Squashed

10:24 7th Mar 2008

notes: 4

I swear to God, I’m starting to think she’s one of those terminators.

— Jon Stewart on Hillary Clinton, here.

13:58

So the Clinton crowd does not have the moral high ground in this round. Yet what was the net result? Power, a talented journalist and thinker who gives a damn about genocides (certainly more so than Bill Clinton did during the Rwanda nightmare), was forced off Obama’s campaign.

—

MotherJones Blog: In “Monster”-Gate, Clintonites Get Away with a Slur, While Respected Obama Aide Falls

I think calling somebody a monster is sort of a non-scandal. It is negative—and if the Obama campaign is dropping somebody over it, it says a lot about his desire to run a positive campaign. But it isn’t particularly virulent. It doesn’t speak to qualifications or lack of qualifications. It doesn’t play to stereotypes or moral-worth.

Unfortunately, if Clinton is making a big deal of this, it’s probably a sign that they’re looking for anything to throw up a smoke screen before unleashing another round of truly vicious, truly deceptive attacks. Then they’ll claim it was defensive because somebody called Hillary a name.

14:18

notes: 1

Clinton’s justification for this strategy is that she needs to toughen up Obama for the general election-if he can’t handle her attacks, he’ll never stand up to the vast right-wing conspiracy. Without her hazing, warns the Clinton memo, “Democrats may have a nominee who will be a lightening rod of controversy.” So Clinton’s offensive against the likely nominee is really an act of selflessness. And here I was thinking she was maniacally pursuing her slim thread of a chance, not caring—or possibly even hoping, with an eye toward 2012-that she would destroy Obama’s chances of defeating McCain in the process. I feel ashamed for having suspected her motives.

— John Chait, Go Already!: Hillary Clinton,fratricidal maniac

16:22

notes: 2

She’s a monster.

—

Myself on Hillary Clinton, after reading this post.

An Obama adviser essentially says that Obama, as President, would base his Iraq plans on what is actually happening in Iraq when he takes office rather than a plan he put together as a presidential candidate without access to classified military reports. Clinton’s plan involves essentially the same thing, but she is still accusing Obama of deceiving voters because his aides know he isn’t an incalcitrant moron.

If Clinton wants to go into office with set war plans and refuse to change them regardless of what is actually happening in the world, perhaps she should take her orders from the Bush administration. How’d that work for them?

17:29

I would not accept a caucus.

—

Hillary Clinton, on whether I (and the rest of Michigan) will actually get a chance to support the candidate of our choice this time around. Perhaps she would settle for a primary so our already cash-strapped state can waste the many million dollars a new primary would cost?

I agree that a primary is much more democratic than a caucus—but Michigan isn’t in an ideal situation, and we already paid for the expensive primary. As the saying goes, beggers can’t be choosers, and Clinton needs to extend the nominating season somehow if she hopes to catch up to Obama.

20:51

notes: 1

reblogged from: jakelodwick

California Court Enforces Anti-Competitive Behavior Laws and Angers Jakob Lodwick

Here’s what the jury determined actually happened. A giant media conglomerate owns a bunch of newspapers. One of those competes with an independent newspaper. The media conglomerate decides it wants the independent newspaper to go away. (So far so good. Capitalism encourages competition.) Then the media conglomerate does something illegal. It cuts the ad costs its competing newspaper to below the cost of producing the newspaper. It uses profits from the other papers to keep the paper losing money afloat. As soon as the little paper went under, it would have jacked the ad cost up higher than it had ever been because there was no longer any competition in the market. This is illegal.

jakoblodwick wrote, amongst other things, “In reality, the playing field was level, but is no longer level. It was level when both papers were entitled to own their own property and were free from coercion. When unethical businessmen use the government to stifle competition, everyone else suffers. This is true regardless of the size of the business. It’s wrong when Halliburton does it and it’s wrong when a quirky alt-weekly does it.”

The big SF weekly was the one trying to stifle competition here. It was trying to get a monopoly by destroying the newspaper advertisement market and bankrupting its competition. It wanted to ensure that it was impossible to run a profitable small newspaper in San Fransisco so that it could later jack up the costs and screw consumers who didn’t have any alternatives.

23:19

notes: 9

reblogged from: jakelodwick

Why Antitrust Laws Are Important to Capitalism

Since Jakob asked, I’ll explain why antitrust laws are both a legitimate and moral government function.

The general idea of capitalism is that value is created when people make exchanges. If I sell my chicken for $10 I wanted $10 more than a chicken, and somebody else wanted a chicken more than $10. If both Jakob and I are trying to sell chickens, whomever is willing to sell for less will make the sale. Everybody wins, except whoever doesn’t sell his chicken, who is where he started. At least, everybody wins if nobody does something…unsavory.

There are a few unethical things I could do to screw up Jakob’s sale and get a better price for my chicken. I could hire a thug to beat up Jakob. I could lie and say that Jakob’s chicken has a contagious bird flu. I could throw spurs on one of my chickens, have it peck Jakob’s only chicken to death, and then sell the customer one of my other chickens for three times what Jakob would have sold for. That last one is sort of what the big newspaper tried to do.

Generally speaking, you’re allowed to do whatevery you want with your property. There is nothing wrong with competing and winning, but there is something wrong with deliberatly stopping somebody else from competing. The problem wasn’t that the newspaper sold cheap ads, the problem was that the big newspaper deliberately took a loss on ads (which is a newspaper’s primary revenue source) for one of its papers specifically to destroy the competition. You are permitted to improve your business by enhancing the value you offer others, but not by deliberately destroying what somebody else offers for the purpose of eliminating competition. In other words, I can go after your customers, but I can’t go after you. That isn’t competition—it’s just pure friction. In other words, waste. The court, in this case, is not subsidizing the little paper, it’s telling the big paper to pay the little paper for the damage it illegally (and immorally) caused the paper. The newspaper is not at the whim of the judge—but the judge (and jury in this case) enforces the law. The law is just and necessary for a free market and fair competition.

The idea that limited anti-trust laws allows any and all government intervention is rubbish.The government is allowed to intervene in business when businesses take actions for the sole purpose of hurting others.