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It is. All foreign steel is bullshit, and has been for a long time. The head of Kobe Steel recently stepped down because their scandal got so bad as more and more was revealed.

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

The worst part is that Obama's administration, working with the RINO who shall not be named, knowingly purchased massive quantities of shoddy, cut rate foreign steel for use in the US military in order to secure those kickbacks. This is why steel and steel-containing products are on Trump's hit list for tariffs.

Why would anyone target The NRA? Seems really suspicious.

Maybe because they oppose net neutrality?
https://www.reuters.com/articl...

Elon can do no wrong.

He is wrong about this. Steel tariffs in retaliation for China's car tariffs make no sense. Less than 3% of steel imported into America comes from China. So 97% of the "punishment" is collateral damage against our neighbors and allies. The biggest exporter of steel to America is Canada, followed by Brazil and South Korea. China is #10.

Top steel exporters to the US

The U.S. government is, by some measures, the most violent government on earth. United States taxpayers pay for more than 740 U.S. military bases and offices.

The effect of the U.S. government's invasion of Iraq was destroy the Iraq government, so that there could be more war. Now Iraq is no longer a managed country, and is destroyed as a society.

U.S. taxpayers pay "... expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest".

Some people want to kill other people. If you are a U.S. citizen, are you comfortable taking money from your bank account to pay for killing other people and destroying their property? Some of the money that is taken from you is taken using inflation.

The founders of Google are Jews. Some Jews like the fact that the U.S. government defends Israel, and those who aren't Jews pay most of the cost. That is a pro-Jewish comment: It helps people understand one of the ways in which the Jewish culture is self-destructive. Maybe that understanding will help people of the Jewish culture stop being self-destructive.

Yup, they've agreed to peak emissions 'around 2030'

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

BEIJING, Nov 14 (Reuters) - China's total volume of carbon emissions is set to rise by a third in the next 16 years, according to scholars from China's Tsinghua University, even as the world's biggest carbon polluter has pledged the climate-warming gas emissions will peak by 2030.

China's president Xi Jinping announced this week that the country would strive to bring its spiralling carbon emissions to a peak by "around 2030" as part of a joint commitment with the United States to combat global warming.

What the fuck are you trying to do, distract from the "progressive" Socialist government of Venezuela running the country with the largest oil reserves on Earth into a poverty-stricken hell-hole with massive starvation?

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year and almost 90 percent now live in poverty, according to a new university study on the impact of a devastating economic crisis and food shortages.

The annual survey, published on Wednesday by three universities, is one of the most closely-followed assessments of Venezuelans’ well being amid a government information vacuum and shows a steady rise in poverty and hunger in recent years.

Over 60 percent of Venezuelans surveyed said that during the previous three months they had woken up hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food. About a quarter of the population was eating two or less meals a day, the study showed.

Last year, the three universities found that Venezuelans said they had lost an average of 8 kilograms during 2016. This time, the study’s dozen investigators surveyed 6,168 Venezuelans between the ages of 20 and 65 across the country of 30 million people.

...

Are we now waking up to the realities of socialism, kiddies?

Wages in the US are now going up after 8 years of Obama "recovery".

Black unemployment is at an all-time low - a mere year after Obama's "recovery" ended and a real recovery started.

But, hey, you can always tout the Socialist weight-loss program! Venezuelans have lost an average of 20 lbs each under Chavez and Maduro! Yeah, if you're a kid under 20 lbs, you probably starved to death, but PROGRESS!!!!

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

With more than three killings per hour, Venezuela last year was the worldâ(TM)s second most murderous nation after El Salvador, a local crime monitoring group said. The homicide rate in Caracas alone was a staggering 140 per 100,000 people, according to the group, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence.

Authorities say nongovernmental groups inflate figures to create paranoia and tarnish the government, but even so the most recent official national murder rate - 58 per 100,000 inhabitants for 2015 - was still among the worldâ(TM)s highest.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion...

The Venezuelan government stopped publishing comprehensive crime data more than a decade ago, and the discrepancies between what authorities say and data released by independent organizations are extreme.

