Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – September 8 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Justice Alito reports German princess gave him $900 concert tickets
Associated Press, September 06, 2024 [via DailyKos]
Justice Samuel Alito reported Friday that he accepted $900 worth of concert tickets from a German princess, but disclosed no trips paid for by other people, according to a new financial disclosure form.
The required annual filing, for which Alito has often sought an extension, doesn't include details of the event tickets gifted by socialite Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Germany….
[TW: I begin with seemingly innocuous news item because it bears directly on today’s condition of political culture in USA. The rest of the Associated Press story lists a number of other gifts and courtesies Justice Alito has accepted, and sees nothing else peculiar in the gift by Gloria von Thurn und Taxis.
[Now, Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
[I am not going to write anything more on this Section other than to note its obvious importance as part of the Constitution of a republic in a world dominated and mostly ruled by monarchies and oligarchies. What I want to draw attention to are some of the comments in the DailyKos story:
Sep 06, 2024 at 06:36:03 PM — WTF is a German Princess?
Sep 06, 2024 at 06:40:10 PM —Germany hasn’t been a monarchy for more than 100 years….
Sep 06, 2024 at 06:46:09 PM — Germany still has princesses?
[Ganesh Sitaraman makes the very astute observation in his 2017 book, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic that Americans’ historic dislike of monarchies began to disappear after World War Two, when nazism, fascism, and communism came to be perceived as greater threats than oligarchy, and USA elites embraced a “special relationship” with the United Kingdom. To this day, the largest embassy by far in Washington DC is the British.
[But the threats of oligarchy and monarchy did not actually recede; they merely disappeared in the shadows cast by the Cold War. Very few people wondered what had become of the vast fortunes controlled by the former oligarchs of Europe. Perhaps people did not want to ask such potentially embarrassing questions of our new-found anti-communist allies.
[Thurn und Taxis is one of the oldest and nastiest of the European "black nobility." In the 15th through 18th centuries, the family became one of the richest in the world by operating the postal service used by Europe's royal families to communicate with each other. In 2017, the family's net worth was estimated at around $ 2.5 billion, “including the largest privately owned forests in Europe.” Gloria married into the family by wedding Johannes. Their son, Albert, was, at age eight, one of the youngest people ever recorded as a billionaire when Johannes died, leaving Albert sole designated heir of a $3 billion fortune.
[The nephew of Johannes was Max Thurn. He was a major power in the Mont Pelerin Society, serving as secretary from 1976 to 1988. This is the period in which the Mont Pelerin Society's economic “neoliberalism” became entrenched in power under Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in USA. The past half century of economic “neoliberalism” has pauperized the working class, destroyed the middle class, and enriched only elites, creating the social conditions in which right wing reactionaries thrive.
[It is a tragedy that the USA public and media are largely ignorant of the bloody history of European oligarchs, and fail to make the connection between inherited wealth, the continued existence of oligarchs like Thurn und Taxis, and the collapse of representative democracies around the world. The corruption of US Supreme Court Justice Alito is just a recent case in point.
[The social milieu Justice Alito is apparently comfortable in should certainly be of great public interest, and even, I strongly suggest, of concern to any intelligence agency that seriously understands the importance of maintaining the United States as a republic. Another comment from the DailyKos story:
Sep 07, 2024 at 01:09:34 PM — Back in the 1980's I spent the afternoon with the "Kiser Apparent" of Germany while working as an archaeologist for the "very rich". The "Prince" owned catfish farm in Texas. The rich kissed his ass.
[Theorists of civic republicanism warned about the corrupting influence of wealth and luxury. That’s one reason why Section 9 was written. Now consider Donald Trump and who is mentor was:
Aside From The Ones Living In Miami, Brooklyn and WeHo, Will Russians Get To See "The Apprentice?"
