Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 29, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 29, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Is There a New Left Stirring Within The New Right?

John Judis [The Liberal Patriot, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-24-2023]

“[T]here is a segment of recent politics that is sometimes identified with the ‘new right’ but in reality offers a much more heterodox—and interesting—approach to politics and policy, one that’s well worth considering by liberals and left-wingers alike. This new tendency can be found in the policy group, American Compass, the online magazine Compact, and the journal American Affairs. Its leading intellectuals are Oren Cass of American Compass, Julius Krein of American Affairs, Sohrab Ahmari of Compact, and author Michael Lind. What distinguishes these thinkers from others is their engagement with what used to be called ‘the labor question’ namely, how America can fulfill its original promise of political and economic equality in a society where the owners and managers of capital have inordinate power over labor and politics. These thinkers consider questions that were once confined to the left: how to revive the American labor movement and now to tame the power of multinational corporations and global banks. They often cite left-wing and liberal writers like John Kenneth Galbraith and Karl Polanyi. The most recent and noteworthy examples are Lind’s Hell to Pay, Ahmari’s Tyranny, Inc., and Oren Cass and American Compass’s Rebuilding American Capitalism.”

33 States Sue Meta and Instagram Over Harms to Teen Mental Health

October 24, 2023 [Mother Jones]

On Tuesday, 33 states filed a 233-page complaint against Meta and Instagram. The bipartisan lawsuit, in federal district court in California, alleges that Meta knew more about the mental health impacts of Instagram on teenagers—including addiction—than it had publicly acknowledged.

According to the complaint, Meta—which owns Instagram, Facebook, and now Threads—”created a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time and attention.”

Meta “has ignored the sweeping damage these Platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation’s youth,” the complaint reads. “In doing so, Meta engaged in, and continues to engage in, deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state and federal law.”

Behind the Curtain: Rattled U.S. government fears wars could spread 

[Axios, via Naked Capitalism 10-22-2023]

“Not one of the crises can be solved and checked off. All five could spiral into something much bigger.” Not a good time for a collapse of executive function in our governing class.

“American leadership is what holds the world together.” Joe Biden October 2023 … just let that sink in. 

Adam Tooze [Substack, via Naked Capitalism 10-25-2023]

...This idea, that there is a “place” in the world, which is that of “America as the organizer”, and that without America occupying that place and doing its job, the world will fall apart, or some other power will take America’s place as the organizer, is deep-seated in US policy circles.

As a metaphysical proposition it is silly and self-deluding. It is bizarre to imagine that the world needs America to “hold it together”. America itself is hardly in one piece….

For the most part, to make sense of the sort of thing that Biden and Blinken say, you have to realize that they are talking not to the world or about the world, but to Americans about America. Above all, Biden and Blinken’s rhetoric is directed against Trump, who conjured up a scenario in which America was, as Biden and Blinken see it, a chaotic, disruptive and untrustworthy force. This shames their self-understanding as a liberal elite. With a tight election in 2024 those fears will overshadow all America’s interactions with the world, whoever actually sits in the Oval Office.

American democracy, the system that produces the leadership that Biden and Blinken so self-confidently evoke, is clearly broken. Pervasive and well-merited skepticism about America’s system of government, is now a massive reality in world affairs.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 22, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 22, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Deb Chachra’s ‘How Infrastructure Works' 

Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-18-2023]

“Infrastructure isn’t merely a way to deliver life’s necessities – mobility, energy, sanitation, water, and so on – it’s a shared way of delivering those necessities. It’s not just that economies of scale and network effects don’t merely make it more efficient and cheaper to provide these necessities to whole populations. It’s also that the lack of these network and scale effects make it unimaginable that these necessities could be provided to all of us without being part of a collective, public project. The dream of declaring independence from society, of going ‘off-grid,’ of rejecting any system of mutual obligation and reliance isn’t merely an infantile fantasy – it also doesn’t scale, which is ironic, given how scale-obsessed its foremost proponents are in their other passions. Replicating sanitation, water, rubbish disposal, etc to create individual systems is wildly inefficient. Creating per-person communications systems makes no sense – by definition, communications involves at least two people. So infrastructure, Chachra reminds us, is a form of mutual aid. It’s a gift we give to ourselves, to each other, and to the people who come after us. Any rugged individualism is but a thin raft, floating on an ocean of mutual obligation, mutual aid, care and maintenance. Infrastructure is vital and difficult. Its amortization schedule is so long that in most cases, it won’t pay for itself until long after the politicians who shepherded it into being are out of office (or dead). Its duty cycle is so long that it can be easy to forget it even exists – especially since the only time most of us notice infrastructure is when it stops working.”