For instance, local officials announced that 17,778 Venezuelans were victims of homicide in 2015. But the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a nongovernmental group, estimated that there were 27,875 murders that year, which would make Venezuela's homicide rate one of the highest in the world, at 90 killings per 100,000 residents. The group found that the rate climbed higher in 2016, to 92 per 100,000.

Venezuela's capital, Caracas, was proclaimed the most violent city in the world last year by the Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, a Mexican research group that tallies an annual index of the world's most violent cities. The homicide rate supposedly topped 119 per 100,000 residents, the group said. But there are no official statistics to support the claim and, predictably, the Venezuelan government has denied it.

One reason for the data discrepancies is that the Venezuelan government has excluded extrajudicial killings from its homicide count, while human rights groups such as violence observatory do not. Also, the government has traditionally relied on statistics gathered by the Ministry of Health, while the observatory combines this health data with unofficial information about so-called resistance deaths attributed to state security forces and other deaths being investigated by independent forensics agencies.

In the absence of concrete and comprehensive statistics, some groups are attempting to gather oblique data on Venezuela's crime wave. Our organization commissioned a study on perceptions of violence from the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University. Early data indicate that 6 out of 10 Venezuelans reported at least one murder in their neighborhood over the previous 12 months. By way of comparison, only 3.5 out of 10 respondents said the same in El Salvador and Honduras, considered the two most violent countries in the world.

The public opinion project survey also found that 80% of Venezuelans are "very" or "partly" afraid of being murdered in the coming year. This fear of violence is fueling a migration crisis as Venezuelans flee to Brazil and Colombia.

There are many causes of the spiraling homicide problem in Venezuela. Political and economic crises have undermined the legitimacy of institutions. The military and police have been largely discredited. State security agencies are said to both commit and ignore lethal violence. Impunity is rife and the cost of murder low, with an estimated 92% of homicides not resulting in a conviction. And gang violence has soared in the capital city.

But without solid statistics, Venezuela has little chance of slowing the crime wave anytime soon. It is next to impossible to make effective public policy without reliable data. Over the last decade, Venezuela has implemented no less than a dozen anti-crime initiatives, with no visible results to

>I don't see any indication that Apple is any less likely to mine and sell user data than Google. What gives you that feeling?

Well, I agree it's rather difficult to perceive the difference, but here are a few things that may point towards this conclusion:

- Apple: makes money from selling you hardware; they don't really need your data, since they already made their money off you. Google: makes money from selling your information to ad companies; grabbing as much of your data as they can is the core of their business model.
- Apple: blocks trackers from their browser. Google: blocks other companies' ads in their browser, while expanding their tracking of you.
- Apple: doesn't track you over multiple web sites, nor does it buy credit card transaction data from banks. Google: does.
- Apple: has blocked its own ad team from using customer data collected via iTunes. Google: you got to be kidding me

The summary is the article, nigh verbatim:

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

The three suppliers who spoke to Bloomberg estimated Congo’s artisanal output at 10,000 to 20,000 tons last year.

Congo’s Ministry of Mines estimates 86,923 tons of cobalt was produced last year. There are no exact data on how much of that cobalt is produced at artisanal mines, but the figure is about 13,000 tons higher than the output reported by the country’s industrial operators and published by the chamber of mines this month.

Two-thirds of the world’s supply comes from Congo

Math: ((10000 + 20000) / 2) / (86923 / (2/3)) = 11,5% of the world supply from artisinal mines.

Most artisinal mines are just villages digging their own land to try to get some extra income to lift themselves out of the country's crippling poverty (as the wealth from the big mines has failed to trickle down to ordinary people). But some percentage of artisinal mines will be abusive; call that fraction P. So P * 0,115 = will be the fraction of the global supply that is troublesome and needs to be dealt with. Dealing with it, however, is difficult when there's so much profit to be had by unscrupulous suppliers slipping artisinal cobalt into their supply streams.

Of course, it's not present production that matters. It's future production. Where's that coming from? In the short term, there will be even more from the DRC - albeit in new large mines. Katanga just reopened. 2018 production is anticipated at 11k tonnes per year, and 34k tonnes per year in 2019. Also, Metalkol will start production late this year, ramping up to 14k tonnes per year by 2019.

