The cost of Scalia’s death to business

The death of Antonin Scalia has cost Dow Chemical corporation about a billion dollars. As David Dayen explains:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was worth billions of dollars to corporate America, if a Dow Chemical settlement made public Friday is any indication.

Dow was in the midst of appealing a $1.06 billion class-action antitrust ruling, after a jury found that it had conspired with other chemical companies to fix prices for urethane, a material used in furniture and appliances.

But because of Scalia’s death and the sudden unlikelihood of finding five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the case, Dow decided to settle for $835 million, the bulk of the original award.

[Read more…]

Welcome to the Trash Talk primaries

Professional athletes, once the leaders in trash talking opponents, may have to take notes from the new kids in the game. While I said before Thursday’s debate that the fight between Donald Trump and Marco Rubio would get ugly, I did not expect that it would sink so deep into the mud so soon, starting with Rubio’s aggressive performance at the debate itself where he tried to out-Trump Trump. It looks like Rubio’s technicians have reprogrammed him and flipped the switch into Attack mode.
[Read more…]

Please help this astronaut return from space

Pretty much everyone has received the offer to take part in what has become known as the ‘Nigerian Prince’ scam, that is also known as the Nigerian 419 scam. This takes the form of a letter asking the recipient to agree to be a partner in getting a huge amount of money out of that country that, for whatever reason, cannot be done any other way. All that you have to do is give them your bank account number and they will wire the money to you, you keep a hefty portion of the money, and send the rest to another account. Of course, all they want is access to your bank account so that they can drain it.
[Read more…]

Conservatives freak-out over the popularity of Bernie Sanders’s positions

Tomorrow is the Democratic primary in South Carolina that polls predict Hillary Clinton will win handily. What has been extraordinary is how Bernie Sanders has made the word socialism and socialist ideas so acceptable, especially among the young, so that they view it as a more compassionate system than capitalism. This is certainly true but the mainstream media in the US has been relentlessly extolling the virtues of a particular form of capitalism that leads to vast inequalities, and they cannot believe that their sustained propaganda has been upended by a hitherto obscure senator from Vermont.
[Read more…]

You have to hand it to Donald Trump …

… because he will take it anyway.

But joking aside, his tactical abilities were on display today. Marco Rubio was making the rounds on media outlets this morning touting his debate performance as a knockout blow against Trump that would turn the tide in his favor although the verdict on that is decidedly equivocal. Since he has been chosen to be the establishment candidate to defeat Trump, he was sure to get a lot of positive media attention to bolster his claim.
[Read more…]

Last night’s Republican debate

The debate last night was as expected a slugfest between Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, with Ben Carson and John Kasich largely bystanders. It looked like Cruz and Rubio had decided to join forces and attack Trump rather than each other (maybe they met in a closet before the debate to plan their strategy) and they did manage to land some blows on him. This report from the Guardian suggests that Trump stumbled but similar instant judgments have proved in the past to be not good predictors of his fortunes.
[Read more…]

Poetic justice for a homophobic church

There is something sweet about poetic justice. Jessica Williams of The Daily Show returns to a church with a virulently anti-gay pastor. The building is under foreclosure because he has not been paying his water bills among other debts and now owes about a million dollars. The pastor seems to think that having tax-exempt status (itself an indefensible boondoggle) means he is entitled to free water as well. Why stop there? Why not free electricity too? And internet? And cable TV?
[Read more…]

The Trump-Rubio mismatch will be revealed in the coming showdown

Today there will be another Republican debate at 9:00pm ET in Houston, Texas and aired on CNN. It will be the last debate before a slew of contests to be held on Tuesday, March 1 and there is no doubt that Donald Trump hopes to run the table of 12 primaries and three caucuses. Trump leads in the polls everywhere except Texas and Arkansas where Ted Cruz has leads. Texas is the big prize because if Trump can defeat Cruz in his home state, that will be a crushing blow and likely force the latter’s exit from the race.
[Read more…]