2:00PM Water Cooler 2/7/2025 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether.

Readers, my head chilly appears to be on the downslope, oh pleasure. Anyohw, I began on-time as we speak, then thought I’d have my feeds one final look… –lambert

Chook Track of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Bindloss Campground, Hanna, Alberta, Canada. With some faraway geese.

In Case You May Miss…

1. Attainable Democrat methods in opposition to DOGE.
2. The notion of “racial capitalism” decried..
3. Gap punches.

Politics

“So most of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in reality a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Trump Administration

“Hegseth commits to Pentagon passing clear audit inside 4 years” [The Hill]. • Huge if true. It might take DOGE to do it. How’s that going?

DOGE

“The place’s the Actual Energy Nexus? How Does the Opposition Get To It?” [Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo]. “I’ve made this point a few times in passing in other posts. But as events develop I wanted to explain it succinctly and with emphasis. Democrats are out of power and have very few actual levers to impact what’s happening. Yelling is important. Driving opposition in what is ultimately a battle for public opinion is important. Contesting everything through the courts is important. But there is only one hard lever of power currently available: that’s the help the White House needs from Democrats on a budget and the debt ceiling. This morning explainer from Punchbowl makes clear why that help is essential. It’s not just helpful. It’s essential. The GOP majorities are simply too small, especially in the House. The GOP is simply too fractious. This is the one area where it isn’t a matter of yelling as loud as you can when no one actually has to listen, or working through a decidedly hostile judiciary. Trump needs this. It’s not a matter of working out a deal with Mike Johnson. Trump needs this help and there’s only one place to get it. It’s a not a discussion with John Thune or Mike Johnson. Only with Trump. I had been somewhat pessimistic about what I was seeing from congressional Democrats on this front. But starting yesterday they began to change their tune and started saying explicitly that the budget and debt ceiling were a key lever for them in handling the situation. That’s real progress. But I think the terms need to be sharpened a lot. The standard should be no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops.” • Well, here I am quoting Josh Marshall with approval. It’s a funny old world.

“Taking DOGE to Court Is a Doomed Strategy” [Ken Klipperstein]. “The war against DOGE is shaping up to be the same as the frenzied and ultimately unsuccessful takedown of Donald Trump that we saw in Russiagate and the January 6 investigations. The parallels are eerie, with Democrats alleging an illegitimate government takeover by DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) headed by Elon Musk. Even more bizarre is their adoption, literally verbatim, of MAGA rhetoric like ‘Stop the Steal.’ After weeks of confusion the party strategy finally emerged this week, expressed in accusations that DOGE was not in compliance with records laws and procedures. There’s plenty to criticize about Trump’s chaotic DOGE-led war on government, but the hunt for some kind of broken rule that will invalidate the whole thing hasn’t worked in the past and won’t now. For one, a senior U.S. intelligence official tells us that neither the FBI nor the intelligence community are investigating Musk and company for any unlawfulness. Trump has apparently granted DOGE officials security clearances, including top secret.” And: “Instead of making a plainspoken case to the public about how DOGE could negatively affect their daily lives, Democratic leaders conducted astroturfed ‘demonstrations’ in front of USAID, Treasury and other government shrines this week. They adopted the conspiratorial tone of the MAGA opposition to the Democrats that they have been so contemptuous of in the past. ;’An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government,’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said of DOGE in a press release on Monday. The statement might as well have been written by Alex Jones on January 6, 2021. It was jarring coming from the Democratic Party’s highest ranking official, a bespectacled 74 year old with reliably vanilla politics.” And: “It all reminds me of the Mueller investigation, when political journalists who had never covered national security suddenly peppered their articles with acronyms like ‘SIGINT.’ There’s lots to criticize about DOGE. I certainly have, publishing as many of its boneheaded memos as I can find. But instead of focusing on the substance — what it is actually doing, its gaping exemption for the national security state, and so on — Democrats instead are focused on obscure matters of process. “Did DOGE submit Form 18-7.4?” is a question almost nobody outside of Washington cares about. Nor should they.” • All true, though stops somewhat short of the Courts (i.e., the Federalist Society’s court (hat tip, these same process Democrats)).

“A Constitutional Crisis?” [New York Times]. “The president can’t shut down agencies that Congress has funded, yet that’s what Trump did, with Elon Musk’s help, to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The president can’t fire inspectors general without giving lawmakers 30 days’ notice, but Trump dismissed 17 of them anyway. Congress passed a law forcing TikTok to sell or close, and the courts upheld it, but Trump declined to enforce it. ‘The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,’ said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.” The Constitutional remedy is impeachment, but the Democrats used that one up already with trivial and butchered efforts. Ah well, nevertheless.

