Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 15, 2024

By Tony Wikrent

 

How Much Do I Need to Change My Face to Avoid Facial Recognition? 

[Gizmodo, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-09-2024]

An aggregation of quotes from experts in the field. Here’s the most optimistic one: Even the best neural networks struggle with low-quality photos that lack information-rich pixels of the human face, especially when matching against a large list of potential identities. Thus the first step is to deny the algorithm those pixels by occluding the face. Cover the face in cases where that isn’t suspicious, e.g., wear a scarf in the wintertime, sun glasses on a bright day. Hats with wide brims are also a confound, as they can hide the forehead and hair, and cast a shadow on the face. Holding a hand over the face is also good for this. The second step is to look down while in motion so any camera in the vicinity will not capture a good frontal image of the face. Third, if one can move quickly, that might cause motion blur in the captured photo—consider jogging or riding a bike. My best practical advice for evasion: know where facial recognition is being deployed and simply avoid those areas. How long this advice remains useful though depends on how widespread the technology becomes in the coming years.”

 

Strategic Political Economy

The early American rejection of John Locke

[TW: I want to begin with this, because you will see echoes of the argument over masses versus elites in almost all the subsequent stories. USA is stumbling and faltering because so much of what we are taught and believe is based on lies. One of the biggest lies is that the founding of the republic was based on the ideas of John Locke. It is true that Locke’s ideas later came to predominate American political economy, but it was after a period of ideological combat. Unfortunately, the opponents of Locke lost.

[In the 1820s and 1830s, the Transcendentalist movement in USA, which included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, Louisa May Alcott, and Walt Whitman quite explicitly rejected the ideas of John Locke. Universalist minister Orestes Brownson, wrote in The Boston Quarterly Review, in January 1839,

Locke was a great and good man, but his philosophy was defective… Locke reduces man to the capacity of receiving sensations, and the faculty of of reflecting on what passes within us. According to him we have no ideas which do not enter through the senses, or which are not formed by the operations of the mind on ideas received by means of sensation.

[Locke’s] system of philosophy… is no less fatal to political liberty than to religion and morality… This philosophy necessarily disinherits the mass. It denies to man all inherent power of attaining to truth. In religion, if religion it admits, it refers us not to what we feel and know in ourselves [such a sense of fairness and justice], but was said and done in some remote age, by some special messenger from God; it refers us to some authorized teacher, and commands us to receive our faith on his word, and to adhere to it on peril of damnation. It therefore destroys all free action of the mind, all independent thought, all progress, and all living faith. In politics it must do the same. It cannot found the state on the inherent rights of man; the most it can do, is to organize the state for the preservation of such conditions, privileges, and prescriptions, as it can historically verify….

The doctrine, that truth comes to us from abroad, cannot coexist with true liberty… The democrat is not he who believes in the people’s capacity of being taught, and therefore graciously condescends to be their instructor; but he who believes that Reason, the light which shines out from God’s throne, shines into the heart of every man, and that truth lights her torch in the inner temple of every man’s soul, whether patrician or plebian, a shepherd or a philosopher, a Croesus or a beggar. It is only on the reality of that inner light, and on the fact that it is universal, in all men, and in every man, that you can found a democracy, which shall have a firm basis, and which shall be able to survive the storms of human passions.

But the disciple of Locke denies the reality of this light, he denies the teachings and the authority of the universal Reason…. It is folly, therefore, to repose confidence in the people, to entertain any respect for popular decisions. The disciple of Locke may compassionate the people, but he cannot trust them; he may patronize the masses, but he must scout universal suffrage, and labor to concentrate all power in the hands of those he looks upon as the enlightened and respectable few.

[Merriam-Webster offers this definition of “scout”: “to reject scornfully.”]

[ — The Transcendentalists – An Anthology, edited by Perry Miller. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1950, pp. 207-208. ]

 

You Can’t Rebrand a Class War — Move left, just to stay standing.

Hamilton Nolan, December 13, 2024

…If you are one of the many analysts seduced by the idea that the Trump administration would be in some way friendly towards the “working class” or would in some way advance the concept of antitrust enforcement in the public good, you are a god damn idiot. Please stop analyzing politics for the general public. Horseshoe theory has poisoned your brains and blinded you to reality. The total melding of the federal government with the interests of the ultrarich and a strongman leader who conducts federal policy in service of only those who bow to him is not “populism.” It is fascism. I would love to stop entertaining this charade so that I do not have to periodically rewrite this for the next four years. “Hey, Lina Khan’s replacement has vowed to focus antitrust enforcement against big tech monopolies!” Yes and his motivations are not “economic equality” or “the public good” but the fact that he and other right wingers are pissed that their accounts got censored and that big tech companies are too “woke” and so the tech companies will take exaggerated steps to cancel their DEI programs and what not in order to placate the right wing and we will ultimately get neither true antimonopoly enforcement or trivial social progress….

Yelling at pundits, unfortunately, is not going to fix the downward spiral that we are in. This is not just some minor issue of policy preference. America’s grand situation is this: Fifty years of rising economic inequality has sapped the public trust (for good reason!) and destroyed faith in our institutions and consolidated political and economic power in the hands of fewer and fewer rich people. Turning around this long-term trend of inequality will require A) the strengthening of organized labor, in order to pull more of the nation’s wealth into the pockets of workers, and balance out the ability of the rich to purchase political influence, and B) aggressive work by the federal government and the courts to restrict corporate power and break up monopolies and create a friendly atmosphere for the large scale labor organizing that will be necessary. As demonstrated by the handful of items above, and by common sense, the Trump administration is going to the opposite of those things.

