Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 02, 2025

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 02, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie — We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people.

Greg Sargent, March 1, 2025 [The New Republic]

It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”

Now the Trump administration has officially terminated a number of current contracts struck by USAID for this lifesaving nutrition, contracts that had called for the paste to be delivered to hundreds of thousands of children, most in Africa, according to the Georgia-based nonprofit set to deliver them, Mana Nutrition….

The full extent of the damage from these cuts—originally set in motion by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—is not yet known. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives, has established, via communications with partners that work with USAID, a list of contracts that were terminated. Among them are programs that offer natal care for mothers and children, that provide netting and other equipment to prevent the spread of malaria, that work to thwart the spread of Ebola and bird flu in dozens of countries, and much more. The cancellations will nix programs that helped tens of millions of people, Gawande notes.

“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” Gawande told me in an interview. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times has developed a long list of other terminated contracts, which include programs preventing the spread of polio, treating HIV and tuberculosis, ensuring clean drinking water in war-torn regions, and buttressing public health in many other ways. Tens of milions of people benefited; now they will not.

Hegseth Clears the Way for More War Crimes 

[Daniel Larison, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

The Secretary of Defense admitted that the reason for removing the JAGs was so that they wouldn’t be “roadblocks to anything that happens.” If top military lawyers don’t serve as roadblocks more often than not, they aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted 

[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

White House point man at Homeland Security shared ‘martial law option’ post to keep Trump in office 

[CNN, via Naked

Capitalism Water Cooler 02-26-2025]

“The Trump administration’s new point man for dealings with the Department of Homeland Security is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for ‘martial law’ to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election. Paul Ingrassia and the Twitter account for a podcast he co-hosted posted the remark and similar sentiments on social media in December 2020 and January 2021, according to a CNN KFile review of deleted and still-active posts by Ingrassia himself and the account of the podcast. The 29-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer now serves as the second Trump administration’s White House liaison to the DHS, a key role that has historically involved managing the administration’s relationship with the department and overseeing the placement of political appointees.”

STATE OF NEW YORK, et al., v. DONALD J. TRUMP (PDF)

[United States District Court, Southern District of New York, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

Judge extends block on DOGE’s access to federal payment systems 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025] The opinion.

Trump and Elon’s ‘Pointless Bloodbath’ at the FAA Is Even Worse Than You Think 

[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but the latter role is important, too, given the nation’s ongoing pilot shortage.

Musk has inside track to take over contract to fix air traffic communications system

BYRON TAU and BERNARD CONDON, February 25, 2025 [AP]

A satellite company owned by Elon Musk has the inside track to potentially take over a large federal contract to modernize the nation’s air traffic communications system.

Equipment from Musk’s Starlink has been installed in Federal Aviation Administration facilities as a prelude to a takeover of a $2 billion contract held by Verizon, according to government employees, contractors and people familiar with the work.

Musk’s Starlink gets FAA contract, raising new conflict of interest concerns

Chris Isidore, February 25, 2025 [CNN]

FAA targeting Verizon contract in favor of Musk’s Starlink, sources say 

WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 02-28-2025]

Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding

[Washington Post, via The Big Picture February 28, 2025]

Despite the hype, DOGE hasn’t found a shred of fraud 

[Public Notice, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-24-2025]

“DOGE has claimed it’s rooted out $55 billion worth of spending, a dollar amount that appears to be wildly inaccurate: As of Sunday, DOGE’s website claims it has saved or cancelled $55 billion worth of government contracts. But that same website only accounts for $16 billion in contracts. Half of that comes from an $8 million government contract that DOGE incorrectly identified as being worth $8 billion. Additionally, DOGE has been in some cases simply cancelling contracts that the government has already paid for. Some $325 million in supposed savings are simply contracts that have been repeated in DOGE’s reporting, Politico found. But actual fraud? DOGE has found nothing. None of this has stopped Trump, Musk, congressional Republicans, and their allies in rightwing media from breathlessly highlighting millions of dollars’ worth of spending as examples of fraudulent government programs. Nowhere in those lists of programs — like the USAID initiatives that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been lambasting for weeks, including the tortured and incorrect claim that US taxpayers funded ‘condoms for Gaza’ — is anything that even Musk or Trump themselves have identified as ‘fraud.’ Instead, the goalposts for DOGE have silently moved from finding fraud and corruption to simply pointing out and cancelling government programs that Trump and Republicans simply don’t support.”

DOGE Claims It Has Saved Billions. See Where. 

[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

“A WSJ analysis of government data found that many claims of savings were overstated and ‘woke’ cuts were only a tiny fraction of the total.”

The Incompetence of DOGE Is a Feature, Not a Bug 

[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 02-24-2025]

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Federal workers ‘don’t deserve’ their paychecks

Ashleigh Fields, Feb 26, 2025 [The Hill, via NC State AFL-CIO]

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said federal workers “don’t deserve” their paychecks during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday.

