Its a new month. The NHL and NBA playoffs are turning the page to the second round and Arsenhole got drubbed over the weekend, which all but knocks them out of UCL play next year. All in all, things are looking pretty good. Or so one would think. Unfortunately, the links say otherwise.
May Day! May Day! Country going down!!! Tens of thousands of protesters set to hit the streets today. Some municipal workers from Seattle even urged to do so after a memo sent from the mayor telling them today would be a good day to take off in order to stick it to the man…not realizing they’d be sticking it to the people that pay their salaries (and bloated benefits, pensions, absurd perks, etc).
Well, The White House Correspondents Dinner went on as planned. The right are mocking it mercilessly. The left are saying it was a thumb in Trump’s eye. All I can say is that if you’re gonna throw a Rick Perry joke, maybe you ought to do it when he’s not making funeral arrangements for his dad.
The government has been funded until October. Hooray! Now we won’t have people dying in the streets like would happen when the shutdowns occurred.
You must assimilate. Resistance is futile. That shit don’t sell in Canada, eh.
American soldier killed by IED in Mosul. We shouldn’t even be in that shithole fighting while the local men flock to Europe for free shit. This one hits a little closer to home. He was my nephew’s roommate at OBC, was in his wedding and they were the very best of friends. The least I could do was mention him in hopes that a few more people would put him and his family in their thoughts and prayers.
Sorry for finishing on a downer. Hopefully this will make up for it a bit.
Comments
387 responses to “Monday Morning Links”
Condolences sloop, for you and you nephew and the family. That truly is a shitty situation.
Ditto.
It’s always a great loss when someone in our lives is taken away, especially when it’s in such an unexpected and untimely way.
I’m really sorry to hear this.
Condolences and prayer/thoughts.
That’s terrible news Sloopy. And there is no reason for you to apologize.
If you’re waving a flag today, it better be solid red. Or solid black. Or red and black. Or have a sickle and hammer. Comrades.
Anyone who skips work to protest today should be fired. Communists don’t need employment in filthy capitalist establishments. Their job should go to capitalists who want to work.
Plus, they’re free to join a commune, or form a syndicate, or whatever. But not in Somalia, that’s off limits.
How about an anarcho-syndicalist commune?
Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
So… Let me guess your office is abandoned today?
I don’t know yet, it’s only 8:30.
Besides, no state employee is going to waste leave time to march. If they had that sort of motivation, they wouldn’t work here.
As a fellow state employee, I wholeheartedly affirm that statement.
Besides, this is a RTW state. No SEIU bullshit here, thankfully. Makes me hate myself just a bit less.
Mounted above the door at UCS’s office.
It’s uplifting
I thought that was the DMV sign?
Is there a difference with any state agency?
Ugh, going to renew my drivers license today.
What if you’re already on vacation?
/skipping work at the beach today
Just don’t protest.
Got it. No drum banging today.
*pulls out the snek flag*
http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mweRL5i3IUe4iSePlVD4xqA.jpg
I had to drive into downtown Tampa today for a doctor’s appointment and worried that because I was going to be in the UT area that I might run into some protesters but luckily the lazy bastards sleep in.
I hope you had time to enjoy some jalapeno mac and cheese from Holy Hog.
On a lighter note, fuck the mayday parades. I’ve already got watermelons and commies on my derpbook alike celebrating by doing jack and shit except for shitposting from their computers, which were provided by their capitalist jobs in a country where they have to right to shit on the system.
Watermelons?
Green on the outside, red on the inside.
Shoulda known that-need more caffeine.
It’s okay, I’ve been up for like 2.5 hours, I’m still waking up, mornings are not my strong suite.
Thoughtful, dispassionate policy analysis. Honest disagreement based on sincere philosophical differences.
But since his risible assertion of “American carnage” in the streets during his Inaugural Address, Mr. Trump has continually fomented fear and bullied vulnerable groups, particularly unauthorized immigrants. He has shown no interest in reaching beyond the minority of Americans who elected him, one reason his approval ratings are the lowest on record for a president at this point in his term.
And what of his central campaign pledge, to make America great again, presumably by creating vast numbers of jobs for those who helped elect him? This may prove the emptiest of his promises. The giant infrastructure program, which would indeed yield jobs, is nowhere to be seen. In its place are proposed tax cuts to benefit mainly the wealthy and photo-op executive orders to deregulate energy businesses that, even if sustained by the courts — a long shot — will merely enrich the likes of the Koch brothers.
Yet if his ratings are dismal, the other measure Mr. Trump has always lived by — his revenue — is booming, as he uses the presidency to promote his properties. His determination to leverage his office to expand his commercial empire is the only objective to which Americans, after 100 days, can be confident this president will stay true.
Hey, they gotta do whatever they can to salvage their readership after the hit it took when an editorial went off the plantation the other day.
Like ESPN and the Democrats, they’ve decided to double down as if it’s an example of having principles.
Link?
Yes, feel the hate wash over you, prog harder, PROG HARDER!
The Koch Brothers are one of the left’s bogeyman: a terror to wave in the face of political children to keep them in line. I haven’t researched it, but I’d be surprised if the Koch’s offered much support to Trump.
Since the Koch’s are supporters of most of the libertarianish Freedom Caucus, you could say that they are actually helping to thwart Trump.
Of course, that will somehow be twisted into “proof” that Trump is a Koch puppet somehow.
Cause political theater, duh!
The Koch brothers were against Trump. If I recall, one of them wrote he was voting for HRC.
But yes, they are bogeyman. If you ask any of these lefties, they can’t articulate what they do that is so awful, besides be white and rich. Rarely, you find can one who can you they are involved the evil fossil fuel business.
Plus they were (and are?) extreme critics of Trump.
As I read this, I thought ‘great more Salon crap.’
That’s how bad the NYT is.
Yup.
GOOD MORNING Rufus
Their bullshit has gotten so silly that only dead enders really listen to them anymore. Unfortunately there are still a good many of them left-just look at their comments sections.
And pseudo-intellectuals. Everytime I read their comments I get the image of Kramer pretending to be an academic – or doctor. Dr. Van Nostrand.
With the cravat and pipe. LOL, that’s perfect.
“The giant infrastructure program, which would indeed yield jobs, is nowhere to be seen.”
If we gave everyone a teaspoon we could dig a new Panama Canal, or something!
Shovel ready jobs!
I thought the wall qualified as a giant infrastructure project, i.e. complete waste of money?
Behold: the greatest infrastructure program of all time: the Great Trans Africa Aeroplane Canal:
http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s07e22_the_africa_ship_canal
(the title is misleading: search for “aeroplane”; or not, I know libertarians can’t be told what to do).
It kills me that “shovel-ready jobs” are a great idea, because an unemployed sales manager working as a helper on a road crew is basically an even break, but expecting the guy who attached the rear passenger side tail light at the Ford plant to learn a different manufacturing job is literally Hitler.
Tax cuts to benefit mainly the wealthy, since they mainly pay the taxes in this country. So long as my taxes are being cut as well, what the hell do I care?
Your envy factor isn’t high enough to make you a good citizen sir!
Absolutely.
I’ll set you up with an easy one Monday morning…
My wife, having no knowledge of the idiocy that goes on here, says to me this morning, “I had a weird dream last night.” Oh yeah? “Sasquatch was wreaking havoc on the streets.”
*suppresses laughter*
Did you ask her if the sasquatch’s name was Steve?
Do they have other names than Steve?
I just want to stand up for all the other Steve’s out there…
All Sasquatch may be Steve Smith but not all Steves are Sasquatch
When STEVE SMITH rape you in dream, you get raped in the real world too!
NIGHTMARE ON STEVE SMITH STREET
One, two, STEVE SMITH coming for you.
Three, four, Better guard your back door
Five, six, grab a tube of lube.
Seven, eight, get pounded ’til late.
Nine, ten, Never walk again….
Nice
Is he wearing a glove with claws when he is doing this work?
It’s sort of a glove and, yes, it does have claws.
I lol’d. Plus “tube?” You meant to say “gallon.”
Gallon? 55 gallon drum.
Does anyone actually buy those? I can’t image even a porn studio needing that much lube.
You and I obviously don’t watch the same type of porn 😉
Ask jesse.
This is another instance of a story where the po-po get their blue panties in a bunch because the serfs don’t lick their boots properly, but I still get a kick out of them.
It is also ironic that the piggies love them some BBQ.
Right around the corner from Smith Pass the Gravy Avenue.
