StupidiNews!

• Pakistani Taliban gunmen have attacked a military school and left 120 dead, mostly children, and at least 100 more wounded.
• In an 8-1 ruling the US Supreme Court has found that police can pull a suspect over for the wrong reason, as long as they have a reasonable suspicion and understanding of the law.
• A manhunt in the Philadelphia suburb of Pennsburg continues for Iraq war veteran Bradley William Stone, who is suspected of killing six people, including his ex-wife and her family.
• Crude oil prices have now fallen under $60 as OPEC nations continue to produce in order to maintain market share against US shale oil.
• Dutch privacy regulators say Google has violated a 2012 law and could face up to 15 million euros in fines.

Last Call For Waging A Wage War

NY Times Upshot reporter Neil Irwin crunches the numbers on the labor market and finds a major problem that's going to have to get fixed sooner or later: employment is roaring up, but wages are down.

On the surface, it doesn’t make any sense. The jobless rate doesn’t even count millions of people who have left the labor force entirely in recent years and might be coaxed back in. So any employer with a job opening should have no problem hiring. If anything, the ratio of openings to hiring should be lower than it was in the mid-2000s, not higher. 

Here’s a theory to try to make sense of the disconnect: During the recession, employers got spoiled. When unemployment was near 10 percent, talented workers were lined up outside their door. The workers they did have were terrified of losing their jobs. If you put out word that you had an opening, you could fill the job almost instantly. That’s why the ratio of job openings to hires fell so low in 2009. 

As the economy has gotten better the last five years, employers have had more and more job openings, but have been sorely reluctant to accept that it’s not 2009 anymore in terms of what workers they can hire and at what wage.

This is most evident in the rush to get more H-1B visas for tech workers.  We've been told for a decade now that America isn't producing enough engineers and programmers, and the reality is that employers don't want to pay American ones at a fair market wage,  They want cheaper imported labor.  In effect, this is playing out all over the country.  Employers naturally want to hire as cheaply as possible, but the days of "I'll take that job for nothing just so I'm employed again" are over.

There are some early hints that this day is coming soon. In the National Federation of Independent Business survey of members released Tuesday, 22 percent of small businesses reported increasing compensation versus 2 percent that said they reduced pay. Their outlook for pay increases in the coming months rose. The November jobs numbers released last week showed a 0.4 percent rise in average hourly wages for private sector workers. 

All this is fragmentary evidence, and after years of stagnant wages, we’ll need a lot more solid proof that something has changed before proclaiming a wage boom has arrived. But in this standoff between businesses that want high-skilled workers for minimal pay and workers who want to see raises, one side has to give.

And it's going to be employers.  How much, we'll see, but I wouldn't be surprised to see wage numbers start going up soon.  There are now too many unfilled jobs.

Women Are All Nasty Liars Anyway, Right Guys?

Ol' Instagoober lets us know that ladies, the only problem on college campuses is your constant lying about being raped so you can get attention or something.  And we certainly don't need new laws to stop something that doesn't exist, right?

For months we've been told that there's a burgeoning "epidemic" of rape on college campuses, that the system for dealing with campus rape is "broken" and that we need new federal legislation (of course!) to deal with this disaster. Before the Rolling Stonestory imploded, Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., were citing the Virginia gang rape as evidence of the problem, but now that the story has been exposed as bogus, they're telling us that, regardless of that isolated incident, there's still a huge campus rape problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. 

And that's the real college rape hoax. Because the truth is that there's no epidemic outbreak of college rape. In fact, rape on college campuses is — like rape everywhere else in America — plummeting in frequency. And that 1-in-5 college rape number you keep hearing in the press? It's thoroughly bogus, too. (Even the authors of that studysay that "We don't think one in five is a nationally representative statistic," because it sampled only two schools.) 

Sen, Gillibrand also says that "women are at a greater risk of sexual assault as soon as they step onto a college campus." 

The truth — and, since she's a politician, maybe that shouldn't be such a surprise — is exactly the opposite. According to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rate of rape and sexual assault is lower for college students (at 6.1 per 1,000) than for non-students (7.6 per 1,000). (Note: not 1 in 5). What's more, between 1997 and 2013, rape against women dropped by about 50%, in keeping with a more general drop in violent crime nationally.