In the longer term, however production looks to be moving away from the DRC. While cobalt deposits are crazy-abundant in the DRC (cobalt prices could fall to near zero and they'd still produce it as a byproduct of their copper production), today's prices support production all over the world. Eg., in Australia the Skoni project will start in the 2020s, while among the many plays in Canada, First Cobalt is the most interest (near the aptly named town of Cobalt). But it's not just new mines; a lot will be from adding secondary recovery streams to existing mines, like the $500M Vale nickel mine at Voisey’s Bay. Cobalt can be found pretty much everywhere that nickel and copper can be found , but most mines haven't bothered recovering it because of how cheaply it's been coming out of the DRC. But while that will meet short-term demand, the long term is to focus more on mining "cobalt for cobalt's sake", rather than simply as a byproduct. And that'll be the case until the supply curve catches up with the demand curve and prices slack off.

Even mines right "next door" to the Tesla Gigafactory, like Lovelock mine in Nevada, may be opening in a couple years. It's a boom time for the cobalt market.

The three suppliers who spoke to Bloomberg estimated Congo’s artisanal output at 10,000 to 20,000 tons last year.

Congo’s Ministry of Mines estimates 86,923 tons of cobalt was produced last year. There are no exact data on how much of that cobalt is produced at artisanal mines, but the figure is about 13,000 tons higher than the output reported by the country’s industrial operators and published by the chamber of mines this month.

Two-thirds of the world’s supply comes from Congo

Math: ((10000 + 20000) / 2) / (86923 / (2/3)) = 11,5% of the world supply from artisinal mines.

Most artisinal mines are just villages digging their own land to try to get some extra income to lift themselves out of the country's crippling poverty (as the wealth from the big mines has failed to trickle down to ordinary people). But some percentage of artisinal mines will be abusive; call that fraction P. So P * 0,115 = will be the fraction of the global supply that is troublesome and needs to be dealt with. Dealing with it, however, is difficult when there's so much profit to be had by unscrupulous suppliers slipping artisinal cobalt into their supply streams.

Of course, it's not present production that matters. It's future production. Where's that coming from? In the short term, there will be even more from the DRC - albeit in new large mines. Katanga just reopened. 2018 production is anticipated at 11k tonnes per year, and 34k tonnes per year in 2019. Also, Metalkol will start production late this year, ramping up to 14k tonnes per year by 2019.

In the longer term, however production looks to be moving away from the DRC. While cobalt deposits are crazy-abundant in the DRC (cobalt prices could fall to near zero and they'd still produce it as a byproduct of their copper production), today's prices support production all over the world. Eg., in Australia the Skoni project will start in the 2020s, while among the many plays in Canada, First Cobalt is the most interest (near the aptly named town of Cobalt). But it's not just new mines; a lot will be from adding secondary recovery streams to existing mines, like the $500M Vale nickel mine at Voisey’s Bay. Cobalt can be found pretty much everywhere that nickel and copper can be found , but most mines haven't bothered recovering it because of how cheaply it's been coming out of the DRC. But while that will meet short-term demand, the long term is to focus more on mining "cobalt for cobalt's sake", rather than simply as a byproduct. And that'll be the case until the supply curve catches up with the demand curve and prices slack off.

Even mines right "next door" to the Tesla Gigafactory, like Lovelock mine in Nevada, may be opening in a couple years. It's a boom time for the cobalt market.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/...

In response to an April 29, 2011, Wall Street Journal article, calling on President Obama to explain the NLRB lawsuit against Boeing, NLRB attorney Jayme Sophir issues a one word email response on May 2, 2011, to NLRB attorney Debra Willen, Division of Advice: âoeUgh.â

She was appointed by Obama

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

An Obama administration holdover at the National Labor Relations Board recommended last year that a case accusing President Donald Trumpâ(TM)s businesses and presidential campaign of requiring workers to sign unlawful confidentiality agreements be dismissed, according to a memo released this week.

Associate General Counsel Jayme Sophir in an advice memo dated Oct. 31, 2017 said there was no evidence that the agreements were ever enforced, and the law firm that brought the case, Weinberg Roger & Rosenfeld, did not file it on behalf of any employees of the Trump Organization Inc or the campaign.