I’m here all week, tip your waitress
The comments are predictably racist as shit.
Pathetic. Especially judging by the fact that the owners are gonna fire every single person involved, which they should.
I don’t know man…appeal to cops or black folks who like BBQ. Seems the latter would be better for business.
You can accommodate both. There’s a not-so-small contingent of people out there that support the cops and are also black. They’re not mutually exclusive.
And I can assure you the parent company would be none too pleased that a franchisee allowed their name to be plastered all over national news in a negative light when I’m sure a lot of their outlets are in neighborhoods that aren’t 100% BLM activists.
If people want to mix politics with business, they better own the business or they need to STFU and do their jobs.
Is this for real? I don’t have any words if this person is 100% serious with this statement.
which they should
Why?
Actually, the BBQ place should say that while procedures were followed there will be a thorough investigation and those involved will be suspended with pay.
The Kings Men will not be disrespected by any commoners.
I agree with you in principle but, simply from a business standpoint, having the staff setting out to specifically antagonize a segment of customers generally seems like a bad idea.
That’s fair. Its not a good business model at all, but the backlash against the place wouldn’t be so heavy if not for the blue costume.
I find it annoying that they are calling for the employees to be fired. Shouldn’t they be demanding that these employees be given a week’s paid vacation and a stern talking to?
I don’t know. What they did is way worse than killing someone for making a furtive movement.
Just let Norm do the damn WHCD forever
O, and the ESPYS
Norm had the look of “I’m doing something kind of wrong here, but, I don’t give a shit”. Minhaj had the expression of Chihuahua licking his master’s balls.
While the NBA is right on cue for its predictable Warriors/Cavs show down the NHL continues to confuse observers with its unpredictability. Like any of you thought you’d potentially see an OIlers/Predators Western conference finals.
Meanwhile, in the East, the Rangers continue to demonstrate their inability to hold a lead.
The Rangers are the strangest team in professional sports.
THE PLAYOFFS ARE DEAD TO ME.
I want to see an Edmonton/Ottowa final.
Preds/Sens would be ideal for me. I’d settle for Preds/Pens only if Crosby suffers explosive giardia on the ice.
Caps going down hard early in the playoffs is as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
Once my Sharks faceplanted against the Oilers, I started rooting for the referees and injuries.
A pretty good article outlining the ways that the LEO’s are monitoring all of us and failing to comply with laws to let the public know what is being watched.
Warren Limmer is my neighbor and a fairly squishy Republican on most things, but really good on civil liberties. He is also doing a great job of stopping Minnesota from complying with the Real ID act.
Violating the law to enforce it. I guess it’s cute when they do it?
“What do you mean? Like in a vault?”
Unfortunate that when that data is compromised we will have no recourse in that situation. Just like those saps on the Colorado River that the EPA pooped on.
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is sounding like a self-licking ice cream cone.
Texas sound.
Problematic. Quite possibly NOT OKAY.
The Salsa family will be going to Black Hills area of South Dakota. Looking for any suggestions of things to do / see.
Already on the plan are; Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Wildlife loop in Custer park, something in the bad lands.
Favorite Salsa family activities are geocaching, disc golf, shorter hikes (kids are 10, 8, & 5 years), mini golf, and ice cream.
Wind Cave?
Saw that on the map, looks like a strong contender.
Are there any minor league baseball teams playing along your route? That’s an underrated good time.
Yes! One of my favorite things to do when on a work trip. Usually reasonably priced food, local color, and a break from work. I may or may not have scheduled one in a couple of weeks to eat Red Leaf dogs and drink Coke out of a styrofoam cup the way God and Dow Chemical intended.
Devils Tower is a fairly short drive from Mt. Rushmore. It has a concrete trail around the base that’s definitely doable for the older kids and I’d think would be doable for an active five year old. It’s been a few years, but if I recall correctly, it took the wife and I about 45 minutes to go around with a few short stops to look around along the way. If you’re there on a nice day you can see people climbing it. There’s also a large prairie dog colony at the base that the kids might enjoy watching for a while.
I vaguely remember that one as a kid traveling to Yellowstone. Looks like close to a couple hour drive one way, is it worth that much driving?
Prairie dogs, kids love ’em at the zoo. so active.
First time I went I was traveling alone, and almost didn’t go because of the distance from Rushmore. I enjoyed it enough to go again with my wife a few years later.
I’d say if you have a nice day and the family is up to doing the short hike around the base, its definitely worth the drive time. If you have bad weather or the five year old is feeling uncooperative that day (we have a five year old boy so I know how that can go sometimes) I’d skip it.
There’s also a boulder field at the base off the paved trail that’s not too tough, and lots of fun. Even the 5 year old should be able to handle it, at least part way up.
If you are driving from the east, check out Story Book Land in Aberdeen. Note that it is funded by donations, not tax dollars.
We will be on 90, That is a out of the way.
The Corn Palace in Mitchell SD.
Wall Drug
The wife wants to go there.
I anticipate saying “no” to the kids about once every minute with every piece of whatever they can get their hands on to see if they can buy it.
Head up to Spearfish and drive the canyon – really pretty. If the kids like to fish there are several lakes in the park that will work. Also, there is a short hike from the visitor’s center up a trout stream (Grace Coolidge creek, iirc). Good fishing there as well.
The State Game Lodge is really cool. There are a ton of references to Silent Cal, who loved the place.
Black Hills are amazing. Enjoy!
Would that be taking the Alt hwy 14 around Spearfish?
Yep, that’s the one. Definitely 20 miles you don’t want to miss.
Thanks all for your great suggestions. Much appreciated.
One more. When you are at the park, take the kids up to the Mount Coolidge Fire Tower. Great view and cool drive.
Go see Deadwood. Eat at Jakes.
For campy tourists trap stuff go to Reptile Gardens, Bear County and the Black Hills Maze.
On the Custer wildlife loop, take carrots to feed the asses. (You’ll understand when you get there)
Eat at Botticelli’s in Rapid.
I’ve heard good things about Sturgis – but that was from a single guy in the Navy who hit it in the early 90s.
‘It was looking right at us’: Dozens of Yowie claims on South Coast
STEVE SMITH JR.
So, some sort of mixed Sasquatch-hiker abomination.
Disclaimer: I am a deontological free market capitalist on non-aggression grounds, so I believe that laissez faire is a morally correct principle regardless of outcome.
That having been said, I was recently considering the curious case of the vitamin and supplement industry as a case study in regulation and markets and wanted to see what you all think.
The “supplement” industry is estimated anywhere from 5 billion to 35 billion dollars in revenue annually depending on whose numbers you take (see here and here). Even at the low end, it’s hardly a small niche industry. There is a large consumer base, certainly sufficient to exercise market power. There are numerous suppliers and manufacturers – certainly not a monopoly or oligopoly situation. The vitamin and supplement industry is not regulated by the FDA and could, theoretically, serve as a model for how a deregulated pharmaceutical industry might work. Yet studies and independent investigations have shown that not only do many vitamins and supplements not contain the ingredients that are listed on the label (sometimes at all, sometimes merely not in the labeled amount), but many contain completely different ingredients altogether than those listed on the label, including ingredients that may cause severe allergic reactions (see here and here). While there do exist independent testing laboratories and certification agencies in the vitamin and supplement industry, they do not appear to have garnered broad market acceptance. The result is that very often consumers do not get the ingredients that they believe they are purchasing, and sometimes they get potentially life-threatening allergenic ingredients in addition to or in place of what they believe they are purchasing.
Now, leaving aside the question of the efficacy of any particular vitamin or supplement (which range from “snake oil” to “physcian recommended”), everything about laissez faire theory says that this issue shouldn’t exist – that it should be remedied in the market by consumer choice and general liability. Regardless of whether or not they are medically or scientifically valid, we would expect that consumer pressure and liability for accuracy in advertising would at least ensure the purity and quantity of the ingredients in vitamins and supplements. But that doesn’t appear to be happening. The reality is that some substantial number of vitamin and supplement sellers are peddling outright fake or substanitally misleading products, and the market does not appear to have resolved the issue or to be poised to resolve the issue on its own. I find this rather disheartening. As it currently exists, the market seems, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, to be crying out for regulation to ensure the safety of consumer (even if not the efficacy of their choices).
So, is this a legitimate example of market failure? Regulatory dysfunction? Simply a case of dumb consumers getting what they deserve? Even if we suppose that the market for supplements is dominated by stupid people, is it not still in theirs and society’s best interest to ensure the purity of what they are taking, even if it has no medical or scientific validity? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter.
