Monday, October 31, 2016

Stuff I read today, Halloween 2016


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Not nine, not seven, eight days: a week until it’s not over, but we have a winner.

Eight days a week
I love you
Eight days a week
Is not enough to show I care…

- McCartney & Lennon, 1964



A poll doesn't predict the future. The media has completely missed this point, again and again. If, on the day the iPhone was announced, you had done a well-designed poll of adults and asked, "Do you intend to ever buy a smartphone?" the yesses would have certainly been less than 5% of the result.

Of course, a decade later, that's turned out to be completely wrong. Was the poll in error?

No.

An accurate poll is a snapshot of right now, based on what's happening today. That's all. If outcomes end up being different a week or a year later, that's not the poll's fault, it's our mistaken belief that the future can be predicted.

- I’ve never seen much point to mass economic boycotts based on personal preferences. Unless you’ve enough purchasing power to break the company that has displeased you, it’s easier just to substitute another product or another store.

So old man Yuengling can back Donald Trump all he wants. The Supreme Court says billionaires have more rights than the rest of us, and they ought to use them.

But it’s a different barrel of beer when old man Yuengling makes it the enforceable policy of his company that here’s a big long list of people it does not discriminate against- and here’s a short list of those they do.

Here’s another: Duke Energy has ladled out millions to Republicans this year. They do it to advance their corporate interests. A side effect is they help insulate homophobic legislators from paying any price for their HB2s and religious freedom laws.

- Here’s the Monday NC Roundup:

Well-Fargo, another huge corporate presence in North Carolina, practices Darwinian Banking:

Mexican immigrants who speak little English. Older adults with memory problems. College students opening their first bank accounts. Small-business owners with several lines of credit.

These were some of the customers whom bankers at Wells Fargo, trying to meet steep sales goals and avoid being fired, targeted for unauthorized or unnecessary accounts, according to legal filings and statements from former bank employees.

“The analogy I use was that it was like lions hunting zebras,” said Kevin Pham, a former Wells Fargo employee in San Jose, California, who saw it happening at the branch where he worked. “They would look for the weakest, the ones that would put up the least resistance.”

North Carolina needs no wall to keep immigrants out. The immigration court in Charlotte does it way faster.

The first week of early voting in Charlotte, ten thousand fewer votes were cast than four years ago. Lines stretched for hours. The first day all 22 early voting stations were open- like in 2012- a new one-day record was set. Make it harder to vote, and fewer people will. Nuts to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the state GOP chortles. Michael Bitzer breaks down the data.

Compared to Senate seats and governorships, North Carolina Supreme Court seats are bargains.

There’s one less lawless clown on the streets, NC Capital Connection reports in a bid to keep the GOP HQ firebombing relevant:

Investigators reviewing footage from midnight to 9 a.m. on Oct. 16 came across an image from an area ATM of a person wearing a clown mask.

Investigators immediately began following the lead to determine if there was any connection to the incident..

The image, while not connected to the attack, has been connected to the theft and fraudulent use of an ATM card that had not yet been reported. Investigators were able to identify the person in the clown mask, and charges are pending. As of publication, the name of the suspect was not available.

In Hoke County, two cases of voter registration fraud have been filed against the Democrats. I can remember when there were something like eleven registered Republicans in the whole county. When 21 Republican votes were cast for Nixon in 1960, the elections board chair just tore up the extra one.

When it comes to another term, Senator Sockless Dick Burr is being a real dick.


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