“Those are not real jobs producing federal revenue, by the way. They’re consuming taxpayer dollars…. Federal employees do not deserve their jobs. Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks….

[TW. Greene is not just wrong, but dangerously and criminally wrong. Her thinking reflects hateful anti-government ideology that has become delusional. I have written a number of times about how USA industrial development was enabled and nurtured by government programs. Following is a list of some of these writings.]

HAWB – Introduction – How America Was Built

January 26, 2015

• 1794-1816 The federal armories lay the foundation of modern industrial mass production
• 1801–1806 Oliver Evans develops the high-pressure steam engine
• The Coast Survey Act of 1807 and the discovery of a deep water channel into the port of New York City
• 1804-1859 The Army Corps of Topographical Engineers explore and map the West
• 1817 The Erie Canal
• 1802-1835 The US Military Academy at West Point and its role in engineering and education
• McCulloch v. Maryland 1819 – Powers are implied, not enumerated
• The General Survey Act of 1824
• The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1824
• 1833 Associate Justice Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution
• 1835-1852 The Illinois-Michigan Canal and the creation of Chicago
• 1838-1842 United States Exploring Expedition of the US Navy
• 1843 Direct funding to Samuel Morse for development of the telegraph
• 1850s Admiral Benjamin Franklin Isherwood and the development of steam power
• Land Grant Act of 1850
• Steamboat Act of 1852 and the power to regulate private property
• 1859 Brig. Gen. Randolph B. Marcy’s Prairie Traveler
• Pacific Railroad Acts of 1861 and 1862
• 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges
• 1862 Abraham Lincoln establishes the Department of Agriculture
• 1867-1872 The United States Geological and Geographical Surveys of the plains and the west
• 1870 Weather Bureau of the United States established
• 1879 United States Geological Survey and the development of mining
• Hatch Act of 1887 creates agricultural experiment stations
• 1890s-1920s The Good Roads movement and government pavement of roads
• 1907 U.S. Forest Service establishes Forest Products Laboratory at University of Wisconsin Madison
• The Air Commerce Act of 1926
• 1928 The National Bureau of Standards and the Cooperative Fuel Research engine
• 1911 US Supreme Court breaks Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly
• 1912 USDA botanist and plant pathologist Mark Carleton and the improvement of wheat
• Smith–Lever Act of 1914 establishes a system of agricultural cooperative extension services
• 1915 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
• 1917-1919 The US Navy and the development of radio
• 1919 Nebraska State Legislature establishes Tractor Test Laboratory at University of Nebraska
• 1919 Bank of North Dakota established by state legislature after Non-Partisan League sweeps state elections
• 1920 USDA scientists Harry A. Allard and W.W. Garner discover photo-periodicity of plants
• 1924 US Army Industrial College lays the foundation for the Arsenal of Democracy in World War 2
• 1930s The Bonneville Power Authority, the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification
• The Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932 promotes organized labor unions
• 1942 US military develops mass production of penicillin
• 1943 National Resources Planning Board publishes plans for post-war demobilization of military personnel and reorientation of industry
• 1943 Petroleum Administration for War sends Everette Lee DeGolyer to assess oil supplies in the Middle East
• 1948-1965 USDA regional research laboratories and the frozen foods industry
• Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (the GI Bill)
• 1945 Vannevar Bush’s report to Truman Science, The Endless Frontier argues the need for continued government support of science and engineering research and development
• 1940s-1950s The origins of computers: Whirlwind and the SAGE air defense system
• 1952-1957 US Air Force funded Boeing 707 brings us the jet age

HAWB 1863 – Admiral Benjamin Franklin Isherwood and Steam Power – How America Was Built
Dec 28, 2015

HAWB 1791-2001 Hamilton and the Apple I-phone – How America Was Built
Feb 28, 2016

HAWB – Creating America’s Amber Waves of Grain – How America Was Built
January 1, 2017

HAWB 1940s-1950s Timeline of computer development shows crucial role of government

December 3, 2017

DOGE is waging a class war on America’s new clerisy 

[Spiked, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-27-2025]

The class dynamics at play in DOGE are not as straightforward as some would have it. It’s not simply a case of Musk, the billionaire oligarch, ruthlessly attacking the lowly administrator. The impetus for DOGE is primarily driven by a conflict within the middle class. On one side are public workers whose pay, and pensions, well exceed those in the private sector. On the other, there are millions who pay tax and feel harassed by regulations, particularly among Trump’s base of small business owners. Millions of middle- and working-class families not sucking the federal teat are falling ever behind the affluent elites, who seem to control the state whichever party is in power. Throughout the Biden years, government employment and related sectors, notably in health services, have emerged as the only consistently growing high-wage sectors, a pattern evident both in the last month of his administration and Trump’s first. In contrast, material sectors, like manufacturing and mining, have slumped. In the first three years of Biden’s presidency, the ranks of government workers, at all levels, expanded by 1.5million. In 2024, the federal government reached its highest worker count in two decades. President Biden’s budget for 2025, signed in March last year, envisaged total spending to be more than 60 per cent higher than it was in 2019.