I doubt consumers even have a vague memory of what due diligence looks like anymore given how many things are regulated today. It’s just assumed that govt is regulating everything and that leaves the door open for shysters to take advantage of the few unregulated industries left. My thoughts on it anyways.
For my supplement usage – vitamins, weightlifting junk, and melatonin – I tend to stick with the “big names” since their products seem to deliver what they promise. Of course it could be placebo effect.
I think part of it is that people believe that the supplement market is regulated the same as OTC drugs are, and most also are likely to believe that big pharma is hiding the proof of these low cost cure-alls to make a big profit. This leads to a group of consumers who want to believe that they’re the ones making out like bandits.
Being sold in drug stores probably helps contribute to this, people see the supplement being sold next to OTC medicine, and think they’re just different brands. Hell, some of the drug stores sell homeopathic medicine.
I may comment on the substantive questions later if I get time, but just from a quick perusal of the WaPo article I found these red flags:
1. The most activist AG in the country,
2. using a barely developed technique with high error rates,
3. decided to go to court with a case that could be summed up as “either the supplement manufacturers have discovered alien life and are selling it through retail channels, or else our tests are utter shit”
ALIENS!!!
It is always Aliens.
And never Lupus.
Well, so for one thing it looks like the test to which those articles refer was contested on the grounds that it may have used a methodology based on erroneous assumptions on the DNA “barcode[‘s]” integrity lasting through the manufacturing process. So that’s one set of tests using a single methodology which a scientist interviewed in the WaPo piece suggests produced such wildly divergent results that it may be flawed.
For another, if it’s true, it proves mislabeling, which is fraud and already illegal. And something you still see from time to time in FDA regulated products. There are third-party labs which offer certifications; I’m not sure that your assertion that they’re not broadly accepted in the market is necessarily supported by evidence. Not that it isn’t, I’m just skeptical of the claim, haven’t seen anything from you to prove otherwise, and unsure that even if the assertion is true it necessarily demonstrates a serious problem. You also make an assertion regarding safety, but haven’t provided any statistics to demonstrate that there’s a danger. If there is a widespread health threat from herbal supplements, you would expect to see statistically significant numbers of people suffering negative health effects beyond what would be explained by other influences, and that doesn’t appear to be the case.
So let’s go with the assumption that there’s a bunch of hokum and snake oil being sold as supplements. Copper bracelets or magnets or whatever haven’t been proven to have any therapeutic effect beyond panacea. People buy them based on claims that they’re magic healing jewelry. For some people, believing the lie produces the same effect, for all intents and purposes. If people buy sugar pills believing them to be ginko biloba or whatever, and, safe in the knowledge that the ancient wisdom of the Orient will improve their memory and lift their spirits, proceed to skip happily through the day, then I would argue that they have indeed seen a beneficial effect, the market is working, and the results are at least not negative, and maybe even positive.
Finally, I think it’s important to note that nobody claims the free market will produce outcomes you think are best for other people. It results in the most efficient allocation of resources among participants based on their own preferences. The market is just a system that results when you combine property rights with individual preferences and decision-making. It’s not a nutritionist, or a priest, or a parent. It doesn’t cause anything or create anything. It’s just the thing that you’re witnessing when people are free to exchange property with each other according to their own perceived self-interests.
And by panacea, I of course mean placebo, but haven’t had enough coffee yet to not be a moron.
This is the most important point. Utopia does not exist and the attempt to produce it always produces gross violations of natural rights.
Something something not the right top men, something something, not real communism/socialism, hence this time it will work…
As I said, I am a deontological free marketeer. I know all the arguments and accept them. I would be in favor of a laissez faire market even if it reliably produced worse outcomes because I believe it is the morally superior system of resource allocation. I also happen to believe that in most cases, a laissez faire market actually does produce equal or superior outcomes to a regulated or centralized market.
However, IF the claims being made about the contents of these supplements are true, I would argue that some level of fraud has still been committed even if the consumers are satisfied and don’t die, and the fact that there hasn’t been a self-correction from natural market forces is a little bit disturbing, especially if we extrapolate this market to something like, say, prescription drugs. If I order a copper magnetic bracelet, should I not be entitled to some assurance that the bill of materials actually contains both copper and magnetic materials, even if the claimed benefits of the product are, ultimately, speculative or false?
Re: the lack of 3rd party verification of supplements, here is one source that suggests the number of supplements carrying some sort of third party verification is a small percentage of the total. I have seen other throwaway references that are similar.
When I think of other markets with which I am familiar that have extensive and thorough safety protocols through ASTM, UL and other independent, third party agencies without government regulation, I can’t help but think the supplement industry serves as an interesting outlier.
The market HAS solved it.
The reality is the consumers really don’t care, they are not buying health supplements, they are buying products that make them feel healthy. The fact that the consumers are not willing to pay extra to get product that has been certified or even research the contents or providers shows that they are getting exactly what they want from the transaction already.
In the cases where the allergens actually harm someone, yeah they can get compensation from the Courts but it isn’t happening enough to make the general population care
I’m not sure if I like the implications of that interpretation, as it essentially means one can commit fraud with impunity as long as he picks sufficiently ignorant customers. Call me an old softy, but I think even gullible, stupid people are entitled to some assurance that they are buying what is advertised to them (even if they aren’t entitled to any guarantee of efficacy).
Now mind you, if a supplement manufacturer put on their label “Super Metabolism Booster 3000” and didn’t provide an ingredient list, I’d say caveat emptor. But if a supplement manufacturer were to put, say, “800 mcg Chromium Picolinate” on their label, and the product actually contains only 100 mcg of chromium picolinate, or in fact contains wheat germ, which was not indicated on the label, and no chromium picolinate at all, then I would say a wrong of some type has been committed even if the customer remains ignorant of the ruse and satisfied with their placebo pills.
It seems that if this was actually a big problem, this would be the easiest class-action lawsuit ever. And their are enough class action lawyers that the low hanging fruit would be taken already.
I am not saying their isnt fraud, but that the fraud, if it exists, is hard to prove.
I guess what I go back to on this is that if there was a problem that people cared about they would reflect it in their choices. If demand for “officially certified” supplements were higher, you’d see greater interest in those certifications.
The alternative, where you presumably have the FDA regulate them as drugs, won’t solve the problem such as it is. FDA regulation didn’t markedly reduce the amount of contamination in foods or drugs since its inception, and contamination still occurs on an infrequent if regular basis. If anything, regulation makes people less vigilant about quality, while raising costs and creating an environment that rewards rent-seeking.
I’m with you there. I guess my concern is this: maybe people in this corner case are too stupid (or lazy) to effectively leverage market forces to produce the best outcome (consistent quality and quantity of advertised ingredients) from a utilitarian standpoint. It’s my feeling that in the vast majority of cases, people over the long run will behave rationally and effectuate good utilitarian outcomes in an open market by leveraging their consumer power. If (and of course that’s the big “if”) these allegations are true, it appears that isn’t happening in this particular case. It makes me wonder if this is an unusual niche case, or maybe a laissez faire market in things like pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures would be as bad as what we currently have.
See below on my point about how i think you’re misunderstanding what the allegations even are.
the claims are limited to “multivitamins” and “herbal” supplments
– the claims about multivitamins are not “fraud”, but seem mostly to do with variance of quality control
– the claims about herbals aren’t specific enough to draw any conclusions, but i would probably say that any study which tried to make broad-brush claims about such a incredibly diverse and basically “zero regulated” sector needs to be scrutinized to see what it is they’re really saying.
Herbal supplements include literally hundreds of product segments. I think a few dozen of those segments represent the bulk of sales. If the fraud were largely confined to the more-fragmented “80%” long tail of the market, then the headline claims are probably a little misleading. However, given that these claims are mainly about enabling consumer lawsuits, i doubt you’re going to get a lot of clarity from the plaintiff’s side.
If the claims made in those articles is true, that is pretty bad. And some of those examples were very big name brands.
It’s an example of regulatory capture. Supplements are regulated, and as usual, the companies making the supplements wrote the legislation.
The FDA is in charge of overseeing them, but unlike pharmaceuticals, supplements go to market and are then tested. Then, if there are complaints, the FDA can’t do much if the company immediately changes the product. Even if the next iteration of their supplement is crap as well, they are considered discreet cases, and the FDA can’t consider the past case when evaluating the new one.
