Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: The Friends of Enrique Tarrio

Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: The Friends of Enrique Tarrio

by | 232 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: The Friends of Enrique Tarrio
 


Unpaywalled (gift) link:

… Roger Stone is one of Trump’s oldest advisers, having not only encouraged him to run for president in 2016 but also advocated that he do so more than once previously. Stone, alongside his partner Paul Manafort (whom Stone encouraged Trump to hire on his 2016 campaign), was for decades a fixture in D.C., where he gained — and fostered — a reputation for being cutthroat.

… By early 2018, Stone, joined by Tarrio, had sworn fealty to “Western chauvinism” in keeping with the Proud Boys tradition. When Stone traveled to Oregon that March, he brought the Proud Boys with him. In May 2018, Proud Boys joined Stone in the green room of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. A few months later, Stone offered a message of support that the Proud Boys shared on their website.

As Trump’s reelection bid gained steam, so did Tarrio and the Proud Boys. Tarrio became the Florida state director of Latinos for Trump. He appeared at several Republican Party events, landing photos with prominent Trumpworld figures including Donald Trump Jr.

Meanwhile, the activities of his organization, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reported, had become “strongly correlated with the fortunes of former president Trump.” Of the 150-plus events in which Proud Boys had a public presence in 2020, ACLED tallied, nearly two-thirds were explicitly supportive of Trump’s reelection.

Most of those events came after Trump failed to repudiate the Proud Boys during a presidential debate. Moderator Chris Wallace asked if Trump — who had been hyperactively demanding Joe Biden disown left-wing violence — would do the same of extremists on the right by asking them to stand down. Trump asked whom he should address, and Biden suggested the Proud Boys.

“Proud Boys,” Trump said: “stand back and stand by.”…

When Trump subsequently lost the election, the Proud Boys stepped forward. In both November and December 2020, D.C. hosted pro-Trump protests that devolved into violence involving members of the Proud Boys. The December events in particular are noteworthy. Stone spoke to the crowd, conferring briefly with Tarrio at the scene. Tarrio managed to post a photo from the White House, something the Trump administration said was a function of his participating in a public tour. He also ripped a Black Lives Matter flag off a church and set it on fire — leading to his arrest when he arrived in Washington on Jan. 4, 2021, for the protest at the Capitol…

Internal Proud Boys messages offered a preview of the group’s approach to the day. On Jan. 4, Tarrio sent an internal group a voice message, including one bit of advice: “You want to storm the Capitol.” A bit later, another participant in the group wondered “what would they do [if] 1 million patriots stormed and took the capital building. Shoot into the crowd? I think not.”

Proud Boys — though not Tarrio, given his Jan. 4 arrest — were among the first people to attack police officers on Capitol Hill the day of the riot and to make entry into the building. Afterward, they celebrated…

On Thursday, Tarrio and three other members of the Proud Boys were convicted on federal charges of seditious conspiracy, plotting to use force to halt the finalization of the 2020 presidential electoral vote count. They aren’t the first to be convicted on such charges; that dubious honor goes to members of the Oath Keepers.

Tarrio’s conviction, though, also does something else: It brings a sedition conviction much closer to Trump’s inner circle. This wasn’t a random Trump fan caught up in the day’s fervor. It wasn’t even an extremist plotting with his allies to disrupt Congress. It was a friend of a friend, someone who’d tried to intertwine the White House with the fringe — with some success.

He now faces up to 20 years in prison.

Reader Interactions

232Comments

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Is it just me or are the Proud Boys a particularly weird subset of right wing wacko?

  4. 4.

    Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride

    @Omnes Omnibus: I just found out that they’ve been doing their latest thing a few blocks from my house.  A small queer-owned shop that recently opened has been sponsoring Drag Queen Story Hours, and the local Proud Boys have faithfully showed up to do whatever it is they do at such events.  If they’re trying to pick fights, apparently it hasn’t worked.

  5. 5.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I believe they are the definition of fuck around and find out.

    Weird? Well people that know that what they want the country to be can only be gained by violence to me says YES, they are that definition. Because they know that most people do not want what they want. Or anything close. They are the subset of humanity that is defined by the words – shitty fucking humans.

  6. 6.

    kalakal

    I hope they become the poster boys for lock the door and throw away the key.

    Treasonous scum

  7. 7.

    bbleh

    @Omnes Omnibus: Are they unusually weird though?  Aren’t they just a prominent manifestation of the arrested (ha) male emotional development characteristic of MAGA?  The whole macho affect, the faux-military play, the violence, even the name.  I see a dozen surly, paunchy white men in trucks just like ’em every day, and that’s without looking.

  9. 9.

    Geminid

    I read that federal prosecutors have asked that Oathkeepers leader Stewart Rhodes be given a 25 year sentence for his role in the attempted insurrection. That’s another group Roger Stone was tight with.

  11. 11.

    M31

    the only good thing about Trump not being in jail is that these punks get to sit in their cells contemplating the fact that he’s sitting on his gold plated toilet and they’re in the slammer

    I don’t support Trump not being in jail, mind you

  12. 12.

    SpaceUnit

    @Baud:

    Agree.  That Royal Family crap was making me sick.

     

    His Majesty the King has farted!  Huzzah!  Christ.

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    Reposted from downstairs.  This thread is more relevant:

    Look at that, the DOJ is “doing something.”

    I posted last night about the latest J6 defendant convicted and sentenced yesterday For 14 years in prison It is the longest prison sentence so far.

    Yesterday, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Stewart Rhodes to 25 years.

    And this morning, a story about identifying the person known as “Pink Beret” who has been in the most wanted J6 list but was not yet identified until an ex-boyfriend was shown her photo and he called the FBI with the tip.

    No. 537 on the FBI list is a woman wearing a white coat and black gloves, carrying a black Dolce & Gabbana purse, who has been the subject of Jan. 6 conspiracy theories. In one image, with her eyebrow arched, she looks dead at the camera like she’s Jim from “The Office.” In another, she’s standing near the Capitol, appearing to direct rioters with a stick.

    Atop her head: a pink beret.