How Can We Know if Government Payments Stop? An Exploratory analysis of Banking System Warning Signs 

Nathan Tankus, February 24, 2025 [Notes on the Crises]

Mass terminations have cut USDA ‘off at the knees,’ ex-employees say 

[Investigate Midwest, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

The Plot to Destroy the CFPB

David Dayen February 28, 2025 [The American Prospect]

Declarations in a court case involving the union of the consumer protection agency detail a desire to whittle it down to “five men in a room.”

A remarkable set of declarations from current and former employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau detail Acting Director Russ Vought’s scheme to illegally eliminate the agency, and the consequences for thousands of CFPB employees and millions of consumers left vulnerable to predatory financial scams.

The fourteen declarations, filed on Thursday in National Treasury Employees Union v. Vought, provide an unusually direct window into how the Trump administration sought to cripple an agency that has returned more than $21 billion to consumers over its lifespan. And the employees call out CFPB’s current chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, for lying in his declaration to the court that the agency is just going through a normal transition process in the transfer of political power.

CFPB has been under a “stop work” order since Vought took over the agency on an acting basis. No work has been performed and employees are on paid leave; the order was characterized as a work stoppage to get around federal employment laws limiting administrative leave to ten days in a calendar year. Seven outstanding enforcement cases were dismissed in the past week….

STEPS TO DESTROY THE CFPB have already had major consequences. For purposes of the lawsuit, the actions Vought has taken thus far mean that numerous statutory responsibilities are deliberately not being carried out. CFPB is the exclusive federal examiner of numerous consumer protection laws and the primary enforcer of those laws. The Consumer Complaint Database, where individuals can complain about their financial transactions, is statutory and must be maintained. The student loan ombudsman is a statutory position for individuals to get assistance with their student loan issues. None of these tasks are operational, according to the declarations, along with several other statutory requirements….

Amnesty Day at CFPB

David Dayen February 27, 2025 [The American Prospect]

…Here are the details on the five cases the CFPB dropped this morning:

• Rocket Mortgage: This case involved an alleged kickback scheme whereby Rocket Homes, the biggest mortgage lender in America, gave incentives like referrals to real estate brokers in exchange for steering customers to its mortgage lending products, eliminating the kind of comparison shopping that could get borrowers a better deal. Jason Mitchell and his real estate brokerage firm, JMG Holding Partners LLC, was also sued in the case, for accepting the kickbacks and steering borrowers. Mitchell gave out $250 gift cards to its brokers for pushing customers to Rocket Mortgage. This was alleged to have violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act….
• PHEAA: The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) was sued in May over pressuring student loan borrowers to pay debts that were already discharged in bankruptcy, and reporting incorrect information to credit reporting bureaus. The CFPB had warned PHEAA and other student loan servicers two years ago that they were returning loans to collections that had been discharged and that borrowers no longer owe….
• Capital One: In January, the CFPB sued the financial institution over deceiving depositors out of $2 billion in interest payments. Capital One changed its primary interest-bearing account from 360 Savings to 360 Performance Savings, without informing depositors that they needed to shift their money into the new account to get interest.…
• Vanderbilt Mortgage: This is Warren Buffett’s manufactured-home company. In January, the CFPB sued Vanderbilt for issuing mortgages without determining a borrower’s ability to pay, ignoring signals that borrowers could not afford the loans….
• Heights Finance: This case, filed back in August 2023, involves a short-term installment loan conglomerate that does business under several names, which would entice borrowers with small loan offers and then encourage them to refinance, earning fees on each refi. This churning of loans made up the bulk of the revenue of the company, and the CFPB alleged that it violated unfair and deceptive practices statutes….

The CFPB Shutdown Is Entirely About Payment Apps

David Dayen February 26, 2025 [The American Prospect]

… it’s interesting to look at the one area where Republicans are playing by the book, to legally strip power away. That will tell you what this shutdown is all about. Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), Congress can nullify agency regulations passed within the last 60 legislative days of the previous term with a simple majority in the Senate. So what CFPB actions are Republicans definitively trying to kill?

Why, scrutiny of Big Tech’s payment app empire, of course.

Last week, only one CFPB rule showed up on a priority list of CRA resolutions from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA): the so-called “larger participant” rule that gives the agency supervisory authority over non-banks engaged in digital payment app transactions. Other CFPB rules, like capping overdraft fees and removing medical debt from credit reports, did not appear among the priority list; neither did more permissive changes to bank merger rules, which has been a priority of some senators….

