(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
__
Dave Weigel at Slate brings news from the Heartland (Institute):
[My emphases.] Shorter R Street: Look, denying reality was fine as long as our funders were paying us more than we’d lose when the digestive byproduct hit the fan. But we can’t afford to base insurance calculations on wishful thinking — we’re operating as libertarians, for pete’s sake!On Friday, the libertarian, Chicago-based Heartland Institute made a routine-sounding announcement. It would “spin off its insurance research project effective May 31.” The D.C.-based Center on Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate would break off; its director, Eli Lehrer, would found some new project…
Today, the spin-off — dubbed the R Street Institute — sent out a statement from its spokesman, R.J. Lehmann. Most of it was boilerplate about how the team of six Heartland refugees would keep working on “much the same portfolio of issues we already have been.” Oh, one caveat:
There is one thing that will certainly change from ending our association with Heartland: R Street will not promote climate change skepticism.
The backstory is explained here by Lucia Graves. Heartland has been a locus of climate change skepticism for some time. It had been shedding some corporate support since debuting a billboard with a picture of the Unabomber and the slogan “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” Next week, Heartland will host its 7th climate change conference — typically, a haven for skeptics.
“Our project has never been engaged in climate science, per se, and there are no plans to begin working on that issue now,” said Lehmann. “However, we do work on catastrophe risk issues, and to the extent that climate risk is relevant to that topic, our intent is to take scientific consensus seriously, in advocating for public policy issues that relate to climate risk.”
An example? “Global warming is relevant to the risk of catastrophic floods,” said Lehmann. “It is relevant to crop losses from drought, and we see scientific consensus as suggesting those concerns must be taken seriously as we evaluate federal subsidies for flood insurance and crop insurance.”
Apart from noting the gradual trickle towards the final stage of Gandhi’s Aphorism (First they ignore you; then they mock you; eventually they fight you; then you win), what’s on the agenda for the evening?
scav
How catastrophic. The flood of money was drying up and the little bottom feeders had to move. Yup, evidence would suggest the climate is changing, but cockroaches live on.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Shorter R Street: Don’t you just hate it when Mother Nature rains on your Fail Parade?
__
Also, is it is just me, or does the name “Heartland Institute” come across as having chillingly Orwellian overtones?
Brachiator
Nothing much for me.
However, I note that a number of our tech staff received their copies of Diablo 3 this afternoon. We are taking bets on how many of them might call in sick tomorrow, or who will come in and fall asleep at his desk because he was playing the game all night long.
jl
First they ignore you; then they mock you; eventually they fight you; then they realize they will have to pay out ginormous insurance claims.
Maybe Heartland can restart their ‘infamous monsters for climate change’ billboard campaign with a pic of a property and casualty insurance exec next to Manson, or Hitler, or Genghis Khan, or whoever.
jl
“what’s on the agenda for the evening?”
Honky tonk music, hard likker, purdy wimmin, and a fast car to the county line.
That is, just the usual routine.
Edit: sorry, forgot ‘hell raisin'” after ‘purdy wimmin”. But maybe I will put hell raisin’ after hard liker, and have the purdy wimmin wait for me over the country line tonight. For a change of pace.
Spaghetti Lee
Man, who knew that Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and bin Laden were so worried about insurance costs?!
The Bearded Blogger
Boring ass work related cocktail/ceremony… want to skip it, don’t know how to pull it off…
The Bearded Blogger
Has there ever been a use of the phrase “per se” that was not part of a weasel worded excuse or retraction?
The Bearded Blogger
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: True, sounds like a detention center in V for Vendetta
the fugitive uterus
I need 7 t-shirts, different colors, that say “Who the fuck are these people??” Would save so much time and energy.
Brachiator
This is thoroughly depressing. Not sure if there has been a thread about it yet, doing some quick posting on the fly
Makes me think of the admonition of Justice Stevens:
and the stirring words of Harry Blackmun. On February 22, 1994, less than two months before announcing his retirement, Blackmun announced that he now saw the death penalty as always and in all circumstances unconstitutional by issuing a dissent from the Court’s refusal to hear a routine death penalty case (Callins v. Collins), declaring that
I confess that I used to think I could imagine circumstances where the death penalty might be just and reasonable.
