purchased at buybacks. GunBusters president Scott Reed says, "We disagree with a number of points in the [New York Times] story, with our main disagreement being that law enforcement agencies are unaware of what is happening with the firearms. The implication that agencies are being deceived about how the firearms are destroyed and how GunBusters is funded is patently false.”

The statement from Reed went on to say that when the company has an initial meeting with police departments, the police are offered a choice for any guns turned over to be completely pulverized, for a fee, or for only the frames to be destroyed, for free, with the remainder of the weapon “salvaged.” Not surprisingly, many police departments choose the free option knowing full well firearms components are resold.

Gun buybacks are a failed public policy tool. They take attention and resources away from other measures, such as increased community policing and community mental health, which are more effective at reducing suicides and violent crime. But unlike gun buybacks, those measures are administratively and politically more difficult to implement, especially in cities like Flint, Detroit, and Grand Rapids dominated by elected officials sympathetic to calls to "defund the police."

[neoatlantiscodex]

Solar

Let's take a best-case scenario for solar power, near the equator. This maximizes the amount of power we can get from solar, but we still have one crucial problem. Inconsistent producion. It peaks at noon, and drops to 0 at sundown. The actual production graphs is probably a bell curve for the day time. So, with this, we need a method of storing the power. We do not have a good solution, at all. We don't have enough Lithium and Cobalt, in the world, (by current estimates), to replace our cars, nevermind everything else. Doing this for a large grid is suicidal. BUT, doing for a small grid makes sense. Solar power has the crucial advantage of being grid-independent. This means that a small grid, say an individual house, or a small community, could easily produce it's own power. This also has the advantage of creating a stable power supply in regions that have intermittent service. Say, if you are living in California. Or in an out-of-the-way reservation.

People assume that solar power is more sustainable, because it doesn't use fuel. This is a pretty reasonable assumption to make. The problem is that it has not proven to be true. Even in places like California, household solar power and storage systems are only competition with grid power rates with government subsidies and mandatory grid buybacks. Most of the houses have it's own solar and power storage. It's also equiped with a smart switch to decide when it's connected to a grid. So, the battery charges over the day until it's full, which is usually around or just after midday, and then the smart switch hooks it up to to the outside grid, and they get buyback. So, California only just get solar power throughout the day, but only through part of the day, completely variable based upon independent household usage. Just try to imagine balancing this over the day without any reasonable storage. As it is, California has not managed to get it to work. If they can't, then who can?

If we move away from the equator, we have another problem, Winter. Winter daytime production can be a fraction of what summer daytime can produce. Not even just because of reduced hours, but reduced sunlight during those hours.

Another, less well known problem with solar, is slower generation. It takes a lot more material and power making solar pannels than they produce, at least compared with every other form of power generation. Except maybe wind. This means that while we could scale up our solar production to meet our needs, we cannot do it on a reasonble time scale. It's impossible to replace our power generation with solar without going through something else.

There is another serious, crippling issue with solar power. Not so much with the solar power itself, (other than being vulnerable to environmental damage), we are clearing space for it. This is mind bogglingly stupid. We could instead be putting them on flat roofs, if you leave a space this could even shade the roof, dramatically reducing the heat exposure of the building while increasing the efficiency of solar pannels. We could also put them on the side of those incredibly ugly modernist skyscrapers. A huge amount of the glass on skycrapers isn't even useful. It's just there to make it look ugly and uniform. We can even put them over farm fields. This is called agrivoltaics. It turns out that most plants evolved to grow in partial shade. Too much sunshine, and they risk burning, and to avoid it they go through a LOT more water. By adding partial shade you dramatically reduce water usage and increase yield. Depending on the plant, of course. If we really wanted to be special, we could put agrivoltaics on the rooftop of our medium density mixed usage neighbourhoods. Green roofs dramatically improve the insulation.

Note: I'll deal with grid storage and solar thermal in a later post.

[goldentortoisedesigns]

Phase 1: Stabilize and Legitimize Power (First Week)

• Public Address Day One: Calm the markets, assure global powers, and speak directly to the American people. Emphasize transitional order, democratic principles, and a unifying vision.

• Emergency Roundtable: Bring in key non-partisan policy experts, high-level bureaucrats, and trusted military advisors. Avoid ideological cronyism—look for competence and constitutional loyalty.

• Suspend Certain Legislative Functions Temporarily, using executive emergency powers, but frame it as restoring functional governance, not consolidating dictatorship.

⸻

Phase 2: National Reset Agenda (First 100 Days)

1. Economic Reform:

• Cancel Medical Debt outright (possible via HHS mechanisms and buyback programs).

• Launch a National Infrastructure & Climate Corps—job creation, road repair, solar panels, water systems, and EV rail lines, with massive federal funding.

• Implement a Progressive Wealth Tax and close loopholes. Immediate fight, but doable with public support.

2. Criminal Justice:

• Legalize Marijuana Federally and begin mass expungements.

• Decriminalize Psychedelics starting with psilocybin for therapeutic use. Frame it as mental health reform.

• End Qualified Immunity and implement independent police oversight boards nationwide.

3. Health & Safety:

• Declare Healthcare a Human Right and begin expansion of Medicare to all under 25 and over 60 as a phase-in to universal coverage.

• Insulin and EpiPen Price Caps: Crucial for you personally, and symbolically powerful.

⸻

Phase 3: Structural Political Reform

• Kill the Filibuster: You have full power—use it to break gridlock permanently.

• Expand the House of Representatives: More proportional representation, less gerrymandering impact.

• Automatic Voter Registration + National Voting Holiday: Easy, popular, massively increases turnout.

⸻

Foreign Policy & National Security

• Draw Down Overseas Bases (gradually), reinvest in domestic resilience.

• Climate Diplomacy Blitz: Re-enter every climate treaty, and lead a new green development plan for the Global South.

• AI & Tech Governance: Build a Federal Tech Ethics Board to regulate AI, data privacy, and algorithmic bias.

⸻

Cultural & Civic Rebuild

• Massive Funding for the Arts, with a National Creatives Fund—grants for music, film, design, education.

• Civic Media Initiative: Replace crumbling local news with publicly funded, non-partisan journalism.

• Launch a National Storytelling Archive where Americans can record their lives, accessible by future generations.

By the order of

The Transitional Chancellor of the Union

[thehashemilawfirm0]

Orange County Lemon Law Lawyer: Protecting Your Rights as a Consumer

Purchasing a new or certified pre-owned vehicle is a major investment, and every car owner deserves to drive a safe and reliable vehicle. Unfortunately, not every car lives up to expectations. Whether it's persistent engine problems, faulty brakes, or an electrical system that just won’t work properly, defects can quickly turn your dream car into a nightmare. That’s where an experienced Orange County Lemon Law lawyer can help.

Tages:- orange county lemon law lawyer, orange county lemon law lawyer

What is the Lemon Law?