    “I stopped dead in my tracks,” the designer, who asked not to be named to avoid harassment and threats, recalled in an interview with NBC News. “I’m like, ‘That’s Jenny.’”
    He sent in a tip to the FBI. On Monday, he said he got a call from the bureau, confirming they were investigating Jenny. By Friday, a law enforcement official confirmed to NBC News that the bureau had identified “Pink Beret” as the clothing designer’s ex, Jennifer Inzuza Vargas, of Los Angeles.

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Is it just me or are the Proud Boys a particularly weird subset of right wing wacko?

    They named themselves after a cut song from Aladdin and have a bizarre rule that says members may not ejaculate alone more often once every 30 days. They’re very weird

  16. 16.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @bbleh: ​
      This seems pretty out there:

    The Proud Boys say they have an initiation process that has four stages and includes hazing. The first stage is a loyalty oath, on the order of “I’m a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world”; the second is getting punched until the person recites pop culture trivia, such as the names of five breakfast cereals; the third is getting a tattoo and agreeing to not masturbate; and the fourth is getting into a major fight “for the cause”.[23][84][85][86][87][88] The masturbation policy was later modified to read: “no heterosexual brother of the Fraternity shall masturbate more than one time in any calendar month” and “all members shall abstain from pornography”.[89]

    The Daily Beast reported in November 2018 that the Proud Boys have amended their rules to prohibit cargo shorts and the use of opioids and crystal meth. However, the same article mentioned that no restrictions were placed on cocaine.[89]

    Source. I was in a fraternity, played rugby, and was a soldier so I have seen some weird ass male bonding stuff and these guy are OTF.*

    *OTF = Out There Flapping.

  17. 17.

    Jackie

    @M31: Expecting to get pardoned in two years.

    There are SO MANY reasons to make sure TFG OR any GQPer isn’t elected POTUS for at least the next two presidential election cycles!

  18. 18.

    Kelly

    PNW Proud Boy brawler Tusitala “Tiny” Toese was convicted in March on 10 counts of criminal violence at a 2021 Portland protest. I can’t find his sentencing but he’s probably looking at 5 years 10 months. He’s broken probation on 2 earlier assault convictions. Hopefully we can incarcerate a bunch of these gangsters in spite of sympathetic cops.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @Omnes Omnibus:

     I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world

     

    I love how they haven’t created shit but take credit for the benefis of liberalism.

  20. 20.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    I love how they haven’t created shit but take credit for the benefis of liberalism.

    Right? What makes them special in their own eyes is the color of their skin and where they were born. It’s very pathetic

  21. 21.

    Ruckus

    @Jackie:

    EVER!!!!!!

    They are shitty humans and until (or unless) they clean up their shit they shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    Will the prison Aryan Brotherhood consider him “one of the good ones?”

    Now we get to find out!

  26. 26.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jackie:

    Expecting to get pardoned in two years.

    There are SO MANY reasons to make sure TFG OR any GQPer isn’t elected POTUS for at least the next two presidential election cycles!

    One of an infinite amount of reasons to keep that fucker out. I always go back to the plan to make it easier to fire federal civil servants. It would be a return of the patronage system

  30. 30.

    Jackie

    @Ruckus: I completely agree! Unfortunately “normies” have short memories and will eventually think it’s time for a change… hopefully enough time passes to purge the party from MAGAts.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @Miss Bianca: It’s probably a prohibition on shorts in general, and cargo shorts are just the kind these guys might normally wear.

    It reminds me something I’ve observed in “biker” culture: it might be 90° out, but those poor bastards still wear jeans, even if they aren’t riding. One of many drawbacks to that hyper masculine culture.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Is it just me or are the Proud Boys a particularly weird subset of right wing wacko?

    Por que no los dos?
    Oh, did you mean “Is it just me (about the Proud Boys),” and not in general?​
     

    ETA: Unrelated, but: is there any way you guys could be convinced to un-trade Aaron Rodgers to the Jets?

  37. 37.

    SpaceUnit

    Where’s the love, people?  Cargo shorts are awesome.

    There, I said it.

  38. 38.

    Miss Bianca

    @Geminid: Well, out here in CO there’s the cult of Wearing Shorts No Matter What the Weather, which I frankly find weirder than Never Wearing Shorts. I mean, if you’re a biker, wearing shorts on your bike is just asking for it, anyway, so there’s a practical side to that prohibition.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    @Jerzy Russian:

    bopping their baloney

    Interesting turn of phrase, first time I’ve seen it. I guess I am no longer aware of all internet traditions.

  40. 40.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jerzy Russian: “bopping their baloney”? LOL – I’ve never heard *that* particular euphemism before! Now I’ll never be able to get it out of my head! Damme, sir, I say, damme!

  41. 41.

    kalakal

    @Geminid:

    It’s probably a prohibition on shorts in general, and cargo shorts are just the kind these guys might normally wear.

    Maybe they’re worried about being confused with Roderick Spode’s Black Shorts?

    Nah, they’re several sticks short of a bundle

  42. 42.

    dmsilev

    @Miss Bianca: I knew someone who wore shorts all year round in Chicago, including a fair amount of walking outside in winter. Was never quite sure how that worked.

  43. 43.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Really bummed to see Dee Snider promoting Transphobic lies about parents pressuring kids to transition, Transgender Identity being some kind of trendy fad and kids having easy access to irreversible surgeries etc.  All of which are complete bullshit constantly peddled by Nazis.  He got called out and like so many Cisgender People who step in it on Transgender issues, is sadly responding with extreme defensiveness and fragility.  TS was one of my fave bands as a kid and Snider seemed to have turned out to be a pretty decent adult so this is really disappointing.  Paul Stanley is also being a Transphobic asshole, but that doesn’t surprise me at all, and I never liked KISS anyways, so fuck him…

  45. 45.

    Mike in NC

    Wanna-be white boy Tarrio has been seen taking selfies with Ginni Thomas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and several outspoken GOP members of Congress. Fascists all. They should just change their name to Trump Boys and Trumpkeepers.

  46. 46.

    Jerzy Russian

    @SFAW:   The first I heard that phrase was in the Movie Vacation with Chevy Chase.  The family was staying with some sort of relatives in the midwest(?) somewhere, and Rusty’s cousin(?) asked Rusty “have you ever bopped your baloney?”.  The cousin had some dirty magazines, and you can imagine what happened off screen.

  48. 48.

