by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus
Strategic Political Economy
“The U.S. Military Is Not Ready for a Constitutional Crisis”
I spent nine years on active duty in the U.S. Navy. I served as an aircraft commander, led combat reconnaissance crews, and taught naval history. But the first thing I did upon joining the military, the act that solemnized my obligation, was swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. How strange, then, that despite all of my training, the millions of taxpayer dollars devoted to teaching me how to fly, lead, and teach, not once did I receive meaningful instruction on the document to which I had pledged my life….
I had left the Navy and was in law school when news of the torture memo broke. This was the George W. Bush administration’s attempt to offer a legal justification for “enhanced interrogation.” I had been through Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school, the military’s interrogation training program, from which these techniques had been adopted. I understood the “enhanced” methods described by the Bush-administration lawyers for what they were: torture.
At the time, I found it unconscionable that legal scholars would be complicit in underwriting our government’s disregard for the Geneva Conventions. But with the benefit of hindsight, though I still find the torture memo appalling, I can at least acknowledge that the Bush administration cared enough about the law to offer the pretense of legality.
The current administration is not even trying. President Donald Trump openly flouts laws at home, while threatening to destroy cultural sites abroad (a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions).
How State Capacity Drives Industrialization
[Palladium, 2-12-20, via reader of RealEconomics]
These “tools that make the tools” are a crucial piece of modern supply chains, and most advanced manufacturing would be impossible without them. The ability to produce machine tools domestically is one of the foundations of a deep industrial base. Recognizing this, the South Korean state encouraged Hyundai, a chaebol which built the first all-Korean automobile in 1975, to begin making machine tools for the growing domestic market. Since then, the South Korean machine tool industry has grown steadily alongside the Korean economy as a whole. Production today is slightly larger than the machine tool industry of the United States, a country more than six times as populous….
Korea’s story may be more extreme than most, but this type of state-led economic development is how every wealthy country on Earth has industrialized. The sole exception is Britain during the original Industrial Revolution…. Only the state can coordinate many different industries to produce a transformation at the scale of industrialization.
Interesting: even some leading libertarians are beginning to admit society needs government to actively promote the general welfare, though of course, they won’t use such terms. Probably, the spectre of China building a 1,000 bed hospital in ten days has scared the living crap out of them. The USA, by contrast, and thanks in no small part to the popularization of libertarian ideology, can’t even maintain the infrastructure it already has.
Thy Neighbor’s Solar Panels: When our peers take actions to preserve the planet, we’re more likely to follow suit. How the human instinct to conform could help us address the climate crisis.
[The Atlantic, via The Big Picture 2-12-20]
Predatory Finance
In wake of Brexit, EU to put Cayman Islands on tax haven blacklist
[Business Insider 2-12-20]
- Credit-card debt in America has reached a record high of $930 billion, according to new Fed Reserve data first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
- Serious credit-card delinquency rates — payments made 90 days or more past due — have also increased, particularly among those ages 18 to 29.
- Millennials‘ difficulty in paying off their credit-card debt reflects their financial reality: an increasing cost of living that outpaces their income growth.
[FT, via Naked Capitalism 2-11-20]
The Carnage of Establishment Neoliberal Economics
It’s Kochs vs. Mercers in the Right’s Big Tech Brawl
[Businessweek, via The Big Picture 2-12-20]
White House budget doubles down on reorgs and benefit cuts
[Federal Times, via Naked Capitalism 2-11-20]
The hidden design failure that’s costing consumers trillions
Restoring balance to the economy
California Considers Tax on Companies With Large CEO-Worker Pay Gaps
[Capital & Main, via Naked Capitalism 2-13-20]The Survival of the ILWU at Stake!
A recent federal court decision in Portland, Oregon poses an immediate existential threat to the strongest union in the U.S. today, the ILWU, and ultimately to the labor movement as a whole. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), arguably one of the most militant unions in the U.S., has been hit with a union-busting $93.6 million dollar court-imposed fine for a secondary boycott deemed illegal under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. The plaintiff, International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI) is owned by the third richest man in the Philippines, billionaire Enrique Razon Jr. and operates in 27 ports worldwide, mainly in poor, developing countries.
North Carolina AFL-CIO picket in support of EPA employees on Febuary 18
North Carolina AFL-CIO 2-14-20
Click here to sign on support to the EPA Workers’ Bill of Rights.We’ll be taking this petition into the bargaining room – and the more names we have, the better our position for negotiations.
Even if you ARE joining the rally, please sign the EPA Workers’ Bill of Rights. And then, share it with your friends and family! The more names we can get – from EPA workers and their families to environmental enthusiasts to local elected officials and advocacy organizations – the better!
The EPA Workers’ Bill of Rights is a common-sense 10-point list of demands, including:
- The right to full staffing levels
- The right to conduct climate change research
- The right to protect human health and the environment without fear of reprisal.