California’s Lemon Law, officially known as the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, provides strong protection for consumers who purchase or lease vehicles that turn out to be defective. Under the law, if your vehicle cannot be repaired after a reasonable number of attempts, you may be entitled to a refund, a replacement vehicle, or cash compensation. The law applies to new vehicles, some used vehicles still under warranty, and even leased vehicles.

To qualify, the defect must substantially impair the use, value, or safety of the vehicle. Importantly, the manufacturer must be given a reasonable number of chances to fix the issue before legal action is taken.

Why You Need a Lemon Law Lawyer in Orange County

Navigating California’s Lemon Law on your own can be overwhelming. Vehicle manufacturers often have legal teams ready to dispute claims, delay the process, or offer lowball settlements. An Orange County Lemon Law lawyer has the knowledge and experience to take on the auto companies and fight for the compensation you deserve.

Here’s how a lawyer can help:

Evaluate your case to determine if your car qualifies under California’s Lemon Law.

Gather and organize documentation, such as repair orders and warranty records.

Negotiate directly with the manufacturer to seek a fair settlement or buyback.

File a lawsuit if necessary, and represent you in court at no upfront cost.

Most lemon law lawyers in Orange County work on a contingency basis, meaning you pay nothing out of pocket. If they win your case, the manufacturer pays your attorney’s fees.

Signs You Might Have a Lemon

Not sure if your car qualifies? Common defects that might indicate a lemon include:

Repeated engine or transmission problems

Electrical system malfunctions

Faulty airbags or safety features

Steering or brake failure

HVAC and sensor issues

If you’ve taken your vehicle in for the same issue multiple times, or it's been in the shop for an extended period (usually 30+ days cumulatively), it’s time to speak with a lemon law lawyer.

Local Knowledge Matters

Choosing an Orange County-based lemon law attorney means working with someone who understands the local courts, dealerships, and manufacturer representatives in the area. Whether you’re in Irvine, Anaheim, Santa Ana, or Newport Beach, a local lawyer offers personalized service and faster response times.

Don’t Wait — Time Limits Apply

California has a statute of limitations on Lemon Law claims — generally four years from the date you first experienced the problem or should have reasonably known your car might be a lemon. Acting quickly ensures you don’t miss the window to file your claim.

Final Thoughts

If you're stuck with a car that just won't work right, you don’t have to deal with it alone. An experienced Orange County Lemon Law lawyer can take the stress off your shoulders and help you pursue the compensation you deserve. With no upfront costs and strong legal protections on your side, there's no reason to keep driving a lemon.

[kirtishiva]

How Battery Health Affects Laptop Buyback Prices?

When selling a used laptop, several factors influence its buyback value, and one of the most crucial among them is battery health. The battery plays a vital role in a laptop’s functionality, portability, and overall user experience. As such, a deteriorating battery can significantly impact the resale price. Let’s dive into how battery health affects laptop buyback prices and what you can do to maximize your return.

Understanding Battery Health

Laptop batteries degrade over time due to charge cycles, heat, and general wear and tear. Most modern laptops use lithium-ion batteries, which have a limited lifespan measured in charge cycles—typically between 300 to 1,000 cycles before performance starts declining. Battery health is usually expressed as a percentage of the original capacity; a battery at 80% health means it holds 80% of the charge it did when new.

Why Battery Health Matters in Buyback Pricing?

Reduced Usability – A laptop with poor battery health may not hold a charge for long, requiring frequent charging. This reduces its appeal to buyers and consequently lowers its resale value.

Replacement Costs – If a battery’s health is too low, buyers or refurbishers will need to replace it, which incurs additional costs. Many buyback companies factor in this expense when offering a price.

Performance Issues – Some laptops throttle performance when the battery health is poor, leading to a subpar user experience. Lower performance can lead to reduced demand and lower buyback offers.

Manufacturer Restrictions – Some laptops, such as MacBooks, require official Apple battery replacements, which can be expensive. Buyers may offer less for laptops with batteries in need of replacement.

How to Check Your Laptop’s Battery Health?

Windows Users: Use Command Prompt (powercfg /batteryreport) to generate a detailed battery report.

Mac Users: Go to “About This Mac” > “System Report” > “Power” to view cycle count and battery condition.

Third-Party Software: Tools like HWMonitor or CoconutBattery (Mac) provide insights into battery health.

Maximizing Your Laptop’s Buyback Value

Maintain Battery Health: Avoid overcharging, overheating, and deep discharges to extend battery lifespan.

Replace the Battery (If Needed): If your battery is below 50% health and easily replaceable, consider replacing it before selling.

Provide Accurate Battery Information: Be transparent about battery condition when listing your laptop for sale. Buyers appreciate honesty and may be willing to negotiate a fair price.

Sell Before Significant Degradation: If you plan to upgrade, sell your laptop before battery health drops too low to maximize value.

Final Thoughts

Battery health is a key determinant in a laptop’s buyback price. A well-maintained battery can fetch a higher resale price, while a worn-out battery can significantly devalue your device. Regularly checking and maintaining battery health ensures that when it’s time to sell, you get the best possible return.

If you're considering selling your laptop, check the battery health first and take necessary steps to keep it in optimal condition. Doing so will help you secure a better buyback price and a smoother selling experience.

[ceo-education]

Government Policies and Investment Management Best Practices

Author: By Med Jones, Oct 25, 2023

If you are a market strategist, economist, money manager, journalist, or an investor/trader who is losing money and/or confused by "irrational" asset price movements, I’d be happy to reveal the root cause of your confusion & losses.

The culprit is the actions of the three major market actors; the government, the Fed (& central banks), large market participants, and the leading financial media. They currently have different priorities and are directly and indirectly intervening in the economy, financial markets functioning, and manipulating asset prices (mostly unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally).

For example, the current Government (like prior governments) wants to prevent a recession to avoid losing the 2024 elections. On the other hand, the Fed’s current priority is fighting inflation, and is willing to cause a recession and risk a rise in unemployment to achieve price stability. Both actors may not fully admit the price of their ultimate goals, at least not publicly.

The combined actions of the three largest actors are distorting economic forecasting models, impeding asset price discovery, and trapping both traders in the short term and investors in the long term.

What is the evidence to the preceding "market manipulation" claim?

1. Massive Government Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA) & deficit spending is offsetting Fed Fund Rate (FFR) hikes & Quantitative Tightening (QT)

2. Student debt (delay then forgiveness) to win votes & prevent consumer spending decline and recession before the congressional and presidential elections

3. Promoting employee retention credit (ERC) claims in 2023, even when COVID lockdowns were over in 2022 and unemployment was at ~ 3.6% historic lows.

4. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) release to keep oil & gas prices down before the elections, at the risk of having to refill it at much higher prices.

5. Replacing Fed's inflation hawks (voting members) with doves to influence the inflation fight, even if the risk of further re-inflation is real. Possibly even, influencing some in their academic network to write papers &/or to promote the idea of changing the Fed inflation target from 2% to 3% even when it could de-anchor expectations and cause a re-inflation spiral.