    Anonymous At Work

    Statement: Worth exploring but Fox’s request to Dominion about “don’t leak ANYMORE damaging texts or messages from Tucker Carlson” all-but-guarantees that there are more, and possibly worse, messages out there that Dominion could leak or that Smartmatic could use.  I know there is no peak wingnut and I know there’s no floor for the reprehensible crap that goes on at Fox “News”, but HOLY MOTHER-FORKING SHIRT-BALLS! What can be worse than what’s come out already?

  49. 49.

    Jackie

    The battle between TFG and Puddin’ Boots is getting more entertaining: Puddin’ Boots has planned to speak at a GQP event in Iowa May 13. TFG has subsequently decided to hold a rally same day, same time in Iowa 😂

    I bet we see this scheduling conflict happening again and again…

    https://www.alternet.org/ron-desantis-2659974448/

  52. 52.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Why do people feel the need to pontificate about things they know nothing about? Like, fucking talk to an actual trans person for once before shooting your mouth, Snider

  54. 54.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    @UncleEbeneezer: I once read that Dee Snyder and his ilk looked like a group of alcoholic housewives who were too bombed to do their makeup properly. And KISS looked like transvestite hookers done up by a deranged anime artist. Not the sort of people who should complain about anyone else’s tastes.

  55. 55.

    SpaceUnit

    @Anonymous At Work:

    I keep reminding myself that Dominion and Smartmatic probably both pour money into Republican PAC’s just like every other red-blooded American corporation.

  56. 56.

    Jackie

    @dmsilev: My son does the same and we live in eastern WA – the cold side of the state in winter. He’s been a year round shorts wearer for at least the last 25 years – starting in high school. He’ll wear heavy shirts and jackets, but long pants only when necessary/required, ie weddings and funerals.

  57. 57.

    Almost Retired

    I suppose, like any organization, an ambitious Proud Bay has to work his way up the leadership ladder to President, after first serving in offices such as secretary, treasurer, etc.  My guess is that the first rung on the ladder is Chapter Masturbation and Cargo Shorts enforcer.  Gotta pay your dues.

  60. 60.

    West of the Rockies

    OMG. I fucking hate the name Proud Boys.  You assholes are adults.  Misogynistic, racist, homophobic adults.  Own it.

  63. 63.

    Raoul Paste

    I think.these Proud Boys saw Fight Club and didn’t realise that  it was about mental illness

  64. 64.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @SFAW: Uh-Uh. I’m looking forward to seeing the Jets stomp the shit out of Belicheck this season.

  70. 70.

    JWR

    I’m shocked, I tells ya, shocked!

    Robert Kennedy Jr. to make campaign debut at bitcoin conference

    WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first appearance as a presidential candidate will be at a cryptocurrency conference in Miami this month as the iconoclastic Democrat embraces a controversial industry that environmentalists say is a major contributor to climate change.

    Icing on the cake is that he’s (still) hanging out with Scaramooch and Gabbard.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    I remember how, in the runup to the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes announced that the Proud Boys would not participate as an organization and that any member who went was doing so on his own.

    That was a smart decision, as several outfits and individuals like Richard Spencer were bankrupted by the ensuing lawsuits. McInnes had come away from his media ventures with a small fortune and had a lot to lose.

    The Pagans’ also distanced themselves. Members from a local chapter appeared as “security” for one of the organizer’s press conferences (they looked like a Doobie Brothers roadie reunion!). Then the local chapter head announced that national Pagans’ leadership told them to stay away from the rally, and threatened to take their “colors” if they attended.

    I suspect financial interest was involved here also. Pagans’ are said to be involved in organized crime, and they may know that Nazis are bad for business.

  72. 72.

    trollhattan

    @JWR: ​He thinks it’s 1968 and his name carries value, when he’s been hellbent on ruining it for at least the last two decades.

    When you serially find yourself “apologizing” for calling vaccinations a holocaust, it’s more than a tell, it’s who you have become.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @JWR:

    RFK Jr. is 70 and Marianne Williamson is 72. Trump is almost 77. I feel like none of these people are on solid ground calling Biden old.

  76. 76.

    mrmoshpotato

    Repeating.

    As I said earlier,

    Punch him in the nuts! Punch him in the nuts! Punch him in the nuts, Lady Justice!

    And then throw his white trash, Dump-humping, Nazi shit ass in prison!

  77. 77.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    RFK Jr. is 70 and Marianne Williamson is 72. Trump is almost 77. I feel like none of these people are on solid ground calling Biden old. 

    Given that trio, I think Biden is on solid ground to call them crazy assholes.

    Well, Dump is also a fat, orange, fascistic, Soviet shitpile mobster conman who’s been sucking Kremlin asshole since at least 1987.

  78. 78.

    JWR

    From Politico.eu:

    The Ukrainian military shot down a hypersonic Russian missile over Kyiv using the newly acquired Patriot missile defense system, an air force commander confirmed on Saturday.

    It’s the first time Ukraine has been known to intercept one of Moscow’s most sophisticated weapons, after receiving the long-sought, American-made defense batteries from the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands.

    “Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram, referring to a Kh-47 missile, which flies at 10 times the speed of sound. “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”

  80. 80.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @SFAW:

    @Miss Bianca: And yet a thing I find fascinating about the English language is that somebody can invent or introduce a phrase like that and even if we’ve never seen it before (I certainly haven’t) we know exactly what is meant.

    I have no idea if any other languages can be that playful while still achieving communication.

  81. 81.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Scout211: I would love to know if their breakup had anything to do with her becoming Dump-humping, traitorous trash.

  82. 82.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mrmoshpotato: From the article:

    “I was just instantly turned off, like, ‘Yo, I don’t think this is going to work out,’” he said. “You’re, like, reading ‘Mein Kampf,’ you think immigrants don’t deserve X, Y, Z.” (One of the social media accounts linked to Vargas, which was viewed by NBC News, also makes references to Hitler.)

  83. 83.

    Bill Arnold

    @JWR:
    Re RFK Junior – the company he keeps, photo:
    This photo posted on Instagram on July 18, 2021 shows Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., second left, with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, left, anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger and former President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, right. The account, run by Bollinger, has since been removed. (AP Photo)
    RFK Jr is on team Fascism.
    (Also he is a mass murder, both for his anti-nuclear-power advocacy and for his anti-vaccine efforts. But proof for those is more involved than a simple photograph.)

