Politico has a long piece on Boehner. It includes this little gem:

On Sunday, July 17, it appeared they had a deal. Boehner and Virginia Representative Eric Cantor—whom the speaker had reluctantly brought into the negotiations, knowing the majority leader’s distrust of Obama could poison the talks—worked out some final details that morning at the White House. When the president returned from church, Boehner says, he invited them both into the Oval Office and shook their hands. Some fine-tuning remained, but in Boehner’s mind the so-called grand bargain was done. The framework included reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending; and $800 billion in new revenue. “I was one happy son of a bitch,” Boehner tells me.

The next 48 hours changed everything. On Tuesday morning, the so-called Gang of Six—three senators from each party who had been discussing their own sweeping fiscal agreement—announced a briefing for their colleagues at the Capitol. They unveiled a separate framework, totally unaware of what Obama and Boehner had agreed to. This deal included significantly more revenue. Chambliss, by then a senator, was one of the GOP Gang members and had no idea—because Boehner had been negotiating with the president in private—that their announcement would kill the speaker’s deal with the White House. Obama saw that Republican senators were endorsing a deal that included far more revenue, and knew there was no way he could sell the grand bargain to his liberal base. When he came back with a counteroffer, seeking a higher revenue number, it validated Cantor’s warnings about not trusting the president. And by that point Boehner’s members had heard enough about the grand bargain to know they didn’t like it—with the $800 billion revenue figure, much less something higher.

So the deal fell apart, and the two sides peddled their competing versions of events: Boehner’s team said the White House moved the goal posts, while Obama’s allies said the speaker couldn’t sell his own members on the deal.

Earlier today, I was sent a link to an article in Bloomberg titled Why Workers Are Losing to Capitalists. Marx in Bloomberg? Impossibru!

But nevermind Marx. That opinion piece is 800 words, give or take, on labour's share of income. Yet it doesn't mention policy once. Not a single time. It's automation, it's globalisation, it's Gremlins. But not a single peep on policy.

Nothing on union busting. Nothing on taxes on capital vs taxes on labour. Nothing on minimum wages. Nothing on welfare. Nothing on the public sector.

If you read about inequality and related issues in these papers, there's rarely any agency. It's always something abstract like market forces, globalisation, innovation, etc. Nothing on decisions made by people in power, parliament first and foremost, that often had the explicit aim of reducing wages to "increase competitiveness".

1-800-PROVE-IT Infomercial has been added as a related post - related requested by Mordhaus.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/1-800-PROVE-IT-Infomercial

Now what is the average caloric expenditure for the "average American" over the same period? I bet that in addition to the average caloric consumption going up 800/day, the average caloric expenditure went down due to a lot less people working in physical jobs now compared to 50 years ago...

It seems calories-in/calories-out would be a much simpler explanation for the "obesity epidemic" compared to eating high/low fat high/low carbs etc. etc.

I'm torn by our pulling out of Paris. I think it's critical that we all cooperate to reduce our Co2 emissions. But I also understand that at least what China offered (not) to do is the single biggest factor in our future success (failure).

Their "reductions" are tied to points of GDP compared to 2005 levels, meaning that they can either reduce their emissions, or grow their economy faster than their emissions grow. The latter is what is happening.

Their contribution is to try to have their reliance on coal "peak" by or prior to 2030. At the moment, they are emitting over 30% of the world's Co2, with the US at about 17%. But even when and if China's Co2 emissions peak, they almost certainly won't fall...they will plateau. As we speak, China is building dozens of new coal-fired power plants...and these new plants, along with those already built, have life spans of at least 50 years. So when you hear talk of China's already reducing their emissions, they aren't speaking of real reductions, rather lowered percentages as a ratio of growing GDP. For example, China emitted over 5,800,000 kilotons of Co2 in 2005, and 10,600,000 kilotons in 2015. Yet China's nominal GDP was only US$2.3 trillion in 2005, and a whopping US$11.1 trillion in 2015. So as a ratio of GDP, China's emissions appear to have decreased. The opposite is true, and they'll continue this farce for as long as possible. Now, some will answer with things such as:

A. But America pollutes more per capita!
B. But China deserves to have a per capita GDP that rivals that of the US!
C. You should be comparing GDP per capita or PPP!

To which I answer...our planet's climate and environments don't give a damn about these abstractions. What matters is the TOTAL amount of greenhouse gases being emitted.

So, I guess we won't keep warming under two degrees Celsius. Because it's more important that China's per capita GDP of about US$8,000 grows to match the US$56,000 of the US. In effect, if populations stayed the same, and the US economy stagnated...we'd need to wait for China's nominal GDP to grow to US$77.7 trillion compared to the US's $17 trillion.