I would imagine that absent the fig leaf of government regulation from the FDA, if the public cared enough about supplements an independent private evaluator would arise to certify the contents.
I spent ~6 months or so in the early 2000s doing market research/consulting work for OTC firms on the scope/segmentation/competitive analysis/channel analysis of the Vitamin/Supplement industry. basically, it started booming in the late 1990s/2000s due to the DSHEA legislation which lowered the regulatory bar somewhat in regards to how supplments could be marketed and labeled. People wanted to get in on the action.
Can you link to some of these “Studies and investigations”, and can you quickly summarize the scale of the issue in some concrete figure? can you narrow the fraud down to some specific market-segment?
e.g. Does fraud affect “10% of the industry”, across the board? Does it only affect private label suppliers? (who represent a huge share of the industry) Does it affect US suppliers or is it primarily imports which are not as well-regulated? Is it particular to certain channels? (e.g. Walmart vs. Vitamin Shoppe vs. generic) Those sorts of things.
also, as far as your figures go, i’d estimate the market is closer to $50-70bn (or larger) at least. probably far higher. i’d need to see what they’re including. It is an industry that is badly quantified because there are a lot of untracked channels
(e.g. its easy to add up GNC + Vitamin Shoppe #s; its not easy to split out all the OTC categories from every drug/supermarket/health-food store/walmart plus mail order + herbalife direct-sales, etc etc.)
Relevant links are in the OP. Here is a separate, older study regarding vitamins. TL;DR, a third of vitamins and 3/4 of herbal supplements tested didn’t have the ingredients listed on the label, or the amount of ingredients listed on the label.
I’ll admit I’ve not researched the topic much further than that. I’ll just say that if those figures hold true, it’s a rather dismal view of the industry.
Again, that’s pretty bad. Now I’m concerned I’m taking stuff that isn’t what it says.
The study you just linked there says that 30% of MULTIvitamins don’t have the ingredients listed on the label. Not all “vitamins”
And herbal supplements are also a segment which is even less-regulated than vitamins. I could go on at length here but the essence of it is that there are no standards in the “Herbal” segments.
The links in the original post also limit themselves exclusively to criticising the HERBAL supplments segments ; not the entire OTC dietary supplements sector, which is what you seem to suggest.
Basically, what this appears to be is a misread on your part of what these studies are saying in the first place. They’re both criticising segments within the industry, not the entire spectrum of products.
And i think there’s some important contextual info you’d need to understand before coming to any conclusions; given that the most “serious” claims of fraud are against multivitamins, you’d want to understand what it is they’re saying is about those products
recall that multivitamins list, on average, dozens of vitamins encapsulated in a single pill. variance in any 1 of them would flag them.
what they could be actually measuring is simply poor-quality-control in the delivery mechanism – not fraud.
As for herbals…. i could give you a very long rant here, but will skip it and just say that the herbal supplements business is the freaking wild west, and has always been that way by design.
Perhaps my phrasing was lacking in specificity, but I think I actually do have a decent, though certainly not expert, understanding of the industries (sub-industries, if you prefer) that were being evaluated. Even if they are sub-segments of a larger industry, I think you missed my point. When you say, for example, the herbal supplements business is the freaking wild west, and has always been that way by design, I presume (and correct me if I’m wrong) that you mean by “wild west” that the industry is unregulated and unaccountable. What I’m asking is: why would the lack of regulation or official oversight make that industry less reliable or trustworthy? Orthodox market theory suggests that consumer pressure should provide a set of incentives that guarantee reliability and trustworthiness at least as well as regulatory oversight. And yet it seems that in these corner cases, that’s not happening. I was merely pondering why that might be.
(sigh)
Most herbal supplements are literally “obscure weeds pulled out of the dirt, ground into dust, put into pill”
those herbal supplements – EVEN WHEN ACCURATELY DESCRIBED AND PROPERLY DOSED – often do nothing to the human body at all. Your body literally just pisses them out. They do nothing more than “clog your kidneys”.
Michael Specter has an entire chapter in his book “Denialism” about this.
The reason there is no “Orthodox market theory” at work here is because there is no way to measure “Efficacy” of products that DONT DO ANYTHING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Its hard to make a claim of Fraud when the product you are buying is based on biological misconceptions in the first place.
In short = the concept of ‘Fraud’ in the herbal supplements business is somewhat laughable to begin with.
Now it might potentially have some minor concern if the fraud resulted in people consuming falsely-labeled products that caused allergic reactions. “Do no harm” is the rule. If they do harm, then lawsuit away and more power to them.
But basically the criticism boils down to a very obvious case of Caveat Emptor. Anyone Buying ‘Ginko Biloba Cocktail’ is a fucking idiot to begin with.
The reason there is no “Orthodox market theory” at work here is because there is no way to measure “Efficacy” of products that DONT DO ANYTHING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
In the final paragraph of my OP I asked Even if we suppose that the market for supplements is dominated by stupid people, is it not still in theirs and society’s best interest to ensure the purity of what they are taking, even if it has no medical or scientific validity?
You’ve provided an answer to the question, but you’re lecturing me as though it’s something I hadn’t even considered when it formed a substantial part of the basis of the query.
As I said above, I’m not too sure if I agree with this interpretation of market dynamics. If I order 200 grams of premium goat placenta and I get 200 grams of chicken byproduct meal, I still think there’s a case to be made that I’ve been ripped off in some regard even if the 200 grams of goat placenta would have had absolutely no benefit to my health or wellness.
Perhaps I expect too much of markets and of the people who constitute them.
I gotta run, but I do appreciate yours and everyone else’s thoughts. Just something I was noodling about here recently.
That is like saying coffee and tobacco don’t do anything to the body at all. Just because a chemical is found in a plant has no bearing on whether or not it has an effect.
I don’t mean to. I think i just get sidetracked trying to explain that your gripe is less about “market theory” and really about a misperception of the market you’re looking at.
I think when you consider that you are being offered a choice of literally 200 different brands and formulations of goat placenta products in todays Dietary Supplement marketplace, that there is going to be a lot of variance in quality on the margins of that marketplace.
If you’re talking to me, i don’t know what you’re referring to.
I would probably guess that this does hold true for the products sold by large retailers who do a lot of due-diligence on their suppliers and hold them accountable.
Whereas the people who sell their products via mail order/direct-distribution don’t give a toss.
Given that half the market goes through ‘alternative channels’, you can easily fit a lot of fraud into the fragmented areas of the market.
In short =
the studies you mention suggest 2 things
– 1 quality control in multivitamins is ‘mixed’
– 2 there is outright fraud in the herbal supplements business
regarding 1 = this may have always been well known to insiders but is probably only becoming better understood now. Obviously when you are trying to combine a dozen + vitamins into a product that is intended to make all of those constituent vitamins equally bioavailable, you’re going to run into problems.
what i think is interesting about the study is that no one here is claiming that any of these ingredients were MISSING. they’re just saying that there’s terrible dosage variability among some brands.
Also = you have to recall that their claims of “30%” is based on a sample of “38 products” tested.
there are literally HUNDREDS of different multivitamin products on the market. When they claim “30%” had problems, its of *their sample*, not anything claiming to be representative of the entire industry.
I think the take away on the multivitamins topic is that “some are better than others”. I’m not sure this is really all that shocking.
On the subject of outright fraud in the Herbal supplements industry:
I think you’d need to be VERY VERY specific about pointing to examples and who the suppliers and what category they are in. *(e.g. is it some weeny asian product? or widely-consumed Melatonin-supplements? There are hundreds of product categories but only a few are big-sellers) Much of this could simply be that many suppliers are getting ripped off by bulk-ingredients providers in some specific categories and that they themselves don’t have quality control mechanisms that catch it.
I don’t think you’re wrong, and I didn’t mean to suggest that those were definitive studies that conclusively prove fraud across the entire industry. I understand how sampling works. I would say it does seem to suggest that in certain specific cases things were misrepresented, and that there may be larger issues regarding quality, at least for those manufacturers. Call me cynical, but I’d be surprised if these studies just happened to stumble upon a tiny minority of shoddy operators.
What’s distressing to me, as I articulated above, is that there are not similarly huge dosage variances or the outright absence of active ingredient in regulated drugs, even things like OTC painkillers. It would be nice to think that an unregulated market would produce similar quality outcomes. I understand you are cautioning not to interpret these results broadly. But even if they are only contained to the particular supplements and particular companies subject to studies, unfortunately that’s not been the case. There’s not a similar minority of, say, simvastatin or amoxicillin manufacturers with the same type of variances and abnormalities happening. That sucks.