I think it's safe to assume Sophir is a left winger.

Article here

https://www.wsj.com/articles/S...

It's paywalled, but you can read it here

http://archive.is/1pp1R

South Carolina is a right-to-work state, and we're proud that within our borders workers cannot be required to join a labor union as a condition of employment. We don't need unions playing middlemen between our companies and our employees. We don't want them forcefully inserted into our promising business climate. And we will not stand for them intimidating South Carolinians.

That is apparently too much for President Obama and his union-beholden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, who have asked the courts to intervene and force Boeing to stop production in South Carolina. The NLRB wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state, where its workers must belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Let's be clear: Boeing is a great corporate citizen in Washington and in South Carolina. The company chose to come to our state because the cost of doing business is low, our job training and work force are strong, and our ports are tremendous. The fact that we are a right-to-work state is an added bonus.

The actions by the NLRB are nothing less than a direct assault on the 22 right-to-work states across America. They are also an unprecedented attack on an iconic American company that is being told by the federal governmentâ"which seems to regard its authority as endlessâ"where and how to build airplanes.

The president has been silent since his hand-selected NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who has not yet been confirmed by the United States Senate as required by law, chose to engage in economic warfare on behalf of the unions last week.

While silence in this case can be assumed to mean consent, President Obama's silence is not acceptableâ"not to me, and certainly not to the millions of South Carolinians who are rightly aghast at the thought of the greatest economic development success our state has seen in decades being ripped away by federal bureaucrats who appear to be little more than union puppets.

Basically Nikki Haley criticised the Obama admin for taking Boeing to court over setting up shop in a 'right to work' state where workers don't have to join a union..

Presumably her reaction to Damore's memo was a similarly visceral 'Ugh'.

So it's not surprising she's decided that the labor rules she's so keen on defending don't appl

Every daylight savings time heart attacks increase by 25%, car crashes increase by 17% (2.75 billion cost over 10 yrs). The only reason people do daylight savings time anymore is because we've been doing it for so long we don't question it anymore. It never saved any daylight, I think a study after world war II showed the policy barely had its intended effect (increased productivity, energy savings) and came with a whole host of unintended consequences. For the love of god we need to quit this idiotic experiment!

Unfortunately at this point there are established interests that want to keep it going. Starbucks knows they get more business when the clocks change, and would resist any proposed law to get rid of daylight savings time. There are dozens of other companies in a similar situation. sources: https://www.reuters.com/articl... http://www.telegram.com/articl...

It is now illegal again to form a class action against equifax, or even to bring suit yourself, no matter how negligent they are or whatever they do no matter how criminal. You are forced into a one sided "arbitration" that is anything but an arbitration. The solution to this is to vote everyone responsible out of office.

This revelation comes just as it appears that the investigation of Equifax is being put on ice and that the head of the CFPB thinks that his job included protecting the banks.

They should have pushed out this news last Friday or Monday when the market news would have buried it.

110010001000 inquired:

Why is Google taking an equity stake in a company that promotes such a toxic workplace?

to which stephanruby responded:

This could be a way to ensure that Travis Kalanick and his co-founders cannot take back control of the company.

Right now, they still have way too many shares.

From TFS:

Uber will pay Waymo a 0.34 percent equity stake

One third of one percent of Uber's total outstanding shares isn't going to prevent Kalanick and his co-founders from doing anything.

So, no, that's not it, at all ...

This could be a way to ensure that Travis Kalanick and his co-founders cannot take back control of the company.

Right now, they still have way too many shares.

.34 percent is not nearly enough to have any say in what goes on.

Why is Google taking an equity stake in a company that promotes such a toxic workplace?

This could be a way to ensure that Travis Kalanick and his co-founders cannot take back control of the company.

Right now, they still have way too many shares.

Why should network bother paying for high profile shows with good production values when they can get more net profit out of scripted reality shows that cost less than a board dinner? Yes, you could get better ratings for the expensive shows, but the difference in ratings is so small that you still net more money with slightly lower ad revenue but considerably lower programming cost.

