by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Articles of impeachment drawn up against Gov. Mike DeWine over coronavirus orders[Cleveland.com, via Naked Capitalism 8-26-20]
A key principle of republicanism is public virtue: if your self-interests conflicts with the general welfare, you have a duty to not oppose the general welfare. Clearly, the principle of republicanism is dead in this country, hence, it is no longer a republic. Some of the most discomfiting passages from the speeches and writings of the foundering era of USA dealt with the issue of a people becoming unfit to govern themselves.
Another key principle of republicanism is that citizens must not be dependent on anyone else if they are to be able to judge public affairs with sufficient disinterestedness to make the general welfare their major concern. This principle created major problems, however, as it was used to justify restricting the vote on "men of means" only. This created an opening for ruling elites to establish oligarchy, especially in the South. In practice, it meant white supremacy. As Dayen writes below: "The way you control labor is that you don’t pay enough to ever have workers be comfortable."
The Logic of the Boss
David Dayen, August 27, 2020 [American Prospect]
The absolute last person you should ever ask about a labor action connected to racial justice is Jared Kushner. So of course CNBC did just that this morning. Kushner told Andrew Ross Sorkin: "The NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially."
There’s an implicit logic of the boss embedded in here. The way you control labor is that you don’t pay enough to ever have workers be comfortable. You keep people reliant on the boss so they never get crazy ideas in their head like using their power for positive change, for themselves or the society at large.
In the 1960s, cheap college tuition and a lower cost of living gave space to young antiwar radicals to devote themselves to sustained protest. The diminishing of higher-education support and the rise of student loans weren’t exactly responses, but it was a nice side benefit. The cleaving away of labor from productivity, the skyrocketing of inequality, the breaking of the labor movement, a federal minimum wage that hasn’t increased since the second Bush administration—this all snuffs out personal agency and the ability to speak out. Keep someone dependent on their paycheck, and their health insurance too, and you’ve put a lid on mass action.
The NBA is leading the way together, and Jared Kushner wants to keep people afraid and alone.[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 8-24-20]
Aisha Ahmad
@aishaismad
Aug 23
Culture
2009: 1st Black President
2010: 3 women in SCOTUS
2015: Same-sex marriage legal
2020: 1st WoC nom for VP
Federal Minimum Wage
2009: $7.25
2010: $7.25
2011: $7.25
2012: $7.25
2013: $7.25
2014: $7.25
2015: $7.25
2016: $7.25
2017: $7.25
2018: $7.25
2019: $7.25
2020: $7.25
Terminating payroll tax could end Social Security benefits in 2023, chief actuary warns
[NBC, via Naked Capitalism 8-26-20]
The Election
“Bernie Sanders Responds to RNC’s Attempts to Paint Biden as a Socialist: ‘If Only That Were True…'”“The Sanders team went on to list examples of government subsidies and tax breaks given to the Trump family, fossil fuel companies, and Amazon, as well as bailouts given to Wall Street following lobbying by White House economic adviser and ‘high priest of unfettered capitalism’ Larry Kudlow, before quoting Martin Luther King: ‘This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.'”“Republican Gov. Baker Wades Into Democratic Primary To Endorse Rep. Neal”
“Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is stepping into a Democratic Party primary race to support Springfield Rep. Richard Neal, a powerful figure in D.C. politics facing a challenge from Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse. ‘Congressman Neal has been a powerful voice for all in the 1st District and the Commonwealth is a better place because of his hard work. I’m looking forward to working with him now more than ever as we fight and come back from this pandemic,’ Baker tweeted ahead of an appearance in Springfield with Neal and Mayor Domenic Sarno, announcing redevelopment plans for the city. Baker, who has an 83 percent approval rating among Democrats according to a July poll from MassINC, described himself as a ‘pragmatic and practical’ Republican this week when asked how he felt about the Republican National Convention that’s nominated President Donald Trump for re-election. Baker has had participated in the party convention.”
Corporate Dems Want You To Shut Up While They Get Loud
David Sirota, August 24, 2020
This kind of hectoring has become a defining part of the Democratic Party’s culture. As the late great journalist Bill Greider lamented in this must-watch clip: “The way the Democratic Party is run for quite a number of presidential cycles is they pick a nominee in a kind of half-assed process that doesn’t really represent much of anybody and then they tell everybody to just shut up -- don’t bring up anything that will complicate life for your nominee... shut up, turn off your brains.”