That is not what i suggested.
What i suggested is that the very very broad CATEGORY of multivitamins has a lot of quality-control issues. Because of the complexities inherent with formulating those types of products.
You’re literally talking about 2 entirely different markets with entirely different regulatory frameworks. You might as well be comparing Dietary Supplements to Motor Oil as to “Aspirin”.
I think you have set an unreasonable standard for the definition of “Quality” by looking specifically at a type of product where the consumer has zero ability to assess efficacy. When you can’t tell the good vs. the bad product when you consume it, it is unsurprising that there is a low degree of attention paid to perfect-adherence to label-claims re: quantities of constituent vitamins.
I was actually surprised to learn that the “missing ingredients” (basically, proper fraud) was so low within multi-vitamins, and that the problem was mostly ‘dosage’.
Also, i think the reaction to the scale of the problem is misleading. I am very very leery of these claims of “30%” or “3/4ths” of the industry when you’re really talking about fractions within single product segments.
basically, as someone who has looked at this sort of stuff for many many years, I find the whole thing sort of unsurprising and not particularly noteworthy.
It would be like someone getting very shocked by a German man coming to me and saying, “DID YOU REALIZE THAT ANHEUSER BUSCH PUTS RICE IN THEIR BEER!??! YOU’RE BEING RIPPED OFF!! He’s technically correct, but its based on an entirely different idea of what “normal” is supposed to be, not fraud.
I have a comment with more than 2 links awaiting moderation – would appreciate it if a mod could get it approved 😉
We approved it. But you might want to not test the 250,000 character limit boundary next time.
Seriously, dude. That’s long enough to be a stand-alone post. Which we put up when people submit from time to time.
It’s only 516 words. I definitely wouldn’t consider it worthy of a stand alone post. Good god you guys are anal sometimes. Maybe I should just not post this early when I’m overtired…
On a smartphone that takes up quite a lot of screen, though.
You might want to recalibrate your snark detector. The first paragraph was a joke. The second one was a serious suggestion to submit something that long socwe can post it as a story.
I do miss those epic fights involving Nikki or John or others I forget at the moment.
Somali Center for Women Empowerment?
Southern Center for Webelos.
I’m sorry. Like I said, only about 1/4 of my brain is working at this hour on any given day.
Never say sorry!
I agree it would make for a better stand-alone topic than something you’d have to look for in a comment thread.
Crafting for the Revolution
Yentas?
The fact that these people actually think they’re saying something meaningful tells you just how deep their lunacy and self-delusion is.
Why do I get the feeling that “Fierce Babe” is at best 50% accurate?
Well Babe was quite the porker
You should flush when you’ve gone Beyond the Movement.
*narrows gaze and slow claps*
You’ll probably need to flush twice or three times with the low flow toilets they have mandated.
Ever notice how these racial “justice” groups seem to aggregate in societies that have been extraordinarily hospitable to different races and ethnicities? You don’t see this in the Middle East or Japan or South Korea et cetera. If I moved to China and realized that I couldn’t get as far ahead in that society as I would like, owing to my cultural and racial background, should I be out protesting?
I can’t even imagine marching in the streets with other white expats making demands of the host society or writing blog posts for a Chinese audience to lecture them about how racist they are and how nothing is my own fault. For one thing, posturing as a victim in China wouldn’t get me as far as it does in the West. For another thing, I can’t imagine being so entitled as to demand subservience of the host society. Nor would I get butthurt about the fact that being a white westerner means I won’t enjoy the full spectrum of opportunities in China, that seems pretty damn natural, the kind of thing I implicitly acknowledge as an inevitable consequence of moving there.
I’ve been seeing more and more stories lately about thirdhand smoke.
Given that second hand smoke risks have been debunked, why are people studying this?
So these kids should wash up more often?
Nicotine on your flesh isn’t harmful.
It doesn’t even stop the soybean aphids from attacking!
But they studied 25 children, what more evidence do you want? How many more CHILDREN do you want to die?!?!
In this case, assuming none of the children were handling fresh tobacco, I agree, but it could be in high enough doses. Green Tobacco Sickness is real
As a northener, I had to goggle that.
I notice it doesn’t link to any of these studies.
nth hand smoke is the real concern.
Seems kind of unethical to push informed consent forms for a study onto parents who had to bring their kid into the ER or did they just not bother? And a whole 25 kids? That’s not much of a sample.
‘I work 14 hours a day’: Woman finds a note from Chinese ‘prisoner’ begging for help inside her Walmart purse
I thought this only happened with Fortune Cookies
Inspector #7 got bored and overtime wasn’t amusing her.
I found a note tucked into my license plates: “Help! I’m being held prisoner!”
Did you make sure they would never do that to you again?
The Liberating Obsessiveness of I Love Dick
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39770300
All things considered, Le Pen is doing better than I thought. Short of a major attack or scandal, it looks as though she’s going to lose, but damn she is giving it the old college try.
Nothing screams political outsider like “Rothschild banker”.
And this…US pollster Nate Silver gives Marine Le Pen no chance at all, arguing she is in a far worse hole than Donald Trump ever was.
Yeah, I’m gonna buy that line./s
Comse caveats:
France is not the US.
The French have a fundamentally different set of values and always have.
Pre-election polling however has not been the best predictor (nor have my opinions for that matter)
I am refusing to be surprised if she wins.
Their media control is tighter than even ours, their election mentality is weirder and more flippant, and they aren’t voting on anything other than the candidates. And if you have studied recalls and special elections in the US they can be a hot bed of upsets and firsts.
SO just sayin’ i aint gunna predict shit (plus i am terrible at it).
Comse = some
Run against Trump? Elizabeth Warren will certainly stand and fight
Senator who the president derides with a racist nickname has a book to promote, a seat to win and rumors of a White House bid to … neither confirm nor deny
If women have had enough of economic lies, then Elizabeth Warren is in trouble.
That’s a pretty big “if”.
If it’s a racist nickname, wouldn’t she have to be the race in question? Which she isn’t?
Exactly. He’s not deriding her Native American heritage. He’s mocking her for stealing that honor from real native Americans.
Nobody bitches when blacks make fun of Rachel Dolezal. But when conservatives rightly mock Warren for essentially stealing Indian heritage to get a leg up, they get hammered by the media.
But there’s no double standard. Nope. Our media is non-partisan and evenhanded.
The actual Indians I know (one is Navajo, one is Lipan Apache) hate that bitch, and they’re both (nominally, at least) Democrats.
By prog logic progs can never be the racist ones..
They have a point though because it all comes down to power differential and oppressive bourgeois intersectionality. Don’t you even social science bro?
I can’t after an engineering education and really liking that logic thing that comes with the whole patriarchal model of thinking…
Feelz are not my thing.
She will stand and ‘fight’.
What’s her weapon of choice? War hatchet, pipe Tomahawk or atlatl?
Buffalo shit.
Let’s finish that sentence for them…
Warren, who has claimed Native American heritage without evidence, other than suggestions that she falsely used it for quota advantages.
I saw none of the Washington Correspondents’ Circle Jerk or associated sanctimonious whining, but I did accidentally see an NBC News clip about it. Some female teleprompter-reader was boohooing about “Why wouldn’t he come and sit there at the head table and take our juvenile insults like a man, huh?” And besides, Trump had the unmitigated gall to go out and compete with all those honest and sincere journalists, and said mean stuff about them!
Said mean stuff about a group of people who have actively attempted to de-legitimize him and undermine his authority from the moment the they realized he had won the election. The horror.
The HORROR.
Why wouldn’t he come and sit there at the head table
Because if the Girl Scout eggs your house, you don’t buy cookies from her.
TSTSNBN gets a shout out in our local alternative news site.
It’s interesting that he had to find a way to whittle down to a small enough subset. Cleveland finally won something last year, but before then it had been generations since that city claimed a major sports championship. Seattle has one Super Bowl win recently, but nothing as far as baseball or basketball go, and no hockey team so they don’t count, etc..
Conservative Reason.com?
It sure as hell isn’t libertarian.
They’re no conservatives, that much is for sure.
Not conservative. Not libertarian. Well, WTH is left?
Paging Swiss..
It sure as hellto be sure itI suppose it is nice to be drafted in the first place, but I wonder what guys like Solomon Thomas think when someone points out that getting past San Francisco and being drafted by Jacksonville instead would have netted him more after tax income.