So keep in mind reported sexual assaults are down.  The ones that aren't reported, well.  I can't imagine why efforts to drag a woman who tries to report sexual assault through the mud, calling her a liar, and trying to destroy her utterly would lower the rate of reported sexual assaults.  There's no epidemic because it's not being reported, and it's not being reported because those who do are treated worse by America than those who actually assault women on college campuses, ergo, there's no epidemic because the numbers "don't fit the left's narrative".

It's a neat little package of self-loathing we bundle our young women up in, isn't it?  If you report assault, you're worse than the person who assaulted you and you're assumed to be lying because of "the statistics" show assault on college campuses are down.  If you don't report it, well, then the assault statistics are down, so there's no problem.  College campuses are safer than ever!

So of course we don't need to do anything about it, except make those lying women shut up, right boys?  Al we have to do is make sure no woman feels confortable enough to ever report her assault and bammo, instant cure for sexual assault in America.

The statistics say so. Just ask Glenn Reynolds here.

Measuring Up In The Treasure State

If it seems that the new dress code for Montana's state legislature is a throwback to the days of Mad Men, it's because it's a throwback to the days of Mad Men.

Montana has never been known as a black-tie place. Governors wear cowboy boots and bolo ties, and people joke that a tuxedo is a pair of black jeans and a sport coat. But this winter, when lawmakers arrive at the State Capitol, they will have to abide by a new dress code: No more jeans. No casual Fridays. And female lawmakers “should be sensitive to skirt lengths and necklines.”

Republican leaders who approved the guidelines say they are simply trying to bring a businesslike formality to a State Legislature of ranchers, farmers and business owners that meets for only four months every other year. But the dress code has set off a torrent of online mockery, and is being pilloried by Democratic women as a sexist anachronism straight from the days of buggies and spittoons.

“The sergeant-at-arms could be standing there with a ruler, measuring hemlines and cleavage,” said Jenny Eck, a Democratic House member.

Ms. Eck said she was leaving a health care forum in Helena, the capital, on Monday when one of her Republican colleagues peered at her and told her that he was glad to see she was dressed appropriately.

“It just creates this ability to scrutinize women,” Ms. Eck said. “It makes it acceptable for someone who’s supposed to be my peer and my equal to look me up and down and comment on what I’m wearing. That doesn’t feel right.”

Yeah, commenting on a female colleague being "dressed appropriately" isn't creepy as hell or anything. Republicans sure like to re-live the "good old days" whenever possible, when women were "dressed appropriately" and stuff. 

 Why don't you find that cute new young page and swat her ass hello while you're at it, guys.

Jesus.

StupidiNews!

• Protests against police brutality found tens of thousands marching in cities across America over the weekend in support of the families of victims.
• Former Vice-President Dick Cheney insisted in an interview with NBC that former President George W. Bush knew about torture of terrorist detainees and insisted it was done for medical reasons.
• Australian police are treating a hostage situation in a Sydney cafe as a terrorist attack, believing the gunman may have ties to Islamist extremists.
• New York is expected to issue the state's first Vegas-style casino licenses this week, eventually putting gambling facilities in the Catskills, only 50 miles away from the Big Apple.
• Ride-share service Uber charged four times the regular fare rate in Sydney during Monday's hostage crisis, only to turn around and begin offering free rides after being mauled in social media.

Last Call For Uber Uber Alles

Ride share bad boy Uber is flipping the country's taxi services upside down, proving that when you combine the ambush tactics of the Tea Party right and the pitiless analysis of Silicon Valley's left, there's very few local and state legislatures and regulators you can't curbstomp.

On a Thursday in June, bureaucrats from Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles made their move against Uber Technologies. The fast-growing ride-for-hire company was told that its popular service was, in fact, illegal and that the firm needed to immediately cease all operations in the state.

Far from being intimidated, Uber was ready to fight back. The company immediately called on one of its most potent weapons: its ­ever-growing list of smartphone-wielding customers. A notice sent to Uber users in Virginia included the e-mail address and phone number of the ordinarily low-profile official in charge of the decision. The notice instructed the company’s supporters to demand that the DMV “stand up for you.”

Hundreds of them did and, by Sunday, Commissioner Richard Holcomb’s inbox was flooded. Holcomb did his best to respond — working through the weekend, even crafting e-mails to irate Uber customers as he lay in bed at home.