A few months ago, the head of a big German TV network called his core target audience "a little fat, a little poor" in a telco with shareholders and got fire... I mean, it was suggested to him to reorient himself employment-wise. Even though it's true. Everyone who does give a shit what's on TV did already dump "old school" TV networks in favor or Netflix, Amazon and whatever other streaming services exist. What's left as the viewers of classic TV networks is those that are too lazy or too poor to pull the plug and watch those shows they want to see when they want to see them.

During the course of the investigation, the FBI recorded Sporyshev and Podobnyy speaking inside the SVR’s offices in New York, known as the “Residentura.” The FBI obtained the recordings after Sporyshev attempted to recruit an FBI undercover employee (“UCE-1”), who was posing as an analyst from a New York-based energy company.

That undercover employee ("UCE-1") was Carter Page. He was the primary witness and worked for the FBI up to May of 2016.
But then, suddenly, in October of 2016, the FBI applies for a Title 1 FISA application against Carter Page. What is a Title 1 FISA? It says the target "is working on behalf of a foreign government". Why???
Let me tell you why! A Title 1 FISA allows the FBI to retroactively monitor all communications of not just the target, but ANYONE he communicated with as well!
The FISA warrant was an excuse that allowed the Obama WH to spy on Donald Trump's entire team.

SCOTUS upheld federal law permitting mandatory arbitration, which trumps state law

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

They'll have to wrestle the Mexican drug cartel's money laundering operations from HSBC's cold dead hands first: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

Russia also is an active economic and diplomatic partner of North Korea. And that includes Internet connectivity.

There was no easing and the meeting where the sanctions were discussed were a bust, as reported by everyone there.

Trump has blocked sanctions at every turn. They were passed by the House with only 3 members voting no and passed by the Senate 98-2. Trump missed the first deadline, in October, to apply the sanctions and has now missed the second deadline, as of Monday of this week.

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

This was a law that Trump himself signed because Congress had a veto-proof majority. He is in direct contravention of the law.

This reuters article suggests that they want to build a national 5G network, but not that they want to take over networks built by private carriers.

I'd like to see a 5G speed network built that is just a dumb pipe for IP. Then, they could use the same security for VOIP as is used with the wired internet. What's the point to a 5G "cellular telephone" network? The bandwidth is overkill for voice. If they just provide a dumb pipe, secure data communication is as solved a problem as anything they're going to come up with. The big problem is the name. I'm sure Trump won't want to put money towards anything with "Dumb" in the name.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk...

http://volokh.com/2013/05/03/l...

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...

https://www.theguardian.com/la...

https://www.cnet.com/news/lond...

https://www.amren.com/news/201...

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

https://www.thenewamerican.com...

No, not at all. The characters were clearly shown as a bunch of evil assholes at best. They were filmed no differently than the typical mobster family movie except in nicer suits.

If you thought hose characters were being portrayed heroically there may be little to no hope for you.

Oh right.. you want us to wave away accuracy in the portrayal of capitalist sharks and stay on the conservative message that someday they'll trickle down on us.

Crumbs, right?

From Fedex?

From Starbucks?

From Home Depot?

There are more crumbs coming, too:

IMF raises global growth forecast, sees Trump tax boost

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund on Monday revised up its forecast for world economic growth in 2018 and 2019, saying sweeping U.S. tax cuts were likely to boost investment in the world’s largest economy and help its main trading partners.

Why don't you tell us all how the wonderful Five Year Plans the Soviet Union uses to centralize their economy and run it along socialist lines is going to leave use capitalist fools behind.

And can you imagine if a country with the huge oil reserves went all-out socialist! It would be a paradise. Too bad a country like Venezuela won't ever be taken over by a socialist who remakes its entire economy on socialist lines! Can you imagine how that would turn out? With all that oil to fuel a Socialist Paradise!

WHAT FUCKING COLOR IS THE SKY ON YOUR PLANET WHERE YOU BELIEVE SOCIALISM IS BETTER THAN FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM?!?!? STARVING PEOPLE IN VENEZUELA DOESN'T MAKE YOU REEXAMINE YOUR SHELTERED BELIEFS?!!?!?!?!

ARE YOU THAT FUCKING INDOCTRINATED?!?!?

You wanna know how I know you're a rabid, ill-educated conservatard?