The problem with this is not just an “aw shucks I would prefer if we went the other way” type of thing. The problem is that the long-term trends—inequality, concentration of wealth and power, and the resulting inability of the political system to reflect the interests of regular people—is destroying America. It means the nation is not, in a very straightforward sense, working. If democracy is a machine meant to ensure that the government serves the will and the interests of the people, ours is broken, and instead of fixing it, it is being further stripped for parts. The fact that people across the political spectrum reacted with glee to the murder of an evil health insurance CEO is a big tell. If there is great inequality, and great unfairness, and power is too concentrated, and instead of opening the system up to regular people so that they can reverse those things, you come in and make the system operate more towards the interests of the rich and well-connected, the people will, inevitably, get more angry. Crazy things happen when many people get very angry and have no legitimate political outlets for their legitimate rage. If we, collectively, do not want more crazy things to happen, we must reform the system. The Trump administration is not going to do that.

The Democratic Party is such a dispiriting collection of careerists that it can be frustrating to continually speak about what they should be doing, while watching them always choose to instead continue the things that serve the careerists. But let us speak rationally here, regardless. We have a two-party system and the Democratic Party is the opposition. We know what needs to be done and we know that the Republicans are going to do the opposite. The only move for the Democratic Party—the rational move, the reasonable move—is to get more radical. Pundits will call this “going further left” but really what we are talking about is pulling harder in the direction of where the nation needs to go, in response to a Republican Party that is pulling harder towards plutocracy. If billionaires are destroying our country in order to serve their own self-interest, the reasonable thing to do is not to try to quibble over a 15% or a 21% corporate tax rate. The reasonable thing to do is to eradicate the existence of billionaires. If everyone knows our health care system is a broken monstrosity, the reasonable thing to do is not to tinker around the edges. The reasonable thing to do is to advocate Medicare for All. If there is a class war—and there is—and one party is being run completely by the upper class, the reasonable thing is for the other party to operate in the interests of the other, much larger, much needier class. That is quite rational and ethical and obvious in addition to being politically wise. The failure of the Democratic Party, institutionally, to grasp the reality that it needs to be running left as hard as possible is a pathetic thing to watch. When the current situation is broken and one party is determined to break it further, the answer is not to be the party of “We Want Things to Be Broken Somewhat Less.” The answer is to be the party that wants to fucking fix it. Radicalism is only sensible, because lesser measures are not going to fix the underlying state of affairs….

When political pundits and strategists and party operatives anchor their sense of reality in a bygone era that no longer exists, they are bound to misjudge what is happening now. They are bound to fail to recognize the reorientation of the national landscape, the tilting of the ground that requires a lean left in order to keep things stable. There is a class war, it is being won by the rich, and they are about to stage an enormous offensive for the next four years. Position yourselves accordingly. It is one thing to fight against great power and lose. That is part of fighting. That is forgivable. What is not forgivable is to see all this coming, and to choose to continue to stand in the same place and say the same things and advocate for the status quo and pretend that America just needs to “get back to normal.” “Normal” has been broken for the lifetimes of most of the people alive today. Radicalism is only getting more and more correct. Recognize it or get run over.

 

Why Bidenomics Was Such a Bust 

James Galbraith [The Nation, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2024]

…It is no help to argue, as Paul Krugman did, that voters are not competent to judge their own interests and well-being. Krugman faults the voters, in effect, for failing to accept the superior wisdom of a columnist at The New York Times. But it is a precept of democracy (and of free market economics) that voters (and consumers) do know their interests. To refuse this precept is to deny the point of democracy, in which case there is no good reason to go on having elections. Or markets, either.

If voters are unhappy with the good readings on standard indicators—unemployment, the monthly inflation rate, economic growth—it must be because those indicators no longer connect to their sense of well-being. I have written on this before. In particular, low unemployment rates may reflect widespread disaffection with bad jobs; a low inflation rate does not reverse past price increases; and the incomes from growth may flow to profits and capital gains….

What did happen under Biden was a decline in real incomes—in household purchasing power. Prices had risen sharply in 2021–22, and even though the inflation rate was transient—contrary to screams from economists—the change in price levels was not. Wages struggled to catch up. Many people living on savings and pensions never did….

…Pressure from voices like Summers led to an early curtailment of direct Covid relief, which fell just as prices rose. It is a shocking fact that while during Covid child poverty rates and food insecurity declined, those rates returned to pre-Covid levels when the benefits ended. Should we really be surprised that the affected families, having briefly tasted a better life for their children, were unhappy?….

 

Democrats’ problem with working-class voters is bigger than free trade

Eric Levitz [Vox, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-13-2024]

“In light of deindustrialization’s most pernicious effects, Democrats should make American workers’ access to remunerative employment and collective bargaining rights less contingent on the market’s whims, while rebuilding the party’s reputation for sound economic management.”

[Lambert Strether cuts to the heart of the matter:

“The problem is simple, from a 30,000-foot level (where indeed most things are simple). The Democrats are the party of the PMC. As the governing class, they are in the business of operating the many and varied rental extraction schemes that dominate our financialized economy, and which enrich the (propertied) ruling class at the expense of the (enwaged) working class (health insurance being one such). Therefore, the class interests of the Democrats and the working class are diametrically opposed. The Democrat Party founders on this contradiction. “A house divided against itself cannot stand…. I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” –Abraham Lincoln.” ]

The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning

Leonard C. Goodman [ScheerPost, via Naked Capitalism 12-14-2024]

… The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital,  policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.

Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy….

 

Global power shift

Could Chinese Control Over Strategic Minerals Coupled with US Corruption Cripple the Sputtering US War Machine?

Conor Gallagher, December 8, 2024 [Naked Capitalism]

 

Cynical Overtakes Sacred, as the West Bares its True Face 

Simplicius the Thinker, via Naked Capitalism 12-08-2024]

One can hardly believe it anymore. The West has dropped all pretense of their sacred cow of ‘democracy’, used for generations as an instrument of moral superiority with which to browbeat the rest of the world….