6. Fed's Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) to bail regional banks = "Not QE" QE and guarantee of SVIB deposits > $250K i.e. beyond FDIC's legal limit, thus changing the rules for some depositors, but not others before them. One would ask why some well-connected and privileged depositors get their money bank at SVIB, but not others. = Seeds of future socioeconomic moral hazards and legal conflicts. This is similar to bailing Wall Street during the 2008 GFC instead of the homeowners.

7. Treasury depletion in H1/2023 and refilling the Treasury General Account (TGA) with more expensive short-duration bills to prevent raising long-duration bond yields = shadow Yield Curve Control (YCC) aiming at stimulating growth to offset Fed policy in fighting inflation, and ease further banking stress, and slow & delay the bond bubble correction to fair value after more than 10 years of artificially low interest rates = kicking the can down the road.

8. Announcing treasuries buyback plan to promote market "resilience". One would ask: Why would they need to do so if you claim to have the "deepest & most liquid free market" in the world? This raises a serious question about the confidence in the long-term health of our financial markets with continuous bailouts and support.

9. Secret and public political pressure and negotiations with oil-producing countries to bring the price of oil down, until at least after the elections of 2024 in return for security guarantees and other political concessions

10. Coordinating with other central banks to manage the timing and degree of rate hikes and liquidity injection, even when they do not admit it in public.

10. Negotiating temporary unrestricted (not debt limit) deficit government spending that resulted in the ensuing historic house speaker removal and political dysfunction at DC.

The work of the government policies and their connected large hedge funds and asset managers and financial media can easily manipulate the sentiment and price action of asset prices until they cannot. What is the limit one might ask? Math! There is only so much any government can do to manipulate investors’ sentiment until they hit the wall of math. For example, how long can a government keep pumping asset prices bailing out banks, individuals, and businesses, and overhiring government workers to prevent the natural market cycle? The answer is when government debt services exceed income and government bond investors start to question GDP growth or the sustainability of the deficit spending. At a certain point, the government has no choice but to print money i.e. devalue their currency and cause inflation or cut spending and raise taxes to cause recession. The calibration of such actions to achieve the immaculate soft-landing is near a miracle, unless of course you can manipulate the macro data and keep revising prior year data until you lose investor’s confidence.

What is the final result of all these interventions (manipulations)?

With non-stop manipulation, even the largest and best fundamental, macro, and technical traders and investors get surprised and misjudge the timing and the degree of asset price corrections and recovery. No wonder most decision models suffer from distortions, markets suffer from volatility & investors suffer behavioral errors (FOMO & TATI), doubt, confusion, and painful losses, be it oil futures, gov treasuries, stocks, corporate bonds, gold, or bitcoin.

The worst case scenario is the investors get conditioned to buying the dip over a decade or so until the central banks or policy-makers make a serious error like the subprime policy, banking and derivatives trading deregulation pre-2008 great financial crisis or the 40-year inflation of 2021 the resulting losses is worse housing and stock market bear market since the great depression of 1929 and worst bond bear market in history in 2022 and beyond

To be clear, this is not a US-only market problem, three clear examples of overt government interventions (manipulations), include China's direct intervention by ordering banks and funds to support the Chinese equity markets, the Japanese government buying ETFs, and the Turkish government forcing its central bank to ease money policy despite the out-of-control inflation.

Also, to be fair, such tactics are not exclusive to one political party, they all do it to varying degrees at different election cycles. The problem is each action/intervention has a cost that compounds until the math or the physics of the cycle's limit is painfully broken.

Conclusion:

We do not have true free, fair, and efficient markets. We have inefficient markets with constant interventions and government elites trying to pick winners and losers (via bailouts, tax credits, regulations, spending budgets, etc.). No wonder, a few well-connected investors (policy insiders and their network) on Wall Street make money, while the overwhelming majority of traders and investors lose their life savings.

This generation of investors and savers who worked hard all their lives are watching their spending power dissipate with the highest Inflation rate in more than 40 years, including historic bond losses (TLT down more than 50% for the first time in its history), stocks/crypto bubble formation and burst in 2021-2022, highest inflation in 40 years, regional bank failures (most risk delayed for now but continues, especially in the commercial real estate sectors CRE), dangerous sovereign debt levels, and the resulting loss of debt management credibility in US government. Evidence? Recent rating downgrade by Fitch and rising LT bond yields which likely to continue to rise until the US suffers from a recession or succeeds in cutting deficit spending by more than half which is not easy (painful for many). As for the new generation of workers, they are priced out of homeownership, feel trapped, and cannot catch up.

Is there a hope for the new investor?

The only hope is that this generation of investors have much more access to information and tools. So, their learning curve could become much shorter than prior generations. However, governments are hard to change, special political and economic interest groups are strong, political structural changes are even harder, and democracies are complex and messy, so we do not count on quick and positive developments. It is ultimately your responsibility to protect your hard-earned retirement money over the next few decades, by becoming a more informed investor.

What practical steps that new investors can take?

You learn math, chemistry, physics, and other skills in school in order to make money, but they do not teach you how to invest your saved money to build and preserve your wealth. Don't be a victim of the adage of "Wealth made on Main Street is lost on Wall Street." - It is your money, if you do not protect your money, no one will.

The first step is to learn investment risk management and ask your advisor how they will manage risk first (before they chase returns), learn how to choose quality credit and equity investments before you reach out for yields and returns. Develop an investment methodology, do not speculate. Do not be afraid to ask your advisor tough questions about their performance in bear and bull market cycles. If they do not have a track record, find better advisors.

References & Sources:

·         The Investment Think Tank Research at  Investment Management Best Practices webpage

·         Top Investment Education: The  Investment Management Workshop and Strategic Investment Management Master Class for CIOs

[theblogs2024]

Four Techniques For Employing The appropriate Lemon Legislation Attorney

If you end up during the regrettable scenario that the new or utilized car or truck is a lemon, you’re over probable leaping to conclusions about how the procedure will conclusion. Nonetheless, the first thing in your to-do listing should be getting a fantastic lemon regulation attorney to characterize your circumstance.

You may be pondering: “My car or truck is Evidently defective; this claim should be a slam dunk. Do I really need a lawyer that will help me?”

The truth in the subject is definitely the car market is backed with several of the most large-powered lawful protection groups within the nation – specifically in California. It’s not unusual that a dealership or company will unnecessarily hold off the lemon approach for shoppers. In the end, this might be your 1st working experience by using a lemon. Specialised attorneys cope with these instances daily. The great ones know just what it will take to have speedy buybacks and replacements.

It’s crucial to Be aware that you choose to shouldn’t just pull a name from a hat that may help you have the justice you deserve. The selection you make in this article will roughly establish the end result on the proceedings. There are lots of crucial techniques you have to consider when you are generating your assortment. Let’s mention 4 of the key ones.