So if we moved Joe Mauer down a couple tax brackets he could then hit a ball in the air to right field?
Willfully obtuse or genuinely stupid? Or both?
# of championships for Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, LA, New York, and San Fran/Sacramento based teams in the last 2 decades…
Baseball – 13
Football – 9
Basketball – 8
Hockey – 9
So in the highest taxes metropolitan areas the teams have won 39 out of a possible 80 championships.
I am reasonably certain that there is no linkage whatsoever between a teams odds of winning or it’s ability to attract Free Agents and the tax base of the city they are located in. If it were the case that there was such an effect why wouldn’t the Patriots seek to move to someplace in New Hampshire where there is no State Income tax?
I would only affect half of their pay. In the NFL, players pay taxes proportionately in the states their games are in.
Why isn’t it based on their home state?
Every state basically says that for any workers who travel they owe us the portion of their pay that they earned in our state. Those rules even apply to you and me, so if your company sends you to a conference halfway around the country then technically you owe the state you traveled to the taxes due on that weeks pay. For most people however it never comes into play because the company payroll department typically lacks the minute to minute details of where you are working and so they don’t even report that you have earned out of state income and for normal people it would be difficult to impossible for a state to prove you traveled there for work. With professional athletes however, well their work travel schedules are posted 6 months or more in advance for the whole world to see and given the size of their payrolls every state that has an income tax is going to see to it that they get their cut from those players.
Still, if you were only in the state for a day or two – is that enough? I know for California, some of the contractors I know who traveled there for work didn’t have to worry about dealing with that BS until they had been there over 30 days in the year.
I have to admit, Boehm is one of the two or three I still enjoy over there. I think it’s because he mostly writes about sports topics and over-regulation. And he often puts something up on a weekend.
I guess to something like the Minnesota Post that’s coming from a conservative website.
As proud member of the Norwich Fierce Babe Network, I participate in a radical, feminist identifying space which allows women to pro-actively organise events alongside holding discussions and creating an online forum for women to share grievances.
Sounds like a laugh riot.
Sounds like this?
WTF?
Sophomoric idiotic bullshit
Sitting around bitching and moaning, and planning marches with signs. Then marching and more networking.
Rinse and repeat.
Because it is all about the virtue signaling, and not so much about anything else…
Because women aren’t allowed to do those things in the normal course of a day? If you feel like you can’t do the things you want to do unless you have some sort of “safe space”, you need to look at yourself, not the rest of the world. And sweetie, honey – the world is not gonna love you or everything you do, no matter how safe your space is. Punkin.
Florida person?
“At the University of Florida, a student was recently penalized for writing “man” instead of “humankind” in a class paper.”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/32372/
Since “man” is proper usage, I don’t see how they could realistically defend penalizing someone, unless they want to finally admit they penalize people for incorrect political opinions.
“Mizzou’s Med School Could Lose Accreditation Over Lack Of Diversity”
http://kcur.org/post/mizzous-med-school-could-lose-accreditation-over-lack-diversity#stream/0
You know who else had a lack of diversity in their organization…
MEChA?
NAMBLA?
University?
BLM?
BET?
La Raza?
The Klingon High Council?
Qapla’!
Pe’Tak!
The Congressional Black Caucus?
Glibertarians?
The 501st legion?
NOW?
So, the AMA limits the number of med school graduates to artificially constrain the supply of doctors. Meanwhile, we import Indian doctors by the gross to try to make up for the shortage. And then we’re gonna penalize a med school and make sure we get even fewer graduates because it isn’t sufficiently affirmative action in its admissions?
Fuck this shit so fucking much.
I got to watch my dad die of sepsis from a preventable infection because of shitty, overworked medicaid mill doctors, and we’re navel gazing about whether med school is diverse enough.
Sure is gonna be fun getting old and dying in this fuckhole of a medical system.
When my liver eventually turns into a rock I certainly don’t want to let the guy they let in under their diversity quota to do the transplant.
What do you call the medical student who graduated last in his class?
“Your honor”?
Shit, wrong joke.
The law school joke is “The A students become professors, the B students become judges, and the C students become rich”
Diversity, it goes with everything!
Worthwhile read from Joel Kotkin: The Arrogance of Blue America
Excellent article. Thanks for pointing it out.
Manic Monday – Russo-mania Edition
Article:
Comments:
Genius…
Denail is not just a river in Egypt…
You hammered that comment.
Denali isn’t just a mountain in Alaska.
…
…
…
Its also the name of this black chick i know.
They also keep forgetting that young and minority voters who came out for Obama, stayed home because old white lady.
No no, it was Russians, the FBI, white cis-hetero shitlordism, and whatever else it needs to be to fill out the remainder. Maybe Sarah Palin?
Traffic was for shit today, so not that many true blue commies living in the DC area, apparently. Just a buncha poseurs and virtue signalers.
Another mouse in the trap yesterday. It seems like they really like to party at my house on weekends.
You should deep fry’em. Caracas Fried Chicken.
I see what you did there… Maybe Kristen can sponsor some Venezuelan waifs to come live with her and hunt down her rodent population?
Now this is an idea! All you people with “get a cat”. Fuck that. I’ll get a couple of disillusioned Chavezistas.
Make sure you have enough rodents to prevent them from thinking they should eat you Kristen..
After all, while Venezuela is far from the Andes, there have been such incidents and there are plenty of natives in Venezuela’s Orinoco river area that don’t mind the occasional long pig after they hit it with a curare dart.
“thinking they should eat you Kristen..”
Phrasing?
Euphemism?
If your trees get Dutch Elm, you could get a couple of Norks to get rid of that rotten bark.
We have a shit-ton of oak trees and a bunch of crab apples. That oughta keep their bellies full, in addition to the rodents.
All you need is a couple of rats.
Turn them into burgers in an underground (literally) burger stand, like in Demolition Man.
Party at Kristen’s house! Woot!
Woot? What is the EQ circa 2001?
Yo Yo Yo!
C. Anacreon replied to one of my comments on Saturday night, but I didn’t get a chance to respond.
He wrote:
“Good grief Ken, aren’t you the guy who used to get all worked up when someone used the word “cunt’? And now you are accusing a woman of having a ‘swamp pussy’”?
What I don’t think C. Anacreon understands is that swamp pussy is a serious medical condition that adversely impacts the lives of millions of American women, not to mention the people who love them. I know it’s an uncomfortable topic that people don’t like to talk about, but that’s why there needs to be a national march for swamp pussy to raise awareness of this life altering and widespread condition.
I know the figures have been disputed, but I’ve read elsewhere that one in four men on campus will at some point become the victims of swamp pussy. Deny the specifics of those statistics all you want, but don’t expect me to ignore the obvious. Swamp pussy is real. I know.
I’m a survivor.
They did a highly informative documentary on this very thing back in the ’80s.
Hmm. Adrienne Barbeau.
12 year old me was definitely on board with that.
DO NOT GOOGLE IMAGE “BLUE WAFFLE”
Everyone knows how strict the punishments for heresy are.
At one time, Vice was actually interesting.
I knew Gawker wasn’t hiring the best writers, but I didn’t know they were hiring 12 year olds.
That is a gold mine of a thread.
Maybe, and bear with me ‘cuz I’m going all the way out on this limb, maybe that’s the problem?
Gawker’s budget isn’t in the best of shape lately…
It still somewhat annoys me that the Hulk Hogan lawsuit didn’t end up killing the Gawker hydra, only the Gawker name itself. And yeah, Vice is so far from what it once was. Pathetic.
Zombie Gawker is just barely limping along. They are having writers work across brands to save on staff costs and their content isn’t nearly as interesting as it used to be (this is for Foxtrot Alpha, Jalopnik, Deadspin, etc. Gawker and Jezebel have never contributing anything other than hate reading material).
So, yeah, it exists still, but it probably wishes someone would walk up behind it and put it out of its misery.
The ideas he wrote about with words on a computer are violently hateful. His column was the moral equivalent of burning down a black church and lynching the survivors. The NYT needs to get on this immediately.
And these people take offense when you point out they are nothing but a cult, having replaced the old time religion and its Apocalyptic predictions with one where government now plays the role of god and anything that gets in the way of marxism gone wild playing the role of the devil.
These topics are mostly about the strawmen they imagine on the other side. I bet none of them make much of any sacrifices for climate change (Is there a better way to quantify how much someone cares?). It’s just about sticking it to the Republicans, racists, and rednecks in their heads.