[TW: If Musk and his (Dangerous Oligarchs Grabbing Everything) DOGEbags are actually trying to cut the deficit, why was CFPB one of their first targets? CFPB is funded by the Federal Reserve, not Congressional appropriations. ]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Budget: Background, Trends, and Policy (pdf)

February 4, 2025 [Congressional Research Service]

DOGE Gains Access to Confidential Records on Housing Discrimination, Medical Details — Even Domestic Violence

Jesse Coburn, Feb. 26, 2025 [ProPublica]

Fired cybersecurity chief for Veterans Affairs site warns that health and financial data is at risk 

[AP, via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

A Scam Built Atop an Accounting Gimmick Wrapped in Bullshit: Why Visiting Fort Knox Is Not About Selling Gold but is About Buying Bitcoin

Nathan Tankus, 26 Feb 2025 [Notes on the Crises]

Strategic Political Economy

The US Has Never Imported So Much Food 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 02-28-2025]

Gen Z and the End of Predictable Progress

[Kyla’s Newsletter, via The Big Picture March 1, 2025]

How AI, volatility, and changing institutions are shaping young people’s economic reality

Key Takeaways:

• Gen Z faces a double disruption: AI-driven technological change and institutional instability
• Three distinct Gen Z cohorts have emerged, each with different relationships to digital reality
• A version of the barbell strategy is splitting career paths between “safety seekers” and “digital gamblers”
• Our fiscal reality is quite stark right now, and that is shaping how young people see opportunities

Violence alters human genes for generations, researchers discover (press release)

[University of Florida, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-28-2025]

“In 1982, the Syrian government besieged the city of Hama, killing tens of thousands of its own citizens in sectarian violence. Four decades later, rebels used the memory of the massacre to help inspire the toppling of the Assad family that had overseen the operation. But there is another lasting effect of the attack, hidden deep in the genes of Syrian families. The grandchildren of women who were pregnant during the siege — grandchildren who never experienced such violence themselves — nonetheless bear marks of it in their genomes. Passed down through their mothers, this genetic imprint offers the first human evidence of a phenomenon previously documented only in animals: The genetic transmission of stress across multiple generations. ‘The idea that trauma and violence can have repercussions into future generations should help people be more empathetic, help policymakers pay more attention to the problem of violence,’ said Connie Mulligan, Ph.D., a professor of Anthropology and the Genetics Institute at the University of Florida and senior author of the new study. ‘It could even help explain some of the seemingly unbreakable intergenerational cycles of abuse and poverty and trauma that we see around the world, including in the U.S.’ While our genes are not changed by life experiences, they can be tuned through a system known as epigenetics. In response to stress or other events, our cells can add small chemical flags to genes that may quiet them down or alter their behavior. These changes may help us adapt to stressful environments, although the effects aren’t well understood. It is these tell-tale chemical flags that Mulligan and her team were looking for in the genes of Syrian families. While lab experiments have shown that animals can pass along epigenetic signatures of stress to future generations, proving the same in people has been nearly impossible.”

Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.

[Politico, via The Big Picture February 28, 2025]

Eugene Ludwig is chair of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity and former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency. He is author of The Vanishing American Dream: A Frank Look at the Economic Realities Facing Low- and Middle-Income Americans.

…I decided several years ago to gather a team of researchers under the rubric of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity to delve deeply into some of the most frequently cited headline statistics.

What we uncovered shocked us. The bottom line is that, for 20 years or more, including the months prior to the election, voter perception was more reflective of reality than the incumbent statistics. Our research revealed that the data collected by the various agencies is largely accurate. Moreover, the people staffing those agencies are talented and well-intentioned. But the filters used to compute the headline statistics are flawed. As a result, they paint a much rosier picture of reality than bears out on the ground….

But the CPI also perceives reality through a very rosy looking glass. Those with modest incomes purchase only a fraction of the 80,000 goods the CPI tracks, spending a much greater share of their earnings on basics like groceries, health care and rent. And that, of course, affects the overall figure: If prices for eggs, insurance premiums and studio apartment leases rise at a faster clip than those of luxury goods and second homes, the CPI underestimates the impact of inflation on the bulk of Americans. That, of course, is exactly what has happened…. But the true cost of living, as measured by our research, rose more than twice as much — a full 9.4 percent.

Global power shift

China gets taste of victory in US tech war thanks to talent, supply chains, organisation

Zhou Xin, 25 Feb 2025 [South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

China’s mature chips to make up 28% of world production, creating oversupply — Western companies express concern for their survival 

[Tom’s Hardware, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-27-2025]

China declassifies tech of world’s first high-orbit radar satellite, worrying US 

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-27-2025]

After 18 months of eye-in-the-sky secrecy, Chinese scientists have revealed the revolutionary technology behind the world’s first geosynchronous orbit synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, giving China a permanent view of one-third of the Earth’s surface.

Ludi Tance 4-01 – or Ludi – which was launched in August 2023, is the highest flying surveillance satellite ever launched. It continuously monitors the Asia-Pacific region from an altitude of 36,000km (22,370 miles), far above US remote-sensing radar satellites that are positioned in low-Earth orbit, according to the project team, led by senior engineer Ni Chong, with the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).

New products show China’s quest to automate battle

Tye Graham and Peter W. Singer, March 2, 2025 [DefenseOne]

One system tested in a recent PLA exercise automatically dispatches drones, tracks targets, and assigns strikes.