1) You want to disagree and sound smart about whatever so you post a link as "evidence". As per conservatard rules though, you didn't even fucking read it. It was even in the second phrase of the first goddamned sentence. A straw man argument is changing the subject. What argument did the second poster replace and then attack from the first poster? The argument is still government limiting your choice. At best you might argue false equivalency but even then you'll have to prove those aren't equal.

Good Lord you're pathetic, too.

GP poster equated allowing someone the choice to buy a phone with non-replaceable battery with a company deliberately mislabeling rat poison in order to kill people.

Not only is that a straw man, you're a straw man, too. From the Wizard of Oz.

If you only had a brain!

2) You're a hypocrite. You play the logical fallacy card and then immediately use an ad hominem which is probably the most well known of the logical fallacies. The louder you conservatards scream about something, the more the rest of us know you're guilty of doing that exact thing.

Calling an idiot an idiot doesn't make the idiots argument a good one.

He's still an idiot.

Like you, who is unable to see the difference between allowing someone to buy a phone without a replaceable battery and fraudulently selling poison as food.

Calling you dumb as a post is an insult to wood.

3) You view the "left" side of anything as the inferior hence the line "My left shoe is smarter than you are" which is your attempt at an ironic insult. This is an old religious thing about the sinister and all that bullshit. Jews and Muslims also love throwing shoes as insults. So not only do I know you're a conservatard, but you're an old fucker as well. Surprise surprise.

Lame conservatard is lame

Oh, read this, you moron:

IMF raises global growth forecast, sees Trump tax boost

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund on Monday revised up its forecast for world economic growth in 2018 and 2019, saying sweeping U.S. tax cuts were likely to boost investment in the world’s largest economy and help its main trading partners.

That's gotta hurt a progtard like you after a community organizer stagnated the entire US economy for eight fucking years because he was so intent on "remaking the US economy" and following Venezuela's example of FWEE STUFFZZZ!!!

Add in some fixes to the income gap as well. CEO's in Sweden only make low 7 digits, any more and they are criticized. Stateside, many CEO's make 8 and 9 digit salaries. Not to mention stock options and other nonsense they get. I'd love to see a law that states "A CEO cannot earn more than n times his/her employees average salary". Even better if 'n' were 15, and instead of average it were lowest salary. Give the low-level worker bees a living wage and invest that CEO wallet padding into productivity somewhere.

You can figure with corporate overhead, insurance, lights/power/water and such for a typical worker you're looking at *actual cost* for an employee is 3x their salary. You *could* cut Alphabet's CEO's salary to $100M/yr and afford to pay a whole corporation of 300 people $100k/year including that huge factor of overhead. Realistically it'd be more like 600 folks at $100k a year (assuming 50% overhead instead of 200%). Does one person really contribute that much more than 600 to earn such a crazy high salary?

Well, no wonder. From 3 years ago:

Russian researchers expose breakthrough in U.S. spying program

The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.

Stuxnet, the hard drive firmware exploits, last year the upload of malware from a NSA developer, and others discoveries of state developed spyware have definitely made KL and other Russian based software companies targets to be hurt economically.

The rise of contract labor versus permanent employment has been an ongoing issue globally, ranging from Canada to France to Japan and even India. There are differences and nuances market by market, but a lot of it comes down to employers demanding workforce flexibility in the face of uncertainty, competition, and plenty of desperate underemployed people. France is a case where labor regulations are so tight, that contract labor is an easy loophole. Maybe the only place that this trend is beginning to reverse is in Japan, but that's simply because their labor force is rapidly shrinking.

> coal, oil, and nuclear companies certainly didn't in the previous administration.

B.S. They subsidized all of those industries with loan guarantees and billions in direct subsidies to pay for research (and building plants) for reducing environmental impacts such as clean coal. Loan guarantees on the Alaska pipeline, relaxing rules on coal companies (allowing them to self bond on reclamation costs, that will now have to be done through a superfund spending by the government when they are finally bankrupted.) The Obama administration allowed several coal companies to settle debts in bankruptcy, to keep the mines active, that went against federal law. They also used tons of resources on cleanup (such as deepwater horizon) much of which was never paid back.