“Congressional Democrats denied entry to EPA headquarters” [Axios]. “A group of House and Senate Democrats said they were denied access to the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is the third time this week that Democratic lawmakers were blocked from an agency that has been targeted by President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.” • Lesson of Occupy: Take and hold ground (although I don’t know the legalities here, the Executive Branch denying entry to the Legislative Branch seems a little sketchy). Of course, the lawmakers liked footsoldiers. Putting aside the possibility of pink pussy hats from the Northern Virginia suburbs, I have long though that DC residents — aside from the Northwest, of course — might have been usefully organized into cadres of sans culottes. One wonders if “shrinking government” will have direct material impact on non-Northwest portions of Washington, DC.

A union stirs:

New: CPFB Union names three DOGE “minions” that were spotted in the internal staff directory last night pic.twitter.com/7T5RdMDD5O

— Matt Berg (@mattberg33) February 7, 2025

* * *

“DOGE follows longtime Musk sample — and turns consideration to Social Safety Administration” [Semafor]. “The Social Safety Administration is an upcoming focus of the Division of Authorities Effectivity, a supply with data of its work informed Semafor, and one particular person concerned in DOGE is presently getting ready to work with the company that gives advantages to the aged and disabled…. These concerned and acquainted with DOGE, nonetheless, say they’re not confused about their mission: They’re empowered to slash authorities spending and transform companies to fall consistent with the president’s agenda. What’s extra, they seem undisturbed by the drama they’ve prompted….. Notably, the views amongst DOGE supporters differ with regards to the place to attract the road: The primary of the three individuals with data of its work informed Semafor the ‘whole federal authorities’ is up for grabs. The second particular person instructed the road can be drawn at areas affecting nationwide safety and initiatives offering direct advantages. Ernst stated ‘it’s fairly doable’ each a part of the federal government will face scrutiny sooner or later. Whereas Musk has talked about a aim of slicing $1 trillion from the federal authorities, the group isn’t working with many particular targets or finish targets. ‘It’s going to depend upon what we discover,’ the second particular person stated. ‘There’s going to be reworks throughout the federal government, each company.’ Shifting rapidly with a sledgehammer mentality is seen inside DOGE as the one method to enact profitable change, as all three sources acquainted with the group put it.” And: “‘,’ White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated on Fox Information this week.” • Which is nuts, as a result of authorities isn’t and shouldn’t be run like a enterprise — and if it ought to turn into, each worthwhile deparment will instantly shart enshittifying itself to compete with the departments. Apparently, DOGE ends, supposedly, by the midterms, so each — or all — sides are equally conscious of the election calendar.

“Right here at DOGE, We’ve Streamlined Each Side of America’s Collapse” [McSweeney’s Internet Tendency]. “I promise, America will quickly be the Cybertruck of nations—uglier than you may have imagined, constructed for wealthy chuds, borderline inoperable, and on hearth.”

* * *

“Afternoon of Day Seven of the Trump-Musk Treasury Funds Disaster of 2025: Treasury Secretary Bessent’s Lawlessness & Sorry Readers- Learn and Write Code Nonetheless Appears in Play” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. “The wording of the court docket order for Marko Elez to have ‘learn solely’ entry is ambiguous. Particularly it says: Mr. Marko Elez, a Particular Authorities Worker within the Division of the Treasury, as wanted for the efficiency of his duties, offered that such entry to cost data shall be ‘learn solely’ [emphasis added]. Information are knowledge which signifies that a cynical authorities lawyer could approve ‘learn and write’ entry for code on the grounds that Marko Elez is barely barred from modifying or including new knowledge to cost data straight reasonably than not directly via modifying supply code. The plaintiffs place would after all, accurately, declare that ‘learn and write code entry’ is a violation of this order as written. Nonetheless, the likelihood is extraordinarily regarding. And keep in mind— ‘learn solely code and knowledge’ entry remains to be ‘catastrophic.’ All this comes as CNN and different shops affirm that among the worst case situations I used to be nervous about are true.” And Elez is meant to be gonzo, however “A supply acquainted with the state of affairs says: ‘My inclination on any kind of query like that is that [Elez] has extra entry, not much less and no matter entry he doesn’t have, he’s making an attempt to get.’”

“America This Week, Feb 7, 2025: “The Huge Retailer: Politico, USAID, and Managed Actuality” (podcast) [Walter Kirn, Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. • Unsure why Kirn and Taibbi suppose that DOGE’s write entry to OPM’s personnel and the Fiscal Workplace’s cost knowledge isn’t a narrative, however they clearly suppose it’s not (or else they’d cowl it). On the brilliant aspect, no cheerleading for Bhattacharya’s horrid new enterprise!