In the Nineteenth Century, Scientists Set Out to Solve the “Problem of American Storms” 

[Humanities, via The Big Picture 10-21-2023]

[In the 1830s, telegraph] operators had discovered something both interesting and paradoxical, the writer Andrew Blum observes in his book The Weather Machine. The telegraph had collapsed time but, in doing so, it had somehow simultaneously created more of it. Now people could see what the future held before it happened; they could know that a storm was on its way hours before the rain started falling or the clouds appeared in the sky. This new, real-time information also did something else, Blum points out. It allowed weather to be visualized as a system, transforming static, localized pieces of data into one large and ever-shifting whole….

Morse’s invention promised to finally help shed light on what Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the newly founded Smithsonian Institution, called in the 1847 annual report the “problem of American Storms.” Henry was referring to an ongoing scientific spat known as the “storm controversy,” which had been raging in the pages of journals for nearly two decades….

The Smithsonian’s weather “crusade” would become the institution’s first major scientific undertaking, and it consisted of two parts. The first involved recruiting the telegraph companies to provide daily, nationwide weather updates. Starting in 1849, instruments were sent out to several offices around the country with a request that operators pause traffic on the lines in the morning to submit brief descriptions of local conditions. A few years later, Henry installed a map in the lobby of the Smithsonian Castle, where the collected information was displayed using a series of color-coded cards and arrows. Any time after 10:00 a.m., members of the public could stroll in and see for the first time “one view of the meteorological condition of the atmosphere over the whole country.”  ….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 15, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 15, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

US science agencies on track to hit 25-year funding low 

[Nature, via Naked Capitalism 10-11-2023] 

The Smart Corporate Tax Idea That Might Have Prevented the UAW Strike

Jessica Church, October 9, 2023 [washingtonmonthly]

Targeting out-of-control CEO pay by using the tax code is the right policy for this moment. Here’s how it works….

Indeed, this strike could have been avoided were company profits shared more equitably among workers and management. But despite taxpayer largesse that not only rescued the auto industry during the Great Recession but led it to thrive, that has not been the case. Under the Barack Obama-era bailout, workers and company executives were supposed to make sacrifices. But while unions accepted that two-tier wage system that the UAW is fighting, executive compensation has soared.  

A situation where executive compensation shoots up like a missile while workers’ wages flatline was not inevitable. In 2021, Congress debated a measure that might have made the strike unlikely and unnecessary. Both chambers considered versions of the Tax Executive CEO Pay Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont.  

The clever and potentially revolutionary legislation (discussed extensively in Washington Monthly) aimed to rein in excessive executive compensation by levying a tax on companies that pay their CEOs 50 times or more than their median employee earns. The tax came as a surcharge on corporate income tax, meaning that it only applied to profitable companies with federal corporate income tax liability. That surcharge increased as the CEO-to-median worker pay ratio worsened (0.5% for ratios between 50-100:1, 1% for ratios between 100-200:1, 2% for ratios between 200-300:1 and so on, up to 5% for ratios more than 500:1)….

How red-state politics are shaving years off American lives

[Washington Post, via The Big Picture 10-09-2023]

Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than residents of similar nations, despite living in a country that spends substantially more per person on health care than its peers. Many of those early deaths can be traced to decisions made years ago by local and state lawmakers over whether to implement cigarette taxes, invest in public health or tighten seat-belt regulations, among other policies, an examination by The Washington Post found. States’ politics — and their resulting policies — are shaving years off American lives.  

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 8, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 8, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

War

Hamas Attacks, What Does It Mean?

Ian Welsh, October 7, 2023

Hamas actually captured the Israeli southern command base briefly. It was retaken with massive air strikes (meaning Israel was willing to hit its own people.) In the initial 12 hours or so they wiped the floor with local Israeli forces….

As I have said repeatedly, and as the last war with Hezbollah showed, the Israeli army, no matter how many weapons or men or planes it has, is weak and incompetent. This is not the military of 1967 or even 1980, when the legend of Israeli military brilliance was created.

This is due to serving primarily as an occupation army. All occupation armies, fighting against the weak, become weak, brutal bullies incompetent at fighting real opposition.

The Israeli army was slow to respond, a general was captured and a command base. This is, again, humiliating.

Humiliation

Humiliation is the word of the day. Just as a bully whose victim manages to get in a few good punches has to be brutal in response, so Israel will lash out massively….