The poor guy never had a chance.

Then, seeking a longer-term fix, Uber lobbyists submitted a draft of a proposed temporary operating permit. State officials granted a revised version several weeks later, permitting Uber as well as Lyft, a smaller company, to continue normal operations for the time being.

In an era of government dysfunction, the Virginia example shows how San Francisco-based Uber has pioneered not just a new sort of taxi service but also a new way to change long-standing local ordinances.

Uber’s approach is brash and, so far, highly effective: It launches in local markets regardless of existing laws or regulations. It aims to build a large customer base as quickly as possible. When challenged, Uber rallies its users to pressure government officials, while unleashing its well-connected lobbyists to influence lawmakers.

Why bother with lobbyist organizations like ALEC when you can cut out the middleman, aggressively leverage the internet and your own customers, and crush any and all regulatory opposition?  Just roll through and take over before anyone can react. Yes, the article does point out that Uber has screwed up so far on more than a few occasions, and maybe people are starting to wise up to what's going on.

But until that happens, it's the Wild West, and Uber is winning.

Sunday Long Read: History Is Written By The Winners

I grew up in North Carolina and went to public school there, eventually graduating from the state's residential magnet high school for science and math.  It was one of the best learning experiences of my life, which is why it saddens me to see 20 years later that the Koch brothers just bought North Carolina's high school history and civics classes to teach Tea Party doctrine to students.

Public high school students in North Carolina will be taught from a lesson plans and worksheets prepared by a organization closely tied to the billionaire Koch brothers, if the state’s Department of Public Instruction gets its way. According to the Raleigh News and Observer, the Virginia-based Bill of Rights Institute received a “$100,000, sole-source contract with [North Carolina] to help develop materials for teachers to use in a course on founding principles that the state requires students to take.”

The N&O also notes that the organization receives funding directly from David Koch and from two Koch family foundations, although, if anything, this description understates the Institute’s ties to the conservative billionaires. Two of the Institutes four board members are employed by Koch entities — one is a senior vice president at Koch Industries and another is director of higher education programs at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation — and many of the Institute’s other top leaders also appear likely to push a political agenda in line with the Koch brothers’ anti-government views. Board member Todd Zywicki, is a George Mason law professor and a leading opponent of Wall Street reforms such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Institute’s president, David J. Bobb, founded two centers at Hillsdale College, a conservative institution of higher education that proclaims its opposition to “the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so called ‘social justice’ and ‘multicultural diversity.’”

At every turn the lesson plan is that America was formed by armed resistance to centralized, federal government and remains plagued to this day by high taxes and Washington DC interference.  The lesson plan also includes a call to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, instead allowing state legislatures to choose Senators to "avoid the corruption of federal elections" and holds the Commerce Clause as the source of many woes the country suffers from.

It's pretty subtle and nasty stuff, and worth a read.  Especially for those of you with kids in high school, understand that this lesson plan is coming to dozens of red states pushed by state legislatures controlled by Republican corporate interests.

Got to get them hating the federal government while they're young, you know.

Cruz Uncontrolled Con't

So Sen. Ted Cruz's plan to force the Senate to stay through the weekend and vote on every single nomination the Dems wanted in order to pass this year's spending bill to stop a shutdown was a disaster.

For Ted Cruz.

Democrats called his bluff.

While Republican senators were fuming at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for holding up a $1.1 trillion spending bill aimed at preventing a government shutdown, Democrats saw a silver lining: the move by Cruz and Lee gave Democrats an opening to move a number of President Barack Obama's nominees for federal judgeships and the executive branch.

What happened was that when Cruz and Lee scuttled a deal between Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that would have allowed lawmakers to leave Washington D.C. for the weekend and come back Monday they gave Democrats a chance to advance Obama's presidential appointees by having to stay in D.C. to deal with the spending bill.

The extra time over the weekend gave Reid the opportunity to, through the Senate's executive session, file cloture on the nominations and move them sooner than they would have under the deal Reid and McConnell had planned on and that Cruz and Lee blocked. Under the original deal Reid would have had to schedule votes on the nominees later in the upcoming week, when Democrats may not have wanted to stick around to vote.