  85. 85.

    bbleh

    @SpaceUnit: @Omnes Omnibus: I LOVE cargo shorts.  What’s the alternative in shorts that isn’t (1) gym wear or (2) something that can’t be worn without dying of humiliation unless your name is Bush or your family predates theirs in Connecticut?

    But the pockets — other than the usual side ones — are useless.  Anything in them just gets in the way

    OT: Newton Minow just died.  I had no idea he was still alive. Now THERE is someone who can say I-told-you-so.

  90. 90.

    James E Powell

    I don’t watch much regular TV and I don’t watch local TV news at all, but I wanted to watch the Kentucky Derby. On comes a KNBC 4 new promo that troops are massing at the border to stop an invasion of immigrants because Title 42 is expiring. The video accompanying this hysterical thing had no relation with reality, but showed soldiers running into position – to do what was not exactly clear – as if we are in a Defcon 1 run for your lives situation.

    I wondered WTF? but then I remembered it’s May sweeps. The media are truly fucked up people.

  91. 91.

    MomSense

    I don’t even know how to process all of this.  Like W said after TFG’s inaugural speech.  That was some weird shit.

    Tarrio is an Afro-Cuban leader of a violent white supremacist/incel group with bizarre rules about masturbation and an oddly specific dress code that conspired with an orange POS, GQP operatives and elected officials to overthrow the government.

    I mean WTAF.

  93. 93.

    raven

     
    A Pennsylvania man who threw a folding chair at law enforcement and repeatedly used pepper spray on police during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was sentenced Friday to more than 14 years in prison – the longest of any January 6 defendant so far.
    Peter Schwartz, 49, was found guilty on 10 charges in December 2022 during a jury trial, including four felony charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon. Schwartz’s prior criminal history of 38 felony convictions dating to 1991 was a significant factor behind his sentence.
    “Mr. Schwartz, dare I say, there are not many people who have come to this court with a criminal history like yours,” District Judge Amit Mehta said during a sentencing hearing on Friday.

  95. 95.

    eversor

    @bbleh:

    Sufer/skater shorts!

    https://us.oneill.com/collections/mens-shorts scroll to the regular shorts.  Other brands make these as well.  These are nice, comfy, well made, and do not make you look like Tactical Ted.  Try it from amazon and send it back if you don’t like it.

    Though I also like cargo shorts.  I also like Oakleys and as I get a massive veterans discount on their glasses I’m not going to stop buying them just because a bunch of Tactical Ted’s love them.

  98. 98.

    SpaceUnit

    @eversor:

    More like Tactical Timmy.

     

    And I’m just ignoring the cargo shorts haters now.  Let their hatred eat away at their shriveled souls.

  99. 99.

    Scout211

    @mrmoshpotato: the NBC  article:

    The clothing designer, who’s based in Los Angeles, met Vargas, who’s from Sacramento, online and they hit it off “really well” in late 2018. In early 2019, when they were in their early 20s, Vargas flew down to L.A. “We weren’t, like, trying to get married or anything,” he said. “We were hooking up for a few months.”

    Toward the end of those months, the designer said, Vargas posted on his Discord that she was reading Hitler’s 1925 manifesto. They got into a discussion about it that revealed more of Vargas’ far-right politics, he said.

    “I was just instantly turned off, like, ‘Yo, I don’t think this is going to work out,’” he said. “You’re, like, reading ‘Mein Kampf,’ you think immigrants don’t deserve X, Y, Z.” (One of the social media accounts linked to Vargas, which was viewed by NBC News, also makes references to Hitler.) 

  100. 100.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SpaceUnit:

    And I’m just ignoring the cargo shorts haters now. Let their hatred eat away at their shriveled souls. 

    As they lose all their shit on the rollercoasters.  Oopsy poopsy!

  105. 105.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Scout211: I actually decided to read the article after my comment.  Haha!

    Surprisingly good investigative reporting on this pink trash.

  107. 107.

    karen marie

    @bbleh: I’d never heardcof Newton Minow but I’m grateful he existed.

    https://americanarchive.org/special_collections/newtonminow

     

    Minow successfully pushed through Congress the Educational Television Facilities Act of 1962 to authorize federal grants for educational station construction and repair, marking the first time that federal funds had been allocated for educational television, a process that led five years later to the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and the establishment of the nationwide system that exists today. During his tenure as FCC Chairman, Minow also shepherded through to passage the All Channel Receiver Act, ensuring that all new television sets would include a tuner to receive UHF channels, the portion of the spectrum to which most educational stations had been assigned.

  108. 108.

    Ken

    @Anonymous At Work: What can be worse than what’s come out already?

    Carlson thanking Madison Cawthorne for inviting him to the weekly Republican cocaine orgies, and the two of them exchanging photos?

  109. 109.

    Scout211

    @raven: Schwartz’s prior criminal history of 38 felony convictions dating to 1991 was a significant factor behind his sentence.

    Noted in the overnight thread: Trump recruits the best people to help him overthrow democracy.

  111. 111.

    NotMax

    @SpaceUnit

    Don’t hate them however won’t wear them. Find them uncomfortable to da max. Too long to be called shorts; more like middies.

  115. 115.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @MomSense: The easiest grift in the world is choosing to be the PoC (or member of any marginalized group) that openly pushes White Supremacy and gives the movement a “see we’re not racist” shield of bullshit.  That’s why we always have people like Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Stacy Dash, Jason Whitlock, John McWhorter etc.  There’s always demand for someone willing to play that role and it is well-paid.  And given the amount of Anti-Blackness in the Latinx community (like every other community) I bet we are going to see more and more diverse faces on the leaders of White Supremacist and domestic terror orgs in the future.

  117. 117.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    And given the amount of Anti-Blackness in the Latinx community (like every other community) I bet we are going to see more and more diverse faces on the leaders of White Supremacist and domestic terror orgs in the future.

    They never think the leopards will eventually eat their faces

  118. 118.

    Bill Arnold

    @AlaskaReader:

    You posit that if you’re against nuclear power,
    …you’re a mass murderer?