Also for nuclear:U.S. offers Vogtle nuclear plant $3.7 billion in loan guarantees

Apparently North Korea makes "vinalon" out of coal and limestone. Kim Il Sung called it "Juche Fiber". According to a defector "Almost no one" wears it. There is some speculation that a vinalon plant in NK is making rocket fuel for its missile program.

Special Report: The fabulous story of North Korea's fabric made of stone

remember who to thank when we have to pay

Why would we have to pay anything? It's on Apple. And other companies...

Apple alone is paying $38 billion in taxes to bring cash back to the US.

And (in the article) it notes Apple plans to spend over $350 billion in the U.S. over the next five years thanks to all of the cash it can bring back. All of that spending will also be taxed... along with the 200k employees Apple plans to hire.

Apple is not the only company in this same boat, many others have stashed funds overseas waiting until the taxes were low enough to bring back cash. So that is vast sums freed for spending in the U.S. which again will bring in a Yuge amount of tax revenue.

It's not "Free money". It's "Freed Money". It's been liberated from the cellar, allowed to see the light of day and explore the world at last, where it can finally do some good.

Of course you could cite credible sources and prove your case.

Credile source #1

Among that group of employees, only those who have worked for Walmart for 20 years or more will get the full $1,000, Walmart told Business Insider.

Credible source #2

The bonuses will be determined by an employee's length of service. Those workers with more than 20 years of experience will qualify to receive the full $1,000. However, workers with less than two years of experience will receive $200, a Walmart spokesman told CNBC.

Credible source #3

A one-time bonus benefiting all eligible full and part-time hourly associates in the U.S. The amount of the bonus will be based on length of service, with associates with at least 20 years qualifying for $1,000. A discrete one-time charge will be taken in the fourth quarter of the current year to account for the bonus; qualification will be determined before the end of the month and payments will be paid as quickly as practical thereafter.

As to the difference between the income of those laid off and the bonuses, this article cites the bonuses will cost $400 million. This article says 9,400 people are being let go during the layoffs. Simple math shows $400 million/9,400 = 42,553. If we assume those being laid off made that much in salary and benefits, then after one year, the amount of money saved by laying off those people will dwarf the one-time bonus amount.

All it takes is google and searching for "xyz Layoffs"

AT&T: http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Comcast: http://www.newsweek.com/comcas...
Wal-mart: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

I have not seen JetBlue, but the others, yes.

Oops... it seems there was no relaunch of Google Maps in China:

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

The name you're looking for is Nghia Hoang Pho.

Per that article, he is the third person in the last two years to be charged for illegally removing classified information from NSA facilities.

cost of oil, coal and such is dictated at the moment by market factors - what kind of money can you get by selling it. basically what this means is that if demand goes down they can sell it for cheaper than they are selling it at now.

For a decade or two this may be true of Saudi surface oil (where Jed Clampet and a squirrel rifle drill a deep enough to strike oil), but it isn't true for frack oil where you have to figure in the cost of the sand and it isn't true for Canadian shale-oil where you have to figure in the energy cost of separation and transportation and already it isn't true for North Sea oil and it's doubtful that it will be true for deepwater wells in the Arctic or Gulf of Mexico or other places even if you can ignore the cost of environmental damage and human lives lost. In fact oil Energy Return On Investment (EROI) has been decreasing to from 2000:1 in 1919 to 5:1 in 2007. In fact, just as whales became more and more difficult to harvest as we approached peak whale oil in 1845, we are approaching the point where every drop of oil takes more energy and blood to extract.

“For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles. Not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.” -- Herman Melville (Moby Dick 1851)

So much bluster and outrage, so little clue.

"A former U.S. National Security Agency employee pleaded guilty on Friday to illegally taking classified information outside the spy agency that an intelligence official said was later stolen from his home computer by Russian hackers.

[Nghia Hoang] Pho, a 67-year-old U.S. citizen born in Vietnam, faces up to 10 years in prison. He is not being held by authorities as he awaits his sentencing, which is scheduled for April 6, 2018, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore."

Twat.

Oh, I don't know about that. $400,000 isn't exactly chump change. Besides . . .

U.S. blames North Korea for 'WannaCry' cyber attack

Any bets this is who is behind it?

