by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Destroying Democracy Is Central to the Privatization of Public Goods
[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-2021]
How Delaware Became the World’s Biggest Offshore Haven
[Foreign Policy, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-2021]
The American Ruling Class Has Never Let Us Build Back Better
[Jacobin, via The Daily Poster, November 21, 2021]
The defeat of Reconstruction was the nation’s first failure to build back better, and it set the stage for the failures that followed. American austerity politics found their first full expression during this period, pivoting on an ideological turn to classical liberalism within the Republican Party. The events of the 1870s created a pattern of missed opportunities and reactionary blowback that has since been repeated time and again.”
Fighting the Inflation Profiteers
David Dayen, November 24, 2021 [The American Prospect]
Companies are raising prices well above increases in their costs. The only antidote is to finally take action against corporate power….
“Executives are seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices,” reads a Wall Street Journal story explaining that around two-thirds of the largest publicly traded companies are showing profit margins higher today than they did in 2019, before the pandemic. Over 100 companies show profit margins of 50 percent or more above those 2019 levels…. Corporate executives are not hiding their handiwork; instead, they’re boasting about it in financial disclosures and earnings calls. “We have not seen any material reaction from consumers,” said the chief financial officer of Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumer goods company, which has hiked prices three times in the past year. “What we are very good at is pricing,” said Colgate-Palmolive’s CEO. “We find that taking several small price increases is more effective than one large price jump,” added the CFO of Unilever. Dollar Tree, a discount store which has the word “dollar” in its name, has decided to permanently set its price point at $1.25, stating specifically that the move is “not a reaction to short-term or transitory market conditions.”
Class war and economic disequilibrium
Big Business Declares War on Lina Khan
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 11-22-2021] A must-read (and especially insightful on factional conflict in the Republican Party). L 11-22
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce gets ready to go after the anti-monopoly movement and its leader at the Federal Trade Commission. But the conservative-corporate coalition is now splintering….
Since the Senate confirmed Lina Khan to be one of two key antitrust enforcers in June, the network of corporatist operatives in D.C. and Wall Street have been quietly trying to undermine her. This week, the campaign came into the open. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce just announced in the Wall Street Journal that it will be engaged in open conflict with the Federal Trade Commission, and more broadly with anti-monopolists across government.
“It feels to the business community that the FTC has gone to war against us, and we have to go to war back,” said Chamber President and CEO Suzanne Clark. The plan from the Chamber is endless harassment of the agency. They are filing Freedom of Information Act requests for the correspondence of Khan and her staff, writing warning letters about the commission’s actions, and threatening to sue the FTC at every step (even on things that went through on a bipartisan vote). The Chamber is also sending letters to every agency in government, in organized pushback against the Biden executive order on competition. The goal is to frighten lawyers at these agencies, to make it too painful to try and govern….
the real challenge in the antitrust world is the historic merger wave. According to Bloomberg, “Companies have announced $2.8 trillion of deals so far in 2021, an unprecedented number that puts this year on track to be the most active ever.” (These are a result of cheap credit from the Fed and the CARES Act passed in 2020.) This wave creates a special problem for the FTC. While European competition enforcers can simply block a deal until it’s been investigated, in the U.S. deals automatically go through unless the FTC brings a challenge in court with a deeply researched complaint. With thousands of deals going through, the experience of being at the FTC today is like playing tennis against a machine that shoots tennis balls at you unrelentingly.
In the midst of this merger boom, Khan has been pursuing every possible trick to address the problem. She has demanded merging firms get prior approval before pursuing new mergers, ended the process of quickly clearing mergers, and withdrawn loose merger guidelines. The FTC is now sending letters to firms telling them that the commission may undo mergers in the future, thus creating an incentive for firms to delay deals. These moves are not enough to stop the historic wave, but they have slowed it slightly, and generated concern among dealmakers. “This is significant and could have collateral consequences on the M&A deal space, particularly for private equity firms and their exit plans for a carve-out business or assets,” said Erica Weisgerber, partner at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
In response to this newfound skepticism of mergers, the antitrust bar, which openly encourages firms to pursue illegal mergers, is now suggesting a collective strategy to overwhelm both the DOJ and FTC. Here’s Paul Weiss partner Scott Barshay offering a plan to his fellow attorneys:….
Two weeks ago, roughly at the same time as Wilson’s speech, conservative Republican Senator Tom Cotton joined Democrat Amy Klobuchar in cosponsoring a bill opposing big tech mergers, a bill that Jordan opposed in the House Antitrust Subcommittee…. to have someone like Cotton come out squarely on the opposite side of Jordan over big tech means that the Republican Party will be fractured.
And Cotton’s not alone. His approach to big tech mirrors that of multiple Senators on the right, including Chuck Grassley, Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, John Kennedy, Lindsay Graham and John Thune.
“Wall Streeters Are Scouting Condos and Yachts Ahead of a Record Bonus Season”
[New York Magazine, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021]
“On Tuesday, Wall Street compensation consulting firm Johnson Associates put out a report confirming that just about everyone who had a hand in this financial free-for-all is going to get rewarded more handsomely than any time since at least the financial crisis. In its report, the company predicts a double-digit increase in bonuses this year practically across the board, with as much as a 35 percent bump for bankers who helped bring new companies to the public markets. For Wall Street’s biggest earners, though, they’re looking at much more than that — as much as three times their biggest bonus, ever, Intelligencer was told. For established bankers, that could mean millions more in their total compensation, just for this year.”