    If one advocates for the closure of working nuclear power plants knowing full well that the power will be replaced by plants that burn large amounts of fossil carbon, killing millions of humans in the fullness of time, then yes. Replacement of no(very low)-carbon electricity sources with sources with large sustained CO2 emissions indicates a lack of a realistic level of concern about global heating.
    Whether new plants should be built is a separate matter. The safety arguments are BS relative to burning of fossil carbon[1], but the economic arguments can be solid except maybe in certain high latitude regions without much hydro potential. (Wind is too variable as a single primary source; HVDC very long range transmission would work but is vulnerable to disruption e.g. sabotage.)

    [1] nuclear power can in principle enable nuclear arms proliferation, which is also a concern when plants are in certain countries.

  119. 119.

    eversor

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Large amount of keys, wallet, money clip (too many cards now), sun glasses, contacts case, face masks cause covid, spare medicine, a few building FOBs, pocket knife, eye drops, flash drive, internal ear monitors (fancy heaphones).

  123. 123.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    “Fuck around, find out! Fuck around, find out! Fuck around, find out!” — Proud Boys, in evidence introduced in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial yesterday.

    They fucked around, they found out, and irony became karma.

  124. 124.

    AlaskaReader

    @Bill Arnold: So your entire argument is premised on a pretext you have predetermined.

     

    That’s a idiotic as your point of view that anti-nuclear power equals mass murder.

    If you live in a world where alternatives are only acceptable according to your own presuppositions, …I can see now why your ‘point of view’ is as idiotic as it sounded when you posited it.

  125. 125.

    trollhattan

    @JWR: ​It’s like shooting a bullet out of the sky using a BB gun. You have to have a really smart BB.

    Boggling accomplishment.

  130. 130.

    Bill Arnold

    @AlaskaReader:
    How many humans do you estimate global heating will kill over the next 100 years? Including downstream effects like failures of agricultural regions, major fisheries, resource wars, etc.

  131. 131.

    JoyceH

    Re shorts in winter, it dawned on me recently that when I was a kid, little girls wore knee length dresses and skirts year round, and in the winter added knee length coats, but with legs sticking out maybe with knee socks – it seemed completely normal at the time, but now I realize how weird it was.

  132. 132.

    AlaskaReader

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m well aware a statement is a point of view.

    I suppose you were just trying to be helpful to point that out?

    Otherwise, why respond to a question put to another?

  133. 133.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eversor: Jesus. Why the fuck do you need to carry that much shit around?  Phone, wallet, keys, pen, and pen knife.  They all fit into regular pockets.

  134. 134.

    JWR

    @trollhattan:

    Boggling accomplishment.

    Oh yeah. I read the 10X the speed of sound part and was impressed. Then I read the part about how it was at night, and thought Whoa! Until I remembered that visible light has little or nothing to do with the targeting mechanism. ;)

    But good for them, and woe to RU.

  135. 135.

    trollhattan

    @JoyceH: ​Snow being rare in Seattle it was a surprise when in junior high we had a huge snowstorm, but of course they still opened schools and quite a few girls wore jeans.

    They were all sent home for violating the dress code. When I ponder all the horrid things done by those junior high-schoolers, girls in jeans doesn’t make the top thousand.

  136. 136.

    AlaskaReader

    @Bill Arnold: I don’t presuppose any deaths are directly attributable to a simplified theory that you predetermine all the parameters for.

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @AlaskaReader: ​
      I am sorry. I didn’t realized that this was a deadly serious thread. I will endeavor to be more better going forward.

  138. 138.

    eversor

    @SpaceUnit:

    Yeah that’s a fucking issue as well.  I have the iPhone 12 Pro Max and it’s a monster.  I know it’s a silly size but I do wifi analyizers on it and I like me graphs.  With it in the larger pocket is a set of Moondrop Blessing2 IEMS.  These are 300 buck hardwired IEMs that will slaughter any wireless set and they are in a case.  I put sunglasses in their case and my contact stuff and eye drops in the other big pocket.  Wallet one back pocket money clip in the other.  A massive set of keys and a pill container in one from pocket, all my building FOBs in another.  Knife goes in knife pocket.

    It WORKS.

    If it’s in the winter, well then my jacket or coat has lots of pockets and I use those.  If I’m going to work it’s in my backpack.  If it’s just a run I use fitness gear.  But if it’s summer and we are out for a bit it’s the way to go!

  139. 139.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @West of the Rockies:

    Misogynistic, racist, homophobic adults.  Own it.

    Despite the weird phrasing, that is what the name means.  They are proud of being misogynistic, racist, homophobic males.

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I have no idea if any other languages can be that playful while still achieving communication.

    German is built on it.  That’s why we love words like schadenfreude.  Japanese is the language where puns are built-in and ubiquitous.

    @schrodingers_cat:

    What exactly are these guys proud of?

    Toxic masculinity.  When they say they’re swearing fealty to chauvinism it’s not a code, that’s actually what they mean.

  142. 142.

    eversor

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m actually on call 24/7 for a couple contracts.  Do I do it all the time, well no.  But if I am going to be going out for a day or say 8 hours it’s better to have it than not and have to go all the way home to grab stuff.

    I don’t wear cargos or do it all the time.  I’m just saying I get the logic in them.  And for me, at times, it’s the best option.  I prefer board shorts most of the time though.

  143. 143.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    They all fit into regular pockets.

    Pants have two traditional useless back pockets. My father taught me to never put anything valuable in them. (pickpocket bait) That leaves two usable pockets in “normal” pants.

  148. 148.

    Scout211

    @JoyceH: It was weird, and sexist.  Thank goodness kids can wear shorts and pants to school today.

    We were allowed to wear pants or snow pants to school under our dresses, as long as we removed the pants in the cloak room before entering the classroom.  But usually we just walked to school and had our knees freeze. Too much work to deal with the pants.

    Cloak room. Now there’s a word not used by school-aged kids anymore, anywhere. LOL.

  149. 149.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Bill Arnold:

    Carry a purse like normal people!

    …okay, I carry more of a big, black, leather, pseudo-businessy satchel than a purse, but back when I started 30 years ago nobody considered those different things.

  151. 151.

    eversor

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Wait till you have to rush into a place and do a wifi or cell drop point heat station and you are fiddling about with that small ass screen.

    I hate giant phones as well.  But I am stuck with my iPhone and two issued iPhones.  All with different management systems  on them.  You don’t want to know how many laptops I have to manage at home and the others in other areas at work.  It’s a fucking nightmare.