"It allows us to speed up the time when we could get going on these noms, rather than waiting until next week," a top Senate Democratic aide told TPM on Saturday evening. "It gets harder to get them all done when you’re running up on the end of the Congress."

Cruz dragged out the clock in protest, lost his anti-immigration poison pill vote on the CR/Omnibus bill anyway, and bought the Democrats extra time to bring up all the nominations that the Republicans blocked for the last two years for a straight up or down vote on Monday.

And in the end, Ted Cruz loses again.  Get used to that headline, America.

Bill De Blasio, Persona Non Grata

New York City's Finest apparently don't think Hizzoner Mayor Bill de Blasio should be welcome anymore after siding with people who think the NYPD shouldn't be chokeholding people to death.

Cops are warning Mayor de Blasio and Council Speaker Melissa ​Mark-​Viverito to stay away from their funerals should they be ​killed in the line of duty.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association distributed a flier to members, blaring: “DON’T LET THEM INSULT YOUR SACRIFICE!” Cops were encouraged to sign and submit the “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver to ban the cop-bashing pols from their funerals.

“I, as a New York City police officer, request that Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito refrain from attending my funeral services in the event that I am killed in the line of duty,” the waiver states.

“Due to Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Mark-Viverito’s consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve, I believe that their attendance at the funeral of a fallen New York City police officer is an insult to that officer’s memory and sacrifice.”

Officers can download the form on the PBA’s Web site and drop off a signed copy to their PBA delegates.

The mayor traditionally attends funerals for fallen officers.

Not anymore, it seems.

Cruz Uncontrolled

The whole "not shutting the government down" plan the House worked out on Thursday has run into the reality of Grandstanding Sen. Ted Cruz, and no plan survives contact with the Enemy, as they say.

Sen. Ted Cruz, the firebrand conservative freshman from Texas, has blown up the Senate leadership’s plans to have a peaceful weekend by forcing round-the-clock votes on President Obama’s nominees and the $1.1 trillion omnibus.

Cruz took to the floor late Friday to castigate congressional leaders for trying to pass the 1,600-page spending bill after only a few hours of debate and questioned the resolve of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to fight Obama’s executive order protecting five million illegal immigrants from deportation. 

“Even though millions of voters rose up just one month ago to protest how President Obama and the Senate Democrats were running Washington, business as usual is continuing inside the marble halls of the United State Congress,” Cruz said in a fiery floor speech.

Because of objections from Cruz and his ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the Senate will begin slogging through procedural votes on nominees starting at noon Saturday and vote to end a filibuster of the omnibus spending package at 1 a.m. Sunday morning.

“It appears that we’re going to have to have a series of votes all day tomorrow starting as soon as we get here and perhaps into the morning,” Reid said shortly before temporarily adjourning the chamber Friday night.

A senior Senate Democratic aide said the Senate may hold up to 40 procedural votes on nominees this weekend due to what he called the “extreme pettiness on the part of Republicans.”

So we're all just playing Ted Cruz's game now.  Get used to that for the next two years, America.  It's what you voted for when you sat home in November.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Four are wounded, 3 hospitalized as police search for a gunman who opened fire near a high school in Portland, Oregon.
• US Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Justice Department will not compel NY Times reporter James Risen to reveal his source on a failed CIA plot to undermine Iran's nuclear program.
• The "CR/Omnibus" spending bill that passed the House yesterday must now pass the Senate before midnight Sunday to avoid a government shutdown.
• Meanwhile, the House passed unanimously tougher sanctions on Russia over the continuing Ukraine crisis, but the bill gives President Obama some leeway on action.
• British officials are blaming an air traffic control center software failure for dozens of cancelled flights on Friday.

Last Call For Back-Scratching 101

The Village is a small world after all as the Sony Pictures hack/leak is the gift that keeps on giving.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd promised to show Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal’s husband Bernard Weinraub — a former Times reporter — a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication. 

The end result was a column that painted Pascal in such a good light that she engaged in a round of mutual adulation with Dowd over email after its publication. It also scored Pascal points back at the studio, with Sony’s then-communications chief calling the column “impressive.” 

The exchanges were uncovered in a trove of Pascal’s emails released as part of a massive hack on Sony carried out by the group known as “Guardians of Peace.” 

The column, published after the Academy Awards earlier this year, lamented how “Oscar voters and industry top brass are still overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged.”