1. Do Your Homework

Likely into any problem wholly clueless isn't great. Regardless that you might be probably not a professional in lemon regulation, you ought to definitely go through up approximately you may on what the whole process of filing and resolving a declare involves. For starters, you need to know precisely what qualifies your vehicle being a lemon. Consider, the lemon regulation differs marginally from state-to-state. In California, your car or truck may possibly qualify being a lemon if:

The defect must be coated beneath the company or dealership guarantee, and it impedes the protection and/or performance of your vehicle. The manufacturer has designed two or even more makes an attempt to fix a warranty-lined defect. The car has long been from provider for 30 or maybe more days to maintenance the guarantee coated defect. Defect(s) aren't a result of abuse by The customer. It is crucial to note It isn't essential for the defect to occur throughout the first 18 months of proudly owning the motor vehicle, or 18,000 miles on the odometer, but if it does, it may enhance your assert considerably.

Furthermore, you need to know which motor vehicles are included beneath the point out’s lemon regulation, and how the procedure functions with utilized automobiles.

This analysis need to be accomplished previous to reaching out on the attorney. You should have just as much awareness on the subject as you can before the consultation.

two. Keep on to ALL Information

Probably the most important issue to learn about the lemon regulation is when you prevail, the manufacturer is accountable for ALL expenditures. These involve:

Every month payments plus the deposit produced for your motor vehicle. Payment in the bank loan balance. Take note: the maker might not be accountable for late fees over the bank loan incurred by the consumer. All lawyer and lawful charges. Collateral costs: which include gross sales tax, finance expenses, registration, services contracts, and many others. Incidental expenses related to the lemon: which include things like expenses for towing, rental motor vehicle, and so on. This is why, it’s critical that you simply hold onto ALL receipts and documents linked to the lemon auto. Moreover, you'll want to continue to keep a record of each visit to the restore shop. This contains what they did, the day you bought the vehicle in, the odometer readings, how often times you needed to provide the car in, The prices, and so forth. Having a paper trail of everything involving your lemon car is essential in receiving the most through the manufacturer.

three. Hunt for the Crimson Flags

To reiterate, deciding on a fantastic lemon regulation lawyer to manage your case is An important piece of the puzzle. However, not all attorneys are equal. In regards to lemon instances, you'll want to be really selective in the selection. When you are purchasing all over, there are red flags That ought to mail you packing.

one. They're not specialized in lemon law – Although some legal professionals (who will be experts in other parts of the legislation) will definitely let you know they're able to manage your lemon claim; this is never a good idea. It’s most likely they are just searching for a brief situation. Like a standard rule of thumb, In case the company will not promote their knowledge in lemon law, avoid them.

two. They request a bunch of out-of-pocket fees – A superb lemon attorney entirely understands that a lemon is the results of the carelessness from the manufacturer, of which is accountable for all legal costs should you earn the situation. Consequently, a trustworthy lawyer will never cost you any sort of retainer or contingent charges out of your lemon buyback for their services.

three. They choose your circumstance and not using a session – Top quality lawyers will never accept a scenario without any history knowledge, as they will not choose to danger shedding. That being stated, the lemon lawyer you arrive at out to need to offer you a consultation to take the preliminary methods to evaluation and file your lemon regulation claim.

4. They pass your situation to paralegals – Many the countrywide lemon regulation corporations make money on the sheer number of clientele they get. In these circumstances, almost all of the consumer interaction is done as a result of assistants. Extra importantly, these sorts of corporations normally do not seek to pressure the company to pay for. As an alternative, they will attempt to receive you to have a income settlement from your maker (you don't want this). When you have a lemon, you require an attorney who presents a superior degree of individualized services and is devoted to getting the most effective result.

When you detect any of such purple flags, will not squander anymore of your time and efforts and preserve looking.

four. Fully grasp the Lawyer’s Values

Dealing with any sort of lawful approach is rarely simple. When you're selecting a attorney to stand for you, you will need to be sure their Main values perform inside your favor. As an example, Should you be looking for a legal protection law firm, the attorney should have a real enthusiasm for pinpointing negligence in regulation enforcement.

With regards to lemon attorneys, they must have powerful values centered all-around customer justice and also have a enthusiasm for standing around the large vehicle producing giants. Within the Golden Condition, where by there are a lot more automobiles about the highway than wherever else in the country, your California lemon law firm should value fast buybacks and rapidly processing of lemon claims.

Great lemon lawyers empathize with how irritating a faulty vehicle would be to a purchaser. Moreover, they understand that acquiring a assert resolved ASAP is critical for keeping the crowded streets Secure.

Summary

When you've got a lemon vehicle, the process of having your declare solved doesn't have to become an extended, distressing journey. With the proper lawyer, you can get the case wrapped up promptly and competently!

Check more info. here: lemon law attorneys near me

[kirangenforce]

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[misfitwashere]

What happened to SWA?

via FB. (Same thing that happened at Boeing, General Motors, etc. Operations staff replaced with accountants.)

Larry Lonero

ntpdooeSrsa8huYlac21t7t34r08a:4e61u58ytsd4M2c7m2eu uA11 103   ·

What happened to Southwest Airlines?

I’ve been a pilot for Southwest Airlines for over 35 years. I’ve given my heart and soul to Southwest Airlines during those years. And quite honestly Southwest Airlines has given its heart and soul to me and my family.

Many of you have asked what caused this epic meltdown. Unfortunately, the frontline employees have been watching this meltdown coming like a slow motion train wreck for sometime. And we’ve been begging our leadership to make much needed changes in order to avoid it. What happened yesterday started two decades ago.

Herb Kelleher was the brilliant CEO of SWA until 2004. He was a very operationally oriented leader. Herb spent lots of time on the front line. He always had his pulse on the day to day operation and the people who ran it. That philosophy flowed down through the ranks of leadership to the front line managers. We were a tight operation from top to bottom. We had tools, leadership and employee buy in. Everything that was needed to run a first class operation. When Herb retired in 2004 Gary Kelly became the new CEO.

Gary was an accountant by education and his style leading Southwest Airlines became more focused on finances and less on operations. He did not spend much time on the front lines. He didn’t engage front line employees much. When the CEO doesn’t get out in the trenches the neither do the lower levels of leadership.

Gary named another accountant to be Chief Operating Officer (the person responsible for day to day operations). The new COO had little or no operational background. This trickled down through the lower levels of leadership, as well.

They all disengaged the operation, disengaged the employees and focused more on Return on Investment, stock buybacks and Wall Street. This approach worked for Gary’s first 8 years because we were still riding the strong wave that Herb had built.

But as time went on the operation began to deteriorate. There was little investment in upgrading technology (after all, how do you measure the return on investing in infrastructure?) or the tools we needed to operate efficiently and consistently. As the frontline employees began to see the deterioration in our operation we began to warn our leadership. We educated them, we informed them and we made suggestions to them. But to no avail. The focus was on finances not operations. As we saw more and more deterioration in our operation our asks turned to pleas. Our pleas turned to dire warnings. But they went unheeded. After all, the stock price was up so what could be wrong?