Howie Klein, September 07, 2024 [downwithtyranny.com]
Before Trump barged his way into the national consciousness, Roy Cohn was one of the worst villains of any American in our lifetimes— right up there with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Joseph McCarthy… and on a par with historical miscreants like Jefferson Davis, Andrew Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest… A real master of corruption, Cohn built his hideous career by exploiting power, weaponizing fear and perverting the law. From his role as McCarthy's right-hand man during the Red Scare— ruining countless lives through baseless accusations of communism— to his later years as a ruthless Mafia lawyer, Cohn epitomized everything vile about American greed and runaway ambition. With the exception of a small handful of delusional Republicans, his career is universally seen as a showcase of sociopathic disregard for ethics, and he is seen as a man who thrived on manipulation, blackmail… destruction. Most damning of all, Cohn mentored The Donald, passing along his amoral playbook to a demon who went on to wreak even more havoc on the country. So Cohn’s poisonous influence didn’t end with his death; it metastasized into the very heart of modern American politics.
And now there’s a film! Nick Schager’s preview for the Daily Beast noted that it’s the movie Señor T doesn’t want you to see— and for good reason… a damning film about the making of a monster… “a bona fide supervillain origin story.”As you probably know by now, it’s “an incisive primer on the relationship with Roy Cohn that made the 45th President of the United States who he is today. Which is to say, it lays out the gory details regarding the source of his egomania, greed, ambition, vanity, sociopathy, and heartless rapey-ness, the last of which comes to the fore in a brutal assault of his first wife Ivana.”When they first met, Cohn recognizes him “as a dreamer determined to do whatever it takes to be Rockefeller-grade rich, as well as something of an empty vessel into which he can pour all his evil. Pour he does, gradually taking Trump under his wing and indoctrinating him in the ways of unabashed cutthroat nastiness. To succeed, Cohn instructs, Trump must follow three surefire rules: attack, attack, attack; deny everything and admit nothing; and never acknowledge defeat and always claim victory….
David Rooney, May 20, 2024 [The Hollywood Reporter, via downwithtyranny.com 9-4-2024]
“What Abassi’s film reveals most of all is the extent to which the toxicity that’s now an inescapable part of our contemporary reality was shaped by the unholy alliance between two men half a century ago,”….
“Currently,” wrote Galuppo... ‘The obstacles we have faced releasing this movie are well documented. Our distribution was blocked. We were hit with a cease and desist from Trump’s lawyers,’ reads the Kickstarter website. ‘Major media companies were afraid to show you this movie. Releasing this movie has become a David and Goliath struggle, but with your support, you can help #ReleaseTheApprentice.”
[TW: in The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991, Vintage Books), Gordon Wood recounts (p. 108), that General Nathanal Greene wrote that the “most dangerous” men
“...knew the secret avenues to the human Heart and having the power to make the worse appear the better,” they had the capacity for ensnaring ordinary people in chains. “Ninety-nine parts out of one hundred of mankind, are ever inclined to live in peace, and cultivate a good understanding with each other.” Only members of “the remaining small part”—those with considerable abilities” were “joined to an intriguing disposition”—were “the real authors, advisers, and perpetrators of wars, treasons, and those other violences, which have, in all ages, more or less disgraced the annals of man.”
Controlling and channeling the overweening passions of these extraordinary men—the aristocratic passions of avarice and ambition: “the Love of Power and the Love of Money,” as Benjamin Franklin called them—seemed to many to be the central political problem of the age. Some thought that “ambition and avarice are springs of action so utterly opposite, that they never did or ever will unite in the same person. “ Others, however, were convinced not only that these two great passions “may subsist together in the same breast,” but that when “united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent Effects. Place before the Eyes of such Men a Post of Honour, that at the same time be a Place of Profit, and they will move Heaven and Earth to obtain it.” ]
A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations
Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Taibbi, Racket News. Important.
How the Neocons Subverted Russia’s Financial Stabilization in the Early 1990s
...On the basis of Poland’s economic success, I was contacted in 1990 by Mr. Grigory Yavlinsky, economic advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev, to offer similar advice to the Soviet Union, and in particular to help mobilize financial support for the economic stabilization and transformation of the Soviet Union. One outcome of that work was a 1991 project undertaken at the Harvard Kennedy School with Professors Graham Allison, Stanley Fisher, and Robert Blackwill. We jointly proposed a “Grand Bargain” to the US, G7, and Soviet Union, in which we advocated large-scale financial support by the US and G7 countries for Gorbachev’s ongoing economic and political reforms. The report was published as Window of Opportunity: The Grand Bargain for Democracy in the Soviet Union (1 October 1991).
The proposal for large-scale Western support for the Soviet Union was flatly rejected by the Cold Warriors in the White House….