.... at the very moment many good progressives are blunting their criticism and making clear that defeating Trump is of utmost importance, Corporate Democrats aren’t being asked to wait or hold their tongues. In fact, they are doing the opposite: Rahm Emanuel — who has been advising Biden — just went on television to show that the corporate wing of the party is intent on using the stretch run of the Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime™ not to doggedly focus on actually winning the election, but to instead try to predetermine post-election policy outcomes....
The larger dynamic at play was exemplified by Emanuel’s television appearance on a CNBC segment dubbed “Democrats 2020 Agenda: What’s at stake for business?” As progressives are being told to keep quiet and not even so much as tweet their concerns, Emanuel used the platform to demand that during this health care and climate emergency, a prospective Biden administration must reject the two major initiatives that polls show are popular.
“Two things I would say if I was advising an administration,” said Emanuel, who left the Chicago mayoralty in disgrace after his city officials suppressed a video of the police murder of a teenager. “One is no there’s no new Green Deal, there’s no Medicare For All, probably the single two topics that were discussed the most. That’s not even in the platform.”
“A battle is brewing on K Street over an effort by progressives to ensure a Biden administration is devoid of any former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists. Black and Latino lobbyists say a ban of that sort would end up shutting out minorities and could make the administration less diverse if Democrats win back the White House.”
“Joe Biden extended his lead over Donald Trump in the race for the most billionaire donors in May, according to a review of documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. The former vice president, who has received donations from 106 billionaires and their spouses, added six new donors last month. President Trump, meanwhile, got just one new donor, bringing his total to 93…. Despite the months-long pause on new billionaire donations, the Trump campaign is certainly not hurting for cash overall. While the Biden campaign and the DNC out-fundraised Trump’s and the GOP in May, Trump’s team still has $265 million cash-on-hand, compared to $122 million for Biden’s.”
The Executive Committee of the Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party has approved the release of a policy platform, modeled on Franklin Roosevelt's Relief, Recovery & Reform approach to ending the First Great Depression. The PCNCDP platform is comprehensive, and therefore not a short read, but it is full of links for further reading on each point, including the work of dozens of organizations such as ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, Brookings Institute, Economic Policy Institute, Immigrant Justice Network, Movement for Black Lives, National Women's Law Center, Poor People's Campaign, Society of Professional Journalists, and others. The PCNCDP platform covers 15 issues:
- Civil Rights/ Liberties
- Economy and Employment
- Education
- Elders and Disabled
- Electoral Reform/ Voter Suppression
- Foreign and International Affairs
- Government Integrity
- Health Care
- Housing
- Immigration
- Law Enforcement/ Legal Reform
- Science/ Energy/ Environment
- Systemic Racism
- Taxation
The Carnage of Establishment Neoliberal Economics
“What ‘Capitalism’ Is and How It Affects People”[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 8-30-20]
Krystal BallGlenn Greenwald August 28, 2020 [The Intercept]
@krystalball
These numbers are staggering 1 in 4 young adults say they’ve seriously contemplated suicide in last 30 days.
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
· Aug 28
The social fabric of the U.S. is fraying severely if not unravelling https://interc.pt/2EIqUdM
Show this thread
12:54 PM · Aug 28, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
Perhaps the most illustrative study was one released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month, based on an extensive mental health survey of Americans in late June.
One question posed by researchers was whether someone has “seriously considered suicide in the past 30 days”— not fleetingly considered it as a momentary fantasy nor thought about it ever in their lifetime, but seriously considered suicide at least once in the past 30 days. The results are staggering.
For Americans between 18-24 years old, 25.5 percent — just over 1 out of every 4 young Americans — said they had. For the much larger group of Americans ages 25-44, the percentage was somewhat lower but still extremely alarming: 16 percent. A total of 18.6 percent of Hispanic Americans and 15 percent of African Americans said they had seriously considered suicide in the past month. The two groups with the largest percentage who said yes: Americans with less than a high school degree and unpaid caregivers, both of whom have 30 percent — or almost 1 out of every 3 — who answered in the affirmative. A full 10 percent of the U.S. population generally had seriously contemplated suicide in the month of June.