We were a motivated, willing and proud employee group wanting to serve our customers and uphold the tradition of our beloved airline, the airline we built and the airline that the traveling public grew to cheer for and luv. But we were watching in frustration and disbelief as our once amazing airline was becoming a house of cards.

A half dozen small scale meltdowns occurred during the mid to late 2010’s. With each mini meltdown Leadership continued to ignore the pleas and warnings of the employees in the trenches. We were still operating with 1990’s technology. We didn’t have the tools we needed on the line to operate the sophisticated and large airline we had become. We could see that the wheels were about ready to fall off the bus. But no one in leadership would heed our pleas.

When COVID happened SWA scaled back considerably (as did all of the airlines) for about two years. This helped conceal the serious problems in technology, infrastructure and staffing that were occurring and being ignored. But as we ramped back up the lack of attention to the operation was waiting to show its ugly head.

Gary Kelly retired as CEO in early 2022. Bob Jordan was named CEO. He was a more operationally oriented leader. He replaced our Chief Operating Officer with a very smart man and they announced their priority would be to upgrade our airline’s technology and provide the frontline employees the operational tools we needed to care for our customers and employees. Finally, someone acknowledged the elephant in the room.

But two decades of neglect takes several years to overcome. And, unfortunately to our horror, our house of cards came tumbling down this week as a routine winter storm broke our 1990’s operating system.

The frontline employees were ready and on station. We were properly staffed. We were at the airports. Hell, we were ON the airplanes. But our antiquated software systems failed coupled with a decades old system of having to manage 20,000 frontline employees by phone calls. No automation had been developed to run this sophisticated machine.

We had a routine winter storm across the Midwest last Thursday. A larger than normal number flights were cancelled as a result. But what should have been one minor inconvenient day of travel turned into this nightmare. After all, American, United, Delta and the other airlines operated with only minor flight disruptions.

The two decades of neglect by SWA leadership caused the airline to lose track of all its crews. ALL of us. We were there. With our customers. At the jet. Ready to go. But there was no way to assign us. To confirm us. To release us to fly the flight. And we watched as our customers got stranded without their luggage missing their Christmas holiday.

I believe that our new CEO Bob Jordan inherited a MESS. This meltdown was not his failure but the failure of those before him. I believe he has the right priorities. But it will take time to right this ship. A few years at a minimum. Old leaders need to be replaced. Operationally oriented managers need to be brought in. I hope and pray Bob can execute on his promises to fix our once proud airline. Time will tell.

It’s been a punch in the gut for us frontline employees. We care for the traveling public. We have spent our entire careers serving you. Safely. Efficiently. With luv and pride. We are horrified. We are sorry. We are sorry for the chaos, inconvenience and frustration our airline caused you. We are angry. We are embarrassed. We are sad. Like you, the traveling public, we have been let down by our own leaders.

Herb once said the the biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within. Not from other airlines. What a visionary he was. I miss Herb now more than ever.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Rail monopolies destroyed the American supply chain

The rail barons were the original monopolists, whose ability to make or break whole industries based on their parochial needs spurred the first American antitrust laws. For generations, railroads were tightly regulated to ensure resiliency, competition and fairness. Today, the monopolists are back, and their greed has shattered American supply-chains.

The pandemic has seen massive failures in rail service — late deliveries, waves of derailments, huge backlogs. But rail profits have soared, as have the prices of carrying freight. No wonder: in 1980, there were 40 US “Class I” railroads. Today, there are seven.

How did this happen? Blame Carter. And Reagan. And every president since. The Carter administration lit the kindling for the bonfire of regulations and Reagan poured gas on it. In 1980, the dismantling of rail regulation picked up a good head of steam and it hasn’t slowed since.

Writing in The American Prospect, Matthew Buck provides an excellent, highly accessible overview of how railroad deregulation made a small number of people — especially the notorious hedge-fund looter Bill Ackman — spectacularly rich, and how those riches were turned into political power to further the removal of the rail industry’s brakes.

https://prospect.org/economy/how-americas-supply-chains-got-railroaded/

The rail industry wasn’t just a pioneer in 19th century corrupt monopoly, it was also the trailblazer for late 20th century tolerance for monopolies. In the 1980s and 1990s, the DoJ and FTC were still occasionally willing to get out of bed and block a merger or two, but rail was governed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), which basically slept through both decades. “By the 1990s, STB policy blessed nearly all mergers except those that left only one railroad in a market.” You will not be amazed to learn that “a 2018 study of railroad mergers from 1983 to 2008 was unable to find that mergers improved efficiency.”

All this started under Carter (never forget that Carter was a milder version of Reagan, the way GW Bush was a junior-league Trump). In 1980, Carter signed the Staggers Rail Act, which ended the regulation of railroad freight prices by the Interstate Commerce Commission. This allowed the railroads to once again pick the winners, by offering preferential freight prices to the biggest companies, thus pricing the smaller competitors out of the market (no coincidence that this period saw the rise of big-box stores like Walmart).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247576067_Two_Cheers_for_Discrimination_Deregulation_and_Efficiency_in_the_Reform_of_US_Freight_Transportation_1976-1998

The law also ended the railroads’ duty to provide service on “unprofitable” routes, effectively choking off whole regions and leaving them to wither and die. By 2008, the railroads had abandoned more than 40% of their routes.

Today, the remaining Big Railroad companies have divided up the country into noncompeting territories. Two companies — CSX and Norfolk Southern — dominate the east-of-Chicago trade. West of Chicago, there’s another duopoly run by Union Pacific and BNSF. North-south rail is controlled by three companies. Most train stations have only one railroad servicing them.

The railroads haven’t just hiked their rate-cards, they’ve also hiked their hidden fees, doubling their revenues from “demurrage and accessorial” fees — these are the rail equivalent of airline baggage upcharges.

But most of all, railroads have implemented “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR), a just-in-time system that saw mass closures of freight facilities and huge staff reductions — since deregulation the rail industry went from 500,000 jobs to 130,000 jobs. Much of these staff reductions involved closing union shops and and replacing well-paid workers with low-paid workers who have fewer on-the-job rights.

This was good business for the railroads, kicking off decades of big dividends and stock buybacks: $196b since 2010 — more than the companies have spent actually maintaining their infrastructure.

But this is bad business for the rest of us. Right from the start, PSR created shipping delays and losses. Railyard accidents shot up, and with them, worker fatalities. Derailments soared. People died.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3angy3/freight-rail-train-disaster-avoidable-boeing

The number of usable track-miles in America plummeted. Productivity — driven by layoffs and service cuts — leveled off when there weren’t any workers or routes left to cut.

That was before the pandemic. Today, the American rail system has been cut to the bone, and it represents one of the weak links in the US supply chain. The system experiences bottlenecks at every point: loading, unloading, delivery — not to mention all the cargo that disappears overboard when the trains derail while traversing under-maintained tracks.

Congress and the GAO are pushing to re-regulate the rail companies, leaning on their notionally still-extant common carrier obligations. But it seems to me that the medicine the rail companies really need is the same stuff that worked in the 19th century: breakups.