Health Care Crisis
Climate and environmental crises
In Somalia, an unprecedented effort to kill massive locust swarms with biocontrol
Several factors caused the massive outbreak. In May 2018, a cyclone hit the desert “empty quarter” of Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. After the unusual rainfall, vegetation flourished, and the well-fed locusts increased their population 400-fold over 6 months. Normally, the populations would shrink when plants die after the desert dries out again, and timely control efforts can prevent populations from booming.
In this case, however, a second cyclone hit in October 2018 and the population continued to increase—an estimated 8000-fold by March 2019. The locusts headed to southern Iran, crossing territory that hadn’t seen the insects in 50 years, and moved east into India and Pakistan. Last summer, many flew south with prevailing winds into Yemen, where civil war prevented any spraying of pesticides. The swarms moved to Ethiopia and Somalia in October 2019.
Compounding the problem, yet another cyclone unexpectedly hit the Horn of Africa in December 2019 and more breeding ensued. By the end of that month, growing swarms had entered Kenya. They reached Uganda and Tanzania in the past few days.
Climate change policies will continue to fall short unless we hand the mic to those most hurt by it
‘Consistent With a Mass Extinction’: New Study Warns Climate Chaos Driving Rapid Decline of Bumblebees
[Common Dreams, via Naked Capitalism 2-9-20]Car ‘splatometer’ tests reveal huge decline in number of insects
“There Are Rivers in the Sky Drenching the U.S. Because of Climate Change”
“Atmospheric rivers are narrow ribbons of concentrated moisture that originate in the Pacific and can flow thousands of miles before dropping rain and snow on land. Scientists are ramping up their research into the systems this winter fearful that warmer temperatures tied to climate change will boost the moisture they carry, supercharging them moving forward…. A study released in December by Scripps and the Army Corps of Engineers found that atmospheric rivers caused 84% of the flood damage suffered in 11 western states over 40 years through 2017. The average annual cost: $1.1 billion, according to the report.”
Neoliberalism requires a police state
A Canadian Energy Company Bought an Oregon Sheriff’s Unit
Will Parrish, Alleen Brown, Febraury 12, 2020 [The Intercept]
Pembina was the sole funding source of a sheriff’s unit that monitored opposition to the proposed Jordan Cove natural gas pipeline and export terminal.
In fact, for nearly four years, Pembina was the sole funding source of a unit in the sheriff’s office dedicated to handling security concerns related to Jordan Cove — despite the fact that there is not yet any physical infrastructure in place to keep secure. The pipeline and terminal cannot begin construction without approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is scheduled to vote on whether to license the project in February. Yet between 2016 and 2020, the department’s liquid natural gas division, known as a “combined services unit,” spent at least $2 million of Pembina’s money. The energy company put the funding on hold in April 2019 but left open the possibility that the arrangement could be revived in the future. Pembina and the sheriff’s department are currently discussing how they may continue to work together, and Coos County Sheriff Craig Zanni said he expects the partnership to be renewed.
Information Age Dystopia
“ICE Is Using Location Data From Games and Apps to Track and Arrest Immigrants, Report Says” [Vice, via Naked Capitalism 2-11-20]
“The Department of Homeland Security began purchasing location data in 2017 from Venntel, a Virginia-based company which markets itself as a ‘pioneer in mobile location information,’ according to the database of federal contracts. Since then, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has purchased $190,000 in Venntel licenses and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has spent over $1 million on the company’s products. The data is drawn from inconspicuous cell phone apps, like games and weather apps, that ask the user’s permission to access their location. But the data has been used by DHS to ‘help identify immigrants who were later arrested,’ and by CBP to identify cell activity in places such as remote desert areas on the Mexican border, according to the Journal, which said it both reviewed documents and spoke to people ‘familiar with the matter.
Why Google Did Android
Tim Bray [via Naked Capitalism 2-10-20]
Ironic: to preempt Apple from establishing a monopoly.
“Inside Documents Show How Amazon Chose Speed Over Safety in Building Its Delivery Network” [Pro Publica, via Naked Capitalism 2-13-20]
Collapse of Independent News Media
Can Journalism Be Saved?
[New York Review of Books, via Naked Capitalism 2-9-20]
Then there is another option, imperfect like all the others, for saving journalism: direct government subsidy. Almost all American journalists react to this idea with a strong visceral recoil, especially now. But the severity of the situation demands subjecting our automatic assumptions to more careful scrutiny. Government support can be structured in many different ways; great portions of the independent truth-seeking activity in the United States are funded by the government, reasonably successfully, despite enormous built-in potential for political interference. The Federal Reserve employs many more professional research economists than any economics department. Public libraries, almost all the time, are permitted to acquire their books and research materials freely. University research—indeed, universities generally, including private universities—are overwhelmingly supported by the government, including when their work touches on politically controversial subjects. Most of the basic research establishing global warming as a phenomenon was conducted either by government employees (like James Hansen of NASA) or by government-funded researchers, despite the powerful political opposition to this kind of science.