    My favorite iPhone remains the iPhone 5.  I like the new OLED screens but they are fucking bricks now.

  155. 155.

    Scout211

    @trollhattan: While we enjoy an abundance of rain and cooler weather, Western Canada is burning.

    It looks really bad and those of us from California understand how scary this can be.

    Over 24,000 residents throughout Western Canada have been ordered to evacuate their homes to escape active wildfires in the province of Alberta.
     
    As of Saturday, there were 103 active wildfires in the province, burning around 121,909 hectares, approximately 301,243 acres, the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, said at a news briefing Saturday.

    Since Friday morning, there have been 45 new wildfire starts, she said.
     
    The wildfires have increased from 92 that were reported on Friday, at least 31 of which are out of control, according to a news releasefrom the Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA). Of the 61 remaining fires reported Friday, 44 are under control and 17 are being suppressed and are not likely to spread. The province has seen an increase of 20 wildfires since Thursday, AEMA reported.

  157. 157.

    Geminid

    @JWR: I read that this means California will have more hyrdro-electric generation this year. Since solar and wind power capacity is being added, natural gas generation will become more and more a backup source.

    Of course, a renewed drought could limit hydro power again.

  160. 160.

    Bill Arnold

    @AlaskaReader:

    Labeling all those who oppose nuclear power as mass murderers is, I would submit, a fairly serious charge.

    The mortality cost of carbon (29 July 2021, R. Daniel Bressler, Nature, open access)
    That paper only covers direct heat related deaths. It does not cover famine or war or other hard-to-estimate causes of death, so it is in that sense a lowball estimate.

  161. 161.

    AlaskaReader

    @Bill Arnold: I’m the arrogant one?

    …it wasn’t me that was looking for controlled affirmation of your own unimaginative pet theorizing…

  162. 162.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:

    California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, is full.

    California will see more of this random up-and-down. But good for now.

  163. 163.

    AlaskaReader

    @Bill Arnold: Yeah, …get back to me when the final tally of all the deaths due to mishandling of nuclear waste has been determined.

  164. 164.

    JWR

    @Geminid: Now let’s see if my power and gas bills go down, even slightly. But srsly, these friggin’ SoCal energy bills are getting close to Enron levels. I’m happy Newsom went after the gasoline companies and their refineries, however gently, but what about these other energy profiteers?

  165. 165.

    Bill Arnold

    @AlaskaReader:

    …it wasn’t me that was looking for controlled affirmation of your own unimaginative pet theorizing…

    I’m discussing mainstream material; maybe a bit colorfully, but realistically, in the context of current academic literature. Peace, if you suggest alternatives.

  166. 166.

    gene108

    @dmsilev:

    Modern-day brownshirts, basically. The ones a hundred years ago were pretty weird as well (and even more thuggish).

    The ones 100 years ago included a lot of angry young Great War veterans, who had been through some of the most horrific combat in human history.

    They were truly battle hardened, and bitter.

  167. 167.

    kalakal

    @SpaceUnit:

    I’m on team cargo shorts

    I live in Florida, more comfortable than pants
    The big pockets are great for my epipens & assorted meds. I do not want to lose those epipens. They’re too big for jeans/pants pockets & it’s too warm for a jacket.
    I like to have my hands free

  168. 168.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @gene108:

    They were truly battle hardened, and bitter.

    Whereas these piss their pants if the odds aren’t overwhelmingly in their favor and they’re sure they won’t get arrested for it.

  169. 169.

    SpaceUnit

    @kalakal:

    Glad to have you on board.

     

    I just can’t believe there are folks on this thread discussing stupid things like nuclear power and the Jan 6th conspiracy when cargo shorts are under attack.  Wake up people!

  170. 170.

    Bill Arnold

    @AlaskaReader:

    Yeah, …get back to me when the final tally of all the deaths due to mishandling of nuclear waste has been determined.

    Ah, OK, you’re a committed no-nuclear-power person. (I grew up 10 miles east (downwind) of Indian Point NPP on the Hudson River, with a meltdown warning siren a couple hundred meters away that was tested every year. Never really bothered me, except for the siren tests.)
    Learning From Fukushima Dai-ichi (Richard L. Garwin, Nov 16, 2011)
    See figure 4, a log-log plot that attempts to compare oil, natural gas, coal, hydro, nuclear, though it does not really address non-prompt fatalities well, especially in the supply chain or due to air pollution. Hydro has a bad record.

  173. 173.

    Yutsano

    @JWR: ​Sounds like time for the state to buy out PG&E and the other fuckers y’all use for energy down there. We have a few up in Washington but almost all power municipalities are public.​

    EDIT: was making all the power companies in California private a Reagan thing?

  174. 174.

    JWR

    @SpaceUnit: Speaking of conspiracy theories, have you heard the latest? Baud wears Cargo shorts and just claims he’s not wearing any pants! Pass it along. ;)

  175. 175.

    dnfree

    For whatever reason, I still get an abbreviated email from Andrew Sullivan on Fridays.  Yesterday he was discussing Ben Smith’s book on the new media and these paragraphs stood out as how far he’s drifted.

    In the 2010s, Ezra Klein created something real and valuable, and is still at the top of his game in the new medium of podcasting. Other early bloggers — Matt Yglesias and Glenn Greenwald and Jonah Goldberg and Freddie DeBoer— are still doing great work and making money. Drudge understood the medium better than anyone, before anyone, and seems eternal. TPM is still out there, and thriving. The tribal subscription model has its drawbacks — the NYT veered way off the rails into leftist cray-cray shit after 2016 and during 2020 in order to appeal to partisans — but it has managed to stabilize a bit since, and is booming financially.

    There’s a story, in other words, of actual journalists and writers innovating, failing, succeeding, in this new era, with ethics intact, creating online media that will last. It’s a hopeful story in some ways. It’s just one Ben Smith had very little to do with; and has little apparent interest in understanding.

  180. 180.

    trollhattan

    @dnfree: ​

    leftist cray-cray shit

    Jesus, he once at least tried to be an erudite observer, now he’s Trump without the pussy grabbing?

    They take it as an article of faith that it’s “the left” who have gone nuts, and not their own people. Makes it easier to sleep, I suppose.