Not just for the sake of a robust supply-chain, either. America can’t transition to a zero-carbon economy with trucks. Freight-trains are far more fuel-efficient, easier to electrify, and far safer than trucks.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2009/01/01/back-on-tracks/

Railroad deregulation made the industry far more profitable than it had been since the days of the robber-barons — and it made America as a whole poorer, and more vulnerable. It is a classic capitalist success story, wherein profits are privatized and losses are socialized.

[sirrah22]

Exxon Mobil (Ticker: XOM) is expected to generate about $41 billion of net income in 2022, up from $23 billion last year.”

Similarly, Tom Perkins reports for The Guardian:

“The analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings for 100 US corporations found net profits up by a median of 49%, and in one case by as much as 111,000%. Those increases came as companies saddled customers with higher prices and all but ten executed massive stock buyback programs or bumped dividends to enrich investors. …

“The Guardian’s findings are in line with recent US commerce department data that shows corporate profits rose 35% during the last year and are at their highest level since 1950.”

The Guardian’s analysis found:

“Chevron’s 240% profit spike was part of ‘the best two quarters the company has ever seen’… Steel Dynamics profits increased 809% … Fertilizer giant Nutrien’s profits shot up by about $1.2bn … [and] Nike’s 53% profit increase driven by higher prices was only ‘partially offset’ by supply chain and inflationary cost increases.”

The article concludes that much of the explosion in corporate profits is made possible by market consolidation: giant companies no longer subject to the pressures of inflation.

I’d add that there’s a big reward down the road for all those CEOs if they can help America dump the pesky Democrats who want to tax those windfall profits and replace them with Republicans who are again demanding more tax cuts for the morbidly rich.

Last Tuesday, Nobel Prize-winning economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a particularly fascinating op-ed wondering out loud why the economic data for the United States doesn’t make sense any more. If the economy is in trouble, so should be American companies; if the economy is doing well, so should the American consumers.

But the companies are doing great while consumers are getting screwed.

“Let’s talk about the numbers, and how they don’t add up,” Krugman noted.

He then laid out the numbers, showing that while inflation is raging, wages are actually declining, among other paradoxes.

“Are you confused?” Krugman writes. “You should be. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I can’t remember any period when economic numbers were telling such different stories.”

Former Labor Secretary and economist Robert Reich writes at his brilliant Substack newsletter this week, after noting the global issues also contributing to American inflation:

“Big corporations continue to jack up prices, using inflation as a cover. Big Oil is the worst culprit. Gas prices are up about 60 percent from the year before. They contributed almost half the rise in inflation in June, although pump prices have dropped a bit since then. Big Oil is scoring record profits and using them to reward investors by buying back shares of stock. Shell is expecting profits to nearly triple, adding $1 billion to the bottom line. BP reports its largest quarterly profit in a decade.”

And nobody has ever, ever, ever accused the management of any of the big oil companies of wanting more Democrats running the show in Washington DC.

In an earlier post, Reich notes how some of America’s largest companies are enthusiastically funding some of America’s most seditious politicians.

“To state the question in historical terms,” he summarizes, “how different is their behavior from the wealthy European industrialists who quietly backed the fascists in the 1920s and 1930s? These billionaire and corporate funders are as complicit as are the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in threatening American democracy.”

Indeed. And if they can kick American consumers in the shins hard enough to get them to “vote out the bums” currently running Washington DC — the Democrats — while adding an epic pile of cash to their money bins, all the better.

Hard to believe? Immoral? Remember, these are companies that continue to fund Republicans associated with Trump’s attempt to end our democracy. And if we still had competition in the American economic landscape, even imagining a scenario like I’ve laid out would be impossible.

Time will tell if my analysis is accurate, a paranoid fantasy, or (most likely) a bit of both. But it’s certainly worth Democrats in Congress calling a hearing to check it out.

[antoine-roquentin]

The truth is that Uber and Lyft exist largely as the embodiments of Wall Street-funded bets on automation, which have failed to come to fruition. These companies are trying to survive legal challenges to their illegal hiring practices, while waiting for driverless-car technologies to improve. The advent of the autonomous car would allow Uber and Lyft to fire their drivers. Having already acquired a position of dominance with the rideshare market, these companies would then reap major monopoly profits. There is simply no world in which paying drivers a living wage would become part of Uber and Lyft’s long-term business plans.

Only in a world where more profitable opportunities for investment are sorely lacking can such wild bets on far-flung futuristic technologies become massive multinational companies. Corporations and wealthy individuals have accumulated huge sums of money and cannot figure out where to put it because returns on investments are extremely low. The flip side of falling rates of business investment is a slackening pace of economic growth, which economists have termed “secular stagnation.” It’s this decades-long slowdown that has generated the insecure labour force on which Uber and Lyft rely.

In slow-growing economies, labour markets are weak. Older workers who lose their jobs have trouble finding equivalent forms of employment. Meanwhile, young people just starting out in their working lives are sending out hundreds of applications only to end up in dead-end retail jobs. Rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft feed off the insecurity that is omnipresent in the modern economy. When the alternative is working irregular shifts at coffee shops, driving for rideshare companies on one’s own schedule can seem like a dream. Management by algorithm appears similarly utopian compared with management by nasty bosses. In the early years of their operation, rideshare companies even offered rates of pay that were good relative to available alternatives.

Of course, Uber and Lyft were probably planning to have fired these workers by now and to have replaced them with robots. But like many promises of automation, driverless cars are still some way from becoming a reality. Uber and Lyft started squeezing these workers’ incomes to staunch their own bleeding of cash reserves. At this point, drivers started fighting back.

This fight for workers’ rights is grounded in a growing recognition that the expansion of the digital economy does not simply reflect the triumph of an unstoppable technological change. Behind Silicon Valley rhetoric, much of what appears to be technological innovation turns out to be a means of circumventing legal regulations, including minimum wage laws. By misclassifying its workers, Uber avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars into US state unemployment insurance schemes. Yet during the Covid-19 economic crisis, Uber lobbied the federal government to step in and pay its drivers’ unemployment benefits anyway.

Why should Uber be entitled to have it both ways? It makes sense to demand that companies hire workers in stable jobs, or not be allowed to hire them in the first place. Yet in an environment of weak economic growth, this demand will be insufficient to win economic security for all. Capitalist economies have been able to extend security to widening circles of workers only in periods of rapid economic growth, when low rates of unemployment made it possible for more and more workers to demand better wages and working conditions. The era of high-speed economic growth ended long ago and is not coming back.

High rates of economic growth in the mid-20th century – the reference point for any politics that seeks to restore economic growth in the present – were premised on a historically exceptional period. The restoration of stable international trade following two world wars made possible the largest growth of economic productive capacity in human history, not just in Europe and the United States, but worldwide. By the 1970s, rapid expansion had given way to worsening global overcapacity, resulting in rising competition and falling rates of investment in internationally traded goods. People were left scrambling for work in the growing service sector, where the potential for labour productivity growth, and hence economic growth, is significantly lower.