The short-term obsessed West considers the various CIA-sponsored subversions of the democratic processes as “winning”: but have these people given any thought to what precedent they’re setting? They are burning their foundations, lighting their entire house on fire. In the hopes of smoking out a few ostensible ‘wasps’ they now stand to destroy their entire order within a generation….

 

China’s ‘explosive’ ironmaking breakthrough achieves 3,600-fold productivity boost 

[MSN, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2024]

A new method for making iron is not only faster and cheaper, but also better for the environment, according to Chinese researchers

After more than a decade of intensive research in China, a new ironmaking technology is poised to revolutionise the global steel manufacturing industry.

The method involves injecting finely ground iron ore powder into an extremely hot furnace, triggering an “explosive chemical reaction”, according to the engineers involved in the project.

The result is a display of bright red, glowing liquid iron droplets that rain down and collect at the bottom of the furnace, forming a stream of high-purity iron that can be directly used for casting or “one-step steelmaking“.

China develops record-breaking 504-qubit quantum computer powered by Xiaohong chip 

[Interesting Engineering, via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2024]

Justin Trudeau’s Painful Last Faceplant

Matt Taibbi, December 12, 2024

[TW: For this, I considered creating a new category entitled “Just good, damn funny writing”.]

Canada’s hipster PM is about to talk Canada back into its historical role as the Washington Generals of international relations….

Canada is a net-funny country that’s produced some of the world’s best comics, but Trudeau is uniquely toolless in a troll war. He’s a man who in a previous life surely had a name like Prince Microballs and in the present seems to think humor was outlawed with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A key to winning any troll battle is forfeiting all pretensions to dignity, and he’s up against a man, Donald Trump, who used a picture of himself sitting next to Joe Biden’s wife to sell cologne using the tagline, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” Trump is capable of anything, including firing an ICBM filled with cat shit at Parliament Hill….

Trudeau was a product of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program, which markets itself as a “dynamic community of exceptional people” who learn to “foster collaboration in the global public interest” with an aim to “scale-up, amplify and accelerate” their collective “impact.” This is bullshit-ese for “hive-minding the half-wit offspring of the 1% to pilot global institutions in unearned positions of influence.” ….

 

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Enduring the Trauma of Genocide (w/ Gabor Maté) 

Chris Hedges, December 13, 2024

 

Oligarchy

Bernie Sanders Says Defeating Oligarchy Now Most Urgent Issue

Jon Queally, December 14, 2024 [CommonDreams]

“In my view,” said Sanders, “this issue of oligarchy is the most important issue facing our country and world because it touches on everything else.” He said the climate crisis, healthcare, worker protections, and the fight against poverty are all adversely effected by the power of the wealthy elites who control the economy and the political sphere.

”My friends, you don’t have to be a PhD in political science to understand that this is not democracy. This is not one person, one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future. This is oligarchy.”

Why Can’t We Fund Universal Public Goods? Blame the Tax-Dodging Billionaire Nepo Babies

Julia Conley, December 13, 2024 [CommonDreams]

… a report released by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) on Thursday shows how “billionaire nepo babies” don’t just waste their families’ fortunes. They also benefit from “a rigged system” that allows them to “pass that wealth down over generations without being properly taxed–often without being taxed at all.”

In addition, the heirs of the country’s biggest fortunes spend vast sums “to elect politicians who protect their unearned wealth and manipulate the country’s economy in their favor,” said ATF.

Along with Mellon and Koch, the report profiles Samuel Logan of the Scripps media dynasty; Nicola Peltz-Beckham, daughter of billionaire investor Nelson Peltz; Gabrielle Rubenstein, whose family has made its fortune in private equity; and President-elect Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump….

A previous analysis by ATF found that as of late October, just 150 billionaire families had spent $1.9 billion on the 2024 elections….

SF tech CEO’s billboards are ‘dystopian.’ That’s how he wants it

[SFGATE, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-11-2024]

“Thursday afternoon in San Francisco: On one side of Mission Street, hotel workers chanted and banged on a drum outside the Marriott Marquis, part of a monthslong strike for higher wages and more jobs. On the other, a tech company’s billboard proclaimed, ‘Stop hiring humans.’ Various versions of the provocative advertisements are emblazoned across the city on rotating screen displays on bus shelters and on classic vinyl billboards on poles and buildings, plugging the San Francisco startup Artisan. SFGATE spoke with Artisan’s CEO about the campaign. The company has just 30 employees and is less than 2 years old; its only existing product is an artificial intelligence ‘sales agent’ called Artisan, built to automate the work of finding and messaging potential customers. It’s a classic AI-age idea, one of many such tools flooding the tech world. But the billboards in San Francisco are less routine. Bleak might be a better word, or mean-spirited. And in a city laden with jargony advertisements, these are easy to understand. Most feature a dark-haired, purple-eyed persona and a few rows of text. Some critique humans and remote work: ‘Artisans won’t complain about work-life balance’ and ‘Artisan’s Zoom cameras will never ‘not be working’ today.’ Others are more direct: ‘Hire Artisans, not humans.’ Several include the line, ‘The era of AI employees is here.’ The gist is crystal clear: Artisan is selling automation to employers. In a video spot about the ‘sales agent’ tool online, Artisan says it works with ‘no human input’ and ‘costs 96% less than hiring someone to do her job..’” “Artisan.” Of all the names to choose.

Britain’s ‘paedophile island’: The damning truth about idyllic tourist retreat where imposter monks raped or abused 54 children in hidden den of sexual deviance and moral iniquity 

[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2024]

 

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Distributional implications and share ownership of record oil and gas profits (PDF)

[University of Massachusetts, Amherst, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-13-2024]

“We estimate that globally, net income in publicly listed oil and gas companies reached US$916 billion in 2022. The United States was the biggest beneficiary receiving US$301 billion in fossil fuel profits both from domestic extraction and through global shareholding, more than U.S. investments of US$267 billion in the low carbon economy that year. Analyzing the U.S. distribution including privately held US companies, 51% of profits went to the wealthiest 1%, predominantly through direct shareholdings and private company ownership. In contrast the bottom 50% only received 1%. The incremental fossil-fuel profits in 2022 over those in 2021 were enough to increase the disposable income of the wealthiest Americans several percent and compensate a substantial part of their purchasing power loss from inflation that year, thereby exacerbating inflation inequality. Record fossil-fuel profits also reinforce existing racial and ethnic inequalities and inequalities between groups with different educational attainments. Our results also show that only a small share of overall profits benefits institutions that serve the wider public such as pension funds.”