As Pandemic Evictions Rise, Spaniards Declare ‘War’ on Wall Street Landlords
[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-2021]
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-2021]
Dollar Tree made $1,230,000,000 in profits this year, gave its CEO $10,767,883 and pays workers as little as $8.32 an hour. Over 7,400 Dollar Tree employees are forced to rely on food stamps and Medicaid subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Cite the damn corporate greed. https://t.co/6cA6rMtY51
— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) November 24, 2021
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The pandemic
[MedPage Today, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-24-2021]
“In a hospital setting, however, most infection control protocols focus on contact transmission…. n March 2018, we embarked on a 3-year journey to test a theory: that mitigating the airborne transmission of viruses and bacteria is just as important as, or more important than, measures to reduce contact transmission. St. Mary’s Hospital for Children was the laboratory for this experiment. We had no idea at the time that we would soon find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic. Three years later, the results are in: the deployment of advanced air purification measures significantly contributed to a 45% reduction in healthcare-associated infections, according to the study recently published in the Journal of Hospital Infection. If we extrapolate those results nationally, it could mean 765,000 fewer hospital infections each year. This study is novel. To our knowledge, it is one of the few studies — perhaps the only study — of an engineering solution to airborne disease transmission conducted in a real-world hospital setting with over 100,000 patient days. Many studies of indoor air quality are conducted in labs or rooms fabricated to mimic the real world. More real-world studies can only advance our knowledge of the most effective tools for air purification. As promising as these results are for hospitals, they also provide a blueprint for reducing the airborne transmission of diseases in other indoor settings such as schools, restaurants, retail stores, office buildings, nursing homes, and more.” • Important, because members of the (hidebound) hospital infection control often serve as gatekeepers for policy, and to this point have worked hard to prevent a paradigm shift to aerosol transmission.
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Boeing Built an Unsafe Plane, and Blamed the Pilots When It Crashed
[Bloomberg BusinessWeek, via The Big Picture 11-21-2021]
Cost-cutting, corporate arrogance, and a new plane that was supposed to be easy to fly. An exclusive excerpt from Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing….
Boeing’s Safety Review Board, a formal gathering of engineers and pilots, discussed the Lion Air crash in early November. Among themselves, board members had earlier acknowledged some of the software’s flaws. But they’d expected that pilots would safely respond to a misfire of the software. Now they questioned their own assumptions….
There was another reason for the reluctance to admit that the design had fallen short—one involving race and nationality, not cost. The empathy Boeing’s aviators might have had for a pilot who looked like them wasn’t being extended to Suneja and Harvino. Conversations at Boeing kept focusing on how Harvino, once he took over the controls, hadn’t been able to trim the plane with the thumb switch. Boeing’s pilots, predominantly older White men, had long shared private jokes about the incompetent crews they ran into overseas. “Too dumb to spell 737,” went a frequent refrain of one pilot, according to someone who heard it. Another trainer would ask rhetorically if “Chung Fo Ho” could handle a given procedure….
In plain language, the directive was saying that Boeing’s brand-new airplane, supposedly a marvel of modern technology, could crash itself into the ground based on bad data from one tiny sensor. It sounded like the kind of single-point failure commercial aircraft weren’t supposed to have. And as Boeing employees began privately talking more with airlines about MCAS, elaborating on how the software worked, the pilot grapevine started jumping.
What most alarmed pilots was that this new feature overturned decades of Boeing design philosophy, the thing the manufacturer had always claimed set it apart from chief rival Airbus….
Boeing sent a vice president named Mike Sinnett and chief test pilot Craig Bomben to clear the air with pilots from major U.S. customers. On Nov. 27 the two men visited the American Airlines pilots’ union in Fort Worth. Dan Carey, president of the union, had agreed with staffers beforehand that if what they heard sounded insincere, he’d record the conversation. The Boeing executives had been talking for only a few minutes when Carey discreetly turned on his phone’s recorder.
Structural Issues Still Slowing 787 Production Rate
[American Machinist, via Naked Capitalism 11-25-2021]
“Premature aging of the airframe.”
I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End
[Medium, via The Big Picture 11-21-2021]
This slowdown is warehouse management related: very few warehouses are open 24 hours, and even if they are, many are so short staffed it doesn’t make much difference, they are so far behind schedule. It means that as a freight driver, I cannot pick up as much freight in a day as I used to, and since I can’t get as much freight on my truck, the whole supply chain is backed up. Freight simply isn’t moving.
Poor conditions and low pay for truckers helped fuel supply chain crisis
[NBC, via Naked Capitalism 11-26-2021]
Cost of shipping a container from Asia jumped over 500% since last year, Traeger Grills CEO says
[CNBC, via Naked Capitalism 11-23-2021]
Robert Kuttner, November 23, 2021 [The American Prospect]
…The deeper problem is the deregulation and excessive offshoring and the resulting abuse of private corporate power that produced these bottlenecks.
American consumers and workers may be suffering, but the cartel of shipping companies that control the terms of this global trade (none of them U.S.-owned) have never been more profitable. The container ship industry booked net profits in the third quarter of 2021 of a mind-blowing $48.1 billion, a ninefold increase over profits in the third quarter of 2020, which were already a record.