Workers’ inability to find stable employment is thus not the result of recent advances in automation technologies, which, like driverless cars, have mostly failed to pan out. Their plight results from an everyday reality of low profitability in economies saturated with capital, and insufficient opportunities for its reinvestment, such that dividends and share buybacks have increasingly become the norm for surplus cash holdings. With shrinking opportunities for investment, enormous pools of capital have rushed into highly speculative ventures such as Uber and Lyft that have little capacity for demonstrated profitability.

That governments turned a blind eye to Uber and Lyft’s misbehaviour for so long is no surprise. Governments are complicit in making workers more vulnerable. Facing persistently slow economic growth and high rates of unemployment, governments have spent decades trying to coax companies to invest by making it easier to deny workers’ benefits and to avoid paying taxes. Again, this bid to restore conditions of rapid economic growth, much like supply-side and trickle-down solutions that failed to produce generalised prosperity, was a failure. The Covid crisis has only made economic prospects less auspicious.

[robertreich]

Monopoly Mayhem: Corporations Win, Workers Lose

Why do big corporations continue to win while workers get shafted? It all comes down to power: who has it, and who doesn’t.     Big corporations have become so dominant that workers and consumers have fewer options and have to accept the wages and prices these giant corporations offer. This has become even worse now that thousands of small businesses have had to close as a result of the pandemic, while mammoth corporations are being bailed out.   At the same time, worker bargaining power has declined as fewer workers are unionized and technologies have made outsourcing easy, allowing corporations to get the labor they need for cheap.     These two changes in bargaining power didn’t happen by accident. As corporations have gained power, they’ve been able to gut anti-monopoly laws, allowing them to grow even more dominant. At the same time, fewer workers have joined unions because corporations have undermined the nation’s labor laws, and many state legislatures -- under intense corporate lobbying -- have enacted laws making it harder to form unions. Because of these deliberate power shifts, even before the pandemic, a steadily larger portion of corporate revenues have been siphoned off to profits, and a shrinking portion allocated to wages. Once the economy tanked, the stock market retained much of its value while millions of workers lost jobs and the unemployment rate soared to Great Depression-era levels. To understand the current concentration of corporate power we need to go back in time. 

In the late nineteenth century, corporate power was a central concern. “Robber barons,” like John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt, amassed unprecedented wealth for themselves by crushing labor unions, driving competitors out of business, and making their employees work long hours in dangerous conditions for low wages. 

As wealth accumulated at the top, so too did power: Politicians of the era put corporate interests ahead of workers, even sending state militias to violently suppress striking workers. By 1890, public anger at the unchecked greed of the robber barons culminated in the creation of America’s first anti-monopoly law, the Sherman Antitrust Act. 

In the following years, antitrust enforcement waxed or waned depending on the administration in office; but after 1980, it virtually disappeared. The new view was that large corporations produced economies of scale, which were good for consumers, and anything that was good for consumers was good for America. Power, the argument went, was no longer at issue. America’s emerging corporate oligarchy used this faulty academic analysis to justify killing off antitrust. As the federal government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement in the 1980s, American industry grew more and more concentrated. The government green-lighted Wall Street’s consolidation into five giant banks. It okayed airline mergers, bringing the total number of American carriers down from twelve in 1980 to just four today. Three giant cable companies came to dominate broadband. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry. Today, just five giant corporations preside over key, high-tech platforms, together comprising more than a quarter of the value of the entire U.S. stock market. Facebook and Google are the first stops for many Americans seeking news. Apple dominates smartphones and laptop computers. Amazon is now the first stop for a third of all American consumers seeking to buy anything. The monopolies of yesteryear are back with a vengeance. Thanks to the abandonment of antitrust, we’re now living in a new Gilded Age, as consolidation has inflated corporate profits, suppressed worker pay, supercharged economic inequality, and stifled innovation. Meanwhile, big investors have made bundles of money off the growing concentration of American industry. Warren Buffett, one of America’s wealthiest men, has been considered the conscience of American capitalism because he wants the rich to pay higher taxes. But Buffett has made his fortune by investing in monopolies that keep out competitors. -- The sky-high profits at Wall Street banks have come from their being too big to fail and their political power to keep regulators at bay. -- The high profits the four remaining airlines enjoyed before the pandemic came from inflated prices, overcrowded planes, overbooked flights, and weak unions. -- High profits of Big Tech have come from wanton invasions of personal privacy, the weaponizing of false information, and disproportionate power that prevents innovative startups from entering the market. If Buffett really wanted to be the conscience of American capitalism, he’d be a crusader for breaking up large concentrations of economic power and creating incentives for startups to enter the marketplace and increase competition. This mega-concentration of American industry has also made the entire economy more fragile -- and susceptible to deep downturns. Even before the coronavirus, it was harder for newer firms to gain footholds. The rate at which new businesses formed had already been halved from the pace in 1980. And the coronavirus has exacerbated this trend even more, bringing new business formations to a standstill with no rescue plan in sight. And it’s brought workers to their knees. There’s no way an economy can fully recover unless working people have enough money in their pockets to spend. Consumer spending is two-thirds of this economy. Perhaps the worst consequence of monopolization is that as wealth accumulates at the top, so too does political power. These massive corporations provide significant campaign contributions; they have platoons of lobbyists and lawyers and directly employ many voters. So items they want included in legislation are inserted; those they don’t want are scrapped. 

They get tax cuts, tax loopholes, subsidies, bailouts, and regulatory exemptions. When the government is handing out money to stimulate the economy, these giant corporations are first in line. When they’ve gone so deep into debt to buy back their shares of stock that they might not be able to repay their creditors, what happens? They get bailed out. It’s the same old story. The financial returns on their political investments are sky-high. Take Amazon – the richest corporation in America. It paid nothing in federal taxes in 2018. Meanwhile, it held a national auction to extort billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies from cities eager to house its second headquarters. It also forced Seattle, its home headquarters, to back away from a tax on big corporations, like Amazon, to pay for homeless shelters for a growing population that can’t afford the city’s sky-high rents, caused in part by Amazon!

And throughout this pandemic, Amazon has raked in record profits thanks to its monopoly of online marketplaces, even as it refuses to provide its essential workers with robust paid sick leave and has fired multiple workers for speaking out against the company's safety issues. While corporations are monopolizing, power has shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. 

In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.2 percent of them are. Since the 1980s, corporations have fought to bust unions and keep workers’ wages low. They’ve campaigned against union votes, warning workers that unions will make them less “competitive” and threaten their jobs. They fired workers who try to organize, a move that’s illegal under the National Labor Relations Act but happens all the time because the penalty for doing so is minor compared to the profits that come from discouraging unionization. 