Oligarchy

The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever on Rich People

[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture March 1, 2025]

The highest-earning 10% of Americans have increased their spending far beyond inflation. Everyone else hasn’t.

Meet the World’s 24 Superbillionaires

[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture March 1, 2025]

As the ranks of global billionaires have swelled dramatically in recent years, a new category of ultrarich has emerged—the superbillionaire. Musk is one of just 24 people worldwide who qualify for that distinction, which is defined as individuals worth $50 billion or more. The ultrarich are growing in numbers, and changing wealth as we know it.

Monopoly Round-Up: The Populist Revolt Against Oligarchy Begins 

Matt Stoller, BIG, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-24-2025]

…But something about this campaign is different. It’s not so much what Bernie is saying, it’s that he is doing it to overflow crowds in Nebraska and Iowa. And it’s not just event crowds, his videos are getting tens of millions of views, and his online campaign metrics are performing remarkably well. I got a note from a contact in Bernie-world, who told me that “The level of engagement is higher than the last presidential.” …. This anti-big business vibe isn’t necessarily channeling itself through the Democrats, who are deeply loathed and distrusted….

Sanders, however, seemed to have tapped into something. An argument about who holds power, a sense of broad popular rage at the perception that this country is now run by small group of billionaires and corporate elites. For the first time since November, parts of the public are listening to political arguments again.

And the more you zoom back, the more you see that the populist frustration is real, deep, and broad. Take electric utilities. On the eastern shore of Maryland, a Republican area, twenty thousand people have signed a petition demanding an investigation of Delmarva Power, a subsidiary of utility giant Exelon, for overcharging them. That’s almost 5% of the whole customer base. You see the same anger in New York City about ConEdison, or in St Joseph, Missouri, about Evergy….

What’s important about what Bernie is doing, and these other signals, is he might be showing that fear of oligarchy is the dominant view of a large swath of the public. If that’s the case, a lot of things could change, and quicker than we might imagine.”

Democrats Need Some Consensus— A Good Place To Start Would Be Franklin Roosevelt… And Josh Weil

Howie Klein, February 25, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

Leigh Ann Caldwell hit on one message all Democrats, from corporate scum like Adam Smith to dedicated FDR-progressives like Pramila Jayapal, feel strongly about: the South African Nazi running America for Trump. “Furious and fearful voters,” wrote Caldwell, “have been channeling their rage through the Capitol switchboard, jamming phone lines, desperate to get the ear of their representatives to vent about being fired from their government job, or the slashing of federal agencies, or the prospect of losing federal benefits… [T]he grassroots fury from activists and donors, alike, has finally started to break through to Democrats on the Hill. Members, however, are still trying to keep their voters’ expectations at bay until government funding runs out in a few weeks— their first real legislative chance to force Trump’s and Republicans’ hands. Interestingly, however, the pressure still hasn’t led to unity, and mistrust between the ideological wings continues to simmer.”

Philosophical economics: Shameless Robber Barons

[Klement On Investing, via The Big Picture, February 28, 2025]

…The chart below compares the share of assets owned by the richest 10% in a range of developed countries. American wealth inequality clearly is in a different category from other countries….

I analysed why the CAPE ratio has stopped working in the US while it keeps working in Europe. After weeks and weeks of analysis, the only reason I could find is summarised in the chart below. It shows the profits of the Magnificant 7 companies in the US compared to the US GDP. For comparison, I added John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company in the year before it was broken up by antitrust enforcement….

GRAPH: Profits vs. US GDP for largest US companies

…The largest US businesses make monopolistic profits that in the past were unachievable because in competitive markets, profit margins are eroded over time. But in the US, many markets are no longer competitive. As I have explained before, US megacap tech companies are creating a kill zone to protect their markets and they can do so ever more effectively, the more money they make….

Today, people are celebrated for being rich, no matter how shameless they conduct their business or how they got their wealth. Indeed, today, some people become rich by being infamous, rather than being skilled or creative.

This is a failure of today’s capitalism and – more importantly – a failure of today’s society. And, in my view, the world is a worse place for it.

Or to use Abraham Maslow’s words:

“If swindling pays, then it will not stop. The definition of the good society is one in which virtue pays. I can now add a slight variation to this; you cannot have a good society unless virtue pays.”

Scot-free — We are living through an inflection moment in the distribution of impunity.

Trevor Jackson, March 1, 2025 [The New York Review]

What happens when power and responsibility become unmoored from each other? The political events of recent months have provided new clarity to this old question….

…Impunity refers to the way a person treats society—specifically, how they exempt themselves from accountability. Immunity refers to how society treats a person—specifically, how it protects them from negative consequences. As Ben Tarnoff recently argued in these pages, publicly demonstrating one, the other, or both has become a way for American elites to assert and reproduce their status, from not paying taxes to avoiding prosecutions. To be a member of the elite is to not be held to account….

