Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 27, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 20, 2022

 Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 20, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

Here's WHY your inbox is a dumpster fire of fundraising spam, and what we can do about it.

Will Easton, November 18, 2022 [DailyKos]

Over the past couple cycles here, certain Democratic consulting firms, candidates & organizations have simply decided that it’s in their best interests to sell, rent, swap & trade your email address around the ecosystem, without bothering to ask you first.  So if you’ve contributed to one campaign … you’re going to be emailed by dozens, perhaps hundreds.

The DCCC condones and encourages this practice; it’s my understanding they REQUIRE their endorsed candidates to share email addresses into the pool.  OTOH, a lot of progressive candidates do NOT engage in these practices -- most notably Senator Sanders, whose refusal to just hand his entire email list over to the party in 2016 was the cause of much handwringing ...but he made the right call.

Global power shift

Ukraine is a ‘Warm Up’ for Fighting China: Why the Head of America’s Nuclear Forces Just Warned of an Imminent ‘Very Long’ War  

[Military Watch Magazine, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2022]

John Mearsheimer on Putin’s Ambitions After Nine Months of War 

Isaac Chotine [The New Yorker, via Naked Capitalism 11-18-2022]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 13, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 13, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

One point of view, does not show the whole picture!

AQEL Tech [YouTube, 2019]

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The Pandemic

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 11-9-2022]

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How to Hide a Plague: How Elite Capture and Individualism Made Covid Normal

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[YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2022]

The US has experienced among the highest cumulative mortality rates from Covid-19 in the Global North. This lecture will argue that the failures of the US pandemic response were mainly driven by economic elites who used their influence to undermine public health protections. The initial phase of the Covid response was collective, including a massive temporary expansion of the welfare state, but this approach threatened the power of the capitalist class. In response, there was an abandonment of economic interventions followed by a wholesale reframing of the virus as an issue of personal responsibility and individual choice. This lecture will explore how the exertion of elite influence went far beyond lobbying politicians, extending to government bureaucracies and civil society institutions such as news media and schools of public health. This process of constructing a new, deadlier normal holds lessons that can be transferred to climate change and other collective crises of the 21st century.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 6, 2022

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 6, 2022

by Tony Wikrent

The Pandemic

The Worst Pediatric-Care Crisis in Decades 

[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism 11-2-2022]

[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-2-2022]

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[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-1-2022]

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[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-1-2022]

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How Republicans Claimed COVID as a Winning Campaign Issue 

[New Yorker, via Naked Capitalism 11-1-2022]

The backlash against pandemic restrictions has become a more potent talking point than the public-health crisis itself.

[TW: For me — because I believe we need to revive civic republicanism and especially its principle of civic virtue — the public hostility to adopting individual measures to protect the public health, is very demoralizing. ]