Myths Behind First Class: Now It Is Gone

“No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.”
~ Walter Bagehot, “Mr. Gladstone”

“Dieu me pardonnera; c’est son métier

(God will pardon me. That is His business.)” Last night `Cigarettes, Cognac and Wild, Wild Polish Party at The Avenue ....’

Today the Royal family invited us to their housewarming party at the edge of the wild native forest ...

American Pravda: The Legacy of Sydney Schanberg Unz Review 

NYT Lets $27 Million Man Brag About What He’s Doing for Income Inequality FAIR. That $27 million figure is a great understatement. Bloomberg puts his net worth as $1.1 billion.

HSBC escaped US money-laundering charges after Osborne’s intervention Guardian

Trick or tweet, or both? How social media is messing up politics New Scientist

(1) Brazil's Aos Fatos turns a year old and transitions from Medium to its own site. (2) Last week's On The Media was all about political lies. (3) Donald Trump requires a change of pitch from fact-checking journalists, argues Jay Rosen. (4) Applications to the fact-checking fellowship close Friday, July 15. (5) Would you, could you fact-check the leader of the free world? (6) PolitiFact Illinois becomes the 18th state affiliate of the Florida-born fact-checking outfit. (7) El Sabueso fact-checks jobs numbers in Mexico.

We are being skewered; every consumer and every business which uses gas is being gouged. Spiralling energy prices – electricity costs have doubled in recent years too – are all part of the train wreck which is Australia’s energy policy Gas Prices by Michael West

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away." from The High WindowCaught on camera! Half naked woman tries to bribe her way out of a speeding ticket in Miami

WHY ANCIENT STATUES have small penises.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Nancy Pelosi blows off traffic laws — to shop at shoe store!

Susan Rossiter, Sangster, Peacock Renouf - She was the elder daughter of Sir John Rossiter, a Liberal member of Victoria's Legislative Assembly for 21 years and later the state's agent-general to London. In 1970, she was the focus of a minor political scandal in Australia when she appeared in print advertisements for Sheridan brand bedsheets while her then husband, Andrew Peacock, was Minister for the Army in the Australian federal government. The advertisement read "Susan Peacock, wife of Australia's youngest Minister of State, adores Sheridan Sheets". This is in breach of a rule which forbids the linking of parliament to an any commercial advertising. Andrew Peacock was not, however, required to resign over the incident.
She is survived by three daughters, Jane, Ann and Caroline. (Born on 15 July 1942 and died on 16 July 2016): Lady Susan Renouf loses battle with ovarian cancer

Sonia Kruger has courted controversy on morning television by calling on Australia to stop taking Muslim immigrants, prompting a stand-off with co-host David Campbell. Sonia Kruger calls on Australia to stop taking Muslim immigrants

11 Picassos, six van Goghs, five Cézannes and a rare pair of Monets. That's what's at stake in a family art feud. “It’s Agatha Christie meets Homer” Art of Dispute

A Short History of Boris Johnson Insulting Foreign Leaders Atlantic

Cait Etherington offers her voice full of Money in New York Appartments as Library Stacks ...

In the early to mid twentieth century, the majority of the city’s libraries had live-in superintendents. Like the superintendents who still live in many of the city’s residential buildings, these caretakers both worked and lived in the buildings for which they were responsible. This meant that for decades, behind the stacks, meals were cooked, baths and showers were taken, and bedtime stories were read. And yes, families living in the city’s libraries typically did have access to the stacks at night—an added bonus if they happened to need a new bedtime book after hours.

We are all meritocrats now. But the meritocratic elite — multiracial, gender-neutral, but still hereditary — has hardened into a new aristocracy Gang of Imriches

Victorian Color Picture Books is a delight in its totality, featuring seminal illustration by legends like Randolph Caldecott and Walter Crane, as well as a wonderful conversation with Maurice Sendak about the art of visual storytelling. Complement this portion of it with the British Library’s excellent Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art

Dodo co-founder Igor Gilenko wanted in Ukraine over bank fraud

Former Paramatta Eels star Will Hopoate allegedly received payments from Eddie Obeid jnr 

Walt Mossberg on Tyranny of Messaging and first class notifications

Real relationships can be a burden to busy professionals and broken people.
Unkept Promises of America’s Economy Drive Turbulent Election Wall Street Journal. Includes picture of Alan Greenspan in the thumbnail.

But the sex doll just won't cut it. Also, they often need a presentable companion for social obligations. Those are the situations fueling demand in the sugar daddy/sugar mommy economy.

According to Nancy Jo Sales in Vanity Fair, if that economically based relationship involves sex, the fee can be up to $700 an hour.  But that kind of work isn't open to everyone. As one young woman told Sales, she had to cultivate the right persona. The busy professionals she accompanied to their social musts required her to have a certain look, casual sophistication, and ability to chat about the right things.

A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order Quanta

It was everywhere. From the establishment The New York Times to offbeat MEdiaDragon and Abovethelaw. Those of us who understand public relations had a hunch that plaintiff Gretchen Carlson had a media firm behind her. And, that she did. Odwerpr.com reports that her high-profile lawsuit for sexual harassment and more against Fox head Roger Ailes is being managed in the court of public opinion by Ripp Media. The publicity machine kicked in as soon as former Fox anchor Carlson filed her lawsuit. Here you can read the details.