* * *

“The Authorities’s Computing Specialists Say They Are Terrified” [The Atlantic]. “Elon Musk’s unceasing makes an attempt to entry the information and knowledge methods of the federal authorities vary so broadly, and are so unprecedented and unpredictable, that authorities computing consultants consider the hassle has spun uncontrolled. This week, we spoke with 4 federal-government IT professionals—all skilled contractors and civil servants who’ve constructed, modified, or maintained the sort of technological infrastructure that Musk’s inexperienced workers at his newly created Division of Authorities Effectivity try to entry. In our conversations, every knowledgeable was unequivocal: They’re terrified and struggling to articulate the size of the disaster…. The 4 consultants laid out the implications of giving untrained people entry to the technological infrastructure that controls the nation. Their message is unambiguous: These are usually not methods you tamper with frivolously. Musk and his crew might act intentionally to extract delicate knowledge, alter basic elements of how these methods function, or present additional entry to unvetted actors. Or they might act with carelessness or incompetence, breaking the methods altogether. Given the scope of what these methods do, key authorities companies may cease working correctly, residents could possibly be harmed, and the injury is perhaps tough or unattainable to undo. As one administrator for a federal company with deep data concerning the authorities’s IT operations informed us, ‘I don’t suppose the general public fairly understands the extent of hazard.’ Every of our 4 sources, three of whom requested anonymity out of concern of reprisal, made three factors very clear: These methods are immense, they’re complicated, and they’re vital.” • Thsi is an excellent IT account:

Me modifying the Treasury database by hand pic.twitter.com/ZOl31Yf87f

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) February 7, 2025

You possibly can argue that this picture represents “the extent of hazard”; worse, if something, resulting from “youthful folly” by DOGE’s programmers, who began, in any case, on Inauguration Day. Nevertheless, you may additionally argue, as we did yesterday, that DOGE in reality had insider entry properly earlier than the Inaugural, which could possibly be equally harmful, simply another way.

* * *

“USAID and Safety State Clan Wars” (excerpt) [Yasha Levine, Weaponized Immigrant]. ” USAID was not created for philanthropy. It was created to increase American energy via softer non-military means: pacification via propaganda, off-the-books violence, and bribery overseas. I assume some name this bribery ‘help’… The company was arrange in 1961 beneath President Kennedy in an effort to administer assist applications that fostered financial and social growth in international international locations. It sounded good on paper. In actuality, the company turned a robust power in America’s international pacification efforts, interfacing straight with ARPA and covert CIA applications. USAID rapidly developed a status for brutality and bloodlust: it skilled demise squads, schooled international police departments in efficient torture methods, arrange opium operating operations to finance covert insurgent exercise in Laos…The company additionally turned a laboratory for capitalist-friendly neoliberal financial reforms that have been alleged to supplant native left-wing calls for for wealth redistribution with out really doing something to vary the underlying energy buildings of society. (In yet one more current instance Chrystia Freeland’s uncle (sure, from the infamous Nazi collaborator household) labored for USAID to denationalise farm land in Ukraine…after which parlyed this expertise to begin his personal agribusiness funding agency in Ukraine.” • I’m not seeing quite a lot of international governments weeping over USAID’s demise, probably as a result of they really feel much less more likely to be overthrown?

Democrats en déshabillé

K–hole:

Don’t be a dick

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2025

That stated, this type of indiscipline is pervasive amongst Democrats. Keep in mind after they butchered preserving an NLRB seat in Democrats fingers, via the identical form of stupidity (from Ro Khanna, sarcastically sufficient).

Syndemics

“I’m in earnest — I cannot equivocate — I cannot excuse — I cannot retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Covid Assets, United States (Nationwide): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; contains many counties; Wastewater Scan, contains drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, however nationwide knowledge). “An infection Management, Emergency Administration, Security, and Basic Ideas” (particularly on hospitalization by metropolis).

Lambert right here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To replace any entry, do be at liberty to contact me on the tackle given with the crops. Please put “COVID” within the topic line. Thanks!

Assets, United States (Native): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reviews); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Assets, Canada (Nationwide): Wastewater (Authorities of Canada).

Assets, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tricks to useful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, sq. coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Keep protected on the market!

Transmission: Chook Flu

“The US Is Not Prepared for Chook Flu in People” [Scientific American]. The deck: “Chook flu is infecting extra individuals than we predict. We have to cease it now earlier than a brand new pandemic begins.” And: “Proper after President Donald Trump took workplace, amid the flurry of govt orders and company upheavals, the administration informed the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention to not launch any reviews or communications till one in every of Trump’s individuals might check out them. Among the many many reviews not launched that week was a examine on what number of veterinarians had gotten fowl flu…. This virus is flexible. This virus is mutating. And it’s absolutely infecting extra individuals than we predict. Positive, the danger of a human epidemic remains to be thought of low. (Sound acquainted?).” • I’m so, so sick of pervasive Crimson State/Blue state posturing in Scientific American. There’s greater than sufficient blame to go round.