 

Predatory finance

I Say Forbidden Things About Sports (private equity firms plan to take over college football)

[The Honest Broker, via The Big Picture 12-08-2024]

What’s happening in athletics is tragic—but don’t expect to hear about on ESPN. I was shocked when I learned that private equity firms plan to take over college football. How is that even possible?

R

estoring balance to the economy

It’s Time to Break Up Big Medicine 

Matt Stoller [via Naked Capitalism 12-13-2024]

 

Democratic governors quietly prep extensive plans to counter Trump

[CNN, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-13-2024]

“Diplomatic and depressed as they have been in public, a small group of Democratic governors are deep into behind-the-scenes preparations and deliberations over how to balance the politics of pushing back on what they are expecting from President-elect Donald Trump’s next turn in the White House. Since long before the election, they’ve been poring through Project 2025 — it’s helpful, several Democratic governors told CNN, to have a blueprint in public. They’ve been studying their own executive powers and state laws…. They’ve been stockpiling the abortion medication mifepristone [(!!)] in secret warehouses and rehearsing their answers for if and when the incoming White House tries to nationalize their state police or National Guard units for use in deportation raids; some are planning to flat out refuse, while others intend to argue that the officers are busy with other work keeping the people in their states safe. (None have fully wrapped their heads around how it would work if units from other states are sent in and set themselves up for showdowns on the state borders.)” And: “Several have been running tabletop exercises behind closed doors for months, often with state attorneys general and other relevant officials involved. Officials in multiple governors’ offices told CNN the circles have been tight to keep the incoming White House from being able to prepare for their own responses, or for the proactive innovations they’re looking into.”

 

Trump driven imbalance 

One Kind Of Bank Robber Wants To Disarm The Police, The Other Kind Wants To Disband Regulators

Howie Klein, December 14, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

This week, writing for the Wall Street Journal, Gina Heeb reported that in interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Musk’s team “asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp… Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department….

‘A Gift to the Oligarchs’: Trump Pick to Replace Lina Khan Vowed to End ‘War on Mergers

Jake Johnson, December 11, 2024 [CommonDreams]

“President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission vowed in his job pitch to end current chair Lina Khan’s ‘war on mergers,’ a signal to an eager corporate America that the incoming administration intends to be far more lax on antitrust enforcement. Andrew Ferguson was initially nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as a Republican commissioner on the bipartisan FTC, and his elevation to chair of the commission will not require Senate confirmation. In a one-page document obtained by Punchbowl, Ferguson—who previously worked as chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—pitched himself to Trump’s team as the ‘pro-innovation choice’ with ‘impeccable legal credentials’ and ‘proven loyalty’ to the president-elect. Ferguson’s top agenda priority, according to the document, is to ‘reverse Lina Khan’s anti-business agenda’ by rolling back ‘burdensome regulations,’ stopping her ‘war on mergers,’ halting the agency’s ‘attempt to become an AI regulator,’ and ditching ‘novel and legally dubious consumer protection cases.’ Trump announced Ferguson as the incoming administration’s FTC chair as judges in Oregon and Washington state blocked the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons, decisions that one antitrust advocate called a ‘fantastic culmination of the FTC’s work to protect consumers and workers.’”

Monopoly Round-Up: Trump Lays Out His Antitrust Agenda  

Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 12-09-2024]

…Donald Trump’s antitrust agenda came into focus this week, and while it won’t be like Joe Biden’s, it seems he is going to continue some significant parts of the anti-monopoly revival. Specifically, it’s likely the second Trump administration will keep Google and the rest of big tech on the hot seat, and address pharmaceutical middlemen….

So what does the Slater appointment, and these comments, mean? Whoever took over at the Antitrust Division would have inherited monopolization cases against Google, Apple, Ticketmaster, Visa, and RealPage, as well as an unusually aggressive merger program, and broad investigations into UnitedHealth Group, seed monopolists, Nvidia, and a whole set of other corporations.

The risk was that these cases would be settled on the cheap and the investigations shut down. The Slater pick makes that less likely; she’s a competent, creative, and enforcement minded lawyer, with a background at Fox, Roku, and in the Federal Trade Commission. Right now, she’s on the staff of Senator J.D. Vance, and likely shares his economically populist views, most notably his belief that big tech is too powerful and needs to be broken up. I’m guessing that tech lobbyists are pretty unhappy….

I guess I’d say the news here is mixed. At an important level, we’ve won the ideological argument over antitrust, which is not how to bring cases, but whether to do so. Trump could have sought to reverse the Biden antitrust agenda, instead he’ll adopt and accelerate parts of it. There are important adjacent enforcers, like Republican state attorneys general, who are bringing cases to break up Blackrock and Vanguard, so it’s pretty obvious the Bork era is over.