  181. 181.

    aliasofwestgate

    Oathkeepers started out as some sort of organization for military vets. I had a friend they approached (white male). He happened to be able to see the way the winds were turning in that thing and the sales pitch they gave him. He never bothered to join. He laughs quite a bit about it now and the idiocy they got themselves into.

    I’m ex military but washed out of boot camp on a medical discharge. Besides being female and mixed race, the chances of me being contacted were low. So yeah, never even bothered with me at all.  I will never cease the mockery over these hyper masculine idiot organizations, and neither will my old friend. XD

  182. 182.

    Ken

    @SpaceUnit: The only real cure is to strip naked and run through the woods under the full moon, like their instincts are demanding. Petty bickering does not feed the beast!

    Or there’s that whole “civilization” experiment, the usefulness of which has not been conclusively demonstrated.

  185. 185.

    trollhattan

    @Bill Arnold: We were “off the map” WRT how to supply water after that many consecutive years of severe drought. IOW the worst historical droughts paled in comparison to the last several years.

    Here’s hoping the feds and state shepherd this resupply very cautiously, going forward. As to this year, the water contractors are all in “oversupply” mode for now. It’s a nice problem to have.

    Next decade, management of groundwater basins will be in full force statewide, and the ag practice of overdrafting will become illegal. They’re pretending it’s not coming.

  187. 187.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trollhattan: “leftist cray-cray shit” = “advocating rights for any marginalized group that does not actually contain Andrew Sullivan”

  189. 189.

    trollhattan

    @SpaceUnit: ​Future archeologists will poke thought our landfills and encounter the 1970’s layer, which will comprise perfectly preserved polyester clothing monstrosities, which they will draw all kinds of wrong conclusions about. “Certainly, nobody WORE this, so why did they make it?”

  190. 190.

    JWR

    @Yutsano: Don’t know about the Reagan thing, though it wouldn’t surprise me at all. But back when Enron was starving Grannie, I thought Grey Davis should’ve seized the electric companies. He might have even made it through that ludicrous recall election, the one that gave us Ahnold.

  191. 191.

    SpaceUnit

    @Ken:

    Say, I haven’t heard you weigh in on the cargo shorts issue.

    Not trying to straddle that fence, I hope.

  194. 194.

    SpaceUnit

    @trollhattan:

    It’s funny.  I was just a young kid in the 70’s, but even then I had the sense to realize that the clothes were a crime.

    Do the most rudimentary Google search of 70’s fashion and, well . . . you’ll probably wish you hadn’t.

  195. 195.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:
    Also, some suspect that the next-several-decades probability of another Great Flood of 1862 is higher than has previously been estimated.
    Happily on the Northern East Coast where rain runs from 40-60 inches per year currently (a bit less in the global heating future according to some models), with occasional 3-week dry spells mid-summer, and earthquakes stronger than 4.0 are like 100 year events.

  197. 197.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SpaceUnit:

    Do the most rudimentary Google search of 70’s fashion and, well . . . you’ll probably wish you hadn’t. 

    Hahahaha!

  204. 204.

    Layer8Problem

    @kalakal:  Normal pants can’t carry enough without strain, so the logic of cargo shorts or pants is inescapable.  Books, dammit, a nice thick paperback for when the conversation grows tiresome.  Sunblock; having just had a clean skin check with only four suspicious items zapped with the cold cold sprayer, it’s important.  Sunglasses case.  A small solid notebook for the impromptu deep thoughts.  A really small Bluetooth keyboard for the phone, like God meant people to use on the social media.  The list is endless.

  206. 206.

    Jay

    @trollhattan:

    Fall drought, low snowpack, early dry spring.

    There is no longer a ” forest fire season” in the Canadian West and North.

  210. 210.

    JWR

    @SpaceUnit: Your probably right. And don’t forget the Levi jacket! I still have my older sister’s hanging in the closet. ETA my jacket was stolen along with my bicycle. :(

  211. 211.

    Ken

    @SpaceUnit: Say, I haven’t heard you weigh in on the cargo shorts issue.

    I feel it best not to take a side, in case violence escalates and an neutral mediator is required.

  216. 216.

    JWR

    @SpaceUnit:

    a Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat.

    Nope, it was a 10 speed. And I never had a banana seat, but I did have a pre-BMX 20″ Schwinn that was tricked out and re-geared for dirt on the hills behind our house. Ah, good times!

  217. 217.

    Roberto el oso

    @James E Powell: The Iron John ‘movement’ may have ended up kind of goofy (it attracted lots of divorced men, apparently), but its origins are much different. It was founded by Robert Bly, the poet and anti-war activist, and was intended to give males a safe place to deal with trauma, as well as to re-evaluate themselves in terms other than what job they had, what sports they liked, and so on, with the idea that if they began to think of themselves as sons and brothers and husbands and fathers (i.e., as something other than stoic loners), that they would arrive at a less toxic place than they felt they were. Yes, there’s a fair amount of mythologizing of the male impulse to be wild and savage and wolfish, and since the movement was necessarily closed to women it looked (and possibly was) creepy. It was not remotely my cup of tea (I’m personally uncomfortable with white men being weepy and ‘opening up’ about how tough life can be) but I did know a couple guys (including one who was gay) who seemed to get a lot out of it in a non-creepy way.

    They liked to meet up in forests and beat on drums and then ‘share’, with no one allowed to speak until they were holding some object (a stick, maybe, or, and I might be fabricating this entirely just because it’s sort of funny, a toy bear? … meant to symbolize the gruff yet sensitive nature of the folks involved … or something …)

    Anyway, sorry for the long response but I think the Iron John movement was touchy-feely but not in the weird ‘we’re Spartans and don’t call the stuff we like to do together homoerotic’ way that the Proud Boys/Oathkeepers seem to be.

  218. 218.

    Dan B

    @NotMax:  My fashion zenith in 69 was purple and grey striped hip hugger bell bottoms with a purple satin shirt with extra long collar.  Chicago.

  220. 220.

    Glidwrith

    @SpaceUnit: I shall join you in the call!

    Neither good fit or proper length of leg could be found in the women’s department. From scarcity, I crossed the aisle to the men’s department and found a veritable cornucopia of wearable shorts!

  221. 221.

    West of the Rockies

    @Ken:

    We will pray with those old Druids, they drink fermented fluids, waltzing naked through the woo-eds,  and it’s good enough for me…

  224. 224.