Kim Digs for Cybercrime Coin Sanctions Can’t Snatch

And is that leading to this?

South Korea plans to ban cryptocurrency trading, rattles market

anti-ISIS "rebels" *cough* Al Qaeda *cough* CIA...

drones to here, guns to there
Money! Money! Everywhere! (this from almost two years ago) Tell me truthfully, is anybody really surprised why they're still around?

Oh, the twisted web...

The links you gave were false. More precisely the information in them was wrong.
21 of 58 reactors are offline: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

Biomass releases the exact same amount of CO2 regardless if it is burned in a power plant or left rotting on a field. How stupid are you?

The American Petroleum Institute, in particular its members Exxon and Chevron, have been funding denial and manufacturing doubt ever since their own scientists told them of the risks of continued fossil fuel use back in the 80s (here is an empirical study describing their efforts to deny and deliberately misrepresent climate science findings, including from their own scientists).

And the reason fossil fuels appeared as cheap as they did was because the huge emission and pollution costs were being borne by the public, rather than the industry. If these externalised costs were factored in, the price of coal-fired electricity would triple (study) - and the RoI for investment in alternatives like renewables or nuclear would have been much larger. Likewise, the health and other external costs of oil exceeded $56 billion annually back in 2005, adding at least 23 to 38 cents per gallon (again without including climate costs).

External costs are a market failure. Regulation is one option to correct that failure, but it's not the only possible option. Feel free to choose a solution that fits your political preferences, but ignoring or hand-waving away the problem won't make it go away. You'll still be paying for it, with excessive health premiums, illnesses and lost productivity, and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths every year.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who have forgotten or misplaced crucial passwords to encrypted disks on their PCs, passwords that have been typed in and therefore (in the paranoid world) have also been logged to XKeyscore databases or compromised with similar eavesdropping technology by various governments around the world. There's a fairly clear social demand for accessing one's own data, and given that all these eavesdropping programs are common knowledge now denying access in order to keep the programs secret seems pointless.

Note to self - cryptsetup luksAddKey is a very good idea, maybe use that next time.

From the article:

“We face an enormous and increasing number of cases that rely heavily, if not exclusively, on electronic evidence,” Wray told an audience of FBI agents, international law enforcement representatives and private sector cyber professionals.

This is obviously a very dangerous situation, given that there are literally dozens of ways people's PC:s and other electronic devices are compromised these days, both via hardware and software. Perhaps you think you are safe - to which I'd reply you are likely poorly informed (start by reading up on XKeyscore and the related eavesdropping programs). So if you allow cases to be decided on solely "electronic" evidence, many innocent persons who have been tricked, "pranked" or otherwise attacked will be victimized. A related issue is that there's a risk of silent repressive actions against persons based on mere suspicions from surveillance data or simply personal rivalry, feuds or revenge for real or imagined reasons. Tragical examples of this can be found in the literature.

With Sarsbane-Oxley passed years ago, not a single CEO has been held accountable.

But, many CFOs have been, and while ,there isn't evidence that CEOs have been charged:

it forces corporations to be more vigilant about financial reporting at all levels, which is likely one of the reasons there have been few accounting scandals at major public corporations since Sarbanes-Oxley took effect. In that regard, the law is doing what it’s supposed to, encouraging accountability and deterring fraud.

Yet, this is ANOTHER case where the CEO SHOULD be an MUST be held accountable for allowing their company to produce a clear and dangerous product deficency.

Maybe, but no under SOX, as SOX covers fraud, not product deficiencies that haven't been proven to be knowingly fraudulent.

However, this is why I don't use proprietary NAS systems. If I wanted vulnerabilities in code I don't control to affect the security of my data, I would much rather use a public cloud, whose entire business is data security, than appliances from a disk vendor for whom this is a side business, supposedly trading on the insecurity of the cloud and punting the security of their device "because not cloud" where it's still effectively someone else's computer (running code I can't look at).

Then why are Christian bakers forced to make cakes and pay damages to couples for same-sex marriages ?

Aren't Christian Bakers privately owned ?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oregon-lgbt/oregon-appeals-court-upholds-damages-in-gay-wedding-cake-case-idUSKBN1EN01V

mmmmh ?