The housing emergency and the second Trump term 

Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism 12-12-2024]

Musk and Ramaswamy’s DOGE Project to Eviscerate the Federal Government is a Legal Train Wreck 

[Washington Monthly, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-09-2024]

DOGE, whatever it is, is not a “department” in the constitutional sense. The Constitution uses the word “department” to mean either a branch of government, such as the “judicial department,” or a “freestanding component of the executive branch, not subordinate to or contained within any other such component,” to which the law assigns duties, such as the Department of the Treasury or the Environmental Protection Agency. DOGE’s fabulists presumably chose the name to fit the Musk-preferred acronym but also to confuse the public as to their position and authority. As far as the government is concerned, DOGE has neither. Journalists should stop calling it ‘the department.’ Call it a ‘project’ or an ‘initiative.’ Don’t treat it as weightier than it is.” Importantly: “Contrary to the DOGE Manifesto, it is doubtful that Musk and Ramaswamy can operate indefinitely in secrecy as freelance advisors. The duo called themselves ‘outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees’ and asserted that Trump personally named them to head the DOGE. They anticipate advising the initiative ‘at every step’ and working with a team of government officials embedded within government agencies. These arrangements will make DOGE, once Trump is inaugurated, a ‘federal advisory committee’ under the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). FACA covers ‘any . . . task force, or other similar group, or any subcommittee or other subgroup thereof (hereafter in this paragraph referred to as ‘committee’), which is . . .established or utilized by the President. . . . in the interest of obtaining advice or recommendations for the President or one or more agencies or officers of the Federal Government.’ Each such committee must develop a public charter, conduct meetings in public, and keep minutes of its meetings.”

Where are all the bureaucrats? 

Kevin Drum [via Naked Capitalism 12-12-2024]

Chart: Full Time Civil Service by Department

63 percent in defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security

Poultry Bosses Benefit from Trump’s Threats 

[Labor Notes, via Naked Capitalism 12-12-2024]

Health care crisis

How to Research Your Hospice (and Avoid Hospice Fraud) 

[Propublica, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2024]

I used to do health insurance company PR. Here’s what I think the backlash is missing 

Wendell Potter [STAT, via Naked Capitalism 12-12-2024]

 

Collapse of independent news media

Taibbi: Trust In The Media Can’t Be Fixed, Not One Journalist Has Come Forward To Say “Yeah, We Screwed Up 

[RealClearPolitics], via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-09-2024]

TAIBBI: “Trust is a human thing. You can’t mechanize it. And in the journalism business when you make mistakes you have to stand in front of the camera and own up to it or else audiences will never again trust you. And there are years and years of errors about major consequential news cycle-dominating stories like Russiagate and COVID where the networks and major dailies have simply not come forward and said ‘Yeah, we screwed up” and they have to do that if they’re going to get audience back. But they refuse to and I just don’t think that’s — they’re ever going to learn.’”

 

Climate and environmental crises

Helene damage costs in NC more than $53 billion. Who will pay is unclear. 

[Carolina Public Press, via Naked Capitalism 12-08-2024]

 

Creating new economic potential – science and technology

The Big Guide to Fusion

[Ben James, via The Big Picture 12-14-2024]

Nuclear fusion will not be “cracked” in a single breakthrough. Instead, there is a fixed checklist of requirements that it must work through. This guide will walk through the checklist. I call it “The Fusion Ladder”. By the end, you will understand the important milestones in taking fusion from kid to grid.

The End Is Near for NASA’s Voyager Probes

[Wired, via The Big Picture 12-09-2024]

The two probes have left the solar system and are still collecting data from the interstellar environment—but their atomic hearts are growing weaker and weaker.

 

Democrats’ political malpractice

Nancy Pelosi ‘Making Calls’ to Undermine AOC’s Bid for Top Oversight Role

Julia Conley, December 13, 2024 [CommonDreams]

As Common Dreamsreported last week, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has publicly indicated that she is supporting Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) to succeed Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) as ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability when the 119th Congress begins in January.

But Punchbowl Newsreported Thursday that Pelosi—well-known for her relentless and often successful efforts to whip votes within the Democratic caucus—is also “making calls” to other Democratic lawmakers on behalf of Connolly.

The outlet reported that the former House speaker is “actively working to tank” the candidacy of Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), with whom she has had a rocky relationship at times as the progressive Democrat has pushed the party to embrace far-reaching reforms on climate, immigration, and other issues.

Pelosi Working to Defeat AOC

Methinks They Lie, December 13, 2024 [DailyKos]

It is being reported that Nancy Pelosi is actively working to defeat AOC’s bid to lead democrats on the powerful House Oversight Committee. Salon reports that Nancy is lobbying democrats to support 74 year old Gerry Connolly instead. Pelosi has clashed with AOC in the past over the direction of the democratic party and the two obviously have differing views of how the party should be run in the House.

The House Oversight Committee has a powerful and important role as it has broad investigative powers including over one very important branch in our government: the executive branch.

If ever there was a time for the old guard within the democratic party to sit down and shut up it is now. Nancy needs to stand down and get out of the way. Pelosi confidently declared that the dems would take over the House on election day. Yeah. Uh. WRONG. It should be obvious from the disastrous results of the previous election that the party needs new blood to take over. We need fighters with the fire in their bellies to take it straight to the fascists on the other side. We need new leaders who are smart enough to realize the old world of the old guard is dead and that doing things the same way over and over and over (and continuing to lose) is not only stupid, but makes it appear as though maybe you kind of like the system as it is. When a large swath of the voting populace holds a view that there is no difference between the two parties then it is high time for radical change.

Why Are Democratic Candidates Being Pulverized In The Midwest, Particularly In Rural Counties?

Howie Klein, December 08, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

Dan Osborn ran as an independent on a platform that most Democrats would recognize economically to the left of a garden variety red state Democratic candidate— very pro-union, very pro-Choice, very anti-corporate. He didn’t win… but he clobbered Kamala. He did significantly better than her statewide and in around 30 counties, almost all of which were rural counties. She drew 369,995 votes (39.1%) while Osborn won 436,493 (46.7%),…

Southeast of Nebraska, sits Missouri, another red state that rejected Harris. She drew 40.1% of the vote. The independent-minded Democratic Senate candidate, Lucas Kunce, who also ran on a platform more appealing to the working class than hers, beat her by nearly 2 points (41.8%)….