Such government funding systems require several layers of built-in protection from the whims of elected officials. Usually these are peer-review mechanisms that determine where funding goes specifically and ensure that it cannot be cut off capriciously without warning. The administration and Congress fund the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, but they don’t directly approve each individual grant. Of course, this system isn’t perfect, but no other funding system is either. A 2009 report by Schudson and Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of The Washington Post, suggested establishing a Fund for Local News, which would distribute money to appointed state boards that would review applications from news organizations.8 These could be newspapers, radio or TV stations, websites, startups—anybody who could do good work. The boards would make irrevocable multiyear grants, based on the applicants’ specific plans about what to cover, and could renew the grants (or not) based on the quality, reach, and influence of the coverage they funded. The media reform group Free Press, in a report published last year, called for the establishment of a Public Interest Media Endowment, which could distribute its funds either to state or local entities or to the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the requirement that the funds support original local reporting.9 Victor Pickard, in Democracy Without Journalism?, calls for the creation of a government-funded or -owned, employee-controlled category of local news organizations.
Stephen Gillers, in Journalism Under Fire, endorses Downie and Schudson’s proposal and appropriately protected public funding for journalism more generally. He also explores creating some form of legal distinction between professional and citizen journalists, so that the former could achieve the longed-for, but never attained, federal protection of our relationships with confidential sources. Gillers is a law professor; it’s unsurprising that, in the conversation as it stands now, policy solutions to journalism’s crisis usually come from outsiders, because journalists are so powerfully socialized to embrace a libertarian view of our work. That would be fine if the market had any meaningful chance of fixing the problem, but, for reporting with a public mission, it doesn’t.
“Let’s assume the bankruptcy, despite its non-complete pre-packedness, goes through according to plan and with relative speed. The New McClatchy would be controlled by Chatham Asset Management, a hedge fund that is currently the company’s largest shareholder and lender. Chatham hasn’t been as prominent a player in the American newspaper industry as Alden Global Capital, Fortress, or Apollo…. Chatham, though, has some other connections to the news business that sound a bit less high-minded. It is controlling owner of American Media, Inc., the company best known as the owner of the tabloid National Enquirer — not long ago seen engaging in a hush-money scheme with Donald Trump and some sort of…questionable relationship with the Saudis and the hacking of Jeff Bezos’ phone. The National Enquirer is currently a Chatham-controlled company.”
“McClatchy files bankruptcy to shed costs of print legacy and speed shift to digital”
Democratic Party leadership insists on suicide
Buttigieg calls on Democrats to “own” deficit reduction. I’m not kidding.
Bob Johnson,
“Caruso-Cabrera, who became a CNBC contributor when she left the network in September 2018, serves as a member of the board of directors for financial services firm Beneficient. She will take a leave from her role as CNBC contributor for the duration of the campaign, a CNBC spokesperson said.”
“AIPAC Must Stop Bernie Sanders – at All Costs” [Haaretz, via Naked Capitalism 2-11-20]
“About that Democratic Primary …”
James Kwak [Baseline Scenario, via Naked Capitalism 2-12-20]
…the national Democratic Party of the past thirty years has been a failure, both as policy and as politics… Both Presidents Clinton and Obama turned their backs on redistribution and social solidarity, preferring the soaring rhetoric of growth and opportunity: maximizing overall economic growth while giving everyone the “opportunity” to participate in prosperity. But what we got was modest growth whose benefits were monopolized by the 1%, soaring inequality, and widespread economic insecurity. (For the numbers, see Chapter 2 of Take Back Our Party.) As a society, we have to recognize that growth is not the answer. What we should care about is the actual welfare of ordinary families: whether they can afford health care, whether they can afford a place to live, whether they can go to college, whether they can retire, and so on. Those are the things our economic platform should focus on—not the myth that a rising tide lifts all boats….
“Now, the issue on everyone’s minds is electability. Sure, we may want Medicare for All—but what most people want more than anything else is to defeat President Trump. And many people think that the most electable candidate is the most right-wing candidate. This is based on the theory of the median voter. The idea is that you can line up all voters on an ideological spectrum, and they will vote for the candidate who is closest to them—which means that we want to nominate someone in the middle (or, more accurately, someone just to the left of Trump). The median voter theory is nonsense. If it were true, Donald Trump would not be president today. Nor would the Republicans have a majority of the Senate, and a majority of governorships, and a majority of state legislatures. They have achieved this electoral success despite running far to the right of where most Americans stand on just about every issue—immigration, abortion, gay rights, taxes, you name it. We have to give people a reason to vote for us. The problem is, for decades, Democrats have not given people a reason to vote for them.”
The American Prospects is posting a chapter a day from Take Back Our Party: Restoring the Democratic Legacy by James Kwak.
The rising tide was the theoretical basis for the “trickle-down economics” of President Ronald Reagan and the conservative revolution. In their view, the postwar American economy already suffered from too much redistribution; cutting taxes for the rich would encourage them to work, save, and invest, accelerating growth and therefore benefiting all people. But it was also the justification for the opposition’s New Democrat narrative of growth and opportunity. “This isn’t the time to get caught up in distributional politics,” Democratic Leadership Council Chair Charles Robb said in 1986—“it’s time to make the economic pie grow.”
