Reverie

The commissions to overturn political idolatry thus entrusted to the United States, like that to overturn religious idolatry entrusted to the Jews, requires only that portion of sagacity, sufficient to discover a fact, of universal notoriety, incapable of contradiction, and acknowledged by every honest man, learned or unlearned. It is, that no species of property-transferring policy, past or existing, foreign or domestick, ever did or ever can enrich the labouring classes of any society whatever; but that it universally impoverishes them. --Taylor

 Sen. Warren’s aim is to confiscate a large chunk of the property of equity owners (those whose economic welfare is most directly tied to the quality of corporate decision-making) and transfer it to a largely nebulous set of “stakeholders” (those who, having directly risked nothing of their own on the performance of corporations, will nevertheless get a say in how corporations are run simply because politicians, bureaucrats, and judges declare them – according to what criteria we do not know – to be “stakeholders”). --from a letter to the editor on the esteemed Sen. Warren's New Big Idea

A reporter in England has been in possession of extraordinary details about Russia’s cultivation and handling of Brexit’s biggest bankroller. Arron Banks was secretly in regular contact with Russian officials from 2015 to 2017, according to a cache of emails apparently not seen in those Transatlantic investigations until they were published in Britain on Sunday.

Isabel Oakeshott, a former Sunday Times journalist who ghost-wrote Banks’ book, The Bad Boys of Brexit, was granted access to his emails in the summer of 2016 in order to help draft the diaries. The book mentions one meeting at the Russian embassy which has been the focus of great interest ever since, especially amid questions about where Banks’ sourced the multi-million pound funding of Brexit. He has denied the money came from Russia. Oakeshott says she did not discover the stunning extent of Banks’ true dealings with Russia until last year. Even then, she decided not to publish saying she wanted to wait until the publication of her next book White Flag? in August. It is unclear whether the Electoral Commission’s investigations into Banks’ financing of the Brexit campaign would have been completed by August.
Oakeshott was keen to keep her treasure trove of Brexit/Russia revelations for her book launch, but she has not merely kept out of the debate about the legitimacy of the Brexit campaign. Describing herself as “a long-standing Brexit supporter,” who is close to Farage and Banks, Oakeshott has become a regular TV pundit shooting down “conspiracy theories” about the validity of the Brexit vote amid claims of Russian influence or reports about Cambridge Analytica’s disputed involvement. (Daily Beast)

Pope Francis met with oil and gas executives and investors in a closed-door session at the Vatican on Saturday to sound the alarm on fossil fuels’ dire threat to humanity and urgently call for greater efforts to develop alternative energy.

Between 1979 and 2014, the percentage of poor Americans dropped from 24 to 20, the percentage in the lower middle class dropped from 24 to 17, and the percentage in the middle class shrank from 32 to 30. Where did they go? Many ended up in the upper middle class ($100,000-$350,000), which grew from 13 to 30 percent of the population, and in the upper class, which grew from 0.1 percent to 2 percent. The middle class is being hollowed out in part because so many Americans are becoming affluent.

In 1509 King Henry VIII of England married Catherine of Aragon, the first of six wives. When Catherine failed to produce a male heir, Henry divorced her against the will of the Roman Catholic Church, thus precipitating the Protestant Reformation in England.

A rare moment in history where a religion was begun without a vision.

The Department of Justice inspector general report condemned Strzok's behavior, stating that it was "not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate's electoral prospect." So they fired him. Fair enough. By why did it take so long?

By far the most costly war in terms of human life was World War II (1939–45), in which the total number of fatalities, including battle deaths and civilians of all countries, is estimated to have been 56.4 million, assuming 26.6 million Soviet fatalities and 7.8 million Chinese civilians were killed.

Who is...Ali Watkins?

Government power, a vast, organized, and living body, naturally tends to grow. It feels cramped within its supervisory mission. Now, its growth is hardly possible without a succession of encroachments upon the field of individual rights. The expansion of government power means usurping some form of private activity, transgressing the boundary that I set earlier between what is and what is not its essential function.--Bastiat

The world of book collecting is filled with strange and wonderful things. Look at this recent auction and the devotion to this small niche:

In July of this year, Forum Auctions held a two-day sale of the Rothamsted Collection, made up of more than 3,400 books on agriculture from the Lawes Library offered across 800 lots. With a hammer total of just over £1.75 million—two-and-a-half times the low estimate—the collection had the rare distinction of being a “white-glove sale,” in which every item was sold.