Of course.  It's ironic that the column found Hollywood to be an overly chummy boys club (which it is) while of course Dowd and Pascal using a close friendship to get the glowing column about Pascal written in the first place.

Can't be burned down fast enough.

Don't Get This Band Back Together, Please

One thing Hillary Clinton can attempt to do in order to address concerns of African-American voters like myself who did not vote for her in the 2008 primaries is to not surround herself with the people she had in 2007-2008. You know, back when her campaign braintrust decided that trashing Obama with good ol' Southern Strategy garbage was OH HELLO LANNY DAVIS.

Last week, on Dec. 4, I helped organize a Ready for Hillary fundraiser in Montgomery County, Md., in the immediate suburbs of Washington, D.C. The organization, an independent grassroots committee, has been at work for the past year gathering millions of names and small donations in support of Hillary Rodham Clinton for president — that is, just in case she decides to run in 2016.

Never the hell mind with that plan then.

By the way, Davis goes on to say Martin O'Malley's people are backing Hillary now, but the funny part is O'Malley is going after Hillary over her refusal to prosecute Bush/Cheney era torture.

Ark-itechcts Of Their Own Disaster

Joe Sonka gives us some good news:  Dinosaur Steve's Ark Park here in Kentucky will not be getting taxpayer money after all.

Kentucky’s Tourism Arts & Heritage Cabinet Secretary Bob Stewart informed representatives of the proposed Ark Encounter tourist attraction today that their project will not be eligible for up to $18 million in tax incentives from the state, due to their refusal to pledge not to discriminate in hiring based on religion. 

“As you know, since the filing of the original incentive application in 2010, we have strongly supported this project, believing it to be a tourism attraction based on biblical themes that would create significant jobs for the community,” wrote Stewart in a letter to Ark Encounter’s attorney. “However, based on various postings on the Answers in Genesis (AIG) and Ark Encounter websites, reports from Ark Encounter investor meetings and our correspondence, it is readily apparent that the project has evolved from a tourism attraction to an extension of AIG’s ministry that will no longer permit the Commonwealth to grant the project tourism development incentives.” 

Stewart explains that their application will not go forward because the state will not grant incentives to a company that openly intends to discriminate in hiring based on religion, saying it is a violation of the state constitution for these incentives to be used to advance religion. He detailed how Ark Encounter representatives had previously promised not to discriminate in hiring several times, but recently they have stated they have every right to do so, saying, “The Commonwealth’s position hasn’t changed. The applicant’s position has changed.” 

Stewart cited AiG CEO Ken Ham’s Nov. 19 fundraising letter that accused the Beshear administration of religious persecution and reaffirmed their desire to discriminate in hiring based on religion. He also cited other statements throughout the year from AiG officials claiming the purpose of the park is to evangelize and indoctrinate its visitors. 

“Certainly, Ark Encounter has every right to change the nature of the project from a tourism attraction to a ministry,” wrote Stewart. “However, state tourism tax incentives cannot be used to fund religious indoctrination or otherwise be used to advance religion. The use of state incentives in this way violates the Separation of Church and State provisions of the Constitution and is therefore impermissible.” 

Stewart went on to wish the Ark Encounter project well, despite the fact that it will receive no money or incentives from the state.

Good.  I've been saying the Yabba Dabba D'oh here should never have gotten a dime, and it looks like finally that Ken Ham will have to fork over his own cash.  I'm not paying for a Christian indoctrination theme park with my tax dollars, especially when "Christian" here has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and everything to do with being a complete bigoted asshole to everyone.

Good riddance, and I hope the whole thing burns.

StupidiNews!

• The House narrowly avoided another shutdown fiasco with a 219-206 vote to pass a funding bill through next year, but the bill faces substantial Senate opposition.
• A time capsule from Boston's colonial era has been dug up from under the Massachusetts State House, originally buried by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.
• Dozens of congressional staffers walked out of the Capitol on Thursday in a "hands up, don't shoot" posture to show solidarity with supporters of slain Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
• Crude oil prices have now dropped below $60 a barrel as the International Energy Agency has cut their demand forecast for the fourth time in just five months.
• The FCC may have folded on net neutrality, but has decreed that in order to receive subsidies for rural broadband development that carriers have to offer a minimum of 10Mbps speeds.