I was reading some progressive full pro-Islam over the weekend online, and they started pontificating on the First Amendment, etc. Nobody’s bigger on the Forst Amendment than I am, but this person didn’t give a shit about the First Amendment. If she weren’t so absorbed with hating on the rednecks in her imagination, she’s be going after Islam despite the First Amendment for the way women are treated in various Muslim influenced cultures.
It’s all about signaling elitism. If environmentalism were associated in people’s minds with being a redneck, they’d denounce climate change as a hoax.
So if Toby Keith releases a song called “Be A Man And Stand Up For Mother Earth,” the New York Times will start running editorials about how environmentalists are conservatives fearful of change?
If Topy Keith writing a song could change the predominate conception of global warming in the culture as a redneck issue like gun rights and Sharia, then yeah, Toby Keith writing a song might change everything.
But he’d need to change the idea on both sides.
Incidentally, I don’t buy that Islamophobes are all about gay rights either–not even when they’re complaining about “Islamists” throwing LGBT off the top of buildings. Their stumping for gay rights should also . . . be taken with a grain of salt.
Here is one place Sour Kraut was during International Workers’ Day weekend:
http://imgur.com/a/72684
Full of celebrating people. Totally creepy.
I can’t believe they still venerate that guy so much there. I would have thought after Deng Modernized, Mao would have gone a bit more down the memory hole the way Stalin did.
Some people like and are attracted to those types that when in power kill off a few million to make a point.. Especially if they claim they are doing social justice.
Everybody wants to be on the winning team, particularly when the losing team gets eradicated.
Yeah, when the guillotine goes into action it is funny how many people no longer wanted to be members of the group getting their head separated from their shoulders…
Is that the line for Mao Under Glass©? Doesn’t look very crowded. I think I waited in a line just as long during a cold, drizzly weekday in March back in the 90’s.
Oh c’mon. The Great Leap Forward only killed, what, 40-50 million people? A mere piker compared to Stalin.
I think Mao killed more people than Stalin, unless you count the Germans, Poles, and other Slavs in what became USSR adjacent slums, but then again, Mao had 4 times the population Stalin had to work with, locally, and didn’t need to work that hard to increase the tally of rotting corpses. Of course, compared to Pol Pot – when you look at percentages – neither Stalin nor Mao really took the killing seriously…
I thought Castro had the highest batting average?
Hard to believe he hit for a higher average than Pol.
My brother just put this up on FB. Not a huge Prager fan, but this was well done.
Do you even Monocle, bro?
Sometimes. Just so used to doing the old way, it’s actually faster.
Interesting idea…what’s the data on murder as a % of the overall population?
Castro killed more than 1/3 of the Cuban population? Pol Pot is credited with something over 2 million bodies in a country of 6 million…
I mean, and don’t get me wrong, Castro was one brutal mofo – his enforcer was Che after all – and I am certain that his people killed a shit ton of others in South America and Africa, but I am not sure he killed 1/3 of the Cuban population. Then again, he had far more time that ole Pol Pot did to mow down the people…
No. But unlike the others he actually played baseball as a kid and thus had a batting average. 😉
The story that he was looked at by various MLB teams on account of his great fastball turns out to be complete bullshit.
I’m not sure about the new season of Fargo yet, but I have to say that David “Knox Harrington, the video artist” Thewlis makes a fantastic Big Bad.
I’m worse than Hitler.
OK.
Wow. Not even the magic edit fairy can fix this shit.
The OK signal is now a white power hand gesture? The intertoobz is lernin’ me stuff today.
Sure, the three fingers are the W and the looped fingers with the wrist are the P. It literally can’t be anything else.
The Nazi salute has a sad.
White Power Forever!
The Village hardest hit.
Stephens even managed to tick off fellow journalists.
“You’re a s–thead. a crybaby lil f–kin weenie. a massive twat too,” tweeted Libby Watson, staff writer at Gizmodo.
I think that’s quite a leap, calling a Gizmodo writer a *journalist*.
Hey, about that commie pope, eh?
Since I’m dumb, here it is again. Your Monday Morning nutpunch
I’ll see you all in a couple of months for the “prosecutor decides not to press charges” article, in four for the “internal investigation over, officer back on the job” article, and in six for the “taxpayers pay settlement to victim’s family” article.
I’m seeing double!
I love you, magic edit fairy!
~~~magic edit fairy~~~
Now that just isn’t cricket.
Look, do you not want police to make it home safely at the end of their shift? For that to happen, sometimes you just have to shoot unarmed teenagers.
Oh boy, here I go killin’ again!
What line of logic suggests that if someone is driving recklessly, then shooting and killing them will make the car magically come to a halt?
Anyone catch American Gods last night? Any good. Trying to determine if I should add it to the watch list.
I was wondering that myself. It was my first dip into Gaiman’s universe, followed by Sandman. The trailer looked pretty good, but I wanted to hear what fans thought before I committed the time to it.
I like it..
It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, so keep that in mind. Watched the first episode yesterday, and I enjoyed it. They stayed very close to the book, with some changes due to the medium (as an example, Shadow’s cellmate isn’t named). I’m curious as to when they’ll really start to deviate from the book in order to get to more seasons, But with Gaiman and Fuller running it, I have faith so far.
My guess is if you read the book and liked it you will HATE it. That was the case for my wife and I.
Someone needs to clue Hollywood in to the fact that just because shows with tons of blood spraying everywhere can be successful (Deadpool, Game of Thrones) that doesn’t mean that every show should have gratuitous blood spray everywhere.
As my wife said, they basically turned it into a live action Mortal Combat sequence and in the process they gutted the heart of the book.
If you haven’t read the book and aren’t turned off by viscera spraying everywhere it wasn’t horrible, the acting was good (although I think McShane was given some bad dialogue to work with, Wednesday was much more charming in the books, in the show he came off as glib and smug but not charming), the story line was compelling if a but confusing at this point and in my opinion seems a but rushed and they tacked an intro scene which was not in the book into the very beginning that I think would have been a better fit for the 2nd or 3rd episode to help explain what was going on (in the book it wasn’t until about a quarter of the way through that Shadow realized that supernatural things were happening and it wasn’t until about the midpoint that he started to believe it, the air of mystery in the book worked much better than just basically laying everything out at the beginning), the cinematography was choppy, at times extremely well done but they jumped around to different styles (somewhat intentionally) that gives the entire episode something of an acid trip feel.
So, if you are a fan of the book (which I am) I give it a D, if you’ve never read the book I’d give it a C+
I’m not quite sure what the purpose of articles like this are. Do leftist types take solace in things like that?
There is no point other than to satisfy their itch to demonstrate how much better Europe is to the USA.
They seem to Europhile and Ameriphobe extra hard when there’s not a Democrat in office. Can’t imagine why.
That article seems to be saying that Le Pen – like Trump – would win the election based on the electoral college.
Gee, it’s almost like people in big cities tend to vote for the more “liberal” or “progressive” candidate but people in the rural regions don’t always agree. It’s almost like there’s some system in place so that candidates must win support from a broad cross-section of voters rather than just focusing all their efforts on a few large population centers. It’s almost like the whole country would be better off if more decisions were shifted from the national to the state or local (or better yet, individual) levels.
“White gunman with ‘a beer in one hand, a gun in the other’ opens fire on black pool party guests at luxury apartments”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4461560/Gunman-shot-opening-fire-wounding-people.html
Shit, he killed someone before the cops took him down. How evil is that?
Shit. Some fuckstick with a deathwish decides to take others with him and set race relations back another few years on his way out. Burn in hell.
Trump: ‘Why was there the Civil War?’
“”I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart,” Trump said during an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito….
“”People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?””
People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War?
Because Marvel needed a reason to bring all the threads of their franchise together?
Ha ha, but seriously, it’s hard to rebut alternate-history scenarios. It’s tough enough to figure out what actually *did* happen in the past, much less try and figure out what *might* have happened.
/shoots young artist Hitler anyways
https://xkcd.com/1063/
Would, but still looks old for 35?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4461870/Britney-Spears-shows-abs-skimpy-outfit.html
Plastic surgery. She looks like a man now.
Brit Spears?
Courageous!
I totally would. No homo.
It’s not the years, but the mileage.
The coworker changed the radio station from the blessedly no-DJ music rotation to some local rock station with a goddamn morning crew. Between celeb gossip and witless banter, they squeezed in a piece lauding Congress for avoiding a government shutdown. Because Planned Parenthood and national parks are fucking indispensable.