...In early 1992, I was invited to make the case on the PBS news show The McNeil-Lehrer Report. I was on air with acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. After the show, he asked me to ride with him from the PBS studio in Arlington, Virginia back to Washington, D.C. Our conversation was the following. “Jeffrey, please let me explain to you that your request for large-scale aid is not going to happen. Even assuming that I agree with your arguments — and Poland’s finance minister [Leszek Balcerowicz] made the same points to me just last week — it’s not going to happen. Do you want to know why? Do you know what this year is?” “1992,” I answered. “Do you know that this means?” “An election year?” I replied. “Yes, this is an election year. It’s not going to happen.”….
...At the time of German reunification, both the US and Germany repeatedly promised Gorbachev and then Yeltsin that the West would not take advantage of German reunification and the end of the Warsaw Pact by expanding the NATO military alliance eastward. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin reiterated the importance of this US-NATO pledge. Yet within just a few years, Clinton completely reneged on the Western commitment, and began the process of NATO enlargement. Leading US diplomats, led by the great statesman-scholar George Kennan, warned at the time that the NATO enlargement would lead to disaster: “The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” So, it has proved…..
Calling Harris A Communist Is An Insult To Communism
Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin’s Newsletter, via Naked Capitalism 09-05-2024]
Aurelien [via Naked Capitalism 09-07-2024] Another important piece.
... Politics is not, and should not be, a purely technical activity. At most, it’s a transmission mechanism to enable the wishes of the people to be given concrete expression. But for this to happen, these wishes have to be articulated and organised in some way, and indeed this was the function of political parties in the past. They were organised expressions of the interests and attitudes of different parts of the society and, at best, they sought to promote and safeguard these interests. They and their leaders had, therefore, to be embedded to some degree in society. In turn, society had to be sufficiently organised both geographically and socially into coherent interest groups which political parties could seek to represent.
None of that is true today. Neoliberalism has largely succeeded in destroying any concept of a society of coherent groups, replacing it with a mass of alienated, utility-seeking consumers, compulsorily ascribed to newly-invented and marketed “identities.” Political parties these days operate like product manufacturers, targeting market segments with differential advertising. Understandably, therefore, the “consumers” of politics move from party to party as they might move from brand to brand. A fractured society will inevitably produce a fractured political system, and there are no technical solutions to that. In the end, all genuine political struggles are articulations of social struggles, by, or on behalf of, authentically existing groups. So this year we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the crushing of the 1984 miners’ strike in the UK; the last stand of organised labour against the brutalities of Thatcherism. But what was striking about that episode was the social solidarity within and between mining communities: the men manned the picket lines and supported other strikers while the women somehow kept families together and food on the table. I suspect that for anyone born after, say, 1980, this must sound like a historical novel. The social, and even family structures have long disappeared, and these days feminists would be bused in to explain to the women that their real enemies were their husbands and the patriarchy, not the government and the employers….
This would be, of course, the opportunity of the century (at least) for a populist party of the genuine Left to arise, and the Party itself is much more afraid of this than of any alleged “fascists” on the other side of the spectrum. In France, a few brave souls like Fabien Roussel the Communist Party leader and François Ruffin (who left LFI in disgust) are trying to create a left-populist discourse, but are being drowned with derision, not least by the Notional Left itself. So the impetus will inevitably come from the Right, and it’s not going to be funny.
It would be much wiser of the Party to make concessions to populist Left ideas now, because they are not going to like the alternative when it happens. But then no-one ever accused them of being overly intelligent. I’ve become convinced, in fact, that with the machine seizing up as it has, those who make a populism of the Left impossible will make a populism of the Right inevitable.
Of what value is democracy when those in power ignore it?