Bill Clinton agreed. “The Democratic Party’s fundamental mission,” he wrote, is “to expand opportunity, not government; to recognize that economic growth is a prerequisite for expanding opportunity; to invest in the skills and ingenuity of our people in order to build shared prosperity.” In short, the key to making everyone better off is to encourage private-sector growth, while “expanding opportunity” to ensure that no one is left behind. Clinton’s primary domestic policy achievements included lower deficits, welfare reform, and financial deregulation, all traditional Republican goals; yet as long as economic growth was good for rich and poor alike, he could still claim that he was a champion of ordinary men and women.
“The chaos of recent weeks might give Sanders supporters their most potent argument yet. The Democratic Party has become so corrupt and dysfunctional that it can’t even perform the most basic function of a democracy: counting the votes. It is time to turn to new leadership. Or we can stick with the corporate Democrats and blame the Russians again when we lose to Trump.”
“Here They Come Again: The Kind of Neoliberal Democrats Who Prefer Trump to Sanders”
“I have no doubt that the Democratic liberals who fear that Sanders is ‘unelectable’ are genuine in their belief. They also want and need for him to be unelectable because for them the really significant divisions in the society must not be those between economic classes…. From the standpoint of those liberals tied to investor-class interests, a Trump victory in 2020, even if it were to raise a serious threat of authoritarianism, could be less disturbing than a Sanders-led, left-tacking political realignment. And, much as the Clinton administration’s liberal architects of welfare reform dismissed their left critics as tendentious and naïve—until those critics were proven right—liberals’ insistence that Sanders can’t win preempts, at least for now, questions about what they would do if he were to win the nomination. Would they support him? Would they follow Bloomberg, or someone else, on a third-party ticket? ‘From the standpoint of those liberals tied to investor-class interests, a Trump victory in 2020, even if it were to raise a serious threat of authoritarianism, could be less disturbing than a Sanders-led, left-tacking political realignment. We don’t know the answers to those questions, but I have my suspicions.”
“One of Klobuchar’s Biggest Backers Is ‘the Worst Company in the World’”
[Daily Beast, via Naked Capitalism 2-13-20]
“But while the Minnesota senator has successfully parlayed her grandfather’s work in an Iron Range mine into working-class bona fides, some of Klobuchar’s most important longtime backers are billionaires and billion-dollar corporations. Chief among them: Cargill, the agriculture behemoth and the largest privately held company in the United States, which has donated a small fortune in campaign contributions over the course of Klobuchar’s political career.” • Cargill is a busy company. They’re also helping to burn down the Amazon rain forest (no matter what their PR says).
Blake Zeff’s Twitter thread on Bloomberg buying democracy
February 13, 2020 [via Naked Capitalism 2-14-20]
“Mike Bloomberg has offered blue America a Faustian bargain: Forfeit all credibility on the issues of money in politics and democratic reform, and he will spend whatever it takes to make the bad man in the White House go away. The market for what Bloomberg is selling is large and growing, thanks in no small part to the $300 million he’s already spent advertising it. Many rank-and-file Democrats — like so many disillusioned voters in democracies the world over — like the idea of hiring a no-nonsense, post-political businessman to fix their broken government (just, you know, a less ostentatiously racist one than America’s current CEO). Meanwhile, many Democratic elites see Bloomberg as a (slightly unsavory) savior who can single-handedly stop the party from nominating a supposedly unelectable socialist, provide its vulnerable first-term suburban House members with an ideal standard-bearer, and liberate the party from all resource constraints and fundraising headaches as it rides a rising tide of billionaire bucks back into power.”
Zack Beauchamp
✔@zackbeauchamp
· Feb 13, 2020
I genuinely don’t understand how you could call yourself a progressive or liberal and conclude an authoritarian Republican is a better candidate than a social democrat with a long track record of progressive votes in Congress
10,599 Corporate Lawyers Have Donated to Buttigieg’s Campaign: Here Are the Dirty Little Secrets
Pam Martens and Russ Martens, February 10, 2020 [Wall Street on Parade]
Supporting the scenario that Buttigieg is a strawman for the diabolical Mike Bloomberg (who bought himself a third term as Mayor of New York City by financing the repeal of term limits and has now likely managed to insert himself onto the Democratic debate stage through a convenient rule change) is the fact that the Global Head of Public Policy at Bloomberg LP, the Wall Street data terminal and news outlet that is majority owned by Mike Bloomberg, is a bundler for Pete Buttigieg. The bundler is Didem Nisanci, who conveniently served as Chief of Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from March 2009 to January 2013, the period after the financial crisis when the SEC failed to bring charges against any of the CEOs of the mega Wall Street banks that had brought on the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. As of September 14 of last year, Nisanci had contributed $2800, the maximum allowed by an individual to Buttigieg’s primary race. Prior to Mike Bloomberg throwing his own hat in the ring in November, Buttigieg had received additional contributions from other Bloomberg employees.