No more.
realbtl
Early to bed for a 6:00 AM flight from Montana to Portland Maine for daughter’s 27th(!) birthday.
You parents ever notice how it takes a conscious effort to reprogram the old brain to picture you adult kids at their real age and not, in my case, the 6 year old in the soccer shorts that came to her knees?
gnomedad
R.J. Lehmann still believes denial costs you money in the real world. Do you?
MikeJ
@The Bearded Blogger:
Thomas Keller.
Randy P
@Brachiator: Unpossible. Didn’t some right wing blogger just state a couple of days ago that no innocent person has ever been executed?
chrome agnomen
@Brachiator:
dick cheney?
Brachiator
@Randy P:
The only thing worse was an argument I heard from a talk radio host: “he probably committed some other crime even if he was innocent of the one they executed him for.”
The Bearded Blogger
@chrome agnomen: I’d sentence him to look into the eyes of at least 100 of the orphans and widowers he has made, and also spent at least a week cleaning up oil from a beach.
driftglass
Being from Chicago, I am more than a little familiar with Heartland.
One clue as to where their heart is?
Before made their daily bread lying about climate science for Big Oil they made their daily bread lying about cigarettes for Big Tobacco.
Turns out, exactly the same fucking playbook.
Mark S.
Derrick Rose could be out for a year. Tough break for the Bulls.
Brachiator
@chrome agnomen:
Yep.
Linda Featheringill
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: #2
That’s where they take you for reeducation.
Mark S.
I don’t know, to me, Heartland Institute sounds like some think tank set up by Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts, maybe specializing in proving the Universe is only 6,000 years old or that the Founding Fathers were all fundamentalist Christians who were just joking about the separation of Church and State. It has such a cornpone ring to it.
piratedan
@Brachiator: come on now, how about all of those budding Einsteins and future GW Bushies that have been terminated in their embryonic state to further the life of some walking incubator who can’t keep an aspirin firmly in place between her knees when Daddy knocks on their bedroom door at night? This deciding on who lives and who dies stuff is getting decidedly complicated if you ask me.
bemused
@realbtl:
Not often. What we really like about having adult kids who live far away is visiting them. They plan the activities, play tour guides and just tell us to follow them. We love this role reversal.
Gravenstone
Tonight’s agenda? Barrelling headlong into at least 12 hours at work (and of course after a night of piss poor sleep). Trying to cajole a balky reactor to give me just 5 more degrees so I can maybe, possibly, hopefully drive this damned reaction to completion. I won’t say to completion in a timely manner, as that ship done sailed.
Off to procur another diet Dew…
ant
this one we’ll be hearing about: The abortion that Mitt doesn’t talk about anymore
Mike G
The definite sign that climate change is a highly probable phenomenon is that reinsurance companies have been building it into their risk models. Follow the money.
Reinsurance companies insure the insurance companies against long-tail, long-duration and catastrophic events and have billions of dollars at stake in making accurate predictions about the probability and risk of various climatic events in the next few decades.
As opposed to dirty industries whose self-interest is buying corrupt corporate-whore politicians and promoting obfuscation so as to free-ride and evade responsibility as much as possible.
tech98
@Linda Featheringill:
It sounds very Bush Administration, a dime-store flags-and-eagles shallow sentimental name to con the dullest of rubes. I’m surpirsed they didn’t call it the Freedom Institute.
currants
@realbtl: Yes. For some reason it’s particularly difficult when that kiddo is expecting her own. Cognitively it’s kind of…weird. Then again, it took me about 5 years to think of myself as someone’s mother, so maybe I’m just a slow learner.
currants
@MikeJ: Touché!
Poopyman
@tech98:
That one’s taken.
Cermet
As the saying goes – when money is at stake, they stop the bullshit. Need no more proof who the rubes are and how they are controled through their need for
dogI mean god, guns and stupiditykay
@ant:
I had never heard about that, which is amazing because Romney’s been running for President for 4 years.
I’m glad it’s a ProPublica reporter. They do excellent work.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
All one has to do is research an issue and not accept bullshit doctrine and things like, the death penalty, global warming, racism, misogyny, the arguments for them just fall apart. It boils down to not being a dick to your fellow man. Follow that one and this shit is easy.