Corporations have replaced striking workers with non-union workers. Under shareholder capitalism, striking workers often lose their jobs forever. You can guess the kind of chilling effect that has on workers’ incentives to take a stand against poor conditions. As a result of this power shift, workers have less choice of whom to work for. This also keeps their wages low. Corporations have imposed non-compete, anti-poaching, and mandatory arbitration agreements, further narrowing workers’ alternatives. 

Corporations have used their increased power to move jobs overseas if workers don’t agree to pay cuts. In 1988, General Electric threatened to close a factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana that made electrical motors and to relocate it abroad unless workers agreed to a 12 percent pay cut. The Fort Wayne workers eventually agreed to the cut. One of the factory’s union leaders remarked, “It used to be that companies had an allegiance to the worker and the country. Today, companies have an allegiance to the corporate shareholder. Period.” Meanwhile, as unions have shrunk, so too has their political power. In 2009, even with a Democratic president and Democrats in control of Congress, unions could not muster enough votes to enact a simple reform that would have made it easier for workplaces to unionize. All the while, corporations have been getting states to enact so-called “right-to-work” laws barring unions from requiring dues from workers they represent. Since worker representation costs money, these laws effectively gut the unions by not requiring workers to pay dues. In 2018, the Supreme Court, in an opinion delivered by the court’s five Republican appointees, extended “right-to-work” to public employees. This great shift in bargaining power from workers to corporate shareholders has created an increasingly angry working class vulnerable to demagogues peddling authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia. Trump took full advantage. All of this has pushed a larger portion of national income into profits and a lower portion into wages than at any time since World War II. 

That’s true even during a severe downturn. For the last decade, most profits have been going into stock buybacks and higher executive pay rather than new investment. The declining share of total U.S. income going to the bottom 90 percent over the last four decades correlates directly with the decline in unionization. Most of the increasing value of the stock market has come directly out of the pockets of American workers. Shareholders have gained because workers stopped sharing the gains. So, what can be done to restore bargaining power to workers and narrow the widening gap between corporate profits and wages? For one, make stock buybacks illegal, as they were before the SEC legalized them under Ronald Reagan. This would prevent corporate juggernauts from siphoning profits into buybacks, and instead direct profits towards economic investment. Another solution: Enact a national ban on “right-to-work” laws, thereby restoring power to unions and the workers they represent. Require greater worker representation on corporate boards, as Germany has done through its “employee co-determination” system. Break up monopolies. Break up any bank that’s “too big to fail”, and expand the Federal Trade Commission’s ability to find monopolies and review and halt anti-competitive mergers. Designate large technology platforms as “utilities” whose prices are regulated in the public interest and require that services like Amazon Marketplace and Google Search be spun off from their respective companies. Above all, antitrust laws must stop mergers that harm workers, stifle competition, or result in unfair pricing. This is all about power. The good news is that rebalancing the power of workers and corporations can create an economy and a democracy that works for all, not just a privileged few.

[htmcars-blog]

6 Important Things You Need to Do After Buying A Lemon Car

In a list of pricy purchases that are alleged to last, a car tops the list. It’s alleged to be an enduring purchase. So, when your newly bought car spends longer during a mechanic’s garage than on the road or maybe in your own garage, then you’ve landed yourself a lemon.

No one likes getting to the mechanic and it’s worse once you just bought your car. However, there comes some extent when the repairs are too constant and you’re left wanting to act. you've got the facility to advocate for yourself when it involves seeking a refund or demanding the dealer to shop for back the lemon.

Here’s an inventory of strategies which will assist you when buying a lemon car:

Ask yourself if your car may be a lemon

Just because a car breaks down and annoys you doesn’t mean it’s a lemon. For it to be classified together, it must regularly fail a group of standards covered by the warranty. You’ll also know that it’s a lemon if you still bring your car to a mechanic and he’s unable to form an enduring repair or determine where the difficulty is coming from.

Know why lemons occur

Lemons occur because it’s not a financially sound business strategy to form a line of cars that never break down or got to get replaced. this is often a daily occurrence.

In 2018 alone, there have been reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about lemons. The list included the following:

Jeep Compass with faulty dash backlighting

Chevy Equinox with faulty gear shaft and driveshaft reports

Honda Accord with malfunctioning breaks

Toyota Camry with acceleration issues

The list isn’t an exaggeration and it isn’t a matter of your budget being at stake, too. It’s more about your life or the lives of your family being compromised.

Know the law

Simple aggravation doesn’t count. If your car annoys you, that doesn’t make it qualify as a lemon. There are specific conditions like repeated failing repairs, excessive time at the mechanic and other conditions that your car must meet to qualify as a lemon. And these criteria vary from state to state.

Be aware that cosmetic defects aren’t covered by the lemon law. Any surface damages from negligence, abuse or vandalism that's indirectly connected to the manufacturer aren’t counted also. It also doesn’t cover any additions or alterations you made to your car, like adding a spoiler or a replacement audio system.

Support your case

Time is against you within the case of owning a lemon. you would like to act fast if you would like to form sure that your case is processed and you receive compensation. While this varies counting on the state you're in, this usually gives you roughly two years to form a claim.

Be careful because some states will check out the odometer as an indicator of responsibility. So, it’s always better to require care of this sooner instead of later. Record any cost of repairs, keep receipts, and make a journal illustrating the times your car was within the shop.

Once you're uninterested with the repairs, approach your dealer and request a refund, buyback or replacement. If the dealer refuses, make another request in writing. Remember to be polite as this may benefit you within the end of the day. If they still say no, then it’s time to believe an attorney.

Understand the compensation

There are generally three options dealers must do to rectify things consistent with the lemon law:

Replacement: Here, your current lemon is replaced with a replacement car. If you opt to hunt the assistance of a lawyer on this, the fees for the lawyer are paid by the dealer directly.

Return: during this case, the dealer purchases your car from you, allowing you to shop for a special car. Again, if you seek the help of a lawyer, the dealer pays the arbitration fees directly.

Cash: If you’re okay with owning a lemon but believe a cash payout would be more beneficial, then the dealer can award you a sum. during this case, the lawyer fees begin of that compensation.

Seek legal support

While anyone is capable of seeking compensation via the lemon law alone, a lawyer will help expedite the method. you're ready to complain to the govt, attend court, or maybe sue without a lawyer but having one will streamline the method. Remember, there are dealers out there which will drag this process out.

Having a lawyer, especially when the fees are covered by the dealer, will help confirm you're justly rewarded for your troubles. Plus, they’re ready to tell you directly if you've got a robust case.

Lemonade rather than just a lemon

Lemon law isn't widely known. most of the people think that if you purchase a nasty car, you’re simply cursed with it. the truth is that there are laws in situ to guard consumers and confirm that companies don’t cash in of them by intentionally selling defective products or products that would potentially be deadly.

These laws vary from state to state but are designed to be encompassed within the protection they provide to consumers. And while it's possible to travel at it alone, there’s no downside to hiring a lawyer. At worse, you get support through this process and at the best, you begin with a far better deal than you had getting into, all with barely, if any, fees.