Let me just add that if China were allowed to grow that powerful, polluting all the while, then the free nations of our planet would have graver problems than climate change.

You may think that China is a poor country without the current means to effect a major transition. To which I'll answer that their government and state-run corporations could stop buying foreign businesses and real estate, as well as not building more missiles, planes, rockets, blue-water navies, and man-made islands...and perhaps put those funds toward an honest shift toward green energy.

@RFlagg

The CBO says medical insurance under Trumpcare will spike about 800% for Trump's core demographic (old, lower income, white people) a few months before the mid terms. He and the Republicans in Congress also want to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid. How long will their voters stay on that ride?

I suspect in the next three years or so, Republican voters will get a real chance to see what they've been voting for all these years. Tax breaks for the rich, the shaft for everyone else. When cold hard reality hits their personal finances I'm hoping there will be a fundamental shift in American politics.

For that reason alone, Trump may actually end up doing some good for the country.

I lived in EPA in the late 80's, and again in the early 90's. We heard gunfire nightly, but never had a serious problem.
We went to Mountain View from there. We paid $800 for a 2 bedroom apartment for years, then left in 96, ending up in far northern California where we could afford a decent house with 2/3 of an acre in a nice neighborhood.

My advice would be to buy what you can live with and afford, then sell and move out of the city when you retire and buy someplace cheap to live with the proceeds. You'll be way better off with that money still in your pocket rather than someone else's, and have far better options when you retire. Just my opinion, but it's working for me. Real estate has been the best investment I've ever made by far, infinitely better than the stock market has done for me (sadly I invested an inheritance in the stock market in early summer '08, and lost my shirt).

LOL, East Palo Alto. I volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club there for a year when I lived in Mountain View. Two cops got shot and East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate ever that year. It's utterly insane how on one side of the 101 you have these multi-million dollar mansions and Stanford University and on the other side you have gangland.

Meanwhile, back on topic, when I moved to Mountain View in 2002 my rent was $800 a month for a studio apartment. The rent went up by $100 a year every year until I finally called it quits in 2007 when they wanted to charge me $1300 a month. I gave up ever actually being able to own a home in the Bay Area (let alone rent) and left in 2009.

In Japan now, and things aren't quite as bad as the Bay Area, but we've been house hunting recently and we're shocked at the disparity between what we want versus what we can actually afford, even with both us being full-time professionals. I know that 2nd place he goes to is supposed to be a joke but it's not that far off from the truth, at least as far as our experiences go. While the places we've been shown by the real estate agent are certainly habitable, they aren't particularly nice. So we're going to have to decide whether we want to live someplace not so great with the advantage being the mortgage will be paid off by the time we retire or just rent in a place we're comfortable with and wind up having to really budget hard after retirement since rent will consume a sizable portion of our pensions/social security.

To play devils advocate... the average calorie intake for an adult is between 2000-3500 depending on age, gender and activity level. Let's take the low bound of 2000.

So 4 calories is 0.2% of your recommended daily calorie intake. In other words, you'd need to eat 500 packets of splenda a day to maintain your body weight (sidenote: REALLY don't do this).

Basically, when a meal is 6-800 calories, the difference between 4 and 0 is almost meaningless.

That said, saying it has ZERO calories implies that you can have as many servings as you like, which is obviously not a good idea.

In conclusion, drink your fucking coffee black. Anything else is just being a pansy.

*ban
1-800 RID-OF-IT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QEvZZpMO_s

Let's be extremely optimistic and figure that these things work in a 25 meter radius, with 100% kill rate to any mosquito inside that zone for 30 seconds+. That's plenty to put in or near a house and drastically reduce the mosquito population in (and a little bit around) that area. But just a short distance away, the mosquito population will be completely unaffected.

Animals that prey on mosquitoes will find a small dead zone and move on.

Lets say they worked extremely well, and we decided to cover an entire city with a grid of these things. Maybe New York (800 km^2). Would the local ecosystem be affected? Sure. Some species of birds, bats, etc. would move upstate -- but overall there would probably be way less impact on the ecosystem than simply having a gigantic city there in general.

It would probably be better to set them up covering small villages in area with high risk of malaria, in which case any affects on ecosystems would be very small and contained. But on the other hand, first world people like New Yorkers with high population density and more $$$ to burn might be plenty happy to chip in (tax dollars?) for these things if they never got any mosquito bites again. And that would probably help the economy of scale kick in and make it much cheaper to set them up in places that would really benefit...

800 words of wondering dribble. learn to be concise.

Update on my hometown figures. Our local paper says there were 1000 at the march. ONE THOUSAND. I can't help but think that is overstated. But even if you say "only" 800 -- that is mind blowing.