Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Giving up is unforgivable.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

How stupid are these people?

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Come on, man.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

In my day, never was longer.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night QFT Open Thread: “Trump’s GOP, Party of Corruption”

Late Night QFT Open Thread: “Trump’s GOP, Party of Corruption”

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Tina Nguyen, at Vanity Fair — “In the witch-hunt era, a criminal indictment has become a mark of pride for Republicans”:

If there’s anyone who can sympathize with Rep. Chris Collins, the first congressman to support Donald Trump, who is currently facing indictment for insider trading, it’s Michael Grimm. “He’s going to have a really, really difficult emotional time,” the retired Republican congressman, who was himself indicted on 20 counts of various crimes, told The New York Times on Thursday, when asked what he’d say to Collins. “He’s going to have to swallow every bit of it. And smile.” He went on, “Washington, as long as you’re riding high, they want to be your friend. And when you’re not, they don’t want to be anywhere near you. . . . And whether he knows it or not, a lot of Washington is going to look at him as a pariah.”

They might also look at him as unelectable, a realistic concern in a potential wave election that threatens to wipe out the Republican hold on Congress, particularly if Collins refuses to bow out of the race. But fear not, Grimm said—he himself had done what Collins aspires to do, running for re-election under indictment in 2012, and winning…“If I were him, I would double down on the president needing us,” Grimm suggested….

But could anyone in the Serious Grown-Up Business-Friendly Party actually defend stock market fraud?

Heeerrre comes MCARGLEBARGLE!

To be fair — to the Washington Post, who paid her this time — McArdle eventually gets around to explaining that, well, insider trading might be offensive, but it’s really all the fault of Government Overregulation:

… It’s surprisingly hard to pin down an actual harm from insider trading. And yet we have a stubborn intuition that it ought to be illegal because it just doesn’t seem fair. That’s a reasonable response: Insiders such as the sons of congressmen and board members should have to take the same losses as anyone else on speculative investments.

There is no evident problem with confidence in the markets today, but there is an obvious problem with confidence in our institutions. That’s the harm of insider trading — and all sorts of other self-dealing, self-interested practices by networks of folks with cultural, economic or political power. Occupational licensing, building restrictions that make it impossible for disadvantaged families to gain access to better schools, professional networks and degree requirements that help “people like us” climb the ladder into the best jobs — all of these look, from the outside, like more insider trading. They’re also often defended by people who regard the allegations against Chris Collins with horror…

Look, regulations only serve to encourage law-breaking, knowhutimean? As J.P. Morgan said, during our first Gilded Age, “Anything not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry loose, was not nailed down.” It’s not the plundering, it’s the nails!

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  1. 1.

    The Midnight Lurker

    So… according to the pink Himalayan salt lady; insider trading is a victimless crime and we should overlook it?

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    Oh my god, this is awesome:

    Question: If person uses Ivy League education/prestige to acquire and serially deploy a series of glib verbal tricks to hold space in the public square that might otherwise be open to voices that are more interesting, challenging or morally substantial is this a victimless crime? – Josh Marshall

  3. 3.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    If I were him, I would double down on the president needing us

    This is so cult-like and unAmerican. And these stupid fucks (his supporters) refuse to address any criticisms of Trump. In one breath they’ll tell you they’ll call Trump out when he does something wrong and deflect with Hitlery’s emails when given an example of unpresidential conduct (like Helsinki) in the next. It’s exasperating.

  8. 8.

    Steve in the ATL

    Can we please get a thread to discuss the unlimited awesomeness of Elon Musk and how all the h8ers should suck it?

    TIA!

  10. 10.

    Kraux Pas

    If I were him, I would double down on the president needing us

    This is so cult-like and unAmerican.

    A true patriot knows that ensuring the wight people stay in power is more important than our system of law.

  14. 14.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @khead: Same here. But I remain one of those simple, stupid son-of-bitches that still believe there are greater rewards.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    I can’t be arsed to go look, but I’ll bet that McArdle was a strong proponent of Theranos.

  17. 17.

    chopper

    we’ve gone from “so what about collusion?” to “is insider trading really all that bad?” in like a week. we’ll be back to “well, how is ‘treason’ really defined?’ in a few days, maybe followed by “is it really all that bad for a guy like trump to be sexually attracted to his daughter?”

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @HumboldtBlue: I know the name, just looked him up and the face doesn’t look familiar. So I’ve likely read something of his, but as far as I know, I’ve not met him. Why do you ask?

