Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 26, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 26, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

The deep state unleashed oligarchy 

Patrick Lawrence: What Died 60 Years Ago? A President and a Nation’s Promise

[Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 11-24-2023]

Why Has America Tolerated Six Illegitimate GOP Presidents?

Thom Hartmann, November 22, 2023 [DailyKos]

...it’s important to remember that Dwight Eisenhower was the last Republican president who believed in democracy, the rule of law, and that government should prioritize what the people want…. 

This has brought us a series of criminal Republican presidents and corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, who’ve legalized political bribery while devastating voting and civil rights.

None of this was a mistake or an accident, because none of these people truly believed in democracy.

This rejection of democracy and turn toward criminality and it’s logical end-point, fascism, started in the modern GOP with Richard Nixon….

[Nixon sabotaged peace in Vietnam to win the 1968 election]

Next up was Ronald Reagan. He not only didn’t believe in democracy, he didn’t even believe in the American government….During the Carter/Reagan election battle of 1980, then-President Carter had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr to release the fifty-two hostages held by students at the American Embassy in Tehran. 

[This deal was sabotaged by Reagan by creating the illegals Iran-Contra arms deal.]

...Fifty-four years of Republican presidents using treason to achieve the White House (or inheriting it from one who did) has transformed America and dramatically weakened our democracy.

Those presidents have contributed their own damages to the rule of law and democracy in America, but their cynical Supreme Court appointments have arguably done the most lasting damage.

Republican appointees on the Court during this time have gutted the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, union rights, the Affordable Care Act, and legalized Republican voter purges. They legalized the bribery of politicians by billionaires and corporations….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 19, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 19, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Global power shift

The Hinge of History:  Palestine and the New World Order

Patrick Lawrence [Scheerpost, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2023]

There is disgust and condemnation now, and they find expression not only on the streets of many cities but also in governing circles. Axios reported Monday that an internal State Department memo, signed by 100 officials at State and its aid agency, USAID, accuses President Biden of lying about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and of complicity in war crimes. On Tuesday, The New York Times put the signatories of another letter to Biden at 400 representing 40 government departments and agencies, including the National Security Council — this in addition to an open letter to Secretary of State Blinken signed by more than 1,000 Agency for International Development employees. So far as I know, this measure of dissent in policy and governing circles is more or less unprecedented….

The devastation of America’s status in the community of nations—and I do not think we witness anything less—is altogether the consequence of a complacency long evident among America’s policy cliques. As Chas Freeman points out in his exchange with Chris Lydon, Israel is now breaking U.S. laws circumscribing the use of American-made armaments; it is in breach of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. And nobody in the U.S. says anything about it, Freeman says with obvious ire. It is the rest of the world that is beginning to speak up. I put it this way: We watch as the Age of Hegemonic Hypocrisy, as I propose we call it, draws to a close….

...We now have the Chinese preparing, by all appearances, to play a diplomatic role in the search for a settlement. We have Iran and Saudi Arabia summiting to determine a common course of action in response to the Gaza crisis. We have Turkey militantly denouncing Israel and talking to Iran after long, long years of animosity. We have a goodly number of America’s friends pulling the plug on their relations with Tel Aviv.

Postscript to ‘What’s on the tube…’ 

Gilbert Doctorow [via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2023]

...There are a lot of possiblities to explain subjectively what CNN and the BBC are doing. Objectively what they are doing is re-establishing their credibility as news as opposed to propaganda providers.  And I think this is especially obvious for the BBC.  One of their senior journalists who has his own program now calls it "Unspun" and repeats in the trailer-adverts that he is delivering news without spin.  Why would he be saying this if it were not obvious that everything the BBC has been saying about Russia for the past 20 months is "spun" and is being rejected by viewers for such tendentiousness.

This is all the more timely for these broadcasters now that the lies they have been disseminating about the Ukraine war are overturned by the latest news from the supreme Ukrainian military commander Zaluzhny in his widely cited interview in The Economist. Now, finally, we read in mainstream that the Ukrainian losses in the war may approach 400,000 dead, not 70,000 as official Kiev claims and that the kill ratio till now may be 10:1 or 12:1 in Russia’s favor….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 12, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 12, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

(anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

Trump will implement Martial Law, Shoot Protestors and Prosecute his enemies

Frank Vyan Walton, November 11, 2023 [DailyKos]

Trump has called for the Death Penalty against human traffickers, firing “Radical Marxist Prosecutors”, he has plans to implement right-wing indoctrination in our colleges, he has plans to “Crush the Deep State” (which would be Federal Employees), he’ll criminalize gender affirmation, he’ll try to criminalize the press that criticizes him under the guise of fighting “censorship” and the labeling of false “disinformation” and hate speech, he’ll end all support for Green Energy and Electric Vehicles, he’ll cut off aid to Ukraine and let Russia keep the land they’ve stolen, the guy who has 114 Trademarks in China and Russia says he’s going to “Stop Chinese Espionage” [How? Shut down Mar-A-Lago?] , he's promised to restart failed racist policies like “Stop and Frisk” and much more [such as snake and alligator moats, mass deportation and prison camps for Immigrants.]

Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term

Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett, November 6, 2023 [Washington Post, via downwithtyranny.com]

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family….

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act….

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 5, 2023

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 5, 2023

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

The Great Reordering  

Rana Foroohar, October 29, 2023 [Washington Monthly, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-31-2023]

There can be no doubt now that an epochal shift is underway in how the economy—in America and across the globe—is governed. The mystery is how a moderate, conventional politician like Joe Biden engineered it….

The record on that score is unequivocal. His COVID-19 stimulus bailed out people, not banks. His domestic economic policy has been about curbing giant corporations and promoting income growth. His infrastructure bills invested in America in a way not seen since the Eisenhower administration. He has taken commerce back to an earlier era in which it was broadly understood that trade needed to serve domestic interests before those of international markets.

The contrast with the so-called neoliberal economics of recent decades, in which it was presumed that markets always know best, and particularly the Clintonian idea that “free” trade and globalization were inevitable, could not be starker. With a few notable exceptions (Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jared Bernstein), Bill Clinton’s administration, like Barack Obama’s, was filled with neoliberal technocrats who bought fully into the idea of the inherent efficiency of markets. Although they might have occasionally looked to tweak the system, many of the academic economists running policy basically believed that capital, goods, and people would ultimately end up where it was best and most productive for them to be without the sort of public-sector intervention you’ve seen during the Biden administration.

In this world, so long as stock prices were going up and consumer prices were going down, all was well. Monetary policy trumped fiscal stimulus. And if the latter had to be used, it should be, in the words of the economist Larry Summers, “timely, targeted, and temporary.” (The Biden stimulus, by contrast, is designed to be broad based and long term.) In this political economy, outsourcing wasn’t a bad thing. China would get freer as it got richer. Americans should aim to be bankers and software engineers, not manufacturers….

“Rather than speaking to Goldman Sachs, Biden spoke to autoworkers.”

Winning the Anti-monopoly Game

Will Norris, October 29, 2023​​​​​​​ [Washington Monthly]

Despite press accounts to the contrary, the Biden administration’s revival of antitrust policy isn’t failing. It’s just getting started.

How the Youth Boom in Africa Will Change the World

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-31-2023]