    SFAW

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    I, too, would like to see that. Just not sure Rodgers will be the one to do it. And I’m not thrilled that Joe Douglas gave up the next 10 years of draft picks just to get a 40-year-old (almost) QB who makes Tom Brady seem likeable and RFK Jr. seem lucid.

    Omnes may beg to differ with my description, of course.

  225. 225.

    StringOnAStick

    @Jay: The only Canadian I know well, or at least used to, became a global warming denier when he went to work in engineering associated with oil and gas.  How he can look at their fires and refuse to understand a temperature graph will be an enduring mystery to me.

  226. 226.

    Miss Bianca

    @Roberto el oso: Have you actually read Iron John? I recall getting a distinct “look at all this stuff we gotta do FOR WOMEN, the ungrateful bitches” vibe off it. I found it pretty puerile stuff.

  228. 228.

    Roberto el oso

    @Miss Bianca: you’re almost certainly right. I skimmed it at the time it came out, since one of the guys I mentioned wanted to know what I thought about it — the fact that I knew of Bly, and had read some of his poetry and translations made him think I might be interested, which I wasn’t. If I were to take a look at it now I’m certain I’d agree with you.

    My comment was more to indicate that I didn’t think the genesis of the PBoys has much to do with Iron John.

  229. 229.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    I’m older than jr and MW and not that far behind SFB. I find that anyone more than a day older than I am is old – because I am. I’m not ashamed of it at all because in the 2 yr period 10/2017 to 10/2019, 14 people I knew passed away and only one of them was older than me and only by 1 yr. It was sobering to say the least.

  230. 230.

    Chris T.

    @Yutsano:

    EDIT: was making all the power companies in California private a Reagan thing?

    Dead thread (as often for me), but: no, this came out of a Harvard Business School thing (though that particular set of papers was in the 1980s during Reagan, so there’s a sort of a connection there).

    The most basic element here is a simple financial problem. Imagine you’re a shipping company and you need to buy trucks (or trains or whatever, but let’s just say trucks) to haul cargo. You look around and the absolute best, top of the line mileage to be had gets you about 5 mpg. Fuel isn’t crazy expensive either so you go for it: you buy a fleet of 5 mpg trucks, expecting to use them for the next decade.

    Alas, the day after all your shiny new trucks are delivered, some Albert Einstein of Fuel invents a new engine that gets fifty mpg. They cost a bit more to build but on your decade timescale, they save huge amounts of money. So, how do you arrange to switch to the new more-efficient trucks?

    The Harvard Business School answer is: you go bankrupt and someone else buys the new trucks.

    Now translate that back to electrical utilities. The best power generation technologies, up until the genius guy showed up anyway, that burned fuel got you about 33% efficiency. You could burn coal, or oil, or natural gas, or diesel, or whatever—it hardly mattered what fuel you used—and you got about 1/3 of the energy turned into power, and the rest wasted as heat in cooling towers.

    If you ran a public utility, you built a plant to do this that was supposed to last fifty years. All the while it would run at this efficiency rate. But some joker just invented a new system that runs at 55% efficiency. That’s almost twice as efficient. And fuel, which used to be dirt cheap, is getting more expensive every year now. What do you do?

    If you’re a public utility, you’re not allowed to go bankrupt. You actually can’t; it’s written into state laws and regulations: you make plans, you run the plans by the state regulators, they approve of the plans (perhaps with changes required), and you build your plants and run them for fifty years. Whatever it costs to build and run them, the regulators have you collect from ratepayers, plus say 10% profit for you (this is what made utilities “orphan and widow stocks”, they had a ridiculously steady dividend due to these rules).

    But that means that you also can’t replace your five or ten year old power generation station, because it still has at least 40 years of lifetime left. So how do we get more efficient power generation into place?

    The obvious (and correct) answers here are that some will win and some will lose, and a fair way to do it would be to spread the wins and losses across everyone via regulation, but Harvard Business School ain’t about being fair baby! So they say: ah, the public utility should sell off all their generation systems to private operators, and the private operators will use the Magic of the Marketplace to solve the problem!

    Well, as you might guess,* the private-market solution is we soak the ratepayers via evil and trickery (including rolling blackouts and failures and crazy rates and so on), and that’s precisely what happened in the UK, which did this first, and then in California, where they did this second, and now in Texas and everywhere else that’s tried it.

    Now, to add to the mishegoss, natural gas prices—most SoCal marginal electricity comes from natgas—have been bonkers all winter. This is an indirect effect of Putin’s war on Ukraine, mostly; you can blame Putin for your power and gas bills. Europe had a mild winter though and the prices have plummeted, so there’s some relief on the horizon this summer. We have yet to see how it all shakes out; next winter, if the war is still on, who knows? The LNG terminals are up and running and natgas suppliers can ship to Europe at the drop of a, well, bomb…

    —

    *No guessing required: PURPA, the 1930s era regulations that established public utilities, got passed because people were sick of the robber baron utilities robbing the ratepayers. The new system pokes giant holes in PURPA, just as the banking industry poked giant holes into Glass-Steagall until they got the repeated collapses that are going on now (SVB anyone?).

  231. 231.

    Ivan X

    @Omnes Omnibus: The iPhone 13 mini offers much more screen and much better camera in a phone that is actually slightly smaller than the SE. Sadly it didn’t sell well, so there was no 14 mini, but Apple still sells it as a lesser-price alternative  to the 14 line.

  232. 232.

    Another Scott

    @Chris T.: I’m no expert, but it seems like a lot of these problems go away if you change the way you do the accounting.  E.g. instead of depreciating the generating plant over 50 years, you do it over 5 in times of rapid technological change.  Plus, a lot of the plant doesn’t change on changing the boilers from coal to gas (though a lot of it does).  I don’t think there’d be a need to swap out transformers and power factor adjustment hardware and transmission lines and all the rest which has to be a big part of the expense.

    Yes, things are different going from boilers to PV or wind, but mainly in the details.

    So much of the pathology of modern American capitalism seems to be driven by the way we do accounting (Don’t own stuff!  Lease everything!  Have 27 layers of holding companies and consultants and contractors to cut payroll and benefit expenses and taxes!!  etc.).  It doesn’t have to be this way.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.