Now doing that is seemingly a lot harder than it sounds.
danimal
My fantasy legislative strategy: Propose a law that defunds ALL planning, studying and preparations for climate change by the federal government, including DoD. Put the lying bastards on the spot. They don’t really believe in the bs they are spewing, so let’s make ’em squirm. The military, if it is to be remotely prepared for real-world contingencies, MUST understand climate change. Similarly, big businesses like insurance and agriculture need good information.
The denialists need to be exposed to sunlight. Pit Big Oil against Big Ag and Big Ins and Big War and let’s see if the GOP starts to get real.
El Cid
@Brachiator: Well, ya know, Carlos whatshisname probably did something illegal sometime, so, it all works out.
dmsilev
The same thing we do every evening, Anne, try to *take over the blog!*
Stuck in the Funhouse
Don’t know quite what to make of this, if anything.
On the one hand, who would expect a president to invest in a company he didn’t think was well run for a bank. On the other hand, getting personally involved as president with a bankster type doing bankster things, is not an ideal political situation, to put it mildly.
My guess is, the wingnut gears are madly turning to find a way to make political hay out of it. And I won’t be taking Obama advice on investments, if I had any money to invest.
Suffern ACE
@Stuck in the Funhouse: He wrote a best selling book and the money needs to go somewhere. In 2008 that would have been jpmc, who were the major bank that was at least three degrees solvent. Although if I were his hometown Northern Trust id feel sad.
Mnemosyne
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
So what bank would have been preferable? Bank of America? Wells Fargo? Is the president supposed to stuff his money in a mattress rather than appear to support a bank?
I guess “private banking” sounds ominous to someone who never uses a bank, but even my smallish regional bank offers it, so it can’t be that unusual.
ETA: To be clear, I’m directing my sarcasm more at the imagined right-wingers who will be running with this than at you. I’m sure Erick Erickson will be telling us which bankster-free bank his money is at, right?
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Suffern ACE:
This is true, though in the heat of a POTUS election, he might do better keeping his cash in the WH bedsprings, till it’s all over.
Villago Delenda Est
@danimal:
They do, and they’re preparing contingency plans even now, regardless of what the wingtards and Darth Cheney’s cronies in the Awl Bidness think.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Mnemosyne:
My grand pappy kept all his cash buried in holes around the farm, with his moonshine jugs, strategically deployed so my teetotalling granny wouldn’t find em. He hated banks and revenuers with equal passion.
Spaghetti Lee
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
Actually, some commenter here brought this up yesterday. If you look at the quote in context, Obama’s saying that JPM’s one of the best managed banks and they still fucked up. No one’s immune from fucking up, which is why we need (drumroll), stronger banking laws. So it’s not like he just decided to wake up one day and praise JP Morgan coincidentally right after they lost $2 Billion dollars, which is how the media seems to be taking it.
As for Obama keeping his money there, well, it’s his dough. Me, I use a credit union.
lacp
@Stuck in the Funhouse: I’m guessing that the 20 or so visits Dimon has made to the White House under the current administration have nothing to do with the President’s account. I don’t think CEOs provide that kind of financial management.
Steeplejack
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
That ship sailed with “Homeland Security.”
Litlebritdifrnt
I was thinking about the unemployment situation today, just to keep my mind off the brief me and the boss have to file in Fed Court tomorrow. Anyhoo, it occurs to me as much as POTUS was derided because of his comments about bank tellers, but what other jobs have simply disappeared thanks to current technology? One of the first that came to mind was how many people were employed at Blockbuster and other video stores all over the nation? We had at least ten video stores here in my town and we now have one, a lone Blockbuster that is holding on. Another one was bookstores, our Booksamillion closed down last year as well as a bookstore in the Mall and another one, thanks to Amazon I suppose, we now just have a Barnes and Noble and a used bookstore. So what other businesses and jobs went the way of the Do Do thanks to technology in the last ten years or so? I do not mean jobs that were shipped overseas, I mean jobs that were previously done by people that are now done by some other means.
Mnemosyne
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
Don’t worry, I’m sure that Clime Acts or mclaren will be here any minute to tell us all that the fact that Obama keeps his money in A BANK is a clear sign of him being completely beholden to the banksters, because obviously only someone like that would put money in a bank account.