The absence of pretense underlying Trump’s actions, however, suggests an exhausted imperial sovereignty. The American state can no longer reliably win its wars, or produce broad-based economic growth, let alone claim some normative global leadership role; all it can reliably do, it seems, is insulate its elites from accountability and protect them from the consequences of their extractive depredations. Now that the elite is unable or unwilling to deliver other goals to other constituents, the maintenance of unaccountability has become one of its core functions, along with the upward redistribution of wealth….

The sociologist Melinda Cooper, in her recent book Counterrevolution, tracks the emergence of a new class of oligarchs, who owe their power less to stewarding corporations than to accumulating personal and familial wealth—they are dynastic rather than managerial capitalists.

 This is not an inevitable outcome of the gears of capitalist inequality churning but the result of a set of identifiable policies. As Cooper shows, the rise of billionaire despots can be traced precisely to the progress of tax cuts and financial deregulation that began in the early 1980s. The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act (known as the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut) reduced the highest income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent and the 1986 Tax Reform Act brought that down further to 28 percent. Together these two Reagan tax cuts incentivized businesses to reorganize as private partnerships or unincorporated structures, generating pass-through income that would be taxed at the lower individual rate than the corporate rate….

Restoring balance to the economy

Sanders reintroducing measure increasing Social Security benefits 

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-27-2025]

“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is reintroducing a measure that would increase Social Security benefits. Sanders is joined by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) on the bill, titled the Social Security Expansion Act. It would expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and ensure the federal program is funded for the next 75 years through a tax on households making more than $250,000 a year, according to Sanders’s news release. The lawmakers noted that it would not raise taxes at all for households that make less than $250,000 annually, which is more than 90 percent of Americans. ‘At a time when nearly half of older Americans have no retirement savings and over 26 percent of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $17,500 a year, our job is not to cut Social Security as many of our Republican colleagues want to do,’ Sanders said in a statement.”

With Great Power Came No Responsibility 

Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-27-2025]

…unique opportunities for disenshittification created by Trump’s rapid unscheduled midair disassembly of the international free trade system. The US used trade deals to force nearly every country in the world to adopt the IP laws that make enshittification possible, and maybe even inevitable. As Trump burns these trade deals to the ground, the rest of the world has an unprecedented opportunity to retaliate against American bullying by getting rid of these laws and producing the tools, devices and services that can protect every tech user (including Americans) from being ripped off by US Big Tech companies….

Information age dystopia / surveillance state

Tracking You from a Thousand Miles Away! Turning a Bluetooth Device into an Apple AirTag Without Root Privileges

[nroottag, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-27-2025]

“Apple’s Find My network, leveraging over a billion active Apple devices, is the world’s largest device-locating network. We investigate the potential misuse of this network to maliciously track Bluetooth devices. We present nRootTag, a novel attack method that transforms computers into trackable “AirTags” without requiring root privileges. The attack achieves a success rate of over 90% within minutes at a cost of only a few US dollars. Or, a rainbow table can be built to search keys instantly. Subsequently, it can locate a computer in minutes, posing a substantial risk to user privacy and safety. The attack is effective on Linux, Windows, and Android systems, and can be employed to track desktops, laptops, smartphones, and IoT devices. Our comprehensive evaluation demonstrates nRootTag’s effectiveness and efficiency across various scenarios.”

Goodbye Surveillance Capitalism, Hello Surveillance Fascism 

Max Murphy [via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

How to fight back in the war against spam texts 

[Vox, via Naked Capitalism 02-27-2025]

How Cambridge Analytica Used Intimate Data to Exploit Gun Owners’ Private Lives 

[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

Climate and environmental crises

Here’s the ugliest global-warming chart you’ll ever need to see

[The Register, via Naked Capitalism 02-24-2025]

Scientists sound alarm after collecting unprecedented data from world’s oceans: ‘The broken records … have become a broken record’ 

[The Cool Down, via Naked Capitalism 02-24-2025]

Mechanisms behind a steep rise in temperature 

[Arctic News, via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

Resistance

What Felt Impossible Became Possible 

Dan Sinker [via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

…the Klan infiltrated all walks of life. In Indiana by the mid-’20s, two-thirds of the statehouse were Republican Klansmen. The governor was Klan. And in any given town, the Klan was everywhere. The mayor, the councilmen, the cops, the prosecutors, the judges….

I spent a few hours reading about George Dale, the publisher of the Muncie Post-Democrat, in Muncie, Indiana.

George Dale hated the Ku Klux Klan.

Now hating the Klan in Muncie, Indiana was not a safe thing thing to do. The Klan ruled Muncie and Delaware County the way it ruled most places in Indiana. The entire police department and the fire department were all Klan. The county judges? Klan. The whole town, essentially, was run by the Klan….

And hating the Klan sent him to jail repeatedly, rounded up by the Klan cops and put in front of a Klan judge with a Klan-packed jury. It was reported at the time that he was sent to the Muncie jail so often that inmates would applaud when he’d return….

