$2.3 million later, Tester reverses on fiduciary rule

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
Sen. Jon Tester before the tragic events of Operation Mayhem

Sen. Jon Tester before the tragic events of Operation Mayhem

Back in 2010, Montana’s Senator Jon Tester voted in favor of the Dodd-Frank Act and its authorization of the federal government to create a fiduciary rule. The fiduciary rule is dry, but it’s important. Generally understand as a response to financial advisors’ tendency, before the 2008 crisis, to push clients toward investments that paid high commissions rather than ones that suited their needs, the fiduciary rule would require advisors to put their clients’ financial success ahead of their own.

That makes sense, especially after you’ve watched subprime mortgage derivatives wreck the world economy. Lawyers are required to prioritize their clients’ interests, and so are clinicians. Maybe that’s why the fiduciary rule is overwhelmingly popular—except, of course, with the financial services industry. It has also recently become unpopular with Sen. Tester, who joined Republicans in attempting to block implementation of the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule last month.

In unrelated news, the financial industry has donated $2.3 million to Sen. Tester this year, bringing his career receipts from that sector to $3 million. Maybe he just wanted to give us all an object lesson in how  conflicts fiduciary of interest work. Either he has reaped monetary benefits at the expense of the Montanans whose civic investment he manages, or he knows a really good reason why the fiduciary rule is bad that he should explain to us right away. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. I’m going to make scrambled eggs and oatmeal for lunch, because I’m sick, and I demand pastes.

New Quinnipiac poll has Trump ahead of Rubio by ten points

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 0 Comment
"I will validate your petty resentments or, if you prefer, your despair."

“I will validate your petty resentments or, if you prefer, your despair.”

Oh boy: a new Quinnipiac poll released today has Donald Trump leading the Republican field with support from 27% of respondents nationwide—10 points ahead of Marco Rubio and 11 points ahead of both Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. All other candidates polled at 5% or less. Three out of four Republican front-runers are insane, you guys. These are exciting times to have access to national polls which, we should remember, are poor predictors of actual outcomes this far in advance. Still, in preparation for taking up the mantle of leadership, Trump told Fox & Friends he would kill terrorists’ families:

“I would knock the hell out of ISIS… [and] when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. I say ISIS is our number one threat, we have a president who doesn’t know what he is doing and all he’s worried about is climate change, he thinks climate change is something that’s going to go kill us.”

Only an idiot would concern himself with climate change, when world events offer so many better opportunities for violent revenge fantasies.

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Classic rock is a form of cultural hegemony

By Dan Brooks in Baby Boomers 4 Comments
Bad Company at the Oakland Coliseum Arena

Bad Company at the Oakland Coliseum Arena

Until I was about 16 years old, there was one station in Des Moines that played rock music: 94.9 KGGO, Des Moines’s best rock and roll. By “best rock and roll,” they meant classic rock. If you were unfamiliar with radio programming terminology, you might think the classic era of rock was the mid to late sixties: Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, et cetera. Although these artists occasionally played on KGGO, the station’s wheelhouse was the mid to late seventies: Bad Company, Foreigner, Kansas, Journey, Boston, Rush. These are the worst bands in the history of music. I know, because I have studied their top singles, against my will, for 30 years.

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Maybe it matters how we talk about abortion

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric 0 Comment
Mike Huckabee called the shootings "domestic terrorism" and abortion "dismembering of human babies."

Mike Huckabee called the shootings “domestic terrorism” and abortion “dismembering of human babies.”

On Friday, an evidently deranged man in Colorado Springs killed three people and injured nine others in an armed standoff with police at Planned Parenthood. “No more baby parts,” a senior law enforcement official reported him as saying. It appeared to be a reference to a series of undercover videos shot by an anti-abortion activist in which Planned Parenthood administrators discussed fees associated with the donation of fetal tissue for research. Or, as Carly Fiorina described it in a nationally televised Republican presidential debate:

“Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says ‘we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'”

That video doesn’t exist, you can’t abort a “fully formed” fetus, and no one ever said that about harvesting a brain. But she was just describing something she felt strongly about, in terms that, if they were true, would probably justify armed intervention.

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I declare Thanksgiving

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment
Thank you, CakeWrecks.com

Thank you, CakeWrecks.com

It’s basically Thanksgiving. I’m thankful the Indy ran my column a day early this week, leaving me free to focus on my real calling, these Black Beans with Orange. Obviously, the period of Thanksgiving commences when you start cooking the food, not when you eat the food. So happy holidays, everybody! It might as well be Christmas morning.

In the meantime, I’m also thankful Sarah Aswell wrote this heartfelt, cleanly structured essay about our comedy death pact and the Missoula open mic where we fulfilled it. She is good at writing but never has to fall back on that, because she is also good at finding interesting stories. Don’t let America fall to ISIS, or she will have to stop writing and wear a bag over her head.

I have achieved a similar result without the bag. There will be no blog tomorrow, since Thanksgiving Thursday is also a holiday, nor Friday because my boss is not a miser duck. Instead, Combat! blog will go to the hot springs with our hot girlfriend. We will take pictures, but they’re not for you. They’re for a certain class of Japanese businessmen. See you Monday!