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How to blow up your company

By on Wed, Jun 21, 2017 in News 0

1) Launch a startup that does something disrupty.
 
2) Boast about how you will smite the competition. Attempt to bulldoze them. Be astonished when they fight back, wallpapering you with lawsuits.
 
3) Raise billions of dollars and blow through it, losing money in a spectacular manner. You are disrupty and have no need to pay attention to outmoded concepts like making a profit.
 
4) Treat female employees as less than equals, sex toys for the dudebros.
 
5) Foster a corporate culture where top management prides itself on being belligerent assholes.
 
6) Lie constantly about most everything until no one can believe a word you say.
 
7) Be astonished when it all blows up in your face.

Political violence is a game the Right can’t win, says a rightie

By on Sun, Jun 18, 2017 in Energy conservation 0

David Hines, a committed member of the right, says political violence, fighting in the streets, is a game the right won’t win because the left are way better at organizing and because, essentially, the culture and media are more sympathetic to left views. Yes, there’s Fox News, however look at what Hollywood says and implies. It’s not a right wing viewpoint. Plus, I would add, the left, via masses of apparatchiks, has control on way more levers of power than the right.

If there’s one thing righties believe, it’s that they could beat lefties in a fight.

You see this attitude reflected over and over again, to the point that it’s probably something engrained in the right-wing psyche. Pajama Boy vs. tactical deathbeast? Pffft. No contest. Look, righties have the guns, righties have police and they have the military. If one day the balloon ever goes up, righties will just organize behind a leadership of their veterans, coordinate with the active service, give all the lefties free helicopter rides, and live happily ever after. Right?

That’s pretty much what the Confederacy thought about the Yankees, and it didn’t exactly work out well for them.

Unlike many on the right, Hines studies the left, says the tactics and strategy used by the left are smart, and finds laughable, as does anyone on the left, that Soros is secretly financing us. If only…

He is genuinely concerned, as am I, that we could spiral into serious violence. (Read his Storify for more on this.) Which would not be grand and glorious as we righteously smite the enemy. Instead it would be blood in the streets, injuries, trauma, death, and your side might lose so then you get tortured. Woo hoo. Sign me up. “Dig, the time is right for palace revolution, but where I live the game to play is compromise solution” said  the Stones in “Street Fighting Man”, and that’s still good advice.

Political violence isn’t fun for the whole family: it’s long, and it’s ugly, and everybody suffers. And nobody ever thinks this when they have a Great Cause, but maybe, just maybe, your Great Cause won’t win. And then what? “It couldn’t be worse” is the sort of thing Turkish coup plotters say right before their attempt fails and leaves their bete noire in undisputed charge of writing the purge lists.

I have spent time on the far left, helped organize sometime huge protests, and agree with what he says about the strengths of the left.

The organizational capacity required to build a new world is the same organizational capacity have Lefties built to pressure government. So who’s in a better position to shape the big moment when it comes? Hell, if tomorrow civilization goes completely Mad Max: who’s got existing local networks of people who they’re used to turning out and doing stuff with on a regular basis? Answer to both questions: not the Right.

The first thing righties have to understand about Lefties is that lefties have a lot more practice building their own institutions, and assuming control of existing institutions, than their counterparts on the right do, and they share their practical experience with each other.

The second thing to understand about Lefties is how they actually function. There’s a lot of independence involved. Righties like hierarchy, so often think of the Lefties as taking marching orders from George Soros or whoever in a very hierarchical fashion. Not so much. A lot of left-wing organization is very decentralized, and they negotiate with other lefty groups as to exactly how they’ll do things and time things to not hurt each others’ work.

Lefties are excellent at protests, not because they pay seat-fillers, but because they’ve professionalized organizing them, as you’ll discover if you read any of their books. The protesters aren’t paid. The organizers are paid. The people who train the organizers and protesters are paid.

Alphabet soup of Marxist parties snoozes away

By on Sat, Jun 17, 2017 in News 0
alphabet soup photo

Photo by Thriving Vegetarian

The alphabet soup of little Marxist parties in the US have been preaching for years, sometimes decades, that the vanguard needs to seize the opportunity if and when something triggers the masses into political action. Organize on that issue, then move onto to organizing on bigger issues.

 You would think the alphabet soup would be overjoyed with the Trump / Russia investigation. It’s splitting the ruling class. People from across the political spectrum are resisting Trump. Corruption and blind self-interest is exposed for all to see. The whole world is watching.
 
But instead of jumping in, helping to dump Trump, then organizing on bigger issues like systemic corruption and healthcare for all, these Marxist revolutionaries are studiously ignoring the whole thing. Go figure.

Rooftop solar returns to Nevada, Screw you Warren Buffett

By on Fri, Jun 16, 2017 in News 0


Warren Buffett, billionaire plutocrat exploiter beloved by the financial press because of his aw-shucks manner and folksy aphorisms tried through his subsidiary NV Energy to kill rooftop solar in Nevada. It wasn’t that NV Energy opposed solar, it was that it would hurt their profits, so everyone else could go screw themselves. They lobbied hard and managed to temporarily mostly kill rooftop solar.

Multiple casinos told Buffett to go screw himself, paid exit fees and are now buying renewable energy on the open market. Ginormous data center Switch has done much the same. Mandalay Bay has 28 acres of solar PV panels on their convention center rooftop. And yesterday Nevada Governor Sandoval just signed bills almost completely restoring rooftop solar to what it was before Buffett interfered.

A Nevada rooftop solar industry crippled by regulators’ 2015 decision to change a pricing structure is expected to make a comeback after Sandoval signed three major energy-related bills at a Tesla facility in Las Vegas

AB405, sponsored by Democratic Assembly members Chris Brooks and Justin Watkins, will restore more favorable rates for customers with rooftop solar panels who want to sell excess energy they produce back to the grid. It also enshrines into law consumer protections for people who buy solar systems.

It wouldn’t allow rates quite as generous as the ones that predated the Public Utilities Commission’s 2015 decision, but customers could now get 95 percent of that “retail” electricity rate. The rate would decline periodically in tiers as more Nevadans install rooftop solar.

Nevada disengages from constitutional convention movement

By on Tue, Jun 13, 2017 in News 0

Happily, Nevada is now no longer a part of the constitutional convention movement, a misguided, dangerous way to force constitutional change. Only one has been held, and that was in 1787. People on all sides of the political spectrum oppose a constitutional convention because it would be so unpredictable and potentially harmful.

The rules are strict. 2/3’s of the states have to call for a convention and 3/4’s of the states have to ratify whatever the convention passes. So, the process would take years. Still, it’s dangerous. Anything passed by a convention becomes part of the Constitution. A convention could make up its own rules. A convention could be controlled by special interests.

Nevada just said no to being a part of a constitutional convention.

Though the resolution flew largely under the radar, its passage means Nevada has likely untangled itself from rapidly growing national movements to hold a state-led constitutional amendment convention, which could bring up or make constitutionally binding changes to a variety of hot-button issues ranging from restrictions on abortion to requiring a federal balanced budget.

New Mexico, Maryland and Delaware have over the last two years rescinded all official requests for a constitutional convention.

Calling a constitutional convention isn’t a purely partisan debate — Segerblom presented the bill alongside longtime conservative activist Janine Hansen, and said the measure wasn’t “hard to sell” with Republican colleagues given that they share similar fears of a “runaway convention” wreaking havoc on long-established constitutional norms.

Former Chief Justice of the United States Warren Burger wrote in 1988:

“There is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like its agenda.”