And, as Spaghetti Lee said, a whole lot of people seem to think that Obama was somehow defending JP Morgan with that quote when he was pretty obviously saying that if even a good bank like JP Morgan could get in trouble under the current rules, there is a problem with the current rules. It’s a call for stronger rules, not a call for JP Morgan to get a free pass.
Suffern ACE
@Litlebritdifrnt: Film developers. Not the guys at Pharmacy, but the lab and the one hour photo stores.
Mnemosyne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Don’t forget consolidation. The LA area used to have three big department store chains: Bullocks, The May Company and Robinsons. All three got bought out by Macys, which closed a lot of those stores. Not only that, but jobs all up and down the line got eliminated, from the clerks who worked in the stores to the companies that manufactured the clothes for the stores’ “private collections” to the newspaper advertising clerks who used to be able to place three competing ads in every paper but now have only one client.
Jay C
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
Of course the wingers will try to “make hay” over the Obamas’ JPMC account: but if recent history is any guide, it will end up most resembling the hay after it has departed the cow: it’s a goddam checking account! Where’s the scandal? Michelle got a free microwave for opening it??
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: I believe Yves Smith will need to check into a hospital over this. A private bank specializes in large account and is where I would expect his money would go as they have the expertise in setting up things like blind trusts, which is what he would have needed to set up. He did not invest in JP morgan. He put his investments there. Or more likely, put his money there and told them to invest it.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Mnemosyne:
The plague of murky derivatives trading seems still to be with us.
@Jay C:
Obama has done it before. Making lemonade out of trumped up perceptions of current events. He could say ok!, to the wingers, put your legislation where your mouth is, and let’s fix the gaping holes in regulating hedge funds, derivatives, and all the other get rich quick schemes on Wall Street. I bet they are working as we speak, to do just that.
gogol's wife
@ant:
That is an amazing story. Will anyone pay attention?
Suffern ACE
@Litlebritdifrnt: My other reply is in moderation. Anyway, film developers, both at the mail in lab and the one hour photo store.
joes527
@Stuck in the Funhouse: Who puts “between $500,001 and $1,000,000” in a checking account?
I guess I just don’t run with the cool kids.
ant
@gogol’s wife:
That reporter did a good job of putting together a narrative IMO.
I’m too young to have any kind of context to what things were like pre row v wade. So it’s kind of eye opening to read that stuff for me.
Canuckistani Tom
@Brachiator:
We’ll see, Blizzard has been having server problems all day.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
I think it’s a money market or other interest-deriving account that you’re allowed to write checks from. I have one at my bank in addition to my regular checking and regular savings accounts, but my balance is probably about 0.0001% of what the Obamas have in theirs.
If you’re wondering why someone would need to write a very large check like that, the tuition at Sidwell Friends is $34K a year, and both girls attend. For large once-a-year stuff like that, it’s easier to have a separate account to write checks like that from than to transfer money out of the investment account into the regular checking account (which is probably at a different bank since money market accounts have rules about how many checks you can write per quarter).
ETA: I’m pretty broke, but my parents have money, so I know secondhand how this stuff works.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@joes527:
Maybe I’ll write a best selling book and have that kind of cash to fret over where to put it. Something like “War and Peas, the Travails of General Stuck” or maybe, “Stuck Up the Down Nutcase”?
Mnemosyne
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
I was wondering what your new nom de plume would be. I think I like it.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Mnemosyne:
Well, we have an election coming up, so it’s time to bring out the best bottle of nonsense for the occasion
The prophet Nostradumbass
Diablo 3 is on the agenda this evening, if the servers can stay up.
Ash Can
The Obamas ain’t poor — at this point, anyway — and Chase has strong Chicago ties, having taken over what was, in effect, the First National Bank of Chicago. In addition, Chase did seem to avoid much of the all-in fucked-up stupidity of a few years ago. On top of everything, I believe Jamie Dimon is a Chicagoan himself.
If this were happening against a backdrop of chronic malfeasance on Obama’s part, I’d consider it more of the same. As it is, I don’t consider it much of a skeleton (unless a whole lot more bones turn up, which I doubt).
jeffreyw
Fixing to haul Mrs J back up to the big city to see her bone doctor. We are expecting them to give her the OK to start putting weight on the leg. Will use the opportunity to test drive Google Navigate with the new Android tablet, and will stop by a damn good butcher shop on the way back to stock up on ham and their fabulous smoked hocks.
joes527
@Mnemosyne: Dude. You totally padded that tuition amount. It only costs that much if you go for the hot lunch option.