In a remotely healthy society, one that provides basic emotional needs to its population, suicide and serious suicidal ideation are rare events. It is anathema to the most basic human instinct: the will to live. A society in which such a vast swath of the population is seriously considering it as an option is one which is anything but healthy, one which is plainly failing to provide its citizens the basic necessities for a fulfilling life.Legal Interventions to Address US Reductions in Life Expectancy
[Journal of the American Medical Association, via Naked Capitalism 8-26-20]
Age-based, geographic, and socioeconomic status disparities collectively diminish average life expectancy. Midlife “diseases of despair” (eg, suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related conditions), firearm violence, and obesity also are contributing factors for reduced life expectancy, especially in rural counties, the industrial Midwest, and Appalachia. Life expectancy gaps among the richest and poorest 1% of the population are estimated to exceed 10 years for women and 14 years for men. Stated simply, poorer, less-educated individuals in the US live considerably shorter lives. This pattern of inequality has been highlighted further during the COVID-19 pandemic.Lambert Strether: "Complete, across-the-board failure by the political class in its entirety at the most basic, material level. Or overwhelming success, depending."
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.
[MIT Technology Review, via Naked Capitalism 8-23-20]
The Pandemic
Only Medicare For All Can Beat CovidThe U.S. has coped with Covid-19 far worse than any other country on the globe. Though much, much of this catastrophe of over 170,000 dead can be laid at Trump’s door, some of it has to do with the uniquely awful American system of for-profit health care. Those words, “for profit,” mean that the U.S. public health infrastructure, always stunted, had completely shriveled by the time the plague struck. Other countries dealt better with covid because they have different health care systems – single payer or Medicare for All systems, in other words, ones that are, to varying degrees, socialized....
One person who argues very convincingly that the U.S. failure to contain covid derives from its uniquely dreadful and unequal health care system is historian Thomas Frank. His recent Le Monde Diplomatique article was titled “It’s the health care system, stupid.” He critiques those who blame feckless Americans for the virus spinning out of control; after all, had Trump not stupidly elevated mask-wearing to the deadly status of a culture war, and had instead promoted it, millions in his base would have followed his lead.
Instead of the “irresponsible Americans” line, Frank explains that “plenty of blame must go to our screwed-up health care system which scorns the very idea of public health and treats access to medical care as a private luxury that is rightfully available only to some.” The medical community has “for almost a century used the prestige of expertise” to keep health care a privilege of the affluent few, Frank writes.
Creating new economic potential - science and technology
China planning high-speed rail freight network to help e-commerce sectorThe is some big spending ahead for electric utilities. More than the politicians and policymakers expect. Electric utilities have to decarbonize and modernize. Even if there were no pressure to retire fossil-fuel generation, the electric industry would have to spend money for a simple reason. The average age of utility assets in the U.S. exceeds thirty years. This implies three things: 1) the average utility plant is already old; 2) it will soon have to be replaced; and 3) due to inflation, the cost of new assets will exceed the cost of original equipment. So on top of an already expensive capital replacement cycle of the industry, it also has expeditiously decarbonize. Electric companies, then, will have to attract increasing amounts of equity and debt capital. The returns on that capital are set, largely, by regulatory commissions. If regulators permit the state’s utilities to earn “excessive” returns in an essential, monopoly business, then consumers overpay for electricity. If the reverse becomes true and authorized returns are slashed severely then the utility’s shareholders will suffer.
Predatory Capitalism in the Time of COVID19
“Debt Relief And The CARES Act: Which Borrowers Benefit The Most?”“To summarize, we have investigated who may benefit (and the expected forbearance amounts) from the various debt relief provisions in the CARES Act. We find that while student debt relief may be expected to reach a larger share of borrowers in majority Black neighborhoods, the dollar value of expected student debt relief per borrower will be perceptibly less in low income, majority Black, and majority Hispanic neighborhoods. Unlike student debt relief, mortgage relief may be concentrated in high income and majority white neighborhoods, both in terms of dollar amounts and share of borrowers that will be potentially assisted. It is worth emphasizing that in this post we have outlined who may benefit from the mortgage and student debt relief provisions of the CARES Act. In other words, we have focused on the supply of this relief to different neighborhoods. Who will actually benefit and the amount of relief obtained will be determined by a combination of supply and demand factors. Since, low income and majority minority neighborhoods have been affected more negatively by this pandemic, residents in these neighborhoods may have the highest take-up rate. Moreover, mortgage benefits are not automatic; mortgagors must actively seek out these benefits by contacting servicers and proving financial hardship. Thus, ultimately, who actually benefits and by how much will be determined by a combination of factors, a topic we will continue to study.”