That’s why I’ve spent so much time lately learning about those that lived under the thumb of the KKK in the ’20s. The speed with which the group grew, the influence it held, the mainstream embrace it received, and the fear it spread—I think about how impossible it must have felt to imagine that their influence would ever ebb.

And I think about people like George Dale—there were many like him—who, despite it feeling impossible, and despite paying incredible personal cost, kept fighting anyway.

And they won….

Two years after he wrote that letter, George Dale became Mayor of Muncie. His first act was to fire all the cops. Over the weeks and months that followed, he stripped the Klan from Muncie.

George Dale lost so much in his battle against the Klan. A battle that must have felt so lonely and so difficult so often. A battle that cost him his home, his savings, and, for a time, his freedom. But he won….

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

House Republicans Squeak Through Budget Resolution

by David Dayen February 26, 2025

The Path to American Authoritarianism 

[Foreign Affairs, via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

There Goes America

[Project Syndicate, Feb 21, 2025, via Naked Capitalism 02-26-2025]

Within his first month back in the White House, Donald Trump has upended US foreign policy and launched an all-out assault on the country’s constitutional order. With US institutions bowing or buckling as the administration takes executive power to unprecedented extremes, the establishment of an authoritarian regime cannot be ruled out.

Three Methods of Control: How an unpopular government will protect its power

Hamilton Nolan, Feb 28, 2025 [How Things Work]

…The 2026 midterms will be the first real chance for voters to take out their anger on what is going to happen as a result of Trump’s policies. Republicans are aware that, by normal standards, what they are doing now would set them up to get whipped in the midterms. But a whipping in the midterms and the subsequent of ability of Democrats to grind the Republican legislative agenda to a halt is incompatible with autocracy, with dictatorship, with the imperial presidency that is being pursued by this administration. Given this obvious conflict between enacting unpopular policies, consolidating power in the White House, and winning elections, what will the Trump administration do to try to hang onto power? ….

• Media as propaganda: America’s media landscape is utterly different than it was in past eras of social upheaval, like the 1960s. Back then, there were dominant mainstream media outlets that commanded wide interest from all segments of the public, and there was a thriving network of credible local news sources across the country. Neither of those things exist any more, except as pale shadows of what they were. Today we have polarized media bubbles enabled by the internet, and a thriving right wing ecosystem (and a less thriving left/ liberal ecosystem). What you can look for in the near future is the increasing right wing polarization of ostensibly mainstream outlets that are under oligarchic control—as you just saw from Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post; an increasing freezing-out and marginalization of credible mainstream outlets that are not under oligarchic control—as you just saw when the White House decided to snub the AP and seize control of which pool reporters get access; increasing use of direct political threats by the White House against major media companies that produce displeasing coverage—as you have already seen from Trump, who wields the FCC like a weapon; and an increasing thumb on the scale by social media companies under oligarchic control to raise the audience of right wing news and restrict the audience of credible news outlets—as you have seen at Musk’s Twitter, and will certainly be seeing more at Facebook as well. Widespread access to and belief in credible journalism is a direct threat to Trump’s project and they are going to attack it with more ferocity than America has ever seen.
• Voter suppression: The Republican Party to a large degree already owes its political power to antidemocratic flaws in our electoral system: Unrestricted money in politics, gerrymandering, and voter suppression. As we approach the midterms, you can expect to see voter suppression, particularly in red states, ramp up tremendously. They will restrict access to voting locations, they will (further) purge voter rolls, they will use official and unofficial groups of “supervisors” to intimidate people at the polls, they create fantastical tales of Illegals trying to vote and use it as an excuse to challenge vast swaths of mostly-Democratic voters. They will cast the existence of get-out-the-vote efforts as corruption, and outlaw them. They will cast the existence of voting in the black community as DEI, and target it. There will be little relief available from the courts. The more unpopular an autocrat gets, the more crooked elections must become. Expect all of this and more.
• Military control: The full takeover of US security agencies—the FBI, the CIA, the military, and others—by Trump loyalists is more or less complete now. They are just mopping up the last disgruntled insiders at this point. If you still believe that traditional norms against using the military domestically or launching FBI investigations for purely political reasons will be respected going forward, please abandon those beliefs at once. The FBI’s primary business now will be attacking Trump’s domestic enemies. It will be more crude and more overt than what happened under J. Edgar Hoover. On top of that, I will bet a dollar that the US military will be called out against protesters in this country before the end of the year. Trump wanted to use the Army to bust the heads of BLM protesters in 2020, and was only stopped by the career civil servants. Now the career civil servants have been shown the door and the military is under the control of a Fox News host. There will be no restrictions. We are going to begin to see the administration’s political enemies charged with crimes and put in jail, and movements in the streets met with harsh, violent force by riot police and, if necessary, soldiers. This form of control works as a disincentive to resistance, a warning. The FBI will arrest some people, one protest will get suppressed in a bloody fashion, and the idea is that those things scare so many people that resistance subsequently declines. How far down the road we go with this form of control depends on the extent to which the political resistance decides to react to it by pulling back, or pushing forward.