Brendan O’Neil may never be hired by Reason again after the heresy he posted in The Spectator:
By their own logic, feminists should support Marine Le Pen
But that’s different because marine Le Pen is simply trying to cash in on being related to a male politician…oops, never mind.
Does the intersectionality cult know that feminists think only women can menstruate, get pregnant, and give birth? Because I imagine that’s going to cause some dissention in the ranks.
You mean like Sarah Palin?
“misuse of feminism”
Feminism is only tolerable when they mobilize against actual abuses – and there are still plenty of abuses to mobilize against, but those don’t seem to be what fires up the feminist troops.
I’ve just been tasked with making the hyphens in the titles of our firmware release notes uniform. That’s why they pay me the big bucks, people!
Well I would file that under ‘things only a female biped mammal can handle’
*runs underneath hot rock*
Also, at least two of my colleagues answer the phone “this is her”.
Are they at least chicks?
At least, yeah.
Why not just write “All work and no play maks Jack a dull boy” several thousand times? It would be more fun.
Sorry, that was wrong of me. I should have said “makes Jill a dull girl.”
There, fixed it!
Add one after every letter and space.
So what are you going to do after the 5 mins writing the perl script?
perl?
*SLAP *
For quick script that involved text manipulation, hell yes, perl.
It’s, like, 10 documents. No Perl script, just simple typing on the keyboard.
Told ya that greasy dude was 100% trustworthy!
Totally subtle. I’m sure the ladies were totes impressed. He must be a PUA.
Raves are still a thing?
WHAT YEAR IS THIS?
The horror which is Trump, ch 843,612: LOOPHOLE!
Corporations are people, Mitt Romney once told us. But if the Trump administration’s tax plan were to become law, in the future a whole lot of people may just become corporations.
That’s because of a huge loophole implied by the broad tax ideas the administration recently released. Unless revised in actual legislation, the plan would give millions of Americans the opportunity to cut their taxes by essentially turning themselves into small business entities.
This mind-bending curiosity of the tax code could undermine the very idea of a job as we know it — or, arguably, accelerate a shift that has been underway for years.
The opportunity to game the system arises from the huge gap between the tax rate paid on individual income — up to 39.6 percent now, or 35 percent under the Trump plan — and the low rate on business income the president proposes, of 15 percent. He seeks to apply that rate to all businesses, including “pass-through” organizations such as limited liability companies and S corporations, and that is where the opportunity for games arises.
Somehow these people are baffled by the notion that differential tax rates are bad. They also think acting in your own self interest is un-American, apparently, but cannot see the benefit in removing incentives to “game the system”.
We’re DOOOOOOOMED.
Haven’t looked at it, but a couple things to keep in mind:
(1) Your business can make all the money it wants, but when you take it out to use yourself, you get taxed at the individual rate.
(2) The tax on pass-throughs is puzzling, and seems at first blush to be a huge hit on small businesses. The point of a pass-through is that the business itself doesn’t pay taxes; its income/losses are consolidated onto your individual tax return. Unless they are saying that your individual rate on pass-through income will be 15%, they are creating more of a double-taxation than a tax break.
re (1), yeah ignore my post below, nevermind.
re (2), the proposal is your final sentence, as I understand it. Pass-thru income would be taxed at 15% instead of your personal rate.
He seeks to apply that rate to all businesses, including “pass-through” organizations such as limited liability companies and S corporations, and that is where the opportunity for games arises.
Lets assume they didn’t change it for pass-thru entities. Then people would just organize as a C-corp to get the 15% rate. It would be painful, but would be worth it in many cases to save 20%+.
The smart play is to pitch them on a flat tax with no “loopholes” for “fat cats” to sneak through.
Watch them squirm.
I’ve tried that tack, and they invariably reply with something like “Rich people ALWAYS find loopholes in the tax code.” Which is rich coming from the Laws Are Magic crowd.
“Rich people ALWAYS find loopholes in the tax code.”
Here’s the complete passage from the bible of “progressivism”:
“Rich people ALWAYS find loopholes in the tax code, therefore we need to have a jungle of confusing and overlapping taxes along with an oppressive bureaucracy that has the power to destroy your finances for the rest of your life, because it’s better for 99 innocent people to get ass-raped in tax court than for one rich person to avoid a few dollars in taxes.”
For example, I am currently an employee of The New York Times, paid a salary every two weeks to write articles about economics.
A subject he demonstrably knows nothing about.
So he basically wants to turn this into Denmark. Isn’t that what they wanted as well?
He eventually gets around to it:
Whichever approach Congress might take to rein in some of the opportunities for exploitation that a 15 percent pass-through rate creates, there is a more fundamental issue at stake.
Simply put: The bigger the gap between the ordinary income tax rate and the tax on pass-through businesses, the more incentive that people — especially high-earning people — will have to find a way to game the system.
If the pass-through tax rate were set at 25 percent, the 28-percent-tax-bracket people wouldn’t have much incentive to try to play these games. (Farewell, Irwin Scribblings.) But the highest earners, who face a top income tax rate of 39.6 percent on millions of dollars, most certainly would.
“As long as you have differential rates, there will always be incentives to try to classify income in ways that take advantage of whichever rate is lower,” said Scott Greenberg, an analyst at the Tax Foundation.
It’s just not fair for people with millions at stake to minimize their tax bill. Just send it all to the IRS.
He’s still conflating the corporate tax rate and the individual/pass-through rate:
But if the tax code is changed to lower the
to 15 percent, from its current 35 percent, that creates a different fairness problem. Suddenly C corporations would have much lower tax rates than competitors that happen to be organized using pass-through structures, such as S corporations and limited liability companies.
Simply put: The bigger the gap between the ordinary income tax rate and the tax on pass-through businesses, the more incentive that people — especially high-earning people — will have to find a way to game the system.
There is no difference in the ordinary income tax rate and the tax on pass-through businesses. They are one and the same. Self-employed people also have to pay both sides of the “payroll” tax (self-employment tax), but that’s a separate issue.
It works like this:
Pass-through income: Shows up on your tax return as ordinary income. If you are self-employed (that is, don’t have an employer paying payroll taxes), you also get to pay the self-employment tax.
Corporate income: Show up on the corporation’s tax return. Any money you take out of the corporation shows up on your tax return as ordinary income. If you are self-employed, you still pay the self-employment tax. Cutting the corporate income rate saves the corporation money, but doesn’t affect your individual taxes at all.
Cutting the corporate rate may make a few changes at the margins (more people going C corp rather than S corp or LLC). C Corp basically makes more sense for bigger businesses, typically, but there will be a few scenarios where a lower corporate rate plus paying ordinary income taxes on what you take out is a better deal than paying ordinary income taxes on everything the company makes. This is business tax planning 101 – people have been running the numbers and deciding which approach makes more sense forever.
The big fallacy in the article is the idea that there is a “pass-through rate”. There isn’t. There is only your individual income tax rate which is applied to all your income, whether wages or pass-through income.
But there may be a “pass through rate” in the Trump tax plan, so it isn’t necessarily a fallacy going forward.
I gather that may be what is going on. Note, however, that anyone shifting from “C Corp employee” status to “pass-through income” status is going to pick up (directly) another 7 – 8% of payroll tax.
Sure, but if they are 100% owner of the C Corp, they are already paying that.
But, yes, if someone converts to contractor status, they would need to account for that. And for the employer subsidy of health care.
Unless they are saying that your individual rate on pass-through income will be 15%, they are creating more of a double-taxation than a tax break.
That is, I believe, the proposal. I seriously doubt it will ever see the light of day, because that would be just the same as the Treasury writing giant checks to rich people.
But there may be a “pass through rate” in the Trump tax plan, so it isn’t necessarily a fallacy going forward
That’s the issue. Suddenly evil rich people will be paying the corporate rate as individuals. If what are largely sole proprietor professionals and consultants/subcontractors/what-have-you incorporate they will suddenly be paying the infinitesimal corporate rate on their personal income.
1) Compute income on Schedule C.
2) Carry that number to 1040.
3) Pay 15% rate
4) INJUSTICE!
And you’re right, R C- he makes no distinction between corporations and the individuals employed by them. Jeff Immelt gets a paycheck, and pays tax on that income at the individual rate.
The smart play is to pitch them on a flat tax with no “loopholes” for “fat cats” to sneak through.
Watch them squirm.
I doubt much squirming would ensue. They couldn’t really give a fuck less about fairness. They just want to punish the successful.