  20. 20.

    James E Powell

    @dmsilev:

    Quite a few people who really should have known better bought what Elizabeth Holmes was selling. It amazes me that people with the resources to check out her preposterous story did not do so.

  21. 21.

    Kraux Pas

    we’ve gone from “so what about collusion?” to “is insider trading really all that bad?” in like a week.

    Providing pseudo-intellectual cover for the strong to exploit the weak is half the other Republican platform, the other half being plausible deniability for racism.

  25. 25.

    lamh36

    Goodness…ya’ll.

    Jeez….I’m watching the live performances from Aretha Franklin on YouTube..and I’m already emotional…I’m gonna cry…I swear…I hope I”m not somewhere important if I had to hear any bad news……I might be a wreck.

    I mean I was a upset about Prince, but this…this is like my grandmother or my great auntie…those were the woman in my life who loved her and why I love so much of her classics!

    So it reminds me of those I’ve lost who loved her. So yeah, this may hit me harder than I thought it would.

    Ya know what I mean?

    Lord…let me go to bed

    Aretha Franklin – Amazing Grace
    https://youtu.be/SlTQJzZwBSY

  29. 29.

    TS (the original)

    In the age of trump – white collar crime is gone – just the boys taking what someone else once had. And some poor sot is in jail for stealing a pkt of chewing gum.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    This got kind of lost in the last thread, so repeating here (emphasis added).

    New archaeological research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that Homo erectus, an extinct species of primitive humans, went extinct in part because they were ‘lazy’.
    [snip]
    “Not only were they lazy, but they were also very conservative,” Dr Shipton said. Source

    If you read the whole thing, it’s a thesis that does, in its own way, hold water. Conservatism as a contributory factor to extinction during climate change is certainly not a far-fetched proposition in today’s milieu.

  42. 42.

    SFAW

    For some stupid reason, I was under the impression that McArgleBargle was some type of capitalist. You know, one of those persons who believes in efficiency of the market, level playing fields, no playing favorites by those in power, things like that.

    Then I remembered that she is (or was) an “Objectivist” — or so one would assume from her former “Jane Galt” persona — and that any Venn-like intersection of Randian “thought” and true capitalism is probably just a rounding error, or perhaps a misunderstanding, or more likely: veeblefetzer.

    Or, as a wise man once said (and continues to say):

    Fuckem

  43. 43.

    Kraux Pas

    @SFAW:

    For some stupid reason, I was under the impression that McArgleBargle was some type of capitalist. You know, one of those persons who believes in efficiency of the market, level playing fields, no playing favorites by those in power, things like that.

    A truly free market operates with no rules.

  44. 44.

    Raoul

    I may be starting to warm up to the idea of tumbrils.

    When the noblesse have completely given up on the oblige, we can reciprocate, right?

  49. 49.

    dmsilev

    @SFAW: Probably referring to Chris Collins, the Republican Congressman whose arrest triggered this subject.

    I can’t blame you for forgetting; that was a whole week ago, so there have been approximately 3,453 Republican scandals in the interim.

  51. 51.

    dmsilev

    @The Midnight Lurker:

    I guess we’re bringing back Phrenology then?

    I’ve always been a fan of Terry Pratchett’s idea of retrophrenology. Figure out what personality traits you want to instill in someone, and shape the lumps on their head accordingly. With the aid of a large hammer.

  52. 52.

    burnspbesq

    @trollhattan:

    “Free Martha, Free Martha, Free Martha, Free Martha, Free Martha, Free Martha!”

    If a lawyer as good as John Savarese can’t keep you out of jail, there’s a pretty good chance you belong there.

  53. 53.

    Mary G

    I have been off the tubes since the morning, but has anyone mentioned Seb Gorka’s fake homemade Fox News business cards yet?

  57. 57.

    Corner Stone

    Man. If only I had a Recent Comments feature to let me know where someone had posted something…sigh.

  58. 58.

    efgoldman

    @Amir Khalid:

    This has to be a parody.

    I saw it on my late-nite teevee machine. Actually asking for money or charge cards,
    ‘Fraid not

    [ETA: Fucking nym didn’t last 10 fucking seconds]

  63. 63.