The industry reported that net profits were a staggering 42 percent of gross revenues, also a record. Basically, the congestion that has caused inconvenience and inflation for the rest of us has been a source of increased market power and price-gouging for the ocean shipping cartel—price hikes that are part of the inflation.
[American Affairs, via Naked Capitalism 11-26-2021]
[Wall StrSupply-Chain Snarls Deliver Windfalls to Wall Street
[Wall Street Journal,via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021]
Charter rates have soared, thanks in part to a global economic rebound that is translating into Covid-19-related labor shortages and port logjams. Cargo ships are in demand, following a yearslong decline in the number of container ships ordered and continued consumer spending on goods rather than services. To capitalize on the boom, hedge funds and lenders are flipping container ships, signing multiyear contracts to charter them out at high rates and taking gains on their equity stakes in container-shipping companies whose stock prices have soared…. The recovery is turning what looked like losing bets for earlier investors in shipping into winning ones.”
[Twitter, via The Daily Poster, November 24, 2021]
Very funny that people used to answer higher minimum wage demands by saying they’d just automate the jobs, and now that it’s prime time to do it due to labor shortage, the tech doesn’t work and is too expensive so they just put up signs saying “sorry we can’t McDonald today”
— dan (@flagrater) November 22, 2021
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Building Back Better Through Taxing Stock Buybacks
Harold Meyerson, November 23, 2021 [The American Prospect
For the past four decades—ever since Ronald Reagan’s appointees to the Securities and Exchange Commission changed a rule and opened a floodgate— stock buybacks have been a major contributor to the misshaping of the American economy.
When the top executives of a publicly traded corporation decree that their company will buy back a set amount of the company’s shares, it increases the values of the remaining shares, since the underlying value of the company remains the same but the number of outstanding shares decreases. As those same top executives tend to be very handsomely rewarded for increases in the price of the company’s shares, buying back stock is a legal and apparently painless way of making themselves m-f–ing rich. Nice work if you can get it.
The practice of buying back shares went all but unnoticed by economists until the middle of the last decade, when University of Massachusetts economics professor William Lazonick documented that the sum total of buybacks by the corporations on the S&P 500 over the preceding decade approximated the sum total of their profits. Rather than investing in new equipment or research and development or (God forbid) wage increases, America’s corporate sector was buying back its own stock, to the advantage of their leading executives and their shareholders (chiefly, of course, large shareholders), and to the detriment of, well, the economy at large.
Restoring balance to the economy
The Deere strike and new contract:
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021]
"SEA CHANGE: The Deere strike and the Volvo truck strike over the summer mark a sea change in relations between our companies' managements and their labor (and representative of a similar change across much of corporate America)…"
— Jonah Furman (@JonahFurman) November 23, 2021
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Bill Mitchell [billy blog, via Mike Norman Economics 11-24-2021]
It seems that the mainstream economists are emerging again and making all sorts of claims that fiscal policy has to target lower deficits and monetary policy needs to tighten (interest rates rise) to stop our governments going broke and inflation going wild. It really is like a tired broken record, isn’t it. They have sort of gone underground during the crisis and more are thinking it is time to reassert the nonsense of the past. And so it goes….
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Creating new economic potential – science and technology
A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution
[New York Times, via The Big Picture 11-27-2021]
The quest for Congo’s cobalt, which is vital for electric vehicles and the worldwide push against climate change, is caught in an international cycle of exploitation, greed and gamesmanship. With more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt production coming from Congo, the country is once again taking center stage as major automakers commit to battling climate change by transitioning from gasoline-burning vehicles to battery-powered ones. The new automobiles rely on a host of minerals and metals often not abundant in the United States or the oil-rich Middle East, which sustained the last energy era.
Climate and environmental crises
The Elephant Who Could Be a Person
[The Atlantic, via The Daily Poster, November 21, 2021]]
“A ‘person’ is something of a legal fiction. Under U.S. law, a corporation can be a person. So can a ship… Some forms of artificial intelligence might one day become persons. But can an elephant be a person? No case like this has ever reached so high a court, anywhere in the English-speaking world. The elephant suit might be an edge case, but it is by no means a frivolous case. In an age of mass extinction and climate catastrophe, the questions it raises, about the relationship between humans, animals, and the natural world, concern the future of life on Earth, questions that much existing law is catastrophically ill-equipped to address.”
Disrupting mainstream economics
[Economics from the Top Down, via Mike Norman Economics 11-24-2021]
Why economists’ talk about “inflation” is largely BS.
The Terror Of Electronic Money
Ian Welsh, November 24, 2021
Electronic money is inherently authoritarian. (Bitcoin is authoritarian and deflationary, and deflation rewards first movers and the rich far more than normal people.)
“Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day”
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021] Joe Weisenthal’s section:
“[T]he last 18 months have vindicated many of [MMT’s] core ideas. 1. Fiscal expansion is incredibly powerful. … 2. Inflation happens when we see real resources stretched to capacity…. 3. Bond vigilantes still MIA. As MMTers would anticipate, the spending boom and the major Fed balance sheet expansion have not dented the stability of the dollar or Treasuries. … 4. You can’t win playing by the CBO’s rules. … [O]ne of the arguments made by its proponents is that the deck is stacked against fiscal expansion, by arbitrary “scores” (by the likes of the CBO) that establish whether a spending plan adds to the deficit or not. Given the contortions that the Democrats have made to satisfy its members in the Senate, while also aiming to get a good score by the CBO (not add to the deficit too much), this is another point of vindication…. Obviously, elevated inflation has caused a drop in people’s perceptions of the economy. And it’s possible that this will sour consumer spending plans in the future. So that’s potentially something to be reckoned with. But for one thing, it seems awfully premature to look at random polls in November 2021 and pronounce anything big about how the future will go. And regardless, a number of core MMT concepts have been empirically vindicated over the last year and a half or so.”
Information Age Dystopia
How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation
[MIT Technology Review, via Naked Capitalism 11-21-2021]
“An MIT Technology Review investigation, based on expert interviews, data analyses, and documents that were not included in the Facebook Papers, has found that Facebook and Google are paying millions of ad dollars to bankroll clickbait actors, fueling the deterioration of information ecosystems around the world.”
“Why Amazon’s Higher Fulfillment Fees Could Generate $3.1B In Revenue” [Benzinga, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021]
“Amazon.com, Inc. has announced it will be raising its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) fees starting Jan. 18, 2022, a move that could generate $3.1 billion in incremental revenue. Amazon will be raising FBA fulfillment fees by an average of 5.2%. The fee changes will be based on package size and weight. FBA monthly storage fees will also increase from 75 cents to 83 cents in off-peak months of January through September…. Assuming Amazon’s claims that alternative fulfilment options are still far more expensive, sellers seemingly have no choice but to pay the higher fees. Given Amazon will be providing no additional services for those higher fees, almost all of the incremental revenue should be profit.”
As Lambert Strether notes: “Because they can.”
[Reveal, via The Big Picture 11-21-2021]
For years, the retail giant has been keeping something from you: It’s handled your information much less carefully than it handles your packages.
Disrupting mainstream politics
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Why Democrats’ ‘Talking Points Are Not Enough’” (interview)
[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021]
AOC: “We always try to tell people why they need to settle for less, instead of being able to harness the energy of our grass roots and take political risks in service of them, the same way that we take political risks in service of swing voters. We can do both…. You’ve got to give me something to work with, with my communities. And if you’re not, how can I make the argument that they should turn out again? And this notion that saying ‘We’re not Trump’ is enough — this is such a deeply demoralizing message. Democrats have a trifecta and have been unable to pass voting-rights protections. And so people can wring their hands and say ‘but Manchin’ all they want, or ‘but the filibuster’ all they want, but at the end of the day, what people see are the results of their actions and the results of investing their time.” And: “Before the Virginia elections, it was very clear that our help and our participation was not wanted or asked for, which is fine. I’m not here to tell people how to run their races. But at the same time, to consider the members here that have some of the tightest relationships to our political base as just a uniform liability — and not something that can be selectively deployed, or consulted, or anything — I think it’s just sad. I think it was a mistake. And we saw a big youth turnout collapse. Not a single person asked me to send an email, not even to my own list. And then they turn around and say, ‘It’s their fault.’ When I think it was communicated quite expressly that we were unwelcome to pitch in.”
“In Cities Around the US, Redistricting Is a Major Threat to Progressive Politics” [Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-23-2021]
“Cities are crucial hubs for progressive politics. Places like Chicago, Illinois, and Buffalo, New York, are making historic advances by electing a record number of democratic socialists to the city council and winning mayoral primaries. Democratic socialists are on the front lines of efforts to reallocate police funds to mental health and social services, raise the minimum wage, implement rent control, and crack down on public utility monopolies. The advancement of democratic socialists and independent politics in cities, however, faces a looming threat: municipal redistricting. Redistricting is often seen as a competition between Democrats and Republicans, and gerrymandering in city councils (where Democrats dominate) receives less attention. The data, however, paint a different picture. To explore the consequences of municipal redistricting for independent politics, my research team digitized and analyzed ward maps from the cities of Chicago, St. Louis, and Milwaukee from their founding in the 1800s to the present. We tracked the movement of wards within each city over time, paying attention to instances when wards were redistricted from one end of a city to another, as well as instances when wards never moved. Our study’s findings are troubling for progressive elected officials. Municipal redistricting has been used by the Democratic Party to discipline and suppress elected officials advocating for racial and economic equality.” • See India Walton…
“Democrats are in denial about what they’re up against”
Ryan Cooper [The Week, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-24-2021]
“The developing strategy seems to go something like this: First, the Wisconsin legislature districts are gerrymandered so it’s nearly impossible for Democrats to win. Next, Republicans seize control of the state electoral process, as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) has already suggested doing, even over Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ veto. Then, either they rig the voting process such that Democrats can’t win, or just award the state’s electoral votes to the Republican candidate directly. The basic idea here — handing out electoral votes through the legislature rather than after a vote — arguably wouldn’t even be ‘illegal,’ since the Electoral College clauses in the Constitution stipulate that electors are chosen “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Doing it over Evers’ veto, though, would definitely violate state law and Supreme Court precedent. More to the point, the tactic would be a grotesque violation of the very political principles of a democratic republic, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution.”