“Walmart, Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s and Costco Wholesale accounted for 29.1% of all U.S. retail sales in the second quarter, according to Customer Growth Partners, up from 25.6% in the same period a year ago. The big retailers were allowed to remain open, and critical factors in their growth included that they had already invested their online businesses, had large supply networks to restock and sophisticated transportation networks that include dedicated fleets. That advantage isn’t likely to fade. Experts say a winnowing out of the sector is likely to continue as the economy picks up steam, with big retailers leapfrogging smaller competitors.”
Predatory Finance
‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event....the subsequent end of European rule during the 1950s and 1960s was often accompanied by a liquidation and removal of European assets.3 Distrustful of newly independent governments and non-white rule, fearing resentment, increased taxation or possibly even nationalization, Euro-American businesses active in the colonial world divested from empire. Many Europeans, moreover, held deep-seated racist convictions about the absence of business acumen among native populations and simply could not imagine economic life continuing in regular form after independence. Following decolonization, many low-income countries therefore desperately needed foreign capital to start a process of industrialization and growth promotion. Furthermore, the European withdrawal created a training problem in many post-colonial economic sectors as whites had held management and higher-ranking positions in industries without providing adequate training opportunities for local leadership: hence the quest for expertise and technical advisers....
Where did funds go upon leaving the colonial world? Some money returned to metropolitan contexts, if only temporarily, awaiting new opportunities. More importantly for the story outlined here, a significant share of funds was moved to an emerging system of offshore tax havens....
Yet it was Switzerland that stood to gain most from the late colonial money panic that had descended on North Africa and Tangier in the 1950s. Switzerland was one of the oldest tax havens, having flourished during the inter-war years when political and economic instability as well as newly introduced income taxes sent German, Italian, French and other money to bank accounts and holding companies in Switzerland. For wealthy French citizens, Switzerland had always been the tax haven of choice. It is fitting, then, that as a result of such older ties, French and other Europeans looking to move assets out of French North Africa and the Middle East chose to rely on the time-honoured services offered by Swiss lawyers and bankers.
Disrupting mainstream economics
How Do Banks Create Money?[via Naked Capitalism, August 26, 2020
By Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and a political economist. He has been described by the Guardian newspaper as an “anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert”. He is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK. He is a non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics. He is a member of the Progressive Economy Forum. Originally published at Tax Research UK. Modern monetary theory highlights the important role of the government in creating money when it spends. That process makes sure our money has value. But it’s not alone in creating money: banks can do it too. This video explores the implications of that.
The Mathematical Model of Modern Monetary Theory 2
Information Age Dystopia
“A Chrome feature is creating enormous load on global root DNS servers”The Dark Side
Racial segregation at US universities is back, with the advent of black-only dormitories. Martin Luther King would be appalledhttps://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/1299114060189822976
Yasha Levine
@yashalevine
Why would anyone want to be reminded of this deadly, cynical chapter in American politics? Why would anyone want to remember that their liberal government — under the Clinton Democrats, no less — had helped plunge Russia into utter ruin, killing and impoverishing millions?
6:38 PM · Aug 27, 2020
Yasha Levine
@yashalevine
22h
Replying to
@yashalevine
Hell, the very same Clinton Democrats that destroyed and plundered Russia are now being offered as America’s only salvation, an America that increasingly looks more and more like the neoliberal, privatized, and oligarchic Russia that they helped create.
“The Republican Party says it will not be announcing a new platform of policies to voters at this year’s Republican National Convention but will instead pledge to ‘enthusiastically’ support President Donald Trump. In a statement released Sunday, the Republican National Committee announced that instead of unveiling a range of new policy goals should its candidate win in November’s presidential election, the party would instead ‘continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.’ The committee said that because of the scaled-back nature of this year’s convention, its first to be held largely online, the party’s Convention Committee on Platform had been unable to meet…. Critics are pointing out that swaths of the 2016 platform are out of date. It contains criticism about the White House incumbent, who at that point was Barack Obama but is now Trump. It also advocates policies since enacted by Trump, such as relocating the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.”