    AnotherBruce

    Fuck off and die Kornacky, that 50 candidates piece you did was pure bullshit. So 50 Democratic House candidates are fucked up by right wing framing and want Nancy Pelosi gone. 50 candidates is one in less than one in 8 of the candidates running for congress, but no mention of the candidates who support Pelosi, Go over to Fox News and fuck yourself, you piece of shit.

  67. 67.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @chopper: “in a few days, maybe followed by “is it really all that bad for a guy like trump to be sexually attracted to his daughter?”” You mean so sexually attracted to his daughter Trump had his daughter’s husband murdered. With the suggestion Jared was at fault for being happily married and Jared should have know that would attracted haters.

  74. 74.

    Yarrow

    @Corner Stone: It’s fantastic. Has to be one of my favorite threads in recent weeks. The cray just doesn’t stop. I’m sure the very next multi-paragraph comment will convince us that St. E of the House of M is a really great guy!

  75. 75.

    jl

    McArdle doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and completely botched the argument.
    For those interested, you can read the real economic efficiency arguments for and against different types of insider trading, presented in fairly straightforward English, in
    Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners Paperback – 2002 by Larry Harris, Oxford Univ Press.

    Harris is very very pro free unregulated market, and he can’t quite bring himself to come down on the side of much more hedged and more cautious arguments in favor of much less blatant insider trading. An honest argument really has to start by admitting that, yeah, the party with less info got cheated, but that the indirect benefits of somehow outweigh the losses.
    Maybe the instructions of McArdles paymasters include making white collar criminal feel better about themselves. They certainly don’t include making any sense, common or otherwise.

  80. 80.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Yarrow: I gotta admit, going back over and reading, t’s …. amazing. Just *amazing*. Some choice stuff, really, comin’ from Elon’s PR guy.

  84. 84.

    jl

    McArdle’s attempt to tie insider trading to inefficiency from professional licensing don’t make a lick of sense. If she has the slighted idea what she is talking about, it doesn’t show. As far as I can see, what they both have in common is that McArdle thinks she can outrage the libs with two bad arguments in one column.

    My cynical hypothesis is that, like Brooks, her paymasters tell what she should put in these columns whenever the GOP is in a tight spot and some bogus hot counterintuitive takes would be helpful, for purely instrumental political reasons. Or, her thought processes could be close to random. I dunno.

  85. 85.

    Chetan Murthy

    That Tbogg unit thread: “Bess” has never heard of the site Slashdot. O tempora, O mores!

  87. 87.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Yarrow: IKR. But then again, it’s the perfect pose for a sealion: “Jes’ folks here, folks who love their Elon!”

  88. 88.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Yarrow:
    Holy shit. I check out before all that happened. I suppose it’s sort of my fault since I directly called out Musk for being an overpromising, egotistical glibtarian in the first place.

  91. 91.

    Mandalay

    Nobody could have predicted that Tom Collins would want to prevent prisoners getting Pell Grants….

    Obama’s support of providing Pell Grants for prisoners reignited the long-standing “tough on crime” versus rehabilitation debate. For example, in 2015 Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) sponsored the Restoring Education and Learning Act of 2015 to permanently lift the 1994 Pell Grant ban. In response, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), and Rep. Tom Reed (R-CA) introduced the 2015 Kids Before Cons Act, which would have banned the Department of Education from providing Pell Grants to prisoners.

    Millionaire Collins takes FYIGM to a whole new level. While embracing tax cuts for the top 0.1%, he also busts his balls to make sure prisoners can’t get financial aid to educate themselves. His nauseating bill is called the Kids Before Cons Act.

    Christ I hope they send this scumbag to the slammer. He’s 50% greed and 50% spite. He is vile beyond words.

  92. 92.

    Fair Economist

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    I suppose it’s sort of my fault since I directly called out [he-who-must-not-be-named] for being an overpromising, egotistical glibtarian in the first place.

    Shhhhh, you’ll summon the demon!

    Maybe we need a nickname for Mr. ElectricCarsAndReusableRockets, like referring to a certain politician as “Wilmer”. Any suggestions?

    P.S. For all his flaws, I am happy he’s pushed a number of the fields he’s worked on forwards. Disclaimer: my husband has a reservation on a Model 3 and we have Solar City on the roof.

  93. 93.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Fair Economist:
    Yeah, I really appreciate what he’s trying to do with SpaceX even though I’d prefer NASA was better funded and leading the way again wrt space travel. It’s incredible that his company has developed reusable rockets that can land on a pad.