Lambert Strether: “Not that I’m one to hold grudges, but I well remember the union-driven Wisconsin Capitol Occupation against Scott Walker in 2011 (well before Zucotti Park, too). Not a national Democrat lifted a finger to help. Nor did the national Democrats lift a finger to help during the 2012 recall election. And here we are! Cf. Gal 6:7. NOTE Not that a recall election was necessarily good strategy. But isn’t the Democrat Party supposed to be a big tent style-o-thing?”
“The Problem of Political Despair”
Michelle Goldberg [New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-24-2021]
“I look at the future and I see rule without recourse by people who either approve of terrorizing liberals or welcome those who do. Such an outcome isn’t inevitable; unforeseen events can reshape political coalitions. Something could happen to forestall the catastrophe bearing down on us. How much comfort you take from this depends on your disposition. Given the bleak trajectory of American politics, I worry about progressives retreating into private life to preserve their sanity, a retreat that will only hasten democracy’s decay. In order to get people to throw themselves into the fight to save this broken country, we need leaders who can convince them that they haven’t already lost.”
[The Atlantic, via The Big Picture 11-21-2021]
If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.
JOE BIDEN’S PRIVATE EQUITY VACATION
[Twitter, via The Daily Poster, November 24, 2021]
President Joe Biden and his family will celebrate Thanksgiving at the Nantucket, Massachusetts, vacation home of David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the Washington private equity giant Carlyle Group. Carlyle has been lobbying on Biden’s Build Back Better reconciliation legislation, and belongs to corporate lobbying groups that have campaigned against the bill. The White House said the Bidens will “stay at the home of their friend, David Rubenstein, as they have done previously.”
[The Saker, via Naked Capitalism 11-23-2021]
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NR
We’re seeing more and more that Republicans simply will not accept any election they lose as legitimate ever again. See all the false claims about last year’s election being stolen, and openly fascist moves like this one to seize control of electoral processes in states across the country.
As far as the Republicans are concerned, the only legitimate elections are ones they win. And there are still lots of people out there who don’t see this. Including, unfortunately, the Democrats.
different clue
@NR,
And also including, sadly enough, the lead bloggers at Naked Capitalism, who are afflicted with both Democrat Derangement Syndrome and also Professional Managerial Class Derangement Syndrome ( DDS and PMCDS).
When it is well and truly too late to reverse the process anymore, then the lead bloggers at Naked Capitalism will see it, because they will feel it in their personal lives.
But by then it will be well and truly too late anymore to do anything about it.
bruce wilder
I am looking at the apparent theme of the last half-dozen items — maybe others do not see a theme but I do — beginning with AOC’s lament in a NYT interview over the Democratic Party establishment’s contempt for the sincere progressive left.
The Democratic Party, as an institution controlled by an elite of established politicians, pundits and political operatives, is NOT a friend to democracy, peace or progressive reform. Nothing will fundamentally change (for the better) as long as the amoral, manipulative reactionaries of the corrupt “center” — “the moderates” — are allowed to demoralize, deride, “brand-manage” and veal-pen any and all progressive and populist impulses.
From the media attention she and “the squad” get, a naïve observer might be excused for thinking AOC is a rising power in the Democratic Party, when, in fact, the Party in the House has been conspicuously moving right absorbing many more new Members with a military/police/security background than “the Squad”.
The corruption of the Democratic establishment and their disinterest in doing any good for the country rather than themselves is kind of obvious even if it is discouraging to face. I have no opinion on whether trying to take over the Party would make strategic sense — so far the challenges (e.g. Nevada, Buffalo) mounted at the state and local levels have failed (which is not dispositive as to the validity of such a strategy, only the premise: the establishment is not a trustworthy ally to progressive or populist politics, duh). As the Jacobin article documents, the establishment is not opposed in principle to gerrymanders, and finding them useful in cementing their own corrupt control, will leverage Republican efforts they only nominally oppose.
As the Ryan Cooper article, supplemented by Lambert’s commentary, illustrates, when the cause is just and matters substantively, the Democratic establishment is out-to-lunch or, if they do contribute something, it is likely to be a monkey-wrench thrown in to break the political machinery of reform before anything can be achieved.
Then, we come to Anne Applebaum and Michelle Goldberg: what can I say? “We have met the Enemy and They is Us!” ???
Applebaum is a neocon. Michelle Goldberg in the essay quoted is regurgitating her “Tyranny of the Minority” thesis from her 2017 debut as a NYT opinion columnist. Both, of course, endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. They are both able storytellers, marketing narratives that flatter themselves and others, without much concern for factual accuracy and completeness in narratives they build or join, nor concern for the consequences and risks of any policy they push. But, here they are, offered by bastions of mainstream media — the NYT and the Atlantic — as champions of “liberal democracy” and all that is good and decent in the world.
Anne Applebaum may be more the political heavy-weight of the two — belonging to all the right clubs, Council on Foreign Relations, on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and all that. Able servant to the plutocracy, you might say.
Both are “liberal” in many bad senses of the term and neither has shown much interest in a progressive or populist economic agenda of any kind. Both are reliably hostile to any sort of populist expression and reluctant to concede any legitimacy to the associated grievances. Which is kind of key to their political function of signalling the Democratic Party’s vague commitment to ideals supposedly subverted by Republicans, while foreclosing the assembly of any effective opposition to a plutocratic, authoritarian agenda.