[Funding the Future, via Naked Capitalism 09-06-2024]
Global power shift
ANATOL LIEVEN: HOW THE RUSSIAN ESTABLISHMENT REALLY SEES THE WAR ENDING
[Foreign Policy, via Naked Capitalism 09-02-2024]
Conditioning Americans for War With Russia
Ray McGovern [Consortium News, via Naked Capitalism 09-06-2024]
Scott Ritter [via Naked Capitalism 09-07-2024]
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
Palestinians Seek US Appeals Court Review of Biden Genocide Complicity Case
[Common Dreams, via Naked Capitalism 09-01-2024]
UK suspends 30 arms exports to Israel over Gaza war crimes concerns
[Middle East Eye, via Naked Capitalism 09-03-2024]
Oligarchy
Ultra-Rich Families Set to Control $9.5 Trillion by 2030, Deloitte Says
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 09-05-2024]
“The wealth of ultra-rich families will likely swell to $9.5 trillion by 2030, according to estimates from consultancy Deloitte, as family offices grow and morph to rival hedge funds. The figure would mark a 73% jump from the current $5.5 trillion controlled by people represented by family offices, according to the report. The number of investment firms for the wealthy is expected to grow by one-third over the same time period, to 10,720. As wealth inequality concentrates more money in the hands of the very rich, and as it becomes easier to open a family office, the industry is catching up with hedge funds in size and — in some cases — hiring from a similar pool of professional investors.”
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
UN chief warns Africa’s inadequate access to debt relief is recipe for social unrest
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 09-07-2024]
On Boeing’s factory floor, workers feel ‘overmanaged and undersupported'
[Seattle Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 09-03-2024]
“In those interviews, workers portrayed consistent problems on Boeing’s factory floor: The company hemorrhaged institutional knowledge during the pandemic and hasn’t yet caught up. Boeing pushes workers to move quickly to get planes out the door, sometimes ignoring the correct sequence of work and neglecting to document deviations. Upper management doesn’t want to hear safety concerns, they say…. Boeing lost nearly 15,000 workers in Washington — roughly 21% of its workforce in the state — between 2019 and 2020 due to retirements, layoffs and voluntary buyouts, according to company data. The aircraft manufacturer was dealing with a slowdown in air travel amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a slowdown in production after the fatal MAX crashes and subsequent grounding of the MAX fleet. It started to ramp up hiring again in 2022, bringing on more than 4,000 workers in Washington that year and 6,600 more last year. It still hasn’t reached 2019 employment levels. Today’s new hires are navigating work on the factory floor without the generational knowledge that so many mechanics relied on, current employees told The Times and the NTSB.”
Predatory finance
They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals
Here’s 22 Examples of Google Employees Trying to Avoid Creating Evidence in Antitrust Case
[404 Media, via Naked Capitalism 09-02-2024]
Pharma Charges 80K to cure Hepatitis C. The Manufacturing Cost is $78
Ian Welsh, September 06, 2024
...So, the laws should be changed and every pharma exec, board members and so on who prices like this should be locked up for life.
Next, all laws need to be changed to end the doctrine that only profit maximization for shareholders matters….
Fourth, end pharma patents. All of them. All information, including manufacturing information is shared.
Fifth: for all palliatives, profits must be capped at 5% max….
Restoring balance to the economy
Noah Smith: Biden did stuff, and it looks like it’s working so far
[Noahpinion, via The Big Picture 09-07-2024]
For the first time in its entire history, the U.S. is facing a rival that can out-manufacture it. This is a very big deal. George W. Bush and Barack Obama never seemed to recognize how big of a deal this was, and so we lost valuable decades in which we could have addressed this problem.
Donald Trump did recognize it — or at least, he seemed to dimly understand that manufacturing strength was important for national competitiveness, and that China was a threat. But Trump didn’t actually do much about it — his export controls on Chinese companies were modest and partially reversed under pressure, his tariffs did nothing to bring back U.S. manufacturing, and his occasional haphazard attempts to encourage FDI came to naught. Trump brought needed attitude shifts, but was utterly ineffectual in actual real policy terms.
Then Joe Biden came into office, and — with help from appointees like Jake Sullivan and Gina Raimondo — actually made a serious attempt to do something about America’s industrial weakness vis-a-vis China. His approach had four basic pillars:
Industrial policy (the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act) to encourage American manufacturing in strategic industries
Export controls on semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment being sold to China
“Friend-shoring” and reshoring of supply chains, especially of critical minerals
Tariffs on various Chinese products
It’s too early to tell whether tariffs have had an effect, since these were a very late addition to the playbook. Friend-shoring has made some progress, though it will take a decade and a half to really see results, and domestic mining is currently being stymied by land-use regulations. In the areas of industrial policy and export controls, though, we’ve seen some pretty rapid signs of important progress….
