Notices by tanya tussing (tanyatussing@mastodon.social)

“Think of the fed gov as a car. You might have thought that the election was like getting the car serviced. Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics, who somehow don’t look like mechanics, tell you that they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money. And that this was the most efficient thing to do. And that you should thank them.” -- #TimothySnyder

The Logic of Destruction: And how to resist:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-destruction

#democracy #freedom #coup

Do not obey in advance

#democracy or #autocracy ?

"After his groundbreaking books 'On Tyranny and 'The Road to Unfreedom', historian #TimothySnyder was asked: “What would a better America look like?” This new book, '#OnFreedom ' ( https://www.powells.com/book/on-freedom-9780593728727 ) is his answer."

Tim Snyder speaking about #Freedom at the John Adams Institute on Jan 4, 2025:

https://youtu.be/LATN40lw5_s?si=T2oUGZbAHoDlNj7b

#democracy

@pluralistic Great blog post about ways to cut the US federal deficit in ways that are financially and socially healthy for most Americans.

Some ideas about lowering #USdebt from @pluralistic that add up to:

"$1.4215t/year without even breaking a sweat, just by tacking (some of) the country's worst looting and tax evasion." "There's plenty of scenarios where interest payments result in the remaining $580b/year in savings, bringing the total up to $2t." "Now, sucking $2t/year out of the US economy all at once..." would hurt the economy, so best to phase cuts in over time.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/27/beltway-bandits/#henhouse-foxes

#Economics #USebt #InterestRates

#PaulKrugman about leaving the #NewYorkTimes -- felt pressure to write "false equivalence":

“I’ve always been very, very lightly edited on the column,” he said. “And that stopped being the case. The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.” And, increasingly, attempts “to dictate the subject.”

@Luis_Fierro Mpost:

https://mastodon.online/@Luis_Fierro/113883719256216147

#Journalism #Economics

@pluralistic ... or rob someone with an html file.

A very thoughtful blog post about a very tough, complex event/issue.

@pluralistic what a great term: accountability sink. There are everywhere.

"The insurance company merely serves as an accountability sink, a layer of indirection that lets a murder happen without any person being the technical murderer:"

"Look, I’m done. I poured years and endless hours into establishing myself on walled garden services administered with varying degrees of competence and benevolence, only to have those services use my own sunk costs to trap me within their silos even as they siphoned value from my side of the ledger to their own." -- @pluralistic

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/

#Mastodon #SocialMedia #iHeatlh

"In 20 U.S. states, there are fewer than 1,000 newspaper employees remaining. While declining journalist employment attracts much attention, newsroom jobs account for only a third of newspaper positions. Many of the losses in the remaining positions occur largely unseen as newspapers reduce delivery schedules and consolidate printing operations."

From Northwestern's Local News Initiative's 2024 Report:

"Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished. Newspapers continue to disappear at a rate of more than two per week; in the past year alone, 130 newspapers have shut their doors. In addition to these closures and mergers, papers are reducing their print coverage, including shifting from dailies to weeklies or ending print publishing altogether."

https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/projects/state-of-local-news/2024/report/

#journalism #localnews #democracy

@pluralistic This blog post looks excellent. I look forward to reading the rest of it later today.

"When Congress created an agency to punish "unfair and deceptive" conduct, they were saying to the American people, "You have a right not to be cheated." While this may sound obvious, it's hardly how the world works."

So true, @pluralistic

"the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation"

#Economics #PoliEcon

@pluralistic "40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes."

Another excellent blog post, @pluralistic .

"Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices."

-- Cory Doctorow

From: https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

#PoliEcon #Economics #AntiTrust

Antitrust cases threaten to sap Google's profits

"A trio of antitrust cases on the docket threaten to reshape Google’s business and sap its profits."

@nicoagrant RT Google’s Play Store case was the first test of how it might fare in the antitrust gauntlet it faces in the U.S.—and Google was routed. The loss could preview its fate in two bigger antitrust cases that could weaken the influential internet business in 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/technology/google-antitrust-cases.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

#antitrust #EpicVsGoogle #Google

So about that invisible hand...

"The problem for the West... China’s industrial dominance is underpinned by decades of experience using... all the levers of government & banking, while encouraging frenetic competition among private companies."

“In 2022, Beijing accounted for 85% of all clean-energy manufacturing investment in the world”

How China Pulled So Far Ahead on Industrial Policy - Gift link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/27/business/economy/china-us-tariffs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vE0.sLyF.pRyVplaJUeg3&smid=url-share

cc: @jgkoomey

#PoliEcon #Climate #Economics

@mothninja Judy Dench reads Shakespeare so beautifully.

Dame Judi Dench Masterfully Does A Shakespeare Sonnet | The Graham Norton Show

https://youtu.be/6_0VBS9AOhE?si=_mJ7B8Ttcs-Fpsqj

#SmallCheeringThings

" …when a super app offers popular mini programs, ‘iOS stickiness goes down.’”"

-- @matthewstoller

#DOJ files BIG antitrust case against Apple. Great #MattStoller
blog post about it:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-the-apple-antitrust-suit-matters

#Antitrust #Apple #Economics

@mikeolson @pluralistic

This still makes me smile