The Kaplan Stenography and Public Relations Post

Still, a higher standard than the Washington Post's editorial page.

Did you know that the Washington Post reprints health and science press releases, verbatim?

Did you know that the Washington Post reprints health and science press releases, verbatim? A spokesperson for the paper says the Post will stop doing that, right away.

Quality journalism.  Real quality stuff.

Today's Worst Person In The World: Tony Blair

Of course the Conservative Party was right for all the wrong reasons.  Which is usually the case in the rare circumstance that the Conservatives are right about anything.

Tony Blair was the UK's insidious DLC/Third Way type.  I remember what I perceived to be an unfair and scurrilous attack ad (pictured above) against him that, in the fullness of time, looks a lot more valid today.  Quite a statesman he turned out to be, backing the Iraq War lies, plunging himself deeply into the sordid affairs of various Murdochs.

Via Atrios:

Tony Blair advised Rebekah Brooks to launch a "Hutton style" inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World at the height of the scandal over the issue, according to an email that has emerged at the Old Bailey trial. The revelation emerged in an email that was read to the jury in the hacking trial on Wednesday, and followed what Brooks said was an hour-long phone call. According to the email, sent the day after the News of the World's final issue and six days before Brooks was arrested, Blair also told her he was "available" to her and Rupert and James Murdoch as an "unofficial adviser" on a "between us" basis.

Not to mention, Wendi. (Allegedly.)

Cable Internet In America: A Useful Lesson In Economics

Information super-highway robbery.  Paying more for less is the modern American way, on healthcare and broadband.  It doesn't have to be.

Americans: We love paying more for less, by @DavidOAtkins

Why is this? Doesn't standard economics dictate that free markets provide greater competition and lower cost? Well, yes--in theory. There are many and very large wrinkles in the classical economic model, but in a perfectly efficient market where manufacturing the product is easy, and the public has the option not to buy the product or to substitute other products, that can and does work. For instance, it's hard to overcharge for toothpaste or apple juice. They're pretty easy to make, and if one company overcharges for them someone else will make it cheaper or people will find a substitute. A free market in toothpaste or apple juice will generally provide a better product at lower prices than a centrally planned market will (provided that government regulation exists to ensure that those products are produced safely and actually contain the advertised ingredients.) But commodities like healthcare and the Internet are different. They're absolute necessities bordering on human rights, for which there is no substitute. They're enormous and impossible for an underdog to produce at a lower cost. And they're easy for ruthless corporations to monopolize and vertically integrate for exploitative, rent-seeking purposes absent government intervention. Allowing a "free market" in such commodities isn't free at all. It's insane. It's guaranteed to produce monopolies, high prices and terrible service. Which is exactly what we have in American healthcare and American internet: the world's freest, and therefore worst and most expensive, markets in essential services. The mark of a sophisticated mind is to understand that some solutions work in some cases but not in others. It's the mark of an idiot to think that the same model will work in all cases. People who think "free markets" work in healthcare or the Internet are just as functionally stupid about economics as the most hardline Communist who thinks that the government should exercise full control of the toothpaste market. Most of the world understands by now that the second guy is a dangerous fool. But we're at a weird point in history where the first guy undeservedly has more credibility. He shouldn't--and he won't for long.

Cast the free market idolaters out of the temple.

LICH Contempt Hearing Pushed To Thursday

A lot of credit to Jim Walden and team at Gibson Dunn.  They really have been working around the clock, over weekends, etc.

A much-anticipated contempt hearing against the State University of New York (SUNY) had barely begun on Tuesday when state Supreme Court Justice Johnny Lee Baynes adjourned the proceedings, at the request of two of the petitioners in the case who said Mayor Bill de Blasio was about to get involved. The legal action will resume on Thursday, February 20, at 11 a.m. at 360 Adams Street. The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and 1199SEIU health care workers requested the two-day adjournment because, they said, the Mayor’s office would be discussing possible plans for LICH with the community on Tuesday. Susan Cameron, attorney for 1199, asked Justice Baynes in court for a delay in light of ongoing “good faith discussions” and added, “The Mayor’s office is today reaching out to community groups to discuss alternative outcomes” at Long Island College Hospital (LICH). Attorneys for six community groups fighting SUNY’s attempts to shut down LICH, however, told Justice Baynes on Tuesday that they were fully prepared to push ahead with the contempt proceedings. Attorney Jim Walden of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who represents the six groups, called the Mayor’s outreach “preliminary.” “The people in this room have been working around the clock,” Walden said. “We want our day in court.” Regarding the Mayor’s Office, he added, “I talk only to my clients.”

War on Whistleblowers: Factory Farms Edition

What kind of society seeks to punish the people who bring crimes to the public's attention?  The sponsors of this legislation should be publicly shamed.

As Idaho moves to criminalize undercover video with 'ag-gag' law, clip of dairy worker sexually abusing cow surfaces

A still from the video shot undercover at an Idaho dairy by animal rights group Mercy For Animals. Under a proposed law, filming scenes like this would become a crime. In Idaho, the dairy industry has successfully lobbied lawmakers to propose a new law that would make it a crime for animal rights advocates or journalists to lie about their backgrounds to applications at dairy farms, for the purpose of documenting criminal activity or animal abuse. Striking back at this proposed legislation that would curb free speech, Los Angeles-based nonprofit Mercy for Animals today released video of a dairy worker sexually abusing a cow at Bettencourt Dairies in Idaho.

People who abuse defenseless animals are lower than dirt.  I am a carnivore: I love beef, bacon, chicken, all of that delicious, delicious meat.  I don't find eating meat to be morally objectionable.  I know many people do, and I respect that.  That said, I have no tolerance for people who abuse or mistreat animals, including the appalling factory farms that basically institutionalize the mistreatment of animals on an industrial scale.

Paging Jim Gaffigan: Hot Pockets

This gives me an excuse to post a classic Gaffigan bit:

Hot Pockets Might Have Diseased Animal Meat In Them

Sad day for anyone who hoped never to know what exactly they were eating in their Hot Pockets ® Philly Steak & Cheese sandwich — according to the USDA it might be the meat of "diseased and unsound animals."

Death pockets! 

Kappa Beta Phi: Wall Street's Secret Fraternity

I'm not amazed that this secret Stonecutter-like fraternity exists, I am amazed that I'm almost 40, follow finance and economic news regularly, and had never heard of it.

I’d heard whisperings about the existence of Kappa Beta Phi, whose members included both incredibly successful financiers (New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead, hedge-fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones) and incredibly unsuccessful ones (Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld, Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne, former New Jersey governor and MF Global flameout Jon Corzine). It was a secret fraternity, founded at the beginning of the Great Depression, that functioned as a sort of one-percenter’s Friars Club. Each year, the group’s dinner features comedy skits, musical acts in drag, and off-color jokes, and its group’s privacy mantra is “What happens at the St. Regis stays at the St. Regis.” For eight decades, it worked. No outsider in living memory had witnessed the entire proceedings firsthand.

These people have removed themselves from our reality.