David Dayen, July 9, 2024 [The American Prospect, via Rick S.]
An interim report shows how pharmaceutical middlemen raise drug prices and damage care.
THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF U.S. TEACHER STRIKES
National Bureau of Economic Research, via Naked Capitalism 09-02-2024]
From the abstract: “…we find that, on average, strikes increase compensation by 8% and lower pupil-teacher ratios by 0.5 students…”
The Unsung History of Heartland Socialism
[In These Times, via Naked Capitalism 09-02-2024]
...As sewer socialism was carried out over the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of socialists were elected to public office across the Midwest — including in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio — under the common cause of redistributing wealth and power. The largest-circulation socialist publication in U.S. history, Appeal to Reason, was printed in the prairies of Girard, Kan., and reached 760,000 paying subscribers at its peak.
Following World War II, a vicious Red Scare targeted thousands of socialists across the country and dismantled many of their organizing efforts. But socialists didn’t disappear; many joined other progressive groups and became involved in movements for labor rights, civil rights, gender equality and an end to war and poverty….
Disrupting mainstream economics
Notes on the political economy of war
Wolfgang Streeck [Journal of Keynesian Economics, via Naked Capitalism 09-07-2024]
Only part way through but this is a very very good piece.
Health care crisis
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
Matt Taibbi, September 02, 2024
...American liberalism’s trumpeting of “rights” always stopped at the border of whatever tony suburb or upscale city neighborhood it inhabited. While public defenders fought rights violations at peasant wages, wealthy Democrats in the privacy of voting booths always voted in the truncheon, lapping even law-and-order Republicans in aristocratic disgust of the rabble….
How city politics work: rich developers get Mayors elected, Mayors use police to keep developers happy. “Community policing” strategies used to round up McMichael and Odom were part of a statistical dragnet rich New Yorkers repeatedly endorsed. The developer-pol relationship was a subtext to the death of Eric Garner, who dressed in rags and at 350 pounds drew complaints from builders of fancy condos across the street from Garner’s Staten Island corner. On the day Garner was killed, a lieutenant from the 120th precinct saw Garner as he drove past, remembered complaints, and dispatched detectives to move him off the corner. They ended up killing him instead.
[Futurism, via Naked Capitalism 09-02-2024]
Shocking leak suggests your phone really is listening in on your conversations
[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 09-03-2024]
California lawmakers approve legislation to ban deepfakes, protect workers and regulate AI
[Associated Press, via Naked Capitalism 09-03-2024]
The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case
[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 09-06-2024]
Climate and environmental crises
Five charts: How climate change is driving up food prices around the world
[Carbon Brief, via Naked Capitalism 09-06-2024]
Texas woman uses AirTags to see where recyclable plastics REALLY end up – and is left speechless
[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism 09-04-2024]
Disrupting mainstream politics
Why The Left Taking Over The Republican Party Is Even Harder Than Taking Over The Democratic Party
Swamp Yankee, September 05, 2024 [Ian Welsh]
For those advising an attempt to take over the Republican Party. I think candidly that that is even less likely than taking over the Democratic Party….
they have as kind of their Ur-Principle the idea that Private Property Is Sacred (this is, as Ur-Principles so often are, is frequently and seemingly without dissonance contradicted by them in the actual practice of their lives). They do not distinguish between the person owning a small cottage and Elon Musk; for them, private property is private property.
[TW: I have previously noted the major damage done to civic republicanism by the con-job of promoting the ideas John Locke as essential to the American Revolution, while ignoring the actual theorists of civic republicanism such as James Harrington.]
A third factor is that fifty years of talk radio, cable news, and now Facebook and other social media have marinated them in a culture of querulous suspicion and anti-reason; they fall for just lunatic conspiracy stuff, and while some of them are just naturally intelligent enough that they fight through this and make real contributions to our local governments, it’s still their native idiom, if that makes sense (like, believing basically every election is stolen; despite the minimizing of certain interlocutors of Trump’s misdeeds, this is a real one, this baseless accusation of fraudulent or stolen elections — this is a corrosive rhetorical move, and one that makes the actual practical life of our bodies politic in the real world more difficult….