Yesterday, on his substack Kunce wondered out loud why people “keep voting against their own self-interest… [but] even if asked entirely in earnest— [it] doesn’t come off as a question. They don’t believe they are voting against their self-interest, so it comes off as a statement: that they are stupid, and that the questioner knows more about what’s good for them than they do. Which is unfortunate, because that’s the mentality that working people, independent voters, and persuadable people are told Democrats have, and it’s one of the things they really don’t like. Even if the presumption in this question is true, that someone would have a better life if they voted for a certain candidate, there’s no way forward from this question that comes to a mutual understanding. Because it comes from a place of superiority… Are people who are rejecting Democrats actually voting against their own self-interest?”

”If you go back to the messages I got from Trump voters describing, in their own words, why they didn’t vote for me even though they liked me more than my opponent, it’s because they think Democrats are ruining the country and have jacked up the economy.

“We obsess over policy a lot, but most people don’t pay that much attention to policy, to what’s happening in DC, or what long term infrastructure bill passed. They do, however, notice that they can’t afford groceries anymore and that the President is a Democrat. Frankly, I’m getting killed by groceries every month, so I get it.

”And when you look back over the last few years, being a normal person has not always been easy when Democrats were in charge nationally, so claiming that voting for a Democrat is in someone else’s own self-interest goes against a lot of people’s lived experience.

”Here are a few examples from my own life.

”When I got back from Iraq in 2009, I spent a large part of 2010 and 2011 trying to keep Marines in their homes who were illegally foreclosed upon by the same big banks that the government had just bailed out. Banks and bankers at the time were knowingly violating the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) left and right, breaking the law kicking servicemembers out of their homes— many of whom had the money to stay but hadn’t gotten proper notice due to deployments. And it all happened under a Democratic President who had a Democratic majority in the House and 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.

”I specifically remember these Marines and their families asking me how the bankers could get away with it. Didn’t we all just bail these banks out? They would ask. I signed up after 9/11 when these guys were attacked in New York, they would say, how could they forget that and treat us like this? Who is the government supposed to be looking out for, anyway? Why isn’t it us?

“I didn’t have a good answer for them, I just did my best to keep them in their homes. And in every single case where they came to me before the foreclosure was complete, I was able to keep them in their homes, because the law was on our side and the banks were egregiously violating it.

”By the way, knowingly violating the SCRA is a criminal act punishable by imprisonment. Can you guess how many people went to jail for illegally kicking Marines out on the street?

”You instinctively knew that the answer was zero. Before you even read it. Because it didn’t matter that the President was a Democrat or that Democrats controlled Congress— there is no accountability for the rich and famous in our system no matter who is in charge. And Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter just solidified every skeptic’s view on Democrats for a generation.

”Try telling those Marines or anyone else who struggled through the foreclosure crisis that the system is fair or that it works.

”So many powerful people actively destroyed, actually ruined, the lives of everyday people in this country during that time and not a single one of those who caused the damage suffered or lost anything. Does that feel like an administration that was in a normal person’s “self-interest?” “

Kamala Harris Ignored Big Corporate Monopolies. It May Have Cost Her the Election 

Zephyr Teachout [via Naked Capitalism 12-13-2024]

 

How Alarmed Harris Staffers Went Rogue to Reach Black and Latino Voters 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-09-2024.

“Campaign organizers in Philadelphia said they were told not to engage in the bread-and-butter tasks of getting out the vote in Black and Latino neighborhoods, such as attending community events, registering new voters, building relationships with local leaders and calling voters. Instead, they said, they were instructed to spend most of their days phoning the same small pool of volunteers and asking them to knock on voters’ doors and help run field offices. The strategy essentially turned experienced organizers into glorified telemarketers making hundreds of calls daily, with some harried volunteers begging to be taken off call lists.”…

On election night, Ms. Harris drastically underperformed in Philadelphia. Although she picked up support in white precincts near downtown, she lost votes in some Latino and Black neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. In interviews, many Democrats expressed little surprise, saying that the Harris campaign had devoted much of its energy to winning over moderate white voters in wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, both in Philadelphia and around the nation. In an October memo, her campaign wrote that the ‘path to win Pennsylvania capitalizes on Trump’s unprecedented weakness in the suburbs.’ As a result, many staff members felt that Philadelphia’s racially diverse neighborhoods were ignored. Even though the campaign raised $1.5 billion, many of its field offices in the city were filthy and lacked basic supplies like tables, chairs, cleaning products and printers, staff members said. Several recounted being forced to raid the campaign’s better-stocked suburban offices or to raise money independently.

 

Dozens of Democrats Press Biden to Pardon Environmental Lawyer Targeted by Chevron 

[Zeteo, via Naked Capitalism 12-12-2024]

[Steven Donziger not included in Biden’s pardons]

 

Biden Pardon of ‘Kids-for-Cash’ Judge Michael Conahan​ Sparks Outrage

Capitalism Breeds Its Own Executioners— Guest Post By Zach Shrewsbury

Zach Shrewsbury, December 10, 2024 [downwithtyranny.com]

Earlier this year, I ran for the U.S. Senate in the Democratic Party primary. While my senatorial campaign won half of the counties in West Virginia— the southern, forgotten part of the state— the voter turnout was low and insufficient to help us secure the nomination. The general election was then lost substantially to West Virginia’s Republican Governor Jim Justice.

West Virginians ended up voting for candidates that projected anti-establishment values even though their actual policy agenda is nothing less than more corporate handouts and commodification of our entire existence fueled by an AI algorithm….