Heather Cox Richardson, February 27, 2025 [Letters from an American]

…Trump and his team appear to be trying to undermine the rule of law in the United States. Today, Rebecca Crosby and Judd Legum of Popular Information reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission has stopped its prosecution of Justin Sun, a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur who had been charged in March 2023 with securities fraud. After Trump was elected in 2024, Sun bought $30 million worth of Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto tokens, putting $18 million directly into Trump’s pockets. Since then, he has invested another $45 million in WLF. Altogether, Sun’s investments have netted Trump more than $50 million.

Crosby and Legum note that the SEC also appears to have dropped its case against the crypto trading platform Coinbase after the platform donated $75 million to a political action committee associated with Trump and donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration…..

Pop! Goes the Liberal Bubble: Reinterpreting everything since FDR

Jim Stewartson, Feb 27, 2025 [MindWar: The Psychological War on Democracy]

…The key flaw in liberalism as currently executed by the establishment, the flaw that led to the destruction of the federal government that we are witnessing in real-time, is that it takes for granted that all humans believe in individual rights by definition. This is dangerously naive, and led to our current existential predicament. Slavery, as Elon Musk likes to remind people, is the norm in human civilization, not the exception….

During the Biden administration, the two most frightening words I heard — and I heard them over and over again — were “norms” and “institutions.” These are phantoms of FDR, the same mistaken belief that WWII erased Nazism, that the fall of the Soviet Union was the end of communism, that democracy is the inevitable outcome of humanity, or that America is exceptional.

It cannot be said enough that over the course of human history, democracy is a vanishingly small phenomenon — a mere blip in a sea of monarchies, dictatorships, and empires….

The fundamental problem with post-FDR liberalism is that it failed to recognize that capitalism itself is just as philosophically anti-liberal as communism or fascism. “Fiduciary duty” — which is required by law of Boards of Directors and Officers — is about putting the financial goals of the company above human considerations….

Civic republicanism

Madison’s Constitution is Coming Undone

Daniel Carpenter, Paul Pierson, and Eric Schickler, February 21, 2025 [Washington Monthly]

…Trump’s actions are best summed up as “unrepublican,” violating the republican system of government that Madison envisioned and that we have enjoyed since our country’s founding. To save our republic, we need to understand how we got here….

The Constitution depends upon the concept of “office” when considering delegated power. The first laws in America creating new agencies (notably, the Treasury Department) delegated power to such “officers.” Musk’s floating status (and that of his team) defies a republican government in which power is vested in positions by law, not persons by whim….

It is astonishing enough that a man (not an “officer of the United States” and not a presidential appointee) is given the keys to the Treasury payment system. But this man, the wealthiest in modern history, spent unprecedented sums to help the president win. He controls one of the world’s largest social/media networks, relaying and propagating threats to those who resist his initiatives. He employs a range of engineers who can draw upon their technical skills to implement his policy objectives. Musk’s conflicts of interest—government contracts, tax subsidies, and favorable regulations—are likewise without precedent. The separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism were designed to prevent this accretion of power.

We believe several of the administration’s actions are unlawful under longstanding constitutional doctrines. But the Supreme Court has become highly partisan, with justices often lining up on predictable partisan lines even on issues, such as presidential immunity, that touch on core constitutional roles….

Madison understood that the Constitution could not enforce itself. What was needed was a culture of tension between branches. He and other defenders of republican government—which to him meant, more than anything else, the rejection of monarchy—relied upon a world where the diverse local attachments of a vast country would push back against the formation of highly unified partisan teams operating across the government. They anticipated that legislators, judges, and administrators would respect their offices and defend their turf, even against people in their own parties. They also had a word for the absence of this commitment to separated powers and constrained office: corruption.

[TW: This is the closest I have yet seen anyone write about one of the most striking historical facts of the early history of the American republic: the founders detested the idea of political parties and desired to ban them. But within a few years, the founders’ concern were overwhelmed by political events, largely driven by Jeffersonian ideology, and the influence of slave-holders intent on preventing the national government from becoming strong enough to end slavery.]

Despair, Hope and Defiance: The Fight for Democracy in a Broken Republic

Mike Brock, Feb 26, 2025 [Notes From The Circus]

…Republican. That word. How vulgar that the party named after our system of government now presides over its destruction. That the very name of the Republic has been twisted into its undoing. A tragedy, yes—but also an obscenity.

The irony is as bitter as it is profound. A party that once stood as a pillar of our democratic system now seems intent on dismantling the very foundations it was named to protect. This perversion of purpose serves as a stark reminder of how far we’ve strayed from our ideals, how easily noble principles can be corrupted when power becomes an end unto itself….

The fight to reclaim not just the word “republican,” but the principles it represents, is central to our struggle. We must remember that our system of government—a republic, if we can keep it—demands more of us than passive citizenship or blind party loyalty. It requires active engagement, critical thinking, and an unwavering commitment to the common good….