    And colonizing Mars isn’t a bad idea in and of itself. It’s just terraforming isn’t possible right now and any hypothetical colonies within the next century would need to be either essentially shielded, sealed, climate controlled domes or the sealed habitats underground. Supplies would need to be regularly shipped from Earth until the colonies were self-sufficient. As The Martian showed, the low gravity would be the biggest hurdle to survival on Mars if the shielding could be perfected.

  95. 95.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    And colonizing Mars isn’t a bad idea in and of itself.

    Uh, *cough*. Mars lacks a magnetosphere. This means that (nearly all) Earth life can’t survive there without massive shielding (cosmic rays). Here’s a link: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/real-martians-how-to-protect-astronauts-from-space-radiation-on-mars

    and the takeaway is that this is an area of active research, but for sure, we got nuthin’ today. You might remember that astronauts are suffering rates of heart damage far in excess of the normal population: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/apollo-astronauts-much-more-likely-die-heart-disease

    So: if Elon really believes in a Mars colony, he should put his money where his mouth is, and build a sealed, underground Earth colony, run it continuously and see how well it works. Oh snap! We tried something like that — Biosphere — and it was a colossal failure, b/c we didn’t understand how to run an ecology (and still don’t): http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/bio3/2000projects/carroll_d_walker_e/whatwentwrong.html

    He could start with that. But it wouldn’t be sexy, would it? It wouldn’t give him what he needs — which is eye candy to distract is fans. Feh.

  96. 96.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: Going on about terraforming Mars: EVEN IF we discount the lack of a magnetosphere (so any atmosphere we build up, will get stripped away), Mars lacks enough water and other volatiles on the surface. Maybe we could do something to the rock in the crust, who knows …. but again, that’s all completely unknown, and so, again, not something you can base a -plan- on.

    But the lack of a magnetosphere means Mars is a dead planet — any atmosphere we put up there, we’d have to maintain at enormous energetic expense, b/c the solar wind would be constantly stripping it away.

  97. 97.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    And colonizing Mars isn’t a bad idea in and of itself.

    Colonising Mars is a terrible idea. The environment is so hostile that it makes as much sense to colonise the Moon, which is only 3 days away rather than 200. The Antarctic plateau is a tropical paradise compared to Mars.

    It looks like there aren’t even enough volatiles left on Mars to make up a useful atmosphere. You would have to drop several thousand city sized comets and/or asteroids before you could even start terraforming. A process that would probably take thousands of years on its own.

    If you really want to go into space, try hollowed out asteroids or shielded space stations. Although first you have genetically engineer humans to survive long term in zero G, if that’s at all possible.

  99. 99.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Although first you have genetically engineer humans to survive long term in zero G, if that’s at all possible.

    You don’t. All you have to do is somehow make a station that can rotate at the correct rate, which will create centrifugal forces to simulate gravity. Far easier than terraforming Mars or genetically engineering humans to survive in zero g.

    @Chetan Murthy:
    I’m aware Mars lacks a magnetosphere. I don’t expect Mars to be colonized for hundreds if not thousands of years into the future. I think by that point, perhaps our understanding of ecosystems will have advanced to the point necessary to make underground colonies work. Perhaps terraforming will also be a possibility in that time as well.

  100. 100.

    PJ

    @Amir Khalid: Somewhere you mentioned thinking about buying a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I’ve had one for over 20 years, and have had no maintenance issues with it (I did replace the stock 6L6 tubes with an Electro-Harmonix pair early on to get a better tone.) I’m not a big fan of the tone of the drive/more drive channels (it’s ok for soloing depending on context, but doesn’t have the kind of crunch I like for rhythm), but the clean channel is excellent.

  102. 102.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    I don’t expect [X to happen] for hundreds if not thousands of years into the future.

    This is the equivalent of saying “maybe someday X will happen”. Periodically columnists will write retrospectives on some “world of tomorrow” article from 20, 40, 60, 100 years ago. And uniformly, those articles fail to predict what happened, and what didn’t happen. Humans are bad at predicting, and especially about the future (as one wag put it). I know of only two instances where people have made predictions out 20+ years, and gotten them right: transistor density (Moore’s Law) and density/packaging of rotating disks. Everywhere else, people have failed over and over.

    I’m not trying to be an Eeyore here. But necessity is NOT NECESSARILY the mother of invention. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sure, terraforming Mars would be great. So would working fusion power. So would a Bussard ramjet. So would warp drive. But me, I keep my wishes reasonable. I want a pony.