Bloomberg’s wealth of $61.5 billion and ongoing income derives from the data terminals he leases to the Wall Street trading floors around the globe. He showed his fealty to the hands that feed him on Wall Street as Mayor of New York City, using his police force to brutalize and bloody Wall Street protestors and coming down like the Gestapo during the eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan.
And now for the third scenario – knock Senator Elizabeth Warren out of the race. Around the same time last spring that Warren penned her scorching opinion piece at Medium on why it was critical to break up the giant tech firms Amazon, Google, and Facebook, bundlers connected to the three tech giants got busy pumping money into Buttigieg’s campaign. Ironically, this was the very thing Senator Warren was warning about in her Medium message.
Disrupting mainstream politics
, via Naked Capitalism 2-10-20]“New Hampshire 2020: In Supreme Irony, the Horse Race Favors Bernie Sanders”
“For Sanders supporters, the calculation has always been simpler: Are you bought off, or not? Just by keeping to the right side of that one principle, Sanders will hold his 20-to-30 percent and keep grinding toward victory, “narrow” wins or not. It’s a classic tortoise-and-hare story. When you know where you’re going, you tend to get there.”
Stirling S Newberry
Thank you Tony, for reminding of us of risk.
Benjamin
Even by the standards of the last four or five years, which have been incredibly revelatory about liberals and liberalism, the current hysteria over Sanders is breathtaking. That some, and apparently a gradually increasing number of, liberals are slowly rallying around Bloomberg as an alternative is just insane.
The people at the top acting in what they perceive as their class interests I can understand. But the people much lower down on the totem pole, who are just parroting what they hear on MSNBC, these people are frankly idiots. They’re as moronic as the worst MAGA hat wearing stereotype.
DMC
“The current administration is not even trying. President Donald Trump openly flouts laws at home, while threatening to destroy cultural sites abroad (a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions).”
Yes but that’s the sort of thing Presidents are just expected to do these days. When’s the last time we had a President that WASN’T violating the Geneva Conventions, one way or another? I’m an old man with a gray beard and I’m hard pressed to think of one in my lifetime. Eisenhower, maybe? Seems like he mostly kept out of (overt) international malfeasance.
Stirling S Newberry
No, this is flagrant… There is a difference.
Benjamin
“No, this is flagrant… There is a difference.”
Is there though? As with so much of what Trump does, these kinds of things were already going on.
He’s about an order of magnitude more brazen and clumsy about it, but the substance of what is going on is pretty in line with past administrations going back at least twenty years.
And so far he still has yet to destroy a country, which makes him *less* of a warmonger than either Obama or Bush. I’m honestly failing to see why him being a loudmouth and threatening specific cultural sites is supposed to be so much worse than him outright invading and destroying a country, but perhaps not deliberately targeting cultural sites (or at least not bragging about doling so).
bruce wilder
No, Benjamin, there is no difference at all. He lost me with, I can at least acknowledge that the Bush administration cared enough about the law to offer the pretense of legality.
That little aside in favor of conventional norms of hypocrisy told me Ken Harbaugh, former U.S. Navy pilot and author of the Atlantic essay, was engaged in empty virtue signalling.
Tom
National Guard is being quietly called up now. Many Twitter users talking about their family and friends getting calls and gathering their stuff to report to duty.
Also reports of large numbers of people coming to the ERs with Flu like Symptoms across the US. Given Covid 19 can fool the PCR test 70% of the time and only a CT scan of the lower lungs can give a definitive diagnosis, this is bad. Bear in mind CT scans are expensive and most insurances won’t cover them so most people won’t get scanned until its too late.
Safe to say the outbreak in the US has begun. You’re either immune or your not. You either live or you don’t. If people stop commenting for long periods, then… Well just in case, its been fun guys. Live Long and Prosper.
Charlie
There may be something to what Tom has written. Here is a google search I found for national guard call ups. Nothing from Twitter, but could be informative.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=national+guard+callups+coronavirus
Hugh
The CDC recommends upper and lower respiratory sputum, aspirates, or lavages for testing, also urine and fecal samples for collection and storage. It says nothing about CT scans. I would think a regular X-ray could show a lower respiratory viral infection, especially if it was aggressive. If the the chest X-ray was clear or indeterminate, you could do a thin-section thoracic CT as a follow up. This could show lower respiratory involvement. It would not tell you what (COVID-19, for example) caused it.
Caruso-Cabrera a CNBC contributor and former anchor, the candidate of the Establishment and Big Business, is going to primary Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive and populist. Pretty clearly payback for AOC backing progressive primary challengers.
MSNBC Morning Joe doing the same ole same ole. Mayo Pete is praised for his clear win in Iowa despite losing both rounds of the popular vote to Sanders and everything else dubious about the caucuses this year, and praised again for his strong showing in New Hampshire, despite losing the popular vote again to Sanders. They then move on to show that if you take everyone together, except Sanders, Sanders is losing big time. If MSNBC is any indicator, US journalism is already dead. Reversing media consolidation, returning local control, and establishing a journalistic ethos are just as important as funding to bringing journalism back.