Finally, Republicans have their own Machine which is even worse than the Democratic Machine, which at least has to pretend to some notion of human well-being. The GOP Machine in my experience down here are connected to local business elites and are also canny, and just like, wildly amoral, and won’t give up the party without a fight.
[TW: The above as elevated from a comment in Briahna Joy Gray and David Sirota discuss the Democratic Party, based on the YouTube video, Did Bernie PROVE Working With Dems Can't Be Done? with David Sirota (video)]
Wouldn't It Be Funny If Nebraska Is The State That Saves The Senate From A MAGA Takeover?
Howie Klein, September 01, 2024 [downwithtyranny.com, via Rick S.]
The Democratic Party decided not to field a candidate in Nebraska’s Senate race this cycle. Maybe they thought the state was just so damn red that they couldn’t even beat as weak an incumbent as Deb Fischer, who had pledged to not make a career out of the Senate— and then changed her mind. In 2020, Trump won the state— and by a lot: 556,846 (58.2%) to 374,583 (39.2%). Trump, though, lost the two most populous counties in the state, Douglas and Lancaster.
So what do those 374,583 people who voted for Biden— plus the people who were disgusted by Trump’s J-6 insurrection— do now? Fortunately, a progressive independent is running… Dan Osborn, in many ways even better than the kind of neo-liberal, corporate, GOP-lite candidate Democrats often run in red states. Roll your eyes all you want about Nebraska but FOUR polls now show Osborn either ahead or neck-and-neck with Fischer!
Fischer and Osborn might be in tight race, as both tout union endorsements
Aaron Sanderford, September 3, 2024 [Nebraska Examiner, via Rick S.]
...ome Republicans privately say they are pressing Fischer’s campaign to dip into her war chest of more than $3 million and spend money defining Osborn. She has raised more than $6.2 million.
Osborn has raised more than $1 million, a significant sum for a candidate backed by no political party. He listed $650,000 in campaign cash on hand in July….
[TW: Not a Republican. And, not a Democrat. Help him win, and shock the political establishment. Donate money here.]
Democrats' political malpractice
Kamala Harris softens Biden’s capital gains tax increase proposal
[Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism 09-05-2024]
US Workers Are So Much Better Off Today Than 4 Years Ago—It's Not Even Close
Dean Baker, September 06, 2024 [Beat the Press, via CommonDreams]
This is not a tough one. First and foremost, workers are better off today because they overwhelmingly have jobs if they want them. They also are getting higher pay, even after adjusting for inflation. And they tell us they are much more satisfied at their jobs….
In January of 2021, the share of people in their prime working years (ages 25 to 54) who had jobs was 76.4 percent. In the most recent data, it stood at 80.9 percent, 4.6 percentage points higher….
...An analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that wages for workers in the bottom ten percent of the wage distribution increased by 13.4 percent from before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation.
Wages for workers in the middle increased by 3.0 percent over this period, also after adjusting for inflation. This is not great, but it is better than what we saw over most of the prior four decades, when wages were often stagnant or falling.
[I include Baker not because I agree with him, but because his article is typical of the arguments made by Democratic Party elites bewildered by general public economic discontent. Yes, the national account statistics and employment numbers look good. But it’s no longer safe to fly on Boeing aircraft. Remember, establishment pundits like Tom Friedman, who sang the praises of free trade and globalization, repeatedly called Boeing the “crown jewel” of American industry up until a couple years ago. Boeing is as good as dead at this point; only its defense contracts are going to keep it on life support. And now another “crown jewel” of American industry, Intel is collapsing.
[The destruction of Boeing as a properly functioning aircraft builder is just one clue to the general economic discontent reflected in poll after poll. This is supposed to be a service economy, but you can no longer get customer service. Trying to solve a problem with billing or a foreign-made product defect is always a reminder that the post-industrial, out-sourced US economy sucks. Having to deal with interminable phone tree menus, often never reaching a live human being, or being shunted to someone in a low wage country like India or Costa Rica whose English just is not that easy to understand.
[How many people look forward to computer or cell phone updates? So more screen space is plastered over with ads? There are little reminders like these every day that the balance of power is totally out of whack, and working people are screwed. Yet companies are making record profits in this smelly rotten carcass of a national economy? And CEOs are still getting bonuses?