Amir Khalid
To everyone who chimed in yesterday on my laptop problem, terima kasih. It seems to be an overheating problem, after all. I spent RM15 (US$5) on a cooling platform with three fans. The laptop now runs a lot cooler and faster, and no longer shuts down when I play videos.
The bank account at JP Morgan doesn’t seem like much of an issue to me. The Obamas have money and they put it in a bank. Shrug. When the President starts saying, “Hey, cut JP Morgan some slack here”, then you can let the outrage flow.
Groucho48
I’ve seen, over the last few months, a fair number of right wing trolls switch from “man-made Global Warming???Hahahahahahaha! Hippie freak!”, to “No one is saying there isn’t warming, it is the hysterical doom and gloom of the global warming folks that is turning us off.”
In other words, “Okay, guess we have to believe in it, but, that doesn’t mean we have to do something about it.”
In a few years, that will morph to…”Reasonable people always wanted to take prudent steps to deal with the warming, but, the ideological big government left wing wackos would only consider socialist solutions. So, it is all THEIR fault that we are in the trouble we are in” If they had only listened to US, Manhattan wouldn’t be under 6 feet of water. Not that that isn’t a good thing.”
gaz
thepiratebay.se is down now =(
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack:
Or, as I like to call it, the Heimatsicherheitshauptamt
Everything is better in the original German.
AA+ Bonds
This shit works in high-level business because those people are inhuman monsters, spin something off and say OH IT’S TOTALLY DIFFERENT so everyone can keep the grift moving
amk
Guess the presager who wrote this. No cigar for the winners.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah LOL no problem with that statement or anything
I realize JP Morgan has played well with the state maybe 25% of the time but capitalists are capitalists and they are all fucked and every time it turns out that they are fucked in exactly the way everyone should know they are, so many people are still like WHA HAPPEN, DIDN’T THESE GUYS BUY BEAR STEARNS FOR NOTHING LIKE GOOD LITTLE FUCKS
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
Too easy. The Powder Blue Satan Wanker of the Decade.
Villago Delenda Est
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Those servers are being pounded. It’s even washed over onto Azeroth, in that some folks are having problems logging in (everyone logs into battle.net, then they’re handed over to their game’s server farm).
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Prezactly.
I figured that out when I first read his comments, but then again, I’m smarter than the average firebagger.
Suzanne Holland
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yup, most frighteningly Orwellian overtones….scary!
Bubblegum Tate
@danimal:
Well, here’s the weasel routine they often do, and would do to get out of that one: “I can accept that the planet is warming, but humans have nothing whatsoever to do with it. It’s just the Earth’s natural warming and cooling cycle.”
Spaghetti Lee
@Bubblegum Tate:
My own response to that is “So?” Seriously, does that mean we’re not going to do anything about it, or even make it worse, because the root of the problem is natural and not manmade?
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’ve always thought so.. rim/shot
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Yes, let’s focus on the part of the statement where Obama says something vaguely nice about JP Morgan and completely ignore the part where he calls for STRONGER REGULATION.
Can’t keep up our anti-Obama credentials without distorting everything he says until you can claim he said the opposite of what he actually said, amirite?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Litlebritdifrnt: Jobs that are gone for good?
I have an old friend who works for a printing company who is in a race to retire before they shut down. Thank Kindle etc. for that one.
Going back a decade or so: Drafters, typists, word processors, receptionists.
Mnemosyne
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
Receptionists still exist, but the job is more “front door greeter” than “phone call director.”
Switchboard operator is the real dead-and-gone job, but that’s been gone since voicemail came in.
Anne Laurie
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: One of my contemporaries trained as a linotype operator. Speaking of extinct occupations…
Mart
European re-insurers started changing weather disaster models about fifteen years ago. After several years of being mowed down by global weather disasters, there was a big pull back in their capacity this year. Trouble for US companies is decision makers are mostly old white men who watch Fox News and listen to Rush everyday. I have wondered when the reality of the balance sheet would flip the discussion.