Ché Pasa
From Tony’s recapitulation of NC’s and other links, it appears there is growing desperation to protect the Sanders candidacy at all costs, primarily to protect him from being flayed alive by the Wall Street rising and the Worst of All Possible Billionaire Evils, Mike Bloomberg. One would rather vote for Trump than Bloomberg. Right?
Hm. Interesting. You know, our institutions have been demonstrating a preternatural tendency to fail, top to bottom, for quite some time now, and it is my belief that Bernie’s vision revivifying FDR’s New Deal is not capable of salvaging the situation. The constituent parts of the political economy have been so weakened, broken, and destroyed that there is little or nothing left to revivify. Something quite different and, yes, new is required, and I don’t think Bernie has that vision. In politics there is no going back either to some status quo ante or to some ideal of a Golden Age.
If Bloomberg has a vision, he’s not saying. He’s pushing buttons with his apparently effective ads, tho. We can look into his record, and it’s pretty astonishing — and bad. He appeals to the same elite constituency Trump does, and he can probably take them in a fair fight, but… what about the Untermenschen that Trump panders to? Would they desert Trump for “MiniMike?” We’ll find out, won’t we?
They are supposedly among Bernie’s natural constituency, but Bernie has never shown the ability to gather them in, and there is no sign it will happen if by some miracle the DNC fails to thwart his nomination.
The zeitgeist is authoritarian these days, not just in the US but widely around the world. Trump gets away with his chaos, bullshitting and authoritarianism because there are no effective institutional constraints. It’s a situation mirrored in many other nations to a greater or lesser degree.
Any Democrat would face constraints, but not institutional ones. They would be the constraints bullies put on their victims and toadies. Democrats would play their usual submissive role. Even, yes, Bernie.
So what do you do? I’m not a partisan of any of the Democratic candidates, and certainly not of Trump. They’re locked in a struggle, but not a productive one. It leads nowhere. If we want something better, different and new, we’d better come up with it — or somebody better do so, fast — for the bell is tolling.
Ché Pasa
The McClatchy bankruptcy story was sadly inevitable, as anyone paying attention to the financials of the company could see. The wonder is it didn’t come sooner. Like many — most? — newspaper organizations, the goal was basically looting the assets until there was just about nothing left.
What will emerge from the reorganization is not what’s needed for an informed public. That’s all but certain. The news business is essentially dead.
It’s worse by far at the local level where timely and comprehensive news is all but absent. That’s where McClatchy was very good, even as the company was shedding reporters and diminishing coverage. We can anticipate little or nothing will take the place of what once was.
That should be an opportunity, no? Why is no one taking it?
450.org
Because those who ordinarily would have been neutralized, nay neutered, by social media especially facebook and twitter.
Ten Bears
OK Bloomers
bruce wilder
Journalism was historically financed by advertising revenue; Google and Facebook have taken fantastic shares of advertising revenues, without needing to produce any journalism.
Tom
@Hugh
CDC is woefully misinformed or being stupid. China’s new diagnostic criteria is CT scans, as PCR tests are giving too many false negatives. It’s why they had that 15,000 increase in official numbers which are far too low from what we see in videos coming out of China and what Satellite surveillance shows.
A CT scan shows fully what is going on in the lungs. And if caught early enough, aggressive treatment can begin, increasing the chances of survival.
StewartM
450
I’m still voting for Bernie in the primary despite the crumb bums who surround him and harass and stalk and threaten people online.
How do you know these aren’t plants?
In 2016, a lot of “Bernie Bros” accusations were later found to be false Here’s one:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-sanders-supporters-throw-chairs-at-nevada-democratic-convention/
Remember, David Brock who ran Hillary’s “Correct the Record” PR campaign was reported to employ internet trolls who, like the Russians, would spread ‘fake news’ about Bernie.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html
Easiest thing in the world is to pay trolls to pose as “Bernie Bros” who would then make outrageous and threatening and repulsive statements supposedly on his behalf.
StewartM
What Bruce and Stirling said. What is happening now is that Trump and his cronies don’t even pretend to be following the law.
It is true that this drift to fascism has been underway for the past 40 years, and it has St Ronnie Raygun’s fingerprints on its beginning, and Clinton and the Bushes and Obama all played a role, but Trump is no longer even bother to hide it. And that means they don’t fear blowback anymore.
Willy
Old Russians and Ukrainians living in America tell me they all read Pravda, but got good at figuring out the real news by reading between the lines. When it was quietly reported that Star City would be focusing on robot spacecraft and human space stations, they knew it probably meant the Soviets couldn’t match the moon landing finances of NASA and it was more practical to militarize space instead.
Now most of us are sorta living in Pravda times. With socialized corporate welfare and their major media supplicants, we’re increasingly having to read between the lines. Of course our current major media is going to have to suck up to their financiers. And players being players, will try to foul each other with the best fake news scandals they think the readers will buy.