[There were plenty of people who tried to warn that globalization and financialization and the war against organized labor was going to head to exactly these results. The United Auto Workers warned about NAFTA. At Boeing, the International Association of Machinists warned about outsourcing and relocating manufacturing to anti-union states like South Carolina. National Nurses United warned about what private equity is now doing to health care.]
Kamala Harris Is Imitating Biden’s Very Bad Media Strategy
Alex Shephard, September 8, 2024 [The New Republic]
Avoiding the press will only invite negative coverage—and it suggests that the people who ran Biden’s disastrous reelection campaign are still calling the shots.
How Trump Plans To Trick Low-Info Voters Into Choosing Him And The Weirdo Instead Of Kamala And Tim
Howie Klein, September 03, 2024 [downwithtyranny.com]
...Progressives among the Democrats are fighting to not allow the race to turn into a lesser-of-two-evils contest, which would mean many voters sitting on their hands. Trump’s camp will be pushing that hard in places where they have no chance, especially in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha, Appleton, Philly, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Phoenix, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Las Vegas, Reno, Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro… maybe Omaha and Lewiston.
Bernie, Pramila, Elizabeth Warren and other trusted progressives have been pushing Kamala and Tim as a positive good, not a lesser evil. The message: Kamala and Tim are running on their records; Trump and his weirdo running mate are obfuscating their records. Bernie, AOC and Pramila have been happy with Biden’s work and seem to assume Kamala is going to continue including them in the process and standing up to the pressure from Wall Street and Silicon Valley….
(anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
The think tank behind Project 2025 is also behind some of Florida’s most extreme laws
[Seeking Rents, via Naked Capitalism 09-01-2024]
'Unhinged and Undemocratic': Florida Cops Question Abortion Petition Signers
Jessica Corbett, September 06, 2024 [CommonDreams]
Floridians and reproductive rights advocates responded with alarm on Friday to Tampa Bay Timesreporting that Florida law enforcement officers have been sent to the homes of multiple voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights measure on the November ballot….
The officer inquiries appear "to be part of a broad—and unusual—effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day," the Times reported….
Florida Goes Full Police State Over Abortion Ballot Initiative
Edith Olmsted, September 6, 2024 [The New Republic]
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
After Immunity: How Judge Chutkan Should Apply Trump v. U.S.—and When
[Just Security, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 09-03-2024]
Worth reading in full, if you’re following this story.
Buying Elections Could Become A Tax Deduction
Helen Santoro, September 06, 2024 [The Lever]
Legal operatives tied to Trump, power broker Leonard Leo, and a hate group are aiming to make dark-money donations tax deductible….
... in a new lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, four religious groups including the National Religious Broadcasters, which represents Christian radio stations, argue that in order to express their free speech rights, 501(c)(3) organizations should be allowed to support political candidates. If successful, the lawsuit could be a big win for dark-money donors who want to influence elections while remaining anonymous — since they would score tax breaks on their massive election spending….
How Kamala Harris can fight the renegade Supreme Court — and win
Paul Rosenberg, August 31, 2024 [Salon, via DailyKos 09-03-2024]
MASTER PLAN, Ep 3: The Memo That Changed America
[The Lever, August 27, 2024]
Our third episode introduces the architect behind the master plan’s original blueprint, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.
The Powell Memo almost sounds fake: a decades-old manifesto detailing how corporations and oligarchs could fight back against New Deal-era reforms and use their money to hijack American politics. It’s like some boogeyman manufactured by liberals desperate to come up with an explanation for their loss of power.
But as you’ll learn in episode 3 of Master Plan, the Powell Memo is real, and it shaped American society in ways that were mostly unknown — until now.
In this episode, we introduce you to the man behind the memo: the seemingly moderate, deceptively mild-mannered Lewis Powell, who authored a memorandum laying out the future for corporate corruption — and then ascended to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he was positioned to implement his agenda. We trace Powell’s money-drenched past, including the legal work he did helping tobacco companies fight public health advocates, and unearth snippets of his speeches detailing his radicalization.
MASTER PLAN Bonus: Ralph Nader Vs. The Master Plan
[The Lever, September 05, 2024]
David Sirota talks with the man whose legislative successes prompted a corporate backlash and Lewis Powell’s infamous memo.
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