David Rubenstein lending his Nantucket cottage to the Bidens is a nice touch, reassuring if you thought anything fundamental might change under “the most progressive President since FDR.”
The last item — a reminder that some conspiracy of Mafia and CIA assassinated the last President who was insufficiently enthusiastic about a war-mongering foreign policy — might also be instructive to those who think naïveté and perennial political failure makes the left stronger.
bruce wilder
different clue: “When it is well and truly too late to reverse the process anymore, then the lead bloggers at Naked Capitalism will see it”
I do not understand why you do not think the NP principals “see it” now, since they link to reports about Republican efforts to secure power at the state level constantly.
Whether “Yves Smith” and “Lambert Strether” are sufficiently alarmed by the ruthlessness of Republican Party efforts to secure their hold on official authority in the States, Congress and the Judiciary, neither have any authority or power I am aware as Democrats. (I do not think either one even identifies as a Democrat.)
They seem like the least likely ones to blame to me.
js
No the least likely ones to blame is most people including very much most Dem voters, voting for the lesser evils when necessary, just caught in the horror of it all, they actually have low blame.
Not people who actually have a media platform, they have a lot more power than that. In fact that alone is probably more power than most PMC have, whatever PMC is today (I think it would require at least barriers to entry to a profession, but if today is a day with a U in it, it’s everyone who ever got a bachelors degree, if today has an S in it, it’s everyone who has a white collar job, and so on).
Chicago Clubs
Thank you, bruce, I well remember the absolute retardation that Michelle Goldberg displayed during the 2016 election and will never read anything she or the historically-illiterate Russia “expert” Applebaum write ever again.
Swamp Yankee
I do think Yves and Lambert (maybe Lambert more so) are beginning to lose the plot to some extent. Their justified rage at both the Democratic Party and the Professional Managerial Class and their Wokeistas (the Inquisitors, as I think of them) is leading them to miss the horrible stuff coming out of the far right Huns who are very much real and not the friends of anyone.
The Inquisitors are awful, but the Huns are still barbarians.
Z
I believe that President he/bipartisan Joe Biden and our current, and future first transhuman, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gave up the goat best when they collectively said that “we” (((as in our rulers))) need a strong, unified Republican party.
Because if you take a unified republican party that votes almost 100% in lockstep and add to it a “diverse” democratic party that gives everyone a voice, as Speed Queen Nancy P is apt to spout between gnawing on her lips (((but will only listen to those who support our rulers’ economic and foreign policies))), that recruits, cultivates, and financially funds a rainbow coalition of Wall Street-Deep State crotch nuzzling opportunists as candidates there’s not much chance that anything will pass through Congress that will serve the working class’s interests over our rulers’. Congress is therefore functionally a roadblock … a rigged obstacle course … and the democrats are fly paper in that trap for the working class and poor.
Our only ray of hope then, though I know it’s not a particularly bright one, to get anything game-changing out of our government is executive action. Biden steadfastly refuses to use it for that purpose though so that will only happen if our long Weekend at Biden’s gets cancelled before 2024 and the Queen B of the KHive becomes president and is consumed by a desperation to avoid a double digit delegate tally in the next presidential election. All the money in the world won’t wash that humiliation off of her.
And Biden’s end may come sooner than our rulers want because there are no one pill solutions to what will be referred to in future pharmacological journals as the “Biden Conundrum”, which requires an ever-changing concoction of chemicals to strike a shrinking and shifting target juuuuust right to keep the lead stiff of this sh*t show on his feet and functioning. One can only hope to find a lover whose pulse races at the sight of them as much as Biden’s handlers does when he goes off-script in a press conference.
Cause you put too much amphetamines into Biden’s daily cocktail of drugs and he’s too impulsive and he’s off sniffing some head of state’s granddaughter’s hair or challenging a news reporter to a fist fight. You give him too many sedatives and he’s falling asleep in the middle of an important news conference or soiling himself in front of the Pope. He needs to be fine-tuned.
If Biden does screw up big-time it will probably be overseas where his pharmology team might not have as much of a grasp on the precise mixture of drugs to feed him to overcome the jet lag and his handlers may not have a complete say in managing the situations he’s placed.
I believe that our rulers will probably squeeze a second State of the Union address out of the old stage hound but it won’t be long afterwards before the state of Joe himself comes fully to the fore. He’s got no backing from the populace, no one will defend him but the state stream media, and he’s one f* up from becoming a global joke. But then again, does it even matter? Will our rulers just keep trotting the stiff out there with his soft words and hard stick shtick rather than turn to Kamala, who they’re justifiably not as confident in to run their show? In our nebulous power structure it’s not our rulers who have to personally deal with it. They pay their front women and men well for that.
Z
Astrid
The Dems and GOP are two heads of the same monster. Funded by and acting on behalf of the same 0.000001%. The branding differences are superficial and intentionally introduce divisions amongst the populace. To treat them as though they’re separate but heavily flawed entities completely misses the point. You won’t get anywhere supporting either. You can attempt a coup and take over one of the heads, but be clear-headed about your odds of success and the monster you’re going up against.
Someofparts – bad writing on my part. I meant that Taibbi is a critic of MSM’s current iteration of wokeness, not that he is an eager participant in it.
different clue
@Z,
Flowers for Bidenon?