Ailes should have seen this coming when he terminated the employment of Carlson at Fox late last June. She's no newbie in how the media game is played. It was a risk he shouldn't have taken in an election year.

Behind First Class: Stock market headwinds meant less generous year for some CEOs

Economic Policy Institute, By Lawrence Mishel and Jessica Schieder,  July 12, 2016: “What this report finds: In 2015, CEOs in America’s largest firms made an average of $15.5 million in compensation, which is 276 times the annual average pay of the typical worker. While the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio is down from 302-to-1 in 2014, it is still light years beyond the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965. The drop in 2015 primarily reflects a dip in the stock market and not any change in how CEO pay is being set. Therefore, CEO pay can be expected to resume its sharp upward trajectory when the stock market resumes rising.

COMPLAINS ABOUT MICROAGGRESSION BY LOWLY GATE AGENT:

Brooks, the actress who plays Taystee in “Orange is the New Black,” took to Twitter to complain about her own first-world problems, a purported microaggression she experienced this morning at the airport.

Brooks tweeted – and then likely when called on her contemptuousness by Heat Street – deleted the following tweet:

I hate when gate agents look at me like I’ve never flown first class and say “You’re in first class, lucky you!”???? really tho

The nerve of that gate agent! Making $45K a year and not even having an expensive cadre of writers sculpting her dialogue and a director shaping her performance and a cameraman shooting take after take to get things just so! Incidentally, I wonder if the people who imagine all of these microagressions occurring ever wonder why they just keep happening over and over to them? But, really, as with Alec Baldwin accosting American Airlines stewardesses, what’s the sense of being a leftist one percenter who believes in tolerance and diversity if you can’t publicly attack people who actually work for a living?

The New Ruling Class Hedgehog Review

Kay Bell, IRS can now share tax data to help find missing kids

Robot Lawyer Successfully Appeals 160,000 London and New York Parking Tickets Michael Shedlock


Risk culture and conduct

Find the top employer that best suits your needs. Sort the Best Places to Work by key criteria, such as training days, and add filters by region and/or organization size. Note that the more filters you add, the fewer organizations will be listed.” This list also includes related articles on the respective top large firm, mid size firm, and small firm that was ranked best in class.

Bennett, L. & Flanagan, D., (2016). Measuring the impact of digitized theses: a case study from the London School of Economics. Insights. 29(2), pp.111–119. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.300. Published 5 July 2016.

S&P threatens Australian downgrade on fiscal “gridlock” MacroBusiness. The austerity enforcers flex their muscle.

Our Greatest Enemy: Optimism The Smart Set (resilc). Your humble blogger warned about this in early 2008: The Dark Side of Optimism in the Conference Board Review

"Yes, the fine print is often boring. Sometimes people would rather dance and holler than make sure all the details are strictly accurate. But without the details, there's no truth, and without the truth, we're sunk." —Columnist Jacquielynn Floyd, Dallas Morning News  


TaxGrrrl, Practically Untouchable: Going Offshore Still Has Benefits. “So don’t consider an offshore trust unless you’re putting at least $1 million in it, says Philadelphia trust and estate lawyer Paula M. Jones.”

Mark Evans, the director of the University of Canberra Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, suggests a bigger role in connecting directly with the public for some of the entities that are keeping everything running while we wait for our next fragile federal government to assemble. His work with the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House shows Australians actually trust public servants a lot more than politicians. Unelected officials can play a role in rebuilding public trust

Want to Attract More Readers? Try Listening to Them – The Public Editor, By Liz Spyd, July 9, 2016 – “Most journalists I’ve worked with have a reflexive aversion to interacting with readers. They subscribe to the view that editors and reporters have the most cultivated sense of which stories are most important, and which subjects most worthy of attention. Expecting them to consider the opinions of readers when making such journalistic decisions would be akin to asking an artist to produce a masterwork to accommodate the taste of a benefactor. Keeping a good distance from readers worked fine over the last century of newspapering. But now that the monopolistic era of print is giving way to an accelerating stampede of digital, the relationship between newsrooms and their audiences is in a period of manifest change. The leadership at The New York Times, in a shift from the past practice, is aiming to produce a product that consumers have a greater say in creating…”

Sen. Pat Toomey Is Trying to Protect His Seat by Arming the Police Daily Beast 

It Is Not 1968 New York Magazine. Reslc: “He is writing this from the Hamptons.”

THIS IS KNOWN AS BAD LUCK:Venezuela’s democratic façade has completely crumbled, the Washington Post reports.

Note the photo atop the article, which is captioned, “A national guard member patrols a supermarket in Caracas in February of last year.”

Well, that’s the usual endgame when a nation declares “We Are All Socialists Now,” as the Washington Post trumpeted at the dawn of the Obama era, via its then subsidiary, Newsweek.

Related: Freedom Is Receding Around the World.

Unexpectedly. Or as Stuart Chase, the socialist advisor to FDR who coined the phrase “A New Deal” asked in his 1932 book by the same name, “Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking a world?”

(Classical reference in headline.)