 

The New GOP Playbook: Undermining Progressives From California, Virginia And Even Austin

Howie Klein, December 09, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

A week from tomorrow Democrats in north Austin will be deciding who will represent their deep blue district on the city council… although these days, even in the deepest blue districts, GOP billionaires think they should decide and spread around immense amounts of money to recruit and support Republican-lite “Democraps” for every office that could impact them. They got scared when Bernie-grade progressive Mike Siegel came in a very strong first in the 6-man first round last month, more than double his closest competitor,…

It pays to not take anything for granted. Last month, 3 Democratic state legislative districts in California flipped red. One, AD-36, a Latino-majority district with a 14-point Democratic voters registration advantage, is in the Imperial and Coachella valleys, where the new assemblyman is Republican Jeff Gonzalez. It was an open seat and he beat Democrat Joey Acuña, president of the Coachella Valley Unified School District board, by 3.6% of the vote. One of Gonzalez’s backers was Tony Gallegos, a former chair of the Imperial County Democratic Central Committee. ‘We didn’t change,’ he told the L.A. Times. ‘We just supported the better candidate.’”

Trump’s transactional regime

‘He actually has juice’: Crypto, AI get a key ally in Sacks 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 12-08-2024]

How Peter Thiel’s network of right-wing techies is infiltrating Donald Trump’s White House 

[Fortune, via Naked Capitalism 12-10-2024]

How Trump Will Lawfully Appoint Loyalists Without Senate Consent 

[Lawfare, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2024]

John Mearsheimer: Trump is appointing Russophobic hawks 

[Unherd, via Naked Capitalism 12-11-2024]

Did Musk’s Hefty Investment In Trump And The GOP This Year Really Buy Him A Co-Presidency?

Howie Klein, December 8, 2024  [downwithtyranny.com]

…On Friday, Dan Rather wrote that when Musk appropriated the title “first buddy” it was anything but innocuous. The richest man in the world, whose wealth is largely dependent on government contracts “now has unchecked access” to Señor Trumpanzee. He’s a regular fixture at Mar-a-Lago, sats in on calls with world leaders and has met with the Republican leadership in Congress. Trump has given Musk and junior partner, Vivek Ramaswamy, also a billionaire, the green light to implement “drastic” reforms in the federal government. All that access is what Musk bought for at least $277 million, “more than any individual has ever spent on a single election,” including notorious robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie. J.P. Morgan, Andrew Mellon (whose largely untaxed fortune was employed to help elect Trump this year), Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, Henry Frick and E.H. Harriman. (It’s very much worth keeping in mind that the political manipulation from those bums spurred angry calls for campaign finance reform and fueled public outrage that eventually led to progressive-era reforms like the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Federal Corrupt Practices Act. Many of the practices by the worst of the robber barons mirror modern concerns about the influence of criminal billionaires like Musk, Timothy Mellon, Charles Koch, Israeli operative Miriam Adelson, Ken Griffin, Peter Thiel, Harold Hamm, Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the Walton family and neo-Nazis Dick and Liz Uihlein.

 

Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

Texas AG sues New York doctor for providing abortion pills across state lines 

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 12-14-2024]

Texas House Introduces Bill To Establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve 

[CNBC, via Naked Capitalism 12-14-2024]

 

Civic republicanism

Emergence of the American System of Manufacturing (video)

Dr. Merritt Roe Smith [Tsongas Industrial History Center, via YouTube, Nov 12, 2013]

[TW: This may be one of the most important videos you ever watch, because it discusses the actual history of how the USA industrialized, including the fact that the national government played a crucial role. Just like you should forget John Locke, you should forget Eli Whitney, Henry Ford, and unlearn Adam Smith and the entire myth of heroic, visionary entrepreneurs. The basis of modern industrial society was the development of modern machine tools that made it possible to produce interchangeable parts. In other words, mass production. And it was the policies of the national government that made it happen.

[Note also that this actual history does not conform to Marxist belief that the social superstructure is produced by the means of production. What actually happened was that the means of production were developed and nurtured by government, part of the social superstructure. The great historical irony, of course, is that what we’re grappling with today is exactly the result of what Marx described, of the people who seized control of the means of production also seizing control of politics, and altering the superstructure. This is the great problem any philosophy of government must solve: how do you nurture and create the creation of new wealth, but at the same time prevent that new wealth from corrupting the economy and the society?]

Dr. Merritt Roe Smith,

Smith begins by recommending Daniel Walker Howe’s 2007 book What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 [which won the Pulitzer Prize for History]. Howe describes the communications revolution that

[10:52]
took place in these years after the war of 1812… first of all, the introduction of steam powered rotary printing presses were capable of spewing out printed materials by the thousands, compared to one single press page at a time that had been used back in Benjamin Franklin’s era.  The new technology completely changed printing so much… you begin to see the emergence of cheap newspapers, cheap pamphlets, cheap books… really it had an impact on reading in America …  So much was available now that had not been available during the late Colonial or early National period. [This ability to mass produce leaflets and newspapers made possible the rise of movements like abolitionism and women’s suffrage.]

[13:15]

… the second part of this Communications Revolution that he talks about has to do with the reorganization of the postal system – not just reorganizing how letters were sorted and distributed…  The Postmaster General … began to give contracts out for the building of roads, the improvement of canals, anything that helped to speed the delivery of the mails… That means here’s the US government getting involved in the building of transportation systems directly through these postal contracts.… And then finally comes the electric Telegraph…

[Smith then discusses the actual process of industrialization, noting it is a myth that it began with Eli Whitney]:

…[Whitney] never made a gun with interchangeable parts and the reason I can say that is that when I was young, I had the good fortune to have a fellowship at the National Museum of American History, then called the Museum of History and Technology, at the Smithsonian and the curator who was overseeing me when I was working on my dissertation, was an expert in machine tools, the most knowledgeable person about machine tools that I’ve ever met. And one day he had been writing about Whitney and proving that indeed Whitney had not been making guns with interchangeable parts. He got out from the collection… five or six of these old Whitney military muskets that [Whitney] had contracted for in the late 1790s … he took these guns apart and tried to switch their parts. That’s the best test you can have. They weren’t even approximately interchangeable. Each part was numbered with ta Roman numeral, especially the working mechanism, where the trigger and the lock are located. The interior of that lock area is made up of all these little pieces that have to work like clockwork in order for the gun to fire. And these parts were all numbered, which meant one thing: they were not interchangeable. Each one was individually filed and fitted. The Roman numeral sixes would fit Roman numeral six but they would not fit Roman numeral four. So if you start to fit Roman numeral 3 with number six … they just don’t come together. End of story.