    Look: right now, an astronaut on a round-trip to Mars, would accumulate so much tissue damage from radiation, he’d be a dead man walking. Here’s a link about “space brain”: https://news.uci.edu/2016/10/10/mars-bound-astronauts-face-chronic-dementia-risk-from-galactic-cosmic-ray-exposure/

  103. 103.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Chetan Murthy:

    This is the equivalent of saying “maybe someday X will happen”.

    That’s essentially my point. Maybe it will happen, maybe not. Nobody can really predict the future, as you mentioned.

  105. 105.

    sgrAstar

    @NotMax: OOooooooh. Homo erectus on Balloon Juice! H. Erectus may have been lazy, but their artifacts have been found far beyond ancestral Africa, from Britain to Southeast Asia and a zillion points in between. Their type artifact was the beautiful Acheulean handaxe. When I was studying this stuff as an undergrad, I was absolutely captivated by the longevity of H. Erectus (~ 1.7 my) and the apparent stasis of their material culture. They had one idea, and it repeated for hundreds of thousands of years. Lazy? Perhaps. Or maybe they were just in perfect synchrony with their environment. As that environment finally began to change, they were unable to adapt. Nonetheless, they were the most successful hominids of all time in terms of sheer duration and geographic extent…and the handaxes are magnificent. Google Images has tons of beautiful examples. I find the endless iterating of their one technological Big Idea just endlessly fascinating. Ok…end of paleolithic pontificating!

  106. 106.

    Barney

    That Vanity Fair article was very sloppy – it claimed Grimm won his primary “by 10 points”, linking to a poll before it that gave him a lead of 10 points. But he actually lost the primary by 28 points. That does paint the “advice from someone in his position” in a different light.

  108. 108.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    All you have to do is somehow make a station that can rotate at the correct rate

    That’s probably easy for condo sized space structures, but spinning megastructures or asteroids brings a whole new set of structural problems.

  109. 109.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @NotMax:

    Homo erectus, an extinct species of primitive humans

    Who says they are extinct? How else do you explain MAGAts?

  110. 110.

    NobodySpecial

    Aerostat habitats on Venus are your best extrasolar chance. 50 km up, it’s earth normal temps and a highly concentrated CO2 atmosphere. Much easier to create and maintain atmosphere.

  111. 111.

    Amir Khalid

    @PJ:
    Steve in the ATL mentioned his HRD. I was actually saying that I can’t justify the expense of a valve amp; a Hot Rod Deluxe is twice the purchase price of a Champion 100 or more, and that’s before the former’s maintenance costs. I lean towards digital amps for when I upgrade from my Champion 20. I like having a choice of a dozen amp voicings, and an onboard suite of effects which I can supplement with my cheap multi-effects pedal. I’m fine with near-enough simulated tone rather than the real thing.

  112. 112.

    evodevo

    @NotMax: Hmmm …maybe it was just a lazy contingent on the Arabian peninsula …’cause Homo erectus colonized the whole Eurasian continent. Their remains have been found as far east as Java and China, AND their species lasted for ~ a million years – ours has only existed for ~300,000 AND we are their descendants (probably). I think this is just a case of Aussie envy lol

  113. 113.

    The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    Don’t know how to link on the mobile site, and don’t know if this kind of guitar porn is your thing, but I do customized bodies. Check out Tongues of Flame Studios on Facebook.

  116. 116.

    chopper

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    if you want to be farther than the moon, a station at a lagrange point makes just as much sense as mars does. at least you could replicate more earth-like gravity then.

    mars is a dump.

  119. 119.

    Another Scott

    @chopper: I’m sure the geologists would have a field visit of a lifetime if they got to visit Valles Marineris:

    The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth’s Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Recently, several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The above mosaic was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1970s.

    Yeah, fixing our own bed so that humanity can survive another 1000 years or so is worth a lot more than working to put a semi-permanent population on another planet – especially Mars.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  120. 120.

    Martin

    It’s surprisingly hard to pin down an actual harm from insider trading.

    Actually, it’s surprisingly easy to pin down actual harm if you accept the very basic tenets of capitalism and supply and demand of fungible commodities. If nothing else you would assume glibertarian assholes would at least try and preserve that, but no, they insist on defining libertarianism to be indistinguishable from anarchy. But it’s hard to keep your gig writing shitty economics if you’re branded an anarchist.

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