I’m thinking that the guys who most often call this out are gonna be the more honest players. And the guys who cry the loudest about the small stuff, the less.
Hugh
Apparently only in Hubei, different diagnostic criteria are being used.
“If lung images show pneumonia, patients who are already marked as suspected cases are confirmed as infected without the need for a positive RT-PCR test.”
That is they are being treated as if they have COVID-19 out of an excess of caution, not because it has been proven they have COVID-19.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/how-china-tests-for-covid-19-coronavirus-12438008
Hugh
I should add:
“No specific treatment for 2019-nCoV infection is currently available. Clinical management includes prompt implementation of recommended infection prevention and control measures and supportive management of complications, including advanced organ support if indicated.”
There are some ongoing trials in China using (1) the anti-viral remdesivir and (2)a combination of lopinavir-ritonavir.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-guidance-management-patients.html
Z
You keep hearing members of the DNC-MSNBC industrial complex saying that Sanders can’t ever get medicare-for-all passed through Congress. Well, if he gets elected and that COVID-19 hits the United States you could see that whole political dynamic changing very quickly. Who wants to vote against universal health care when the current system leads to people not getting treatment because they can’t afford it, and more people get sick because of it? It effects all of us.
Z
Ian Welsh
Some comments are getting a bit too ad-hominem. Please keep it to attacks on positions, not people. I genuinely understand the urge to tell people they suck, but don’t. 🙂
Z
One of the demo-zombie fables that bug the hell out of me is the notion that what’s happening now is mostly Reagan’s fault because he set this country on a permanent course forty years ago that we haven’t been able to steer our way out of even though he’s been out of office and dead for so long.
But when Reagan left office he basically left for good, he was already deteriorating mentally during his last few years as president. It wasn’t long afterwards he was kept at home, probably due to dementia, until he died.
Reagan didn’t hold onto any political power when he left. He couldn’t and I doubt if he would’ve if he could.
Compare that to the Clintons. Bill came onto the scene in 1992 and those two are still corrupting our politics to serve corporate interests. That’s 28 years now and they’re still entrenched in our political structure, very much engaged in the democratic party’s direction even though they supposedly have no role in the government. We haven’t rooted them out yet and they’re still selling us out to corporate interests despite the fact that they already have hundreds of millions of dollars.
Clinton is the dominant political force of our time, by far. Look at all the things he pushed through in his 8 years and how that negatively affected the working class and the poor and benefited the rich and how those rich made Clinton rich once he left office. We’re living in the world that his corruption created.
You could also blame the Clintons for Trump. Without their corruption as a backdrop he never would have become president. If they didn’t use the DNC to cheat for Hillary we may have already had a President Sanders and maybe medicare-for-all. If COVID-19 hits the U.S. we’re going to pay heavily for not having universal healthcare.
Clinton is much more to blame for where we are than Reagan. It’s not even close. Reagan still had some sense of shame. The Clintons have zero.
Z
Z
Hey man, thanks for your vote!
Z
Hugh
Re the death of journalism, there was a breathtakingly dishonest bit of reporting on Morning Joe (2/17) by Heidi Przybyla. It was one of these: drink three shots of bourbon, stare into the sun for a half hour, and it all becomes perfectly clear. Przybyla basically was arguing that Sanders’ vote against the Iraq War was actually equivalent to Biden’s vote for it. What Sanders did was an act of conscience and common sense. What Biden greenlight a war and then do some CYA over it. For Przybyla, obviously indistinguishable.
Hugh
Should read: “What Biden did was greenlight”
nihil obstet
We keep going at Reagan because heroes are important in political affairs. The Republicans understood that. They realized that Democrats could point to FDR, Truman (not my hero, but still, for many), JFK, and besides that to overwhelmingly popular policies like Social Security and Medicare. So they set out to create a hero. Reagan was an amiable front man, attractive to many as a storyteller. So they started a full out propaganda campaign to re-create Reagan as a political hero. Remember that he wasn’t very popular when he shambled out of office. In those days people were still horrified by the Iran-contra crimes.
But the Republicans started a hagiographic industry around Reagan, including vows to name something in every congressional district for the old toad. How successful it’s been is indicated by the fact that Reagan was touted as a good forerunner by Democrats at the 2016 national convention.
So partially I’ll keep hitting Reagan to oppose the Republican propaganda. And although Clinton and followers continued on the path set by the Reagan administration, it is true that Reagan made unfettered greed among the political class acceptable.
Z
Nihil Obstet,
I don’t agree with this: “Reagan made unfettered greed among the political class acceptable”.
Yeah, he made some speeches after he left office and got paid well for them, in foreign countries yet, and set that horrible precedent, but “unfettered greed”? If that’s unfettered greed, what do you term Clinton’s? Insatiable? Infinite?
Reagan came on the scene when the U.S. wanted some simple confidence in their government after Watergate and Carter’s uneven years, which weren’t all Carter’s fault, and Reagan was a simple man, not that much smarter than your average U.S. citizen really, and somewhat vacuous like the actor he was.