I don’t much like Frum, but he’s 100 percent right on this and it’s worth reading. Nor is it all “Republican,” some of this is shared by a lot of Democrats. I’m going to summarize, since the Atlantic has a very limited amount of free views.“The Grand Old Meltdown” : interview of Frank Luntz
1) Lower taxation is the most important economic policy.If you have free articles left at the Atlantic, this is worth reading in full. My take is that it’s accurate; this is the real Republican platform. Frum says it is kept secret because while Republicans agree, most non-Republicans don’t. Remember that there are a lot of independents and non-voters. All of these points are more or less known, and each point has been discussed by various people in detail, but what Frum has done is put them clearly and in one place.
2) Covid is no big deal. Reopen, let people die, the numbers aren’t that big.
3) Climate change is either no big deal or can be dealt with with technology, it’s not worth spending money on.
4) China is the US’s enemy, and when China loses, the US wins, and vice-versa.
5) The post-war order is dead — NATO and the WTO. The EU is a rival, Britain and Japan are subordinates; Canada, Australia and Mexico are satraps (he says dependencies).
6) You deserve as much health care as you can afford.
7) Voting is a privilege, not a right, and can be restricted.
8) Anti-black racism is BS, it’s whites and Christians and so on who are discriminated against now.
9) Abortion rights need to go. (Interestingly, he dances around this one a bit, while stating the other mostly clearly.)
10) Secret money and conflicts of interest are no big deal.
11) The border wall is good, and a long delay in granting illegal immigrants rights is good.
12) The protests should be crushed by granting police more powers. (Dances around this a bit too.)
13) Trump and his surrogates acting up on Twitter and so is just a reaction to worse excesses of his critics.
“[A student asked:] ‘What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?’ … I did not have a good answer to the student’s question…. I decided to call Frank Luntz…. ‘You know, I don’t have a history of dodging questions. But I don’t know how to answer that. There is no consistent philosophy,’ Luntz responded. ‘You can’t say it’s about making America great again at a time of Covid and economic distress and social unrest. It’s just not credible.’ Luntz thought for a moment. ‘I think it’s about promoting—’ he stopped suddenly. ‘But I can’t, I don’t—’ he took a pause. ‘That’s the best I can do.’ When I pressed, Luntz sounded as exasperated as the student whose question I was relaying. ‘Look, I’m the one guy who’s going to give you a straight answer. I don’t give a shit—I had a stroke in January, so there’s nothing anyone can do to me to make my life suck,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried to give you an answer and I can’t do it. You can ask it any different way. But I don’t know the answer. For the first time in my life, I don’t know the answer.’“Trump’s Fights Are Their Fights. They Have His Back Unapologetically.”
“In lengthy interviews over the last several weeks, a cross-section of Trump voters said they believed he had succeeded on issues like hardening the Southern border, appointing conservative judges, taking on China and putting “America first.” Many said the president’s grievances were their grievances, too. They believed kneeling during the national anthem was un-American, and they were appalled at what they viewed as liberals’ minimizing of violence that at times grew out of the protests over the killing of George Floyd. At the same time, Trump voters dismissed as irrelevant aspects of the president’s behavior that critics say make him historically unfit for office. All politicians lie, many said; as for the president’s suggestion that he might not accept the election results, supporters said voters should judge his actions, not his loose talk or tweets. ‘I didn’t vote for Trump because I wanted him to be my best friend,’ Ms. Schenkel said. ‘I wanted to make a change and a difference.’ ‘If he thinks it’s the right thing, he doesn’t care who’s going to get mad at him,’ she added. ‘I think he’s very misunderstood.’ … She grades the president highly on having met his promises, including slowing the flow of undocumented immigrants and building a strong economy before the virus struck. Other Trump supporters outlined myriad reasons for wanting to re-elect him, ranging from the pragmatic, like a new job made possible by the administration’s policies, to a gut-level attraction to his hard-nosed personality. His supporters related ‘aha’ moments in their upbringing when they realized they were conservatives, which they spoke of as nonnegotiable beliefs woven into their identity, like opposition to abortion.”
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