The collection was amassed between the first and second world wars by Sir John Russell, who wanted to create a world-class library of books on agriculture that would be accessible by all. The result of this enormous undertaking was a collection covering a wide range of subjects relating to rural affairs, including farming, gardening, viticulture, architecture, science, law, political economy, and more.
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Anodyne:

1. anything that relieves distress or pain: The music was an anodyne to his grief.
2. a medicine that relieves or allays pain.

Anodyne has a surprising etymology. Its Greek original, anṓdynos “painless,” breaks down to the elements an-, ṓd-, -yn-, -os-. The first element, an- “not,” is from the same Proto-Indo-European source as Latin in- and Germanic (English) un-. The second to last element -yn- is from the noun suffix -ýnē; the last element, -os, is an adjective ending. The main element odýnē “pain” (édyna in the Aeolic dialect) consists of ṓd-, a derivative of the Greek root ed-, od- from the Proto-Indo-European root ed-, od- “to eat” (source of Latin edere, Germanic (Old English) etan, Hittite et-, Homeric Greek édmenai, all meaning “eat, to eat.”) In Greek odýnē is something that eats you (cf. colloquial English, “What’s eating you?”). The Germanic languages also have the compound verb fra-etan “to eat up, devour,” which becomes in German fressen “devour, gorge, corrode,” and in Old English fretan “to devour,” English fret, which nowadays usually has only its extended sense “feel worry or pain.” Anodyne entered English in the 16th century.

A Manhattan woman was sued by her doctor after posting a bad review of him online. Michelle Levine has already spent close to $20,000 fighting the million-dollar suit which accuses her of defamation, libel, and causing emotional distress. The plaintiff is Dr. Joon Song, a gynecologist Levine says she visited once in August for an annual exam. “After I got a bill for an ultrasound and a new patient visit, whatever that means, and it was not billed as an annual I wrote a review about it,” she said. She says she complained to the doctor’s office, but nothing happened. The lengthy critical review, among other things, complained of “very poor and crooked” business practices and was posted on sites like Yelp, Zocdoc, and Healthgrades. “And I gave them one star on Facebook, which they also put in their complaint,” Levine said to CBS2. After getting sued, Levine says she took down all her reviews but Dr. Song still wants her to pay around $1 million in damages plus legal fees. ​

 

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The first known leak in the  investigation of the Trump administration has focused on a 20-something New York Times reporter, who enjoyed a meteoric rise through Washington's journalism ranks that began while she was still in college. Times reporter Ali Watkins hasn't been charged in the Justice Department's investigation of the leak of classified information from the Senate Intelligence Committee. But the revelation late Thursday that the FBI had secretly seized years' worth of Watkins' phone and email records, dating back to when she was a student at Temple University, raised questions about her relationship with the man at the center of the investigation. Watkins' romantic involvement with former intelligence committee aide James Wolfe — who was indicted on Thursday — focused attention on her reporting for such news organizations as McClatchy's Washington bureau, BuzzFeed and Politico.

The Democratic National Committee adopted a new rule aimed at preventing non-Democrats, such as independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, from seeking the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, reports said.

A plan to diversify New York City's most elite public high schools is drawing fire from the minority group that has come to dominate the schools in recent years: Asian-Americans. Fewer than 10 percent of students who score well enough to gain admission to the schools are black or Latino, despite the fact that those two groups make up two-thirds of the city's 1 million public school students. "It's not fair. It's not inclusive. It's not open to all," de Blasio said. But such a change might mean fewer seats for Asian-American students, who now make up 62 percent of the pupils.

Prices are signals, and when the signals stop working, capitalism stops working well. Nowadays, there are certain classes of investors in the stock market who don’t really care what the price of the stock is when they buy it. For instance, index fund investors. Index fund investors buy cheap stocks and expensive stocks indiscriminately. Stock buybacks are even more peculiar; the company buying would rather the price of the stock--their own company--be expensive.

Congressional Quarterly (6/6, McIntire, Subscription Publication) reports the House Ways and Means Committee is working “on a health tax package that would address health savings accounts,” Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) said on Wednesday. He is quoted as saying, “We’re developing a health care tax package for the House to consider. ... It really builds off how do we make health savings accounts more user-friendly, more able to be used for preventative issues and frankly even better used to drive health care costs down.” The article says several committee members are pushing “bills that would allow consumers to use their health savings accounts in additional ways or increase how much money they can contribute to those accounts.”

Why would anyone buy into a program that, if passed, is almost certain to be abolished as soon as the administration changes? This uncertainty in the political landscape is a significant reason why it is so barren.

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AAaaaannnnnnddddd....a picture:
https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/auction-guide/2018/aumn/graphics/fossett.jpg