[Smith then discusses the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held at the London Crystal Palace in 1851, and how the British were stunned to find that the American products looked to be simple and backwards, but actually performed better than all other products in actual competitions to test their use. The British were particularly alarmed to discover that the Americans had achieved the production of firearms with interchangeable parts. The British government organized several groups of British officials and experts to travel to the United States and study the factories in which these products were being made, compare the methods and equipment being used by the Americans with that in use in Britain, and acquire all the American equipment found to be superior or unknown in Britain.]

[Smith next discusses the two leading designers and makers of USA machine tools, John H. Hall, from near Portland Maine, and Simeon North, from Middletown Connecticut. When Hall was given a contract in 1819 to produce firearms for the Army, he was required to do so at the government’s Harpers Ferry Armory, located 55 miles west of Washington DC.]

[34:49]
Now, the interesting thing is is that rather than sending him to Springfield, which was the closest National Armory to Portland, Maine, the government army officers in charge of this contract are Army Ordinance officers — all West Point graduates by the way, all basically engineering types — sent him down to Harper’s Ferry. Why did they do that? Because they considered Hall’s contract for 1,000 guns an experiment.  This was an experiment to see if this guy could actually produce a thousand guns with interchangeable parts, and they wanted him close so they could keep an eye on him…  And the story of that is very well documented, because when he finished that thousand gun contract, the Ordinance Department immediately set up an investigatory commission to walk in there and see what was going on [and write a report].

[38:27]
The important point there is the role that the government played in all this… Is big government bad for business? Well, if you look at it in the 19th century, the answer is “hell, no!” It was very good for business….

[39:07] The General Survey Act of 1824 … allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to lend their army officers out to privately owned railroads to survey and initiate construction on railroads. That’s a big deal; that means that people like George Washington Whistler, he’s the father of the famous artist father, he was an army engineer and he was sent to work on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, to build the first 30 miles of the railroad. And then eventually the railroad took over and built the rest of it. But [army engineers] tutored these private corporations in the building of railroads.Over 50 railroads prior to the Civil War were built using that process. Army Engineers working for private corporations being paid by the federal government and taking all the government books and papers, and plans, and putting them to work for the private corporations. So again an important example of how one of the most important technologies of the 19th century, railroads, had a big input of government support — to say nothing of the land grants later….

Drawing on this new technology that came out of the arms industry in the 19th century [what] emerges around Springfield and Hartford is the first machine tool industry in the United States. These are companies capable of making machines that make other machines…. How did this happen? How was it possible for this to happen if all of these new technologies were coming from private contractors who supposedly had proprietary rights to the new technologies that they were inventing? … How did this proprietary information that Hall and North had … move out and become public information? ….

…Basically the machine tool industry arises because private proprietary knowledge somehow became public knowledge. How did that happen? When they contracted with the US Army Ordinance Department they were required to share their knowledge with other contractors. … the Ordinance Department would go back and report to the superintendent at Springfield saying you know Simeon’s got this interesting little ratchet machine down here that has a rotating head on it that can perform about six different functions simply by moving a lever. We need to get this up at Springfield. And immediately the Springfield superintendent would write to Simon North and say Simon we want to get a copy of that; can you lend us your patterns and drawings of the machine? And without hesitation he did it. No royalty charged. No patent. Simeon North never patented a thing that he invented… Hall patented his machines but he made them readily available for public use. Why? That’s the key question. And the answer is very simple — the Ordinance Department told these inventors that if they wanted to continue in public service as public contractors they had to share their inventions with either the Springfield Armory or the Harper Ferry Armory or both and that those armories were not going to be constrained about who came and saw this machinery… The Springfield Army became the great clearing house of technical information [for production machinery] prior to the Civil War because it was the big National Armory that really started just glomming onto all this new technology and information and bringing it into this one institution….

Today if you try to write a history of machine tools in the United States and think that you can get that information out of patent records, you’re wrong. You will not find a patent on the earliest machine tools. They just don’t exist because the machines weren’t patented

[Smith explains how this new technology of machine tools able to replicate metal pieces, was spread into the economy, successfully seeding the sewing machine industry. The technology was then applied to producing typewriters, then bicycles.

So this is a very interesting story about how an Open Door policy, maintained by the government through this insistence that government contractors share information, had a big impact on the larger economy….  At the center of all this, is this government that’s insisting that certain things happen certain ways. That doesn’t happen today… It’s a totally different system we’re operating on under today and what I’m saying is we ought to relook at what happened during the 19th century and [ask] are we doing this the right way today?

[TW: This method of deliberately seeding new military technology into the economy is seen again and again, with processed food, radios, aviation, electronics, computers, and the internet.

Another large factor, at the time, which Smith does not mention is the role of civic republicanism as guiding philosophy. Promoting the General Welfare is a part of the reason why the inventors of modern machine tools did not attempt to lock up their inventions behind the legal wall of patents. ]

 

People who are good at reading have different brains

[The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 12-13-2024]

“Clearly, brain structure can tell us a lot about reading skills. Importantly, though, the brain is malleable — it changes when we learn a new skill or practice an already acquired one. For instance, young adults who studied language intensively increased their cortical thickness in language areas. Similarly, reading is likely to shape the structure of the left Heschl’s gyrus and temporal pole. So, if you want to keep your Heschl’s thick and thriving, pick up a good book and start reading. Finally, it’s worth considering what might happen to us as a species if skills like reading become less prioritised. Our capacity to interpret the world around us and understand the minds of others would surely diminish. In other words, that cozy moment with a book in your armchair isn’t just personal – it’s a service to humanity.”