Nukes

In some ways this is the bottom line. Israel has nukes. If they did not, I would expect Iran to join in and if I were Egypt, I might invade. Israel is weak and humiliated. But as long as they have nukes, other countries will shy off from direct war unless they think they have a way of taking out those nukes.

Diplomatic Damage

Israeli-Saudi Arabia negotiations are dead for the time being and other Arab allies will not be able to do anything but condemn Israel. There are massive demonstration in support of Hamas in Turkey, Egypt and many other Muslim countries….

The Ukraine Connection

Of significant amusement is that it appears that much of the weaponry used by Hamas is from stockpiles sent to Ukraine and sold on the black market. This spread of weaponry was predicted and lo….

Invading Mexico to Destroy the Drug Cartels? Here’s How!

Harold Meyerson, October 5, 2023 [The American Prospect]

The Republican candidates for president, The New York Times reports, have united around a common solution for the scourge of fentanyl and other drugs coming across the border: invading Mexico. Almost to a person, they are calling for sending our armed forces—chiefly, special operations troops—into Mexico “to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels,” as Vivek Ramaswamy recently put it.

More than 20 Republican House members are co-sponsoring a bill that would authorize the deployment of U.S. forces against nine of those cartels. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll from September shows considerable public support for such action: By a 2-to-1 margin (52 percent to 26 percent), respondents favored sending troops there to take on the cartels. Even Democrats were narrowly divided: While 47 percent opposed such action, 44 percent backed it.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 1, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 1, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

80 Years Ago Denmark Miraculously Saved 8,000 Jews From Nazi Murder

Harvey Wasserman, September 25, 2023 [downwithtyranny.com]

Strategic Political Economy

VACCINE SPECIALIST PETER HOTEZ: SCIENTISTS ARE ‘UNDER ATTACK FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S POLITICAL GAIN’ 

Julian Nowogrodzki, September 21, 2023 [Natue, via Overnight Science News: Politically motivated bullies want to 'tear down the fabric of science', DailyKos 9-23-2023]

The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning, Peter Hotez, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (2023)….

You prefer to say ‘anti-science aggression’ rather than ‘misinformation’. Why?

Misinformation makes it sound like it’s random junk that appears out of nowhere on the Internet. It’s not: it’s an organized, well-financed, politically motivated campaign that’s meant to tear down the fabric of science. And we have to frame it in that way.

Anti-science rhetoric is not new. What’s changed?

Now, it’s fully embraced by a major political party in the United States, and by authoritarian regimes in other countries such as Hungary and, previously, Brazil. It’s sanctioned by elected leaders in the US Congress. It’s reached a new level of organization and aggression — it’s starting to resemble the 1930s, when Joseph Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union portrayed scientists as enemies of the state.

How did you see this play out during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Some 200,000 Americans died because of anti-science aggression…. When I went into the more conservative, rural areas of east Texas, essentially everyone I talked to had lost a loved one because they refused a COVID-19 vaccine. In the intensive-care unit, you saw some people deny COVID-19 existed, yet in their dying words feel remorse and advise their friends: ‘Don’t do what I did, get your COVID-19 immunization.’ These are good people. [Anti-science campaigners] took advantage of that….

...I’ve been leading this dual life, having to combat aggression against science and scientists. It’s hit me hard because now I’m a major target of far-right extremists. It’s odd to have [former White House strategist] Steve Bannon call you a criminal on social media. Those [statements] act as dog whistles, and then it’s followed by a wave of threats online and by e-mail, and even physical stalking.

Right now, you’re seeing individual scientists getting picked off by anti-science bullies on the Internet, or getting subpoenaed to testify at show-trial-like hearings. It’s terrible to watch my virology colleagues get paraded on [television network] CSpan as though they’ve done something wrong, when all they did was what I do — science for humanitarian purposes.

And I see the aggression getting worse as we head for the 2024 election.

So how can this be stopped?

This is the hardest question to answer. People in the health sector don’t know what to do; scientific societies discuss it in bland, defeatist language and talk about meeting with social-media companies. But no one seems to be willing to say, as I do, that this is political. As scientists, we are trained to have neutrality, we’re not supposed to talk about Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. But what do we do when the attacks are partisan?

We’re not seeing vigorous pushback or response, and neutrality favours the tormentor or the aggressor. We’re not hearing from the leadership of scientific societies, from university presidents, to defend science. I think they don’t want to offend donors coming from that political side, or state legislatures or the federal government. But they need to speak out in a forthright way.