But again, Reagan maintained a sense of proportion, some sense of shame and humility, and you could see it in how he fired Rove for dirty campaign tricks, course corrected and raised corporate taxes when he saw U.S. corporations weren’t paying any taxes (like GE, who used to pay him for speeches before he became president), and pulled the U.S. military out of Lebanon when they got bombed instead of immersing the U.S. into a war, and placing U.S. soldiers in further danger, to protect his own ego.
Reagan had a much greater sense of responsibility to the country than Clinton has, who has none. He may have not been a good president overall, it’s certainly debatable, but he didn’t basically all-out sell the country out to Wall Street and corporate interests for his own personal gain.
Z
nihil obstet
Personally, Reagan may not be as awful as his successors. In setting a level of public acceptability for greed with its companions fraud and crime, he did break the path. His constant railing against government damaged the social infrastructure necessary to a good society. His White House appointees left government to set up lobbying firms that pretty obviously were nothing by influence peddling operations. You may say that things were worse under his successors. Yes, but the initial malefactors were met with public horror. He blessed it and made it possible for subsequent members of the political class to indulge their greed. Yeah, he made some speeches, didn’t he?
When there’s as much money sloshing around as you get near governments, you’ll always get some corruption. But without Reagan, you don’t get the subsequent acceptance of corruption among politicians.
Z
Nihil Obstet,
You’re very smart and I read almost everything you post, when I have the time, but I think in this instance we’ll have to agree to disagree on some subjective matters regarding Reagan.
Again I believe Reagan’s influence over our politics is a small fraction of what Clinton’s is and that’s my larger point. I’m not sure if you disagree with that or not, but if you do disagree and its based primarily upon the legacy of Reagan, I’d make the point then that it wasn’t actually Reagan himself that was ultimately responsible for that. He didn’t attempt to keep his thumbs on the political process once he left. He kept almost totally out of the republican party’s politics once he left office.
While I don’t hear any of the democrats talking about carrying on the legacy of Clinton, their greedy mitts are still very much all over our political process and without the Clintons there very likely would never be a President Trump. I suspect we probably agree on that.
Z
Benjamin
@Z
Carter started by opening the door a crack, Reagan made the trickle a tsunami, and then Clinton made the flood permanent by turning the Democrats into ‘moderate Republicans’, while Republicans themselves went off a freaking cliff and have kept going ever since.
So yeah, I’d say Clinton was worse. He had a chance to reverse the right-wing drift, instead he embraced it and rode it to power.
Hugh
Reagan was the first of the “empty suit” Presidents which have led to the current third-rate carney. They were essentially front men and sellable faces for the class interests who owned them.
Reagan had significant Alzheimer’s the last years of his Presidency, heavily managed and spun by his wife and White House staff. So his after office activities were limited and soon became non-existent. This was edited out of the invented hagiography Republicans built up around him and to which nihil obstet refers.
When you look at the construction of the current kleptocracy, you can see some of the first signs (income share of the lower 80% peaking) around 1968 under Nixon, then the first concrete acts under Carter (like deregulation of trucking and airlines and the appointment of Volcker), but it is really with Reagan that you get the full blown onset (the anti-labor Volcker, Reaganomics (supply side economics) with its still ongoing rationale of tax cuts for the rich, government is the problem, union breaking (Patco), foreign policy by accident, etc.)
bruce wilder
I think radically reducing the top rates of income tax, especially on labor income — affecting top corporate executives mostly — set in motion a variety of political and economic dynamics against the background of the evolving role of the dollar as an international reserve currency.
Income egalitarianism peaked around 1968-9 because management in large business corporations tended to side with labor against big-money capital in the 1960s. Top Management in those years had mostly served in WWII. Top rates of income tax were punishing, so perks aside, there was no point in mad ambition to get the top job. Many top executives served long tenures and milked their positions as corporate statesman for status and prestige.
That all changed in the 1980s as the amounts that could be paid to top executives skyrocketed. Big money Capital made an alliance with the class that supplied people ambitious for positions at the top and positions in finance. Tenures shortened, “I will be gone, you will be gone” became a thing. Gradually top executives figured out out-sourcing to China and other disinvesting strategies and the pillage accelerated.
Deregulating transportation and banking, and exposing autos and steel to international trade (on financial terms disadvantageous to domestic reinvestment) stirred the whirlwind.
I don’t think the personalities of politicians had much to do with any of it really, except they probably believe their own b.s. It was policy with predictable consequences, mostly.
Some of it in the Nixon and Carter years was necessary reform to cope with systems set up during or immediately after WWII that were breaking down. Some was a response to the playing out of natural resource exhaustion: the decline of the U.S. as an oil producer and the rise of new industrial powers in Europe and East Asia. Some may have been accidental: the unexpected effects of television on social affiliation and typical intelligence.
But, to the extent that political power mattered, the alliance of Capital with the class of top corporate executives who could drive the corporate bureaucracies — that was key, I think.