CH
@ different clue – I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling this way. NC is still a great site but their commentary and world view has gone quite a bit off the rails recently. I call it Taibbi/Greenwald brain.
In their world the sinister “PMC” controls everything (i.e. anyone with a degree above high school); the Democrats are the *real* fascists; Democrats are in bed with the CIA/FBI/NSA (and the Republicans aren’t?). Any pushback against weaponized disinformation is a full-fledged assault on Free Speech®; Tucker and FOX are truly concerned about free speech and civil liberties (and not just cynical opportunists who want to hurt the Democrats); anyone who votes Democratic is an NPR-obsessed pussy-hat-wearing wokescold, etc.
Russiagate was 100 percent a hoax concocted by Hillary but Hunter Biden’s laptop is totally real and very, very important; January 6 shouldn’t be investigated and was no big deal, and even if it were, it was really an operation by the the “Deep State”.
It’s like the militant Right has no agency whatsoever. Everything wrong with the country is either the fault of the Democrats or the “woke PMC”. Nothing the Republicans do is ever their fault, from the assault on voting rights and civil liberties to abortion bounties to armed paramilitaries patrolling the streets. If the weather were bad tomorrow NC would find a way to blame the Democrats (or the Deep State, the media, the PMC, wokeness, Russiagate, etc.) After the infrastructure bill was watered down, the comments section was full of people pledging to vote for Trump in 2024 and “Let’s Go Brandon.”
It’s sad. I don’t want to concume media that tries to sell me the shit sandwich that is the Democratic Party, but the Republicans are truly scary and a threat to Democracy. There just doesn’t seem to be any sensible media out there any more.
js
Yves and Lambert have lost half the plot, but some of the commentarial on NC (the unbanned) are even further gone, and that can give an overall feel of overwhelmingly right-wing.
Yes, there was a time there was more criticism of the Dem party on the intertubes that was actually from a left or progressive perspective, not ever more flirting with the right wing until it gets difficult to tell the difference perspective. And I Really Do mean difficult to tell the difference. But unlike the right, the left cares about class! Yea um, the right may not really care, but they have co-opted that language. Actual right wing media are now telling us criticism of Rittenhouse is classist, when they know very well the verdict is a threat of right wing vigilante violence against any left protest of this broken system.
Taibbi/Greenwald brain is probably mostly about the $, there’s funding on the right that there really isn’t from a bunch of progressives, socialists, and other assorted leftists, except to a few Dem money raisers like Sanders.
I suppose you’ll find some criticisms of the Dems from the left on twitter, sometimes with a red rose, but it’s pretty sad to be trawling the twitter sewer for it. Or maybe reddit but then again trawling …
Ché Pasa
The irony of course is that “Yves” and “Lambert” and practically everyone they allow to participate in their anti-Dem salon is credentialed and/or an active or retired member of the PMC that controls everything — and on reflection, they are very controlling aren’t they? It’s their mission in life, no?
The inability to find any fault with Rs, no matter what they do, while focusing criticism and indeed hatred on Dems is one of those marketing/media curiosities that warps our politics. NC is by no means the only offender or even the worst offender.
But the general lack of self-awareness over there is frequently amusing.
Z
The lies from the republicans are simple, profound, and fewer … largely based upon trickle down economics and a blind obedience to authority … and they rarely veer off from them so they don’t require revisiting while the democrats are constantly engaging in sophistry and deception that entails adapting and evolving their “reasoning” to defend their actions. There’s more to pick apart, it requires more time to pick apart, and that IMO is part of the reason why they get more attention from people who lean left. The democrats also are arguably the Left’s larger enemy, absorbing the votes and energy from the working class and then working against their aims. With the republicans at least the line is clearly drawn, but the democrats continually blur that line by dividing the Left.
On a personal level it’s also more intellectually insulting to be constantly deceived by people who claim they are on the same side as you when they are in fact your enemies. One side tells you that they are never going to agree with you and you accept it. The other side tells you that they do agree with you but you’re just not smart and savvy enough to understand the best strategy to best achieve your goals while they blatantly sabotage those objectives and assume that you are too stupid to figure it out, or that enough of you will and be able to do anything about it.
Z
Ché Pasa
If you think there is some elemental difference between these parties, then you’re deceived. The parties are on the same side, and that side is against your interests. It’s that simple. Ragging on the Dems does no good. But it may make you feel better to let the world know that you know their game and you’re not going to let them get away with it, by gosh and by golly. Except they do get away with it, just like the Rs do, and there ain’t much you or I can do about it.
Those parts of the media environment that find endless faults in Democrats and none to speak of in Republicans (because at least their bullshit is honest bullshit or some other rationalisation like that) are deceiving you and are hoping that you will become so enraged — at Democrats and only Democrats — that you become loyal to the Rs because their bullshit is honestly bullshit.
This tactic has been underway for decades and it actually works pretty well. As neo-liberal ideology suffuses both parties to their cores, their marginal differences (primarily over who’s the daddy) are highlighted more and more, and the gravitational pull for a lot of Dems and many independents is toward the Rs, whose fiscal and social policies are more and more contrary to the public interest — proudly so. Dems policies are almost as bad (sometimes worse), but they do like to couch them in flowery and obscurantist language. And on occasion, they are manifestly better for the masses — like the proverbial bone thrown to the rabble. I suppose Rs have had similar occasional lapses.