TABLE 1: Each day Covid Charts

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Unemployment Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The US unemployment rate dipped by 0.1 percentage point to 4.0% in January 2025, marking its lowest level since May and coming in just below market expectations of 4.1%. The number of unemployed individuals declined by 37,000 to 6.85 million, while employment edged up by 2,234 to 163.9 million. Additionally, the labor force participation rate rose to 62.6%, and the employment-population ratio increased to 60.1%.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 42 Fear (previous close: 41 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 40 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 7 at 1:51:37 PM ET.

Gallery

Hole punch (1):

Gap punch (2):

That is Colossal: “The story of those images begins in 1935, when Roy E Stryker, the top of the Info Division of the Farm Safety Administration (FSA), undertook a photographic challenge that commissioned well-known American photographers similar to Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans to {photograph} farmers and farmland through the Nice Despair. The FSA aimed to encourage poverty-stricken People to partake in self-sustaining applications the place they may achieve farm loans to purchase seeds, tools, livestock, and partake in homestead schemes which offered each training and healthcare. The challenge was to show the outcomes of economic help that the FSA provided, along with outsourcing photographs of America life throughout this time. Every photographer was given particular directives, for instance, ‘farmer dumping milk at residence,’ ‘nervous farmer,’ or ‘federal authorities shot.’…. Stryker deployed a particular modifying course of the place himself and his assistants would select images they believed have been true to the temporary; the opposite photographs have been rendered unsuitable and punctuated with a gap puncher. These ruthlessly ‘killed’ images have been left unpublishable. As we speak the discovered works seem to have black discs floating upon them, a visible mark of rejection which by accident focus the viewer’s consideration.

Class Warfare

“The Incorrect Durée: The Politics of Cedric J. Robinson’s Racial Capitalism” [nonsite.org]. I knew this was a Nonsite story from the headline alone, because who else? (The headline is a horrid but fully justified pun on Braudel’s “Longue durée.”) I’m leaving this here mostly as a marker, though I’m sure it’s a thorough and elegant stomping, Adolph Reed-style. But if you want to grab a cup of coffee, have at it! However, for the political context: “[Roibinson’s’ notion of racial capitalism has been widely embraced by academics and intellectuals, including Robin Kelley, Michael Dawson, Ibram X. Kendi, Michelle Alexander, Jodi Melamed, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Angela Davis, among others. Moreover, the spirit of racial capitalism has suffused mainstream discourse from the New York Times’s celebrated but empirically flawed 1619 Project, which proffered a race-centric creation story of the United States, to the liberal pop cultural fixation on racial wealth disparities born out of the postwar homeownership regime, best represented in the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates and academics like Richard Rothstein, among many others. Robinson’s notion of racial capitalism was even evoked in health disparities discussions of the American Medical Association during the early stages of the novel coronavirus pandemic.” And: “In the face of racial capitalism’s newfound popularity, sociologist Loïc Wacquant has lamented that we might expect ‘a crisply enunciated informing a set of clear claims about the nature of race, the logics of capitalism,’ but ‘one searches in vain for this clarification.’” • Ha ha, ouch [wince]. This is relevant today because all these people are shortly going to lose funding in the assault on NGOs (especially, I would think, the 1619 Project). Any effort to rescue them should, in my view, be resisted.

“The Power of Naming” [Language Log]. ” information theory is the mother of all factoids. Why would one call it that? Because there is no such thing, only the following phantom utterance that is ubiquitous: ‘Shannon’s information theory.’… The name stuck, suggesting in the minds of innocents something so deep and epochal that it might even shed light on Mozart. Shannon 1948 is the big example of how of data and information have been confounded for 3/4 of a century…. Here is a rough‑and‑ready demonstration of how different they actually are: “Go.” ←That’s just data, but place it in a context, and a layer of information now “rides on it” (or floats above it, on a different plane) such that this is conveyed: “Go to the store now before it closes”; or this: “Fly now to Hiroshima and drop the bomb.” True, in shop‑talk and hallway conversations, a database developer or data‑comm engineer might toss the terms data and information around as if one believed them to be interchangeable….. As for an actual Theory of Information, we must wait for a superintelligent computer to produce it since that task is far beyond human ability. And once coughed up, it will be so lengthy as to require several lifetimes to read it, and in any case, largely incomprehensible to us.”