But in the end, neither party has a fundamental interest in your well-being. Those who focus their ire solely on the failings of the Dems, however, don’t have an interest in your well-being, either, just as outfits who see error only on the part of the Rs have no interest in you except in the monetary sense.
During his entire reign, NC was objectively pro-Trump — primarily because he was skewering the libs and “breaking rice bowls.” He was, in other words, exactly the kind of leader/ruler Yves and Lambert wished Dems would produce, but knew they never would.
So what if that kind of leader/ruler produced extensive harm? If you’re vulnerable and the health care system is falling to pieces, oh well! If you’re a lib and your rice bowl is broken, too bad for you. Ha ha! If you’re some brown person somewhere, citizen or no, too bad for you; you don’t count. If you’re poor and getting poorer, tough luck sucker, it’s your own fault. And so on.
And the Rs are all in to do it again.
The Ds don’t know how they can prevent it.
Welcome to the world.
Swamp Yankee
I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling this way about Naked Capitalism. It is still my favorite, go-to site; but they are missing a significant part of the story lately, I’m afraid.
To be clear, I do think Russiagate was bullshit — but January 6th very clearly was not. I think that the former being mostly false doesn’t mean the latter wasn’t and isn’t a very grave threat. I mean, the federal legislature fell to a mob — is that not concerning?
I also think, as some of you point out, a lot of this may be to do with the world and people that both Yves and Lambert are encountering. Lambert lives in a college town, one I know personally, and it is lovely, but its inhabitants do have a liberal bubble quality that Lambert is reacting against, I think.
Yves, for her part, was in Manhattan for decades, and now, based on her own descriptions, a rather tony section of Birmingham.
I just don’t think either of them ever encounter people from the world of the Hunnic far-right petite bourgeoisie, the land of bizarre memes, who increasingly dominate certain sectors of American political life — people who earnestly believe that “Omicron” is a scramble of “Moronic” and a hoax, and that Fauci is the equivalent of Josef Mengele, people who unironically use the term “Dem o rats” (don’t get me wrong, Fauci is far from perfect, but I don’t see him as the villain Lambert in particular does).
When, as you say, the comments section begins to be littered with “Let’s Go Brandon,” I think that’s a real warning sign, as I can’t think of a more juvenile and substanceless political phenomenon. If “In this house we believe….” signs are outre at NC, surely this reactionary “Let’s Go Brandon” nonsense should be, too.
I may get pilloried for saying this, but I think that part of this may be due to both being off Facebook — I don’t like Zuckerberg’s Panopticon very much, but it is now very much where Normies hang out, do everyday life things like arrange carpools and BBQs, and yes, politics. Check out your local community FB pages (e.g., All Things Plymouth, for Plymouth, Massachusetts): you will quickly be confronted with significant numbers of people who are genuine fascists, not the fever dream fascists of The Atlantic or The New Yorker crowd, but people who are genuine red-baiting Nazi-sympathizing assholes.
I’ve both lived in a jail and defended my PhD; I daresay I have a pretty wide on-the-ground experience of the American people. And there are real Franco types out there who are everyone’s enemies, and NC’s lead bloggers are simply not seeing this fact.
None of this should be construed as a defense of the PMC, the Democratic Party, or Wokeismo, all of which I have major, major problems with.
But I’m afraid that as much as I love their work, I just think Lambert and Yves are wrong on this one.
I t
Jason
The term “PMC” is credited to a woman named Barbara Ehrenreich (and her husband). Ehrenreich seems to have less self-awareness than Susan Webber, if that’s even possible.
I couldn’t get through the second chapter of “Nickel and Dimed” as it was quite obvious Ehrenreich wasn’t particularly comfortable with the people she was feigning to care so much about.
Worse, the book was just flat-out dishonest about the relationships between managers and employees at, say, fast-food restaurants. She conveniently fell into every horrible situation she needed to in order to write her book.
Once you get past the anger, it’s actually fascinating simply observing these people (the Ehrenreichs and Webbers of the world).
But hey, we all have our blind spots. Perhaps if “Yves” has to reduce her aides from four to three or, god forbid, two (gasp!), she’ll see things a little differently.
Z
Ché,
Who says these things besides your strawman? Who boasts that?
I read a lot on the internet and I have never ever read one poster make any claim that they can personally stop it by themselves. Not one.
Z
Z
Another way that the democrats (who are presently in control of the House, Senate (nominally), and Presidency) piss off the Left is that they make a lot of promises that they then find ways to weasel out of by using bogus excuses such as “oh, but the parliamentarian said” or “we can’t use reconciliation for that” which then require an explanation to unpack so people aren’t misled by their bs.
It’s no wonder why many on the Left spend more time and space criticizing the democrats than the republicans.
Z
Trinity
As usual, I’m late to the party, and as usual I agree with almost everything Che says.
(Almost) every website that depends on commentary, ads, or donations is eventually going to skew towards what makes their patrons happy. Every independent bar, restaurant, store I ever knew does the exact same thing. (One happy exception is right here, of course!)
That said, I never visit NC any more. I prefer, such as here, those sites that make me think over sites that tell me what and how to think.